HUD images?

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 3:51 am

Whatever we decide, can someone help me make them? I'd like them to be looking the right direction this time

the plan is to fish them out of the CIC database if at all possible, thsoe that aren't will be made from the ship model in Deep Exploration.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 4:12 am

Can't decide

Well, I like pictures, of course, but how is damage represented? I liked it in priv, where the damage was localized, and you could try and concentrate fire on the part of the ship you'd already damaged.
I'll help make the images, whatever is decided.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 4:25 am

the damage would show up the same way as it does now, this is just a looks issue.

Post by **mkruer** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 4:54 am

I thought this was somewhat decided. It would be a hybrid using existing 3d models, and applying a cell shader to accentuate the edges and flatten out the rest of the ship. Because we are using the actual 3d models there would be no reason to make HUD images.

Quick Examples.

Of course we will have to adjust the coloring such as black out the body and apply the proper color to the wireframe, but this would work its simple and you would never have to worry about HUD images ever again. Works for me, but does it for you?

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 5:23 am

Was thinking about pictures but as if taken from above.
How do you make it happen?

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 6:35 am

also works for me. so what do we do, do we do it in-engine, or do we render tha separately and genreate a bunch of png files?

i personally like the wc1/2 style wireframes better tho.

blue_paladin42 · Post by **blue_paladin42** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 1:23 pm

i personally like the wc1/2 style wireframes better tho.

Definetely. That was the best way to do it really. Seeing the schematic on your screen lent a certain...something to the game. Of course, if one was willing to do extra work, the issue could be resolved by doing both, then just switching the HUD between the two, like how you can switch between the target image and camera view. It would be schematic, model, camera. Not necessarily in that order. If someone would point me in the direction of a vegastrike tutorial or something that would teach me how to do that, I would do it myself. I got loads of time, but no idea how this all works.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 2:20 pm

I've been rendering green wireframes of wc3-wc4-armada ships and they don't look half bad really

the lines will turn red as damage occurs, which is what works for us, right?

http://www.spiritplumber.com/priv_remake/renders/HUD/

what size do we use? i would say 128x128 or 256x256

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 2:44 pm

Gotta say I like mkruer's approach. Then it would be especially cool (although superfluous) if you could rotate it, in 3d, in the HUD.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 3:09 pm

Having the engine do it? sure

saves me some work, that's a definite... i'm almost done tho.

i like the wc1/wc2 green wireframe though... in fact frankly i liked it better than the cameo picture in wc3/4.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 3:32 pm

To clarify, what I am doing right now is:

If I can rip it from Gemini Gold, I am.

If a HUD image exists in http://www.wcnews.com/ships2 I'm using it.

If not, I'm generating a wireframe that looks reasonably like that style.

If we don't like one or the other, nothing prevents us from having a vsconfig variable that says "render the HUD image rather than load it"

ftp://ftp.spiritplumber.com/public_html ... nders/HUD/

there, all done

poof. should at least do it for now, no?

Post by **klauss** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 4:19 pm

Doing the rendering in the engine may take some time of coding.
Although possible, it's not trivial changing the Tri(strip)/Quad(strip) primitives into line primitives. Mostly if you don't want tons of superfluos edges being drawn.

In fact, I would prefer loading those wireframe models with the conversion already done, and tweaked. The conversion could be done by batch processing, with a specially written tool.

Anyway, take time it will.
Mostly because a much higher priority task is fixing the countless bugs that all the new features have been introducing. I'll try to setup the latest WCU this weekend, and test it for bugs. And try to fix them too. Mostly crashing bugs, I'm not great at other kinds of bugs.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 4:45 pm

http://www.spiritplumber.com/priv_remake/renders/HUD/ is this acceptable for now?

i also did the corresponding .spr files (same filename as the .png otherwise), now whoever it is that "has the ball" units.csv wise should put them in... i'm still kinda burned out, meow.

who has the ball with units.csv by the way? i forget ^^; i remember being asked to not touch it, but not by who.

Post by **klauss** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 4:58 pm

Fireskull, IIRC. He's doing the resizing/restatting of units.
And yes, for now those will do.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 6:39 pm

meow, guess we have to wait then

my next upload will not have a patch since we're replacing ALL the unit meshes... just download the "big file", i am afriad.

Post by **klauss** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 6:40 pm

Ah... but they'll be smaller.

blue_paladin42 · Post by **blue_paladin42** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 7:25 pm

The only thing those green meshes for post privateer ships don't have are red gun positions. Other that that, they look pretty cool.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 7:25 pm

yep, which is why i am not too worried about it ^_^;

what i would propose for autorendering is:

* do a wireframe rendering, same as i just did, make the lines somewhat thick & only show visible lines. Make it default to green.

* same for weapons - make them default to red. If the weapon doesn't have a mesh, at least show a red dot (missile mounts, etc.) or a red line.

* have blue (default) cylinders right "before" (z axis) the flame exhausts.

* have a yellow, or other color, dot where the viewpoint is.

This basically autogenerates a HUD image that looks almost like the ones in wc1 and wc2.

blue_paladin42 · Post by **blue_paladin42** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 7:28 pm

AWESOME!!!

Post by **klauss** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 7:38 pm

Everything except the dot thing (the last one) was in my plans.

Even, I'm thinking about auto-edging. There's a simple algorithm for that... only I don't know how well will it work with moveable viewpoints. Hm... perhaps do it in realtime? That would be neat. I'm thinking. No rush, first we have to squash all the bugs (call the exterminator).

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 7:43 pm

what's wrong with just having a top view? ^^;

Post by **klauss** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 7:50 pm

It's a waste of potential. With engine-generated wireframes, we can animate them and make them look cool. If it's too uncannon, we can disable it later.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 7:57 pm

point... how do we represent shield strength though then?

blue_paladin42 · Post by **blue_paladin42** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 1:54 am

Hmm, rotating wireframes. Seems unnescessarily complicated. Who is going to be paying attention to rotating wireframes, when there is a ship rotating right in front of then, which they are desperately trying to hit

.

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 2:28 am

I couldnt possibly agree more with Blue Paladin, actually, I agree 1000% with him.

For me, a top view is fine, since the green lines are meant so you can easily measure damage. If you want to actually see the ship you are targetting, we already have a camera view from inside the hud and there is the artificial camera view too.

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