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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?)

I'm using the default options for Linux and am having problems with varying light levels. I though it was lightning but it goes pretty dark sometimes too. I tried without NEW_WEATHER defined and that gave stable lighting. When I tried a build with NEW_LIGHTING enabled (it's off by default), it was very dark, even during the daytime.

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Ah, there we go; that could be it.

 

* NEW_LIGHTING is in development still. There was a simpler version before, but once it was decided that it wouldn't be in this next release, I began work on a more complex version that includes things like the greying of outdoor colors at night, long, rosy shadows in the morning and evening, etc in addition to objects that look less flat and proper normals on all objects. However, it's not quite done**. Don't use it for now.

 

* NEW_WEATHER just seems... kinda weird to me. The lightning often seems like flickering (if it only came with storms, it wouldn't seem so bad), and the clouds make it dark seemingly without explanation (if you saw a cloud shadow approach and overtake you, that'd be different). Are we planning to include it in the next release or not?

 

** -- The current revision (checked in last night) shouldn't be black during the daytime, however, so I will want to figure out why that is. Still, don't consider it mature code yet.

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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?)

I'm using the default options for Linux and am having problems with varying light levels. I though it was lightning but it goes pretty dark sometimes too. I tried without NEW_WEATHER defined and that gave stable lighting. When I tried a build with NEW_LIGHTING enabled (it's off by default), it was very dark, even during the daytime.

Do not use NEW_LIGHTING at this time. That can be worked on after this next release.

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Here's the summong problem:

The beaver with the green health bar is the one i summoned this time yet you see the purplish glow is not on me or the beaver.

 

summoning.jpg

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I think I already found it. Go into special_effects.c and adjust X_OFFSET and Y_OFFSET to both be equal to 0.25.

 

Can't test until I get home, but that looks like the solution to me. Unfortunately, it'll be on you, not the critter, but it'd take a serverside fix to make it be on the critter.

Edited by KarenRei

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I'm using all these (in Release mode):

NDEBUG;ELC;EYE_CANDY;WINDOW_CHAT;NEW_WEATHER;NEW_FRUSTUM;BUG_FIX_3D_OBJECTS_MIN_MAX;

NEW_TEX;OPTIONS_I18N;NEW_ACTOR_ANIMATION;AUTO_UPDATE;COUNTERS;SFX;FONTS_FIX;COMMENT_BUFFER;

AFK_FIX;CUSTOM_LOOK;CUSTOM_UPDATE;SIMPLE_LOD;USE_ACTOR_DEFAULTS;NOTEPAD;USE_INLINE;ZLIB;

PNG_SCREENSHOT;MINIMAP;FUZZY_PATHS;MASKING;ACTOR_ALPHA;NEW_ALPHA;__SSE__;NEW_LIGHTING;ANTI_ALIAS

 

Something missing or not needed?

 

I'll try later maybe without the NEW_LIGHTNING then. I'm not sure if it's the lightning or something else but it looks very nice and natural lit outside at certain sun settings. When I try with it disabled I guess I'll find out if that's what causing this or not.

 

I would still want to hear what's going on with 3d alpha blending and anti aliasing, are these just experimental? What are they suppose to enhance? Are they to be included in the release?

 

Btw, skills and stats are hidden for teasing ppl:p Ppl can check them out other ways if they want.

Edited by Beaverhunter

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Beaverhunter: Thanks; I like how outside is looking with NEW_LIGHTING as well; just wait until I get normal mapping in so that the walls of buildings and the ground don't look flat either :confused:. The natural look is about half an improved lighting model and about half the fact that I set normals on every object (you wouldn't believe how many didn't have them before!)

 

Still a few bugs in it, though. Just to make sure, you're using the version that was checked in last night? If so, I'll try going to time 1:56 (like in your screenshot) and seing if I can figure out why it's black for you there.

 

Oh, and as for 3d blending and antialiasing: I have no clue who coded them or what they're for. If you want, you could start a new thread.

Edited by KarenRei

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Shadows due to overlapping windows is there in eternal-lands-1.3.3 installed through gentoo portage too, so it is old. It's only visible in daylight with shadow mapping on and outside a rectangle centered on the character (the shadow map texture?). But this is off topic in this thread since it's clearly not introduced by eyecandy.

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Update in.

 

* More eye candy documentation

* Various fire improvements

* Bag effect is slower, slightly smaller

* Summon centering, maybe.

* Minor NEW_LIGHTING fixes.

 

Beaverhunter: The darkness seems to be related to the interplay of NEW_WEATHER with NEW_LIGHTING. If it's not currently fixed, I'll get it soon.

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Sounds good KarenRei, your onto something I guess. But is the darkness also related to the weird inverted shadow effect? Btw, in caves it's really dark even if it's somewhat sunny outside.

 

The darkness is not yet fixed no, even with new CVS. Not sure if the inverted effect is fixed, I haven't played that much yet today. But I doubt it is.

 

There's quite alot to fix and test before the client release, at least so it seems. And the client release is suppose to be in about 3 weeks. We should make a new thread with a real "TODO" list. We should also get the "officials" into this, Roja and Ent should take part in testing and make a few decisions.

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As someone who has successfully compiled the client in both windows and linux (yes I am 1337 :) )I can tell you that there is no discernible difference in the effects for both operating environments.

 

That is all.

 

S.

 

ps. um...bunnies...I like bunnies. But I think something fundamentally important is being overlooked, and that is the pure joy that is an exploding brownie. Something to think about.

Edited by Spleenfeeder

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Today I had two strange red messages showing up in my console, when I was sitting AFK at VoTD sto:

 

Premature start of weather effect!

 

and a while later:

 

Double stop of weather effect!

 

Unfortunately I was AFK, and I was in console mode, so I couldn't see the mysterious weather effect :)

I couldn't find anything logged in the chat_log, the stdout/stderr or the error.log. System is a gentoo linux, using standard (default) FEATURES. If there's something I can help you with to debug, just name it.

 

Cheers,

maj

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Sorry for little off topic, but do evry1 can download test client with special effects and if yes then from where, or does it is only for chosen?

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Beaverhunter:

 

TODO: I'm not sure if there's an official TODO list, but I have my own personal TODO list:

 

Before release:

* Obstruction restesting

* Point sprites improvement

* Follow up with Ttlanhil to enable -DDEBUG_TTLANHIL_TRANSPARENCY

* Follow up on Cycloonx's "Low FPS = hovering particles" bug.

 

After release or IFDEF'ed out before release:

* Make shadows be optionally multipass in NEW_LIGHTING for people with low

shadow map resolution to eliminate shadow jumpiness while walking

* Videos/screenshots -- xvidcap + cinelerra?

* EC documentation

* Map editor / special effect hookin

* New options for existing eye candy (scale and the like)

* Normal mapping so surfaces don't look planar.

* Dragon breath

* Missing targetted magic spells

* Summon critter circle happens around critter, not caster

* Cold-map breath visualization

* Spiraling portal

* Hook in fireflies and leaves

* Performance-optimize leaves.

* Make leaves respect server wind (split into wind class and windblown class)

* Ongoing effects.

 

 

Interaction between NEW_WEATHER (which causes the darkness) and NEW_LIGHTING: I have some unchecked-in changes (should go in tonight) that should eliminate the problem. The problem is that NEW_WEATHER would just obliterate the lighting before when it decided that it got cloudy. Before, objects had so much of a "natural ambient" (which is really more like emissivity) that they'd simply look flat whenever it was cloudy. Take away all of the lighting when you have a realistic lighting model, and it gets black. Except for the shadows, since shadows are rendered in a separate pass and aren't affected by lighting conditions.

 

Caves: I haven't messed much with caves. I did at one point, but decided it would be too much work for now because houses and caves are both indicated in the same way, as far as I can tell -- by is_dungeon. Houses just have stronger lighting. It's really map problems with a few caves for example, the WS to Portland cave. There's no light source in there, as far as I can tell, and since they don't get the outdoor moonlight.... In the old model, if there was no light source, everything just looked flat (they looked somewhat flat with light sources too, just not as much). The ambient was cranked way up.

 

I do have an idea for how I could deal with that problem that I think will look nice; I'll try it out tonight.

 

Brein: Are you referring to the CVS client? You'll need to either compile it or get it from someone who compiled it. If you still want it, you'll need to check it out from CVS; look for Eternal Lands on Berlios.

Edited by KarenRei

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Compiled today and all my past problems are gone - Client works fine so far.

 

Here are some thoughts on some of the effects:

  • I do like the bag drop effect, I think it should be kept.
  • The teleportation effect is great
  • The new fire looks great, but imho the smoke is a bit too thick and dark

I'll add more, once I stumbled over them :P

 

edit: Are degraded jagged sabres really supposed to have a flickering purplish effect?

Edited by kl4Uz

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Bug in harvest events effects:

On bag of gold found, there is what seems to be ¿"pick up bag"-effect? but this effect appears close to the resource not on/under the player.

 

Also I have seen quite a few of the Mother Nature hits now and I kind of would say that it looks alot like someone getting a flame strike as punishment. Can't you try and mixture with the color of that effect? Maybe more purpelish, usually energy is painted purple, or from mother nature maybe greenish color?

 

Edit:

I have also noticed that the magic casting effects are quite big. This might make a problem when it comes to pking, pkers will probably turn eye_candy off just because it can decrease your field of vision aswell as getting very much light effects poofing up everywhere, which might be distracting. But of course if they find it distracting they could just turn it off... but well, just a thought.

 

You seem to have alot to do KarenRei, are you okey with it or are you starting to twist your mind and wanting to shout "Can't someone else do it"? Your doing a good job. I can unfortunately not help much in coding at this stage, I don't even have got any instructions on how the commit function works? Do others work on same file get merged, overwriten? Are the things I commit automaticly added to CVS, and will be downloaded by someone who updates his/her CVS? How to make sure I don't mess something up for someone else? Is anyone checking the CVS so that no one commits a "bad deed"-patch? Sending passwords or alike?... Well many questions=D I can help in debugging though.

Edited by Beaverhunter

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Green is the color of healing, though. Well, at least pure glowing green; a matte green mixed with black is used in poison while a green glow mixed with matte brown dust is used in radon. So, I suppose an impure green could be a possibility, but I wouldn't want it to be the only color. Purple is the color of mana drain. I suppose I could have a mixture of colors. What do others think?

Edited by KarenRei

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I can shrink it.

 

You decide amongst yourselves (if Roja wants to make a declarative statement, that would simplify things; otherwise, I'll just go with whatever changes there's a clear majority for).

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I love the harvesting effects, especially the cavern wall, that is genius.

 

Sorry, i can't stand the new bag effects :) I want my sparkly particles back :P

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I would love to give my input and help you test all these..but it's a bit difficult because I can't see any magic/summoning effects(I can't do them myself)...I guess i'll have to ask for volunteers in the game to show me them :)

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Just realized that I missed replying to one post:

 

Beaverhunter, re: Bag of gold: Does it appear in front of you? it was supposed to appear just in front of you. I didn't want the bag to be appearing inside someone (it looks odd), and since you're finding the gold while harvesting, I'd assume that you were finding it in the resource you were harvesting.

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Just realized that I missed replying to one post:

 

Beaverhunter, re: Bag of gold: Does it appear in front of you? it was supposed to appear just in front of you. I didn't want the bag to be appearing inside someone (it looks odd), and since you're finding the gold while harvesting, I'd assume that you were finding it in the resource you were harvesting.

 

Hmm I gotta watch where it actually appears I guess, but it didn't seem like it was 1 step infront of the player. Doesn't it look more weird if there are like 5-10 ppl sitting quite close harvesting and someone else gets the effect on him/her? I would rather have the effect on the player that actually get it... or maybe better and more advanced... A trail that leaned/pointed towards the player char, like if it was taken from the resources and "sucked" up by the player.

 

Is it the eye candy or the new lightning that is causing the massive light spread? I cast the magic spell Shield alot, and it's like lightning up the whole screen, if many were casting it it would be a disco or something=o

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Just noticed that if you change video mode the special effects are all blocky until you restart the client. May be another one for you list. :) ttlanhil recently fixed a similar problem described here.

 

edit: Just in case its useful, here's a before and after screen shot.

Edited by bluap

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