What about void water or non existing water textures?

[Optimus Prime]

Hi

i asked it a long time ago and i have to ask it again. Before 0.73.x it was possible, to give a map a watertexture which didnt exist. I used this for my FF map like this: i didnt made any watertexture, but in the map .smd i named the used water texture "bla". So the compiler didnt found the texture and therefore it wasnt used and i had a completely transparent watertexture.
Now in the new spring version this feature is broken and therefore some very interesting FF maps dont work anymore.
Cant you PLEASE!!!!! bring this feature back? I mean it must be possible and it cant be so difficult, but it would be awesome!

[AF]

That isnt a feature its a bug used to create an effect as a hack ignoring the pretty tag that does it all for you. A tag I beleive was added in v0.67 months and months ago.

voidwater=1;

With that tag no texture is ever loaded and nothing below height 0 is ever rendered.

[Optimus Prime]

With that tag no texture is ever loaded and nothing below height 0 is ever rendered.

thats the problem with void water. I have a texture map UNDER the water and i want to see it. It simulates the stars and some features on the map and with void vater i cant see them. It just sucks.
Edit: even if it was a bug, why not implement it again and say its a feature? All maps worked with it and it was a great thing to siulate transparency... i dont get the reason why you "fixed" it.

[AF]

You see thats yet another dirty bug workaround.

Skymaps are what you want. Indeed the best space maps possible in spring are impossible using your technique, and your technique falls apart as soon as you change the viewing angle in spring, the illusion is broken and all your stuff starts to look even worse than it would if you did a shoddy skybox map.

Theres no reason why you cant model the undersides of an asteroid and place them as a feature. A skymap in spring can bring about space maps that look as pretty as Homeworld 2, afterall most of what makes a HW2 map pretty is in the skymap and the lighting.

I made extensive posts about this in smoths forum.

In the mean time there is only one way to get the water to dissapear and not terrain underneath to stay put, but it involves using SM3 and texture splatering, which means anything more complex than random stars and your screwed. In SM3 maps if the lowest point on the map is more than -10 points high, the water is never rendered.

[Optimus Prime]

sure it wouldnt be the best way to simulate space, but actually less than 5% play in another view angle than standard, so no one would notice the illusion.
Also the modeling of asteroids as features only works in theory. As far as i know, you can only place features very inexact per pixel on the low pixel feature map. The feature wouldnt fit with the asteroid textures and even than (if you model them so that they fit the asteroid textures), if you would change the view angle, you would see half round asteroids with a plain top.. thats still no real asteroid for me.
So all in all... space maps are not possible like in homeworld, BUT we can simulate them for one view angle and for me thats enough to play on them.
So back to my question: what would be bad by bringing back this "bug/feature"? Would any map be broken? I guess no. Would it slow down the performance? I guess no. So all we would win would be that we have some more maps we can play on.
(correct me if i m wrong)

[Pxtl]

Imho, the real problem that needs to be worked on wrt voidwater is that it's hideous - the sudden drop-off of the terrain is fugly. Imho, the neatest solution would be to have an inversion of the landscape below the original landscape - but that would be a huge pain to code.

To visualise - the following three landscapes would have the same heightmap:

Code: Select all

normal (no voidwater):
     ___^_
____/     \_____

Code: Select all

old voidwater:
     ___^_
    /     \     

Code: Select all

suggested voidwater:
     ___^_
    /     \     
    \___ _/     
        V

Of course, it's a hack, and the bottom of the mass would look silly, and the shadows would be borked - but it would look a damn sight nicer than the current "sudden cutoff" thing. At the very least a gradual fadeout would be nice.

ph33r my 45<|| 5k|11z

[PicassoCT]

You can manipulate the Mapconvertersettings (Heightmin, Heightmax) , so that the Water or VoidWater is completely beneath the Map...

[Optimus Prime]

but i need the water to be exactly under the flat asteroids, else spacecrafst have to go up if they want to fly over an asteroid and LOS and radars would be effected by that.
What i mean is that the water shall simulate a transparent surface for the units which effects their altitude.

[AF]

but i need the water to be exactly under the flat asteroids, else spacecrafst have to go up if they want to fly over an asteroid and LOS and radars would be effected by that.
What i mean is that the water shall simulate a transparent surface for the units which effects their altitude.

But in any half decent map that isnt as flat as a pancake this already happens.

What your tryign to do looks butt ugly as soon as you look at it from the side, unrealistic, and shoddy. Flat picture that look like space maps that'r designed for top down only view is just plain ridiculous in a full 3D engine.

The issues you give are not bugs or problems at all they're features, they're more realistic and they make the game much more believable..


I suggest you ditch the whole asteroid and water space thing and instead move to a skybox model of space mapping, make all buildings not require 'asteroids', and use features for asteroid and use a HW style harvesting model.

Or model your asteroids and place them ontop of hills like sinbad did.

[Optimus Prime]

sorry, but i m not a mapper. I just made one map because there were no ff maps at that time and all i want is to make this and other maps available again.
I dont have the time to put a lot of effort in map design. Not now and in the next 3 months.. perhaps later.

[AF]

Theres no need to revive a visually broken map if its gonna look just as borked when you fix it and have the same gameplay.