While looking at the screenshots of (and downloading) MassMouth2 I thought: How hard would it be to make it possible to have transparent ceilings with a parallax sky behind it??? So a certain sector has a parameter set so a parallax sky is drawn first and then the ceiling is drawn transparent/lucent (forgive my not-being-englishness) i mean: like the fireballs of imps. however: drawn trans... over it???
this would make the clouds of Massmouth more interesting.
MLdB
How possible is this (and how appreciated???)
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wildweasel
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I can see where you're going with the transparent ceilings. In my opinion, that would pose some really neat effects. It shouldn't be all that hard to do, all Randy would have to do is take his existing transparent wall code and add it to the ceilings...I could be wrong, though, because I know nothing at all of C++ (and believe me, I've tried to learn it).
I also noticed that the clouds on levels 9 and 10 were like that. A bit too thick for my liking, however, it's a very creative sky, and I hope to see more of this in Massmouth 3 (if there even is one).
[FUTURE-EDIT] We're still waiting for Massmouth 3. Come back, Cyb! Come baaaackkk!
[FUTURE-EDIT] We're still waiting for Massmouth 3. Come back, Cyb! Come baaaackkk!
Last edited by Xaser on Sat Feb 20, 2010 2:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
http://haunt.8m.com/levels.htmlboris wrote:I think someone (Nick Baker maybe?) make something like this with some Boom tricks, which also worked in ZDoom. Can't remember the URL of that wad though
his "translucent" water wasn't really translucent, but what you do is make a translucent middle floating texture and change its y offset to -(texture height) so that it's entirely under the floor. that makes the water seem translucent (and it actually doesn't use line 242 either, just the old skool doom2.exe deep water). you can also do that with marble floors to make them look reflective, though it won't reflect sprites (well you could rig it to do so, but it wouldn't work for moving sprites).
while the effect is nice, it won't look very good with a skybox since it's meant for enclosed rooms, so it'll pretty much look like the sky is a big box or something, though you might be able to get it looking acceptable by playing around with it a little
I believe I asked for this once before in the notgod phorums. I actually asked for a third parameter be added to the TransferHeights special. Currently it only has 2 (tag, when). The third one I asked for was Transparency. It was to take a value between 0-255 which would control how transparent the fake floor/ceiling would be.
But like I said I asked for it, and the idea was shot down. I believe the reason was the Texture renderer is totally different and easier to code than the flat renderer. IE to make a transparent texture all it took was coding in the new special. But to add in transparent flats, it would have taken a total rewrite of the flat renderer.
But now with Randy working on 47i. Where flats and textures are interchangable. Maybe this option will be easier to add.
Who knows the wonders Randy can do with an engine. Only the Shadow Knows. No but seriously I hope it gets in there somehow.
But like I said I asked for it, and the idea was shot down. I believe the reason was the Texture renderer is totally different and easier to code than the flat renderer. IE to make a transparent texture all it took was coding in the new special. But to add in transparent flats, it would have taken a total rewrite of the flat renderer.
But now with Randy working on 47i. Where flats and textures are interchangable. Maybe this option will be easier to add.
Who knows the wonders Randy can do with an engine. Only the Shadow Knows. No but seriously I hope it gets in there somehow.
re the texture system, randy hasn't rewritten how flats are rendered (indeed that would be an insane amount of work), just their ability to be used on walls (and textures on floors). flats, for instance, are in a different format than all other graphics (which are the same), so if you decide to use MARBFACE on the floor, that's well and good but zdoom still needs to actually convert it to a flat (same deal with a flat you use on a wall) so the graphic formats and rendering remain the same (flats still need to have dimensions in powers of 2 for instance), it's just a LOT less picky about what you can use where (which is quite nice).
anyway so what I was getting at is that while you can use textures/sprites and flats on any wall or floor/ceiling you see fit the fundamentals of the rendering are the same, so translucent flats aren't actually any easier t get in there (at least I don't think so).
anyway so what I was getting at is that while you can use textures/sprites and flats on any wall or floor/ceiling you see fit the fundamentals of the rendering are the same, so translucent flats aren't actually any easier t get in there (at least I don't think so).
Ahhhh, thanks for the heads up Cyb. Also about the 3-D floor thing. Would that be so bad. To add it that is. Just wondering if such a thing had crossed anybodies mind. From time to time I think it would be cool to have it in ZDoom. Just for bridges, and such. But then I realize there's a reason why I hate most Legacy maps, 3-D overkill. Some Legacy maps are nothing but twisting turning walk ways made up of 3-D floors. That gets me pissed off.
Anybody else have a comment on this subject? Pros, Cons, cheese even.
Anybody else have a comment on this subject? Pros, Cons, cheese even.
Tho i am a programmer, i don't know a thing about the Doom source (never looked into it 
) but would it really be hard to have both the parallax procedure draw a parallax sky (what else 
) and then run the flat-drawing proc. after it to do the same area (or column) with a transparent flat? So no special tricks, just the 2 different procedures used together for one ceiling.
Please excuse my moroness
MLdB
) but would it really be hard to have both the parallax procedure draw a parallax sky (what else ) and then run the flat-drawing proc. after it to do the same area (or column) with a transparent flat? So no special tricks, just the 2 different procedures used together for one ceiling.Please excuse my moroness
MLdB
I have absolutely no idea how this was done, or if it is still supported, or even how relevant it is, but I know that Legacy used to have a sort of translucent flat feature (right back in the old DOS Legacy IIRC). It was only for water effects. From memory, you did something like give a sector a tag of a -ve number. The number specified the depth of the water and a translucent watery effect was drawn at the specified height above the floor that had been tagged.
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Mighty Duck X-treme
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wildweasel
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Number 1: TWO ports already have working 3D floors: EDGE and Legacy.[Epyo]Oh stop being so silly[/Epyo]
[Carn]That would be nice. Who's going to code it?[/Carn]
Number 2: As far as I know, both sources are well documented, and it should be easy to import the extrafloor code into ZDoom along with your existing stuff (polyojbects, etc).
