SABRE - (Stable Actor Based Raycasting Engine) - UPDATES!

[bat78]

Chatting with programmer shouldn't be a bad point for you to log in :C
We have a lot to discuss

[bat78]

Whats going on mate?
You said you'll be on skype soon, but two weeks elapsed since you mentioned it.

[lcl]

Whats going on mate?
You said you'll be on skype soon, but two weeks elapsed since you mentioned it.

*one week

Well, I've just forgotten about it again, sorry. I'll try to get on Skype tomorrow.
(By the way, I also get e-mail alerts of private messages, so if you need my attention, you can send one instead of posting to this topic )

[bat78]

Sure, you can answer to my PM if you want though.

[lcl]

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since I posted anything.

So, I was thinking about SABRE today, and I wanted to tell you about a couple of ideas I came up with.
Here they are, coupled with silly looking simple illustrations

So, as you may already know, the maps in SABRE consist of "blocks" with different textures. Each block can be considered as a wall with four sides. This has one downside - every block is the same size in width and in depth. This becomes a problem when trying to make something like a house in SABRE, because the walls get ridiculously fat and consume a lot space. So, my idea for fixing that is to make it possible to only render specific sides of a single block. This would allow having also thin walls (actually they would be paper thin, so that's not quite ideal either, but anyway.. ). Here's a couple of pictures explaining it in more detail:

This is how a simple 15x15 map could look like in current SABRE. The black color represents blocks with a single texture, like a brick wall for example, red could be plank walls and green something else, concrete for example. This is the bird's-eye view of the map. The black dot is the player and the red arrow points to the direction the player is looking at (though that doesn't matter in these pictures). Notice that the red and green rooms have very thick outer walls:

Here's how the map would look like if the red room was completely made out of thin walls:

Or you could combine the thick and thin walls to make the building not have paper thin outer walls but to make the navigation inside seem more like in a real house:

On to the second idea, then.

Also had a question, are walls with transparency possible? Sort of like this -

The walls have a window in them that allow you to see what's on the other side, would that make sabre explode?

Back when Jagmaster asked this, the thickness of the walls in SABRE was a problem for this idea. If the walls were one block thick, there would be a window on both of the sides of the wall, and in the center would be empty space, and behind those two windows you could see what actually is behind the wall. That would be weird and ugly looking, and also require many layers of drawing walls.

But now that I could make thin walls, this idea becomes very much possible, and it wouldn't even add that much more drawing function calls, only one per new wall behind a window. Of course, it would be possible to have a row of windows which you could look through, but I'm thinking I will have to add a limit to how many parallel windows you can see through, just for the sake of performance. Here's an illustration of this idea. The black dots are player's positions and red arrows indicate where he's looking at. The blue lines are window textures, which can have some opaque parts, and some transparent parts:

I already know pretty much how I would go about adding these features to SABRE. I'll try to get to work with this and make a video when I get things working as I want.

[bat78]

Look around. Nobody comes online anymore except me and yesterday Ziv because of some reason.
The next thing is.. it appears that I am the only one actually working consistent. The reason why I do not post updates is because
it might be in vain. Because I wouldn't expect a feedback from someone as valuable as you. Skydereign doesn't like commenting my projects.
That being said, he didn't post an update about gE beta and it kinda needs to have, because it looks abandoned to me.. considering the fact it had to be released like.. 1 month ago.
As a bonus on that.. you still haven't answered to my PM, which I sent.. I already forgot when did I sent it.
And I have some very interesting stuff to show you.. but since you don't get in skype.. well.. I don't have anything to show you.

Nice ideas.

[Jagmaster]

I'm still here too! * raises hand *

It'll be awesome once you implement these features, especially the windows. Super excited to see them.

I'm subscribed to your youtube as well, so even if I'm "not here" (not likely) I'll still see your update video anyways haha.

[MrJolteon]

Look around. Nobody comes online anymore except me and yesterday Ziv because of some reason.

[lcl]

@bat78: Yes, I know that there's not a lot of people posting anything currently, but that doesn't mean that people are not checking the forum every now and then. Also, if only few people are posting, isn't posting updates exactly what we ought to do? I mean, posting a little update every now and then doesn't really take that much time, and it counts as activity on the forum, and will most likely attract some more people to post also. What comes to me not answering your PM, I'm sorry about that, but I have to admit answering your PM's takes quite much time, as most of the time the things you talk about are of such levels of complexity, that I really have to think what I'm going to say. Call me lazy, but I'm not in the mood for writing long PM's that often. And what comes to me not being on skype, that's just because I don't really use skype that much.

@Jagmaster: Haha, so you belong to the 26 people weird enough to have subscribed to my YouTube channel. xD

@MrJolteon:

Anyway, here's how SABRE's doing now.

I've worked on adding the thin walls and the windows / transparent walls to the engine, and currently I have a very hacky and unoptimized version of both of these running. It works but there definitely is room for optimization and cleaning of the code. But that is all okay, my goal was just to see if I could make my ideas into reality in the first place, and now I know that that's possible, so the next thing is to write the cleaner version of it. There was some peculiar bugs, but I managed to work those out, so I now have a pretty good understanding of what needs to be done to make this more efficient and more flexible. Anyway, here's some screenshots:


A little room with windows on three sides


View from inside the little room


Some chain-link fence


Closer look at the chain-link fence


The thin walls will also be usable as door frames, here's a crappy magician's tent entrance texture made in paint xD


As you see, currently the rendering limit for parallel partly transparent walls is 5, and because of that you can't see the concrete wall behind the last window. Changing this will be easy, and if I wanted, I could make it work without limits, but I think limiting is a good idea, because otherwise bad level design could end up creating enormous lag.


Here the render limit is sufficient for seeing the concrete wall behind the windows.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that currently I haven't written collision detection for the thin walls, so that's on the to-do -list, too. Because of the door frames I'll have to make it so that when designing a level, you get to adjust which thin walls can be walked through and which can't.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I'll make a video later on. For now you'll have to settle for the screenshots only
EDIT 2: Updated the image links to link straight to the full picture, postimage.org's image viewing page seems to fill your screen with trash if you don't have AdBlock. Didn't notice before, because I use AdBlock.

[bat78]

Well anyway. Posting updates is satisfying enough for it is truly alentador. (Back to Spanish studying).
It is getting really boring if I don´t do or at least think of imaginarily complex challenges (root if impression).
Now, LcL as a reward for your great and almighty-looking++ job I will get online in skype v4 (fo linux) so I can also meet you with my blueprint xD
..As long as you admire SABRE-supporting, untypical and impressive projects x)

[MrJolteon]

-snip-

Have some upvotes:

[bat78]

And for me too D:

[lcl]

-snip-

Have some upvotes:
*a bunch of nice pictures about upvotes*

Thanks!

And for me too D:

Here you go:



Anyways, time for some more hideous Paint "art"!


With the partially transparent blocks it will be possible to do neat stuff like this tree. The way sprites are drawn in SABRE makes it a bit funny looking when you go around and the sprites are always facing at you (except if you're using a 3D model pre-rendered from several different angles). Using this can be a useful alternative to using sprites at some times.


Here's another picture with a gradient (that was not made in Paint xD) to make it easier to see how the tree is composed.


And... uh... this is what the tree currently looks like from the other side.. But that's just because the whole thin wall thing is still not finished, and I'm showcasing this tree-thing in the quickly hacked together -version of the thin wall thing. I really should have a more professional sounding name for the... uh.. thin wall thing.. Any suggestions?

[MrJolteon]

tl;dr: trees

At least your trees look better than those in Google Earth:

(yes, that's supposed to be a tree)

[MrJolteon]

le post doublémy french is terrible don't judge me plz

I really should have a more professional sounding name for the... uh.. thin wall thing.. Any suggestions?

Turn it into an acronym, everything sounds more professional as an acronym;
TWT = thin wall thing