Project Mode7

[linkrulz4]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

PFA went ahead and completely rescripted it into a PROPER 3D projection mode... and it is awesome

I'm still tweaking what he has, but so far it looks great! Ignore the temporary Mario graphics(sky)

This is extremely interesting. I knew Graal was capable of rendering polygons, but I never imagined someone would actually accomplish this much with the client ever. Sir, this is by far the greatest thing I have ever seen scripted by a single man. You said you plan on making this public, yes?
Is there a plan to make this a third person camera, or would you have it as a first-person camera? I could easily see someone using this to create some sort of death-match game like DOOM. This adds a whole new level of possibilities to what kind of playerworlds or events people can create.

Also are those reflections just Photoshopped or did you really script that? Looks gorgeous, man.

[DustyPorViva]

PFA did all of the new 3D scripting, he gets the credit

And the reflections are all scripted

[linkrulz4]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

PFA did all of the new 3D scripting, he gets the credit

And the reflections are all scripted

My hat goes off to both of you, then.
Solid work. This is exactly the innovation Graal needs.
Seriously, it's relieving to see such dedicated people creating such a revolutionary idea on the client and making it a reality. Again, that is simply amazing and really pushes past what we thought was the limits of the program.

[Tricxta]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

PFA did all of the new 3D scripting, he gets the credit

And the reflections are all scripted

Is it creating the reflection only initially or constantly refreshing. If it is constantly refreshing I thought that'd be rather intensive, no?
Also, does this have any lag overall as of yet?

[DustyPorViva]

Originally Posted by Tricxta

Is it creating the reflection only initially or constantly refreshing. If it is constantly refreshing I thought that'd be rather intensive, no?
Also, does this have any lag overall as of yet?

Reflections are all real-time. Intensive? Not really, running fine on my computer(20fps). Quality can be adjusted, lowering the quality will create distortion in the textures, but still mostly playable.

Here, see a video



Chances are in final play the scene won't be that zoomed in on the terrain, though.

[Kiwi27]

That is amazing.

[Tricxta]

Oh neat, I see what you did there. Seems very smooth as well. Well done, can't wait to mess around with the code.

[Hezzy002]

The horizon renders much further than that in a mode7 racer. Not to be a killjoy, but this is just as far as everyone else gets with mode7 in Graal. The hump has been getting enough texel density to accurately render things further out on the horizon. I think with the new technique you're using it'll be totally possible, though. Best of luck.

[DustyPorViva]

Originally Posted by Hezzy002

The horizon renders much further than that in a mode7 racer. Not to be a killjoy, but this is just as far as everyone else gets with mode7 in Graal. The hump has been getting enough texel density to accurately render things further out on the horizon. I think with the new technique you're using it'll be totally possible, though. Best of luck.

"Chances are in final play the scene won't be that zoomed in on the terrain, though."

Actual racing levels will probably be gmaps, alleviating this issue moreso.

[Hezzy002]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

"Chances are in final play the scene won't be that zoomed in on the terrain, though."
Actual racing levels will probably be gmaps, alleviating this issue moreso.

yeah, I know what you said. I'm just saying as you approach the horizon you have to do more texel samples in order to accomplish the desired effect.

This might not be an issue for you since you can cheap out by just having the GPU do its built-in texture interpolation because you build an image.

I'm also not sure what method you're using, but mode7 isn't a 3D transformation or projection. It's a 2D affine transformation, which is why there's a clearly defined (and perspectively inaccurate) horizon line that appears. If you are doing a 3D transformation, you should just drop it and use the actual formula. It's on Wikipedia in the form of an affine transformation matrix. It'd probably make it very easy to replicate the mode7 results pretty much perfectly.

[Crono]

looks awesome.

[DustyPorViva]

I was having a bit of trouble messing around with PFA's version, since it's not something I wrote up so I was fairly unfamiliar with it, and decided to revisit my own to see where I get.

I'm pretty happy with what I eventually ended up with:

[BlueMelon]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

I was having a bit of trouble messing around with PFA's version, since it's not something I wrote up so I was fairly unfamiliar with it, and decided to revisit my own to see where I get.

I'm pretty happy with what I eventually ended up with:

live demo? ;D

[Hezzy002]

Are you having framerate issues? I see the 3 and have some ideas.

[DustyPorViva]

Originally Posted by Hezzy002

Are you having framerate issues? I see the 3 and have some ideas.

I cranked up the quality to 1 polygon per tile simply to make it look nice Here's at 16 tiles per polygon:

There's more distortion because of the extreme angle, but honestly I'm okay with that. People with more powerful computers will be able to adjust the quality.

Originally Posted by BlueMelon

live demo? ;D

Anyone who has access on Testbed can go on and add "Public/DustyPorViva/Mode7" Though I'm still changing things around so don't be surprised if it's not working at any given time.

[Hezzy002]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

I cranked up the quality to 1 polygon per tile simply to make it look nice Here's at 16 tiles per polygon:
There's more distortion because of the extreme angle, but honestly I'm okay with that. People with more powerful computers will be able to adjust the quality.

Does it bottleneck during rasterization or transformation with the higher quality?

You could also probably get away by scaling up the polycount for the closer sections.

[DustyPorViva]

Originally Posted by Hezzy002

Does it bottleneck during rasterization or transformation with the higher quality?

You could also probably get away by scaling up the polycount for the closer sections.

I was curious and checked it out before. Simply running the loop at 64*64 with no math or rendering drops the fps down to about 8. Then the math/rendering drops it down to 3.

I was thinking about the scaling resolution as well, but that may be WAY too much work.

[Hezzy002]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

I was curious and checked it out before. Simply running the loop at 64*64 with no math or rendering drops the fps down to about 8. Then the math/rendering drops it down to 3.

I was thinking about the scaling resolution as well, but that may be WAY too much work.

Wait, no math or rendering as in a 64x64 loop without transformation or rendering? What else are you doing? It sounds like something odd is going on if you're getting significant performance drops from things other than what should most intensive parts.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you meant by math and rendering, of course.

Putting each polygon on its own layer, or at least ensuring neighboring polygons don't have the same layer should prevent Graal from trying to sort them. Normally Graal sorts images by their bottom left corner, which, at least on some of the older clients, caused huge performance drops because it was done every frame without regard to the previous frame (It should store the new, sorted data so the majority of the stuff is still sorted).

Dynamically scaling up would drastically increase performance and visual quality..

[Chompy]

I so want to play around with that code. Really good job on it so far!

[Tim_Rocks]

Let me play with it

[DustyPorViva]

Managed to get this much done just before bed. Finally implemented rendering gmaps. It's still a bit buggy(some levels seem to not be rendering, some divide by 0 issues with some polygons), but I'm very glad I got past that hump.

[Fulg0reSama]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

Managed to get this much done just before bed. Finally implemented rendering gmaps. It's still a bit buggy(some levels seem to not be rendering, some divide by 0 issues with some polygons), but I'm very glad I got past that hump.

I must say Dusty, this is really good, extremely impressive, but I do have one small question.

Do you plan to allow certain tiles to stand up with this (of course once you've worked out any bugs like you've mentioned)?
Example: Trees or fence tiles, or house tiles.

[DustyPorViva]

Originally Posted by Fulg0reSama

I must say Dusty, this is really good, extremely impressive, but I do have one small question.

Do you plan to allow certain tiles to stand up with this (of course once you've worked out any bugs like you've mentioned)?
Example: Trees or fence tiles, or house tiles.

Tiles? No. But NPCs will be rendered onto the level to supplement that void.

Originally Posted by Hezzy002

Nice work, but the transformation is still quite off. The scene should see more distortion toward the top in the way of shrinking horizontally. Also, the horizon line isn't appearing properly.

Aye, there's probably a lot more tweaking that can be done, but getting past that gmap hump was my focus for now.

[Fulg0reSama]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

Tiles? No. But NPCs will be rendered onto the level to supplement that void.

Well, that's what I was meaning to say, I should've stated that

Glad to hear it.

I can imagine going into a haunted house with "spooky" ghosts n stuff.

[Hezzy002]

Nice work, but the transformation is still quite off. The scene should see more distortion toward the top in the way of shrinking horizontally. Also, the horizon line isn't appearing properly.

[MattKan]

This is quite interesting. Will we finally see a Graal 3D?

[Crow]

Originally Posted by MattKan

This is quite interesting. Will we finally see a Graal 3D?

Does that look 3D to you?

[Fulg0reSama]

Originally Posted by MattKan

This is quite interesting. Could we finally see a Graal 2.5D?

fixed.

[Admins]

Looks cool, do you think there could be something special added in the engine to make it faster?

[Crow]

Originally Posted by Stefan

Looks cool, do you think there could be something special added in the engine to make it faster?

See:

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

I don't think you can. Regardless, this is what it looks like when you apply an image to a skewed polygon:



The issue was brought up with Stefan a long time ago, but I don't think it will ever be fixed.

[DustyPorViva]

Originally Posted by Stefan

Looks cool, do you think there could be something special added in the engine to make it faster?

Internalized mode7 support It's supposedly fairly easy to code if you want to look into it, though it might still be problematic for resolutions that Graal runs in.

You can also look into what Crow posted, by properly normalizing textures on polygons.

I mean you're the coder here, so if you think there's ways this can be improved either with script or modifying the client I wouldn't mind discussing it with you

[Kiwi27]

2.5D is this type thing, right?

[that's Golden Sun: Dark Dawn]

Because that on Graal would be amazing. <3
We'd be able to copy the new Zelda games too!

[Imperialistic]

graal 2.5d ftw

[Rave_J]

i been trying to get level editor to make it support models on graal editor for 2.5 graphics and option to change camera views
but he wont do it.
i wouldnt mind re releasing graal 3d if it works offline or kind of like Torque Engine 3d does where u actually have where u can play with it run scripts ect without having a graal server

[DustyPorViva]

*facepalm* please don't try to turn this into some Graal 2.5d or Graal 3D please. None of that is in any way related to mode7. They're cool and all, but don't belong in this thread and I'd hate to see it spammed up and Stefan lose his interest.

[MattKan]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

*facepalm* please don't try to turn this into some Graal 2.5d or Graal 3D please. None of that is in any way related to mode7. They're cool and all, but don't belong in this thread and I'd hate to see it spammed up and Stefan lose his interest.

Oh, my bad... I'm just ignorant

Anyways this is really good and quite impressive. I think it opens up a lot of possibilities to Graal! Good job!

[Galdor]

wtf is going on here? xD

[Astram]

Is this project still going? It's been over 2 months since Dusty posted :P.

[Crono]

Think he's waiting for Stefan to implement some features.

[Galdor]

Originally Posted by Crono

Think he's waiting for Stefan to implement some features.