[Ryan Cordell]

X-Com like stuff? Duke 3D? An insane coder behind it?

Woot! Color me impressed. =)

[Jan Satcitananda]

Btw, something more about colors. I've reworked access locks and cards a bit. Now they form so-called MultiActors; in fact, several sprites acting as an organic whole. In this instance each lock is rendered by two sprites which utilize my special palette set; the main sprite holds the tile "background" (what is everything but blue colors & fullbrights), and other one is dedicated to the "foreground" (repainted sequence of blues). Since these two layers are distributed to separate sprites, their shades and pals can be manipulated independently.



The standard set of key colors (blue, red & yellow) has been adapted to more saturated colors (similar to Doom's keys). On the screenshot above, one can tell what color each lock has, despite the intense red tint. In vanilla Duke, any non-zero floor palette overrides all sprite pals and by that makes such locks indistinguishable.

Another option is the random selection of three colors out of 12 for use with keycards. I would employ all 23 colors possible in my mod, but some of them have too few shades to represent dark regions of tiles correctly (the access card sprite is very dark generally). Here I've got lime, yellow and violet cards. Nevertheless, my realization doesn't support more than three colors at the same time. Also, the messages displayed overhead are treated as "system messages", but actually they should have internal type.



The message system shown on the screenshot can display up to 8 messages simultaneously. Later I should add a support of multiline messages. The message system is an essential part of the planned telecommunication gadgetry. Thus, all messages will be categorized into following classes:
Incoming - message received from an NPC
Outcoming - message sent to an NPC
Internal - message from onboard systems
External - received public transmission
Intercepted - encoded private transmission between NPCs intercepted
System - message generated by the game engine (not affecting the gameplay)
Pickup - dubs items being picked up
Status Update - notifies when a nearby NPC goes online or offline

[Tea Monster]

Hang on a minute, so you are telling me that you have got colour-bleeding and some kind of environment lighting into DN3D? Holy crap! I think Cryengine 3 has just announced that they put that stuff in there.

[Jan Satcitananda]

It may be called like that. However I'm doing something that strikingly differs in technical aspects from how modern engines work, and EDuke32 seems to be perfectly suitable for experimental projects like this one (as a less labor-intensive alternative to writing my own engine from scratch). I've created some tables which tell the game how the palettes & shades should be modified when combined with each other (specifically, tables of sums and products loaded into game arrays). Also, HDR rendering already works like a charm, and maps can have practically infinite dynamic contrast ratio. I keep investigating what else Build engine is capable of, but I'm already facing performance issues on complex maps.

[Jan Satcitananda]

Just done some tweaking of my mod and it looks interesting. Don't ask me how I did that, I dunno myself how the effect works.

[Headless_Horseman]

I must say WTF ! It that Duke ? And WITHOUT Polymer ?
Please, please, release something !

[Player Lin]

CraigFatman, on 01 April 2011 - 02:25 AM, said:

Just done some tweaking of my mod and it looks interesting. Don't ask me how I did that, I dunno myself how the effect works.

Awesome... but it looks weird.......wait! Isn't April 1 will coming?...

[Micky C]

141 frames per second isn't bad for something that realistic looking

[bullerbullerseven]

You guys got fucking OWNED HAHAHAHAAAA

[Jimmy]

Yes, because everyone believed it, Jhect.

[Gambini]

Well i have to admit it got me wondering for about a minute where the feature was.

[Micky C]

CraigFatman, on 01 April 2011 - 02:25 AM, said:

Just done some tweaking of my mod and it looks interesting. Don't ask me how I did that, I dunno myself how the effect works.

Headless_Horseman, on 01 April 2011 - 04:35 AM, said:

I must say WTF ! It that Duke ? And WITHOUT Polymer ?
Please, please, release something !

TBO I might have actually fallen for it if there weren't all the cars and trucks around. But I agree with Headless Horseman, release something!!!

[Headless_Horseman]

Oh, great, I hadn't realized it was the !st of April. YHBT, of course.
But anyway : RELEASE SOMETHING !

[bullerbullerseven]

Just to make things clear:

I wasn't trying to troll captain awesome, it was just a joke. I'm not sure if you noticed that

[Jan Satcitananda]

*trollface*

Now god serious mode on. Since you guys are eager to play something, I'll prepare a playable version (with some of the new features) which works with original Duke 3D content (episodes & items) within a month or so. I'm busy at my studies so I can't do that any sooner. Recently I was promising to upload a video with some gameplay as well, so of course you'll see it "when it's done".

Today I've implemented multiline game messages, so they won't be constrained by a single line of text anymore. Still most dynamic quotes will remain single-line due to technical difficulties; like in access card related messages where card's color is inserted into the quote to display.

Most features require a lot of work to be completed, so basically what I have to code for an upcoming "LameLNGA" release is some GUI processing (at last), some lens flare revisions and various fixes & optimizations. Withal, I keep looking for efficient ways to deal with stability and performance problems I face during mod's development. Damn proggy tends to crash in certain places for no apparent reason.

[Wolf]

CraigFatman, on 03 April 2011 - 02:11 PM, said:

...Since you guys are eager to play something, I'll prepare a playable version...

That's great news. Your mod has long been one I'm eager to play around with, and I'm sure (or at least really hope) the people here wouldn't mind if some glitches/situational crashing couldn't be ironed out in the end. It would still be extremely interesting to see!

[High Treason]

Yep, I'll be waiting, should be fun to see what you have been working on.

[Jimmy]

Sounds radical!

[Jan Satcitananda]

So, now it isn't very far from something that I could release here. I'm accomplishing the lens flare code. Recently I've recoded all switches to produce accurate flares with more ease (using minimum lines of code), as well as to provide interpolation for moving flares. This affects the projectiles and other luminous stuff as well.



There are no artifacts caused by internally reflected light on the screenshot above; but I've recoded them a bit today and now they look close to what they should be. To achieve maximum authenticity, I'm looking into various real-life samples like this one:



This is a still from some NASA footage about the Space Shuttle missions. The Sun causes intense flare running across the screen there. Today I've tried to imitate it using my flare renderer and got this:



The size of light patches is now depending on the f-number of the virtual camera (actually they should repeat the shape and size of the aperture; this is why these artifacts are hexagonal on the real shot). This screenshot was taken at f/8 aperture (default is f/4 which is twice wider). I'll have to fix some minor problems regarding this and other things before uploading a video, but I hope that it won't take very long, 'cause I'm about to capture something this week.

[CruX]

Captain Awesome, on 25 September 2010 - 03:28 PM, said:

I have no idea what I'm looking at. One of my favorite things about this mod, is that you are doing some scientific shit I cannot understand with my puny retard brain.

QFT. Every time you give us an update about this mod, it boggles my fucking mind.

[Sebastian]

This and the Super Trooper is easily the most awaited thing I'm waiting for. Keep making awesome stuff, man.

[Wolf]

I haven't been this excited for a duke mod since playing the SST demo and waiting for the full thing, hah.

[Gambini]

clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap!!!

This is what polymer switches should look like and you made it for software mode!

[Danukem]

Gambini, on 13 April 2011 - 05:11 PM, said:

clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap!!!

This is what polymer switches should look like and you made it for software mode!

Well, they do look better than switches/buttons with Polymer light, and hats off to Lezing for that!

However, saying that Polymer switches should look like that is kind of silly, since Lezing's switches don't cast any real light and Polymer ones do.

[Jan Satcitananda]

DeeperThought, on 13 April 2011 - 05:18 PM, said:

However, saying that Polymer switches should look like that is kind of silly, since Lezing's switches don't cast any real light and Polymer ones do.

They don't because my dynamic lighting procedures are very far from being completed. Besides, the only type of light source supported is the omnidirectional point light (the sunlight in the previous post is simulated by a point light as well), and switches are to use planar lights. In any case, lights on switches are not that bright to light up surrounding objects unless the room is really dark, so...

It's time to "kick ass and chew bubblegum". Here's what I've captured from 3rd episode:
The game mechanics is pretty much the same as in vanilla Duke, so the video is about things like HDR rendering with flares and color mixing. Some HUD features are also featured. As you can see, I'm close to releasing some sort of a WIP snapshot. Note that the crosshair set is incomplete and designed for other weapons, thus it may seem not fitting to standard Duke weapons. For example, in my current plan 6th weapon is the 6-barrel machine gun and 9th is the salvo launcher.

I had to disable the hard-coded lighting effects due to their incompatibility with my table of shades. Eventually they should be replaced by my own versions. I'd say, the mod as a whole is a never-ending challenge of overriding various hard-coded crap.

[Micky C]

It's so bright! The shades (sunglasses) aren't working! It's amazing how subtle most of the effects (and there are a lot of them) are yet they add quite a bit to the realism. I also thought the splashes were really good. I can't wait to try it out

[Gambini]

Really impressive. The flares, the dynamic contrast effect, the crosshairs. In terms of effects, this mod is several steps ahead than any other thing i ever seen for eduke.

[Gambini]

I missed this:

DeeperThought, on 13 April 2011 - 05:18 PM, said:

However, saying that Polymer switches should look like that is kind of silly, since Lezing's switches don't cast any real light and Polymer ones do.

What is a real light? The effect used for those switches is just as real (or even more) as the lights of Polymer.

[zykov eddy]

Awesome, love it, especially logo and splash animations. Keep it up. Can't wait for beta version.

[Jimmy]

Looking good! Though I would say that the flares, contrast lighting, and some other brightness related things are maybe a bit over-stated. Also, frozen enemies should be opaque.