U-BOOT_HAHD Official Thread

[Schwieger]

@TDW

I think at this point after Hans has pointed out the transparency of the Atlantic is virtually nil there's more concern with how the water looks and behaves than being able to see through it.

Just my 2 cents

[Hans Witteman]

Originally Posted by makman94

Ahoy Hans and Wolfstriked ,

no , none of you understand what is the 'polygon effect' issue ! 'polygon effect' issue has to do with thelight's reflection generally on water surface (only about the light).


@Wolfstriked , i believe (never have involved to that kind of edits) that you can turn off the reflections of port buildings on water via their .dat files. there must be a setting for water reflection for each one and you can turn it off but more expert on this is Hans to tell you about.
ps: i will test later tonight the last settings you send me for the uiia and will send you later my opinion about it .your first version was very good ...so i am curius to see the next one

@Hans ,at the pics at my previous post are all ok ! nothing is 'screwed up' mate !
look at these pics where is showing the light's 'polygon effect' at all its 'glory' .pay attention that the light has turned to little 'squares'(more like exagons). the bigger the difference at colors between sky's light reflection colors and water's colors ...the more noticable is the 'polygon effect' :

Hi mate,

Ok i see now what you mean but since i eat polygon since the last 15 years i can tell you these small triangle are not polygons because if they were then this sea would never be able to run realtime in a game engine.

It is related with bump map and light angle i remember in a past production that i encounter such a problem with a water lake scene i did and i don't remember how i fix it since it a couple years ago but i think if i remember right i just played with my light setting.

But your water look real nice with reflection on it it would be gorgeous.

Also we have to make sure that any change we make to the ocean won't have adverse effect on game mechanic since ship react with the sea big time.

Best regards Hans

[Hans Witteman]

Originally Posted by makman94

it is time to give hands and move on guys. there are very few modders left at forum for 'fighting' each other.whats the point ? really ...is there any point at all ?

@Jeff , i understand that you may felt insulted by the behaviour of TDW back then and probably you are right but on the other hand i don't believe that TDW tried to 'steal' you anything .it seemed to me more that he was very excited with your new finding and 'rushed in' your thread for HEPLING ..not STEALING ! (that was what I understand...unless i am missing scenes from the background so in this case... forgive me).

both said back then that it can be done if you were 'allowed' to hack the executables and you left it over becuase of this. well ,now THE ROAD FOR HEX EDITING IS OPEN [thanks to H.Sie---who is the only one(ok and Stiebler) that is fighting with the 'beast' ] so why you (and TDW both UNITED) don't give it one more try ? never the less there is nothing to be lost ...eh ?

Hi mate,

Don't forget Seeadler he is working on it as we speak just lookk at the thread i have open on Code guru's need here.

For now i stop working with the ocean and for me transparency is not a must have reflection is!

I am now working full swing on FX to finish it so i can do a movie to show you all the new stuff and the result so far are amazing i used many skills i have learn over the years to make the new damage model the way it deserved to be and many will come back to SH3 after seeing those vids i can guarantee you this
Tomorrow i will start testing stuff on my new baby finally a decent card sapphire 6950 2GB

The one who will say never will the one playing it in secret

Best regards Hans

[Hans Witteman]

Originally Posted by Schwieger

@TDW

I think at this point after Hans has pointed out the transparency of the Atlantic is virtually nil there's more concern with how the water looks and behaves than being able to see through it.

Just my 2 cents

Hi mate,

Spot on

Let's blow out some stuff before we sink!

Best regards Hans

[urfisch]

yes, i sign on that. i will continue to mess with the water, too...good, rough looking reflections are the key. anyone who analysed the sh4 and sh5 water will see, this effect makes the main difference between sh3 and the later waters. the scattered, light reflecting surface.



an opacity would be a nice side effect, but with really nice reflections we are close to real water.



all the time people dealt with sh3 water...i always thought about adding the needed dll data from sh4 to have the whole water mesh and all the shader stuff from sh4 in the game. THIS would be the real glory in sh3 modding. but i fear no one has the skills to do so...

[TheDarkWraith]

Originally Posted by urfisch

all the time people dealt with sh3 water...i always thought about adding the needed dll data from sh4 to have the whole water mesh and all the shader stuff from sh4 in the game. THIS would be the real glory in sh3 modding. but i fear no one has the skills to do so...

You need to look into the .exe to see how SH3 does it's rendering first to understand it. SH3 takes a VERY simple approach to water. It does set a shader before rendering the water mesh (very little is sent to the shaders as far as variables go). The water meshes are rendered first (water is divided into what I call patches) while at the same time setting Z buffer entries as it does. Next reflections on the water are rendered. Next sky/atmosphere is rendered (Z write enable disabled). Next units and terrain are rendered (Z write enable restored and Z buffer tests are performed while rendering. If Z buffer entry has already been set by water then pixel is discarded - thus why no transparent water). Contrast this with SH5: SH5 renders everything first then renders water.

I will say that SH3 uses an ingenious system of determining what/when render states need to be set (culling, alpha-blending, Z-write enable), Streams set, Shaders set, etc. SH5's I still haven't figured out yet (doesn't seem to be anything like this well polished system).

One thing SH3 does well is frustrum testing/culling/clipping before trying to render anything. SH5 just renders everything whether you can see it or not (and is why the game has low fps when many units present).

[reaper7]

Originally Posted by Hans Witteman

I am now working full swing on FX to finish it so i can do a movie to show you all the new stuff and the result so far are amazing i used many skills i have learn over the years to make the new damage model the way it deserved to be and many will come back to SH3 after seeing those vids i can guarantee you this
Tomorrow i will start testing stuff on my new baby finally a decent card sapphire 6950 2GB

The one who will say never will the one playing it in secret

Best regards Hans

Excellent news mate, cant wait to see your vids
Good news on the Graphics Front - and a nice card to boot :

[Myxale]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

SNIP.

Wow, never had an insight how this stuff worked. Thanx for the break-down.

[Wolfstriked]

Feedback is most welcome guys.

The way I want my game is a personal thing and I know many people have different ideas as to what is realistic.What I will do instead is just post here my findings and you guys can tweak it to fit your way.

I started tweaking with cutting the horsepower in half and upping the L/R drag from .3 to .75....ala Thompsen's ideas.Then the issues started.....

Horsepower is cut in half giving a much nicer acceleration and drag is increased removing the excessive(IMO)rocking back and forth to the Uboats.Thing is that now with higher drag and less HP the boats slow down too much in turns.This means that the TypeIIA just went from 2:05secs to 3:25secs.Easily remedied by a large increase to rudder drag but that has negative aspect of making the initial turn of the Uboat seem like a speed boat.I am going for turn speeds listed below

TypeIIA=2:10....initial=2:05
TypeVII=3:00....initial=2:20
TypeIX=4:00.....initial=2:43

So I dropped down the COG from 1.95 to 0.25 and was able to bring the L/R drag down to comfortable 0.25.Any lower drop of the Left and right drag and you get a weird bug where the boat will not go where you set it to heading wise.Harrrrrd nut to crackThis allows a lower rudder drag setting for a slower initial turn and brings the turn time of the IIA down to 2:10.I also put the L/R drag for surfaced and submerged equal....if you do not then the boat jerks when it dives into water.

UD drag setting controls the way the boat rides over the water.This is a hard one because it goes for all wave sizes.Small number makes small waves having the boats rock and jump up and down....fixed by higher setting but then the boat looks off on big waves .I go for .25(TypeII) .50(VII) and .75(IX).This works very well and tweaking it up or down just causes issues at different wave heights.

Then the submerged UD drag setting.I put to 0.0 as it allows the TypeIIA to drop into water and then rise rapidly.If you put higher it causes the boats to get stuck in the water and slowly rise as if in mud.Can be tweaked but again its just this one setting for all wave heights.

FR_ratio....this is how the boat travels over a wave so that a more forward setting drops the nose quick while a more rearward settings....doesn't

The difference in mass of surfaced displacement to submerged displacement....this is the factor that shows the buoyancy of the boat ON the water surface.The difference of the initial mass compared to the surfaced is what determines the buoyancy while submerged.

What elseThe manBT_flood_speed determines how fast the boat dives.

Dive plane drag settings....hard to tweak because I noticed that by going lower on the big boats(as it should be)causes a smaller dive angle to occur sadly.

I also changed the scene.dat by removing the 4 wind speed stages.I use only two settings with 0 wind and second at 15mph wind speed.This way the waves slowly get bigger as wind speed increases .In game at stock the waves go from 0.05 to 0.14 at 4mph wind.This makes the slow wind speed waves bigger than they should be.Same with the say 12mph waves being very close in size to 15 etc.With just two stages the waves get gradually bigger as wind speeds pick up.

Largewavesarmonics=the amount of large waves that will appear.Setting it to 0 makes for some truly magnificent seas but the SH3 boats look way off seeming to get stuck on the sides of them.The Largewavescoef=a way to get larger or smaller Largewavesarmonics since there is no way to add say 1.5 Largewavesarmonics.Instead you would do Largewavesarmonics=2 and Largewavescoef=0.5

Originally Posted by makman94

@Jeff , i understand that you may felt insulted by the behaviour of TDW back then and probably you are right but on the other hand i don't believe that TDW tried to 'steal' you anything .it seemed to me more that he was very excited with your new finding and 'rushed in' your thread for HEPLING ..not STEALING ! (that was what I understand...unless i am missing scenes from the background so in this case... forgive me).

No. I viewed it as another intrusion into what I was looking at.
That was not the first intrusion by the way.

Nor the last by any means!

I no longer care but also will no longer share information in an open way.
I have a different look at things then many do.
I like the WOW factor.
Others use it for thier own Glory and Gratification.
Those others will sweet talk you and come up with excuses everytime.
I work with MANY others right now!
But only by PM or E-Mail now days.

If that does not make you happy?
I really no longer worry about it.

[Wolfstriked]

Did some more work to the waves.I think its probably best as I can get it now.Reduced the single large wave height slightly as that seems to be the main factor in the stern staying out of the water.I reduced the height just enough but keeping with large waves as they make the ocean feel more real.Made a video but be warned its my first ever uploaded and the quality isn't great.

[urfisch]

Originally Posted by TheDarkWraith

You need to look into the .exe to see how SH3 does it's rendering first to understand it. SH3 takes a VERY simple approach to water. It does set a shader before rendering the water mesh (very little is sent to the shaders as far as variables go). The water meshes are rendered first (water is divided into what I call patches) while at the same time setting Z buffer entries as it does. Next reflections on the water are rendered. Next sky/atmosphere is rendered (Z write enable disabled). Next units and terrain are rendered (Z write enable restored and Z buffer tests are performed while rendering. If Z buffer entry has already been set by water then pixel is discarded - thus why no transparent water). Contrast this with SH5: SH5 renders everything first then renders water.

I will say that SH3 uses an ingenious system of determining what/when render states need to be set (culling, alpha-blending, Z-write enable), Streams set, Shaders set, etc. SH5's I still haven't figured out yet (doesn't seem to be anything like this well polished system).

One thing SH3 does well is frustrum testing/culling/clipping before trying to render anything. SH5 just renders everything whether you can see it or not (and is why the game has low fps when many units present).

thanks for the detailed explaination, tdw.

so, does that mean, you would be able to change the tech sh3 uses to create water the one, sh4 uses?



if so...THAT would be an extremly glorious thing for the whole community. many people spent weeks and month on changing the existing water. but there are limits we reach, as to the given technology and/or skills.

[ryanwigginton]

Originally Posted by Wolfstriked

Did some more work to the waves.I think its probably best as I can get it now.Reduced the single large wave height slightly as that seems to be the main factor in the stern staying out of the water.I reduced the height just enough but keeping with large waves as they make the ocean feel more real.Made a video but be warned its my first ever uploaded and the quality isn't great.

Looking good!

[Wolfstriked]

Thanks Mate. I go bat crazy over feel in games to the point of insanity as many mention here.

In past I modded my Stalker game removing the horrible feel it had by changing all weapon positions and the walking running animation smoothing out so it wasn't so jerky.Then I modded in all new realistic ballistics,realistic recoils and spread and realistic scopes(view port on the highest accuracy rifles was only 3 inches of my 20in monitor).Loved my pistol modification in that all you had was a dot on screen and a large spread.Then I made it so that when you aimed with Rmouse the pistol would move up but not all the way so you were aiming with the dot but it looked like you were shooting a pistol....most games move the actual ironsight to center onscreen and it just feels off and unintuitive though it feels fine with rifles.So up close it was lethal but mid range to far you just sprayed everywhere giving meaning to all the different weapons.Was kool since you crouched for a tighter spray and up close as I said was deadly.It was super hard though since I also made enemies just as accurate.I mean when you won a gun fight in an abandoned factory deep in the zone against multiple enemy you were basically one bad mutha%^@$#%!!!

Then I went and made it so that health packs were just bandages,stitches,splints etc and only used when you actually were near death.Then only to stop you from the severe limping I added in.I allowed this limping removal so player can at least "walk" back to camp.

From there I fixed the issue that not one modder in Stalker community ever did....no health regeneration.It was either slight regen or slight decline of health over time.I then made it so you ate some food and then you had to sleep 8hrs for 1/4 health back.Also modded in so that food was hard to come by and you were hunting mutants out in the field for health.When you got back to camp you could then seek medical attention for quick full health.

It was so bad ass to do missions this way,creeping around and feeling total tension when you see one enemy ahead let alone 5.I also modded the mutants to be less deadly but due to their mutations having super tough skin and fortitude they were harder to kill then humans.Sadly I got sidetracked by real life and erased all my work one day to make room for a new game.I will never do that again!!

EDIT...sorry HAHD team...back on topic.

[postalbyke]

Re: Wolfstrike Video
It does look good.
Recommend emulating Hans and making virtually the same video with stock SH3 physics, and keeping the camera a little more stationary to increase the ease of observing the boat (just some creative feedback )

edit: where'd you get the camo? (I'm using NYGM, Magui, and nothing else... and i've never been to the "late war" :P )