Skybox discussion

[ago]

From make.conf:

 

FEATURES += SKY_FPV_CURSOR # Use skybox with clouds/stars/etc, enable first person view, coloured cursors, and other misc changes from Emajekral (Experimental) Extract http://users.on.net/~gingerman/sky_cursor-textures.zip into datadir/textures/

Edited March 13, 2008 by ago

[Fedora]

From make.conf:

 

FEATURES += SKY_FPV_CURSOR # Use skybox with clouds/stars/etc, enable first person view, coloured cursors, and other misc changes from Emajekral (Experimental) Extract http://users.on.net/~gingerman/sky_cursor-textures.zip into datadir/textures/

 

 

Checked, and i have those files, still letters in the sky when it rains (scary...)

[Roja]

yay, great job! Looks so much better now!

 

Can you make it so ONLY the water tiles extend? I don't think there'll ever be any case where we want the other tiles to extend. This way if there's a place I don't want the water tiles to extend I can just delete those instead of water + ground tiles(which go to the border in a LOT of maps).

[Schmurk]

@Fedora: try this and tell me if it corrects your problem:

Index: sky.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/elc/elc/sky.c,v
retrieving revision 1.9
diff -u -r1.9 sky.c
--- sky.c       13 Mar 2008 13:41:19 -0000      1.9
+++ sky.c       13 Mar 2008 15:45:38 -0000
@@ -734,7 +734,7 @@

       if(SDL_GetAppState()&SDL_APPACTIVE)
       {
-               glPushAttrib(GL_TEXTURE_BIT|GL_ENABLE_BIT|GL_STENCIL_BUFFER_BIT);
+               glPushAttrib(/*GL_TEXTURE_BIT|*/GL_ENABLE_BIT|GL_STENCIL_BUFFER_BIT);
               if(use_shadow_mapping)
               {
                       glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_2D);

 

@Roja: np for the tiles, I'll extend only the water ones.

[Fedora]

@Fedora: try this and tell me if it corrects your problem:

 

no

[Schmurk]

Well, I'm unable to reproduce the problem here.

Is it doing the same things on all maps? Does it change anything when you enable/disable ingame options? And what are the options you're using to compile?

[Roja]

Ok a few other things I noticed:

 

-On pretty much any map aside from IP, I get fps 0, and even very low fps when i tilt the camera down at my head.-nm, I guess it just takes a few mins to change. I get better fps when i tilt it down at my head

Edit: Seems like my fps problem was because the game never actually closed..I had 3 instances running in addition to the current. They were "closed" as in I closed the game/restarted, but they were still showing up in the processes running!

 

 

 

-When you're standing a bit far away from the water edges and you turn to look at them, shadows from objects at the water's edge also get extended to infinitiy.

 

-I think that the ground objects & the sky need can look better integrated with each other if we have an atmosphere, or "fog".but the current fog looks bad and would need to be adjusted quite a bit. Can something like this be done that matches the color of the clouds or sky somehow?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/fflewddar/fog.jpg

Top picture shows a fog i painted over the pic in photoshop. It's just a light gradient that gets more opaque with farther distances. It should start at a good distance away from your camera however, so things up close would be clear.

Bottom pic shows the unedited screenshot.

[Schmurk]

I've removed the extension for ground tiles and I've added an option to change the water tiles extension amount for test purposes. However, for this last one, you'll need to close and restart the game in order it works properly.

 

For the shadows and the fog I think it should be feasible, I'll look at it later...

[kibora]

Great improvement

[Schmurk]

I've changed the values of the fog a bit in order to reduce it. However the fog is not working properly with water shaders.

About the shadows, was it occuring only for shadows that were far away? If it's the case, I don't know if we can do anything about it... But if the fog was working, then we should not see them anymore.

[Roja]

Ok here's a shot of the shadow bug. It seems to happen only between 1:30-2:30, from what I noticed anyway. It only happens when I'm at a distance away from those obejcts too..if I walk towards them, the shadows return to normal.

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

 

Here's a couple other things I noticed as well, I'm being picky I know

It looks like there's a big bend in the sky? http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/fflewddar/clouds3.jpg

 

Can the sky gradient be made smoother?(probably have to make it larger to make it smoother):

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/fflewddar/clouds4.jpg

 

 

I got a question abotu the sky box:

Exactly how big is it? I'm guessing it was made bigger than the biggest map size(which in fact we don't even have in the game)? And it rotates just around one axis? The reason I'm asking is because I was playing around with the clouds texture..and I wonder if you'll ever see parts of this texture at all(I made different cloud types in different areas).

[Schmurk]

Ok, for the shadow bug, it seems that it's a shader problem because when you put the water quality to 0, it works nice.

 

I've doubled the size of the gradient in the sky and also increased the number of slices on the sphere that is used to display the clouds.

BTW, this sphere seems to have a radius of 600 and rotates on only one axis. I can try to rotate it on 2 axes with 2 different speeds in order to show the whole texture...

 

EDIT: I've tried to rotate the sphere in 2 directions but the result was bad because you can sometimes see the poles of the sphere. I think the idea would be to make a texture like the one used for the moons. The top and the bottom of the texture would correspond to the poles of the sphere and the middle of the texture would be the clouds that would be displayed. So you can put several kinds of clouds from the left to the right and you should then see them at different periods of the day.

Edited March 14, 2008 by Schmurk

[PhilDaBurn]

Note 2: the sun seems to have a wrong position, on the screenshot, it should not be in this position if we are looking at the north

 

While spending hours and hours harvesting, I have noticed that shadows during the day move from South to North, hence Draia's sun moves from North to South. It has never bothered me that Draia spins on East and West poles rather than North and South pole as on Earth. So, what I'm saying is, if the sun should not be in the North, as in your screenshot, than perhaps the direction the shadows move should also be reviewed.

 

Phil...

[Schmurk]

If we move the sun, the shadows will move as well, it's not a problem. However, I've searched on the website to see if the solar system was presented somewhere but I haven't found anything about it. I've just seen the page about the 2 moons.

So I just supposed that the sun position was wrong and should rotate from east to west but maybe I'm wrong. Is there anything official about this somewhere?

[Mar(c)]

If we move the sun, the shadows will move as well, it's not a problem. However, I've searched on the website to see if the solar system was presented somewhere but I haven't found anything about it. I've just seen the page about the 2 moons.

So I just supposed that the sun position was wrong and should rotate from east to west but maybe I'm wrong. Is there anything official about this somewhere?

Well, I don't know about any official resources (I failed to find something about directions in combination with sunrise/sunset in the Stories forums), but it has been like this since the beginning of time.

(Well, since I'm aware of things anyway.

)

In a world where the sun rises in the north and sets in the south [...]

I have to say, I like it to be "off" like this.

 

 

 

#edit

• The stories
  I found one reference in the official stories (originally written in February 2004 <{POST_SNAPBACK}>):

  Peril in Mynadar
  By Tumaros
   
  (...)
   
  "But they would have t' be trained!" shouted Bargak, standing up from his seat and shaking a fist. He began to pace around, every once in a while looking off to the west, to the setting sun. "Tell me again about the cavern."
   
  (...)

  Might be a mistake of the writer of the story.
   
   
  
• The compass
  Magnetic north/south doesn't necessarily bite the east-west rotation axis of Draia.
  For example, the geographic and magnetic axes of the Earth are 11.3° off; I don't know if a 90° declination is plausible though.
   
   
  
• The maps
  The cold maps on the Irilion continent being situated in the south indicates that the sun goes east-west (or vice versa).
  

Just some things to consider, if it really needs to have some logic behind it.

Edited March 14, 2008 by Mar(c)

[Roja]

Marc I already talked to Schmurk, we're going to make it east-west.

 

Ok I recompiled & tested again. The gradient looks much better! The horizon fog, I see you removed that option fron the sky tab? And I assume you combined it with Render fog? That's what it looks like. Anyway, that might not be a good idea..maybe you can make the horizon fog integrated?(it looks fine imo and i don't see any need to turn it on/off)

 

The fog for the objects can still use adjusting. It is still too strong at closer distances. It should start fading out quite farther away.

Here's a rl example:

http://www.pinedaleonline.com/photogallery...cr-P2130069.jpg (although of course the distance shouldn't be that great in the game)

And here's what it looks like in game:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/fflewddar/fog4.jpg

 

 

I think that objects should be black against the sky at night. Right now they look like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/fflewddar/fog3.jpg

Here is an example of night time:

http://flickr.com/photos/cgrossmeier/381811911/

[Schmurk]

Ok, for the horizon fog I tried to disable it when there is no fog and put another attenuation instead but I agree with you, always putting it on is the best to do.

 

I've started to play with the color of the fog during night/day and the result is pretty good. However, it's also based on the weather and the way the weather is actually changing the light attenuation is not the best one IMO and it's hard to have a good result with the fog. So I will have to change several things in the actual weather before I can obtain something correct...

[kibora]

Normally the reflection works

 

 

But when the camera is almost horizontal it disappears

 

[Gildrig!]

Happens to me on pre rc 11

Btw how do i get to try the skybox? ive been following the thread and it looks awesome

[Florian]

"follow cam" in normal mode:

when you change the camera position with the arrow keys and start to walk, the camera follows the actor but keeps the shifted angle to the char selected with the arrow keys. I think walking should remove that shift and align the camera with the char again so that the camera faces the actor's back again.

 

another thing:

the camera also follows the head bobbing of the char, so when you walk the whole screen seems to have an earthquake. Solution (which I can't implement): moving average of the last X heiht positions so that fast and short height changes like walking don't affect the camera.

 

/EDIT

would it be possible to enter the grab mode by holding the right mouse button down and dragging?

Edited March 15, 2008 by Florian

[Roja]

Gildrig: you'll be able to test it when we release a test client with it.

 

 

Can someone give me the link or tell me where to find those cloud textures emajekral made? I overwrote them and need to get them back

[Schmurk]

http://users.on.net/~gingerman/sky_cursor-textures.zip

It's written in the make.conf

[ago]

Edit: Schmurk was faster :-D

Edited March 15, 2008 by ago

[Roja]

Thank you

 

I tried to make some more realistic clouds, and also variations of clouds. You can try the textures here if you'd like: http://www.eternal-lands.com/misc/clouds.zip

 

And here's the image you can replace tile0 with so you don't get double cloud reflections in the water:

http://www.eternal-lands.com/misc/tile0.bmp

[Schmurk]

Your clouds look great Roja!

 

I've commit my last changes according to what you said in your previous post.