DescentBB

Okay, I've sort of got a request.

Diedel, I don't mean to tell you how to do your task or anything, but do you think it would be possible to slow down the release rate for D2X-W32 to maybe something on a weekly basis? As more things get added, other things break (like the door transparency). That's something that would have been easily caught if the game was played on level 1. The constantly, daily upgrading makes it difficult to keep pace with what's going on, as well as making it unreliable to work with. One build you'll be banging your head against the wall over some feature that's "broken" that once worked, not knowing if it's your fault or not. All I'm saying is that it would be smoother if you could provide weekly updates and maybe keep a small cadre of users available to test the build in between official releases.

To add to what Kyouryuu said, weekly releases that are tested by a small group of minions voulenteers.

"minion"!

Well ... I can understand you. Do you understand me?

(Did you understand that? )

Maybe I should simply apply some more thorough testing before releasing new stuff.

The new rendering code has more side effects than I had expected.

Taos11 seems ok on my machines though (or I simply did not find the places where the renderer doesn't work as it should).

Btw, I am having a hard time creating a semi-transparent texture like the meshed window with Paint Shop Pro (I am starting to hate this program. I can't be so hard to add alpha info to an image, or can it? )

Kyo,

I have no problem if ppl ask me to change something in D2X-W32, or tell me there is a bug if they're reasonably polite, and don't feel pushed by that. So you guys don't need to assure me you aren't pushing me. It's only if ppl start to moan at me or say "you have to do this and that" - but this rarely happens (and meanwhile I have come to know certain ppl and they way they use to express themselves here a little better, so tolerance is increasing.)

Can anybody explain me how to add transparency to an image with Paintshop Pro 9 (sh1t program that it is)?

Diedel wrote:Can anybody explain me how to add transparency to an image with Paintshop Pro 9 (sh1t program that it is)?

Will this help?
http://www.psphelp.com/v7_transparency.php

Thx, but no. I need to figure how to set a pixel's alpha value with PSP (v9). Everything I have tried has failed so far.

If it's something like the glass texture that I used, the luminescence will be consistent with the transparency, so the easiest way would be to create a new mask layer based on the image's luminescence, and then create an alpha channel from that. I don't really get how masks and alpha channels really differ in functionality though. Masks have always seemed like an unnecessary middle man.

Jeff,

I need the exact procedure. So far I have tried to following:

1. Create a selection surrounding the transparent-to-be area.
2. Promote the selection to a layer.
3. Set that layer's transpareny to lets say 50%.
4. Save the selection to an alpha channel.
5. (Optionally merge all layers).
6. Save the image.

Did not work. Next I tried:

1. Promote the image to a layer.
2. Set that layer's transpareny to lets say 50%.
3. Save the image.

Did not work. Did I already mention that I hate PSP?

The transparent TGA-based texture rendering bug is fixed. I would probably not have found it if I hadn't been working on high-res texture processing so much the last days. The simple reason is that for high-res textures from pog files no transparency flags were set when loading them.

Btw, you can now override arbitrary animated textures by replacing their primary texture (first frame) with a TGA file containing all replacement frames stacked on top of each other (i.e. first frame at the top, 2nd frame below it, etc). The image height must be a multiple of the image width. You can even add more frames than the overloaded animation has.

Wow, the things TGA supported that I never knew of...

I assume, though, that using the TGA like so doesn't change the spacing between frames? Either that or the total animation time... one or the other (actually I think Descent 2 used both, for whatever reason) was loaded out of the PIG...

Currently, frame time isn't changed. That means having more frames will take the complete animation to take longer to cycle through all frames (which is not desirable in the case of doors - I have yet to figure a fix for these).

D2x-w32 crashes if run under Windows98. I realize Windows98 isn't NT based, but doesn't it support the w32 api? Should you be able to run it under windows98?

spud

I don't know. I don't have Win98.

Depends on a lot of things... drivers, mainly... that I can think of.

Did older D2X-W32 versions run on Win98 for you?

I once had Win98. If you use it for a sufficiently long time w/o reinstalling, it will eventually clobber its drivers, or some system info tables, or whatever, so badly that it will slowly cease to function properly.

If you and your machine can afford it, get WinXP.

Diedel: Try Image -> Palette -> Set Palette Transparency.

Diedel wrote:Jeff,

I need the exact procedure. So far I have tried to following:

Yes, it can be frustrating, but I don't know if Photoshop is any easier because I've never used it. I only have v8, but this is exactly what I did to use D3's reinforced glass texture (meshglass.tga):

I opened it. Went to the layers menu -> new mask layer -> "from image...". Select source luminance. Don't check inverse.

Now go to the layers menu -> load/save mask -> save mask to alpha channel. And then save it.

This also reminds me. If the tga already has an alpha channel (possibly a blank white one), you should delete it from image menu -> delete alpha channel, and then select it and delete it.

Now, on the right there is hopefully among many tools a layer display. Right click on the mask and hit delete. If it asks you to merge the mask, hitting no will just delete the mask. Hitting yes will try to merge the transparency as further luminance in the image. This isn't always useful, especially since (unbeknownst to PSP) we already have the transparency saved in the alpha channel, but can be in this case. E.g. hitting yes will cause it to look more whitish as it would in D3. Hitting no will cause it to look more bluish like it would in taos11. Since then I've gone the white "yes" route though, although I still think I need to play around with it more though.

If you want to simply add an arbitrary constant amount of transparency to any image, the best route I found was to make a new image and just fill it solid with some greyscale color and then use the same procedure above, except instead of importing the source luminance of, say, meshglass.tga, use the solid grey picture. The edit:darker, the more transparent, unless you hit invert.

I haven't had to work with transparency on a pixel-to-pixel level basis, and I'm still looking for good methods myself. I guess there's always the eraser tool?

Also, I'd like to confirm that the alpha transparency bug I was experiencing was fixed beautifully.

I think we all can agree on the speed of the releases, and the spagetti code that you are forced to work with. It seems for every 1 thing that is fixed 2 side-effects are generated. you know 1 step forward 2 steps back. It would drive me crazy if I was in your shoes

There is definately a small elite group on KALI willing to test your builds before each release, especially for a stable multiplayer... all you have to do is ask and ill get you a list, 5 users ok?

Tested Stable Multiplayer build is 1.4.46

Well I decided to play around with it on a pixel-by-pixel basis, and an easy way seems to be to just create a new fully white/opaque mask and select it from the layers thingy on the right. Then everything goes greyscale, and greyness/transparency can be manipulated with any tool like anything else. Unfortunately, I don't see how I would, say, use the fill tool to fill in a certain part of the image a certain grey/transparency based on the image itself's color. I would think that this would be possible.

you know, you don't need to generate alpha channels from the image... just create a fourth channel/layer.

Then treat it like masking tape, except more flexible.

Thanks for all the help on alpha channels. There is a guy in my company who could explain me how to do it. If you create an extra alpha layer, you need to colorize it with a brush/pen and the brushes opacity determines the opacity of the alpha layer; that would work for single pixels, too, and allow you to specify the exact alpha value.

flip,

• thanks for the precise and minute description of the process.

Kyo,

• that only works for palettized images.

Bubba,

• well ... nobody forces you to always get the latest version ... ... but then I would probably not find out about bugs in it. I would love to have you 5 guys test UDP/IP functionality. I wonder whether it is stable enough to support a 6 or 8 player match w/o problems, because there were these reports of some players not being visible, or being dropped from the game, and this is something I cannot reproduce in a LAN because that is much too stable and too fast. I have re-checked communication: With UDP/IP, game participants unicast their data to each other player, with the game host providing extra sync data to keep all players at the same state (type and position of powerups, etc.)
  
  Btw., if your connection allows for it, don't play with short packets - player positions will frequently be interpolated when using them, which does not happen with long packets.
  
  The transparency bug when using TGA based textures I have now fixed was in D2X-W32 for quite a while though, and just happened to surface again when I was changing other (though related) stuff. Coincidence? No, just accidental. Same is true for the "cannot move to upmost option in controls config menu" bug (that was a real old bug).

Jeff,

• thanks for the info. PSP v8 isn't far from v9 (I have both). You can work on image sub areas by using a selection.
  
  Btw, I 'stole' your mesh glass texture from your level :
  
  

Camera performance improved!

Before the fix I had framerates drop below 10 fps w/ Athlon 64 3500+ s939 + GF FX 5200 @ 640x480 even if the cameras had a refresh rate of only 5 times per second. Now I am having 30 fps with full speed camera refresh, two monitors in sight, and transparent textures around. The frame rate gets about halved by the cameras (well, D2X-W32 has to make a full rendering pass for each visible monitor's camera), but still stays within acceptable bounds even with my low end gfx card.

Btw, you can see a camera view on the screen shot right above this post, behind the fusion cannon.

Btw, I 'stole' your mesh glass texture from your level

Oh, yep, that works too.

And selections, duh, I should have thought of that.

Its been awhile since I last checked in and I have to say I am extremely impressed with the hi res texture work so far. It makes the game look incredible. Now on to my little suggestion since I have no bugs to report.

Adding the Fusion slider was a fantastic idea for those of us who are D1 nuts and missed its bone crunching power when using d2x-w32 to play the D1 levels. Another weapon that got toned down for D2 was the good old Mega Missile. I don't know what the exact specs are, and in most cases the damage it dishes out is moot - get hit with one directly and your going to respawn - but it'd be nice to have. Just a thought I've been mulling over for awhile now if you ever feel inclined. I'd say that bugfixes should come before it though.

Arayenya/Matrix

Jeff,

transparency setting still doesn't work.

I have selected the area of the image I wanted to be semi-transparent (inner, red part of teleport bitmap), saved the selection to an alpha channel, loaded a mask from that alpha channel, deleted the alpha channel.

Now I don't know how to edit the mask. It still shows the dashed, animated selection frame, and I cannot fill it with the fill tool and desired fill tool opacity or whatever to set subsequently set the alpha channel to that value.

I saw somebody use the feature where you can have your powerups spew at your start point. I thought it was a bug at first. Is it supposed to be a fairness feature?

I'm running 1.4.47 and I turned on the "fixed powerup spawn points" gameplay option and sure enough, my powerups were with me when I spawned. I went back into the game and turned it off, but it was stuck on. I had to reinstall 1.4.47 to get it to reset.

spud

There is no feature where your spew will spawn at your spawn point. A spawn point is chosen randomly among all available spawn points in a level when a player is to respawn.

There is an option where you can have powerups that had been collected in the level will respawn at their original location after being used (missiles) or dropped. Imo this is a feature to alter gameplay a little, as player positions get more predictable (as they will seek to pick up weapons after respawning), but that has nothing to do with spew.

Diedel wrote:I have selected the area of the image I wanted to be semi-transparent (inner, red part of teleport bitmap), saved the selection to an alpha channel, loaded a mask from that alpha channel, deleted the alpha channel.

you need to keep the alpha channel. luminosity of each pixel in the alpha channel dictates the transparency for image.

My friend UJC has the spawn/spew problem, we're both running 1.4.48. When I kill UJC he sees his spew at his death point, I see his spew near where he spawns.

We've messed with the gameplay options "fixed powerups spawnpoints" and "always spawn missles" or something like that, but to no effect.

turn off fast respawn

Stable Multiplayer build is 1.4.46

1.4.46 doesn't work on me at all.

Diedel wrote:There is no feature where your spew will spawn at your spawn point.

UJC had 'fast respawn' checked, Bubba called it.

Often mines become really cluttered with powerups, especially in big multiplayer games where people are comming and going all the time. It gets to the point where it becomes difficult to see and dogfight with all the spew spinning around. It'd be nice to have a way to limit that or clean it up from time to time.

spud

I will see whether spew receives unlimited life time, and if so, will limit spew life time.

I just got 1.4.46 to work, and the problem as been fixed.

What spud describes is a kali issue, not with descent at all. If you had played the same game on Kahn, this wouldn't be an issue at all. When you joined a game on Kahn, whatever powerups not being used is all you have to play with until someone dies. Powerups (other than energy, gauss/vulcan ammo, and shields) are a finite constant. This means no insane number of powerups floating about after people joining/parting in a game running for a good while.

I forgot about Kali's 'fast join' feature. With it on you don't learn the state of the powerups when you join, you get the level default amounts and positions. This means every time somebody joines a new set of powerups are introduced into the mine for all the remaining players. You can also drop packets and not see people's spew when they explode; the state of the powerups doesn't always remain consistent across all players. It'd be nice if you could restore the number of poweups to default amounts, but not positions.

Thanks for reminding me that was a Kali thing MD, I'll try turning off 'fast join', people generally have better connects these days...

'Allow Kali to drop packets to speed up game'

Is this option a synonym for fast join?

Taos11 should still work for this example...
From one of the two far sides of the level looking toward the other, the cubes in the far distance appear black (or fail to be rendered) as if the detail level was something other than "highest" (even though it is). I wonder if "highest" doesn't actually set the render depth to "full" but just a very high value that isn't high enough for this purpose?

edit: And yay @ camera improvements.

Yeah, afaik highest still limits the rendering depth. I will look into that and change it if necessary.

Hey Diedel, i don't know if this is already done, but could you add new color codes for the text in the briefings?

I would like bright Red, Orange, Yellow, Purple and White colors for the briefing text (i hope i'm not asking for to much).

And, you can add support for repeating tracks in the Redbook?

I mean, when a level is loaded and a cd track is loaded with it too, i want that same track played until level ends, then when that level ends, the track advances in the next level.

Could that be done, please ?