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News: Celebrating 30 years of Star Control 2 - The Ur-Quan Masters

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Author Topic: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation  (Read 7254 times)
TBeholder
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #15 on: September 13, 2008, 10:11:31 am »

I agree in princple that there should be a "UQM -- just as the creators made it (with a few bugfixes/UI improvements)". People should definitely have the option to play the game "just as it was". However, I think that if the game is to have a future (and not just with people making mods) [...] There should be an option to toggle it on or off quickly and easily so that people can go between "Classic" and "New" modes.
Best way would be greater moddability (without recompiling main executable to change anything but sprites and sounds), perhaps via .dll/.so or maybe even scripts (Python?). Then we would have basic “Legacy” and “Enhanced” rulesets and user mods.
I sort of like PsyDev's idea. Such a new melee mode could also include things like a planet location indicator,
More generic solution is tactical minimap (perhaps between 2 status sections). It can be also used to track out-of-screen stones, missiles/fighters/marines and all ships if and when fleet vs. fleet combat will be implemented.

As to Timewarp, i tried it. Melee is rather pretty and has some interesting features, but it's very raw and buggy. AI looks very dumb even as compared to SC2 & UQM with its “almost everything merrily jumps right into Torch exhaust” issue. Fleet melee is cool thing... but now it just throws heaps of errors. And TW has no working campaign at all.
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #16 on: September 15, 2008, 08:25:11 pm »

Yeah, the AI in TimeWarp leaves much to be desired... but I've really liked having the huge fleet battles... gives you a feel for what StarControl could be. Also reduces some of the rock-paper-scissors frustration.


Have you tried XNA Melee? It's pretty good... interestingly the Ur-Quan and Vux seem way more effective in that game. Partially it's due to more rotation angles (Vux laser can stick on you really good) and the fact that there are more pressures about where/when you can position your ship since you have two guys on you instead of just one. Ships that were less effective 1 on 1 can be pretty useful in a more chaotic setup.
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #17 on: September 16, 2008, 04:36:33 am »

How many volunteer artists who would be willing to draw over 400 images do you think we have available to us?

Can't you just tell the game to rotate the sprite X degrees?
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #18 on: September 16, 2008, 10:47:16 am »

How many volunteer artists who would be willing to draw over 400 images do you think we have available to us?

Can't you just tell the game to rotate the sprite X degrees?
The sprites have drop shadows.
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #19 on: September 16, 2008, 11:57:42 am »

Um, what's a drop shadow?
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #20 on: September 16, 2008, 03:24:21 pm »

Jay, use Google or Wikipedia when you don't know something, it saves time and effort for the person you're talking with.

That being said, the ship sprites don't have drop shadows, they have shadows, and that's what makes jaychant's method difficult to implement properly. Of course, you could, for every new angle, to start from the sprite for the nearest original angle (e.g. to make a Jugger sprite whose facing makes a 3 degrees angle with the vertical, start from the sprite for the Utwig looking up), which I believe someone on the SCDB tried to do for one ship (though I can't find the link). It wasn't perfect though, you could still see slightly rough transitions between facings whose new sprites sprung from different original sprites if you paid a lot of attention.

EDIT: It was indeed XNA Melee, as Dabir below remarked. Link here.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2008, 06:26:09 pm by Jubal-lun-Sul » Logged
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #21 on: September 16, 2008, 05:50:02 pm »

You might be thinking of MrBrian's ZFP rotation to showcase what happens in XNA melee. If you applied the HQ filter it probably wouldn't look too bad, but that particular file was jpeg'd and double-sized with no antialiasing.
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #22 on: September 16, 2008, 06:55:27 pm »

How about merging the two nearest sprites, rather than using just one of them? i.e. for every two adjacent sprites, rotate them both to the angle between them (their average) and apply some merging algorithm. The process can then be repeated in case you want 64 directions. I imagine this could somehow be scripted by someone who knows their way around these things.
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #23 on: September 17, 2008, 03:05:02 am »

Jay, use Google or Wikipedia when you don't know something, it saves time and effort for the person you're talking with.

That being said, the ship sprites don't have drop shadows, they have shadows, and that's what makes jaychant's method difficult to implement properly. Of course, you could, for every new angle, to start from the sprite for the nearest original angle (e.g. to make a Jugger sprite whose facing makes a 3 degrees angle with the vertical, start from the sprite for the Utwig looking up), which I believe someone on the SCDB tried to do for one ship (though I can't find the link). It wasn't perfect though, you could still see slightly rough transitions between facings whose new sprites sprung from different original sprites if you paid a lot of attention.

EDIT: It was indeed XNA Melee, as Dabir below remarked. Link here.

Why is it you care about the graphics, and yet we're talking about an old, 320x240-sized game with blocky graphics?
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #24 on: September 17, 2008, 06:37:20 am »

Blocky graphics or not, you still need a decent spin, you don't want the spin to make the shop jump randomly... and if I do things that take time...why would I do it bad and cheap and after remake it if I can make it right the first time...  The movement for now are pretty smooth even tho the graphics are old!

I will try to mod some images on a later time because I got a test coming up.

But, overall it all depend of what quality your looking for!

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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #25 on: September 18, 2008, 09:45:47 am »

How about merging the two nearest sprites, rather than using just one of them? i.e. for every two adjacent sprites, rotate them both to the angle between them (their average) and apply some merging algorithm. The process can then be repeated in case you want 64 directions. I imagine this could somehow be scripted by someone who knows their way around these things.
Interesting, I could probably do this exactly if I had the time, meaning I will do it if no-one else does first.
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #26 on: September 26, 2008, 08:22:00 am »

I had my ship rotation code laying around so I did a test

http://www.viddler.com/explore/Mrbrian/videos/2/

Because of how I am layering a 50% transparent sprite over an totally opaque sprite, it still pops- but if make the two layers both 50%, the image is not totally opaque and fades in and out between each angle, which looks more weird.
The difference between the two is probably not super noticeable when in a zoomed out battle scenario
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #27 on: September 26, 2008, 09:26:38 am »

I had my ship rotation code laying around so I did a test

http://www.viddler.com/explore/Mrbrian/videos/2/

Because of how I am layering a 50% transparent sprite over an totally opaque sprite, it still pops- but if make the two layers both 50%, the image is not totally opaque and fades in and out between each angle, which looks more weird.
The difference between the two is probably not super noticeable when in a zoomed out battle scenario

Incidentally, GameVee gives a higher resolution than Viddler. I haven't tried it yet but I've seen other people's videos on there and they look incredible.
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Re: UQM, Timewarp and ship rotation
« Reply #28 on: September 26, 2008, 01:09:22 pm »

Oh, the snapping would be a bit of a problem for the perfectionist. I wasn't aware there were such differences between the angles. I guess it can't be perfected without manual editing. Undecided

The "2.5D" idea is interesting, but that's a lot of work: manually removing shadows in ~40 images, creating ~40 height maps, generating shadows that look like in the original sprites, and of course adding angles in the engine. Might as well redo the whole thing with hi-res models...
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Shofixti Scouts doing gravity whips  /  These are a few of my favorite ships!
       © meep-eep
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