How do we solve the problem of outdoor distant objects?

[Gambit37]

Is it possible to solve this issue? I don't like how my items and monsters suddenly appear at 3 steps away, when it looks like you can see for miles!

At the moment, the only way of doing it is to make all backgrounds appear to be quite 'foggy' and fade all items to white. It's still unconvincing though due to the horizon. Raising it higher helps a little (which is what I've done), but it still looks odd.

I think the only way to handle this is for the engine to go much further back, say up to 9 tiles, but obviously this is never going to happen.

Maybe it's time to move to fully 3D!

[beowuuf]

The mechanics heavy solution would be to have monsters and party generated floor objects with the appropriate image projected forwards. You could always have a pretty generic silhouette for monsters

I wonder if you could code lua script in DSB to do that automatically?

If CSB had other options for its overlays such as transparency and allowing monsters ontop of them, it might be doable under that

[Sophia]

I wonder if you could code lua script in DSB to do that automatically?

You could, but the effect might still be unconvincing.

I think the larger obstacle is the widening of one's field of view. In the current DM perspective, it's only necessary to look at a row three tiles-- you see a small amount of the walls of a fourth and fifth, but it's not very detailed. So all you really need is front views, side views, perspective views, and a "far wall," for this one extra field of view at the most distant perspective.

What kind of wallset and what kind of crazy wall angles would you need to display all the different things you could see at nine tiles out!

[Gambit37]

No wallset at all! IE, outdoors areas that have no walls and just a ceiling/floor that simulates a horizon. Linflas does it in FoD and I'm doing a lot of it in Bloodbane Rising. You limit the play area with pillars (trees in my case) that are more than three squares away from a wall -- that way you never see the retaining wall and it looks like you can see for miles.

There's some sample screen shots in the developers forum if you want to see, but I'll need to add you to the user group if so.

[Sophia]

In that case, we'd just need to decide how many tiles (laterally) you could view at what range, and where on the screen items that are lying on the ground at each range ought to be drawn, and I can have this hacked into DSB in a week or two.

How's that for never going to happen!

[Gambit37]

I wasn't suggesting it was doable or likely.

I'm still wondering if there are other clever ways of doing it using existing mechanics.

[Sophia]

It's not likely if nobody's going to use it, that's for sure.

[Gambit37]

'It' being DSB? Or the feature in general?

Will respond to your latest PM soon

[Sophia]

Both-- I actually meant this feature, in DSB. It's not going to happen unless I'm sure someone will actually use it, of course. Why bother otherwise.

[zoom]

How long would it take to have DSB handle ultra high resolution mode? a many would go DSB more willingly(end of offtopic)

[Gambit37]

We've discussed that elsewhere. It's not really related to this current discussion.

[zoom]

yeah, I know. sigh

[beowuuf]

Can I just state that when January 20th comes around, I hope that Obama makes this problem one of the first he deals with

[zoom]

lol

[Joramun]

Both-- I actually meant this feature, in DSB. It's not going to happen unless I'm sure someone will actually use it, of course. Why bother otherwise.

The only person I see using high-res stuff is Linflas.
(my apologies to anyone doing hi-res graphics)

I'd gladly see him make a dungeon for DSB, but it seems his current project is too advanced in RTC to be transferred.
(and don't talk about my dungeon converter, it's crappy crap)

I would gladly code things for a dsb dungeon, but I don't have much time,
and my own dungeon ideas would take years and high graphics skills (which I don't have) to implement, since most of them involve: outdoors, new items, new spells, new monsters...

[Gambit37]

The only person I see using high-res stuff is Linflas. (my apologies to anyone doing hi-res graphics)

Apology accepted!

You're not looking hard enough:

http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=27781

[linflas]

[french]franchement le hi-res à la Gambit, ça pète grave sa race non ? [/french]

I'd gladly see him make a dungeon for DSB, but it seems his current project is too advanced in RTC to be transferred.

and honestly, sometimes i think about switching to DSB... mostly when i shave my legs before going to the Christmas Elves Gay Dance Party.

[Joramun]

Sorry, seriously O.T.

Apology accepted!

You're not looking hard enough:

http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=27781

Yeah it rocks !
[french]Ca déchire sa maman même ![/french]

Christmas Elves G. Dance Party...

Dude, I'm a Dwarf, I go to the
Underground Beardy Beardy Thunderdome Rave Party
There's an Anvil&Hammer expo, lots of drums, axes, and
a Moria-full of kegs of Dwarven Ale and bottles of Cave Spirit.

[linflas]

couldn't enter that party, even with my fake beard
end of OT.

but seriously, i *really*think about switching to DSB !

[Sophia]

I'm actually already discussing this with Gambit.

If you feel like articulating your thoughts, send me a PM on what it'd take to push you over the edge. Don't worry about sounding too demanding; a code hacker like me is genuinely curious what you "graphical" types think.

[Gambit37]

I don't think at all. I just go "Oooh, pwetty pictwures! Me wants to make sum ov doze!"

[Parallax]

With existing mechanics, you can make a static object visible from more than three tiles away, as Linflas showed in his Forest of Doom demo (sorry if someone else had done it before, this is earliest example I know of.)
For dynamic objects, though, like monsters and items that can be picked up, it seems like a nightmare. Even a generic monster shape with the correct lateral offset for displaying monsters four tiles away would likely require a modification of the engine. For DSB, it might be possible to add something in the "executed-at-every-time-step" loop, but there is a comment there that specifies that the operations conducted by that loop shouldn't be too time-consuming. And even then, it means looping over every tile in the new field of view and creating phantom flooritems on the third row of tiles with custom offsets, so that they get rendered when they should be (in the rendering loop, I mean), keeping in mind that whoever will code this lua add-on (that is, not me) will have to think carefully about the order in which the items will be drawn so that a monster shape 4 tiles away doesn't get overdrawn by a monster shape 6 tiles away.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: good luck with that!

[Sophia]

In the case of DSB, it would be easier for all involved for me to just work with an artsy person to figure out some sensible default coordinates and a field of view, and implement dynamically scaled flooritems, pickableuppables, etc., out to that new larger field of view. Statically scaled flooritems as well as wallsets won't ever work beyond the initial DM range because the graphics just don't exist, and I don't feel like even going there. Fortunately, the good news is that in large outdoor wallsets, most graphics are generated via the previous two means, not the latter two.

For the sake of compatibility I'd probably make it a per-level parameter: the engine won't try to draw out more than 3 tiles unless you explicitly tell it to.

[Gambit37]

Sounds intriguing! Id be up for helping out with that, though not until next year.

Hopefully, I'll get a bit of time over the holidays to take a proper look at DSB. I'd like to spend some time with it first to see if I might be able to work with it.

[Gambit37]

it would be easier for me to work with an artsy person to figure out some sensible default coordinates and a field of view, and implement dynamically scaled flooritems, pickableuppables, etc.,

Is this somehting you would still consider? If so, I am very happy to work with you on this.

Statically scaled flooritems as well as wallsets won't ever work beyond the initial DM range because the graphics just don't exist, and I don't feel like even going there

Not sure what you mean by statically scaled items -- do you mean the pre-drawn doorframes and the like?
I do think wallsets would have to be extended though. If you went to 5 tiles for items, you still need two more walls to be displayed.

I'm really liking DSB now that I'm getting in to it, but the 3 tiles view is so limiting. I'd love to have more tiles ahead if it's possible. Let me know if you'd seriously consider it and perhaps we can solve it together?

[Sophia]

Well, that was 3 years ago. I think the DSB rendering code has become somewhat more restrictive due to other ways it's grown in the meantime. For example, back then, I think I hadn't yet implemented changing the wallset for individual floor tiles, which would be annoying to do at a greater distance. Not that you'd notice it very much, anyway.

The huge annoyance in extending wallsets is that then I have to widen the field of view and figure out what to do with wallitems at those distances. The current implementation in DSB uses the "far wall" that fades to black and doesn't have wallitems displayed on it, because it's basically too dark to see. This is the same wall used in RTC and DM 2.x. This means the only wallitems I need to draw are either from straight ahead or a simple side wall perspective, because, except for these two squares that have no wallitems shown on them, the DM view is entirely confined to a "tunnel" three squares wide. DM 3.x (and old versions of RTC) did show wallitems on these extended squares; they did this weird bitmap stretching thing that worked ok (mostly) with DM's default wallitem graphics, but I'm pretty sure with custom graphics you'd end up with some very strange looking graphics.

And yes, by statically scaled flooritems, I mean pre-drawn doorframes, pits, stairs, and so on. As opposed to dynamically scaled, like items, monsters, doors, and so on.

[Gambit37]

It's cool, I wasn't trying to put pressure on you or anything. Don't worry about it.

[Chaos-Shaman]

i think adamski is on the right track