I didn't see if the issue about objects getting "stuck" was fully resolved earlier, but in my experience, a common cause of this with fast-moving objects results from collider thickness. Thicker colliders result in much more reliable collisions. Now I realize adjustable collider thickness was mentioned earlier as more of an aesthetic concern, but I just wanted to toss in my $0.02 with regard to this also being a practical physics concern as well.
Found this from t3h interwebz.
It's a bit hard to get answers at scripting subforum sometimes.
Since some of the middleware gods are presumably reading this thread, do you have any insight on this problem?
Thanks for the mention!Quote:
Originally Posted by keely
Oh, and about my initial idea to fix the axis mapping, it was all fun and games until I saw what it did to collider generation. They all flattened. ;) So I just gave up on the idea until later when we see where it goes.
So yeah, as I think you've already read, I think you did a great job here and I look forward to seeing how far this goes. Thanks again!
I am currently experiencing an issue that I would possible contribute to not having adjustable, or I should say thick enough, colliders. I posted in the support forum hoping to find a work around in another one, there is an image attached showing the issue, you can find the thread here. So Keely, I know that you have your hands busy with multiple other things, but as mentioned above by Brady and earlier in the thread, if adjustable thickness of colliders could work itself in to a future release, that would be outstanding!Quote:
Originally Posted by Brady
1) I've been following this thing for quite a while now, I'm just not the best person at understanding the techy talk :)
Does the mentioned "Texturing support" mean we could/can do stuff like the following with RageSpline ? Cause I think I mostly saw gradient/flat colored work examples so far.
http://indiesuperstar.com/wp-content...es-550x412.jpg
http://de.playstation.com/media/le27...Birds_Hero.JPG
http://www.appsundco.de/uploads/tx_a..._Wings_2_s.jpg
2) What interests me even more, considering we could realize stuff like that - would it be performant for Iphone games ? I believe to remember you mentioned performance is "alright", but that's quite generic :D
Since using this on scenes with a bit more painted detail, I guess this could be quite a hit to the polycount of scenes.
3) What about stuff like smuggle truck or tiny wings, where you move through levels, similar to your ragecar game. How can this be done nicely, considering there won't be any visible gaps/holes in the terrain/ground as in your examples, but a continuous mesh throught a long distance.
Any possibility of "cutting/slicing" through the splines, so it's not loaded on a 1billion unit long piece, but chunked about into smaller portions ?
4) Also I was wondering, there is some flickering/noise going on around the edges in the Ragecube Webplayer. Is this just within the nature of using this method or has it something to do with compression/webplayer usage in general ?
It's just as soon as I started to notice this grain effect, I just can't take my eyes of it, it's kinda letdown for me :/
5) Do you plan to use this for a future game project of yours to a full extent ? I mean, the examples in here are quite nice to look, but I'd love to see this on a bigger scale, to get to know some more about the toolset and generally get a better feel of the tool.
Or do you know of projects using this already in their pipeline. Guess you would have mentioned this in here, though :o
These are just some theoretical questions I'm asking myself before going any further :D
Acumen, I can't speak for everything you have posted here, but I can try and help you a bit with your answers for the time being.
1. On my current endeavor with RageSpline, almost all of my objects are textured and through what I have seen and used of it, you shouldn't have any issues with having something similar to the images you showed as example. Though, trying to texture something as like the truck may get tricky.
2. I am currently using RageSpline with plans to publish to both iPhone and Android. One thing that I have done to help with keeping the poly count way down from the spline built objects, is that after I have the level mapped out and in a finished state, all of the extra detail objects that I have get saved as a texture, and placed into a few texture atlases. Then the textures are applied, and sorted, to a billboard object made in Maya. Small tricks such as this help to keep the performance up on the mobile devices I have found.
3. Not positive with this one, maybe we slice tool could come in the future?
4. I have slightly noticed this as well, but I can say that in all of my tests with my current RageSpline project, I have yet to see any of this.
5. This, will have to wait for the powers that be, Mr. Keely, to answer :)
I try to answer without the techy jargon, but I would like to point out one thing. Sort of a disclaimer if you may.Quote:
Originally Posted by Acumen
It's very slippery slope for a developer to answer questions like "Can I do Tiny Wings?". The subject is so broad and complicated, that either you give short and inaccurate answer, or too long and accurate one. Neither of the options feel very optimal.
However, while you're questions are much more specific than "Can I do Tiny Wings?", Some of them are still very hard to answer precisely without hours of research and 1000 words.
That said, I'm going to answer them in a short form, but with certain inaccuracy.
The current texture support is limited to what you might call "linear". It's like projecting an image with a video projector on to an object.Quote:
Originally Posted by Acumen
In the Smuggle Truck image, you could do the yellow sand part. You could also do the bigger ground texturing. However, the smaller rocks, which follow the curvature of the level, isn't doable with current RageSpline.
The Angry Birds image is actually quite doable, since the ground is flat. All the shapes are doable imo, but I would actually do everything in this image with textures, except the actual birds. This is not a very good example image though, because it's so flat.
Tiny Wings has a lot of little things, but one thing I have to say is that while RageSpline has gradient support, that too is "linear" like the texturing. You can't currently have exactly that type of gradient that follows the curves. You can do the trees though.
Sure, if you have loads and loads of shapes, the frame rate is going to plummet with iPhone. I can admit that I haven't had time to really properly test it. The only way to REALLY test performance is to actually make an actual game. Both of my games RageCube and RageCar run 60fps on an 3GS iPhone, but like you said, they are simple.Quote:
Originally Posted by Acumen
One thing I have to mention though. If you have very little detail like let's say the eyes, nose and wings of the Tiny Wing character, you can really take down the vertcount in those RageSpline objects (it's adjustable). There's no point to use 500 verts to something that is in 10x10 pixel size. This way, keeping the detail per pixel ratio consistent, you get a lot more bang for your buck.
Also the planned "render to sprite" -feature, which is still very early stages and I can't really promise anything about it, would take any RageSpline object down to 2 polys.
The current version isn't designed to do big continuous terrains. It was kind of foolish for me to do the example game like RageCar because of that, but what's done is done ;).Quote:
Originally Posted by Acumen
I have to admit, I really don't know what would be the best approach to support a very long mesh like that in the future versions. Maybe generating multiple meshes from single RageSpline like you suggested is the way to go.
This is a new one for me. The way I do anti-aliasing with RageSpline is that I make a narrow stroke around the object that is partially transparent. You can adjust the width of this stroke freely. Maybe there's a certain pixelsize/aa-width -ratio that causes some artifacts. I have to be honest, I just can't see it in the RageCube. Maybe i'm in denial. Do you have a smooth frame rate with it? Anyone else having similar experience? Do you have some kind of exotic hardware?Quote:
Originally Posted by Acumen
Well, in theory I'm doing the RageCube, but there's now so much stuff with this product that I don't think I have any time for it for the next few months. I think I'm going to do a new mini-example-game to showcase the new features, but we'll see.Quote:
Originally Posted by Acumen
@keely, quick question: will inner borders with texture support be coming in the next update? Like this:
http://cl.ly/6Y1G/Screen_shot_2011-0...1.15.59_PM.png
Borders (or outline as I call them in the tool) will have texture support.Quote:
Originally Posted by Prime31
Offsetting the outline is a little iffy like I described on the earlier post about spline offsets, but I guess it's doable. Atleast it's on my mental todo-list.
btw. I'm really starting to consider the option, that I'll do small incremental updates instead. That might skew everything I have said so far about "the next update".
Smaller, incremental updates would be superb. You've got my vote for it.
@alex.loren: thanks for taking the time to come up with all of these answers. I'd be quite interested to get to know your secret project :D
Hope you'll share some information on that soon !
@keely: same thank yous apply to you, as usual for taking the time to answer each and every nitpick !
Yeh, these were just the most prominent examples I could think of as an outsider ^^
Not planning to do any of these kind of games in the future. It was more the really big terrain issue that interested me. But I'm sure solutions can be found on this issue :)
So basically I can assign a texture (that can tile) and it will be applied flat.
It won't follow the actual spline in any way ? Just be tiled in every direction ?
I wasn't aiming to do everything within ragespline, I figure using alternative methods for characters and whatnot would make much more sense, combined with the upcoming rendertotexture-approach.
I was mainly interested in the ground creation perse. Got all questions answered on that.
Concerning the noise on the outlines. Yeh, it's kinda showing when there's slow movement involved. Lots of noisy stuff going on, looks like some ants wobbling around the outline *exaggerating*
Was just wondering where that came from, cause theoretically since this seems a solid object this stuff shouldn't appear, from my extremely dilettantish "knowledge".
Frame rate is just fine. No exotic hardware as far as I'm concernced. Being on my gf's computer all the time :D
I got one more question. There's no real documentation as of yet, and I wouldn't call Prime31 the average user at all ;)
So I'm wondering, since I always have horrible experiences with the camera system in Unity. Say I purchase and "install" your tool, is it possibly for me to work in it without experiencing the same camera nightmare over and over again ? Like will it change the perspective accordingly, so I can not mess it all up again and just see what I can see on your videos ? Or what shall I expect when installing this on a pretty untouched Unity environment ? Some time to set all the cameras/views up ? Just start and be happy ?
Is anyone else having some wonky physics going on due to the scale of a RageSpline being pretty massive? I haven't had a spare minute to dig through the source yet so I'm not 100% where the issue lies but there is definitely appears to be some scale inconsistencies. A unit cube looks like an atom next to a RageSpline...
Do you mean that the original prefabs are too large?Quote:
Originally Posted by Prime31
I made all the defaults in such a way, that they would make sense in default orthographic camera size which is 100. Maybe that was a bad idea.
I think (and hope) that everything besides the width of the box colliders is adjustable, so by adjusting stuff like outline width, anti-aliasing width, etc. you'd get the scale you need.
I don't think RageSpline is going to magically fix the Unity's camera system. I made everything in my power to make it easier, but it's not much. You still probably have to adjust cameras settings. At the end of the day, RageSpline is just an extension to create smooth shapes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Acumen
You can rotate it, scale it and set the offset, but that's it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Acumen
Are you seeing this behavior or the RageCar too?Quote:
Originally Posted by Acumen
Yes, I do.
Maybe it's because these items consist of many small actual objects that move around. Would make sense in my world at least. Compared to a single flat object alpha textured object being rendered, the car consists of many triangles that are rendered upon/underneath each other.
But I guess in a real game environment you wouldn't use the main character like you did in the examples. For testing stuff it's totally fine I think. Good to know something like that happens, though, I guess.
No major flaw, I'd say :)
I think I know what you are talking about now. It's one of those things that you don't see, but after someone points it out, you can't unsee.Quote:
Originally Posted by Acumen
The problem goes away once you set the antialiasing-width bigger. The shapes get slightly blurrier, though. It only happens when there is a big difference between contrast like black vs. white.
It's much better on the iPhone screen where pixelsize is smaller.
Yup, totally agree on all your points, I'm just glad you could finally see what I mean ;)
Could you find some game screenshot, which shows something similar in action? I'm just trying to get a better feel what kind of implementation you're after.Quote:
Originally Posted by Prime31