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Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2010 8:14 pm
by nEW playe
mrapple wrote:
nEW playe wrote:What should I show? The C++ code :wink: ?
Definitely! I"d love to mod my client with these cool ad-ons :)

If you have BZ checked out from SVN, you can simply use the svn diff command to create a file that people can use to apply the mod to their clients.

Then it sounds like if you provide the .diff with some image files and such, people would be able to add this to their clients :)
Ok, maybe Ill post a video of some mods I've done. Then, !if I've got some time!, I can post a diff. (Normally this wouldn't take long, to create diffs, but there are several things I rather don't want to publish, so it could become a time-lasting job, the number of mods I've currently done are FAR over 20 decent things, but that's another story.)
Ill post for now the new files ParticleSceneNode.cpp/h, ParticleSystem.cpp/h, but Ill post the diffs another time :? .
You may expect a video soon.

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2010 8:58 pm
by mrapple
One word: awesome.

Only a few things. Only seeing ParticleSystem, not ParticleSceneNod.

As for the diff, its pretty simple. Heres a mini instruction guide:

1. Run the command "svn co https://bzflag.svn.sourceforge.net/svnr ... nch/bzflag bzflag_particle_mod"

2. Apply all your modifications to the fresh codebase (located in a new directory, bzflag_particle_mod)

3. When finished, change directory to bzflag_particle_mod and run "svn diff > particle_mod.diff"

That should result in a .diff and will allow other players to easily modify their source to incorporate all of your changes with a single command :)

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 4:41 pm
by nEW playe
mrapple wrote:Only a few things. Only seeing ParticleSystem, not ParticleSceneNod.
Excuse me, I forgot to add those in my post. I edited the post, now those files are available for download :) .

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 8:48 pm
by mrapple
Good work. Hope to see that diff file soon ;D

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 6:19 pm
by nEW playe
mrapple wrote:Good work. Hope to see that diff file soon ;D
"Soon" is a great word, but at least: HERE IS IT!

:D :!: BzFlag Exhaust diff :!: :D
  • o Features a stable smoke particle system. (In brief: Every tankhas got a working exhaust :) )
  • o To apply the diffs: Add all non-diff files to the corresponding directory; Apply all diff-files to the corresponding original ones (based on version 2.0.12)
  • o Makefile.in.diff files are actually trivial since its gerenated from Makefile.am, better you should run "automake" in the root of the sourcetree.
  • o If you discover bugs, or questions, please send me a PM or just use the forums.
  • o Of course the licence remains unchanged, but if you plan to create new things, Ill be interested to know :) .
  • Download the zip-file here:
    exhaustDiff.zip
    (358.07 KiB) Downloaded 420 times

Enjoy your virtual pollution!
nEW playe

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 12:17 am
by mrapple
Wow... great work!! Looks incredible!

I only found one "bug" which is exhaust still "generates" when a tank has stealth. Fixed that.

I also added that the color of tank exhaust is their team color. Only exception is that rabbits are rainbow.

Tanks that have stealth/cloaking will ONLY generate exhaust when you are in observer mode or you are the one with cloaking/stealth.

[The extension diff has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

P.S. I tested this and it doesn't display smoke if you have blindness and the effects of wide angle do affect smoke.

P.S.S. If you already applied the original mod, do "svn revert Player.cxx" then "patch < Player.cxx.diff" again.

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 6:46 pm
by nEW playe
Oh, yeah, I forgot about the blindness thing, but I intentionally activated the exhaust also for STealth tanks, but I DEactivated it for the CLoaked tanks.

Take your time to think logical about it: All two characteristics of stealth and cloaked are preserved:
Proof for non-seal situations:
  • o Cloaked tanks are only visible on the radar: OK, no smoke visible.
  • o Stealth tanks are only visible in 3d view: OK, smoke visible.
But I can understand your way of thinking: "You can see a stealth tank behind a wall because there's some smoke-puffing thing at some spot where no tank exists on the radar." This will increase the survive rate of the normal tank, but to be honest: even at particleScale set to 1.0, a static stealth tank remains quasi invisible (Yet I've got some experience :roll: ).
I also put the question to a famous admin (forget his name :roll: , hopefully he reads this post :wink: ) and he told me there was no problem with it.


Thanks for the idea of letting the tanks emit their own teamcolour :) .

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 7:36 pm
by nEW playe
mrapple wrote:I also added that the color of tank exhaust is their team color. Only exception is that rabbits are rainbow.
You coded for example for the Red Team:

Code: Select all

if(getTeam() == RedTeam)
{
	pcol[0] = 1;
	pcol[1] = 0;
	pcol[2] = 0;
}
But why don't you do it linear? It's much nicer then because you preserve the "complex" pullution-calculations (calcs to determine density of black diesel particles). So better would be:

Code: Select all

if(getTeam() == RedTeam)
{
	pcol[0] *= 1;
	pcol[1] *= 0;
	pcol[2] *= 0;
}
I tested this and your idea becomes very cool when playing with multiple teams :D .
It will definitely give a new shape to BzFlag. 8)

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 9:27 pm
by mrapple
That way works too. Didn't really think about the "density" calculations.

Glad this is working out. Now we just need to patch it for 3.0 and maybe it will make it in :)

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2010 4:14 pm
by nEW playe
mrapple wrote:Now we just need to patch it for 3.0 and maybe it will make it in :)
Let's hope so! :D
The cool thing about my ParticleSystem is that you can easily implement smoke or even fire not only on tanks, but also in BzFlag Worlds (someone else might do that).
The positive thing against LUA is the speed of C++.

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 5:20 pm
by hutty
is it possible to do 3d(ish) grass using a ton of billboards and your partial system?

or maybe even partial based clouds

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Wed Oct 27, 2010 5:40 pm
by Cobra_Fast
huttymuncher wrote:is it possible to do 3d(ish) grass using a ton of billboards and your partial system?
or maybe even partial based clouds
It's "particle" not partial ... I would be doing 3D grass with a somewhat dense grid of textured boxes on the ground.

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2011 3:50 pm
by snick
Ultra hi-res basetop and tank textures:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22994649/massivetex.zip

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2011 12:08 pm
by hutty
nice and big, however the base top textures lack the 3d popout ish char that they used to have

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 11:41 pm
by Captain Simmons
nEW playe wrote:Let's hope so!
The cool thing about my ParticleSystem is that you can easily implement smoke or even fire not only on tanks, but also in BzFlag Worlds (someone else might do that).
Would it be possible to use the smoke thing (looks awesome btw) for when a tank gets shot? it would be awesome if, say the parts of the tank flying left smoke trails, and if the spot where the tank was destroyed gets a crater and a rising column of smoke that lasts for a little while? that would make it really awesome looking on some more intense servers to see the smoke of battle floating into the air... or even when a shot hits something like a wall, and bounces off then a little puff of smoke emits or something? I cant wait to see what GMs would look like with that feature. :D


Is this the final patch/ version?
mrapple wrote: Player.cxx.diff
(7.03 KiB) Downloaded 14 times

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 2:30 am
by JeffM
Captain Simmons wrote:Would it be possible to use the smoke thing (looks awesome btw) for when a tank gets shot? it would be awesome if, say the parts of the tank flying left smoke trails, and if the spot where the tank was destroyed gets a crater and a rising column of smoke that lasts for a little while? that would make it really awesome looking on some more intense servers to see the smoke of battle floating into the air... or even when a shot hits something like a wall, and bounces off then a little puff of smoke emits or something? I cant wait to see what GMs would look like with that feature. :D
that is on the roadmap for 2.4.2 or 2.4.4

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2011 2:32 am
by Pizzahead
Kind of sad looking back on this discussion of 3.0

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 7:13 am
by nEW playe
JeffM wrote:that is on the roadmap for 2.4.2 or 2.4.4
And do which particle system will be used then? Would it be the same sort of thing as the GM smoke trails? Or would it be based on my system? Or would it be implemented via LUA script?

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2011 10:42 am
by blast
It would be hard coded the same as the other effects. There is no Lua support in 2.4.

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2011 1:05 pm
by nEW playe
Finally I made a video of a few features I implemented.
(In the past it was difficult to capture videos because of my old gfx card).

Here is the link to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ4NwDDPzno

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2011 3:09 pm
by Bullet Catcher
Nice demo, nEW playe. Your changes significantly increase the realism, but I am concerned about gameplay.

Most importantly, showing tank orientation on radar is something that the BZFlag developers have deliberately chosen not to do. It allows players to almost completely ignore the window view, making the game too easy. This means it is a cheat feature when used on servers that use the official protocol versions (BZFS0026 for 2.0, BZFS0221 for 2.4).

Tanks carrying the Stealth or Cloaking flag won't like having exhaust smoke, but it would be easy enough to turn that off for them.

Tank barrel recoil seems harmless enough, although it usually won't be well synchronized with shots on multi-shot maps. Similarly, the shaking from a nearby explosion won't bother players who have the Display Treads option turned off.

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2011 6:59 pm
by nEW playe
Thank you for your feedback, Bullet Catcher.
Bullet Catcher wrote:Nice demo, nEW playe. Your changes significantly increase the realism, but I am concerned about gameplay.
That's true, sometimes it's really annoying while rear driving, but it adds a level of difficulty though (besides, this is often used in other shooters), and it makes you feel better when you succeed in shooting an enemy.
Bullet Catcher wrote:Most importantly, showing tank orientation on radar is something that the BZFlag developers have deliberately chosen not to do. It allows players to almost completely ignore the window view, making the game too easy. This means it is a cheat feature when used on servers that use the official protocol versions (BZFS0026 for 2.0, BZFS0221 for 2.4).
Good point, I mentioned in the description that is was still activated after using it to debug smoke emission vectors, but I know this is actually not done on official protocol versions. After making this video I realised they were still activated but I was to lazy to make another video without it to replace the current one. I'll think twice next time when posting a new vid.
Bullet Catcher wrote:Tanks carrying the Stealth or Cloaking flag won't like have exhaust smoke, but it would be easy enough to turn that off for them.
We've already discussed this in this same topic: Cloaking flags indeed won't having exhaust smoke, but Stealth flags keep their exhaust smoke (it's logic), cfr. a couple of posts above.
Bullet Catcher wrote:Tank barrel recoil seems harmless enough, although it usually won't be well synchronized with shots on multi-shot maps. Similarly, the shaking from a nearby explosion won't bother players who have the Display Treads option turned off.
To show better what actually happens, here's some anscii art (turret = "=====>" and bolt = "O") that might take away some confusion:

Normal single shot:

=====>
=> O
==> O
===> O
====> O
=====> O

4 rounds directly fired after eachother, followed by a last one just before full barrel recovery:

=====>
=> O
=> O O
=> O O O
=> O O O O
==> O O O O
===> O O O O
====> O O O O
=> O O O O O
==> O O O O O
===> O O O O O
====> O O O O O
=====> O O O O O

Hope that helped something, I know this is not really realistic, but it will still be nice enough, also for on multi-shot maps.

Re: Artwork Refresh for BZFlag

Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2020 2:09 am
by Samson1
macsforme wrote: Wed May 12, 2010 2:03 am After an extensive period of time, it appears that BZFlag version 3.0 may be close to release. This will be the first major release we have had in several years. Because a large percentage of the changes are code-related, the overall look and feel of 3.0 is similar to the current 2.0 branch. I am attempting to coordinate a texture refresh for 3.0 that will be implemented before or soon after the initial release.

I am aware of several people who have worked on or completed alternative texture sets for bzflag in the last few years. However, I am interested in any textures that members of the community can contribute. The project developers will then select from the textures available after receiving community input, and include them in the main BZFlag project.

There are several requirements for texture submissions:
1. Textures must be original work, or copyright fully owned by the submitter. Ownership may be verified before acceptance.
2. Contributors must be willing to turn over copyright of images to Tim Riker in accordance with DEVINFO.
3. Textures must meet general texture requirements for usability, such as being sized at an exponent of 2 (e.g., 512x512, 1024x1024, etc), being tile-able, and should not have obvious repeat patterns.

Please post ideas or reactions here so we can gauge interest. I plan to assimilate all texture contributions and set up test servers, which will allow the community to review the submissions and give feedback.
The Noah might be a good person to seek out textures wise, they're quite good when it comes to textures.