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I redid the client with the new changes...

still looks like exploding bunnies/woodsprites/whatever

And then when you pick it up, it looks like a nuclear bomb smoke explosion.

I like the sparkly particle magical effect MUCH better.

 

Summoned creatures shouldn't have that big beam effect when they die, the more subtle particly sparkly effect was much better. The big beams should be for the grand entrances.

 

Remote heal looks a lot better than it did, (it flashed away too fast before), but (don't shoot me here) it looks like I'm bombing the creature/person when i remote heal them.

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Hey guys, since I am the person who has to APPROVE all the artwork stuff in the end, it'd be a big help if someone can send me a windows client of this stuff if there is one out there.

If not, I have no problems with waiting until it's all done, but I may ask for many tweaks/changes(just warning you) :D

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Like:

* KarenRei

* Acelon

* Jamincollins

 

Dislike:

* Beaverhunter (Windows user)

* Aislinn (Windows user)

* Cycloonx (???)

 

Roja, care to break the tie for us? You're the graphics gal, after all, so it's really your choice :D But, before that: I still haven't seen evidence that the Windows version is doing the same thing as the Linux version. Before we give Roja a possibly buggy WIndows version, can we first actually identify whether things are working right? Last time I saw a Windows screenshot, the effect pictured in it was broken; I don't want Roja being given a client that doesn't look right. Could any of you Windows users take a vid of:

 

* A) The bag effect

* B) The teleporter

 

Thanks. And, until we've got these bugs (if any) fixed, can we quit this pointless back and forth on the bag effect? It's like debating the merits of The Lord of the Rings when you're not even sure that the other side is watching LotR, as opposed to some other movie.

Edited by KarenRei

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Like:

* KarenRei

* Acelon

* Jamincollins

 

Dislike:

* Beaverhunter (Windows user)

* Aislinn (Windows user)

* Cycloonx (???)

 

Roja, care to break the tie for us? You're the graphics gal, after all, so it's really your choice :D But, before that: I still haven't seen evidence that the Windows version is doing the same thing as the Linux version. Before we give Roja a possibly buggy WIndows version, can we first actually identify whether things are working right? Last time I saw a Windows screenshot, the effect pictured in it was broken; I don't want Roja being given a client that doesn't look right. Could any of you Windows users take a vid of:

 

* A) The bag effect

* B) The teleporter

 

Thanks.

Roja isn't the tie breaker, she is the one that approves or dissapproves all graphics! As for Windows being messed up, people should probably also post video card & driver information with their good/bad reports since it might be limited as to who sees problems. For example ATI is regularly known to have problems.

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I know :D That's why I wrote:

 

You're the graphics gal, after all, so it's really your choice

 

Without Roja weighing in, all I had to work with was a simple majority.

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Attempt 1 at screenies:

Please note that the bag shots are really hard, they are never static, and are always changing and fast. They tend to start out bigger than i'm catching as well. (Sorry for the image size, apparently they are being auto-resized for me :D )

 

explodingbunny.jpg

 

pickingupbag1.jpg

 

pickupbag2.jpg

 

beammeup.jpg

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Thanks, Asilinn :D. As stills, these look correct. Is the motion in them jerky, as Beaverhunter reported?

You're welcome.

The bag action isn't jerky at all for me.

Sometimes the beam is, and sometimes it's a bit delayed as well. But not always, and I have never had a framerate problem.

 

I will add that I think the harvest events, good and bad, are awesome, I particularly like the cavern wall.

The summoning effects seem to have the colored glow in an odd place though, seems to show up behind me the character, neither on me or the summoned creature (although the beam part seems to line up right).

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I have another bug/glitch for you KarenRei:

It may have to be night (only tested at night near the beam).

Create a F9 fire, stand near it and zoom in/out. The light from the fire flickers. What I mean is that while you zoom in the ground looks darker and your character is lit more from below as if the light source had moved down with the camera and while you zoom out the ground looks brighter and your character is lit more from above as if the light source has moved up with the camera. Directly after you stop zooming (the frame after?) the lighting is correct again. My guess is that the light position is somehow specified relative to the camera and not to the world and its position is adjusted too late.

 

My sysinfo:

Gentoo Linux x86 stable on an Athlon XP 2400+

GeForce4 Ti 4200 with nvidia-drivers-1.0.8776

CVS update less than 1 hour ago

Default FEATURES minus AUTO_UPDATE

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Ok I got a client and tried it out for a few mins so far. If there's someone who has a high level in magic who can help show me all the effects please pm me in game, it'd be much appreciated :D Summoning as well.

 

It would be really good to know if everone is seeing what they're supposed to be seeing.

Here's my description & thoughts of the campfire for starters:

Right now it looks like one big colored ball in the center, with black balls coming up from it as smoke. I think the fire part could look better if smaller particles are randomly placed coming out of it too, like fire sparks, or just smaller flames here and there. (I noticed the f9 fire has this).

However it seems like the smaller particles show up only when you zoom in, when zoomed out the larger parts seem to get bigger and take over.

 

The smoke I think could look better if it's lighter in color, more grayish, and moves smoothly. Right now the movement is very jerky with the smoke. A particle will move up a space, pause for a split second, them move up again, pause, move, etc..it doesn't look fluid.

 

 

The bag particles:

I think it may look better if the effect is slower, a few seconds longer. Same with the Beam effect(they look nice though!)

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Aislinn: Will you be on at some point this evening, CST? You could show me what you mean by the summon effect's centering. Centering has been a constant annoyance for me because in EL, it's never so simple as "where the actor's x, y, and z pos says it is".

 

I'd rather have the summon effect be centered on the creature being summoned, but the server only sends the caster. Perhaps after the release, I can talk Ent into having it send an ID for the summoned creature :D

 

Troca: You have point particles on, don't you? That's a bug that Ermabwed recently got me debugging info for, and which I'll be addressing this evening.

 

Thanks, you two! Oh, and also, this evening I'll be checking in two new pieces of code that I just wrote (but can't test till I get home). One will average out the framerate of the past few frames to remove any jerkiness that may occur for them but still remain responsive to framerate changes. The other makes it so that limiting your FPS very low won't force eye candy effects to be low-level-of-detail. Currently, the eye candy system sees a low framerate and thinks, "I better cut back on what I'm doing; I must be overtaxing their system.".

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However it seems like the smaller particles show up only when you zoom in, when zoomed out the larger parts seem to get bigger and take over.

 

That's because of your FPS is dropping too low. I had the same 'problem' if I limit my FPS.

 

fireqo0qy3.jpg

 

Left is with high FPS, right is with low FPS.

 

To karenrei:

 

If my FPS drops below 15 the effects fade out really really slow, and if too many effects come in the window they don't fade out at all. I just made a small sample, look first at the effect of the bag that is going out of screen slowly, after that I beamed and check the effect of the beam. Normally it should be gone after a second, but here it took like ~7 secs, the person was already gone when the effect was faded out. (it's a small video though, if you prefer a longer one I can do it for you). With high FPS everything is ok though.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk7nyPZ2_18

 

Edit: I'm a windows user :D

Edited by Cycloonx

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Roja:

 

Fire: How recent is your windows client? There were changes to fires made... the night before last, I think, to reduce the "balling" effect. If you were to give me a screenshot, I could identify whether it's looking proper for you or not. Further improvements certainly can be made, of course; however, they can only go so far using the extant textures without increasing the particle count too high. One option would be, if A) you think it needs improvement when viewing it with a verified properly working client, and :D basic improvements without upping the particle count can't do enough, would be to refer back to that artwork thread I started a long time ago. Right now, the texture on the fire particles is just that of a simple glowing particle. I could, on the other hand, have each particle have a texture of literal animated flames if someone wanted to draw such an animation. The flames moving around each other would look 3d even though the texture is only 2d.

 

Bag: Slower, can-do. I, too, think most of them would look better slower; you could see the particle movement intricasies better. I tried to keep most effects relatively quick because most actions in EL are instant, and Ent doesn't want to impose serverside delays. As an example, this will be a big problem for "teleport to range" effect, sadly; the effect involves a teleport beam forming around the caster, then orbs of light flying from it to the destination, where they turn into a new beam. With the caster instantly getting to their destination, it would make the effect look odd.

 

But, anyways, that is neither here nor there. I don't think slowing the bag effect will create a visual problem. To sum up:

 

A) Fire -- if you could, get me a screenshot so I can verify that it looks correct for you.

B ) I'll work on the fire effect some this evening to see what I can do without having to do texture art myself and without increasing the particle count much (thus slowing down clients).

C) If that still isn't enough, if one of the art people could do some texture animations, that would be great. What would be needed would be a 128x128 RGBA version of a dancing flame (or a small group of dancing flames), optionally a 128x128 RGBA version of drifting smoke, and optionally a 128x128 RGBA animation of a cluster of flying embers (multiple embers being in a single particle would allow for more of them to be visible without upping the particle count)

Edited by KarenRei

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Troca: You have point particles on, don't you? That's a bug that Ermabwed recently got me debugging info for, and which I'll be addressing this evening.

 

I get the exact same flickering however I set the point particle option in advanced video settings (point particle extension is reported as found and used when I start el).

Now it was daytime and I only saw the flickering on my own character not the ground. It flickers in orange on the side facing the fire while zooming.

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KarenRei:

Hmm well I just started some mins ago to use CVS client on real server, so I guess we will see what happens and I'm sure I will find some things I would like fixed, but more on that later.

About the level of detail, after the FPS calc change it's not choppy or things anymore, so it should look just like you see it on Linux.

 

Also on your "sides" list, you forgot that Learner did mention that he wants pickup effect only, not on drop.

 

Roja:

I could fix that but I you need more than the .exe to get the effects. You would need the textures, the .exe, SDL_image.dll, a "custom"/new Cal3d.dll and libpng12.dll. Perhaps also a newer version of SDL.dll, I had some problems with the old one before.

Update: Ooh oki, you got all that fixed?

Edited by Beaverhunter

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Cycloonx:

 

That indeed is messed up! Oy, getting Windows to work right is turning out to be tricksy. There's a small chance that my most recent patch that will go in this evening will fix that bug, but if it doesn't, let me know, and I'll put in some debugging statements for you.

 

 

Troca:

I get the exact same flickering however I set the point particle option in advanced video settings (point particle extension is reported as found and used when I start el).

Now it was daytime and I only saw the flickering on my own character not the ground. It flickers in orange on the side facing the fire while zooming.

 

Hmm. I'm having trouble picturing what you're talking about. Could you take a vid and post it (youtube works fine)?

 

(thanks again, everyone!)

Edited by KarenRei

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Aislinn: Will you be on at some point this evening, CST? You could show me what you mean by the summon effect's centering. Centering has been a constant annoyance for me because in EL, it's never so simple as "where the actor's x, y, and z pos says it is".

Yes, I will be on from 8pm EST until whenever I fall asleep :)

Up until then I will be on and off due to rl comings and goings.

I will try to take a screenie of what I'm talking about in the meantime about the summoning.

 

Also I limit my fps to 30, and have not had it go below that during any of the special effects (not sure if that helps you any).

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Ok I asked jamincollins(who gave me the client), to get me an updated version. So we'll see if that fixes it :)

 

Here is the screenshot though:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/ffle...r/test_fire.jpg

 

I can look into doing some animated fire frames..but that will take some time because I never did something like that before. So i'll let you know on that but i don't think it can be done in time for the update.

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That looks like the bug that I was reducing/fixing before. Also, it looks like the kind of fire that should show up only when the framerate is very low. I'd bet that the client you were given was built before the recent windows fixes.

 

I'll have another look at fires tonight. Thanks :)

Edited by KarenRei

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That looks like the bug that I was reducing/fixing before. Also, it looks like the kind of fire that should show up only when the framerate is very low. I'd bet that the client you were given was built before the recent windows fixes.

 

I'll have another look at fires tonight. Thanks :)

What do you call a very low frame rate? We need to make sure that EL looks good/usable even in the 10-15FPS rate. Some people are lucky to hit 2 digits in some areas.

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Oki, this is "bad"... this might be a serious bug:

I'm not sure if you can see it because my screentaker didn't capture with the gamma setting so it's abit dark.

1. It's VERY dark on nights, why has this changed?

2. Under the trees the ground is lit! Like if its suppose to be shadow there but instead there is light, even though there isn't light where the trees aren't blocking.

3. Frame Buffer is off (on doesn't matter though). It has now happened a few times... It's like the light gets inverted. Shadows become bright and rest of the area is DARK.

 

eternallands0221er5.th.jpg

 

 

Update: Just encountered my first harvest effects. The Radon pouch looks oki I guess. The mother nature hits you seems abit harsh, very big flame coming, why would mother nature use flames? Ill check more though, only seen them once.

 

Old "bug": Gamma setting affects your whole screen, even if you run in Windowed option, you get your whole display brighter, which can be annoying depending on what you do. Can't we add a "brightness" option instead that affects the lights and enviroment instead?

 

Another thing: Maybe it's my system being too fast for it's own health, but on maploadings, I get a delay, maybe 2-3 seconds after it actually has 100% load in the blue bar. I have got this a few times before on official client too but only when it resulted in a crash after. Now I get it on every load.

Edited by Beaverhunter

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Learner:

 

Currently, if you're lower than 13 fps, you get minimum level of detail effects. Maximum level of detail effects are when you're over 37 fps.

 

It would be lovely if we could always use maximum level of detail, but if someone's getting 13 fps while using minimum level of detail, using max level of detail would probably drag them down to just a few fps in an effect-busy area. Clearly not acceptable. If you have another suggestion, though, let me know. Adjusting the ranges is easy, if that's all you want.

 

Minimum level of detail effects work fine. They just don't look as pretty.

 

Beaverhunter:

 

Darkness: I'll tackle this one; there's a chance I introduced it (perhaps I didn't ifdef a DEBUG_TTLANHIL_TRANSPARENCY or something of that nature). First off, what build options are you using?

(OOC: Why are you hiding your stats?)

 

Mother nature: What would you expect mother nature to use? It doesn't look like a "flame" in my opinion, more like just a fast blast of energy.

 

Radon: What about it don't you like, and would like improved?

Edited by KarenRei

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I don't have any program installed for capturing video, sorry, but I managed to get some stills. If you flip though them fast you'll see the flickering I'm talking about. There is a F9 fire just to the right, in front of my character, the particles don't pass in front of him.

Not zooming: elbug-normal.png Zooming out: elbug-out.png Zooming in: elbug-in.png

In particular notice the left (in the picture) of the chest in the out-picture and the crotch area in the in-picture.

 

PS. I noticed another funny effect: If you move a (small) window infront of the EL window it causes strange shadows in the EL world :) Something with the stencil buffer I guess.

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Shadows: I've noticed that too. Is that new or old?

 

Lighting: I'm still having trouble picturing what you're referring to, but I can look into it. All you have to do is zoom while there's a fire going, right?

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Right, start an F9 fire and zoom, alternating between hitting page-up/page-down seems best. You may need to walk a few steps away in some direction and turn around until you get the biggest effect. If you haven't done so already save my screen shots and flip though them in an image viewer that change pictures fast (I used "feh").

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