I accidentally discovered something cool

Whilst making my own spins in Photoshop, which sucked anyways, and will be replaced, I discovered something cool about the mask that can have a neat effect. If you add pixels to the masks slightly down and to the right (making it larger in the +x -y direction), you get a neat shadowing effect. Not really noticeable normally, the shadow shows up over asteroids, planets, and other ships, and it adds more depth and presence to the game and your ship, IMHO. I think it's pretty neat. Anybody else think I should replicate this through a whole plug?

Well I think it would look cool, yes.

It's a tad unrealistic though. No less realistic than the comparative sizes of the ships, but unrealistic all the same.

Actually, the ships I make all have this little quirk. Nova ships are rendered in a way that their dark side isn't completely dark. However, realistically, if there's only one nearby light source, the dark side of an object will be quite dark, pretty much black. So, my ships actually end up looking more like an actual object than the Nova ships (though still don't look NEARLY as good), and has a dark side that looks a little shadowy and contrasting.

Personally, I think the Nova ships often look like really good paintings of cool ships, rather than like a real physical object.

This post has been edited by Fnoigy : 24 May 2005 - 02:22 PM

Screenshots?

Add pixels? Could to clarify the procedure?

This sounds like a cool effect but I don't want to have to manually edit the pixels in all my masks for it

You don't have to. If your mask is greyscale, before turning it to bitmap, copy the mask and paste it as another layer. Then set the layer mode to Screen, and displace it by however much you want the shadow to be. Flatten, convert to bitmap, use as mask. Voila! You're done.

This post has been edited by UncleTwitchy : 25 May 2005 - 05:30 AM

UncleTwitchy, on May 25 2005, 03:29 AM, said:

You don't have to. If your mask is greyscale, before turning it to bitmap, copy the mask and paste it as another layer. Then set the layer mode to Screen, and displace it by however much you want the shadow to be. Flatten, convert to bitmap, use as mask. Voila! You're done.
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Just to note, if you do that, make sure there's enough room in each sprite's tile size to accommodate the extra pixels. Otherwise, they'll go over and show up on the top and right edges of other angles.

Weepul 884, on May 25 2005, 11:10 AM, said:

Just to note, if you do that, make sure there's enough room in each sprite's tile size to accommodate the extra pixels. Otherwise, they'll go over and show up on the top and right edges of other angles.
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Now that would be a neat effect ;).

Now seriously.
The original effect sounds really nice.

I just wonder. Are ship lights transparent? If they are ,then you can use them to make the shadow grey.

modesty_blaise_us, on May 25 2005, 06:33 AM, said:

I just wonder. Are ship lights transparent? If they are ,then you can use them to make the shadow grey.
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They are additive (and can be faded). Which means that black pixels would show up as nothing (anything + 0 = the original anything), if they don't cause a glitch. Dark grey would lighten the background slightly. So, you can't use it for that.

(Sometimes having black pixels not excluded by the sprite mask in an additive sprite can cause glitches in EVN.)

This post has been edited by Weepul 884 : 25 May 2005 - 09:49 AM

UncleTwitchy, on May 25 2005, 10:29 AM, said:

You don't have to. If your mask is greyscale, before turning it to bitmap, copy the mask and paste it as another layer. Then set the layer mode to Screen, and displace it by however much you want the shadow to be. Flatten, convert to bitmap, use as mask. Voila! You're done.
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Oh mah gawd. If this works, I owe you worship and penance.

Weepul 884, on May 25 2005, 06:10 AM, said:

Just to note, if you do that, make sure there's enough room in each sprite's tile size to accommodate the extra pixels. Otherwise, they'll go over and show up on the top and right edges of other angles.
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That brings back some funny memories from when I first started trying to make ships (a couple months ago). My first attempt for thrusters was to draw them by hand, painstakingly, on a new layer, and then turn the old layer that still had the ship to black, then flattened the image and saved it as the thrust PICT. I then found that many frames had the thrust going into another. It's kinda funny looking back.

I Did running light shadows awhile back when I make a mockup of a ground based plug.
http://homepage.mac....cangel_c/VE.mov

If the roid trees could have just been made to stay still. Among the other failings of dirt based plugs. I may have went on to makeing more tests with animated aircraft whos main image shifted up and down to make a hovering look.

Tycho, thanks for pointing this one out to me... We do need our two cents in here, as certainly someone will eventually figure out this method as well.

In Kemet we have several scenes that are ground- based. As in action on-planet. Player graphics are very FF3-ish but-thanks to engine flares- the legs only move when the player does. 5 base sets, showin in sequence. I'm releasing a plug-in micro TC of the first part of Kemet soon in fact, where the player saves up enough $$ to get a ship, kind of as a teaser.

I need to thank Nick Anderson for listening to me rant and think out-loud as I figured out the exact method to implement this.

I want it!

ArcAngel Counterstrike, on May 28 2005, 11:55 PM, said:

If the roid trees could have just been made to stay still. View Post

What about a largish uninhabitable spob whose graphic looks like interspersed trees? True you'd be able to select it, but only by clicking on it (since you wouldn't have to label it as a nav default or anything). The only problems I foresee are possible computer crashes because the graphics are too large and cause Nova to choke or something. On that note, can spobs include transparent graphics and/or holes. (i.e. if I made a "donut" spob, would one be able to see the starfield through the middle of it?)

GutlessWonder, on Jun 4 2005, 02:20 PM, said:

What about a largish uninhabitable spob whose graphic looks like interspersed trees? True you'd be able to select it, but only by clicking on it (since you wouldn't have to label it as a nav default or anything). The only problems I foresee are possible computer crashes because the graphics are too large and cause Nova to choke or something. On that note, can spobs include transparent graphics and/or holes. (i.e. if I made a "donut" spob, would one be able to see the starfield through the middle of it?)View Post

The "super-sized spob as background" has been suggested before, and doesn't work:

1. The game runs very slowly, even on high-end systems, even when the player is the only thign in the system.
2. The game loads all of the graphics into memory when it starts up, and a super-large spob eats memory like nobody's buisness. The game may crash on loading.
3. You can't cover an entire system, or even a large chunk of a system, without a REALLY big image, which would be guarenteed to crash the game.

(I found this when I searched for "Aftermath"- apparently, they were considering having some very large planets.)

Donut spöbs: Yes. if the mask has a black spot in the middle, you will be able to see through it.

Anyway, is there a reason tree-shaped stars wouldn't work?

Edwards

Large stars fields also eat up memory like no tomorrow. And you would not be able to control the tree population from system to system. either a ton, or none.

What if you used the stars for smaller things, like rocks or waves. Also, you wouldn't have to have a ton of trees - just leave some of the star frames blank.

Guy, on Jun 4 2005, 04:54 PM, said:

What if you used the stars for smaller things, like rocks or waves. Also, you wouldn't have to have a ton of trees - just leave some of the star frames blank.
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The stars also have random transparency if I can remember. So it messed up any colors i tried to use.
I just used stars as snow or rain in my tests.

Rnadom transparency would be perfect for clouds...