Progress reports on funded work

[Android_]

Specular lighting looks promising! Good job

[Mythos_Ruler]

[plumo]

Very nice

How's your framerate , mythos?

[wraitii]

I'd be ware of the "plastic model" effect that specular can give... On the shields, it makes them appear really shiny, almost plastic. Using "noise" on the specular images might reduce the effect.

[Android_]

I'd be ware of the "plastic model" effect that specular can give... On the shields, it makes them appear really shiny, almost plastic. Using "noise" on the specular images might reduce the effect.

It'll need some work, sure, but for now it's spectacular indeed!

[Sonarpulse]

Sounds like good stuff. How many channels can DDS support? And how easy is it to use DDS on stuff besides windows? It say a material wanted alpha, spectacular, and team color?

Edited April 9, 2012 by Sonarpulse

[Ykkrosh]

Would be possible to add dynamic texture to simulate snow (or other environmental effects)? This is how it looks like Settler 6, note that snow gradually appears over the buildings: [...]

I suspect dynamically growing snow like that could be done by creating a new greyscale texture that determines the snowiness percentage at which it should be drawn white, e.g. if the building is 20% snowy then render white wherever the texture is >0.8, or something like that. Wouldn't be technically complex, but it'd require more work from artists (and would presumably also require new UV unwrapping for buildings).

How many channels can DDS support? And how easy is it to use DDS on stuff besides windows?

DDS does 4 channels (RGBA usually). The more important thing is the pixel formats supported by OpenGL textures, which has the same limit. But for more than that, you can just use multiple textures when rendering a model, which isn't much of a problem. Users or developers shouldn't have to deal with DDS files - the input data should usually be PNG, and DDS is just generated and loaded by the engine (which is all platform-independent custom code so the OS doesn't matter).

[Mythos_Ruler]

Very nice

How's your framerate , mythos?

It was actually pretty good here. Something like 35-45 fps. Keep in mind, there's very little pathfinding happening there in that video.

I'd be ware of the "plastic model" effect that specular can give... On the shields, it makes them appear really shiny, almost plastic. Using "noise" on the specular images might reduce the effect.

Once specular maps are implemented, this plasticy effect will be mitigated.

[Sonarpulse]

I once made a snow material in 3ds max by taking the cosine of the angle of the normal to the vertical, adding a noise effect, and then increasing the contrast of the resaulting map. The last two steps were just there to "dither" the result. Tiled texture snow maps could just be used as a multiplier. Altogether, this could avoid the need to retexture buildings. If this is too hard for old shaders, substitute the first step for computing the diffuse layer for a vertical light source

[fabio]

I was thinking of a similar idea: snow could be dynamically placed depending on various thing:

• uniformly on roof with a "small" angle;
  
• more to the lower (depending on the angle) for roof more vertical (supposing snow drops to the lower part and stops there);
  
• no snow on yards (we suppose someone will keep it clean...);
  
• no snow near the base of objects like building, trees (supposing they protect a little the nearness);
  
• random noise to make it more real.
  

Dunno however if the dynamic snow make sense at all, are seasons really planned?

About the new shadow and sun effects are they already in SVN? I am not able to see it.

[feneur]

Seasons have been postponed until part 2, but that doesn't mean that it's forbidden to work on such things, only that it's better/recommended to work on other things so we can have part one done as soon as possible (Also, for team members it does to some extent mean that it's, if not forbidden, at least highly discouraged to work on such features =) That said, it's better that people work on non-needed features for a while than get bored with 0 A.D. development entirely and leave the project, so it's not set in stone in that sense. Just that I and a lot of other people will be a lot happier if other things are done first )

Afaik there are no new shadow effects done, the specularity work that has been done is as far as I know just implemented in code (and possible to add to entire objects), but will be added as a texture mapped effect as time goes on.

[Ykkrosh]

Still to do: [...] document stuff

Done - hopefully that page makes some sense to people.

[JuliusColtranePille]

is it likely that alpha X will have much better performance (concerning the problems with pathfinding and the AIs?!) so that it will be possible to play against more than 3 opponents?

would be nice.

[k776]

Alpha 10 has a new AI API, which should perform better. I was able to play against 8 qBots, and while still slow, wasn't as slow as Alpha 9.

[MishFTW]

Alpha 10 has a new AI API, which should perform better. I was able to play against 8 qBots, and while still slow, wasn't as slow as Alpha 9.

Oh goodie! It's always been my dream to get crushed by not one, but eight bots

[Mythos_Ruler]

Alpha 10 has a new AI API, which should perform better. I was able to play against 8 qBots, and while still slow, wasn't as slow as Alpha 9.

Yep, I just played vs. 3 bots and the lag wasn't unbearable anymore. Still lots of lag though.

[feneur]

THe wall system Tech System Healing are important XD

Not sure what that's got to do with anything mentioned in this topic, and definitely not sure what the connection is to my post that you quote. But either way, all three are being worked on and at least an initial version should be included in Alpha 10 or 11.

[feneur]

sorry if i annoying with these themes but between the walls theme and the performance, rhe performance are too large to solved, every SVN improved that but its no enoght, may be the fault is my multicore without graphic card laptop.

__________________________________

im a Turtle player, i want defend my cities XD

No worries about thinking these things are important, they are It's just that it can get a bit much when you post about it everywhere It is nice that you are so active in the forums though, just remember that the time spent reading/replying to your post might slightly reduce the time spent on actually working on these things

[Arthur_D]

Any updates? It's been a while, and at least saying "won't work on this until so-and-so month" would be reassuring.

[k776]

The developer (Philip) has just informed us he'll be working on game related stuff for the next 2 weeks, then he'll have a busy month or two where he can't, then things will be more stable and he can contribute regularly again.

So hopefully the new path finder will be done within these next two weeks :-)

[Arthur_D]

Thanks a lot, Philip and Kieran! Can't wait for the next alpha.

[Arthur_D]

Good question. I could do that, but I prefer to stick with the alphas since they come so regularly. I can usually wait the few months between each.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

The alphas make it easier to find players for multiplayer. Also, with SVN you have to be prepared for some breakage from time to time.

[Aurora Paradox]

*BUMP*

Is the 0 AD team still funding one developer to work full time on the game? The reason I ask is that we haven't had any updates to this thread for awhile now.

[quantumstate]

No, there has been no paid development for >6 months now.