| Author |
Message |
klasodeth
Gamorrean
Joined: 03 Mar 2008
|
|
BD Hopkins
Ree-Yees
Joined: 10 Apr 2009
|
|
lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
|
 Posted: Jun 04, 2009 18:17 Post subject: |
    |
|
As stated the glow is an effect in addition to the dynamic lighting, not a replacement. The glow makes sure that bright areas look like they are glowing whereas the dynamic lighting actually lights up the environment.
As for the dynamic light colors, intensity and radius - I'm "eyeballing" those values. However they are setup in the logic scripts so they can be easily modified and animated. This is why when you blow up a light sprite then its dynamic light goes out too. This also means that by adding in your own light logics, you can easily light custom levels with a combination of sector lighting and dynamic lighting.
I should also mention that the lighting values are set in the logic scripts. So, for example, if I setup the dynamic light for a destroyable lighting fixture then the dynamic light automatically shows up wherever the fixture is. So all you have to do is setup logical lighting fixtures (as well as other objects that generate light like shield packs and blaster bolts) and then place them logically and you have nice dynamic lighting. 
_________________
DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com |
|
GreggD
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 04, 2009 23:44 Post subject: |
|
|
Damn, that looks fresh.
_________________
----------------------------------------
"If they were created by man, then we can solve them by man." -Tim Sabien
 |
|
sheepandshepherd
Trandoshan
Joined: 01 Apr 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 05, 2009 20:01 Post subject: |
|
|
Nice! I like it. It'll be especially noticeable in the darker levels like Talay and Sewers.
I'm not really familiar with how DF's texture format works, but will it be possible to implement a glowing HUD texture? I've noticed that the HUD doesn't get darker in dark areas, and even though that's the way it is in DF, it would probably be more realistic to have the HUD get darker with the lighting but have the numbers still glowing. Can you do that without changing the original BM format?
|
|
lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 05, 2009 20:35 Post subject: |
|
|
sheepandshepherd wrote:
Nice! I like it. It'll be especially noticeable in the darker levels like Talay and Sewers.
I'm not really familiar with how DF's texture format works, but will it be possible to implement a glowing HUD texture? I've noticed that the HUD doesn't get darker in dark areas, and even though that's the way it is in DF, it would probably be more realistic to have the HUD get darker with the lighting but have the numbers still glowing. Can you do that without changing the original BM format?
Thanks.
The numbers and other elements that change based on the amount of something (shields, health, etc.) are drawn separately under (shields/health) or on top of the HUD (numbers) - so having them be rendered differently then the rest of the HUD wouldn't be a problem. I'm not sure if the HUD would look right getting darker though, maybe its something we can experiment with later.
There won't be any other features going in to this build though. The reason the glow made it in is because I put in a post processing framework which will be used for other things in future builds - so getting the glow effect in (which I've wanted to put in for a long time) was a natural test of the system. Other data can now be rendered out when rendering the main scene, in this case a glow mask, which can then be used to post process the scene once it is rendered (but before the HUD / debug elements are drawn). This way I traverse the scene once (thus traverse the portals and clip once) and can then apply additional effects afterwards.
Obviously this means that you'll need MRT support for some of these effects - which generally means SM 2.0 GPU or better. This equates to having at least a Radeon 9500 or GeForce FX. Fortunately we're talking about sub-$50 cards here released 6 years ago, although the faster the better obviously. And DarkXL will continue to support SM 1.0 cards (GeForce 3 era - 8 years ago), just not with all the features available.
_________________
DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com |
|
Magic_Al
Gamorrean
Joined: 22 Mar 2005
|
| Posted: Jun 06, 2009 23:17 Post subject: |
|
|
I wonder if the strength of the glow effect should vary inversely with the light level of the sector. It's a perception thing. A light bulb in a dark room can seem blinding but look relatively dim outdoors in sunlight.
That idea leads to another: the light levels of sectors could affect each other based on the player's location. The player being in a bright sector might push surrounding dark sectors slightly darker and vice versa. Think of being in a dim hallway with a door open to daylight at the end, or being in daylight and seeing the opening to a cave in the distance. There could be a formula that adjusts the "camera iris" to a net light level taken from the percentages of screen area filled by each visible sector, with a second or so delay while your "eyes adjust".
_________________
----- MagicAl`s DARK FORCES Niche -----
http://homepage.mac.com/anewmanagn/magic_al/
Armed only with a blaster pistol and an intimate knowledge of
Imperial methods, MagicAl prepares to go to lunch.... |
|
Weregoose
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 06, 2009 23:21 Post subject: |
|
|
<2¢>I would think that our eyes are in fact adjusting in real life.</2¢>
|
|
Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon
Joined: 28 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jun 07, 2009 00:06 Post subject: |
|
|
I would love to see this effect in Dark Tide IV 
_________________
I don't think outside the box... I customize it. |
|
sweatervest
Ree-Yees
Joined: 22 Apr 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 07, 2009 00:39 Post subject: |
|
|
Perhaps the glow effect can be used on weapon sprites, like the thermal dets. That would create a cool effect when wandering around in dark areas holding those weapons... also projectiles and explosions could look pretty epic.
Is this an implementation of bloom, HDR or something else? Just curious...
|
|
The MAZZTer
Death Star
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
|
|
lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 07, 2009 07:30 Post subject: |
|
|
Actually The_Mega_ZZTer, you are thinking of a combination of bloom and tone mapping. The idea is to map from High Dynamic Range (HDR) to Low Dynamic Range (LDR) using some sort of perception mapping system. Typically you'd detect the scene luminance or range of luminances and then generate a mapping that compresses the high dynamic range data so that it can be displayed on your monitor while attempting to preserve (or enhance) contrast.
"Bloom" is the glow effect you get where bright pixels (those with a luminance > X after tonemapping, where X = 1.0 in many cases). Of course bloom has been faked even without HDR for some time now. Some games apply a simple thresholding causing all pixels greater then a certain brightness to glow. The problem with this system when rendering in LDR space, especially when the threshold is low, is that the glow tends to be too strong and actually reduces the contrast - I'm sure you've all seen games with bad bloom.  For DarkXL, since we have no HDR data or lighting, only the "emissive" (self-illuminated) pixels/surface glow - those pixels that would be very bright with true HDR. This preserves contrast and differentiates between a merely brightly colored surface and a surface that should glow. To illustrate the problem with the thresholding style system - all the Storm Troopers would glow in brighter lighting... that would be weird. 
I actually had an idea where I'd adjust the amount of bloom based on the overall sector lighting. You wouldn't want to just take into account the sector you're standing in - just because you're standing in a shadow but most of the room is bright you wouldn't want the bloom to suddenly become more intense.  I'm not sure I'll change the lighting itself based on luminance though, maybe something to play with later.
And finally, sweatervest, having parts of your weapons glow would be really cool actually. Since your weapon is affected by sector lighting (unlike the HUD) it would only be natural to also be affected by the glow too. Thanks for the suggestion. 
_________________
DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com |
|
BD Hopkins
Ree-Yees
Joined: 10 Apr 2009
|
|
lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 09, 2009 17:35 Post subject: |
|
|
BD Hopkins wrote:
Generally speaking, is artwork for a high-resolution HUD something you might request in the distant future, particularly if the new artwork tries to scale the original pixels faithfully (IE, if artistic interpretation is keep to a minimum save for what is necessary to smoothly increase resolution)? Or would you prefer to find a programming solution to upping the resolution of the HUD, if in fact you ever want to and are able to tackle it?
Eventually you'll be able to change the HUD graphics so someone could put in higher resolution HUD elements as a mod. As for me, I'll be doing a couple of things that will affect the HUD in the future:
1) allow the HUD (not weapon) to be scaled, so you could make the HUD elements smaller on screen if you want - this would work especially well because of how LA did the HUD as separate pieces.
2) implement the optional texture upscaling (I've discussed this in the past) which will make everything look higher resolution, including the HUD.
Here's what a wrote about the texture upscaling:
I have plans for better upscaling of the textures, sprites and font as an extended feature. I plan on adding image filtering options for textures and fonts a little later - kind of like the font scaling done in the Mac version of DF. This should help readability alot.
I should be able to generate vector representations of the binary images - i.e. cutouts for sprites and fonts - which should allow for much better representation of the edges. Basically it'd be similar to applying marching squares on a filtered binary image, where the filter is designed to produce a nice approximated signed distance field. Theoretically this should allow sprite edges to stay sharp and straight even under magnification since the signed distance field responds well to bilinear interpolation. Of course analytical edge anti-aliasing will only be supported on mid-range or higher-end GPUs.
This allows for resolution indepedent sprite/font edges, with analytical anti-aliasing on mid to high end hardware. Also the color data will be upscaled using a high quality filter, and can be done on load ("Images can be pre-upscaled") to avoid extra cost. It could also be done at runtime for higher end hardware to save memory.
In addition, if the color data is split up into a series of sensible frequency bands, it should be possible to treat each frequency band as a binary image and then reconstruct the image from a vector representation - but I'll try that out a bit later.
_________________
DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com |
|
BD Hopkins
Ree-Yees
Joined: 10 Apr 2009
|
| Posted: Jun 09, 2009 18:59 Post subject: |
|
|
lucius wrote:
Eventually you'll be able to change the HUD graphics so someone could put in higher resolution HUD elements as a mod. As for me, I'll be doing a couple of things that will affect the HUD in the future:
1) allow the HUD (not weapon) to be scaled, so you could make the HUD elements smaller on screen if you want - this would work especially well because of how LA did the HUD as separate pieces.
2) implement the optional texture upscaling (I've discussed this in the past) which will make everything look higher resolution, including the HUD.
Here's what a wrote about the texture upscaling:
I have plans for better upscaling of the textures, sprites and font as an extended feature. I plan on adding image filtering options for textures and fonts a little later - kind of like the font scaling done in the Mac version of DF. This should help readability alot.
I should be able to generate vector representations of the binary images - i.e. cutouts for sprites and fonts - which should allow for much better representation of the edges. Basically it'd be similar to applying marching squares on a filtered binary image, where the filter is designed to produce a nice approximated signed distance field. Theoretically this should allow sprite edges to stay sharp and straight even under magnification since the signed distance field responds well to bilinear interpolation. Of course analytical edge anti-aliasing will only be supported on mid-range or higher-end GPUs.
This allows for resolution indepedent sprite/font edges, with analytical anti-aliasing on mid to high end hardware. Also the color data will be upscaled using a high quality filter, and can be done on load ("Images can be pre-upscaled") to avoid extra cost. It could also be done at runtime for higher end hardware to save memory.
In addition, if the color data is split up into a series of sensible frequency bands, it should be possible to treat each frequency band as a binary image and then reconstruct the image from a vector representation - but I'll try that out a bit later.
Ah, yes, I remember your words on this subject now as some of the very first things I read about DarkXL. I respect your decision to keep any features using significant artistic interpretation as separate from the basic structure and/or default settings.
Texture upscaling will include the in-game PDA, right? It will be interesting to compare an upscaled PDA via DarkXL to the vector-based and hi-res version of the PDA I am constructing. It will take me a while to complete, as I'm painstakingly creating a new shape for each and every pixel/group of pixels, where applicable.
For the metal section, some vectorized pixels/groups of pixels work remarkably well with each other after minimal position adjustment and addition of curves. With other areas, it appears that a significant amount of artistic interpretation is necessary to produce a similar look.
The leather section will be much more challenging to reproduce convincingly and with a reasonable file size/number of anchors and shapes. For this I will attempt to use gradient meshes to compensate for fewer anchor points/shapes. I hear that gradient meshes require significant processing power, though. If it doesn't work out, it will be at least good enough for a new manual design I'm still working on, which is what I started this project for in the first place.
|
|
lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 16, 2009 10:11 Post subject: Reticles, glow and lighting - oh my. :) |
|
|
*Warning* Many large screenshots.
I was testing the new UI for build and decided to show all the extended features for the next build at once: reticles, glow and lighting. Each screenshot shows a different reticle and a different level. Not all the reticles are shown but many are.
_________________
DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com
Last edited by lucius on Jun 16, 2009 21:05; edited 1 time in total |
|
Gez
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 16, 2009 12:59 Post subject: |
|
|
These look great! I especially like the city screenshot.
|
|
GreggD
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 16, 2009 13:53 Post subject: |
|
|
Looks keen.
_________________
----------------------------------------
"If they were created by man, then we can solve them by man." -Tim Sabien
|
|
Marley
Gamorrean
Joined: 30 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jun 16, 2009 14:51 Post subject: |
|
|
The emissive effect really adds loads of atmosphere to the scenes and doesn't detract from the Star Wars feel at all, can't wait to see it in motion. Really excited about the next build. How many levels will be playable through? Or are you just getting these features + editor up and running.
_________________
*ZaP* |
|
Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon
Joined: 28 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jun 16, 2009 17:39 Post subject: |
|
|
This is really exciting, all of those look really cool!
Now, are those all crosshairs for each different weapons? Or are they just individually selectable and used one for all weapons? (I hope that made sense, it barely makes sense to me. Then again, I just woke up...)
_________________
I don't think outside the box... I customize it. |
|
Marley
Gamorrean
Joined: 30 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jun 16, 2009 17:59 Post subject: |
|
|
I got ya  Think you just select the different cross hair in the UI and it's the same for all weapons.
_________________
*ZaP* |
|
lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 16, 2009 21:00 Post subject: |
|
|
Right now you select the cross hair you want and all the weapons use it. Individual weapon reticles will come later.
As for what levels will be available - all of them. They won't be fully completable (missing logics and such) but you will be able to use cheats and look around all the levels. Once this build is complete, the next build will focus on getting all logics completed (and usable in the editor). It will also have the beginnings of a really cool feature that I won't talk about yet.
Oh and thanks for the comments.
Edit: By the way, I realized that one of my image tags was improperly closed, there is another screenshot up now that I originally intended to display.
_________________
DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com |
|
Tsophika
Ree-Yees
Joined: 14 Jan 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 17, 2009 06:39 Post subject: |
|
|
Fantastic stuff, Lucius. That thermal det explosion looks rad.
|
|
lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 17, 2009 20:44 Post subject: |
|
|
Again, thanks for all the comments.
I also wanted to mention that the reticle images in the next build (many of which are visible in the screenshots) were originally authored by the following forum members (in no particular order):
Emon,
The_Mega_ZZTer,
zero.prophet,
Gez,
Magic_Al
I will be putting together a credits list for the next build which will be updated from here on out. I will post the listing later, please remind me if I forget anyone.
Thanks for all your contributions!
_________________
DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com |
|
Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon
Joined: 28 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Jun 17, 2009 21:00 Post subject: |
|
|
I really like that shot of Nar Shaddaa. This is really going to bring Dark Forces to new heights in ways I only imagined.
_________________
I don't think outside the box... I customize it. |
|
Jimmy Chicken
Gamorrean
Joined: 09 Dec 2003
|
| Posted: Jun 17, 2009 21:31 Post subject: |
|
|
This is phenomenal work. lucius, I know this has been asked before, but do you have an estimate of the next release?
|
|
lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
|
|
sheepandshepherd
Trandoshan
Joined: 01 Apr 2008
|
|
Jimmy Chicken
Gamorrean
Joined: 09 Dec 2003
|
|
Weregoose
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
|
| Posted: Jun 18, 2009 01:05 Post subject: |
|
|
If an item were placed against a thin wall, would its glow be visible on the other side? Or does that item not get drawn?
| Code: | ___________
| |
| | |
| o|)) Kyle |
| | |
|___________| |
|
|
|
