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Lightgem Again


sparhawk

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When the player looks up the compass should rotate on this axis also. That's the only chance for the player to actually KNOW that he is looking upward. This might sound funny, but when you are in caves then you can easily loose the sense of direction and the compass should provide this. To make sure that the gem can be seen at all times, it has to be tweaked in such a way that with the most probable angle the gem is still seen.

Hmmm, in that case the light gem would have to be mirrored on the bottom half to look exactly the same as the top..making the gem a perfect sphere in this case I think. I know they tilted the compass in Thief 1 and 2 but omitted it in 3 due to the obstruction of the gem no doubt...but if the gem is a perfect sphere, perhaps we can avoid this...although it may be best to leave it stationary and only rotate left to right.

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but if the gem is a perfect sphere, perhaps we can avoid this...although it may be best to leave it stationary and only rotate left to right.

That could work well. The gem is a sphere or an oval. Doesn't really matter but a sphere might look better. And the compass is just a plate with a hole in it. So that it rotates around the gem and there is always a little of the gem visible.

 

The problem is, like in the caves in T1. It can easily happen that you loose direction without that aid and then you no longer know which way is up or down. Just from looking at the screen you can't see this.

Gerhard

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As long as the gem is visible on the underside of the compass it should be fine. Having the compass identical on the bottom as it is on the top should solve that.

Or like this. Should also work. But don't forget that the gem and the compass are two different models. The gem is not even a model it is a bitmap.

Gerhard

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Ok,I uploaded it, it doesn't look as good in its low poly UV mapped state as it does in the gif render I posted eariler, since I can control the lighting and luminosity of the gem there, but it'll do for test purposes.

Does it need a spec map for the hud light rendering? Does it even matter ho high res it is?

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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As long as the gem is visible on the underside of the compass it should be fine. Having the compass identical on the bottom as it is on the top should solve that.

 

But it doesn't solve the problem of not being able to see North. In fact, the more spherical you make the gem, the more of a problem this becomes. Let's face it, most of the time you are looking straight ahead, and an edge-on view of the compass is useless. I don't want to have to start looking up, down, and all around to try and get a good glimpse of my compass or lightgem. They should simply be static, as they were in T3.

 

I never had a problem determining whether I was looking up or down in T3, or in any other FPS with modern graphics.

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But it doesn't solve the problem of not being able to see North. In fact, the more spherical you make the gem, the more of a problem this becomes. Let's face it, most of the time you are looking straight ahead, and an edge-on view of the compass is useless. I don't want to have to start looking up, down, and all around to try and get a good glimpse of my compass or lightgem. They should simply be static, as they were in T3.

 

I never had a problem determining whether I was looking up or down in T3, or in any other FPS with modern graphics.

I think there may be some misunderstanding as to what Sparkhawk is proposing. In this instance the default straight on playerview would still be angled to appropriately see the northern tip of the compass. So when we're walking around it would look like this.

 

lightgem02.jpg

 

It would only be when you looked up or down that the compass would tip accordingly. It shouldn't pose a problem really. It should work nicely I think as long as the underside of the compass and gem are detailed.

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It would only be when you looked up or down that the compass would tip accordingly. It shouldn't pose a problem really. It should work nicely I think as long as the underside of the compass and gem are detailed.

 

Fair enough, but that still means that you will frequently be unable to see the part of the gem that you need to see without having to adjust your POV. I would guess about a 30-40 degree range up and down would be unusable. I don't want to have to change what I'm doing *in-game* to get a good look at the HUD. Too obtrusive, and for too little benefit. If people are worried about losing their sense of perspective, then just include a 'straight ahead view' key.

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Ok,I uploaded it, it doesn't look as good in its low poly UV mapped state as it does in the gif render I posted eariler, since I can control the lighting and luminosity of the gem there, but it'll do for test purposes.

Does it need a spec map for the hud light rendering? Does it even matter ho high res it is?

I just tested it. The model is so tiny that I can barely see it. Only a few pixels big.

 

I created the files in the FTP directory of your lightgem, so you can load them ingame. Take a look at them and resize it. You can copy the directories directly in your darkmod folder and then load the mod and a map and you should see our hud.

 

Another problem is the textures of the gem. You must render them as they are to be seen from the player because they will be displayed exactly as you render them. There will be no transformations applied to them. So what you should do is to position the camera in such a way as if you are the player looking at the game screen, and then render the 16 images.

I think the colour ramp should be probably a little bit brighter. The dark end is good as it is, but the the brightest one should be brighter. You can find my version of the lightgem colours in the guis/asset/... folder. You can take a look at it there. Of course the colours you should take from your own, but just look at the brightness level.

 

And please rename the textures to the names that I already use. :)

Gerhard

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Fair enough, but that still means that you will frequently be unable to see the part of the gem that you need to see without having to adjust your POV.

We will see. I implement it, and if you don't like it you can disable it. If it is really unusable we disable it by default.

Gerhard

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You know, it's a good thing we get along Spar, because we almost NEVER agree on gameplay ideas. ;)

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Now, how am I supposed to know which exact angle you're going to put the comapss in at. I though you would do the gem renders youself. Those gem textures are to be put on the gem model, you can render the bitmaps youself at whatever angle you need.

The model is exactly the same size an Oonfish's. All you have to do is resize it to doom proportions in whatever 3d app you use.

Maybe I should send you the Lightwave scene, and you can do the gem renders yourself. I have an envelope on the luminosity channel, which finishes at 100, but you can make it higher if you want it brighter.

 

Or esle we'll have to wait till I get a faster connection next week, there's no way I'm downloading all the dark mod stuff on a 56k.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Just so we're all in the same playing field, I've drawn up an example of what we should be talking about here.

 

You can see that whoever is putting the gem together needs to do the rendering, because it must be positioned just right, to maintain the illusion that the gem is 3D like the compass (when it is actually a 2D image).

post-5-1102311654.gif

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Just so we're all in the same playing field, I've drawn up an example of what we should be talking about here.

 

You can see that whoever is putting the gem together needs to do the rendering, because it must be positioned just right, to maintain the illusion that the gem is 3D like the compass (when it is actually a 2D image).

 

 

Eeek, I think there is some confusion here. :) I've pretty much ripped the guts out of T3 and the gem wasn't 2D.

 

The Gem is a 3D object, just like the compass. It is simply skinned with a 2d texture.

 

The texture will wrap around the gem, and in this way...the gem can be placed in any position we need it and then anchored there while the compass rotates around it. I've checked out the textures oDDity supplied and they should work perfectly.

 

Just a quick shot of the skinned gem model.

 

gemmodel.jpg

 

This is the T3 gem. I used the t3ui.ini to scale it up in size and turn the end towards the player slightly. It's a full 3d model. Just wanted to make sure there was no confusion there. That should help get things moving along. :)

 

gemmodel2.jpg

 

Another shot...angled up and exposing the edge of the gem.

 

gemmodel3.jpg

 

Since the t3hud files enabled scaling through the t3ui.ini I'm hoping that there is a similar way for us to do this in doom 3. Having to resize the gem and compass and export it each time we want to try a different size would be time consuming. I've tried the d3world forums but wasn't able to find anything about scaling ingame hud items. I'll send an email to id support.

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Well if those are to be the final gem textures as seen in-game then they'll have to be brighter than that. I thought the gem would be rendered in a 3d app first where the luminosity could be controled, and then 16 bitmaps of it would be taken and used.

I'll render them again.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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And does it matter how high res the compass model is? Does it affect performace for the player?we could dicus these sorts of things in real time, rather than like this - it's taken all these posts and the best part of a day to sort this out, which could have been sorted in 10 minutes real time, I suspect. ;)

Message board really aren't a very convienient way to tak, it's really just a succession of one sided arguments.

Edited by oDDity

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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You know, it's a good thing we get along Spar, because we almost NEVER agree on gameplay ideas. ;)

Ah! We seem to agree quite well. Just from the opposite directions. :)

 

But this is no real problem. And I think it is good to have people with different playstyles, so we don't code for one group exclusively. And as I said in earlier postings. If it is no effort to do it, then let's make it customizable.

Gerhard

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Now, how am I supposed to know which exact angle you're going to put the comapss in at. I though you would do the gem renders youself. Those gem textures are to be put on the gem model, you can render the bitmaps youself at whatever angle you need.

 

I think I will have to revise how the model should be displayed. I just wrote an explanation for you and suddenly I realized that this will not work this way. Now I must see how I can do it. I will post on this as soon as I know.

 

The model is exactly the same size an Oonfish's. All you have to do is resize it to doom proportions in whatever 3d app you use.

 

The problem is. I can't import the ASE file. And when I import the LWO file into Blender, then the model looks like crap. It seems that the importer from Blender screwes up on some objects, because I imported other stuff and it looked ok. Maybe it has to do with complexity, I don't know.

 

Maybe I should send you the Lightwave scene, and you can do the gem renders yourself. I have an envelope on the luminosity channel, which finishes at 100, but you can make it higher if you want it brighter.

 

I can't really import it. But I will first fiugure out how to place the gem and the compass. It doesn't make sense right now, to do much on the model until I figured this out.

 

Or esle we'll have to wait till I get a faster connection next week, there's no way I'm downloading all the dark mod stuff on a 56k.

 

The files I uploaded are all that you need. You don't even need to download everything. But I will see how I can do this and next time I compress it before I upload.

Gerhard

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Just so we're all in the same playing field, I've drawn up an example of what we should be talking about here.

 

You can see that whoever is putting the gem together needs to do the rendering, because it must be positioned just right, to maintain the illusion that the gem is 3D like the compass (when it is actually a 2D image).

That's how I thought it should work. That solution has one problem I just realized. :)

 

When I use a 2D image for the pre-rendered gem, then the compass can not rotate around it. If the compass is placed before the gem, then some part of the compass should be obstructed by the gem. How can I do this with an 2D image?

Gerhard

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The Gem is a 3D object, just like the compass. It is simply skinned with a 2d texture.

I thknk we may have to do it this way after all. The only problem is. I currently don't know how to change the texture on the model on the fly. I know that the model has a material just like all the other stuff. So my initial idea was to deal with it, just like with the frob highlight. The only problem I have is, that I don't know how to find the entity for the HUD elements. And I need it to pass the message about the lightlevel to the material shader.

In the logs I can see all entities that are spawned in the gameworld, but the HUD elements don't sho up there. So this means that it is not instantiated as an idEntity class ini the code.

 

I hope you understand what I'm saying here. :)

Gerhard

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New Horizon, there is no confusion, 'cause this idea was never meant to replicated T3's light gem. It is a completely new idea.

 

This idea has the advantage of;

[*]Using much much less polys - the sphere takes up the most, and needs a decent amount to actually look round.

It would definately use fewer polys, but if the compass is going to move up and down in addition to around it, the illusion will be lost. The design was made to fit snugly inside of the compass ring.

 

[*]Looks better - the 2D gem can be pre-rendered with all sorts of cool radiosity effects to really make it look like a beautiful translucent gem, with reflections inside it, etc.

 

This can still be done with the true 3D gem. :)

 

[*]Easier to program - the gem is just a sequence of pictures, just by changing the texture on the 2 poly square.
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Easy, spars. Nothing in the 3D world is really 2D. The gem texture is placed on a 2 poly square that sits in 3D space, in the middle of the compass points.

Thjat reminds me. We could use a cube and put the gem on this. If the texture has proper alpha then this should matter, because the player will only see the round gem. Since we don't need to rotate the gem nobody would notice it, and a cube is easy to render. I think I will try this. :)

Gerhard

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