As part of the graphics effects for Doomdark’s Revenge, Jure and I implemented a haze effect to the landscaping. The mechanic is simple if a little processor hungry. The landscaping technique draws from back to front using seven definitive distance layers, z axis if you like. So what we do in DDR is after every layer has been drawn, we apply a haze alpha mask to modify the pixels drawn. The layer at the back will get modified by every haze layer and thus thicken up the haze fogginess in the distance. You can see the affect on the image here – click to get a bigger view. This is an example of the amount of extra processing taking place in the DDR frontend. What I would like to see is the system moved to using 3d hardware, this would allow effects like this to be done using pixel shaders. This combined with hardware drawing in general would make the DDR frontend function with little graphic overhead.
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The Midnight Engine
The midnight engine DDR port is about 75% done.
The base engine has been changed to handle most of the differences in a global fashion, however, I have created multiple versions of a mechanic where needed. eg. A scenario writer chooses which type of battle system, recruitment system, etc…
Lately I have got caught up the the frontend – this has been rewritten to allow easy change, the idea being that scenario writers can affect the frontend as well. However this has been much more of a pain than I anticipated and has, to be honest, bogged me down!
I got over a major hurdle today, and thus I hope to get back on track.
The graphics system has completely changed from the LOM version, and anyone who has seen the screenshots will admit it looks lovely. The whole engine works with a patch system allowing for the terrain to change depending on which location it is, this means that the panormics look differently all the time. This process is also used in the tunnles which allows the tunnels to have distinct appearnces depending on where you are.
Ther resolution is 1024x768x32 – which is causing some speed issues at the moment, due to the amount of graphic work being implemented. For example, there is a haze layer that is applied over the seven sizes(distance) of graphics. In some way almost every pixel is adjusted a number of times before being written to the screen. This will all get sped up at the end.
Jure has produced lots of new graphics, and has worked with Bill to use the DDR shield templates and produce TME versions – thus keep consistency across the midnight games.
The last work that I know Jure was working on was the fog system, and we also discussued and inverse landscaping for the sky.
I recently implemented all of Andrews TME mods that he used for WOTS into the new codebase, and will be handing a version of TME over to him real soon so that he can hopefully get moving around the DDR map in the WOTS engine.
Hopefully, once I had it over, requests from Andrew combined with my own needs will move the project along.
Lords of midnight, Doomdark’s Revenge, The Midnight EngineRelated Posts:
The Midnight Engine
Here are some screenshots showing the new UI. One also shows of the new sun. We’ve played around a lot with the effects layers. There are now different suns and moons depending on the time of day etc.
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The Midnight Engine
Some of you will already know, that Jure is back on the project. We have been reworking all the graphic handling of the engine for ddr. We are creating everything in 24bit with alpha, and using a patch system to allow images to be made on the fly. This allows for every graphic to respond to its environment. The upshot is large variety in the landscaping and tunnels. Here are a few screenshots.
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The Midnight Engine
Well, it’s be a long time coming, but I placed a new pre-alpha version of the Midnight Engine on the site. I have re-written a lot of the engine to allow it to be easier to use by other developers. The frontend is now all 32 bit with alpha’s. The start of a DDR scenario is with the product, but just to allow artist to start developing graphics. I will update as I add all the little features.