BlindSide Log

BlindSide's Star Sonata Development Journal

May 12th

I've been improving the background generation on/off. On my Phenom 9950 system (2.6 ghz, Only using one core):

- Low/Medium settings take 60 milliseconds to generate the background nebula.
- High+ settings take ~400 milliseconds to generate the background nebula.

I may consider moving this to the gpu for better performance, as high settings systems will undoubtedly support this functionality (I would use the same code that creates the animated patterns on the suns, so it should be pretty damn fast). We'll see.

Currently the background is placed on a flat billboard but I am considering moving this to a hemisphere/quarter-sphere(?) to create a more 3 dimensional feeling.

[Smiley Comment] I assume the background will be the same each time you visit the same galaxy, correct? Its just generating the SAME nebula based on parameters set at universe creation, correct? I think the galaxies should keep their "look" from visit to visit.

[BlindSide reply] Thanks for the comment Smiley! That is correct, the nebula generator currently uses the galaxy id as the seed for the generation, so visiting the same galaxy twice would give you the same look and colors.

May 13th

Finally it is lasers time! Lasers are certainly one of the more interesting graphics elements. Few methods/variations arise:

- Criss cross 2 billboards to create a beam effect, fairly simple. 

No textures are needed here as we can just 2 more vertices and interpolate the vertex color from black at the edges to whatever the color is in the center.

- I could place one or two of those billboard volume light scene nodes on the beam to create a bit more variation, 

I'm always meaning to use them somewhere but haven't found the place.

- A better idea would be to just use an elongated sphere and only render the bumps/animations on the lasers in the glow pass. 

This should create a nice effect, I will probably try this method first.

- For wide area laser/tractory type things a cone with scrolling textures (Via texture matrices would be appropriate). 

I will probably just use whatever texture is provided with C1 and scroll that along the 3 dimensional cone, should come out nice.

Well I am off to implement them and will hopefully have some screenshots in a few hours!

(Some time passes)

Ok, first of all, lets get acquainted with the Laser space objects. Process the start and endpoints and draw a simple line for debug output:

Oh dear that does not look right. Oh yes! The laser is using relative coordinates. Subtract that laser's position from the endpoint:

That's more like it!

Now let's make it look more like a laser. After a bit of magic (And a complete re-write of an already available laser scene node for Irrlicht), we get something like this:

Now that's starting to look more like a laser! Let's try some glow and see what we get:

OK, maybe that's a little too much glow! Let's reduce the laser's radius when applying glow:

It's getting better! Next time we'll try adding a green light to the front of the ship when it fires a laser (Other surprises are in store!). That's all for today, stay tuned.

[Pip Comment] - Starting to look very nice. Any way to add a bit of variation up and down the beam?

[BlindSide response] - Thanks for your comment pip! The lasers will indeed get some variation once the basic look is perfected.

May 14th

Lasers of course should have an overly bright bit in the center, so with some more hacking I got this:

Note that I don't use any textures for this, the laser is purely geometry and the color variation is from blending the vertex colors. This should in theory prove more efficient than a texture based solution, and more importantly it allows us to set any arbitary colors we want without extra hassle.

May 16th

Something was annoying me about the last screenshot, it's the hard end that the lasers have, it looks very unprofessional (Like the C1 lasers :P, not baggin' on C1 or anything). I scratched my head for some time on how to get rid of this without resorting to to textures (Which means scrapping the whole geometry idea and starting from scratch). Solution: More geometry! I think I am getting better at writing meshes by hand. Mind you I only added 3 vertices, but the end result speaks for itself:

Now to add some more variation as promised!

May 17th

I spent more time fixing wormholes and a few other things today. I made a small video showing the two seperate parts of a wormhole, they are combined in the final product: http://irrlichtirc.g0dsoft.com/BlindSide/wh.wmv

Anyway enough about that, I added a cool bulge to lasers:

Particle effects:

Custom core textures: