FOV question *Almost Resolved*

[Spurious Interrupt]

Link if that's too big to see for you.

So I'm having some issues figuring something out with the HD weapon skins.

As far as I can tell, my graphical settings for Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity are identical, yet my weapons seem to be a lot closer to my face in Marathon Infinity than Durandal.

These are the two plugins I'm using:
Marathon Infinity
Marathon Durandal

Two questions:

1) Is it simply a matter of how the plugin was made?
2) Do I actually have a narrower field-of-view in Marathon Infinity, or am I just tricking myself?


If it is the plugin, does anyone know of a version for Infinity that looks like the M2 pic, or how I would start to change it on my own? Thanks for your time.

[Crater Creator]

The weapon-in-hand graphics are sprites; it would be difficult for the field of view to affect them. I notice those two plugins were submitted by different people, which leads me to believe they set the origin to different points. In a Shapes file, you can set the X origin and Y origin to draw the sprite basically wherever you want on the screen. Also, note you'll see more of the sprite as you look down and less of the sprite as you look up.

[Spurious Interrupt]

The weapon-in-hand graphics are sprites; it would be difficult for the field of view to affect them.

This makes sense. Please forgive my futuristic backwards-thinking.

Also, note you'll see more of the sprite as you look down and less of the sprite as you look up.

Yep. Both of those pictures are looking all the way down.

In a Shapes file, you can set the X origin and Y origin to draw the sprite basically wherever you want on the screen.

Do you have any idea on how I may begin to modify this myself? I think that, in addition to it being drawn in a different place, it's also drawn larger in Infinity.

[herecomethej2000]

Before you do that, do you have limit vertical view enabled in marathon infinity and not in m2?

[Spurious Interrupt]

Nope, it's off in both.

[herecomethej2000]

well in that case I guess i used the sprites from the "offical" freeverse plugin with thedoctor45's bloom enabled effects. I don't remember, and to be honest not sure why I'd do that as it would be more work. :\ To be honest I never noticed this issue before, I'll have to look into it when I get home. One would just have to edit the .mml files in the plugin with a text editor.

[EDIT] Looking at from what I wrote on simplici7y, thats exactly what I did. and it's just a discrepency' between thedoctor45's version of the sprites and the offical ones.

[treellama]

The high-res plugin that comes with Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity is based on a direct export of the XBLA shapes file. It works for both Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity. Is there some reason you don't want to use that?

http://simplici7y.com/items/xbla-weapons-plugin

[Spurious Interrupt]

From what I can tell, the high-res plugin I'm using for Marathon 2 isn't the same plugin that goes out with the all-in-one versions of M2 and MINF (it's not the one you linked). I say this because (besides the apparent visual differences), the M2 plugin I have says explicitly that it will not work with Infinity.

[herecomethej2000]

the offical one is just the weapons with an smg added so it can be used with m inf and m2. The doctors45 plug in is his and is a sepaerate project. So of course there is a discrepency.

I just borrowed (with his permission of course) some of his work and put it in the offical one for my own taste. If you have problems either go with the official xbla plugins or edit the plugins yourself

[Spurious Interrupt]

well in that case I guess i used the sprites from the "offical" freeverse plugin with thedoctor45's bloom enabled effects. I don't remember, and to be honest not sure why I'd do that as it would be more work. :\ To be honest I never noticed this issue before, I'll have to look into it when I get home. One would just have to edit the .mml files in the plugin with a text editor.

[EDIT] Looking at from what I wrote on simplici7y, thats exactly what I did. and it's just a discrepency' between thedoctor45's version of the sprites and the offical ones.

Okay, so I kind of got it to work!

Here's what I did:

First (because of something else I'm messing with in the editing forum), I used Aorta to convert the .dds files into PNGS so I could see them. After looking at the two plugins (yours and thedoctor45's), I realized that you both are using the exact same pictures in the shape files, so it isn't a matter of them simply being different images (I tried copying his into yours just to make sure, and they still came out the same).

I then looked into the XML document and saw how it calls shapes, so I copied his .mml and .SHPA files into your plugin for Infinity (and changed their names to match your XML document). The images were pixelated and blocky, but they were clearly drawn the way they are in thedoctor45's plugin.


Then I looked up what the SHPA file actually was, and tried copying that in without the .mml file and that worked!... except for the SMG of course. The shape is there, but obviously thedoctor45's SHPA file won't call for it. I'm currently looking for how to edit that file, but I'm afraid that's too simple for anyone on here to have made a tutorial (or at least anything the search function turns up). I've found which locations and numbers correspond to the SMG and everything, I just don't have a way to edit it.

Any recommendations?

Again, thanks for helping me with this, and sorry to make such a big deal over what probably seems like a little thing. We play netgames a lot in FCAW, and I want to use the HD textures, but the amount of screen the rocket launcher blocks is a bit much for my tastes.

[herecomethej2000]

To be honest with you I haven't had much luck with thoes .shpa files and ShapeFusion. they must be in some weird format as it wont read them. Anvil/Hackvile certianly wont as these are Alephone files. But that is indeed where all the origin information is for each sprite is located. Shame you don't want to go the otherway around

[treellama]

To be honest with you I haven't had much luck with thoes .shpa files and ShapeFusion. they must be in some weird format as it wont read them. Anvil/Hackvile certianly wont as these are Alephone files. But that is indeed where all the origin information is for each sprite is located.

.ShPa are Anvil shape patches, and .shpA are shapes files. To use the former in ShapeFusion, you have to apply the patch to Marathon Infinity or Marathon 2 shapes. To use the latter, just open it.

[herecomethej2000]

Thats weird. I thought OS Classic files have no extensions. File type is part of the metadata of each file. How could they be Anvil Shape patches?

[treellama]

The data in files doesn't change just because they have an extension rather than a file type code!

[herecomethej2000]

No, it just not easily recongnizable when it looks like a modern OS file. Also when it shares the same letters as another format used by the game, but thats another thing.

[treellama]

No, it just not easily recongnizable when it looks like a modern OS file.

Files look like modern OS files because they have extensions? I guess .hqx never got the memo

Also when it shares the same letters as another format used by the game, but thats another thing.

Yeah, that was regrettable. The Aleph One file type codes were the same as the Marathon 2 file type codes except with an A instead of a 2. So shp2 became shpA. Then to work with Windows/Linux/OS X they had to become extensions. Unfortunately, Anvil had already used ShPa for the file type code for its shape patches; and I used it as a file extension in Atque (which doesn't work with shpA files) without realizing how much confusion it would cause when it later became usable in Aleph One directly.