"Sun" entity

[Serman]

It would be cool to have a sun in Warzone 2100 that actually shines, like the ones you see used in the Source Engine.

It would look much better, considering the fact that at this moment, the shadows come from nowhere.

Is this possible with the current graphic engine?

[Buginator]

It would be cool to have a sun in Warzone 2100 that actually shines, like the ones you see used in the Source Engine.

It would look much better, considering the fact that at this moment, the shadows come from nowhere.

Is this possible with the current graphic engine?

You mean add bloom type effects?  That could be done (most anything can be done if someone is determined enough), but, when was the last time you looked up at the sky in a RTS game?
Also, the engine doesn't use any advanced features of openGL 2.x, we are still using 1.x, so it would be more difficult.

[Terminator]

this idia with sun..push me on other one..... I Would be interesting to see warzone with changin day time.. means  day-&-night. Do you remember any RTS with night... real night... When all units or tanks driving with swiched lights on ? I imaging night battle  with dinamyc lights, fire, Bombs, .... it will look like something fog of war ON all the time. may be to add nightvision or infro-red like in "Predator" =). What you guys think about this ?

[Per]

We have tested day/night cycles a bit, and there is already code for this in the repository, but turned off by default. It just did not look any good. It is probably no coincidence that no RTS that I know of use day/night cycles.

[kage]

in machines it was spectacularly achieved

[DevUrandom]

The code currently present in Warzone to simulate this is a bit dodgy... Shadow calculation goes completely off if you enable it, and the lighting is too simple (only ambient lighting) to make it look good. Besides of that it has no impact on the gameplay at all.
The idea in general is good, but I think it needs to be worked out a lot more, so that there is a plan when someone is going to implement it codewise.

[Rman Virgil]

in machines it was spectacularly achieved

* Yep.... & also..

* The revamped Essence engine for Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts

* As well with Garage Games' Torque Engine (RTS ext) used in Sons of Valor

* In both these cases actual tac & stat GPMs are expanded as a direct result of this implementation. Quite stunning aesthetically as well. However the HW demands are also lofty (inherent to dynamic lighting)

- RV

[doom3r]

when was the last time you looked up at the sky in a RTS game?

He's talking about adding sun to create light effects on the surface and the tanks, not to just look at it 


About the day/night cycle, I would suggest to use, for night, only a small light for the terrain, so that you can see the map, and not a totally dark fow, which would make the units look like they are floating in the void. A good way to give the idea of night-fighting would be to view enemy units as green marks only, like the ones you see with sensors, and only if they are in sensors range, even if you should see what happens in that part of the map. When you see them with a unit (or with a wide-spectrum sensor, IMO), the unit's model would appear, so that you can see what type of unit it is.

[Terminator]

Green dots ... good Idia <- agree with this. about invisible terran.. I can offer to do it with green GRID , like simulation of surface.

[doom3r]

I can offer to do it with green GRID , like simulation of surface

Wow nice idea. I agree with that.

About the grid, you made me think of a complete zoom-out mode, like in Supreme Commander, i think I already told about this idea somewhere... Doesn't matter I'm gonna tell you again how that works again  .
The view would be the same as it is now, but when you zoom out a lot, the camera places so high that you can see the map from above, so that camera rotation on x and y axis is now 0. As you zoom out, you see more of the map, keeping this view, until you see the whole map from above, like a big map. Units now, which would be too difficult to view, will appear as marks palced on the surface, different from each other, indicating, let's say, the group they belong to or the category (land units, vtols, artillery). The same will happen with buildings. The surface, instead, would be rendered like in normal view. This way, you can control your army, and organize it, in a much easier way. The unseen map would look like a green grid, and units detected with sensors would be marked as "?" units. I think this way we would fix the problem of the low-quality minimap and in the same time make the game more tactical, in my opinion.
I'd really like to see this in-game  ::)

[Deus Siddis]

. . .and the lighting is too simple (only ambient lighting) to make it look good.

As doom3r stated, this is actually what the TC means-- non-ambient directional realtime lighting (that also casts realtime shadows).

And I have to whole-heartedly agree with the sheer awesomeness of implementing this suggestion along with smooth shading across groups of polygons. WZ so badly needs to move beyond ambient lighting, it just makes everything look so bland. And if augmented with support for normal mapping, you would knock people's socks clean off (and even knock the almighty Spring project for a loop).

I know from the WRP roadmap that graphics impovements are not planned for a while, but is there any chance these could be put higher on the priorities list?

[Buginator]

He's talking about adding sun to create light effects on the surface and the tanks, not to just look at it 

That comment was meant to be sarcasm...again.  I should have made it clearer. 

As doom3r stated, this is actually what the TC means-- non-ambient directional realtime lighting (that also casts realtime shadows).

And I have to whole-heartedly agree with the sheer awesomeness of implementing this suggestion along with smooth shading across groups of polygons. WZ so badly needs to move beyond ambient lighting, it just makes everything look so bland. And if augmented with support for normal mapping, you would knock people's socks clean off (and even knock the almighty Spring project for a loop).

I know from the WRP roadmap that graphics impovements are not planned for a while, but is there any chance these could be put higher on the priorities list?

Priorities list?
AFAIK, job 1 is squish bugs.
2) improvements.  And each dev decides what to work on, since you can't force people to work on something they don't want to in a O.S. project.

So there you have it, a list of 2 priorities.

The other comment I made was pretty much true.  We are not using any advanced features from openGL right now.  The reason is two-fold.  One, someone has to rewrite the engine (and that isn't exactly easy), and there are only a handful of developers, and most of those have other priorities besides warzone.  I count  only 2 or 3 working on the code as time allows them, & some outside help from community members.

It is too bad that most people are all talk, and not many of them will step up to help with warzone. (Mind you, I am NOT talking about people who don't know how to code.)

Sure, it would be nice to update the engine to something better, but that would also mean that lots of people couldn't play the game anymore, because the requirements just shot way up.  That isn't a issue for people that have good machines, but for others, it is, and it seems the devs will get flack no matter what they end up doing, going by how the community reacted in the past.

It will eventually happen though, but there is no real time frame for new features that I am aware of.
Who knows, one of these days, someone may just do what you ask, as has been done in the past. 

[doom3r]

Another improvement we could gain from light effects are laser projectiles-right now they look like a solid needle which casts a shadow on the ground  ??? not too realistic...

[Deus Siddis]

Another improvement we could gain from light effects are laser projectiles-right now they look like a solid needle which casts a shadow on the ground  ??? not too realistic...

Well you can use actual realtime lights to enhance weapon effects by making them light-up the surrounding area. WZ achieves a similar effect by vertex coloring the terrain red around there area where a cannon shell has landed, but this method does not light up nearby objects, only the terrain mesh.

But if you mean beam laser effects, that can't be done very effectively using only light sources. Instead I think you spawn a series of polys, either programmed to rotate themselves on one axis (the direction of fire) towards the camera. Or you can have two chains of polys perpendicular to each other in the direction of fire. Either way, these polys use a texture with an alpha channel (probably not supported yet) that makes it look like a shaft of brilliant light, a bolt of lightning, the rings of dust like in eraser or any combination thereof- it is just a matter of what texture you use.

That's my understanding anyway, anyone with superior knowledge should please feel free to correct me on any of this.

[DevUrandom]

Well you can use actual realtime lights to enhance weapon effects by making them light-up the surrounding area. WZ achieves a similar effect by vertex coloring the terrain red around there area where a cannon shell has landed, but this method does not light up nearby objects, only the terrain mesh.

But if you mean beam laser effects, that can't be done very effectively using only light sources. Instead I think you spawn a series of polys, either programmed to rotate themselves on one axis (the direction of fire) towards the camera. Or you can have two chains of polys perpendicular to each other in the direction of fire. Either way, these polys use a texture with an alpha channel (probably not supported yet) that makes it look like a shaft of brilliant light, a bolt of lightning, the rings of dust like in eraser or any combination thereof- it is just a matter of what texture you use.

That's my understanding anyway, anyone with superior knowledge should please feel free to correct me on any of this.

Seems you've got quite a bit of understanding of this.
Would be cool to welcome you onboard, maybe you want to do some coding or something else?

(And 32bit textures (with alpha channel) are supported by warzone2100.)