Thomm Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 In the meantime I think it is fairly safe to say that there is no terrain shading in CM:SF: At least the hills in this AAR do not show any, and I cannot think of more extreme terrain: http://forums.mzocentral.net//index.php?showtopic=18238&pid=248352&st=0entry248352 Since terrain shading would be a great aid in deciphering elevation changes, I am very curious about what prevented the inclusion of such shading, especially since moving cloud shadows are implemented! Best regards, Thomm PS: Drop Team does an awesome job in this respect! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted July 31, 2007 Author Share Posted July 31, 2007 Must ... resist ... Can't ... Bump!! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destraex Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 can you imagine the frame rate hit its the desert though so it looks fine to me 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreenAsJade Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 I thought that terrain shading was one of those "yay at last" things that CMSF was going to bring? The desert is the hardest place to see contours nicely without decent shading... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steiner14 Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 I think i remember Steve argueing, there will be no grid-overlay necessary because of terrain shading. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted July 31, 2007 Author Share Posted July 31, 2007 Originally posted by GreenAsJade: I thought that terrain shading was one of those "yay at last" things that CMSF was going to bring?Thank you Sir, I thought I was the only one! Destraex, I do not imply self-shading or some-such, just some algorithm like Phong shading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phong_shading, which should not affect performance that much?! Best regards, Thomm 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SgtMuhammed Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 Whether it was supposed to be in there or not it would be nice. I am having a hell of a time judging terrain, much more so than in CMx1. It seems even harder than in CMAK desert maps. I wish there was a false color overlay that you could bring up that would exagerate the contours, or something like that. Although I will say that it really is hard to tell contours in the desert a lot of the time. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackmuzzle Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 Ah, you mean terrain shading like this: (That's from a game I wrote back in 2000) Yep, I'd like that here too Especially considering that there are 3 cheap and a few more "proper" ways of doing that in OpenGL. I used the cheap way back then and just took the vertex normals and calculated the lighting according to the sun angle. Works fine, even though it doesn't cast shadows of course. It shouldn't interfere with existing stencil shadowing though. [ July 31, 2007, 05:45 AM: Message edited by: Blackmuzzle ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted July 31, 2007 Author Share Posted July 31, 2007 You write your own games? Respect! I can only offer some screenshots from the Squad Assault modding I did some time ago: Best regards, Thomm 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackmuzzle Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 That's some very nice terrain there, Thomm! And yes, I do write games in my spare time. Spent much time on Spoonbot for Tribes, then got DerangedRaid to an almost playable state. Eventually I got a job and had no time left for that hobby. Now I'm doing software related to air traffic control, and let me tell you: Quality problems and/or incompetent programmers? They exist in that field of expertise as well. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreenAsJade Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 Terrain shading or gridded terrain ... need somefink... I agree with Rollstoy: I recall some hope being given that terrain shading would make it, though it may have been very early speculation. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted July 31, 2007 Author Share Posted July 31, 2007 Gridded terrain ... did anybody take a look at the bmps already? Can we grid them? Best regards, Thomm 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lindan Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 There has to be a better way than gridding. Having programmed a bit of OpenGL myself, it's not hard to do some basic shading. The fact that Charles didn't code it in may mean there are other problems we don't know of. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackmuzzle Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 What do you mean by "gridded terrain"? Do you mean pre-calculated lightmaps or somesuch? AFAIK it should be no problem to calculate the normals of all terrain vertices and just adjust the vertice light value accordingly. Alternatively, if all lighting is done via GLSL and the "primitive" opengl lighting is not used at all, a minor shader modification ought to do the trick. One thing is for certain though: Please don't do lighting the way it is done in BF2. When you have hundreds of megabytes of shadowmaps, then you did not understand the idea of realtime lighting. OpenGL can do a lot of things, and it certainly can look just as pretty as any other API. Does it show that I love OpenGL? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted July 31, 2007 Author Share Posted July 31, 2007 Originally posted by Blackmuzzle: What do you mean by "gridded terrain"? Do you mean pre-calculated lightmaps or somesuch?No, no, no!!! I mean the mods for CMX1 games that simply paint a grid on the terrain texture bmps. Here is one of mine: For me, those games are unplayable without a mod like this. Seems that the trend continues in CM:SF. Best regards, Thomm 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackmuzzle Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 But.. but that's not realistic! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted July 31, 2007 Author Share Posted July 31, 2007 In all seriousness, this is the wrong place for realism! As long as we do not have 3D monitors, enhanced contrast or grids, or whatever, will have to substitute for the missing depth of the screen image! Best regards, Thomm 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bil Hardenberger Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 Hmmm... I have terrain modelling. I believe it has to do with the time of day the scenario take place at. If it is the middle of the day then the sun will be directly overhead and the terrain flattens out. These shots are from an NTC map I created, and are taken with morning light: 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted July 31, 2007 Author Share Posted July 31, 2007 Excellent! That IS good news! Can you post a birds eye view, that would be the final proof! Best regards, Thomm PS: Note to scenario designers: no high noon, please! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bil Hardenberger Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 Here you go: 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackmuzzle Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 If you ask me as an OpenGL developer, I'd say the omni-light is cranked up way too high. But yes, I do see terrain elevation having an impact on the terrain lighting - even if the effect is too small to really help in discerning the elevation changes. [ July 31, 2007, 08:51 AM: Message edited by: Blackmuzzle ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted July 31, 2007 Author Share Posted July 31, 2007 Well, it is subtle, but it is there!!!! Thank you very much, Bil! Best regards, Thomm 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steiner14 Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 Nevertheless i would prefer a switchable terrain grid. A helping workaround for high noon sun or overcast weather could be, that with the push of button, the sun/moon is placed low, in case a grid is technically not possible. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted July 31, 2007 Author Share Posted July 31, 2007 Originally posted by Steiner14: A helping workaround for high noon sun or overcast weather could be, that with the push of button, the sun/moon is placed low, in case a grid is technically not possible. Absolutely agree! The problem is that you want to decouple terrain shading from drop shadow generation of buildings and objects! That is what I did when I created shadow maps for EYSA: shallow lighting for the terrain and elevated light source for objects. I do not know if this is even theoretically possible in the CM:SF engine. Best regards, Thomm 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigDork Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 Originally posted by Rollstoy: In the meantime I think it is fairly safe to say that there is no terrain shading in CM:SF: At least the hills in this AAR do not show any, and I cannot think of more extreme terrain: http://forums.mzocentral.net//index.php?showtopic=18238&pid=248352&st=0entry248352 Actually I do not play with shadows turned on which is why they are not showing in my AAR screenshots. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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