Mod Request: Screecher Camera

[Battal]

This would actually be pretty cool, if you could pull it off.

[Nycidian]

I can see if that's of any use sometime later this week, exams have priority for now though. Though it seems to me, at first glance, that the textures are not tileable which would make for quite an aweful big wall, correct me if I'm wrong there.

 

Its possible I made a mistake and its not tileable as I made it before i passed out today while extremely tired. My intention was that it be tileable but if not I can make another version that is later on.

 

Also it is likely that it is not the right dimensions needed anyway, as without some testing knowing what dimensions you will need is very hard to predict so I wasn't to worried about it I just made it quite large as a starting point.

[Irontaco]

Hm, can someone try to use that camera style inside the caves to see how it works out in there? then take a screenshot? You might need no fog there since inside the caves it is pretty dark.

[TheDanaAddams]

Okay, I'm not entirely with it at the moment, and it's a pretty rough photoshop mockup, but... this is the basic idea of the layered approach...

I'm going to have to think of a better way to draw the clouds, since the defined fluffy swirls look nice on their own... but sort of jumble together when they start being layered...

 

Anyway, very rough, and doesn't look too great... but at least it'll give the idea of the layering.

Thoughts?

 

[Neosaurus]

I would certainly use this if it were to become a thing

[simplex]

Okay, I'm not entirely with it at the moment, and it's a pretty rough photoshop mockup, but... this is the basic idea of the layered approach...

I'm going to have to think of a better way to draw the clouds, since the defined fluffy swirls look nice on their own... but sort of jumble together when they start being layered...

 

Anyway, very rough, and doesn't look too great... but at least it'll give the idea of the layering.

Thoughts?

Screen Shot 2013-10-29 at 7.54.18 AM.png

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the poopturf fog of war. Is there a way to make it look more misty, and less cloudy?

[TheDanaAddams]

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the poopturf fog of war. Is there a way to make it look more misty, and less cloudy?

Like I said, the swirly clouds look nice on their own, but I'm gonna have to try something different for it to work. I was quite disappointed with how it looked in the mockup.

The next things I try will definitely be more "misty" and with a lot less definition... I do have some ideas to try, but... I kinda exhausted myself with this.

 

My health has really taken a nosedive... it's terribly frustrating... I want to work on this stuff, but I physically can't. If I try, I just end up making things worse.

[sigh]

[mox]

Like I said, the swirly clouds look nice on their own, but I'm gonna have to try something different for it to work. I was quite disappointed with how it looked in the mockup.

The next things I try will definitely be more "misty" and with a lot less definition... I do have some ideas to try, but... I kinda exhausted myself with this.

 

My health has really taken a nosedive... it's terribly frustrating... I want to work on this stuff, but I physically can't. If I try, I just end up making things worse.

[sigh]

Get well soon.   (there were no oranges that I could see.)

 

Aside: Does less layers look any better? If only we could get a layer on the skybox. 

[TheDanaAddams]

Not really - I mean, the layered fadeout looks nice, to me - it's just that the clouds themselves don't work.

[F3RR1S]

Okay, I'm not entirely with it at the moment, and it's a pretty rough photoshop mockup, but... this is the basic idea of the layered approach...

I'm going to have to think of a better way to draw the clouds, since the defined fluffy swirls look nice on their own... but sort of jumble together when they start being layered...

 

Anyway, very rough, and doesn't look too great... but at least it'll give the idea of the layering.

Thoughts?

 

Screen Shot 2013-10-29 at 7.54.18 AM.png

The cloudy fog looks nice to me.

 

But, I have terrible taste in things, so I don't really know.

[Nycidian]

I was thinking about this and darkness is very close to the same mechanic as you might want for the fog .

 

I tried to see what I could do to unravel exactly how the light works but I couldn't figure out other than darkening the screen, but if you could make a another version of darkness only instead of a darkening of the screen it was a gray overlay and then used the same mechanic as light to eat away the gray around your character you would have easy fog at least it seems to me this would work.

[TheDanaAddams]

If that works, it sounds like it could be a much better way of doing it!
Have to add some fog effects, too, so it doesn't look like plain, bland nothingness... but likely better than filling the entire screen with three layers of fog sprites!

[F3RR1S]

I think it would be a good idea to make the bland darkness-like fog before making effects for it, so we can get an idea of how it looks and works.

 

Better to be working than to be pretty.

[Malacath]

I was thinking about using the cavelike darkness and then applying a custom colorcube for day and dusk, night of course sorts itself out. Though the problem is of course that I neither know how to get the darkness nor how to modify colorcubes, since I can't open the *.tex files for them with the TEX-Tools.

[F3RR1S]

It looks like there won't be a problem creating things with the bar on the left in the game.

 

Press Caps Lock while playing.

[simplex]

I was thinking about using the cavelike darkness and then applying a custom colorcube for day and dusk, night of course sorts itself out. Though the problem is of course that I neither know how to get the darkness nor how to modify colorcubes, since I can't open the *.tex files for them with the TEX-Tools.

My TEX converter (ktech) does support colour cubes, but I have no idea how to edit them. For example, this is the snow_cc colour cube:

But I don't know how the darkness effect could be achieved. The light in DS is physically realistic (implemented on top of the graphics engine, which itself does actual physics calculations based on normal vectors, material reflectiveness and so on to compute the visual effect). I believe we'd have to replace the ambient light source used by DS, which seems to be a parallel one (i.e., coming from a point at infinity) by a point source at a finite distance above the player (projecting light either spherically or in a cone), and while the engine could easily do that, it doesn't expose the necessary methods for a Lua script to handle it. In caves it works simply because caves have no ambient light.

EDIT: Actually, I think we can achieve the darkness effect, silly me. While it is true that we can't change the ambient light, we can of course disable it, and then place a point light source above the player ourselves. However, it'll be somewhat of a hassle to emulate all the ambient light transitions with it (but I have a relatively simple way in mind, similar to how my No Warning mod works).

EDIT 2: If anyone wants to take a closer look at how lighting works in DS, read this.

Edited November 2, 2013 by simplex

[TheDanaAddams]

Looking at that colour cube thing actually reminds me of a Normal Map.

In a Normal Map, light behaviour is given sort of instructions based on the three axes - Red being X, Green being Y, and Blue being Z.

 

Perhaps it's something similar here - the colours representing values on the X, Y, and Z axes... for what, and how, I have no idea... and as for a method to interpret and alter it... I have no idea, either.

I think we need Cheerio or Ipsquiggle's help, here.

 

Question, though: Is the colour change caused by insanity also handled by a colour cube? Or is that done differently again?

[Malacath]

My TEX converter (ktech) does support colour cubes, but I have no idea how to edit them. For example, this is the snow_cc colour cube:

[...]

EDIT 2: If anyone wants to take a closer look at how lighting works in DS, read this.

Cool, I'll look into it if noone else has done that by the time I will have time to do so (what an ugly sentence). Also, would you be so nice to show us the sanity color cube? Since sanity has a very drastic effect on the visuals it might give us a better idea of how it works.

Is ktech available for windows as well?

 

Question, though: Is the colour change caused by insanity also handled by a colour cube? Or is that done differently again?

Yes, there are colorcubes for things like dusk, insanity(even different for day, dusk and night), caves, ruins and so on. That always made me think colorcubes are a visual representation of color replacements. Looking at the snow one up there makes me confused though. I don't think it has a lot to do with normal maps since the colorpalette on the right reminds of tangent normal maps and the one on the left reminds me of global normal maps. So I don't think there's a connection, might be mistaken though.

 

I'll see if I can find something useful on this.

Edited November 2, 2013 by Malacath

[simplex]

Cool, I'll look into it if noone else has done that by the time I will have time to do so (what an ugly sentence).

Is ktech available for windows as well?

Nope, sorry. I figured it wouldn't be of much use, due to the official pipeline and Matt's tools. But there are only a thing or two making it incompatible with Windows, and I wrapped each of those in a function, so it wouldn't be hard to port it to Windows in principle. But since I don't have a Windows PC at my disposal I'm afraid I won't be able to do much in that front simply because I can't test anything. You can ask me to convert some colour cubes you'd like, and Klei's TextureConverter.exe should be able to create the .tex from a .png for them.

Yes, there are colorcubes for things like dusk, insanity(even different for day, dusk and night), caves, ruins and so on. That always made me think colorcubes are a visual representation of color replacements. Looking at the snow one up there makes me confused though. I don't think it has a lot to do with normal maps since the colorpalette on the right reminds of tangent normal maps and the one on the left reminds me of global normal maps. So I don't think there's a connection, might be mistaken though.

 

I'll see if I can find something useful on this.

I think colour cubes represent colour filters. But interpreting them as an image is quite hard, I can't make sense of it. I doubt they are made directly, they are probably generated by some program according to some logic. We should ask @Cheerio about that.

[simplex]

Is this what you people had in mind?

Edited November 2, 2013 by simplex

[TeoSS69]

Is this what you people had in mind?

 

I've been waiting, but it isn't moving.

[Malacath]

I think colour cubes represent colour filters. But interpreting them as an image is quite hard, I can't make sense of it. I doubt they are made directly, they are probably generated by some program according to some logic. We should ask @Cheerio about that.

I'm quite sure now, after a quick search, that the different quadratic parts of the image represent "slices" of a whole cube. In that way each triplet of (r, g, b) represents one color in this cube. This would esentially mean that you have complete control over all colors up to a certain precision. The default color cube would thus be a linear scaling from black to white with red green and blue occupying the edges.

Does that make any sense?

 

 

Is this what you people had in mind?

This is basically exactly what I thought of. If we could now somehow make the darks less dark and more greyish it would fell more foggy instead of... well... dark. But I think that if I understand correctly how color cubes work it won't be achievable this way since it would essentially make all blacks brighter.

Edited November 2, 2013 by Malacath

[simplex]

I've been waiting, but it isn't moving.

What?

Anyway, here's the code:

ImmersiveView.zip

[TeoSS69]

What?

Anyway, here's the code:

ImmersiveView.zip

As in : Why is that not a gif

But the mod will do thank you!

[TeoSS69]

Looking good