Eternal X 1.2

[General-RADIX]

Looking good! These seem a little easier to read to me.

[Pfhorrest]

Been looking forward to doing these ones. I feel kinda disappointed that they don't seem as cool as I was looking forward to, maybe because just the texture itself already has a lot of depth baked in, so there's not a lot more for the bump map to do:

[Pfhorrest]

Managed to squeeze two more in quick before bed tonight.

With any luck I hope to finish off the Jjaro set tomorrow night, basically a month early, but I guess that's to be expected given that the actual textures for the Jjaro set (and the glow maps) were pretty much already done years ago when I abandoned this project the first time.

[Hathomirr]

Been meaning to play through this scenario again, so it's nice to see one more major update going on. Keep it up!

Just out of curiosity, will it still be possible to play through it without using the additional 3D effects (bump maps, weapons, hud) should one choose to?

[Pfhorrest]

Bump maps are definitely just a checkbox in preferences.

Weapons and HUD are both implemented as plugins and so can also be turned off in preferences, though I'm not exactly sure what happens when you do that. I'll try to check later tonight.

[President People]

Weapons and HUD are both implemented as plugins and so can also be turned off in preferences, though I'm not exactly sure what happens when you do that. I'll try to check later tonight.

It may be possible to convert Tacticus' shapes file into a shapes patch, like the XBLA plugins do. ShapesFusion doesn't like creating patches using the Eternal shapes as a base, though (that would be too easy I guess). What might work is attempting to trick it by using the Infinity shapes file as a base instead, copying all the new bitmaps, sequences and frames, and patching from there. I'll have to experiment later down the road.

[General Tacticus]

I tried to do that, but shapefusion kept spitting out an error code and producing an empty patch. I think I posted it in the plugin thread, but here's the message anyway:

23:45:55: [ShapesChunk] Unknown collection version -11733
23:45:55: [ShapesCollection] Error loading 8-bit chunk... Dropped

[Pfhorrest]

I got done everything I planned tonight, but I had misremembered how much there was left to do, so this is not the end of the Jjaro set as I planned. Next week should be easily, though.

I hope, after this is all done, to release a 1.2b1 that others will be able to download and walk around the Jjaro levels with the new textures in 3D and tell me if anything looks awful about them. I've seen some glitches here and there but I sorta don't really know what's worth the effort to try to (figure how how to) fix and what's just the best that Aleph One can do.

[President People]

This batch really stands out (heh), especially the first and last shots.

I'm starting to think the more extreme effects ought to be reserved for large (or simple) pieces like the light panels and Jjaro emblem, while the general materials, like the octagonal tiling and metal wire mesh are toned back even further for a much more subtle texture.

The new mothrids monsters are pretty awesome! The only criticism I have of them is their flapping motion while they move is kind of silly to see from a distance. When they're just standing there upright, they're super creepy, and the flailing action when they're in your face is really scary too. Could their moving animation maybe be slowed down a lot (so they more glide than flap), or possible have the most splayed-out frames removed from the moving animation (so they remain mostly upright while moving, then splay their tentacles out when they're up in your face attacking)?

I went with the gliding option, and I think it looks a lot better now. Even so, I can try the other way if you don't like how it looks once I put up the next round.

A question about the Nightmare replacements. I had considered taking a similar approach to the Mothrid - invisible silhouette with eye cutouts - but these guys are already kind of hard to hit even when you can see them. Instead of making them invisible, what if they were colored almost completely black, with their eyes always glowing at full brightness?

[Pfhorrest]

I like that Nightmare idea! Can you also make the black part of them translucent (with MML-linked alpha mask?) I think that would be extra creepy, just a pair of eyes surrounded by this ghostly translucent black body. Makes me think of angler fish.

[President People]

Round 3 is ready. Sorry for the wait!

Mothrid has a floatier animation, and the Nightmare is a bit spookier, silently flapping above the player. The latter now fires fast single bolts, and its death shrapnel, while giving a bit more time to escape, deals more damage and has a greater radius.

Spoiler:

Bugs still present:

• During the M2 Alien Weapon firing animation, the sprite flashes out occasionally.

NOTES:

• The method used to prevent Mothrid's sound from restarting also makes other nearby active Mothrids silent, potentially interfering with attacks from multiple directions. There is no way around this that I know of, other than to either:
(A) Space them far enough apart that only a single Mothrid is within earshot at a given time.
(B) Keep them in close enough proximity that it doesn't matter which makes the sound.


Eternal Scripts Changes:
• xhd-effects.mml
· Last frame of Compiler projectile trail wasn't being replaced. Fixed.



Eternal Shapes Changes:

• (7) Items
· Touched up new Mothrid sprites. It animates a little more smoothly now, and
doesn't look as terrible.
· Edited sequence "Mothrid Chase". I took the "glide" route - animates more slowly
so it appears to float as it moves.

• (10) S'pht'Kr
· Reworked Nightmare sprites to be ghostly. Took the opportunity to edit the rear
angled frames and 45° attack frames while I was at it. Uses Color Table 02.
· General frame adjustments. Keypoint is now aligned more closely to the body.
· Edited Sequence "Nightmare Dying" to animate more slowly, to accommodate greater
damage and radius. It inhales, then explodes.



Eternal Physics Changes:

• Fast Drone Bolt
· Raised Speed from 144 to 256
· Lowered Sound Pitch from 1.125 to 0.5
· Changed Damage Type from Electrical Staff to Suffocation

• Tiny Pfhor (Headless/Mothrid)
· Lowered External Velocity Scale from 0.25 to 0.05. It dies more immediately this
way

• Tiny Bob (Nightmare)
· Changed Color Table from 0 to 2
· Lowered Radius from 204 to 128
· Lowered Height from 500 to 320
· Lowered pitch from 1.1250 to 0.2
· Lowered Terminal Velocity from 73 to 25
· Lowered Gravity from 8 to 2
· Lowered External Velocity Scale from 0.05 to 0.0
· Raised Hover Height from 256 to 704
· Raised Shrapnel damage from 5-7 to 15-25
· Widened Shrapnel radius from 1024 to 1536
· Changed Shrapnel Damage Type from Electrical Staff to Suffocation



Eternal Sounds Changes:

• SMG Firing [Class #30, ID: 18000]
· Changed Volume from Medium to Loud
· Replaced firing sound with Nightmare explosion sound. Technically, this is the
Purple Pod explosion sound, which is nearly identical except for a bit of bass at
the start.

• Shotgun Reloading [Class 137, ID: 11230]
· Changed Volume from Soft to Medium
· Replaced reload sound with PiD Wraith attack sound. This will be used as the
inhaling sound for the Nightmare's death

• Unused 2 [Class #70, ID: 15155]
· Replaced Headless death sound with Nightmare "wing" sounds

The Nightmare seems to have a habit of ceasing its attack once it reaches the player. Before I changed its float height, it was dipping down to the floor and just sitting there, as if waiting for a pat on the head. Cute, but not exactly the effect we're going for. Even though its float height is now above the player, it does pretty much the same thing, waiting on top of your head until you make a move. Giving it a melee attack didn't seem to work, and messing with the flags didn't have any positive effect. I'll tinker with the behavior a bit more and see if I can stop it.

Still on the list is giving the Nightmare some alpha/glow masks, and the .mml for the Banshee's own OpenGL stuff is MIA. I've had no luck fixing the M2 Alien Weapon firing frames, but I'll keep at it.

[Pfhorrest]

Round 3 is ready. Sorry for the wait!

No worries at all, I've been away for the weekend myself!

The new Nightmare is pretty awesome, and I think altogether this is really shaping up to be a big improvement!

I'd really like to hear what other players think too, as I've gotten mixed feedback on this monster-change idea in the first place, and I want to know if other people also think this is an improvement.

FWIW I've been playtesting on a split-out version of "The Dead Live In The Catacombs" (the spookiest Ch5 level IMO) to see how they play outside of the test map.

Mothrid has a floatier animation

I think it could maybe stand to be even floatier still? (i.e. slow down the animation even more)

• The method used to prevent Mothrid's sound from restarting also makes other nearby active Mothrids silent, potentially interfering with attacks from multiple directions. There is no way around this that I know of, other than to either:
(A) Space them far enough apart that only a single Mothrid is within earshot at a given time.
(B) Keep them in close enough proximity that it doesn't matter which makes the sound.

I don't really imagine this is going to be such a problem either way, as if anything it will just make players even more spooked and spinning around looking for trouble so long as they can still hear that noise. (The way that it's kind of hard to tell right away when the mothrid-monster has died also lends to that frenzied "shit shit shit are they all dead yet" feeling, IMO).

The Nightmare seems to have a habit of ceasing its attack once it reaches the player. Before I changed its float height, it was dipping down to the floor and just sitting there, as if waiting for a pat on the head. Cute, but not exactly the effect we're going for. Even though its float height is now above the player, it does pretty much the same thing, waiting on top of your head until you make a move. Giving it a melee attack didn't seem to work, and messing with the flags didn't have any positive effect. I'll tinker with the behavior a bit more and see if I can stop it.

I think maybe checking the "Keeps with clear shot" (or whatever it's titled) flag might help with this. Then the Nightmares won't charge at you, they'll stay where they are and shoot from a distance. That would also further distinguish them from the other two monsters who both charge at you.

Still on the list is giving the Nightmare some alpha/glow masks, and the .mml for the Banshee's own OpenGL stuff is MIA.

I might be wrong that the Banshees have alpha masks. But in conjunction with the "keeps with clear shot" idea above, I was thinking it might be cool if the Nightmares also were invisible when idle/moving but then opaque black (with their creepy glowing eyes) when attacking, like the Banshees are. So you barely know there's even any enemies there, until suddenly this black blob with glowing green eyes appears, spits fire at you, and then vanishes again.

[Pfhorrest]

Finishing off the last of the Jjaro set bump maps this week. First beta (will more likely call it an alpha) will hopefully be out at the start of next week.

Water turned out harder and less impressive than I had anticipated. Wanted to achieve a deep rolling look but this was the most I could seem to do:

But I really really fucking love the corrugated glass effect I've been putting on all of these lights, and next to the metal here I think it turned out spectacular:

And the coup de grace for tonight, these thick windows:

However I'm experiencing what I think is an Aorta bug. You see that blockiness in the transparent part? It's a little easier to see in this shot if not:

It looks like some kind of compression artifact, and I vaguely remember having to turn off either DXTC or MIPmaps to avoid it before, but even turning both of those off now I still get it. Any ideas Treellama?

[ravenshining]

Water is indeed hard to get right, but trust me it's worth it! I don't remember exactly how I did it before, but if your liquids are transparent a nice effect is if you have the more in-plane areas be more saturated and transparent than the perpendicular areas, which should be less transparent. That way, you see more under the liquid when looking down than when looking across.

With lava, I like to do the opposite, with the black/transparent areas raised in a spherical fashion, but I only give it a slight transparency. That gives the effect of looking at chunks of glass floating in incandescence.

Anyway, this weekend I finished touching up The Tangent Universe, and I played through it and at least one other version. The one I played didn't have any differences I could find aside from all the fighting, I'm wondering if it might be easier to add monsters and whatnot to my modified TTU, than to change the geometry and lighting of the others.

I'd have posted earlier, but I keep getting this obnoxious "You cannot post so soon after your last" message. I haven't timed how long it takes, but it lasts more than an hour.

[treellama]

Any ideas Treellama?

I can't tell what the texture is supposed to look like, so it's hard to diagnose the problem. Mipmaps wouldn't cause blockiness, but DXTC could. If you turn it off, you should be getting the (huge) original textures.

I like the texture updates I've seen so far, by the way. I think the maps need a lot more differential shading to catch up! Lots of screenshots in this thread have geometry that would be easier to make out in 3D (and less boring!) with better shading.

[President People]

FWIW I've been playtesting on a split-out version of "The Dead Live In The Catacombs" (the spookiest Ch5 level IMO) to see how they play outside of the test map.

Ah, I'll have to try that. Should help me fine-tune what behaviors I can.

I think it could maybe stand to be even floatier still? (i.e. slow down the animation even more)

Can do. Lengthening the animation may space out the time between its sounds, but maybe that's a good thing. I was going to edit the sprites further anyhow; the way that center limb curls in bothers me.

I think maybe checking the "Keeps with clear shot" (or whatever it's titled) flag might help with this. Then the Nightmares won't charge at you, they'll stay where they are and shoot from a distance. That would also further distinguish them from the other two monsters who both charge at you.

I had tried that flag, but it doesn't move at all if you're within sight, and I wasn't sure if you wanted that. Though, I was experimenting solely on the included test map. I'll play with it further on an unmerged map to see what happens.

I was thinking it might be cool if the Nightmares also were invisible when idle/moving but then opaque black (with their creepy glowing eyes) when attacking, like the Banshees are. So you barely know there's even any enemies there, until suddenly this black blob with glowing green eyes appears, spits fire at you, and then vanishes again.

Ooh, I like that. Extra frames may need to be added for the fade in/out, but it would be worth it. I'll see what I can do.

[Pfhorrest]

Anyway, this weekend I finished touching up The Tangent Universe, and I played through it and at least one other version. The one I played didn't have any differences I could find aside from all the fighting, I'm wondering if it might be easier to add monsters and whatnot to my modified TTU, than to change the geometry and lighting of the others.

Oh yeah, I figured that's what you would do. The geometry of all the variants is identical, it's pretty much just monster placement that differs, so it'd be much easier to redo the monsters on copies of your geometry than to redo the geometry changes over and over again.

I'd have posted earlier, but I keep getting this obnoxious "You cannot post so soon after your last" message. I haven't timed how long it takes, but it lasts more than an hour.

Yeah that's an anti-spam measure, but it annoys me too sometimes.

I can't tell what the texture is supposed to look like, so it's hard to diagnose the problem.

The blocky area is just solid white in the normal texture, with a gradient in the alpha mask, to give a kind of "glare on window glass" effect. You can see it in earlier versions of the texture in early screenshots upthread. I only resaved the texture out so it could catch the updates to the metal texture used as part of it, and besides adding the bump maps (which are completely flat on the affected portions) that should be the only difference.

ETA: here are the old screenshots again for convenience:

Mipmaps wouldn't cause blockiness, but DXTC could. If you turn it off, you should be getting the (huge) original textures.

Hmm, well I've got both DXTC and mipmaps turned off and I'm still seeing that, so I'm at a loss.

I like the texture updates I've seen so far, by the way. I think the maps need a lot more differential shading to catch up! Lots of screenshots in this thread have geometry that would be easier to make out in 3D (and less boring!) with better shading.

Thanks! Yeah as I've been working on these textures I've been wishing that the lighting (and sometimes texture choices and alignment) could be updated alongside it, but just finishing the textures themselves in the course of this year is going to be about all the workload I can manage, so I'll have to depend on the charity of someone else if that's going to happen.

I had tried that flag, but it doesn't move at all if you're within sight, and I wasn't sure if you wanted that. Though, I was experimenting solely on the included test map. I'll play with it further on an unmerged map to see what happens.

I think that behavior would be fine. Have them snipe at you from a distance, and only move to get you back into their sight.

[treellama]

Do you still see the artifacts with bump mapping off? DXTC should be fine for a flat white texture, it really only falls apart on huge gradients that get blown up like the landscape textures.

(I still can't see the difference / problem)

[Pfhorrest]

So I did some experiments and figured a few but not all the things out.

Here's a shot that better shows the problem:

Same exact texture but with the bump map MML line removed:

Problem is gone. So it seems like it really is bumpmap-related.

I wanted to play around with corrugating the glass in the window bumpmap anyway, and doing that also seemed to remove the problem, so it seems likely that it's only happening when there are big flat spaces (that are also semitransparent? I haven't yet tried a solid flat bump map on an opaque texture to see if that does anything weird).

I'm not sure I like that corrugated effect (any other opinions?) so I tried the same old flat-glass bump map but with DXTC off. It had the same problem it was having before. I tried also turning mipmapping off though, and that seems to have fixed it:

ETA: Just tried it with mipmapping off and DXTC on and the problem is still fixed, so mipmapping is the culprit.

ETA2: I tried applying the mipmapped version of that bump map to the boring flat opaque texture on the ceiling of the first room, and it still has blocky bits in what's supposed to be a flat area:

So it seems like mipmapped bump maps do this blocky thing in large solid-color areas regardless of opacity.

[Pfhorrest]

Tonight's progress:

[treellama]

So it seems like mipmapped bump maps do this blocky thing in large solid-color areas regardless of opacity.

So you're generating mipmaps for the bump maps? I'm not sure I ever tested this.

It should work, but Aorta might not renormalize the normal maps perfectly (remember Aleph One combines them). You shouldn't notice huge artifacts, though, just a small (maybe imperceptible) loss of image quality.

Maybe Aleph One isn't loading them correctly.

[Pfhorrest]

If there's no benefit to mipmappimg bump maps, maybe I'll just reconvert them all with no mipmaps. I was just saving the DDSs with the same settings I had used for the textures themselves without really thinking about it.

[treellama]

There should still be a benefit in terms of load speed (since otherwise Aleph One will have to generate the mipmaps as it loads each texture), but if it's broken that doesn't do you any good. I'll probably forget to look into this by the next time I am free. Remind me once in a while I guess.

[Pfhorrest]

I'll try, but remembering things isn't exactly my strong suit these days.

I unexpectedly finished off the last of the Jjaro textures tonight:

Tomorrow night I will try to check over everything once more real quick and then pack up EX1.2a1 for people to check out over the weekend.

[Pfhorrest]

So apparently I overlooked a handful of textures, but I caught up on them tonight.

I couldn't find an example of the fourth one on that map, but I thought this shot looked cool:

Snapped that while testing Eternal X 1.2.0 alpha 1 which is now available for testing!

Compared to 1.1.0 it has Tacticus' weapons, my updated Jjaro textures, and President Peoples' changes to the shapes and sounds and the stock physics (though the physics changes aren't incorporated into the map's merged physics yet so W'rkncacnter monsters will probably behave weird in Ch5).

Please run through some Jjaro levels (like the prologue/epilogue or most of Ch4) and let me know if anything seems wrong!