Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[gfx johnny]

Hello @ll,

i have a suggestion, but dont know if its possible to do for a 2d engine at all. But it would be too great

Im talking about some kind of post filter effects (similar to the blending modes McCoy proposed). They are used in 3d games nowadays, so i dont know if wintermute could handle it. I found a thread about Blitz3d, where someone created a very nice bloom filter:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=31420

They describe roughly how to do it (sampling the frontbuffer, apply it to sprive over the screen, more within the thread). I think i read somewhere it also can  be achieved with the render-to-texture feature? Dont know much about 3d programming, sadly.

Wintermute is using directx afaik, so perhaps its possible to do this or similar post effects? I think it would give wintermute the attention it deserves   Everyone would want to use Wintermute (should be so anyway, hehe) Its an up-to-date and state-of-the-art effect which really makes the difference. Games like Prince of Persia, the sands of time, or Hitman Contracts are looking just great using it. Talking about speed...: the method used by filax in blitz is very fast, on my old athlon 600 with a geforce 2mx 400, its very smooth. So i think it can be used for a wide audience. And it would be a very good investment into the future of wintermute  

I dont have a clue when it comes to graphics programming, but i would help in every way i could... if there is some possibility to do it, i would try Yeah, im very excited about that one, but i dont want to be perky. Just want to know if someone knows if its easy to do, and i thought it would be a nice idea anyway.


Still one little question: i read in the todo list that icon change is only possible using NT? Did i get something wrong or using WinXP, i am not able to change the icon of my exe? Oh well, its not that important anyway

Thx for reading! May Wintermute be with you (for its the best adventure engine out there )

[Jerrot]

Hiya !

Wait, wait... if I get it right they describe some nice DirectX effects for a 3D scene... some kind of post-rendering.
How could that work on a plain 2D background, it would need some AI to understand the depth of bitmaps.

Still one little question: i read in the todo list that icon change is only possible using NT? Did i get something wrong or using WinXP, i am not able to change the icon of my exe? Oh well, its not that important anyway

XP is an NT-based system, so no problem about that. It just doesn't work on Win98 or earlier.

Anyway - I like your enthusiasm! Welcome to the community.
(oh I HATE the word "community", but maybe that's from my work as web developer... !)

[gfx johnny]

Wait, wait... if I get it right they describe some nice DirectX effects for a 3D scene... some kind of post-rendering.
How could that work on a plain 2D background, it would need some AI to understand the depth of bitmaps.

As i said, i dont know much about these things I thought they just take the finished frame (using the buffer), create some kind of texture from it and blend it onto the whole screen through some kind of seperate texture or sprite. So just 2d post processing? No clue...

Perhaps the blitz3d demo was a bad example, then. There are better ones: perhaps you know some of the phtotoshop plugins, there you have hundreds of post-filter effects, and even similar ones to the one described. For example, take a look at the glare filter from flamingpear - its almost a bloom filter (hmm i think its even exactly one  ). It would allow very nice haze effects. Of course you would need a very fast method to do it, but i think there must be some way to do it.

Maybe it would suffice if we were able to play around with the some blend methods using a screen duplicate. We need Mnemonic's knowledge for sure! I think i will try to get more information about this one, so i can suggest a reasonable solution, or even do something on my own. But due to the fact that my own project is only at concept stage and i dont know wintermute that good, it will take time.

 

XP is an NT-based system, so no problem about that. It just doesn't work on Win98 or earlier.

Aw, thx, stupid me

Welcome to the community.

Thx!   I've already read lots of threads and i must say very nice people here

[Igorrr]

Hey gfx johnny,

welcome to the WME...errr Clan, Brotherhood? (That better Jerrot?),

Really nice ideas and great enthusiasm. Don't know how it should and could be implemented in WME, though.
It would mean adding a 3D Mask to all Scenes and Objects. Don't know how much work that would be and if the current glow and lighting solution by animating backgrounds and using different sprites wouldn't achieve similar good effects as you are never changing the view angle of a scene.
But anyway a nice feature that would be cool to have.

Cheers

[Mnemonic]

About the bloom effect... I also got the impression it uses the depth information from the scene. I'm not really sure how to implement this in 2D. I think simply converting the entire image to grayscale to track contours wouldn't work..

[Daniel]

Hi gfx johnny and welcome. I love your spirit.

My game is at concept stage as well and a lot of engine tests are being performed. My lead artist is testing Maya and I'm testing game engines. Because of the nature of the story that is being written as we speak, we'll need a lot of graphic effects to convey a certain feel and atmosphere. Things like haze, fog, rain and other weather effects are a must as well as other blurring effects.

I share your belief that WME could become an instant hit just as soon as one or two games come out using this engine and sporting all the fancy features you mentioned as well as the currently dormant 3D characters with shadows. You have no idea how much trouble my artist is going through in order to try and achieve some graphic effects without the support of the engine. I mean, if you ever want to go commercial with your game, the game should meet some minimal industry standards, and 3D characters, dynamic lighting/shadows and all kinds of weather and other graphic effects like sunlight-through-haze are a must. I did try Jerrot's rain script but, as he himself had stated, I can't get good enough performance for more than 200 raindrops or snowflakes, and 200 raindrops don't look good enough for a real storm... I mean, even the AGDS engine (the one that is used by Black Mirror) managed to pull off some neat thunderstorms and it didn't seem to be a very advanced engine at all.

As I see it, WME is a lot better than most other adventure-oriented engines when considering creating large-scale games. As such, it is perfect for professional and commercial use. Those who want to release short and silly games just for the fun of it will probably use AGS anyway since games can be created with it with close to no scripting at all and it has a *huge* community base. The rest of us, who wants to go pro, will stick with the more serious WME. I only wish that WME will take itself as seriously as I'm taking it and make all those effects available for the more professional of us to create really modern adventures, but I know that it's only a side project and that Mnemonic is working on it on his spare time. Oh Mnemonic, how I wish you had lots of money so that you wouldn't need that day job of yours... Come to think of it, if you had lots of money you wouldn't be working on WME either...

Anyway, I'm staying with WME because it's the best engine I found but I do vote for giving WME the edge it needs for positioning it as the most advanced adventure game engine for professional use.

[Mnemonic]

As for the raindrops etc., we were discussing a native particle effects gererator for WME at the IRC channel. I think it might work nicely, if we defined the right parameters it should be able to handle. Currently maybe it would be possible to fake more raindrops/snowflakes by animating groups of them, instead of single ones. I don't know what approach did AGDS use (I'd guess it's hardcoded) but I can ask Tol about it (hehe).

Oh Mnemonic, how I wish you had lots of money so that you wouldn't need that day job of yours... Come to think of it, if you had lots of money you wouldn't be working on WME either...

Oh, thanks, I wish that too And...I think I would. It's a hobby after all, rich people have hobbies too, don't they?


Anyway, thank you all for believing in WME. I know our community is much smaller than AGS, but I dont think it's a handicap for newbies (as have been recently stated by some AGS user), because they will get helps regardless.

[Daniel]

As for the raindrops etc., we were discussing a native particle effects gererator for WME at the IRC channel. I think it might work nicely, if we defined the right parameters it should be able to handle.

I'm so glad this is being discussed. Particle effects are exactly what I need for creating a certain atmosphere in the game I'm working on. I hope so much you'll manage to pull this off.

Currently maybe it would be possible to fake more raindrops/snowflakes by animating groups of them, instead of single ones.

I thought about it but, without knowing what I'm doing, I went all the way and created a rain animation to cover the entire screen. It was composed of some 30 full screen bitmaps, each one of about 1.5MB. Well, the game didn't like my approach very much...

I don't know what approach did AGDS use (I'd guess it's hardcoded) but I can ask Tol about it (hehe).

I thought Peregrius and Unknown Identity are two different and separate teams under Future Games. Are they both using AGDS? Anyway, I'd be glad to hear his answer.

I know our community is much smaller than AGS, but I dont think it's a handicap for newbies (as have been recently stated by some AGS user), because they will get helps regardless.

I read that "handicap" thing from an AGS and WME user, well, it might *seem* like a handicap for an outsider but it really isn't. I know for a fact that no question of mine has ever gone unanswered so what does it matter if there are hundreds to answer my questions or just a few as long as I do get an answer? And when they talk about the *quantity* of users factor of the AGS forums, they somehow manage to neglect the very important *quality* factor. In those AGS forums with the so many users, there are only a few "quality" ones to give all the help and answers - much like in the WME forums...

[Mnemonic]

I'm so glad this is being discussed. Particle effects are exactly what I need for creating a certain atmosphere in the game I'm working on. I hope so much you'll manage to pull this off.

I didn't think about it too much yet, but it shouldn't be too hard to implement, I think. Although I can't promise when I get to it.
If anyone has any ideas of what effects and their parameters should be covered, bring it on
I'm thinking of gravity (i.e. how fast are the particles falling down), wind strength and some random "noise".
Then the lifetime of the particles after thay hit the ground, sprites for each phase etc.

I thought about it but, without knowing what I'm doing, I went all the way and created a rain animation to cover the entire screen. It was composed of some 30 full screen bitmaps, each one of about 1.5MB. Well, the game didn't like my approach very much...

That's not exactly what I meant. Currently, you have 200 separate entites, one for each snowlake. I though one entity might display a sprite containing, say, 5 snowflakes at once. Then you'd need only 40 entities. But that's just a wild idea and it's pretty much possible it would look weird.

I thought Peregrius and Unknown Identity are two different and separate teams under Future Games. Are they both using AGDS? Anyway, I'd be glad to hear his answer.

Yes, Peregrius also licensed the AGDS engine. The answer is: yes, the rain effect is hardcoded into the engine. You can set the "depth" of the rain layer (i.e. its z-order) and its density, but not the direction of the raindrops.

[McCoy]

Hmmm... for rain, I think the parameters could be

Wind direction: in radians
Wind speed: in knots? LOL just something like from 0 to 10 or something like that, no need to be too exact in this.
Gravity
Number of layers: adding a little depth but I don't know if the parallax scrolling will make things look weird or cool 
Raindrop quantity: Maybe max number of drops at the same time, or drops per second.
Raindrom randomess: the chances of generating a raindrop, 1 would be always (very mathematical and regular rain, always having the max amount of raindrops at screen) and from 0.9 to 0.1, more chances or less. 0 for nothing (?).
Something else... 


And after that, all the look and feel parameters, like wind sound, raindrop hit sound, drops graphics and all that.

And of course, all the parameters editable and updateable in real-time, because with that and something to "fade" between parameters would be nice for making a smooth storm to calm transition, or changing the wind direction real-time smoothly. Wich makes me think... wouldn't it be better to make some built-in method for fading (argh, I don't know a better word to explain it, I know fades are for graphics) from one value to another smoothly in a given amount of time? Something like

math.FadeValue(startValue,endValue,steps,delay)

I know, it can be done by scripting, but I'm sure that a built-in function would be smoother and faster.

EDIT: Corrected it so it will follow Galileo's law... how dumb I was, falling speed doesn't depend on weight!  If so, a parameter "Air friction" should be added to make sense,and I think that's too much,so graviti should be OK.

P.S. This edition was made from mi P900 while I was in the train  

[MMR]

Corrected it so it will follow Galileo's law... how dumb I was, falling speed doesn't depend on weight!   If so, a parameter "Air friction" should be added to make sense,and I think that's too much,so graviti should be OK.

Yep, it doesn't depend on weight, but it depends on size. A bigger object will be affected by a higher amount of "air friction"... so this would be difficult to implement (also consider the transparent areas of a sprite)...

And the "air friction" would be hard to implement in some ways... for example 2 balls. One of them made of stell. The other made of plastic, with extreme weights. The air force will pull both balls with the same force value, but the plastic one will fall slowest.
So a good solution for that is to specify a value for the "air friction force" over each objetc, something like Object.AirFriction(5); in a scale from 0 to 10 (for instance).

[Mnemonic]

No air friction, please IMHO that would be over-complicated for our purposes.

[MMR]

Yep, that's why I was trying to explain with my last answer

[Orange Brat]

I didn't think about it too much yet, but it shouldn't be too hard to implement, I think. Although I can't promise when I get to it.
If anyone has any ideas of what effects and their parameters should be covered, bring it on
I'm thinking of gravity (i.e. how fast are the particles falling down), wind strength and some random "noise".
Then the lifetime of the particles after thay hit the ground, sprites for each phase etc.

Here's a code chunk that would simulate rain in 3D Gamestudio(start with the 3rd function). Maybe it will give you some ideas if you're still not sure what to do about particles.  The effect instruction is what starts the process.  Its parameters are (function, number, vector position, vector velocity). When it's encountered, it'll execute the function using number for the amount of particle, and vector pos is the position of the emitter followed by vector vel for the starting velocity.

Code: [Select]

function hit_check()
{
   if(content(my.x) == content_solid)
   { my.lifespan = 0; }
}

function rain_effect()
{
  my.bmap = raindrop;  //graphic file to use
  my.lifespan = 16 * 0.5; //1/2 second
           my.gravity = off;  //Gravity acceleration of the particle in quants per square tick (default 0). Is used for accelerating vel_z when the move flag is set.
           my.alpha = 75; //Alphatransparent of the particle in percent
  my.x += random(1000) - 500;  //particle's x
  my.y += random(1000) - 500; //particle's y
  my.z += random(100) - 50; //particle's z
  my.move = on;  //particle moves with its speed vector, and accelerates with its gravity acceleration
  my.vel_x = 0;  //Velocity vector of the particle, or line vector for a beam or streak effect. At the beginning of the function it is set to the vector given by the effect instruction
  my.vel_y = 0;
  my.vel_z = -100;
  my.flare = on;  //If a particle's, sprite's or model's FLARE flag is set to ON, the entity will assume alpha transparency
  my.transparent = on;  //If this flag of a sprite, model or map entity is set to on, the entity will be translucent, so you can see through it
  my.bright = on; // in combination with flare or transparent, blends the entity or particle over the background instead of mixing both.
                                     //This way the entity appears illuminated, like fire or sparks. In combination with unlit the entity receives an average environment light as by normal sunlight in the level.
  my.streak = on;  //Like beam, but stretches the particle along its velocity vector, instead of smearing it.
           my.beam = off;  //the particle is "smeared" along a line given by its speed vector and starting at its position
  my.size = 4;  //Size of the particle in quants(pixels)
  my.function = hit_check; // Particle function. When set to NULL, the particle continues to live until its lifespan reaches zero.
}

function rain_fall()
{
   while(1)
   {
       if(particle_toggle == 0)
       {
           temp.x = camera.x + cos(camera.pan);
           temp.y = camera.y + sin(camera.pan);
           temp.z = camera.z + 300;
           if(weather_strength > 0)
           {
              effect(rain_effect, weather_strength, temp.x, nullvector);
           }
          sleep(0.1);
       }
     wait(1);
   }
 return;
}