GoW PyPRP 1.5.0

[boblishman]

Now, I've been thinking about which objects were and which objects were not affected by this change... and I agree with D'Lanor ... it seems that all the objects that were affected were actually sitting in front of an object with a stencil (in this case my main terrain texture) ... consequently, none of my shadows underground (where there is no stencil textures) were affected ... not sure if this will help anyone ... but it seems to be the case.

I also found that there was no need to "over" Pass Index (where I had transparent objects in front of other transparent objects (where neither contained a stencil) and they were both also in front of an object that DID have a stencil, I could set the first two objects to BOTH be PassIndex1 (in fact, making then different Pass Indexes actually caused strange things to happen to the first two objects (partial dissapearing and things) ...

Kato: The animated holograph ... that is done using TWO meshes vertext painted (to create the faded edges). The "back mesh" has the animated "slideshow" of the "bushbaby" and the plants (using texture animation IPO ... two "subjects" on one texture taking up half of the texture each, then using the IPO to move the xLOC 0.5 , every 4 seconds). The front mesh is a speckled "noise" texture ... that animates to a different xLoc & yLoc every frame (just random settings) for 10 frames, which produces a "TV static" effect. Both textures are semi-transparent ... (and in front of a stenciled object ! (the terrain) - hence the "borking" by 1.5.0 !).
I set both the meshes to PassIndex 1 ... and Bingo ...all working normally again

[D'Lanor]

I have spent hours on this but I am unable to fix it. I think this is the culprit:

old 1.4.0 situation:

Code: Select all

     Reading mipmap alpha.jpg.tex from cache
  [DrawableSpans 00000000_0]

     Reading mipmap alpha2.jpg.tex from cache
  [DrawableSpans 00000000_0]


new 1.5.0 situation:

Code: Select all

     Reading mipmap alpha.jpg.tex from cache
  [DrawableSpans 20000000_0]

     Reading mipmap alpha2.jpg.tex from cache
  [DrawableSpans 20000000_0]


How do I push back the alpha layers to drawable spans 00000000_0?


Edit: Ok, reporting back. Many many hours later... I have restored the age. The fact that alpha stencil layers now use blendspans affects all transparent objects in front of them which previously worked fine without any tinkering. This is in contradiction to what Paradox said:

Objects in Spans1 will be drawn in front of objects in Spans0, while still obeying the flag rules of the spans themselves (transparent objects (if properly handled), will still draw in front of everything solid).

There is no way to make stencil layers not use spans because this is hardcoded. I am sure the devs had their reasons for that. They better...

So now all transparent objects in front of stenciled objects must be moved to the next Spans with the passindex button. In my age there were complications because Spans1 was already occupied by 2 other transparent objects and they conflicted with the new object. So those 2 objects had to move to Spans2. And that fixed it.

[Trylon]

Edit: Ok, reporting back. Many many hours later... I have restored the age. The fact that alpha stencil layers now use blendspans affects all transparent objects in front of them which previously worked fine without any tinkering.

Ok, so stencil layers now affect the choice of make the object go into the BlendSpans or not...
That shouldn't be correct behaviour, and has to be changes.

I feel a 1.5.1 release coming

[boblishman]

I have a suggestion regarding "offical" releases of the plugin. How about someone - not necessarily me, though I'm happy to volunteer - in fact maybe myself and A.N. Other - who have a long standing "complex" Age (that uses most of the features of the current plugin) are used as "Testers" ?

... i.e. before the release, we get a copy of the upcoming release and we simple export our Age with it ... without any alterations - (unless, of course we are told in advance of specific changes that need to be made for the upcoming release that will be given out at the time of release) ... and then we report back to the Devs IF (and HOW) it may have caused problems with our existing Age.

Put simply, we would be "blind testing" the new release ... and it would give Dev's the chance to "iron out" any last minute MAJOR bugs before it's release to the community ?

[D'Lanor]

Excellent idea boblishman. That is standard procedure in the corporate world. No sane company would let its devs test their own work.

[Kato]

Anyone want to be the Project QA Manager? >.>

I think Hoikas was suggesting that very thing.

-Kato

[guenter]

I have a problem ...
I can't see any pyprp in the menu import.
In the export menu I see pyprp.
Somebody has an idea?

greeting

guenter

[Jojon]

I have a problem ...
I can't see any pyprp in the menu import.
In the export menu I see pyprp.
Somebody has an idea?

Import support is rather a low priority for the dev team and has (AFAIK) simply been left out in the last couple of pyPRP releases. If you really want it, you could fetch an earlier pyPRP version and have a go (I can't advice on which revision works best).
I believe I've seen the developers mentioning that there is an open invite to anyone who wish to take it upon her-/himself to bring import back and up to date. :)

EDIT: Mind you; an age imported with an old pyPRP version, will not be directly compatible with more recent ones.

[guenter]

Jojon

Thanks for your detailed information.

guenter

[andylegate]

sigh. I'm tearing my hair out over this Passindex thing. Yes I've requested to have a tutorial about it on the Wiki (which by the way, the Texture Blend tutorial is now out of date as Zoffs are no longer used the way they were used).

Okay, I have a pond. surrounding the pond is gravel, the ground around the pond itself has green moss, etc. Of course I used an alpha blend around it. So I set it's Passindex to 1.

Ah, but there are bushes around too. And small rise in the ground further back that has a rockface blend on it, also alpha blended. Okay set the Passindex on it to 1.

Now before all this, I had to set the Passindex on my chainlink fence too. I did that. When I linked in, it looked fine, of course the hill top and the area around the pond, the blended area was transparent as glass. So that's when I went back and did the above. linked back in....oh great, now the fence is acting like a X-ray machine.

Okay, so I'm suppose to figure out what needs to be drawn on top of what. Okay, well, the fence would be last, right? Wrong, or rather not always. What happens when we walk past the fence and are now on the other side of the Age? Everything I said to be drawn first, now needs to be drawn last.......

Was this thought about? If so, what is the answer? How do I now tell plasma what to draw when? I can tell you right now, prior to 1.5.0 with Zoffs, I didn't have a problem. Everything rendered just fine, when and where it was suppose to. No X-ray objects.

Oh, and also one other thing: waveset for the pond. It's now disappeared. The one for the pool is there, but the pool doesn't have anything where I have to screw around with this Passindex. The pond was there with it's waveset just fine for 1.4.0, but now it's gone for 1.5.0.

How do we tell the Waveset when to be drawn with transparent objects on it (IE lilly pads, or the surface beneath it that has a Alpha blend.....)