Pureon Posted February 3, 2011 Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 BETTER than AOE3's FOWNo way! I've got to see this for myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fabio Posted February 3, 2011 Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 The new fog rendering looks great indeed! I noticed a problem, however, at the bottom of Miletus (I am on 8885): Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ykkrosh Posted February 3, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 I just playtested with the new fog, and I think it actually looks BETTER than AOE3's FOW.Hmm, I don't think that should be possible . It should be doing pretty much exactly what AoE3 does.And you thought it would be hard to do. It was (though not hugely) . I still don't really like doing graphics work, but I suppose I understand it a little better now.I noticed a problem, however, at the bottom of Miletus (I am on 8885):Yeah, our handling of map edges still isn't ideal. I could just add a big black vertical rectangle covering each side of the map from the water plane down to the bottom of the terrain, to quickly fix this bug, so I'll probably do that. (We've discussed better ways to handle edges but I don't want to bother with that yet.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeru Posted February 3, 2011 Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 *Rings bell*Calling for pretty screenshots with the new fog for PR purposes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rasunadon Posted February 3, 2011 Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 So it means from Alpha 2 or higher? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feneur Posted February 3, 2011 Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 So it means from Alpha 2 or higher?The new fog rendering is from Alpha 4 and higher, as in only in SVN at the moment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ykkrosh Posted February 3, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 I could just add a big black vertical rectangle covering each side of the map from the water plane down to the bottom of the terrain, to quickly fix this bug, so I'll probably do that.Done that. (Actually made it a bit more complex - the solid black sides hang down from the terrain (or the water if it's higher), so you should never be able to see anything through the edge. With this it'd be easy to do AoM-style terrain where there's a visible rocky texture all around the outside of the map, but that doesn't make sense for circular maps and I think I prefer the fade-to-black-at-edge look.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fabio Posted February 3, 2011 Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 Done that.Confirmed fixed (fast!). It's nice to see some active development again, it seems that's after alpha4 it has slowed a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kimball Posted February 3, 2011 Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 *Rings bell*Calling for pretty screenshots with the new fog for PR purposes.Let me know before this happens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mythos_Ruler Posted February 3, 2011 Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 Problem with fog at edge--units disappear near edge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ykkrosh Posted February 3, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 3, 2011 r8887 fixes that, by making tiles near the edge impassable to all units. (Didn't seem worth re-autobuilding just for that, though.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
janwas Posted February 5, 2011 Report Share Posted February 5, 2011 Very nice! This is done by creating a bitmap with one pixel per map tile, then doing a single 5x5 box blur on itMay I suggest a better smoothing kernel, though? A box filter is really bad. Since you're already separating the kernel, we can get a cheap but decent integral approximation of a Gaussian via binomial filter. Given your 5 taps, the coefficients are 1,4,6,4,1, which sum up to 16 and therefore don't require conversion to floating-point nor division.I agree about not going through gyrations to support 2 TMUs, and disabling shadows sounds like a good compromise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ykkrosh Posted February 5, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 5, 2011 Thanks, done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pureon Posted February 5, 2011 Report Share Posted February 5, 2011 I can't see any difference, the fog still looks excellent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhiteTreePaladin Posted February 5, 2011 Report Share Posted February 5, 2011 Probably the more significant (though more subtle) difference is when you have a narrow strip of fogIn the old one it'd be almost invisibleso enemy units could vanish into it and you wouldn't know whyThat should be slightly less common now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhiteTreePaladin Posted February 11, 2011 Report Share Posted February 11, 2011 Seems that if you try to place a foundation in FoW, it will be highlighted in red. It stays red even when some units arrive in the area. Any movement of the foundation placeholder once the FoW is cleared by arriving units will remove the red. However, you can still build it even while it is red colored as long as it is not covered by the FoW. I think it should turn back to the normal color as soon as the FoW is cleared though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ykkrosh Posted February 11, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2011 That's a consequence of the placement preview not being recomputed until you move your mouse. I guess it should get recomputed every turn, which'd fix this. Fixed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ykkrosh Posted February 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 How should buildings on the edge of fog be rendered? (Especially when we have giant ones like the pyramids.)If I remember correctly, the AoM/AoE3 approach is that the building pops into visibility once its central point is out of the fog, and maybe(?) it changes all the terrain directly under the building to be visible. An alternative is to do something like this (the building on the left) - apply the fog texture to the buildings, exactly like how it's applied to the terrain. Probably the building would always get rendered, initially in pure black (so you could only see it where its silhouette covers a visible area) and then gradually becoming fully lit as you approach it. (You won't be able to select the building, or see dynamic changes to it, if it's still in the fog - it'll only be interactive once it's at least partially in a visible region.)I think that looks nicer, but I don't know if there's subtle gameplay/artistic problems with it. Are there other games that do something like this? If not, why not? (The implementation in our engine is tedious (since there's like a dozen different model-rendering modes - I've just hacked it into one for now) but not particularly complex, and it shouldn't affect performance significantly.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mythos_Ruler Posted February 12, 2011 Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 The second way is definitely nicer. It probably wouldn't be too hard to switch back to the old "AOM" way if it turns out to be a problem, would it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
janwas Posted February 12, 2011 Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 I too like the blending. It should be much less jarring than suddenly popping the whole building intofull visibility.AoK was a software renderer, and they need to keep runtime decisions to an absolute minimum, so it may just have carried over to AoM/AoE3 out of habit. They also didn't have as much variation in building sizes.I don't see any gameplay problems (maybe even less, because a combination of huge buildings and small visibility might mean the center of buildings are never exposed). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feneur Posted February 12, 2011 Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 Looks good, and as long as it doesn't hurt performance I really think showing the building gradually would be a lot nicer.Would the "color buildings black in FOW/SOD" make them look something like the units/buildings in this screeshot: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.p...pe=post&id=2573 (minus the distance fog)? In that case I'm not too fond of it =) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pureon Posted February 12, 2011 Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 I too believe the second way is a huge improvement over AOM /A0E3 unit visibility, it's much more realistic and caters for larger 3D models. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ykkrosh Posted February 12, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 The second way is definitely nicer. It probably wouldn't be too hard to switch back to the old "AOM" way if it turns out to be a problem, would it?It'd be kind of irritating to do the work for the new rendering approach and then switch back to the old way, but it'd be trivial to actually do the switch.Would the "color buildings black in FOW/SOD" make them look something like the units/buildings in this screeshot: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.p...pe=post&id=2573 (minus the distance fog)? In that case I'm not too fond of it =)Without the distance fog they'll just be black on black, so you wouldn't see them at all. If we added distance fog then we'd probably multiply the distance fog colour by the visibility fog texture so it'd still be black on black. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feneur Posted February 12, 2011 Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 Without the distance fog they'll just be black on black, so you wouldn't see them at all. If we added distance fog then we'd probably multiply the distance fog colour by the visibility fog texture so it'd still be black on black.Ah, that sounds good Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhiteTreePaladin Posted February 12, 2011 Report Share Posted February 12, 2011 Just wanted to say I agree with the others; the gradual approach looks great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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