changing lightmaps? | Quadropolis

Djakk | 2011-02-17 21:48

changing lightmaps?

As some of you may know, I've been working on an extenxive campaign game for Sauerbraten,and I've run into a point where I think falshing/flickering lighting would add a cool effect to the map. I was wondering if there were anyway to create a changing lightmap for the map. I know that you can deposit the light maps into a set of .bmps, and I was wodering if there was a command that I could use in the .cfg that would allow me to switch between two different lightmaps to creat this effect. Is this possible? or is there any other way that this can be achieved?

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Chasester_aka_you | 2011-02-17 22:22

I suggest writing a dynamic light agolithem rather then using light map.

chasester

skiingpenguins | 2011-02-17 22:36

you cannot load lightmaps from bmp's.
there are no commands (that i know of) to make dynamic lighting.

SheeEttin | 2011-02-18 02:52

No, dynamic lights can not be used like that at this time. I believe they are used only on rocket and grenade projectiles.

However, you may be interesting in the pulseglow shaders. (See the maps hog2, nevil_c, relic, and shipwreck and their CFGs.)

Chasester_aka_you | 2011-02-18 03:22

I think people miss understood:

I was saying that one should wright a dynamic light algorithm and then integrate it into cube. If the granades actually calc light of geometry and of the dynent (models,pmodels,monsters,etc) then you could use that one and then set it as a calculation that all lights make every frame.

chasester

SheeEttin | 2011-02-18 03:43

Yes, but one, the question is how to do it in Cubescript, and two, it'd probably be really slow (which is why it isn't done).

Though you're welcome to make a proof-of-concept of dynamic lights for light entities and see how it runs. ;)

Chasester_aka_you | 2011-02-22 22:57

ill have to get back to you on this im learing it now

chasester

Calinou | 2011-02-18 09:36

pulseglow IS Cubescript, you can freely change the brightness gain and the speed. For models this get harder.

Suicizer | 2011-02-18 13:15

It can be done on another way for models, by using the moviescript wich has been posted several times trough the sauerbraten community.
The rocketlauncher hudgun that's in assassin- and ctf-edition also uses a similar script, but the different between this script and the moviescript is that the rocketlauncher hudgun somehow also has the same "movement" like water has and is scrolling just 1 texture, not projecting several images as frames to create a movie.

1 model that's inside the modelpack wich I've posted a while ago also carries this script.

If you would take a texture wich goes from dark to bright and back to dark again, you could simulate a pulsing glow when letting the texture scroll...

Drekow | 2011-02-18 18:23

You can try with pulseglow shader it does an effect like what are you saying.
I think you can play with the glow texture to simulate the light radius.

Or you can try whit pulseworld... something like:

setshader pulseworld
setshaderparam "pulsespeed" 0.01

texture 0 "OriginalTextures.png"
texture d "TextureToSwitchTo.png"

this way you can try to pulse from a dark texture to a lighted one, without cares of lighmaps.
Test what is better for yourself.

technically if you can bake lightmaps in the textures (using a 3D program) you can try to switch the textures using this shaders

RaZgRiZ | 2011-02-18 22:19

If i'm not mistaken, pulseglow is about pulsing the glowmap of a texture within a set interval. this wouldn't prove of much use unless you have some fancy texture trick which, by the way, is not related to dynamic lights.

a pulsating glowmap does not equal dynamic lightmaps in any event.

Drekow | 2011-02-19 03:15

But maybe it can simulate a "flashing/flickering lighting" someways...

SheeEttin | 2011-02-19 18:06

There WAS a map that did this, but I'll be damned if I can remember the name of it. I'm fairly certain the node is still here on Quadropolis, but unfortunately the file is gone.

In case I can help anyone recognize it: There were a few different areas, one outside with some shipping containers, one inside with some stairs, and one indoor split-level area. (The flickering light was at the top of the split-level area.) And it was raining.
I remember playing the assassin mode on it, so that narrows down the time frame. ;)

Suicizer | 2011-02-20 14:53

I know what you mean, let me search it in my zip collection!

Is it a map wich had only "coloured" walls in it, wich were pulsing and was incredible bright?

Edit:

Found it and here it is!

The explanation is in the node of megagun!
If you want "dynamic light" be sure to download his "lightning" map wich is in 1 of his comments!

Damn great help, thanks to megagun!

SheeEttin | 2011-02-21 06:43

That...
That isn't it.
Really, which part of that map has shipping containers? Or rain?

The one I'm thinking of was an actual map, kinda grungy. Wasn't the best-made map (weird layout, textures didn't exactly mesh), but I enjoyed it. I wish I could remember something about it so I could find it here.

Suicizer | 2011-02-21 08:43

Ah that's too long ago for me then, because I started playing Sauerbraten just that release (and didn't know anything about quadropolis that time).

Sorry, out of service :P.

Edit:

I think even if it was a different map, the method to get flickering lights is probably the same since it's the most "simple" and realistic method that's been used.

srbs | 2011-02-23 22:02

Is it disconnect?

Suicizer | 2011-02-23 22:40

Probably not, since it doesn't has any shipping containers or rain.

Good searching tough...

MeatROme | 2011-02-19 14:09

The vanilla engine doesn't allow for the prepared lightmap to change, nor does it give you the ability to have more than one definiton (for switching between them). This is basically what you would need to program to allow for stuff like "button pressed"-->"lights in room-A go on" sort of interactivity. This is what I understood to be the thing Djakk wants to do.
The responses so far have tried to steer him away from it, since - as I said - it's not possible with the vanilla engine at this point. Texture shaders may well allow for some nice effects akin to dynamic lighting - like for example having one of your fluorescent lights be broken, add some sparks and electrical hum and you might fool a player ;-)
FYI: when I did that SP map (Four Bases), that (shortly) was even included in the release my solution was simple: I had 2 instances of the basic geometry, seperated by a thick(!) layer of skybox-textured cubes; one was made with the lights off, the second had the lights on and all the monsters had come out to play. At some point in your progression through the map you were simply teleported to the lower half .. and the fragging could begin :-)

Suicizer | 2011-02-20 14:56

What about you can turn on texscroll by a pressing button?

Even tough I got no experience in it, sounds way easier to me than changing the calclight-system and making light-entities sort of dynamic...

Djakk | 2011-02-21 18:39

Okay, I've looked over the map Pulse by Megagun, and I think if i can modify the pulsemap a little bit, I think I can get this to work for what I need. Is there anyway to make the pulse act faster? What Im trying to say is, is there anyway to make the pass from low to high and high to low more sudden instead of a fade effect? And thanks for all of the help so far!

SheeEttin | 2011-02-21 18:55

Yep. As noted above, see CFGs for hog2, nevil_c, relic, or shipwreck. From nevil_c.cfg:

setshader pulseglowworld setshaderparam "pulseglowspeed" .5 // pulse frequency (Hz) setshaderparam "pulseglowcolor" 0 0 0 // pulse glow color

...and then load texture(s) to make glowy.

Suicizer | 2011-02-23 00:23

You can if you modify the texture megagun has made (or just make your own one).
If you add a longer strip of black pixels (in the 1024x1pixel-bar, not recommended to change that value), the intervall between lightflashes will be longer.
Of course, when adding more pixels of any other colour than black (white recommended), you'll get a longer lightflash than the default texture.

The maps megagun made aren't using the setshader pulseglowworld, but just default "stdworld" (because it's not specified in the cfg on wich shader the textures should get rendered).

Maybe a nice tip,
You can create a pretty cool effect (like i tried at the lightning-map of megagun) by brushing megagun's textures with another texture.
Brushing 2 textures that megagun included create an incredible wacky effect and is not recommented :P.

Here are some screenshot of it...

screenshot 1

screenshot 2

It seems impossible to brush a vertical wall, tough. Please reply on this if I'm false.

Edit:
I've been trying out to create a similar effect like texturebrushing by using alpha-material and the command "valpha". If you would take a very thin (like the smallest gridsize) and write "valpha 0.2", than it looks pretty realistic.
The only problem with this way is that any other geometry than just flat can cause problems and could make it look very crappy.

Here are some screenshots of it...

screenshot 3

screenshot 4

screenshot 5

If you look clear (especially in screen 5), you can see the edge of alpha-material just down in the right corner. But don't forget it would only be visible for a fraction of a second!