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[Stucki]

Hi to everybody here in this forum. i am new to this, but i am thinking about doing a classical Adventure game for a longer time now, and now i found this wintermute engine.

two questions are on my mind now...

 - is it possible to have a water effect like in syberia. defined with a mask or an alpha channel.
  maybe somebody can code something ??!?!?  sorry but i am only good in making 3D-graphics and flash animations

 - is it possible to get flash-files working in the wintermute engine - for some animations and othe things ....

i am very interested in these to things and would be very happy for somebody to answer....

greetings,
stucki
   

[Jerrot]

Hi and welcome Stucki!

- is it possible to have a water effect like in syberia. defined with a mask or an alpha channel.
  maybe somebody can code something ??!?!?  sorry but i am only good in making 3D-graphics and flash animations

I guess your abilities are already perfect to do something like a water effect. WME supports AlphaChannels very well and it's no problem to put that animation (the animated water effect) over other objects (e.g. some items in the water) by using the z-order. So you could simple create your water animation and use it in WME that way. Sorry if I did get you wrong, since I don't remember how it was done in Syberia right now... ! So no need for scripting here.

- is it possible to get flash-files working in the wintermute engine - for some animations and othe things ....

It does not directly support SWFs, but AFAIK Flash should be able to save simple animations (not interactive though) as image series, so you could use them for this purpose as animation sprites in WME. Or for some fullscreen cutscene you could also convert your Flash movies to AVIs. (AVIs for in-game objects are on the "ToDo-List", but not supported yet). I'm not sure whether this function was built-in in Flash, but I know it's possible somehow.

Oh - and don't mind to ask more detailled, we love to break our brains for solutions.

Jerrot.

[Stucki]

yeah thank for answering in such a short time, helps alot to know there is somebody ...

but you got me wrong with the water effect. I think ( id do not know for sure ) in syberia the water effect is not rendered, but mathemathically produced. Like some textures in unreal are. So i have to do one bitmap for the water and the moving and twirling is calculated in realtime. Maybe somebody can code something .....
I would be very interested in doing such things. I remeber in riven and myst exile it was also done

I hope you can understand my wishing better now, sorry for ,my bad english, i am not used to

thanks
Stucki

[Jerrot]

Hi Stucki,

but you got me wrong with the water effect.

I was afraid of that case. Hm, I'm not sure Syberia used real-time water effects, but I'll have a closer look into before answering the rest, which scene do you have in mind ?

I hope you can understand my wishing better now, sorry for ,my bad english, i am not used to

There was no problem with your English, I just didn't remember that effect. Anyway - here are users from a lot of countries, so where do you come from ?

Best wishes, Jerrot.

[Nihil]

There is a water-effect that I have seen often on the Internet, it is done whit a Java-Applet ( http://anfyteam.com/anj/lake/anlake.html ), maybe someone knows how to get the source-code and can adapt it to Wintermute?

[odnorf]

There is a water-effect that I have seen often on the Internet, it is done whit a Java-Applet ( http://anfyteam.com/anj/lake/anlake.html ), maybe someone knows how to get the source-code and can adapt it to Wintermute?

I have no idea if this is indeed possible and I don't think it's important at this point because the biggest problem imho with your suggestion is that this script is not free but shareware. And even if we bought the script we wouldn't have the permission to modify it and use it in another app (I didn't find anything like that in the licence so I assume it works that way.)

[Nihil]

I found a source code to a similar (or is it the same?) applet on the web:

http://javaboutique.internet.com/Lake/source.html

Perhaps this could be "rebuild" in Wintermute?
Unfortunately I don't know anything about Java, so I step back and let the experts do their job :-)

[Nihil]

I have no idea if this is indeed possible and I don't think it's important at this point because the biggest problem imho with your suggestion is that this script is not free but shareware. And even if we bought the script we wouldn't have the permission to modify it and use it in another app (I didn't find anything like that in the licence so I assume it works that way.)

Oh, I didn't see it's shareware, I thought it was free because I've seen it on a million pages so far :-)

Well, is it allowed to rebuild code like this in another language? I don't know too much about the legal issues with things like this.

[Jerrot]

Um... I don't see how to implement those ressource *eating* effects in a useful way, even if it was possible somehow.

I just had a look into Syberia and found the water under the bridge in the very beginning. Definitely no real-time calculation there, the perspective was chosen to not reflect any 3D parts and the water itself is a prerendered animation of about 20 sprites, which is no problem for WME. But maybe Stucki thought of some other scene...

[Mnemonic]

The problem with this code is that it would be sloooooow for bigger images since it's painted pixel by pixel; the textures would need to be "prerendered" anyway.

[Nihil]

Ok, I give up  

[Mnemonic]

Ok, I give up  

Don't give up yet Your advices are appreciated.

[McCoy]

The problem with this code is that it would be sloooooow for bigger images since it's painted pixel by pixel; the textures would need to be "prerendered" anyway.

So that's why I think it would be impossible to do it by scripting, there's no way to manipulate pictures pixel-by-pixel (AFAIK...).

[Mnemonic]

The problem with this code is that it would be sloooooow for bigger images since it's painted pixel by pixel; the textures would need to be "prerendered" anyway.

So that's why I think it would be impossible to do it by scripting, there's no way to manipulate pictures pixel-by-pixel (AFAIK...).

Yes, it would be even slower. Much slower.

[nachus]

If i decided to do a 2d animation, how big can it be if it has about 20 frames? (in terms of performance)

On the other hand, i think the other possible way is maybe with a plugin 

[odnorf]

If i decided to do a 2d animation, how big can it be if it has about 20 frames? (in terms of performance)

That depends on the machines you want your game to be playable at. Other than that there are no hardcoded limits in wme but keep in mind that theora has problems in keeping it's framerate with big resolutions.

20fps seems like an overkill for a water animation imo

On the other hand, i think the other possible way is maybe with a plugin 

This plugin by metamorphium does exactly that.
http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=1197.0
He hasn't say anything about it's licence thought. So, if you are interested in using it in a game I'd suggest to contact him first.

EDIT: Some of the previous answers in this topic don't represent the current situation because this thread is an old one. Since then Mnemonic has greatly expanded the plugin structure of wme and meta has released his displacement plugin.

[leucome]

I'm going to use 3d model for water, Using a grid wire surface, put a bone at each vertex and using a noise to move the bones(in 3ds max). And with new .x format that will be possible to add a moving texture on that 3d model too..

ok it's just a teory i'm sure that will work..

[Antimony]

Hi all... i find a free tool called Sqirlz Water Reflections. With this tool you can add pools of water to an image.You can choose from a variety of ripples, and control details such as wave size and perspective.The pools can be of any shape. Version 1.3 adds new controls and effects, including reflection coloring, smoothing, texture, and flow also more flexibility over which parts of the image are reflected. Animations can be saved as Macromedia Flash (SWF) files, animated GIF files, AVI video clips, and sets of bitmap, JPEG and TIFF files.

Find it here :
http://www.xiberpix.com/ (some other free stuff also here)

BEFORE :



AFTER :



not  real-time water effect but maybe usefull...
...your opinion...?

[shuin]

Hiya!

Since my scenes will be full of water and i'm a beginner in using WME, i want to know if i understood correctly.

to have animated water in your scene you must either:
1. make an animation of the water effect and play it as a theora entity over the static image of the water (is this the correct way or did i get it wrong?)
2. use the displacement plugin
3. treat water as a realtime 3d object like leucome said (did it work? anybody tried it? is it possible?)

[Amo]

The 3d thing is really needless and I would not do that in this way. It is really uneffective and if you could get it to work, it will kill WME because of its huge resources needed.

For Max try the following:
Create a plane with many faces (e.g. 50 x 50 )
convert to editable poly
select the whole object
add "noise" modifier
play around with the settings.

After texturing the plane you can render 5 pictures with different noise settings and use them as sprites.
Thats how I would do.