ZylonBane on 25/10/2010 at 19:41
Ah! I suspected there were some words missing from, "For them it probably would've been as easy to just change the blendmode in code to add it to ss2."
As for muzzle flashes, due to their being so bright, the difference between additive and multiplicative blending would probably be minor. It'd really help with ghosts though. With the additive blending they look more like smoked glass than an ethereal vision.
RocketMan on 25/10/2010 at 23:51
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
The best fix for the cutlery would be to individually model each item, but that would be a lot of work for something that's only used maybe twice in the entire game.
I think I can make you some cutlery...seems like it'd be within my abilities.
Enchantermon on 25/10/2010 at 23:53
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
With the additive blending they look more like smoked glass than an ethereal vision.
Aren't they supposed to look like an ethereal vision, though? "Residual psychic emanations" and all that.
ZylonBane on 26/10/2010 at 00:11
Oops. That should have said multiplicative blending, not additive.
Enchantermon on 26/10/2010 at 01:03
Ah, gotcha.
Muzman on 26/10/2010 at 04:22
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
What you want to say here is
bump mapping.
I'm pretty sure it's not. Back in that era to fake a curved archway, say, out of an angular looking polygonal one, it was that rendering technique at work. Half Life was special for having it at the time, where other engines didn't, from memory (and the mappers I used to know may not have known what they were talking about either).
Granted bump mapping probably uses the same methods, but I was particularly talking about getting the hard hexagonal shapes out of the Many's gut tubes. I've always associated bump mapping with being on the texture level. This is on the geometry level (and therefore way off topic). If it's all the same thing or the distinction is irrelevant these days, well and good.
Aaanyway, the difficulty with this topic is that I reckon SS2s minimal Next Gen-ish decor is a great use of the technology they had and holds up surprisingly well for the most part. Most of the things I can think of that could use sprucing up are actually in the middle of textures that are fine. Things like the greebles and cabling behind glass in engineering. Maybe stuff with damage on the texture rather than a decal over the top etc. But I don't know if updating those elements would mean redoing the whole set for consistency.
Likewise there are the light fittings that have some sort of plastic diffuser. They could stand being higher res. But there's plenty of them inset into wall panellng, on Ops for instance, which might make it impossible to do them all.
Briareos H on 26/10/2010 at 05:22
You're probably thinking of Quake 3's NURBS rendering.
Muzman on 26/10/2010 at 06:06
I'm really not. That was a more true way to do curved surfaces that replaced this kind of thing. This is basically a lighting trick in the most fundamental way, applied on specific structures (and yes, I know Phong shading is a generic term for something used all over the place. Dark uses it on character models, I think). Up close it's plain the pipe you're standing on, or whatever, has only six sides. But step back a bit and it's not so obvious.
(
http://www.deaconstomb.org/q2database/maps.html)
This ancient page mentions ArghRad including it. It was a big deal in the mapping community back in the day. There's probably way better things for the source project to write in now, but it was the first thing that leapt to mind that might assist with what Rocketman was talking about (ie not just meatier textures, but curved looking geometry as well)
jermi on 26/10/2010 at 18:08
ZB, I was replying to your PM, but you've exceeded your quota, so here's my reply:
I can't even remember what the SS2 ghosts look like, but they're exactly like Thief ghosts, right? I haven't checked, but to me the Thief ghosts look like alpha blending, probably based on (constant) vertex alpha. I wonder what kind of effect you're hoping to get? Switching to additive blending will mostly just make the ghosts look brighter.
Changing those blending modes is easy, the problem is discerning the ghost geometry from all the other geometry. It should happen based on the texture, of course, but there's no obvious way to do that in ddfix. I'm sure it's not that hard, either, and I mean to tackle this issue at some point because it would be very useful to have special treatment for certain elements, such as light sources, water, etc.
I use Visual Studio 2005. The ddfix sources and project files are available at (
http://jermi.dyndns.org/~jermi/ddfix/ddfix_latest.src.zip) http://jermi.dyndns.org/~jermi/ddfix/ddfix_latest.src.zip.
ZylonBane on 26/10/2010 at 19:11
Quote Posted by Muzman
Granted bump mapping probably uses the same methods, but I was particularly talking about getting the hard hexagonal shapes out of the Many's gut tubes.
Bump mapping would be the solution to the "wallpaper" complaint made eariler. What you're talking about could be fixed right now, by modifying the level geometry to have more detail, and/or making custom objects to replace BSP detail.
Quote Posted by jermi
Changing those blending modes is easy, the problem is discerning the ghost geometry from all the other geometry. It should happen based on the texture, of course, but there's no obvious way to do that in ddfix.
Okay, thanks. I wasn't sure if this problem fell under "trivial" or "nontrivial". :p
