So, do you like the new jump bubbles?

So do you like the new jump representations?

  • Yes, they're OK

    Votes: 4 36.4%
  • No, go back to using jump balls

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No, just use buoys

    Votes: 3 27.3%
  • Yes, but they need brightness/color changes

    Votes: 4 36.4%

  • Total voters
    11
Jump Points

Spirit,

I really the look of the jump points. They seem both high tech and mystical at the same time. (And yes, they are a little bright.)

Floater
 
Okay, so far we have...

(1) Make jump projection darker
(2) Make jump projection thinner
(3) Make buoy bigger

correct? i can do these tonight :)
 
One more thing. I don't know if you noticed this spiritplumber there is a little problem: when you jump, for some reason the ship will move backward a little bit. In several case's, my ships rear was bumping in to the buoy. While this is not so much a problem with a full healt ship, i dont know if any critical damage will be registered on a damaged ship. Also, the backward going itself isent normal. You dont noticed this widout a buoy sinds you dont have a point of referance in space, but with it, it's very noticable.
 
Another note. I haven't had a chance to check out the bouys yet. Been buisy, and lazy. But putting the bouys outside the jump point would be a good idea if thats not how its already done. Naval bouys to my knolage are not placed in the middle of something unless its a warning marker. In fact you could frame the jump point with 2 bouys.
 
Okay, Spirit, finally I re-installed priv-remake and wcu, so now I see the new bubbles.
They are gorgeous!

There's a technical problem with brightness, though; and it's not a matter of making them darker or brighter. The problem is that they are alpha blended, which is not the effect you want. (This was probably the problem with the original bubbles, as well.) When something is alpha-blended, it means that whatever it is shown on top of, --i.e. the "background" color, is multiplied by a constant, say 0.6, and what you're alpha blending on top, its color is multiplied by the 1.0 complement, --i.e.: 0.4, and the results of the two multiplications are added. In the case of a black background this seems okay; but in the case of a bright background it becomes weird, because if the color of what you're drawing on top is actually darker than the background color, it will darken it; and if it is about the same brightness, it won't show at all. So, it's as if the rings were painted with acquarel on a transparency, which can appear brighter or darker than the background. Not what you want: You want them to look "electric"; you want them to brighten any background.

The solution, if you really want to preserve some transparency, but you want them to look like light "sources", would be to tell OpenGL to ***ADD*** the color to the background, with saturation. That way, any background other than pure white will be brightened by the rings. "With saturation" means that if the background is white it will stay so, rather than numerically overflow onto some dark color.

Another solution would be to use color overwrite, without transparency, like the reticle lines in the HUD, though it wouldn't look as gorgeous.

You need to ask Hellcat or some other VS engine developer how to change the color mode from alpha to additive blending. I'm not familiar enough with the engine yet to tell you.
 
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