Lighted Bullets

[Vidiot_X]

Hi,

 

Here is a shot of lighted bullets. The new background comes from NASA's site (no affiliation) and according to their site is OK to use, even commercially (http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html) .

 

I will be adding (fudging in for now) space debris tomorrow. Then back to networking.

 

http://www.phoenix.subspace.co/images/screenshot_light_sm.png

 

For a larger view:

http://www.phoenix.subspace.co/images/screenshot_light.png

or Here:

http://www.phoenix.subspace.co/

 

Regards,

- Rich -

[»ZiGNoTZaG]

Nice, is that going to be a configurable sort of thing? Like radius, color, perhaps even a texture projection kind of thing?

[Vidiot_X]

ZigNotZag,

 

. . .is that going to be a configurable sort of thing?

 

Yes. The light is a simple sprite or image (really a textured quad-poly) with the blend mode set to light-blend which gives the cool lighting effect. Through the map editor (also scripting later) you will be able to set the size (radius) , color, transparency and animation. The limit to use will be based on the power of the players video card and I suspect using lighting for bullets and other object "may" limit the amount of bullets you would be able to use in a map, but real world testing will flesh this out. The map design in general is a balance between all the cool effects (lots more to come), map parts and the players video card power. Although Phoenix SS looks 2D it uses textured quads (polygons) so the better your video card is at 3D the better Phoenix SS will perform.

 

Other visual effects such as repel, shield hits and more will also be simple animated images with blending, color, size and more.

 

In the future, when Phoenix SS has matured I plan to add 3D meshes for at least the walls and ships. It is much simpler though, to start everything out as quads then integrate 3D meshes into the framework after it has been established. The biggest problem will be performance on low end systems. This is why I am using quads as low end systems are better supported this way.

 

- Rich -

[Cheese]

keep in mind most ppl dont know what quads are

[Vidiot_X]

Cheese,

 

Ya, I sometimes forget that not everyone knows this stuff.

 

For those who don't know a quad ( quadrilateral ) is just basically a four sided polygon. 3D frameworks like DirectX or OpenGL use polygon's to draw every 3D object. Quads have 4 vertices ( points in space ) and those vertices are used to make a 2D surface which an image can be rendered to. So basically quads are square polygon's that are used to draw images on the display.

 

It's is interesting to note that a lot of games use quads in their frameworks. It is a popular way to develop a game and maintain a level of portability between all the different hardware and OS platforms available today.

 

- Rich -