[Fox]

Is there any planning into including translucency (0-255) for normal sprites and rotatesprite? Since Polymost and Polymer doesn't use lookup palettes, I don't understand why would it be limited to 33% or 66% pre-defined flags.

[Gambini]

You can embed an alpha channel to your texture.

[Fox]

Which is not a good solution. And I want specifically to display a text with STARTALPHANUM which gradually fades away. That makes up 93 sprites × all palettes × 255. There aren't enough tiles avaiable in Eduke32 for that. Yek.

[Mblackwell]

If you want a gradual fade you need ... (let me think) probably 3-4 versions of every tile. Fade until right before 66% opacity, and then flip orientation bit 1 and start back at the first tile, then flip on orientation bit 32 after you hit close to 33% opacity and start over yet again.

Not the most convenient, but it would work.

Or you could make the text always transparent and stack multiple layers (and play with orientation to boot).

Again, not convenient but possible.

[Plagman]

Isn't that what the spriteext alpha member is? Is the issue here that it's not hooked up to rotatesprite, Fox?

[Helixhorned]

Yup, it's accessible from CON using {get,set}actor[].alpha or the sprite[].alpha inline array syntax even if it's not a member of either the internal actor[] or sprite[] arrays, but of the spriteext[] array. The values are on a 0-255 scale. Full alpha control for rotatesprite etc. is a thing for the future.

[Fox]

It's Polymer only. =S

[blizzart]

I just want to ask what´s the max numbers of pals I can define in a .def file.
For Brute Force I want to use different pals for model skins, so we can vary skin colors and clothes of enemies and NPCs.

Also I want to define new fogpals, too.

[Mark]

I took a quick look at the HRP defs and saw a few tiles that used 16 pals. No idea about the max allowed.

[Mblackwell]

Wasn't it 0-255?

[TerminX]

Yes, but a few of the higher values are reserved.

[blizzart]

Mblackwell, on 23 February 2013 - 06:12 PM, said:

Wasn't it 0-255?

TerminX, on 23 February 2013 - 06:43 PM, said:

Yes, but a few of the higher values are reserved.

Thank you both Mblackwell and TerminX,
that are enough for sure. I just wanted to know, if I can have more than 64 palettes.


But another question: can I define a normal map to a texture only once or can I have a normal map for every pal I use?

[Fox]

Just a small request, is it possible to return the badguy check from the source code in CON? Thanks.

[Mblackwell]

blizzart, on 24 February 2013 - 12:40 AM, said:

Thank you both Mblackwell and TerminX,
that are enough for sure. I just wanted to know, if I can have more than 64 palettes.


But another question: can I define a normal map to a texture only once or can I have a normal map for every pal I use?

Once.

[blizzart]

Mblackwell, on 24 February 2013 - 06:02 AM, said:

Once.

That´s sad. This would have give us the opportunity to use skins with many differences like beards, hair or no hair and much more.

Anyway, it´s not that big problem, so we will stay to different skin colors and clothes.

[Mark]

Use the skins with beard and hats like regular. When making the alt pal skins, leave the beard or hat area transparent. It should work fine when applied to the model.

[Mblackwell]

But the normal would still affect it (I think... ?). But since it's an attached prop you could probably get away with a separate model that follows the animations of your actor and just lock it to the actor's position.

[Micky C]

Is there any way of having both a fogpal and a regular pal on a sector? Maybe some way through con code? Or perhaps in the future with the new map format?

[Kyanos]

The Big Cheese, on 01 March 2013 - 03:21 AM, said:

Is there any way of having both a fogpal and a regular pal on a sector? Maybe some way through con code? Or perhaps in the future with the new map format?

What are you trying to do here? I bet that whatever the results are you're looking for, they will be possible using some con code.

[Micky C]

Well for example have an entire area blue (using pal 1 everywhere), however have a non-black fogpal.

I realized since making that post that I can get an effect very similar to what I wanted by using pal for fogpal, and the con effect to create an underwater global pal (as long as you've hooked up highpalookup to the underwater pals )
So in the mean time it's all good, however if I or anyone else in the wants to use other colours then they're in trouble.

[Kyanos]

There are more game palettes than just water, and more pals to choose from than you can shake a stick at. I'm curious now what might happen if I define a fogpal and highpal to the same pal number, will both be applied, or one or the other?

Hmmm... possibilities here, too much to talk about, no time, here's a pic. Everything is pal 26 a gray fogpal, I also defined it as a highpallookup, the pal 4 all black... 8-bit art stays normal while hightiles and models change.

[Micky C]

Hmm that's a good solution, defining both, however it would need to work for 8 bit art as well, not just high res textures and models. Don't worry about it though, I'm satisfied with my original solution (still provided that you've hooked up the underwater highpal, I haven't updated lately).

[Steveeeie]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, or if its something other have noticed.

Models with alpha maps in the hrp have a bit of a problem.

If polys have an alpha map applied to them, the become transparent(expected) but polys sitting behind also become transparent, is there a way around this?

I will follow this up with a screen shortly.

[Micky C]

We know what you're talking about. It can be fixed eventually, but there are higher priorities.

[Steveeeie]

The Big Cheese, on 02 March 2013 - 04:41 AM, said:

We know what you're talking about. It can be fixed eventually, but there are higher priorities.

Thanks

Do you know if there is support for two sided textures ? I'm currently getting around it by flipping duplicated polys atm, but its a bit of a waste of resources
.

[Micky C]

Steveeeie, on 02 March 2013 - 04:46 AM, said:

Thanks

Do you know if there is support for two sided textures ? I'm currently getting around it by flipping duplicated polys atm, but its a bit of a waste of resources
.

I'm not a dev, just a mapper who spends a shameful amount of time on these forums, and utters jargon that I occasionally read about here without understanding
I'm on my phone right now haha.
But IIRC I don't think there is at the moment, but it will probably be added in the future.

Just to be on the safe side, wait and see what Plagman has to say about it.

[Mark]

I'm not up on the tech speak either, but if it means anything I think "backface culling" might be enabled in the engine. Would that be your problem?

Other will know for sure.

[Gambini]

Steveeeie, on 02 March 2013 - 04:46 AM, said:

Thanks

Do you know if there is support for two sided textures ? I'm currently getting around it by flipping duplicated polys atm, but its a bit of a waste of resources
.

In the meantime, duplicating the desired polygons and inverting their normal to simulate "nocull" is technically less expensive (at least in other engines for which I do models from time to time). And you dont need all polys to be double sided anyway.

[Plagman]

Yeah, that's the way to go. The problem with translucency is a general thing that I need to tackle, but as a general rule of thumb make sure translucent parts of your model are in their own surface, and if there is specific disjoint parts make sure they're on separate surfaces as well, so that the engine can sort them roughly.

[Kyanos]

Plagman, on 02 March 2013 - 09:30 AM, said:

Yeah, that's the way to go. The problem with translucency is a general thing that I need to tackle, but as a general rule of thumb make sure translucent parts of your model are in their own surface, and if there is specific disjoint parts make sure they're on separate surfaces as well, so that the engine can sort them roughly.

It's nice to have rules like this! Any other tidbits you'd like to share. I have many models with transparency and have learned parts of this rule the hard way. However it's news to me to that it's a well known general rule, it's not always easy learning these quirks.