Drac~Test

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Re: Drac~Test

Post by TrespasserGuy »

Very interesting. Those ground textures have a very 90's video game look to them, and I can't really tell why lol. I'm looking forward to seeing the new assets that you intend to put out.
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by TheIdiot »

TrespasserGuy wrote:Those ground textures have a very 90's video game look to them,
Maybe because they are technically from a 90's video game? :wink:

I did play the level in the past, Drac, but I can't for the life of me remember what I thought of the majority of it, aside from really finding the teleporting machine from Timeline to be really cool and well done, especially since it functions so well. I'll give more detailed thoughts on your next release of this level, I think.
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by Draconisaurus »

TresGuy, that sounds pretty nice... There is some mysterious charm about them.

TI, if you appreciated the Timeline machine feature, that is enough for me. : D I was quite satisfied to bring it into Trespasser, and it's nice that it will continue to be a part of my ongoing testing and development. I plan eventually to create additional computer interfaces alongside it, at the right time.
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by Draconisaurus »

Alright, so, as per my expressed determination in TI's thread of level dumps but not things, I set out this morning to test if the ActionType112 action from ATX, inside Tres CE, can be used to activate Player controls while a Camera animation is active. I tried multiple variations including turning them off myself and then on again, and different times relative to the start of the animation, in the same and different triggers as the animation-call action, in repetition succession to see if the engine might "give up" affixing non-control-state... Sadly, none of it worked. : / I still believe that, given the right level and the right implementation, such a feature in Trespasser could have had very high potential. It could have been reserved for areas where Player manipulation of objects is unnecessary. It could have let you actually watch yourself in one of our various full-body Player models as you move around particular sections. *insert digital tears here*
Drac~Test_FixedCameraFail01.jpg
Drac~Test_FixedCameraFail01.jpg (488.08 KiB) Viewed 6452 times
Oh well. There is a funny side-effect, where apparently under default circumstances, the Player will continue walking in the last direction he/she was headed, while the animation plays. This is highly hap-hazard of course and only very particular set-ups of ensuring Player-face-direction would be able to benefit. I might use it sometime but it is of comparatively small usefulness...
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by TheIdiot »

Aaaah, that explains why the player would end up halfway across the level in RTJP~Prologue after the opening animation sequence. Is there any workaround then for freezing the player upon animating the camera? Maybe just teleporting would do the trick, or disabling controls.
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by Draconisaurus »

Funnily enough, one of (and the final version of) the tests goes about by freezing keyboard/mouse input for I believe 3 seconds, before actually playing the animation. Basically the input needs to be disabled prior to the firing of the CScriptedAnimationAction. You can turn it on at any point after the animation has successfully started, as the user won't be able to give any action comands to the Player, anyway.

This failure still upsets me... So much potential.

Funny thing... I noticed that, unintentionally on my part, both JPDS~testing and TstScnRld follow in the steps of the original TestScene and have a button used to summon a dinosaur (the TstScnRld one was inside the Ops Center, for those who haven't found it..). There is an old test level I made and then lost some Summers ago... as well it did not progress almost at all in development, so I'm leaving it out. At any rate, to continue the tradition, Drac~Test will have a dino-summoning -button- with some special gimmick. Hmm, did the TC Ops "test~zone" have a dinosaur teleport button? I don't even think it had any CAnimals, thinking on it... I'm not sure?
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by Draconisaurus »

Ahoy from the modding front. Today I took a break from my secret Tres project and went into Drac~Test to re-establish a test which was lost to an un-backed version of TstScnRld. I set up a test to represent all the default AlphaChannels available to Trespasser (custom ones can be set using an original ActionType). Setting up a test of AlphaChannels 0 to 20, it appears that only 0 to 15 (a binary count) are used. From my previous case to test these, I knew already that the final few were pre-colored yellow. However... my previous test did not institute a black background on which to view the transparency.
TPass020.BMP
TPass020.BMP (1.37 MiB) Viewed 6270 times
And... A more obvious quality of these channels is that there is a repeating occurance of more- to less- opakeness as the numbers ascend (in this case, right to left). In the previous version of the test, I'd thought these were simple repetitions to fill space, and that perhaps the desgining dev eventually got board and made one of the sets colored.

No, indeed, if you look you may see that each ascending transparency set has its own coloration. There are a total of 5 sets if you count the final yellow ones.
TresAlphaChannels01.jpg
TresAlphaChannels01.jpg (214.32 KiB) Viewed 6270 times
This is quite fascinating, and provides some small amount of decision basis for the selection of an AlphaChannel beyond simple transparency level. Neat things may be done with this, to be sure.
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by machf »

You're just seeing the default values that Trespasser assigns to the 16 possible AlphaChannels (0 to 15), you can redefine them at level start using the corresponding Settings objects (one for each channel). Note, there is no ActionType to redefine them, you need to create an object for each one you want to change...
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by TheIdiot »

Just guessing by the colours, but I'm wondering whether at some point these AlphaChannels had been intended for actual transparent windows? It seems they're mostly glass-coloured, and I can certainly see yellowish-tinted glass being used on vehicles or perhaps at the lab.
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by Draconisaurus »

Glass windows is a possibility I haven't given much thought to. I can see it. So far I've mostly only thought about the light beams seen in early development images. The yellow doesn't make too much sense for use on one of those.

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Re: Drac~Test

Post by tatu »

Yellow make sense for evening/moon light. ;)
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by Slugger »

Does the light shaft in the test-scene use a default alpha channel or a custom one? I like TheIdiot's suggestion for their possible use as glass.
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by Draconisaurus »

Slugger, on checking TestScene, no triggers appear to set AlphaChannel details. I believe this feature of the engine was discovered some years after TresView was used to see what was inside the levels, by one of the other means.

Alright, after several weeks of work, I have finished my next complex Trespasser test. I present to you all - the African Cape Gun.
https://www.ima-usa.com/products/origin ... circa-1855
machf and I were in discussion some time ago, to find a nice antique weapon that I might then go and create for Trespasser. It was only going to be a brush-up and experiment on the finer details of creating a CGun object from fully new models/textures, to study how the retail objects were made, and to launch into broader areas of engine investigation, but machf finally remembered a gun he'd been trying to think of - the "cape gun".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinati ... Vg8WI559MQ
Basically, a cape gun has 2 or more types of ammunition in the same weapon. For example, a rifle barrel and a shotgun barrel. Some even have 3 types. The former combination was selected, and I created an antique hunting gun for use in a future Trespasser modification:

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Re: Drac~Test

Post by machf »

Apparently, sobody else has seen this yet...

Oh, and apparently, I can't watch the video embedded on the forum because it has "content from LatinAutor - UMPG, who has blocked its reproduction on this website or app"...

Did you use music from Universal? (Original JP stuff, I guess)
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Re: Drac~Test

Post by Draconisaurus »

Huh. Indeed - a random track from The Lost World OST.
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