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Flexman

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  1. Flexman

    Video underlay

    By Flexman,

    Not quite there yet.
     
    What I'm trying to do is copy the raw TADS buffer into the diffuse COLOR0 buffer and render the symbology into the same bugger but into channel 2 (COLOR2). Texture channel 2 is used by the "fullbright" shader and mixes at full intensity. The net effect being a normal diffuse texture with full-bright symbology painted over it.
     
    At the moment it's not working as intended. I need to go through the shader to check it's doing what I think it's supposed to do. And see if I need to just use multiple buffers and mix them instead of trying to draw directly into different stages. I'm probably missing an OpenGL command to set the texture target correctly.
     
    It's getting late and I've had to do a lot or changes, our cockpit MPDs only have two knobs, the photos and source material I've been using to layout have three knobs. So there's a slight shift in positioning required.
     

    Non of this does anything yet except the "VID" button that toggles the current TADS buffer. This is the new vector font/glyph system in use. I've yet to add the various button "specials" such as menu nagivation arrows, but the toggles work. The FOV shouldn't be in the raw TADS buffer, need to switch that.
     
    The FMS toggles on the left will interface to the flight model.
     
    I have to say the bitmap fonts looked just as good, if not slightly better when used at the same size. It was a pain adding new glyphs though, here I can add anything I can code with GL commands.
     
     
    TrackIR remains a tangled mess of wires but I managed to assemble it to test and discovered that I'd not added the Track offsets to the cockpit cam. Quickly fixed that.
     
    Source
  2. Flexman
    Video underlays are working as intended (more or less).
     
    I split the MPD buffers into two, symbologyBuffer and compositeBuffer. The symbology buffer is texturestage2 and rendered by the shader at full brightness. If the underlay is active the TADS/PNVS buffer is copied to outputbuffer which is texturestage0 (the simple diffuse buffer). The two are mixed by the material shader which is applied to each MPD screen.
     
    The mix works well, providing enough contrast between video and symbology even when the video is quite bright.
     
    I did a version that mixed symbology and the video buffer into a single composite via a shader but the mix was often overbright and hard to read. A good case for adding a working video level control? Maybe in version 1.5.
     
    The final modification is to use the TADS/PNVS postbuffer instead of the raw camera render.
     


     
    Source
  4. Flexman
    The HMD of the new MTADS Apache comes with a number of 'virtual' items displayed to the pilot. The currently selected waypoint is made virtual in cruise and tranistion modes, the waypoint position is marked with a flat bottomed diamond with a dot in the centre. See the take-off point (W00) on the image below.
     
    Flying with the flight path marker inside this symbol and you should head right to that spot.
     
    Waypoint marker
     

     
    Source
  5. Flexman
    It's been a blissfully quiet weekend.
     
    The Combat-Helo configuration files are now in an easier to use XML format and I added a lot of extra options too. Player profile name, host IP, graphics filters etc. Fullscreen and Windowed modes having their own settings.
     
    Also experimented with light scattering, we'll be adding per time-of-day lighting and retiring the old LB2 style skybox. That's not a priority item just something that's nice to toy as a little break.
     
    Arming system which should have been completed already (lots of interruptions this week) has had some GUI elements added to it to improve feedback, just have to write the descriptions for all the ammo. The Apache is receiving the arming messages fine but not visibly showing the loaded rounds. On the whole, not too happy with all the GUI as it is. I made something that was easy to fit to multiple resolutions but it could use a little polish.
     



    I ran another test with the Autopatcher and it's still a bust. The file it's wanting is created server-side but the client patcher can't reach it. So another email exchange with tech-support tomorrow.
     
    Source
  6. Flexman
    Summer Sim 2010 is nearly here. Komodo Simulations, makers of replica helicopter controls for virtual training are sadly not going to have their replica controls ready in time but a recent news update on their web site shows the current collective at the pre-mould stage.
     
    Komodo Simulations WAH-64 collective WIP
     
    Looking good so far. Combat-Helo will be there to show a build of some kind. Although like the controls we're perhaps not going to have all the goodies ready to go into a demo build. We're still working on getting the new flight model ready, going to be a bit hit and miss that one.
     

     
    Source
  7. Flexman
    Spent the day working on the Helicopter entity and the sub-classes that handle all the pylons and stores. It's worth spending time automating these things as much as possible now to simply things later.
     
    I broke out UMLet, a nice fast Java based UML editor to look at my structure. What's missing is the store-jett which needs to be a function of [TStore], pass it the pylon number and it will be required to generate the physics object, parent the rail/pod/fuel cell, detach it from the pylon and let Newton take over, thus letting the pod/rail complete with ordnance fall to earth.
     
    And by moving the [selectedZone] property to the [Pylon] from the [Avionics] class, it allows for the ground-crew loading system to simply add rockets and let the [Pylon] advance the zone so all 3 zones are populated in three clicks. That way it's not dependent on a playing crewing the Helicopter (as [Avionics] are only instantiated when you board a vehicle and destroyed on exit).
     
    This is all part of the process of adding the WEP MFD page which needs access to stores data and it gets it from the [stores] class, which can be thought of as a black box into which each pylon (4 of them) send signals about what is loaded where. And how to re-load of course.
     
    I'm torn about creating the whole WEP page graphic as a vector, I'd rather do that as textures scaled up can look a bit blurry. Cockpit builders might want a stand alone OpenGL client that doesn't require the 3D engine for displays so going native OpenGL makes adding it a cut and paste job.
     
    Source
  8. Flexman

    Weekend video

    By Flexman,

    I know I said this week but will likely be over the weekend, there were some LUA issues I needed to get my head around. As for LUA, I think I'm going to pull out some of the model features I've been putting into the model LUA scripts as it's starting to get in the way when I need to control them in game logic. Reading values and objects back seems to be a dark art, these things may have been fixed, or not bugs at all, but caught between moving engine versions and not much documentation I'm left with having to "land at an alternate airport" just to keep things moving.
     
    Also I want to fix up the cockpit ambient lighting before recording a sight-seeing tour around our version of Herat city. Here's a tasty screen-shot of the Citadel to keep you going.
     

     
    Source
  9. Flexman

    WEP page (advanced)

    By Flexman,

    This is OpenGL, vector based rendered to an offscreen buffer, now with added mipmaps. I'll try and detail the functions of these pages and sub-modes as I go and allow you to submit corrections early on.
     
    The WEP (weapons) MFD page
     
    Pictured below shoing the gun sub-mode. Main feature is the bust limit selector on the left side indicating the number of rounds fired when the pilot commands. The bottom MFD buttons marked GUN, MSL and RKT will switch the weapons and display rounds and options. Stores and gun rounds to add to the display. Will complete tomorrow. The only other notable feature is the ACQ option (R6) to switch the gun aiming between fixed and TADS.
     
    The buttons marked with and arrow above (see top row) are for navigating to different pages. The bottom right button indicates the current page (WEP boxed). Next to that the selected sub mode (GUN boxed).
     

     
    Source
  10. Flexman

    Windows 7 upgrade

    By Flexman,

    A need to test Combat-Helo on Windows 7 resulted in a TESCO purchase of the Windows 7 Upgrade and 1kg of bananas (a rich source of potassium).
     
    Running any Leadwerks program on a fresh OS install results in an EXCEPTION on launch, only two steps required to get it working. Run the OpenAL install then update video drivers. Simple. Everything worked as it should.
     
    Source
  11. Flexman
    Another "gravy" feature which I wouldn't have spent time on had David (part man, part 3DSMax) hadn't made it so easy. He detached the existing low res wipers from the exterior model and created a single 100 frame animation cycle of both wipers complete with slight wobble. The two blades operate at different speed ratios too.
     

    The cockpit wiper control was set to send it's setting as a key to both the exterior and interior cockpit model. Allowing for dual speed wiper control and a park mode (turn off and wipers return to stop position at end of the next cycle).
     

    The ETADS display had it's round inner bevel reduced and is much more square, you can make that out as the bright green screen in the above image. Also the cockpit instrument normal maps were edited to remove raised lettering and other markings that were out of place.
     
    My project planner has me working on the generic event system (GEST) for the next four days. This is a new dependency for completing the start-up procedure and mob animation.
     
    Source
  12. Flexman
    The game world clock is now synced across network clients, time advance and day-night cycles locked. Accuracy is down to round-trip packet times plus a few milliseconds. More than enough to keep entity spawn times and waypoint navigation in close sync.
     
    I'm as yet unsure how often to send clock updates, currently it's every half-second which is quite aggressive, it's easy enough to tweak. Clocks run on client and frame-rate independent so they don't need to be updated often. They just need the occasional time sync from the host or when the host is changing the time-of-day.
     
    Chat channels work well, need to add the player name to the prefix. We have a player profile set in the game config but this carries no player name or any other data as yet.
     
    Almost ready to test that NAT punch-through.
     
    Source
  13. Flexman
    Just wanted to report this to the blogosphere. I'm not a Wow player (I have an account but I don't play very often) but my wife friends across several raiding guilds play from time to time.
     
     
    They've all been subjected to hacks. And I think the leak is at Blizzard.
     
     
    Over the past few weeks, everbody we know, including friends of friends have had their accounts hacked. Including mine, which was inactive, but had an "authenticator" (a hardware device that generates a new 6 digit number every minute). I presume when my account (that was inactive as it wasn't used) was hacked, they didn't take anything as I guess they didn't want to pay money to reactivate it. But they did attach one of these authenticators to it. And I'm not the only one.
     
     
    Once again, this morning a friend had his entire account hacked and cleaned out the family guild bank. In the years I've know people who play there's been a slow increase of attempts and successful account hijackings, but just in the last few months that rate is off the scale. I've never know so many, so fast. And there's no commonality in the people I questioned, everyone I've talked to knows someone who has been effected recently.
     
     
    On this scale I can only conclude that Activision Blizzard has someone working in the organisation leaking account details or a client list has been compromised in some way.
     
     
    You only have to check out YouTube about GM hacks to see how bad things are.
     
    So I'd recommend deactivating your wow accounts or use an authenticator until they decide to do something about this.
     
     
     

     
    Source
  14. Flexman

    XML Database lookups

    By Flexman,

    I needed to add some on-the-fly lookups for data stored in XML databases without having them gobbling up memory. Most games of this type had a vehicle and weapon database, usually with a rotating 3D model or picture of the object. Using the TxmlTextReader function with a cache works fine. Only need to do the lookup once when examining an object.
     


    All weapons come with suitable entries by entering the ground crew mode from proximity to any Apache helicopter. We can re-use this for tutorial pop-ups, optionally adding a tag to the XML entry that points to an audio file thus triggering playback. If that makes any sense.
     
    I mention it here as it just occurred to me and don't want to forget it.
     
    Source
  15. Flexman
    I wasn't going to add a complete gui system, we don't need anything complex. The address book needs to accept input from mouse and keyboard and when I thought about it, the planned map viewer/editor will require it too.
     
    It had to be a simple gui system with input focus and keyboard entry. Since the chat console had functions for filtering keys and the input mapper directed keyboard input into it when active it was simple enough to change it to send to a gui class and whatever control input had focus.
     
    GUI drawing and input handling is as far as I got this evening. Should be functional by late evening tomorrow. Address book will store entries as XML, not sure if passwords should be stored or not. My professional hat says no, my lazy hat says yes. It's non-critical so it seems reasonable to store the last used password no?
     
    Source
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