Underwater View Material Request

[Ishtvan]

It turns out that it's pretty easy to apply a material overlay to the player's screen. We just need a texture artist to create a material to be overlayed for the underwater view. It can be animated if that works better. I seem to remember someone saying they'd tried this already but weren't satisfied with the results, but I don't see anything on CVS.

 

Anyway, if any texture artist wants to put forward a material to be overlayed on the player view while underwater, the implementation of it in the SDK would be very easy.

 

For now, you can even test it without any SDK changes:

 

Just set cvar g_testPostProcess to the name of the material you've created.

[Springheel]

I had looked into this previously, but I wasn't sure about what would happen if you added a distortion effect. Currently, two distortion effects, like heat-haze, cancel each other out, right? So if you looked up to the surface, I was worried you would just see a black box.

 

Other than a heat-haze, I'm not sure exactly what would look good for an underwater overlay. I had considered scrolling bubbles, but that might look weird if the player changed their view and the bubbles didn't go straight up. Any ideas?

 

We had talked about possibly using the overlay to communicate how much breath is left--I had imagined a slight darkening around the edges of the screen that moved towards the center (like tunnel vision) the closer you were to running out of air. Another option would be to turn it from black to red as you run out of air, since the red haze kicks in when you start taking damage anyway.

[Ishtvan]

I was imagining some kind of tint (solid color w/ transparency), but maybe that would be better left up to the mappers with fog lights? I don't know what would look good. IRL it's blurry as hell, but I don't think that would be good for gameplay.

[Springheel]

I could try adding a subtle blur effect and see what happens.

[Gildoran]

I was imagining some kind of tint (solid color w/ transparency), but maybe that would be better left up to the mappers with fog lights? I don't know what would look good. IRL it's blurry as hell, but I don't think that would be good for gameplay.

Yeah, I think adding tinge over the whole screen would be bad, as not all water looks the same... some would be murky, others clear... some blue, others green or brown. Also, it would have the disadvantage that it doesn't change how much it's faded based on distance, which would look wrong.

[sparhawk]

Also, you can not simply add a tint to the entire screen. What about when you enter water that is only partially deep? Or do we just have a in or out? AFAIK in T1/T2 you could really submerge slowly, seeing the effect on screen as well.

[Ishtvan]

Should we just give up on overlaying a 2d material across the whole screen then?

 

I'm looking at the "underwater view" in the programming TODO list and trying to figure out what to do with it. It seems like we have the code to overlay a 2d material, but can't think of one that would work for all situations.

 

As Spring said, we can't use any distortion effects because of the D3 renderer problem with overlapping effects. Are we sure that applies to stuff that's overlayed in this manner? If we put a heat haze in the HUD, would it mess up other effects where it overlapped? I think the answer is yes, but just wanted to doublecheck.

 

We could maybe put in an animated noise-like texture to try and simulate a blur, but that could look crappy. What about a variation on the doublevision effect that happens when you get hit? Does that mess up other things when it overlaps?

[Gildoran]

I'm not entirely convinced adding a heathaze would undo any other shaders, assuming it's rendered after everything else is rendered. (as opposed to being a part of the scene)

[Ishtvan]

Hmm, we could test it out, just need to create a blur/heat haze material and set g_testPostProcess to the material name.