Official forums for BZFlag.org

To start this off I would like to say, WOW. This is one of the few maps that literally makes my jaw drop. The detail put into this map is astonishing. What I would like to know is, how on earth did you make the sky branch out with the multicoloured branches?! That's just mind boggling.
The map was really worth the download wait

I think that everyone should get a chance to play on this map..it's up at a-delusion.no-ip.org port 4020

This map is true BZFlag artwork!

Bambino wrote:To start this off I would like to say, WOW. This is one of the few maps that literally makes my jaw drop. The detail put into this map is astonishing. What I would like to know is, how on earth did you make the sky branch out with the multicoloured branches?! That's just mind boggling.
The map was really worth the download wait

I think that everyone should get a chance to play on this map..it's up at a-delusion.no-ip.org port 4020

This map is true BZFlag artwork!

Bambino is exactly right. Even though it took a couple of minutes to wait for download, it is a very creative and colorful map. It is very nicely made. And if anyone knows how to get the multi-colored sky with branches of colors, please tell me!

I uploaded a video that shows the color cycling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhQnWzJIqnY

I have another one showing more that is uploading right now.

Yes, the most spectacular map I've seen. I looks like it was made by some script, that could turn every map in something like this. If it wasn't, it still could be.

UPD: Just found some old script by KTL http://my.bzflag.org/bb//viewtopic.php?f=24&t=12703

And here's the second video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwuameNXvkw

Just got on the map, looks awesome. If only we could get people on there. Also, nice videos blast.

This is a simplified bzw with just one line like those of the fractals:

options
-set _drawMountains 0
-set _skyColor black
-set _wallHeight 0
end

Material
name GroundMaterial
color 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
end

textureMatrix
name moving01
shift 0.2 0.0 # u/v freqs
fixedshift 0 0
end

material
name gradient01
texture http://trepan.bzflag.bz/horizontal_grad ... nt_end.png
texmat moving01
nolighting
noshadow
noradar
end

mesh
vertex 0 -100 5
vertex 0 100 5
normal 1 1 1
texcoord 0 0
texcoord 0.5 0
drawInfo
dlist
corner 0 0 0
corner 1 0 1
lod
lengthPerPixel 0
matref gradient01
lines 0 1
end #matref
end #lod
end #drawinfo
end #mesh

To make such fractals: math and programming. To make a single leaf I iteratively applied 3d-transformation matrices on a vertex in space. One such iteration results in a sequence of a few vertices. But that sequence cant be shown as a line yet because it is raw, ugly.
In a second step i gave this sequence to an algorithm that calculates a single b-spline out of it. With b-splines you can configure how smooth the curve has to be. The smoother the curve the better the look but the approximation of the given vertices degrades.
Then the curve has to be drawn with some additional trick to avoid the messy look of too many intersecting lines. Try not to draw a line if it is too near a already drawn line. For this i used a nearest neighbour search (using: neartree.sourceforge.net).

That's the ... basic idea ...

Thanks for the explanation, That clears it up completely.

AWSOME!!!!!!!

I still don't white understand how you made a line in bz (is it a really thin mesh?)

the screen shots do not do justice... you must visit the map (to future post readers)

A line in drawinfo corresponds with a opengl "GL_LINE". The thing has no width, the graphics card gives it just enough width to be visible properly, unrelated to how far away it is.

Would be kool to see HIX in this style

Monster wrote:Would be kool to see HIX in this style

Ive asked KTL to do this alot..

A line in drawinfo corresponds with a opengl "GL_LINE". The thing has no width, the graphics card gives it just enough width to be visible properly, unrelated to how far away it is.

Awesome

What other cool things can be done with draw info? (I already know about LOD and spinning objects)

The fastest way to display objects in BZFlag is with strips. Tristrips, Quadstrips, Linestrips, LineLoop and TriFan are the possible input types. What strips do is combine a series of polygons into a single unit, before it is sent to be rendered. This should be one-third to two-thirds faster than drawinfo without strips. What KTL is doing here with linestrips does not easily translate to geometry that must interact with collision detection, so it's good but not something that other mappers will find extremely useful. Tristrips would work best. Tristrips are definitely what we want. Unfortunately, we don't have a utility to create tristrips.




P.S modeltool has the option -striplimit, which will keep your strips under the specified limit. (I have heard -striplimit 12 is a good setting)

Another feature is GL_POINTS.
(not that useful without size and sprite texture control)

oh_nice