Map tiles vanishing

[Verdite]

The first image resolution is the 1024 setting

Second is the 1600 resolution.

[Verdite]

at 1024 i an negate it by outputting with 0.0 fog and 30 draw distance

at 1600 i can negate it by ^ 0.0 fog and 15 draw distance

[Holy_Diver]

The fog setting doesn't affect draw distance, it just gives you so many meters before the fog kicks in. The tiles being missing along the edges is normal. You can avoid it I believe by always using 1x1 map tiles and keeping your aspect ratio 4:3. Otherwise if your game has a lot of wide open vistas you're going to see a lot of that. Ex has an extension that screens out resolutions that aren't in the specified aspect ratio (currently only 4:3 is implemented) ... in fact last night I added a fix so in case the resolution in the .ini file is not 4:3 it will still work... because if Som can't find a mode that matches the resolution in the .ini file the Options menu goes bonkers.

If you can live with a pretty short draw distance like in DoM you can have widescreen, otherwise you wanna stick with 4:3. Som was never intended to be played on any other shape of a screen... kinda stupid, but forgivable for people used to developing for TV consoles in the 90s.

Unfortunately increasing the draw distance doesn't actually help. If it did Ex could just pull back the fog saturation line. The problem is the shape of the clipping frustum which Som uses. The only chance for a fix I think is to find the frustrum in memory and hope manipulating it makes sense. I've also thought about just clipping the top/bottom portions of the view... but I think I concluded it would be a bit messy, and might not yield desirable results. Still I may reconsider that after a while...

The missing tiles may still happen in 4:3 mode for wide open areas, I'm not sure the frustum is even perspective correct. You also have the problem of capping off the skyline. And objects have a way of disappearing even more so than the tiles. That said, in some cases tiles right in your face will disappear. You can disable "optimization" in the map editor to avoid that, but that will make your map somewhat less efficient... especially if it's very room oriented.

PS: The reason you have to be clever with trees like that is so you don't end up with those flat slivers facing the player that way. IMO that's unacceptable presentation wise.

[Verdite]

They dont show up in game.

I'm quite certain they are there because of the jpg output format.

Thanks for clearing all that up, i tried the lowest ratio and it still has the vanishing pieces, like you said. I noticed in kf tac that most outdoor areas are really closed in, by caves and the like.

Off topic ive begun setting the parameters etc for a demo.

[Holy_Diver]

They dont show up in game.

I'm quite certain they are there because of the jpg output format.

Sorry, what is "they" referring to?

Thanks for clearing all that up, i tried the lowest ratio and it still has the vanishing pieces, like you said. I noticed in kf tac that most outdoor areas are really closed in, by caves and the like.

Off topic ive begun setting the parameters etc for a demo.

Well the pieces disappearing is just a fluke of Som. Because the developers did not take the aspect ratio into account when programming the frustum culling routines. The outdoor areas in KF4 are probably closed in for the same reason the sky is pretty problematic in Som. I've never been involved in an honest to goodness game project in my life, so I'd never really thought about sky until recently. It's a general problem in games. About the only way to approach sky sanely is the way it's done in Shadow of the Colossus. Otherwise you just have to work around it in the level design.

FYI: In SOTC the background sky map is basically being redrawn all the time, albeit much more slowly than the stuff in the foreground. Which is possible because stuff far away doesn't move much in terms of camera vantage points, but anything animated in the background, like a distant waterfall could not be integrated into the matte painting so to speak.

We could probably someday do that with Som. I just need to get things to the point where the stuff Som does can be completely detached from DirectX etc. So like you can build a list of everything Som did that frame then process and do the actual rendering/etc. Unfortunately even with max draw distance and an unoptimized map, without a frustum fix you'd still be wearing blinders on either side.

[Verdite]

I was refering to the slivers.

Interesting read btw. I suppose colossus cant be fully appreciated until you have experienced the short draw distance like SoM's.

[Holy_Diver]

I was refering to the slivers.

Well then, by "slivers" I meant the leaf texture polygons that are extremely foreshortened.

I mean that's unavoidable but there should be some more crosshatching polygons so the slivers cannot standout so in the skyline.

PS: For the record the jpeg specification does not add polygons

EDITED: Typical Som objects we have that use that technique have at least 4 polygons intersecting to create 8 spokes. They generally look quite nice.

[Holy_Diver]

I was just thinking... it might even be worth while to correct for the tiles disappearing on the periphery to only show the player the portion of the view that is guaranteed not to have probs. I mean technically its all relative except for the collision constraints. Even the arm could be adjusted if necessary.

Funny, I turned on KF2 yesterday to see what the opening area was like compared to Dark Destiny. It suffered from much of the same probs... disappearing water squares along the periphery etc. It's almost as if the game code was ported directly over to Som with all the same issues intact!! Does that make Som more or less KF, I'm not so sure myself

PS: Observing some of the behavior, it seemed that in 4:3 anyway, all of the tiles were disappearing because A) the culling scheme seems to be 2D (xz plane) only, and B) rather than clipping by the entire tile, it only tests the center of the tile (ie. tosses the whole thing if the center is not in bounds)

[dmpdesign]

I can pretty much guarantee your "B" checks center point note is absolutely true. ‎  It seems to treat map tiles similarly to objects in this way since they also disappear if their center point is not within the check area.