DF-21 Forums

[sheepandshepherd]

I just had an . . . interesting . . . idea. I know that in DF, floor and ceiling textures HAD to be 64x64, and that would limit how interesting your level could be. But what if I made a flat 3do with my larger texture and placed it right on top of the floor? I've never seen anyone do it, but it should work . . . I'll probably test it later on when I have time.
Of course, once DarkXL is finished, we won't need this workaround anymore, will we?

[Pumpkinetics]

It was used in DT4, to an extent. In the former senate building there are several imperial logos on the floor created (I believe) by 3D0s.

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[sheepandshepherd]

Yeah . . . one thing that was used a whole bunch of times in the DT series was 3do ceilings, but I'm sure they used some floors as well, especially in DT3.

[lucius]

[sheepandshepherd]

Hmm . . . I didn't think it was that bad with the texture distortion . . . but either way, the place I'll probably using it for won't matter, the swimming would kinda fit the creepy environment

I haven't played all the way through Jungles of Caldoun, but I'm guessing it uses a lot of 3dos, judging by the amazing amount of natural-looking scenery I saw in the short part that I have played . . .

This "swimming" problem and the other 3do problems will be fixed in DarkXL, right? Also, will normal walls, floors, and ceilings be able to clip 3dos correctly?

And one final question - in DF, how far away could a 3do be rendered? And if a very far wall was causing HOMs, will a 3do blocking the HOM still render correctly? I'll probably have to use a very large 3do for the mountainous exterior background I'm creating in my mod . . .

[lucius]

[sheepandshepherd]

[Matt H]

You might want to take a look at Naboo Reactor Core, the "winner" of the 2005: As Seen in Star Wars contest (it was also the only entry). It has many floor 3dos for a larger floor texture.

Here's the thing - you can't even make a simple grid of 8x8 DFU textures. A wrap-around distortion happens at the edges. So the the flat 3dos need to overlap each other, and the individual textures then need to be offset to compensate.

If I remember correctly, I overlapped by around 2 DFU on each side. (Maybe 1 - I don't remember.) So four 8x8 DFU textures in a 2x2 square would actually cover 14x14 DFU. A 3x3 square would cover 20x20 DFU. And you want make sure to leave a buffer of clear space at the edges so the wrap-around doesn't happen.

So between the clear cusion, the overlap, and the offsetting, a lot of the 64x64 pixel texture gets lost.

You could also crack open DT4 and look at the imperial emblem textures, how they are offset. That might help. Looking back, I see that I had 6 pixels of overlap and 6 pixels of clear-space on each of the 4 textrues. So I guess there were actually 104 pixels, or 13 DFU, in a 2x2 texture grid.

So if you had a large texture, you would divide it by 52 pixel squares, and overlay that onto a 64 pixel grid and do the right offsetting.

Oy. It's complicated...

[sheepandshepherd]

Yeah, I didn't think it would work out too well . . . at least DarkXL will soon solve that problem

[Barry Brien]

Yeah the 'plane' setting, as used in Matt's imerial logo 3dos, only replicates standard 8x8 floor/ceiling textures. Using proper texcturing can make it look quite messy.

[Nottheking]

Ah, the joys of low-precision texture parallaxing. As I recall, this was also an issue with the Sony Playstation, though there it was possible to simply make a continuous grid of 32x32 pixel blocks without much issue.

But as for Dark Forces? Yeah, I tried that, but it didn't work out too hot. It could be done okay with floor/ceiling textures, though if you look at the floor sideways (i.e, while strafing over the border) you'll notice the edge bend until you step over.

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