Water Footstep Sfx: Wading Vs Puddle

[Ishtvan]

So in the water code, we can distinguish between two cases: Water is at about the player's feet level, or water level is between the player's feet and waist (wading). Do you guys think we should have different sounds for these two cases?

[oDDity]

Yes, they are very different sounds, sicne water at abiout ankjle lvel means you have to constanly splash down into the water with your feet, and break the water skin when you lift up.

Wading at waist height could be done very quietly.

[pakmannen]

Sure, sounds good to me.

[Ishtvan]

Cool, I have both cases pointing to movement_water right now, but I can easily change it when the wading sound is ready. I guess maybe we could have a separate sound for swimming too, if we wanted.

[pakmannen]

We probably want different sounds for when you are swimming under water.

[oDDity]

I'd say that splashing though ankle deep water and swimming in the water should be similar sounds, and wading wasit deep and swimming underwater should be very similar.

Wading through waist deep water would be almost silent really, if you were holding your arms above the water.

[sparhawk]

What about a screen effect? Currently being under water looks the same as being above water. Of course when you are fully submerges it's pretty easy, because we can simply overlay the screen with some blueish greenish colour effect. The major question is, what about in between situations where approx 75% of the screen are underwater?

[pakmannen]

How did that look in Thief? I can't remember

[sparhawk]

I have to check it, but I'm sure that there was no all-or-nothing view when you entered water.

[New Horizon]

It would be nice if there was also some visual distortion under water, in addition to the colored tint.

[saxmeister]

Yeah, even the original Quake had warping and distortion effects underwater. I wonder if some of the old Quake code has something that could be useful for the DarkMOD engine?

[Ishtvan]

The water code should be able to detect all those cases (assuming it works as designed). It's got waterlevel_none, feet, waist, head (I'm guessing when it's at waterlevel_head you're underwater, although not positive).

 

As for distortion underwater, it should be a pretty quick coding job to put that in once we have the effect, we just need a shader/fragment program for the effect. Maybe someone has released one on D3World? I dunno. Although, because there's a distortion effect on the top surface, are we going to get the same problem with overlapping distortion effects that you get looking thru glass at water?

[Domarius]

What about a "wet" surface, like a puddle? This "plish plish" noise would be completely different than the "ka-woosh ka-woosh" noise made by stepping through ankle deep water.

 

Wet surfaces could just be a surface attribute, like stone or wood.

[Ishtvan]

That's already in the surface list, called puddle Although I guess that means I need to change the name of the shallow water one to something other than puddle if we want them to be two separate sounds...

[SneaksieDave]

For underwater distortion, it might be a good idea to use a variation of the berzerker (or whatever it's called in D3) powerup. IIRC it goes kinda... doubled-image blurry? Best underwater distortion I've ever seen is in FarCry, because it actually goes blurry, like an unaided eye underwater. Far better than just some refractive effects.

[New Horizon]

For underwater distortion, it might be a good idea to use a variation of the berzerker (or whatever it's called in D3) powerup. IIRC it goes kinda... doubled-image blurry? Best underwater distortion I've ever seen is in FarCry, because it actually goes blurry, like an unaided eye underwater. Far better than just some refractive effects.

 

Yes, the Far Cry underwater shots are gorgeous.

[Ishtvan]

Does anyone know if we can get two overlapping distortion programs, or is it always going to do that crap like where you look thru glass at water and all the distortion goes away? Reason being, the top of the water has a distortion effect applied to it, that looks good, but if we have another one for looking at things underwater (which I think we should), then they'll overlap. Maybe it's okay though, because the water view distortion will be applied directly to the player and isn't on a map surface or anything.

 

Does anyone know what happens experimentally when you look thru glass with the berserker powerup or some other thing that distorts your view?

[sparhawk]

Yes, the Far Cry underwater shots are gorgeous.

 

Can you show screenshots of this? Prefereably fully submerged and halfway.

[SneaksieDave]

Hopefully you have it, NH? I was forced to watch a friend's X-brick when I saw it. I don't have the game (yet).

[Springheel]

googled:

 

http://www.polycat.net/gallery/albums/farcry/fc_14.jpg

 

http://shop.gameplay.co.uk/images/products/RM00542_6_lq.jpg

 

http://jamsi.com/graphics/archive/FarCry1.jpg

[SneaksieDave]

Weird! Those don't look like what I saw on the xbrick. I mean, this shit was like, your-neighbor's-pool-when-you-were-9-years-old realistic.

[Springheel]

It's possible it looks better on higher video settings...they didn't look quite as good as I remember either.

[god_is_my_goldfish]

If i still had my lappy (it's in for repairs, for far too long in my opinion) I would nab one right now, but yes it's very pretty. A better example would be a screen grab from a night time map.

[sparhawk]

I guess I have to reinstall it. Or maybe it's still on my HD. I'll check it.

[New Horizon]

On the subject of footsteps.

 

I've been following the directions to add the material name, human_wood, to a material file to get the proper foot sounds to play but it's just making the floor texture turn black. I don't understand why as it's setup exactly the way the tutorials show.

 

textures/darkmod/mansion/floor/manfloor04

{

 

human_wood

 

qer_editorimage textures/darkmod/mansion/floor/manfloor04.tga

diffusemap textures/darkmod/mansion/floor/manfloor04.tga

specularmap textures/darkmod/mansion/floor/manfloor04_s.tga

 

}

 

Isn't that all it takes?