Breath Indicator

[Springheel]

This isn't the tunnel vision we're talking about now, it's the underwater overlay. The jury is still out about whether we want a tunnel vision effect or not.

[Ishtvan]

You could have it turn off and on based on whether the player's head is underwater with a bit of SDK modification in playerview.cpp. Out of curiosity, how are you getting it to turn on when the player is in the water now? Are you overloading the breath meter?

[Springheel]

Not overloading it, just adding it to the if statement. Any time the player's breath < 100, the overlay is set to visible.

 

It's been fairly simple to do, but I don't know if we'll want to add it or not. Ultimately all it does is darken the screen a bit. I'm going to try one or two other ideas tomorrow.

[sparhawk]

Hmm, actually it doesn't look half-bad. There's a little bit of visible 'edges' in the fade, however. I'll see if I can get rid of that.

 

Having an edge blurred view underwater sounds ok for me, but having such an effect permanently for lost HP doesn't seem good to me. Underwater it sounds natural to have this effect.

[Darkness_Falls]

Cool, Springheel. I'd be interested in seeing the blur effect here. Maybe post the file(s) for us to try when you're able?

[Springheel]

I've come up with something the might work. It kind of fakes a disortion effect, but in a way that won't affect the actual heat haze on the surface. You can't really see it in dark water like the bonehoard--all it does there is make your screen a little darker when you're underwater. In lighter environments like test_water you can get a better look at it. It could still use some tweaking, but you can get the general idea.

 

To check it out, all you have to do is copy this file into your guis folder. It will overwrite hud.gui, so you might want to save a copy first.

 

It will cause the underwater overlay to go on any time you enter water, but it won't turn off when you exit water until your breath replenishes.

 

http://www.mindplaces.com/save/hud.gui

[Darkness_Falls]

I see. Might be cool to have the darkening... hoping to see blurring some day , too

[Ishtvan]

Having an edge blurred view underwater sounds ok for me, but having such an effect permanently for lost HP doesn't seem good to me. Underwater it sounds natural to have this effect.

 

We can do that with an easy SDK change in playerview.cpp later on. Right now I think we should just concentrate on whether the effect looks good rather than the timing of the effect.

[Ishtvan]

I tried out the effect in test_water, and yeah it does make my screen a little darker. I can still make out everything in crisp detail though. Are you sure having a heat haze / double vision effect there would interfere with the top of the water? I thought Gildoran was saying that it might not be a problem? I'm not sure how the doublevision shader works when you get hit, but maybe something like that would work?

[Springheel]

Ok, I'm trying a heathaze effect. It does cause you to not be able to see the surface, but I'm not sure whether that's a deal-breaker or not. I'm not even sure it's a rendering conflict--it just isn't possible to detect one distorted surface when you're looking through another distortion. I'll do some more experiments and then upload an improved version.

 

edit: One effect that people might not like is that it becomes extremely difficult to tell whether you're near the surface or not, which might suck if you're trying to gage how far down you can go before having to try to get back to the surface. Yeah, come to think of it, that would really not be good. Imagine coming out of an underwater pipe into a well and not knowing how far up you had to swim before breaking the surface--you'd have no way of knowing whether there was an air pocket at the top or not until you actually hit it.

[Springheel]

I tried a blur shader and the same thing happened--you could no longer see the surface of the water. I think that means we basically can't use vertex effects.

[Springheel]

I tried out the effect in test_water, and yeah it does make my screen a little darker. I can still make out everything in crisp detail though.

 

Did you see the particles floating around? There are two particle textures scrolling in opposite directions, which messes with the eye a little bit and makes it look like things are 'wavering'. I think it's the closest we'll get to some kind of haze effect without using a vertex program. Question is whether it's worth it or not. The more I see it, the less sure I am that I like it.

[Gildoran]

How are you testing the pixel shader effect? Are you testing it as part of the HUD or using the cvar you talked about?

[Springheel]

Currently I'm just testing it using the HUD. The version I posted above calls the overlay whenever your breath is less than 100. If we find a version we like we can then add it using the cvar. I'm going to try something with bubbles tomorrow, but I don't have high hopes.

 

Anyone else who has ideas concepts, feel free to share.

[Gildoran]

Strange... I was under the impression that pixel shaders were rendered when the scene was rendered, which means they would have already been applied by the time the overlay was drawn... I'll have to test to find out where my misunderstanding is, though that'll have to wait 'til tommorrow.

[Springheel]

It didn't create the same black texture problem that the gas arrow example you posted did. I'm not even sure it was a rendering conflict. It simply became completely impossible to see the surface heathaze texture, using both the heathaze and the blur overlay.

[Gildoran]

Are you sure it was me who posted a gas arrow example?

[Springheel]

Hmm, I thought it was you. This is from a while back--the shot from the roof of Dram's old map, where the gas arrow made the glass look black? Maybe it was somebody else.

[Gildoran]

Oh, ok, I know what you're talking about then... I didn't create that screenshot, I just pointed out that it was due to lack of depth-sorting, and that maybe we shouldn't have transparent glass.

[Ishtvan]

OrbWeaver was who made the gas arrow effect.

 

@Spring: In your current effect, I didn't notice the overlapping particles or any movement really, I just saw a darker screen. Maybe I just didn't notice.

 

Is it possible to adjust the magnitude of the blur effect? If there's not a rendering conflict, maybe it's possible to tone down the blur until you can make out the surface still?

[Darkness_Falls]

I tried experimenting w/ effects earlier today, but they didn't work as I desired. Where do we download your latest attempt, Springheel? Or have you not done any since the "darker screen" one you posted earlier?

 

Sounded like you made a new one, since I don't remember seeing "two particle textures scrolling in opposite directions' in your earlier version. I'd like to see the new (if exists) so I can learn from it in order to maybe help in creating concepts.

[Springheel]

Is it possible to adjust the magnitude of the blur effect?

 

I tried changing the magnitude of the heathaze without any impact. I didn't try to adjust the blur, though it wasn't that strong to start with.

 

I don't remember seeing "two particle textures scrolling in opposite directions' in your earlier version

 

Hmm, if you both didn't see it then maybe I uploaded the wrong file or something. Try updating the guis/assets/hud/underwater_overlay.tga file on CVS--I uploaded another version not too long ago.

[Springheel]

Another possible road to take for an underwater overlay might be some kind of faked flicker effect, though I don't know how good that would look either.

 

If someone wants to play around with that, there's an example posted here: http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=5651

 

I think I'm going to leave my contribution alone for now.

[Darkness_Falls]

Okay, yeah, we didn't have the overlay TGA to see the full effect before. Now I see the criss-crosses. I'm afraid that won't address our needs. That type of effect is something that would be better suited for being cast across the pool bottom of any body of water rather than being tied to the HUD. (Though, I'm not suggesting we do it.) It looks kinda like the beautiful patterns created on surfaces from light going through water. However, when it moves in-synch with how the player looks around, it just looks weird.

 

D3 must have some warbly "blur" effect setting that we could kick in when under water. Similar to bloom effects that get applied to objects (rather than it looking like a HUD overlay); I imagine a "blur" setting is somewhere in D3.

[sparhawk]

It looks kinda like the beautiful patterns created on surfaces from light going through water. However, when it moves in-synch with how the player looks around, it just looks weird.

 

This effect is called "caustics". And such an effect should definitely not move synced with the player.