63 replies to this topic

[theShadow]

do you think that the tree swaying that mycond implemented could make it in to a11? possible as an effect thats disabled by default, but can be turned on for testing purposes?

[WhiteTreePaladin]

Flickering shadows when rotating the camera has been an issue for a long time.

[edit]
Really like the tree animations! It's a bit more windy than most maps would need, but I guess you can configure that. It really does make the shadows look bad. If that can't be helped, then perhaps tree shadows could be made static, although that's less than ideal.

[wrod]

I know some of you guys are going to hate me for this but maybe animated trees should wait untill the game is almost done because it could make the game slow if u add the effects first without the rest of the game being done

[zoot]

wrod, on 26 June 2012 - 04:57 PM, said:

I know some of you guys are going to hate me for this but maybe animated trees should wait untill the game is almost done because it could make the game slow if u add the effects first without the rest of the game being done

Fortunately, development isn't a static process like that. If the trees are perceived as slowing anything down, they can be taken out or put back in at any time.

[myconid]

wrod, on 26 June 2012 - 04:57 PM, said:

I know some of you guys are going to hate me for this but maybe animated trees should wait untill the game is almost done because it could make the game slow if u add the effects first without the rest of the game being done

My patches added a way to scale the amount of effects through the game's config file. Setting that value to 0 = no effects, 10 = all effects. Values in between scale the effects up gradually, depending on how the effects registered themselves with the materials manager.

[feneur]

myconid, on 26 June 2012 - 05:21 PM, said:

My patches added a way to scale the amount of effects through the game's config file. Setting that value to 0 = no effects, 10 = all effects. Values in between scale the effects up gradually, depending on how the effects registered themselves with the materials manager.

Are effects possible to turn off completely on an individual basis as well?

[wraitii]

Yeah, whatever myconid is adding right now should have an option in the settings as some of it can be fairly GPU/CPU-intensive on low end machines. I suppose it can't be too complicated to code, but I have no idea what the underlying architecture is.
That being said, I really appreciate trees that slowly rock under the wind (and had personaly implemented small bits of pollen going itsy bitsy in the wind at some point in Alpha 9 for coolness), and it's great it's been done .

[myconid]

feneur, on 27 June 2012 - 11:36 AM, said:

Are effects possible to turn off completely on an individual basis as well?

Afraid not. That may involve hardcoding stuff and I'd rather avoid that at this point.

[feneur]

myconid, on 27 June 2012 - 12:30 PM, said:

Afraid not. That may involve hardcoding stuff and I'd rather avoid that at this point.

Ok, well as long as there is some way to control it, and eventually it would be nice to have the ability to turn things on and off completely. Don't worry about having that option at the moment though

[historic_bruno]

myconid, on 27 June 2012 - 12:30 PM, said:

That may involve hardcoding stuff

Sounds good, because it annoys Philip, and every time the config system's ugliness annoys Philip, it increases the chances that he will replace it (He's complained about it for a long time) Though anyone else is free to work on it if they can improve it. It's especially awkward for renderer config as you may have noticed...

As Erik said, it's not essential to have options for everything in the initial version, but I think eventually we will want them IMO numeric values are nicer for things that can't be expressed as distinct features, like quality and detail level of Effect X.

[theShadow]

just a quick thought. Does this system animate all the trees on the map at once, or only the trees the player can see?

[myconid]

theShadow, on 29 June 2012 - 01:43 PM, said:

just a quick thought. Does this system animate all the trees on the map at once, or only the trees the player can see?

The animation happens while transforming the vertices for display on the screen, so only the objects that are to be displayed are animated.

[Josh]

Do you think animated trees could make it into Alpha 11? It seems like they weren't that hard to implement.

Edited by Josh, 29 June 2012 - 11:24 PM.

[zoot]

It won't be hard to integrate, if that is what you mean. A minor outstanding "problem" is that it depends on GLSL, which is not activated by default, so the team would have to make a decision on what they want to do in that regard.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I like the cloud shadows. They're just a little too fast in that game. Looks more like smoke shadows. Their building designs are horrible too.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

Oh yes, I forgot about cloud shadows. They looked nice in BFME2.

[Zeta1127]

Ah, BfME2, I haven't been able to play in awhile, but I know a thing or two about it.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I love BfME2 for its unit control (the battalions are awesome). Its econ leaves much to be desired, though. I also like the 3D rolling oceanic waves for the water and some aspects of the wall system.

[zoot]

Mythos_Ruler, on 30 June 2012 - 05:00 AM, said:

I also like the 3D rolling oceanic waves for the water

Anyone have any video of this? How do they deal with waves hitting the shore?

[Zeta1127]

Mythos_Ruler, on 30 June 2012 - 05:00 AM, said:

I love BfME2 for its unit control (the battalions are awesome). Its econ leaves much to be desired, though. I also like the 3D rolling oceanic waves for the water and some aspects of the wall system.

No kidding, the efficiency radius on farms was too large, making it hard to get a good economy for things like walls. If there was one good thing about BfME2, it was the fact it sure looked good and the wall system was great in theory.

zoot, on 30 June 2012 - 05:07 AM, said:

Anyone have any video of this? How do they deal with waves hitting the shore?

EA built a fancy graphics engine, powered by their partnership with nVidia. BfME2 Collector's Edition DVD might be able to shine more light on it, and since I have it, I will take a look.

Edited by Zeta1127, 30 June 2012 - 05:14 AM.