2010-03-08, 11:33 PM
I was just pondering the requirements for remaking KF3.... the "billboard" trees caught my attention. A billboard is basically a flat graphic that always faces the player. KF3 (aka KFII) uses these to really pad the countryside with trees.
Well in case anyone has ever wanted a "billboard" ...I just realized SOM does indeed have this feature hidden inside of it. And how I know this is there is an item turned object (I think Tom made these by copying all the items into the object folder) which exhibits this billboard quality. It's the golden short sword, and it's probably not the only one of its kind. This used to annoy me because I needed to use it as an object, but when I did so it would always be facing the player billboard style. I suppose I did not realize it at the time, what was an annoyance, was actually pointing to an actual feature.
So I invite anyone to try this in there game. And then try to figure out what about that file seems to make it behave that way.
Btw, if no one wants billboards in their game atm / is in the mood to be the first to isolate this feature, there's a more than better chance I will figure out what's going on when I start documenting the file formats sometime here shortly.
PS: I think the sword object I mentioned only faces the player about the vertical plane. Which is probably a good thing at least in the case of trees which would otherwise appear to lay down when seen from above. I think full on billboards are probably also available, because I'd expect some magic particles to work this way. The flames in lamps may do the same.
EDITED: Is there a chance the x files or whatever you guys use to export models into Som can be exported to act this way? Maybe we already know how to do this??
Well in case anyone has ever wanted a "billboard" ...I just realized SOM does indeed have this feature hidden inside of it. And how I know this is there is an item turned object (I think Tom made these by copying all the items into the object folder) which exhibits this billboard quality. It's the golden short sword, and it's probably not the only one of its kind. This used to annoy me because I needed to use it as an object, but when I did so it would always be facing the player billboard style. I suppose I did not realize it at the time, what was an annoyance, was actually pointing to an actual feature.
So I invite anyone to try this in there game. And then try to figure out what about that file seems to make it behave that way.
Btw, if no one wants billboards in their game atm / is in the mood to be the first to isolate this feature, there's a more than better chance I will figure out what's going on when I start documenting the file formats sometime here shortly.
PS: I think the sword object I mentioned only faces the player about the vertical plane. Which is probably a good thing at least in the case of trees which would otherwise appear to lay down when seen from above. I think full on billboards are probably also available, because I'd expect some magic particles to work this way. The flames in lamps may do the same.
EDITED: Is there a chance the x files or whatever you guys use to export models into Som can be exported to act this way? Maybe we already know how to do this??