Animated Trees

[theShadow]

just a quick thought. Does this system animate all the trees on the map at once, or only the trees the player can see?

[myconid]

just a quick thought. Does this system animate all the trees on the map at once, or only the trees the player can see?

The animation happens while transforming the vertices for display on the screen, so only the objects that are to be displayed are animated.

[Josh]

Do you think animated trees could make it into Alpha 11? It seems like they weren't that hard to implement.

Edited June 29, 2012 by Josh

[zoot]

It won't be hard to integrate, if that is what you mean. A minor outstanding "problem" is that it depends on GLSL, which is not activated by default, so the team would have to make a decision on what they want to do in that regard.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I like the cloud shadows. They're just a little too fast in that game. Looks more like smoke shadows. Their building designs are horrible too.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

Oh yes, I forgot about cloud shadows. They looked nice in BFME2.

[Zeta1127]

Ah, BfME2, I haven't been able to play in awhile, but I know a thing or two about it.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I love BfME2 for its unit control (the battalions are awesome). Its econ leaves much to be desired, though. I also like the 3D rolling oceanic waves for the water and some aspects of the wall system.

[zoot]

I also like the 3D rolling oceanic waves for the water

Anyone have any video of this? How do they deal with waves hitting the shore?

[Zeta1127]

I love BfME2 for its unit control (the battalions are awesome). Its econ leaves much to be desired, though. I also like the 3D rolling oceanic waves for the water and some aspects of the wall system.

No kidding, the efficiency radius on farms was too large, making it hard to get a good economy for things like walls. If there was one good thing about BfME2, it was the fact it sure looked good and the wall system was great in theory.

Anyone have any video of this? How do they deal with waves hitting the shore?

EA built a fancy graphics engine, powered by their partnership with nVidia. BfME2 Collector's Edition DVD might be able to shine more light on it, and since I have it, I will take a look.

Edited June 30, 2012 by Zeta1127

[zoot]

Thanks Edit: Found a video. Posted here.

Edited June 30, 2012 by zoot

[myconid]

Thanks Edit: Found a video. Posted here.

Looks totally doable, though it'd take a bit more hacking than the trees. Here's how I think it was done in that video:

1. there is a much finer water mesh than in 0ad
   
2. it is displaced with cos waves by the vertex shader (just like the trees)
   
3. then there's also code in the fragment shader to draw a foam texture on areas where the angle of the water is large (the tops of the waves).
   

Unlike the trees, this will use more processing power, because there's a need for additional vertices.

I think all the effects in Lion.Kanzen's previous video should be possible with my other patches, with the exception of the cloud shadows. I think those can be done by passing in a cloud texture to the fragment shader and using the LOS texture transform to make it look like shadows on the ground. i.e. it should be as simple as a texture read and a multiplication.

[historic_bruno]

It won't be hard to integrate, if that is what you mean. A minor outstanding "problem" is that it depends on GLSL, which is not activated by default, so the team would have to make a decision on what they want to do in that regard.

We can turn it on by default on GPUs verified to work well with GLSL. It's actually very easy to do that, see hwdetect.js. We also have data like http://feedback.wildfiregames.com/report/opengl/ (much more privately collected and unanalyzed) which can help. Then it would be a matter of finding a good baseline of default effects for high(er)-end GPUs with GLSL support.

[zoot]

Would we need to ship and maintain an actual compatability database? That seems a bit complex, though I guess that is what game studios do.