226 replies to this topic

[serveurix]

fabio, on 13 January 2013 - 03:37 PM, said:

About the license, 0 A.D. is mostly GPL (engine) and CC-BY-SA 3.0 (arts), both licenses are copyleft, so you are required to keep the same licenses for your modification.

Note that CC-BY-SA is just weak copyleft, similar to LGPL.

[CTLN7]

Enrique, on 13 January 2013 - 02:49 PM, said:

If you want normals/parallax, specularity and transparency, you should use this material: <material>basic_trans_parallax_spec.xml</material>

EDIT: If you want add parallax effect in top of the normal bump, you should use a black and white image as the alpha channel of the normal map.

Dosen't seem to work for me I will try another time right now i want to know how can i create a new faction .

Edited by CTLN7, 14 January 2013 - 05:12 AM.

[Enrique]

CTLN7, on 14 January 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

Dosen't seem to work for me I will try another time right now i want to know how can i create a new faction .

Ok, If you come back to try the effects, make sure you have the needed settings set to "true" in the .cfg file or they will not show.

[dvangennip]

CTLN7, on 14 January 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

Dosen't seem to work for me I will try another time right now i want to know how can i create a new faction .

Making a new faction is simple. Either make a new mod folder or use the public folder (in data/mods/public). In the civs folder there you'll find JSON files for each civ in the game. Copy one and adjust the data inside. Now you've got a new faction added Set the starting units and building to your desired units and building, and it should work.

[CTLN7]

Enrique, on 14 January 2013 - 12:07 PM, said:

Ok, If you come back to try the effects, make sure you have the needed settings set to "true" in the .cfg file or they will not show.

It worked quite nicely ,thanks .The shaders are loking great .

[Pureon]

CTLN7, on 14 January 2013 - 01:10 PM, said:

It worked quite nicely ,thanks .The shaders are loking great .

This wiki page may also be helpful: http://trac.wildfire...raphicsGLSLonly

[poVoq]

Heh, those buildings give me a bit of a steam-punk vribe, still nice looking... though as previously mentioned a bit too monochrome.

Oh and great to hear that you are going open-source with your game... please also use CC-by-SA the the license for the graphics to have full compatibility with 0 AD assets.

[Ilves]

Ok, the combined efforts of us and your engine continues to inhabit the ancient world with tanks:

Spoiler

Buuuut... this is still fat from that goodness what Mythos_Ruler presented us. Can you be so kind to explain what made his screenshots looking so smooth? Maybe, materials or DDS saving setting? (the notorious mip maps for instance). And how to enable normal maps working?

Moreover, I'm going to ask how to make Alpha Channel working (it's included in the dds file but not working as you can see from the black square in place of wheels):



Here you can see the wheels of the tanks and the shaders working:



Thanks

Edited by Ilves, 15 January 2013 - 01:55 AM.

[Enrique]

I'm going to try answering some questions.

First, about the transparency.

The transparency is handled different depending on the material used in the xml actor:

• If you use a material with "player_trans" means that the transparencies in the texture will show playercolor.
  
• If you use a material with "basic_trans" means that the transparencies will be handled as basic transparency, achieving the effect needed in the tank wheels.

Therefore, you'll need different .xml actors in the unit. (example: main actor the hull with playercolor, and attached to it the props of the turret [also with playercolor if there's no transparent elements], and the wheels with basic transparency)


To enable the normal/parallax and specular effects, you need to do the two following changes (and have a graphics card/driver with good OpenGL 2.1 support)

-First, you need to make some changes on the .cfg file of the game. The best way to do this is making a new copy of the file binaries\data\config\default.cfg an rename it as local.cfg
Open the file with a text editor and make the following changes:

• Set preferglsl=true (this enables GLSL mode)
  
• Set gentangents=true (this enables AO, normal/parallax, and specular mapping)
  
• Set materialmgr.quality=10 (value 10 to enable all the effects, 5 to enable only some of the effects, or 0 to turn them off)

-Second you have to specify the correct material in the .xml actor files in order to use the effects. I've already explained the transparency differences.

• basic_trans_parallax_spec -> this enables "basic transparency", "normal/parallax" map and specular map (i.e for the wheels)
  
• player_trans_parallax_spec -> this is like the first, but with playercolor (i.e. for the turret and hull)
  
• player_trans_ao_parallax_spec -> this one enables the same as the above, but also "Ambient Occlusion" map (I think you don't need it because the AO is already in the diffuse texture)

You can find all the material files in the folder "0AD\binaries\data\mods\public\art\materials". But I think those two first are the ones you're looking for.


Final note:
When specifying the texture's location in the .xml actors, you have to tell the engine which type of texture is, like the following example (not sure but I think It has to be in this order):

<textures>
<texture file="structural/rome_struct.png" name="baseTex"/>
<texture file="structural/rome_struct_norm.png" name="normTex"/>
<texture file="structural/rome_struct_spec.png" name="specTex"/>
<texture file="structural/ao/rome_market_struct1.png" name="aoTex"/>
</textures>


For more information about the graphic options, you can follow the link that Pureon posted: http://trac.wildfire...raphicsGLSLonly
I wish you good luck with your project!

[Ilves]

Enrique, on 15 January 2013 - 03:07 PM, said:

I'm going to try answering some questions.

First, about the transparency.

The transparency is handled different depending on the material used in the xml actor:

• If you use a material with "player_trans" means that the transparencies in the texture will show playercolor.
  
• If you use a material with "basic_trans" means that the transparencies will be handled as basic transparency, achieving the effect needed in the tank wheels.

Therefore, you'll need different .xml actors in the unit. (example: main actor the hull with playercolor, and attached to it the props of the turret [also with playercolor if there's no transparent elements], and the wheels with basic transparency)

Oh-oh. That's bad news - we use both transparency (for most cylinder details) and housecolor often. Is it theoretically possible to modify the engine to allow one material using both maps? For e.g. housecolor or opacity will be kept in a seperate map file then.
Moreover, wheels can't be props, they need to play rotation animation while in move.

Edited by Ilves, 15 January 2013 - 04:31 PM.

[idanwin]

Yes, you can make your object in multiple parts and merge these together in the game by making multiple actors and then adding one of these as a prop to the other. this way one actor can use player transparency and the other can use base transparency.

[Ilves]

The hull (the main part) needs to have housecolor. While the wheels need to have transperancy. But wheels can't be props, they ought to play rotation animation, while props are static.

[Enrique]

Ilves, on 15 January 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

The hull (the main part) needs to have housecolor. While the wheels need to have transperancy. But wheels can't be props, they ought to play rotation animation, while props are static.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but imo:
Props are static respective to their "parent" but they can be animated. And IIRC the props inherit the state of it's parent, so if the hull is moving (in moving or "walking" animation) the wheels will look for a "moving" animation and play the rotation or whatever animation they have assigned to move and play the "idle" animation (stop) when the hull is in the same state/animation

[Gen.Kenobi]

Enrique, on 15 January 2013 - 04:52 PM, said:

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but imo:
Props are static respective to their "parent" but they can be animated. And IIRC the props inherit the state of it's parent, so if the hull is moving (in moving or "walking" animation) the wheels will look for a "moving" animation and play the rotation or whatever animation they have assigned to move and play the "idle" animation (stop) when the hull is in the same state/animation

You are pretty right
That was what we noticed when we put the archer as a turret. It would still use it's fire animation even though it was a prop of the chassis, I guess... Gudo made the example.

[Ilves]

Ok, that helps a bit. Rays of greatefullness to everybody who helped us.
But one question continues to bother me from sleeping and I'm going to continue asking it

Look what goodness Mythos_Ruler has achieved with our tank:

Spoiler

And look what we get:





The normal maps are turned on, but they are hardly visible from RTS distance. The texture is 1024x1024 (separate for turret and the hull), still it's no use since the skin degenerates at speed of light with every 1 m away from camera. I also want to turn on anti-aliasing. What should we do?

[Gen.Kenobi]

You should try to give the normal texture a paralax map. This will make the details pop out way more.

Just add a new Alpha Channel into the difuse texture and remake the normal map. This should fix your problem, unless you're already using Parallax.

Also, bear in mind that Mythos used Post-Processing in these screens he took. You can see Bloom, DOF, ect. Last time I checked those features were only avaliable into Atlas - could be wrong though.

[feneur]

Gen.Kenobi, on 16 January 2013 - 04:44 PM, said:

You should try to give the normal texture a paralax map. This will make the details pop out way more.

Just add a new Alpha Channel into the difuse texture and remake the normal map. This should fix your problem, unless you're already using Parallax.

Also, bear in mind that Mythos used Post-Processing in these screens he took. You can see Bloom, DOF, ect. Last time I checked those features were only avaliable into Atlas - could be wrong though.

I would assume you can set them manually in the map file as well But it's certainly a lot easier to set them in Atlas where you get some feedback immediately

[Ilves]

but what to do with the texture degenerating (blurring) quickly at distance? The texture on the tanks at the end of the screen look like if they have a 32x32 texture.

Quote

I would assume you can set them manually in the map file as well But it's certainly a lot easier to set them in Atlas where you get some feedback immediately

Which way you can set bloom and all the rest in the map file?

Edited by Ilves, 16 January 2013 - 05:53 PM.

[zoot]

Ilves, on 16 January 2013 - 05:52 PM, said:

but what to do with the texture degenerating (blurring) quickly at distance? The texture on the tanks at the end of the screen look like if they have a 32x32 texture.

This is potentially a graphics driver issue. Same with anti-aliasing.

[Evropi]

For the license question above:
well, it's not really fair to compare software licenses to artistic works ones. As far as I know, there is no pre-existing license that makes the entire collection of art free culture. Besides, making distribution of the entire work necessary but individual models and textures being disallowed would render the art useless to others as they'd only be able to make clones of the game. CC-BY-SA is a good choice. Even better because you get credited (the freelance artist's most powerful tool is their portfolio!) and anyone who modifies has to release under the same license, benefitting all.