2023-02-06 snapshot

[Jakob Hubbard]

6. Deal with editor/saving/loading. Since the tread mark decals are going to be in an atlas texture they won't be easy to save in the decals file. I'll probably just punt and not save them.

I'd probably just scrap this for now and possibly add it to the backlog of additions later. Although it would be nice to see the decals that were formed during erode if someone were to save a post race version. Imo the benefits don't really outweigh the time it would take, better to just keep plugging along to the final optimization of the terrain engine (this is totally not influenced by my desire to have editor and ui scripting in the game ).

[jlv]

6. Deal with editor/saving/loading. Since the tread mark decals are going to be in an atlas texture they won't be easy to save in the decals file. I'll probably just punt and not save them.

I'd probably just scrap this for now and possibly add it to the backlog of additions later. Although it would be nice to see the decals that were formed during erode if someone were to save a post race version. Imo the benefits don't really outweigh the time it would take, better to just keep plugging along to the final optimization of the terrain engine (this is totally not influenced by my desire to have editor and ui scripting in the game :lol:).

I have to do something because if I don't touch the save code it'll save the tread mark decals with (null) as the texture name. It'll be easy to just skip them though.

[jlv]

whats the timeframe for next update

I don't want to promise a time frame and then miss. Here's what I have to do:

1. Add code to fit the tread mark decal textures into one atlas texture in a somewhat optimal way. (Done. This was the hard part.)
2. Add "treadmark" option to tileinfo file parser. (Done.)
3. Add code to read the tread mark image files and plug them into the atlas. (Done.)
4. Update decal code to allow texture coordinates that don't cover the entire texture for the atlased decals. (Done.)
5. Add code to drop tread mark decals as the bikes move around. (Still a couple of bugs to shake out but basically working!)
6. Deal with editor/saving/loading. Since the tread mark decals are going to be in an atlas texture they won't be easy to save in the decals file. I'll probably just punt and not save them.

Getting close! Need to make a better test case since I'm using placeholders for my tread mark decals. Updates are fast aside from an occasional delay when it has to update the lower detail levels.

[Jakob Hubbard]

Awesome! Thanks for the update on progress.

[Hayden_Scott]

whats the timeframe for next update

I don't want to promise a time frame and then miss. Here's what I have to do:

1. Add code to fit the tread mark decal textures into one atlas texture in a somewhat optimal way. (Done. This was the hard part.)
2. Add "treadmark" option to tileinfo file parser. (Done.)
3. Add code to read the tread mark image files and plug them into the atlas. (Done.)
4. Update decal code to allow texture coordinates that don't cover the entire texture for the atlased decals. (Done.)
5. Add code to drop tread mark decals as the bikes move around. (Still a couple of bugs to shake out but basically working!)
6. Deal with editor/saving/loading. Since the tread mark decals are going to be in an atlas texture they won't be easy to save in the decals file. I'll probably just punt and not save them.

Getting close! Need to make a better test case since I'm using placeholders for my tread mark decals. Updates are fast aside from an occasional delay when it has to update the lower detail levels.

could we also get a fix on the newer snapshots I have noticed that the ground decals look like they almost have a lod on the decals and dont become high res until your pretty much riding ontop of it. i noticed this even on max gfx

[Jakob Hubbard]

could we also get a fix on the newer snapshots I have noticed that the ground decals look like they almost have a lod on the decals and dont become high res until your pretty much riding ontop of it. i noticed this even on max gfx

Are you sure your ground texture resolution is 4k? It was moved from a maximum of 1024 to 4096 in the newer snapshots because of the way terrain is rendered. If it is at 4k what GPU are you running?

[jlv]

could we also get a fix on the newer snapshots I have noticed that the ground decals look like they almost have a lod on the decals and dont become high res until your pretty much riding ontop of it. i noticed this even on max gfx

Like Jakob said, 4096x4096 does help. But I am planning on making more texture pyramid levels an option. I'm not sure how the UI should work for it though. Right now there are 3 levels. The lowest detail level always covers the entire field, this level is required so there will be no options to disable it. The high detail level covers the area around the camera that is at least 64x64 height elements and 64x64 feet. The low detail level covers an area 4 times that size in length (16 times in area). So if you want less transition between low and high you'd want a mid level that covers high * 2x2.

So for the UI, it's not totally clear what to do. I could just make it a console thing where /terrainlevels x interprets 'x' as a bit mask. E.g. /terrainlevels 5 gets the current behavior (i.e. levels 1 + 4 = 5) and /terrainlevels 7 would add a mid level (levels 1 + 2 + 4 = 7). That would be the maximum for user unfriendliness but would allow full flexibility if you want to use 255 for 8 levels or something. I could make it use binary so it'd be 101 for 5 and 111 for 7 which would be a little more friendly.

I could add an on/off setting for each level in the advanced gfx menu. This would be flexible but would take a lot of space in the menu. Might just confuse people though.

Could have just one setting that progressively enables more levels. Something like 0000, 0001, 0101, 0111, 1111, labeled as "off, low, medium, high, ultra". This would be simple but if you want something not in the list you'd be out of luck.

What do you guys think?

[Hayden_Scott]

could we also get a fix on the newer snapshots I have noticed that the ground decals look like they almost have a lod on the decals and dont become high res until your pretty much riding ontop of it. i noticed this even on max gfx

Like Jakob said, 4096x4096 does help. But I am planning on making more texture pyramid levels an option. I'm not sure how the UI should work for it though. Right now there are 3 levels. The lowest detail level always covers the entire field, this level is required so there will be no options to disable it. The high detail level covers the area around the camera that is at least 64x64 height elements and 64x64 feet. The low detail level covers an area 4 times that size in length (16 times in area). So if you want less transition between low and high you'd want a mid level that covers high * 2x2.

So for the UI, it's not totally clear what to do. I could just make it a console thing where /terrainlevels x interprets 'x' as a bit mask. E.g. /terrainlevels 5 gets the current behavior (i.e. levels 1 + 4 = 5) and /terrainlevels 7 would add a mid level (levels 1 + 2 + 4 = 7). That would be the maximum for user unfriendliness but would allow full flexibility if you want to use 255 for 8 levels or something. I could make it use binary so it'd be 101 for 5 and 111 for 7 which would be a little more friendly.

I could add an on/off setting for each level in the advanced gfx menu. This would be flexible but would take a lot of space in the menu. Might just confuse people though.

Could have just one setting that progressively enables more levels. Something like 0000, 0001, 0101, 0111, 1111, labeled as "off, low, medium, high, ultra". This would be simple but if you want something not in the list you'd be out of luck.

What do you guys think?

"labeled as "off, low, medium, high," would be great, have it going across the screen instead of 4 more rows going down for the UI so it doesnt take much space

[jlv]

Thinking about it some more, maybe I'll just have options like this:

off (0000)
low (0001)
medium (0101)
high (0111)
custom (0010)
custom (0011)
custom (0100)
custom (0110)
custom (1000)
custom (1001)
custom (1010)
custom (1011)
custom (1100)
custom (1101)
custom (1110)
custom (1111)

That'd give you access to all the combinations without being totally confusing.

[Jakob Hubbard]

Quick question about the tire tread update. Will the tire treads be removed if traveling backwards in a demo? Or can the treads only be placed in the forwards direction of time. If it's only forwards, does it keep track of the latest time placed or something along those lines so treads aren't double placed?

[Racers52]

Thinking about it some more, maybe I'll just have options like this:

off (0000)
low (0001)
medium (0101)
high (0111)
custom (0010)
custom (0011)
custom (0100)
custom (0110)
custom (1000)
custom (1001)
custom (1010)
custom (1011)
custom (1100)
custom (1101)
custom (1110)
custom (1111)

That'd give you access to all the combinations without being totally confusing.

Personally, I'd like the flexibility to custom tailor settings to my system so having access to all the combinations would be nice. Or if you wanted to do a small preset window with -off to high- and then have an advanced options tab underneath with a click and expand window where you can access the values not in binary format and change them how you'd like that would be nice too but I have zero experience in UI design

[jlv]

Quick question about the tire tread update. Will the tire treads be removed if traveling backwards in a demo? Or can the treads only be placed in the forwards direction of time. If it's only forwards, does it keep track of the latest time placed or something along those lines so treads aren't double placed?

Right now it'd just drop more decals if you rewind. I could make it hold back after rewinding. Deleting them when rewinding would actually be possible but probably not worth the effort since erode doesn't rewind properly either.

[jlv]

Personally, I'd like the flexibility to custom tailor settings to my system so having access to all the combinations would be nice. Or if you wanted to do a small preset window with -off to high- and then have an advanced options tab underneath with a click and expand window where you can access the values not in binary format and change them how you'd like that would be nice too but I have zero experience in UI design :mrgreen:

I like having all options available too. Some don't really make sense though. For example, you'd never want 1100, it'd be a nonsense ultra low + low combo. Still nice to have just for the sake of experimenting.