Cicero Report post Posted October 21, 2004 Until I really get better at OpenGL, I'm just not even going to pretend like I can do anything useful with it. However, we do have a few people that are competent enough to pull some stuff off. 1. Distance fog. Why would we need this? With fog, even the cheap, vanilla GL fog, we can have better viewing angles without worrying about artifacts or massive FPS drops. We could have a slight fog/mist on land that just keeps you from seeing past the distance that the server updates, and a thicker fog around the edges of the map to keep you from seeing off to far. 2. A useful auto-camera. This probably doesn't need too much OpenGL code, but it would be a fun little side project for someone, as it's already an option that's turned off by default and is unlikely to cause side effects with anything else. Some suggestions: zooming and tilting the camera depending on where your character is and what s/he is doing. The optimal camera location for indoors is probably different from that of traveling through a field or fighting something. 3. More particle effects and sprites. The particle effects don't really need OpenGL work, since we have a system in place (unless you think you can further improve the particle system). We do need particle textures and definition files though. We don't have anything in place for sprites, specifically projectiles. This could be useful for arrows, fireballs, etc. 4. Targeting effect. Wouldn't it be cool if when you clicked on something, there was some sort of feedback to illuminate what you just did? Glowing footprints where you click to walk, a brief red aura around an animal you clicked to attack, etc. A lot of other games have this, and I think it would look cool Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Umrion Report post Posted October 21, 2004 1. Distance fog. Why would we need this? With fog, even the cheap, vanilla GL fog, we can have better viewing angles without worrying about artifacts or massive FPS drops. We could have a slight fog/mist on land that just keeps you from seeing past the distance that the server updates, and a thicker fog around the edges of the map to keep you from seeing off to far. Should be quite easy to add.. Might take some tweaking to get to look good, but still a quick fix. Experimenting with the fog coord extension might yield some nice results too. 2. A useful auto-camera. This probably doesn't need too much OpenGL code, but it would be a fun little side project for someone, as it's already an option that's turned off by default and is unlikely to cause side effects with anything else. Some suggestions: zooming and tilting the camera depending on where your character is and what s/he is doing. The optimal camera location for indoors is probably different from that of traveling through a field or fighting something. I did some enhancements to the auto-cam when I first started looking at the code. Didn't finish it, though, since interest in this seemed to be so low and I found other things to work on. 3. More particle effects and sprites. The particle effects don't really need OpenGL work, since we have a system in place (unless you think you can further improve the particle system). We do need particle textures and definition files though. We don't have anything in place for sprites, specifically projectiles. This could be useful for arrows, fireballs, etc. I'll leave that to the artists 4. Targeting effect. Wouldn't it be cool if when you clicked on something, there was some sort of feedback to illuminate what you just did? Glowing footprints where you click to walk, a brief red aura around an animal you clicked to attack, etc. A lot of other games have this, and I think it would look cool Yeah, feedback is a good thing, and not only because it looks cool. Isn't there already code for that aura thing? draw_model_halo sounds like it would do that (I haven't studied the function, though.) Only thing to add would be to connect this to clicking on stuff. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Entropy Report post Posted October 21, 2004 Yeah, the draw_model_halo, with some modifications should do it. Getting the actor under the mouse is also trivial, so it can be implemented relatively easely. It would be nice if we'd have volumetric fog (maybe using the fog coordinates extension?) to emulate morning fog, or steam from lakes, etc. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
