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-- Suggested improvemets w/Source code (http://volitionwatch.papageorgefamily/vwbb/showthread.php?threadid=6034)

quote:

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Originally posted by Shrike
Dunno if this has been mentioned.

Up the polygon limit per subobject.

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[url="http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/the158th/"]158th Banshee Squadron[/url]

I thought the polygon limit was imposed by PCS and other converting tools not by FS2 itself.

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we better get someone porting this to DX8 if we are going to try to up the poly limets much

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quote:

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Originally posted by NukebombOverkill
the only really trickey part i see it the varying size of the sprites. background editor in fred should specify enough information to specify the exact location of all sprite objects in the game the trick is to have the objects scale as you aproch and move away.

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quote:

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Originally posted by NukebombOverkill
the only really trickey part i see it the varying size of the sprites. background editor in fred should specify enough information to specify the exact location of all sprite objects in the game the trick is to have the objects scale as you aproch and move away.

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__________________
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quote:

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Originally posted by Mewgen1
My idea is to use a system like th asspect missle locks for firing the beams. Use the nifty little lock indicator to lock on as long as the target is within a certain degree arc (180*90 in this case) then you pull the trigger an it fires as long as you hold down the trigger or a ceratin time period, whichever happens to come first. Once its been fire have a [short] recharge period before you can fire again. This way you could fire on ships that aren't directly in front of you and if, say you were trying to hit one of the faster bombers then you wouldn't have to keep it directly in front of you for as long as you wouuld have to if you were jsut fire dumb-fire beams.

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__________________
Forgive my stupidity.
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quote:

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Originally posted by Mewgen1
My idea is to use a system like th asspect missle locks for firing the beams. Use the nifty little lock indicator to lock on as long as the target is within a certain degree arc (180*90 in this case) then you pull the trigger an it fires as long as you hold down the trigger or a ceratin time period, whichever happens to come first. Once its been fire have a [short] recharge period before you can fire again. This way you could fire on ships that aren't directly in front of you and if, say you were trying to hit one of the faster bombers then you wouldn't have to keep it directly in front of you for as long as you wouuld have to if you were jsut fire dumb-fire beams.

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__________________
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quote:

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Originally posted by DTP

[higher resolutions are]

hard no, time consuming yes.

all of HUD elements and ani`s would have to be rescaled to that resolution, We dont have the original MAX scene files used to render the animations in the first place, & rescaled animations would at the very least look very ugly.

and so far i can tell, that you would have to redesign 60-70% of the code to understand that resolution.

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__________________
Forgive my stupidity.
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quote:

---

Originally posted by DTP

[higher resolutions are]

hard no, time consuming yes.

all of HUD elements and ani`s would have to be rescaled to that resolution, We dont have the original MAX scene files used to render the animations in the first place, & rescaled animations would at the very least look very ugly.

and so far i can tell, that you would have to redesign 60-70% of the code to understand that resolution.

---

__________________
Forgive my stupidity.
---
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an alternative to self-illumination maps

fix the fullbright colour code so it works in DX, and not just glide. Nobody uses glide any more.

(ie a ship has a fullbright RGB colour defined in ships.tbl, and that colour shows fullbright, unaffected by lighting)

With the "no ambient lighting" hack, fullbright lights would look amazing.

edit-

another thing I'd like to see is someone posting the compiled versions of the editing tools that are in the source..
the main reason for this is that I know that [V] used 3dsmax, and all the convertors out there are for TS..
I use 3dsmax.. and I figure [V]'s convertor would probably be a good bet to see if I can avoid TS for good.

__________________
Forgive my stupidity.
---
The Fish Institution
http://www.fishinstitution.com

an alternative to self-illumination maps

fix the fullbright colour code so it works in DX, and not just glide. Nobody uses glide any more.

(ie a ship has a fullbright RGB colour defined in ships.tbl, and that colour shows fullbright, unaffected by lighting)

With the "no ambient lighting" hack, fullbright lights would look amazing.

edit-

another thing I'd like to see is someone posting the compiled versions of the editing tools that are in the source..
the main reason for this is that I know that [V] used 3dsmax, and all the convertors out there are for TS..
I use 3dsmax.. and I figure [V]'s convertor would probably be a good bet to see if I can avoid TS for good.

__________________
Forgive my stupidity.
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aspect locking beams i think is going to be very popular, especially for TBP with the Whitestar, for other projects it would make for nice antifighter beam cannons mounted on a heavy bomber or even gunboat.

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[url="http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/the158th/"]158th Banshee Squadron[/url]

how about cel shading, (defined per ship in ships.tbl) so manga-style mods are possible.. assuming it's not too difficult.

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Forgive my stupidity.
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how about cel shading, (defined per ship in ships.tbl) so manga-style mods are possible.. assuming it's not too difficult.

__________________
Forgive my stupidity.
---
The Fish Institution
http://www.fishinstitution.com

About cel-shading, Generally, you map a 1d texture that is brightness, instead of using default lighting. If you use a texture in addition to cel-shading, you'll have to use multitexturing, and it won't be simple (Technically, to do it right, you need to use non-textured polies). On the other hand, I think it would be pretty hilarious to see a Herc Mk.2 trying to get a cartoon ship.

As for the name-plates for on Orion-class destroyers, all you need is the font that was used to write the original name-plate, and a 'blank' texture (Only the background plating). Then simply create several copies of the blank texture (1 for each different Orion), and draw the name of each ship onto each texture(Drawing to a texture is fairly trivial in OpenGL, but I don't know how it works in Direct3D, even though it's a safe bet that it's also fairly simple). Both Direct3D 8.1 and OpenGL have functions usefull for drawing fonts (Direct3D 8.1 has a function to friggin' draw strings with true-type fonts in D3DX).
Of course, you'll have to clip to the texture (Changing font size, I guess, so you won't have half a name on the texture).
If you do this on level load, there'll be no speed loss whatsoever, and only a little memory lost (Unless your mission consists purely of Orions )


About Graphical enhancements, just look at the bump-mapping examples supplied with the DirectX SDK, and choose which type to use (It shouldn't be too hard to generate height-maps from the textures - a color's brightness is sqrt(R^2 +G^2 + B^2), just sort the palette for each texture according to brightness (you'll need a pass over the texture too)). Emboss looks like sh*t, but works on practically anything, dotproduct3 looks good, and works on GeForce1+/Radeon+ (The aforementioned example with the DirecetX SDK includes a function which converts a height-map to a normal map, and I think that NVidia also released a tool that does that), and enviromental bump-mapping looks the best, but requires at least a radeon or GeForce 3 (At least if you want decent FPS). Also, since the data is generated from the textures' brightness, there would be inaccuracies (Such as the 'GTD Orion' on an Orion's nameplate would stick out, since it's the brightess), unless someone would be willing to do heightmaps for all the textures in the game (Thought not ).

Bah, these are just the ramblings of a 16-year-old that knows too much of how to THEORETICALLY implement stuff, and not practically (Or, well, at least, not in a readable fashion, and not without breaking everything else ). I've programmed far too much in Dos, Mode 13h, and far too little under Windoze to do anything usefull myself, at least until I bother to learn windoze stuff seriously.


Edit: My measly amount of posts (in relation to the amount of time I've been registered) is because I had a really crappy internet connection back then, so I couldn't play online (considering the pings I get from where I live), and I was bored of FreeSpace2, since I played everything I could get my hands on, and stuff just kinda ran out. With the release of the source code, FS2 got my interest back, since I have recently acuired MSVC 6), and I discovered that my account that has been inactive for over a year, hasn't been deleted. I also had an ass-whopping 20 or so posts on the VBB

__________________
-"Oh God, please don't kill me today. Tomorrow is so much better."
Spathi prayer, Star-Control 2

About cel-shading, Generally, you map a 1d texture that is brightness, instead of using default lighting. If you use a texture in addition to cel-shading, you'll have to use multitexturing, and it won't be simple (Technically, to do it right, you need to use non-textured polies). On the other hand, I think it would be pretty hilarious to see a Herc Mk.2 trying to get a cartoon ship.

As for the name-plates for on Orion-class destroyers, all you need is the font that was used to write the original name-plate, and a 'blank' texture (Only the background plating). Then simply create several copies of the blank texture (1 for each different Orion), and draw the name of each ship onto each texture(Drawing to a texture is fairly trivial in OpenGL, but I don't know how it works in Direct3D, even though it's a safe bet that it's also fairly simple). Both Direct3D 8.1 and OpenGL have functions usefull for drawing fonts (Direct3D 8.1 has a function to friggin' draw strings with true-type fonts in D3DX).
Of course, you'll have to clip to the texture (Changing font size, I guess, so you won't have half a name on the texture).
If you do this on level load, there'll be no speed loss whatsoever, and only a little memory lost (Unless your mission consists purely of Orions )


About Graphical enhancements, just look at the bump-mapping examples supplied with the DirectX SDK, and choose which type to use (It shouldn't be too hard to generate height-maps from the textures - a color's brightness is sqrt(R^2 +G^2 + B^2), just sort the palette for each texture according to brightness (you'll need a pass over the texture too)). Emboss looks like sh*t, but works on practically anything, dotproduct3 looks good, and works on GeForce1+/Radeon+ (The aforementioned example with the DirecetX SDK includes a function which converts a height-map to a normal map, and I think that NVidia also released a tool that does that), and enviromental bump-mapping looks the best, but requires at least a radeon or GeForce 3 (At least if you want decent FPS). Also, since the data is generated from the textures' brightness, there would be inaccuracies (Such as the 'GTD Orion' on an Orion's nameplate would stick out, since it's the brightess), unless someone would be willing to do heightmaps for all the textures in the game (Thought not ).

Bah, these are just the ramblings of a 16-year-old that knows too much of how to THEORETICALLY implement stuff, and not practically (Or, well, at least, not in a readable fashion, and not without breaking everything else ). I've programmed far too much in Dos, Mode 13h, and far too little under Windoze to do anything usefull myself, at least until I bother to learn windoze stuff seriously.


Edit: My measly amount of posts (in relation to the amount of time I've been registered) is because I had a really crappy internet connection back then, so I couldn't play online (considering the pings I get from where I live), and I was bored of FreeSpace2, since I played everything I could get my hands on, and stuff just kinda ran out. With the release of the source code, FS2 got my interest back, since I have recently acuired MSVC 6), and I discovered that my account that has been inactive for over a year, hasn't been deleted. I also had an ass-whopping 20 or so posts on the VBB

__________________
-"Oh God, please don't kill me today. Tomorrow is so much better."
Spathi prayer, Star-Control 2

More ideas?

Right, just a few ideas from me.

1) We need to add a movie player back into the engine, seeing as they took the MVE one out. Can I suggest using MPEG or divx avi? Finally MODders could add movies to their campaigns - super cool.

2) Bump/spec maps would be nice, but not essential...

3) I don't know how many of you have seen Starlancer or played it, but there's some very nice stuff in there. For one thing, 3D planets in the background that spin. It looks so sweet. Next, when ships blow up they leave a random scattering of debris. Could FS2 do this maybe? Finally, the ability to warp between different places in mission would be *so* nice - you know, you take off from your ship, warp to the main battleground, fight, suddenly have to warp out to defend a convoy somewhere else, then finally warp back to carrier ship and end mission.

Anyway, just my $0.02. Carry on.

More ideas?

Right, just a few ideas from me.

1) We need to add a movie player back into the engine, seeing as they took the MVE one out. Can I suggest using MPEG or divx avi? Finally MODders could add movies to their campaigns - super cool.

2) Bump/spec maps would be nice, but not essential...

3) I don't know how many of you have seen Starlancer or played it, but there's some very nice stuff in there. For one thing, 3D planets in the background that spin. It looks so sweet. Next, when ships blow up they leave a random scattering of debris. Could FS2 do this maybe? Finally, the ability to warp between different places in mission would be *so* nice - you know, you take off from your ship, warp to the main battleground, fight, suddenly have to warp out to defend a convoy somewhere else, then finally warp back to carrier ship and end mission.

Anyway, just my $0.02. Carry on.

1) We need to add a movie player back into the engine, seeing as they took the MVE one out. Can I suggest using MPEG or divx avi? Finally MODders could add movies to their campaigns - super cool.

It would indeed be cool, but you won't get any of the original movies working (Interplay sent a "Cease and desist"-esque e-mail back when Descent Manager still had MVEextract, which could extract single movies from .MVL files (Descent 2), and could turn .MVE files into executables, so you could play them at your leisure). I think it's some copyirght issue (3rd-party code), like with the sound code for the descent 1/2 sound stuff, etc.

__________________
-"Oh God, please don't kill me today. Tomorrow is so much better."
Spathi prayer, Star-Control 2

1) We need to add a movie player back into the engine, seeing as they took the MVE one out. Can I suggest using MPEG or divx avi? Finally MODders could add movies to their campaigns - super cool.

It would indeed be cool, but you won't get any of the original movies working (Interplay sent a "Cease and desist"-esque e-mail back when Descent Manager still had MVEextract, which could extract single movies from .MVL files (Descent 2), and could turn .MVE files into executables, so you could play them at your leisure). I think it's some copyirght issue (3rd-party code), like with the sound code for the descent 1/2 sound stuff, etc.

__________________
-"Oh God, please don't kill me today. Tomorrow is so much better."
Spathi prayer, Star-Control 2