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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Alpha mapping issue

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Santman
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Posted: 1st Feb 2012 23:17
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Continued from this thread:
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=193289&b=1

@Resourceful, yes, that's exactly what happens. The problem is solely down to the fact that the clouds need to be invisible, but the alpha mapping fails. TBH, I'm debating simply re-doing the code and getting the effect another way, it's starting to seem like less hastle! Lol.
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gwheycs62egydws
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Posted: 1st Feb 2012 23:40
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@Santman

here I bee

so the clouds are shadow's
well they cast shadows

that shed's some light on things

it now adds a lighting calculation to the hole thing
I can understand why this would add more to the program to deal with

if you cut down on vertex's in the clouds that would help
I know you want to keep them to have 2 side's

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
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gwheycs62egydws
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Posted: 1st Feb 2012 23:41
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do you know about "DarkCLOUDS" ?

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
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Santman
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2012 01:01
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Yeah, I read a little about it, but that's not needed. The game is a simple one, a ball and puzzle game, that primarily just a puzzle game, so doesn;t need anything as fancy as that. There's a very early WIP video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_LWx6EKeBI

The clouds don't need any sides...so long as they cast shadows!! Lol. I made them in AC3D, but it's hardly overly functional, hence the mess of them, but I figured as they'd be invisible anyway. As it stands, they may have to go as big black "blobs" cannot appear. :-(
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gwheycs62egydws
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2012 01:18
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I did see a bit of shadow but it dose not look they have any affects on looks

I also noticed all the tree's and plants
not moving or any thing but that's a lot forth video card to deal with

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
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Santman
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2012 01:28
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Lol. Actually, it's just a low res video - there are 200 tree's (50 high detail, 150 "imposter" style) all of which are moving (high detail ones have 3 axis of movement - branches and trunks), 200 clumps of grass each with 200 planes - all moving, 50 bushes - all moving, and the sky has a 3 layer paralax style alpha mapped sphere sky to give it a generated look without the performance hit. Take into account on that the additional bump mapping and texturing on all surfaces, and that scene averages just over 1 million drawn triangles per frame, at around 70fps (so each second, around 71-75 million triangles). In full HD it looks quite splendid I think, and runs much faster than that as the video capture software was knocking about 30fps off it, and it's been heavily optimised since. One day I'll use the newest engine and "walk" around the forrest while recording at 720p to show it properly....but that's not what this game is about. Check its facebook page for a still of it though, with better resolution.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ball-Blast/288717214475217

But none of that is why the clouds render black. :-(
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gwheycs62egydws
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2012 01:30
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I re looked at the video
the vegetation dose move

is the vegetation have built in animation or is it dun by the program ?

if it dose by the program then that is one thing that could be changed
also "Dark Imposters plugin DBPro/GDK" would help
since that what it's made for when it comes to dealing with a lot of objects
that move and do not move

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
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Santman
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2012 01:38
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No animation, all the action is handled by the engine. It has a basic functionality to alter the wind speed and force at will, which affects all aspects of the background movement as it has a very simple engine moving it, but it gives me total control. This will be worked on as the first world will chnage to a storm (hopefully) in real time, which will make the ball slide etc as it gets wet.

As per my previous post, the engine has it's own simple imposter system, and rudementary physics for things like spike fragments (they can be broken), all custom and in engine - no plug-ins. The game has scaleable EVERYTHING, and a beta system I call the FCS, or frame rate control, system which not only restricts it to s set framerate, but can increase engine performance to boost lagging speed by doing things like culling out clouds, reducing forrest movement etc, as well as reducing model detail in real time. That would be more of a nightmare with the plugins I think.

Anyway - little victory, fixed the slow down AT LAST, so it's back to it, hopefully a playable demo next weekend, even with black clouds. :-(
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gwheycs62egydws
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2012 01:53
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thats a lot of math to deal with
so it's not wonder with every thing else in there it slows down

as far as I can see the dll additions have brought back speed
since there more purer than DBP code is

if you could take what you did as far as the function you created and turn
them into dll should not see any more chugs

saying that sticking with what you have
unless the ball get's near the ground the animated objects should
stop being animated until they need to be

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
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gwheycs62egydws
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2012 21:57
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@Santman

I was wondering when was the last time you degraded your hard drive ?


I do not think any of the windows operating systems would have any major affect
but considering windows 7 is still the new kid of the block
there could be some thing that is not set correctly

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
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Santman
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2012 22:10
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Resourceful,

Nope, I run Vista so it's nothing to do with Win 7, and the harddrive defragging would have no impact at all on this issue. Even so, window's Vista onwards defaults to constantly defrag in the background. I assumed it was a problem with the model itself....but then why is not every instance of each model the same?? Why sometimes are none of them black? Nope, it is, I suspect, a DBPro issue.
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gwheycs62egydws
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2012 22:33
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I remember reading way back when windows nt 3.51 would start to put files all over the place right from when it was put into a computer

from xp up it's still nt operating system
some time latter there was a fix created to solve that which looks like
it final got to be part of the hole thought

from what I now know about your program you have a lot of math going on
from the animated objects to lighting

have you experienced the slow down with any other 3d program ?
or even 2d ?

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
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Santman
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2012 00:57
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Nope, there's nothing else that slowed down, that was the problem. It was only my project. The .exe for it in backup that was pre-compiled ran at full speed too, it was only newly compiled .exe's that were affected.

Anyway, the problem seems to be solved now at least for the slow down. Someone pointed me in the right direction - you open the editor and it auto starts the last project. Close that, then move the db file elsewhere. Close DBPro and open it. Because it can;t find the project, it opens a new one. Copy the files back and open them from the file menu....and amazingly no more porblems.

Very odd, and def a bug. But an IDE bug, so being disregarded for now.
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gwheycs62egydws
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2012 01:10
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ahh ok

I know that is a setting in DBP but I turned that off

so it was trying to load some thing and compile at the same time
well more or less

as for the black clouds
if your triangle's are facing the wrong way then that would
be the problem

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
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