Battlezone Forums

I'm using draw_wave to render a flat ring and while it works just fine for that, I am having trouble with the texture.



The wave section nearest the Scout is showing vsmoke.tga the way you would expect, but the rest of the ring appears to be using a different texture altogether. At first I thought the ring was horribly stretching the texture but you can see that the light and dark sections don't match up.

Below are the exact settings used to take that screenie. I don't know if this is a bug or just something I messed up, so feedback would be helpful.

[Ring]
simulateBase = "sim_smoke"
lifeTime = 20.2
renderBase = "draw_wave"
textureName = "vsmoke.tga"
textureBlend = "one one modulate"
startColor = "255 255 63 255"
finishColor = "255 127 30 0"
startRadius = 6.0
finishRadius = 20
animateTime = 20.2
waveAngle = 3.14159
waveDepth = 0.5
waveSegments = 32

try this if those don't fix/do any thing then its probly a bug.

That is the last pixel on either side of the image repeating over and over. Might be a bug, to fiddle around. Normally the textures used are more single gradients than anything more complex, but I think FE pulled off a pattern OK.

S.cavA.rmyG.en wrote:3.15159 //test this
waveSegments = 37 //and this

No dice. 3.15 created a small overlap area that was more opaque than the rest of the ring. Adding more waveSegments seemed to get rid of that overlap area but not spread the texture throughout the ring.

Nielk1 wrote:That is the last pixel on either side of the image repeating over and over.

Sure enough. Tried using lightflare.tga and the only the lightflare was visible in that small section, no visible ring

Looks like the texture is only applied to the first wave segment, and I also noticed that the wave I posted doesn't slowly fade over time, so its finishColor alpha is never used, only the startColor alpha. Although for some reason the finishColor colors are used...

You could use a draw_geom effect if you want a workaround for the meantime. unfortunately draw_geom, draw_sphere and draw_wave are still pretty buggy in multi-world and I don't think that's likely to change soon.

I think it was only ever intended to draw a simple gradient texture, its not like its a properly UV mapped object.
waveAngle = 3.14159 = Pi, increasing this will cause the overlap. Use drawgeom if you want something more complicated.

rounding error, perhaps? tried using more digits? 3.14159265359

I wouldn't be surprised if the UV code is bad. Turns out that the code on the little circular gauge was bad for a long time and no one ever knew because it wasn't noticeable till an actual image texture was applied.

Going back to my previous post, a draw_geom would probably be less expensive am I right? Less polygons to draw? (I'm guessing that draw_wave just uses a bunch of polies generated by the engine?)

bugs should still be fixed... This should be tested in beta and then fixed if actually broken.

Well I can't ever recall seeing anyone produce a full detail textured ring with it. Some evidence that it was ever different?

MrTwosheds wrote:Well I can't ever recall seeing anyone produce a full detail textured ring with it. Some evidence that it was ever different?

If that's true then we definitely have an issue to have fixed. I thought FE had some, but I don't recall.

I had a case where I put a texture on a circular gauge and found that when it had a certain value range the UV was all wrong on the element. I think it was Ken who fixed the gauge issue. This is probably just a case of similar issues.

FE uses some expanding rings on water to simulate raindrops or some bubbles rising from the depths.

Rings would be done with a simple gradient, where the image across the texture is the same anyway, so it wouldn't matter. I don't think it ever did draw a whole texture all the way round.

Even if it didn't, it should.