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Wirehead Studios > Wirehead Modifications > Generations Arena > I don't mean to nit pick... (Just a few helpful tips.)
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o'dium
 

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« on: 2003-11-24, 16:03 »
Really nice mod you have here, however there are few things that could use improving IMHO to give it a more polished feel:

1) Particles don't alpha fade? I find it strange that you haven't faded particles (i.e. sparks) and stretched sparks don't fade, they simply just "disappear". Also, it would improve the look a lot more if they bounced.

2) Blaster bolts particles are not autosprite. Again, this has been in since day 1 and i can't for the life of me think why you haven't fixed it. They just look BAD.

Also if your going to use blendFunc GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE then please either add more particles or use a better pic, because its really not doing it justice.

3) A "LOT" of your work (Skins included) is not to the power of 2. This is just common sense guys, come on Slipgate - Wink Also, your Railgun particle pics (Which TBH don't look that good) for the Strogg, are all 250? They should be 256, or better yet, scale them down to 64x64 at least because that size isn't needed and wont help with overdraw.

4) Sorry but I really don't like the impact effects of the Strogg weapons Slipgate - Sad They just looks like smaller smoke puffs. I recommend using 3 large smoke puffs that float up and increase in size from the impact point and also have random rotation. Also, maybe a few sparks with a random count.

Like I said before, its a really nice mod. I myself am working on the Quake II Evolved mod at the moment so i know how hard it is to get things right or let things slip through. But, some of these things can be fixed very fast (with the exception of the smoke puff effect).

I'm sure the next release will solve these issues. Keep doing the great work guys Thumbs up!
« Last Edit: 2003-11-24, 18:07 by ConfusedUs » Logged
[WaRdeN]
 
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« Reply #1 on: 2003-11-24, 16:33 »
As for particles, they are still using the default graphic I put in there, and are waiting to be reskinned. Not much a programmer can do about that.

As for skins not being a power of 2, well that's a question phoenix or Tabun can answer.
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ConfusedUs
 

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« Reply #2 on: 2003-11-24, 18:08 »
Yup, we're still in beta stage, and not quite done yet. Still working on some things.

However,I do believe that we're were aiming for the 'oldschool' look in a lot of the particles.
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Tabun
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« Reply #3 on: 2003-11-24, 18:52 »
Heya O'dium, thanks for showing an interest.
I've read a lot of your posts in the QII-E forums, so I'm not surprised you found a few nits to pick ;]

When I first joined the Wirehead team, I was a wee lad and not very familiar with most gl concepts - I just knew what looked ok and how to airbrush it in PS. So I pretty much relied on the modelers to supply the skinmaps, which I used as a base. For models & skinmaps I provided I automatically used either 256^2 or 512^2 etc.
I guess we've never really stopped to think about it before - It's not something the players notice until it gets their FPS down ;]

I could rework the particle img's Warden, I'll check into that with Pho if need be :]
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Tabun ?Morituri Nolumus Mori?
[WaRdeN]
 
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« Reply #4 on: 2003-11-24, 19:29 »
I asked phoenix for a codebase I can use. The particles need work, and I need something to do. So once he gets me the code we can work something out.
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Lilazzkicker
 

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« Reply #5 on: 2003-11-24, 19:33 »
Wewt!  As long as I can run it on my machine that is. If not....  Doom - Huh?
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Angst
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« Reply #6 on: 2003-11-24, 19:53 »
Heh, particles haven't been touched since.. what? .99b-ish I believe. I know pho said something about the particles needing to be recoded. *shrug* eyecandy has been a secondary concern for the most part while pho has been coding. Once gameplay is where we want it and bugs are adequately squashed, the mod will get the pretties. Maybe before then, but there are some tasty bits in the works... See there IS a reason to lurk on irc at 3am! Slipgate - Tongue

And aside from that, many of the existing images are placeholders until appropriate models and animations are created, strogg rocket explosion is a prime example.
« Last Edit: 2003-11-24, 19:55 by Angst » Logged
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Phoenix
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« Reply #7 on: 2003-11-25, 01:01 »
Yes, particles can use some work.  If you want to see an example of what we're shooting for fire off the BFG10K or check out some of the screenshots.  Those fade quite nicely.  The plan is to match the particle effects from the old games pretty closely.  We've just not gotten around to doing that yet since so much else has needed work.  After 99d's release I think we'll be able to divide the workload a bit more since there's some model stuff I need to do and that will give Ward a chance to work on those effects and give me a chance to work on some other stuff that's needed doing.

The "power of 2" issue was never brought to my attention until about 4 months ago, or I would have done the skinmaps different on the guns.  We resized several weapon skins that were a hair under 512 or what have you and reduced a few skins that were horribly large when we released 99c.  If you set r_roundimagesdown 0 the extra detail will, however, show up on the ones we left as is.  I can't see any reason to force the textures down the the next lower level since it's happening anyway, and if you have a high-end card and want to pump up the detail a bit this can do it without forcing the texture size up and eating more memory.  As more and more people get better graphics cards going backwards seems wrong.  When Gen is completed the average gamer will most likely be able to run with almost all the detail settings on high at 1024 or better without any serious framerate hits.

The Strogg impact effects will be getting an md3 explosion later.  We were working on one but unfortunately a team member lost some data and the model went with it, so we have to do a new one from scratch.  We can resize the pic for the rail particles later, but the railgun effect itself was settled on due to several factors.  Using localentities to make individual particles horribly reduced the number of sprites you could use and the railgun trails tended to disappear on large space maps or if a lot of other localent effects were put into play right after the gun was fired.  It also horribly lagged the video during a zoom and dropped your framerate into the cellar.  Even if we were to switch it over to polyvert particles it would eat up too many particles and a rocket explosion or two could remove it from the scene quite suddenly.  The optimal balance of effect and playability was to use a stacked model with fixed sprite planes and use an autosprite shader for the texture.  This gives us a  true spiral railtrail with custom colors that doesn't overuse localentities and doesn't lag the framerate.

I'm glad you like the mod so far, and we're still VERY far from done.  We're always improving things as we go, and suggestions are always welcome.  Visual effects often have to take a back seat to more intangible gritty function coding and/or bug fixing, so sometimes the gameplay is solid while the eyecandy has to wait.  Don't worry, once we finish running Gen through the forging die we'll get be adding that polish everyone's looking forward to. Slipgate - Smile
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I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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