I decided to try the flashlight idea out today, and I think it looks great for a first try, but the bottom right shot in the image below may make me scrap the flashlight idea.

Do you think I ought to keep the flashlight despite this JK limitation? [edit] For clarity, I should mention specifically what the limitation is -- translucent surfaces. If a translucent surface is behind another with respect to the player, the portion of the rear surface that is overlapped will not be rendered.



Also, I made a new skin, but my texturing suxorz -- you can see why I rarely texture anything anymore...
(well, it was a rush job, but I'm still little-to-no good when it comes to textures)

Cool!

With a better skin those could be awesome.

Keep the flashlight!

^-- What he said.

I love the flashlight. Keep it. Not many people use tints in their levels anyways... it looks cool.

Actually if I remember correctly, you shouldn't be seeing any 3DOs either behind that flashlight beam.

I seem to remember, when putting holograms in my SP levels, you can only see architecture through them, 3DOs you see straight through. It should stay true to the flashlight.

Still, these bugs are forgivable. Keep the light!

looks cool, i like the skin gives it a flare of comedy, and reminds me of Master Chief

It's JPG compression-man!

did you try the black and white dot trick?

From the way it looks, I'd guess that's what he's doing.

Slaw, could you send me a quick and dirty test gob, I have a few ideas on how to make it work, but I've never tried them before.

lumpshare@yahoo.com

Yeah, I'm using the black/white dot trick.

And I deserve a big 'DUH' because I forgot that normally you aren't going to run around the whole level with your flashlight on Given that, it's even less likely that you'll run into 'tinted' surfaces AND have your light on...

Release date, somebody...?:rolleyes: (Coolie! :D)

Coming along nicely. Strange, though, I thought that only translucent surfaces would cause problems. Didn't know that transparent parts (full black) also cause trouble...

Looks good, maybe try setting the blocks light flag on the flashlight surfaces, I seem to remember that fixing a few rendering problems that I ran into on translucent 3do's, I don't know about weapons though.

Adding 'blocks light' didn't help. *shrug*

Now, I had an idea to "improve" the cloaking effect... (more like make it cooler looking, but... yeah...) also utilizing the "black dot technique". This way gives the other players a small chance at spotting the cloaked player and destroying him, just like more modern games and force persuasion.


And whilst I'm showcasing I may as well show off the progress of the new hud... I'm not done in the top left (super powerup indicator) and the bottom left frame is going to be redone (reminds me of a file folder ), but I'm pretty happy about how the bottom right turned out (light blue bar is battery, dark blue is force).

You rock hard, Slaw! Great work, you've made so many awesome mods for JK, just try releasing some more soon (I could learn from that).

Anyway, I love the cloak idea, that's a really clever way of not only allowing the other player to see the cloaked person, but also makes for some hilarious battles - just imagine a battle with two lightsabers waving in the air with no hands attached!

I'm wondering though, does the gun "bob" (you know, sway back and forth) when you run? It will look a bit unattural and weird if the gun just stays perfectly still when the cloaked player is moving. Is there any way to do this?

Also, I agree, the flashlight should stay, it's a great feature, even with those flaws. The HUD is pretty good, but is a bit plain. Perhaps you could make it a bit more interesting, perhaps mroe variation in color. It would look very effective if you could include a schematic of the playerm odel i nthe top-right-hand corner, like in UT or one of those MechWarrior games, with body damage. You could have various parts of the body (arm, head, torso, etc.) turn green, yellow, red, in relation to the player's health, or how many hits that area of their body has sustained.

Might be difficult, but I remember reading a tutorial on millenium about how to implement location based damage, and don't you have all the Millenium tutorials saved somewhere on your hard-drive/on-line? It would really bring JK up-to-date with modern games, and would add so many cool strategic elements to multiplayer (assuming you're implementing that)!

Hmm... good idea... I'll see how the damage indicator thing works out. And since I'm using a 3do hud (instead of bm's), I have more liberties with what I can do with it... (It'll also save me inventory space this way ;))

Also, yes, the weapons do bob. Just as they would a normal player. I wasn't actually planning on leaving the weapons visible, since it would pretty much eliminate the point of a cloak, but perhaps I'll add in a "cheat" feature to leave the weapons uncloaked.

A 3do HUD, yey! What happens if you turn translucency off for the flashlight? Does it look bad? I ask this because the black and white dot trick alone doesn't cause those rendering problems (tested). It could look pretty bad without transparency, though.

Actually, it's not flagged as translucent...
I don't remember why I didn't flag it though... or even if that was intentional. :\

Added translucent flags... also, no change in rendering errors.


I like it better non-translucent though.

Are you giving the HUD 3do a surface light value of 1? You'll probably need that, so you can see it in dark areas. I'm just wondering, because the pic of the HUD in the top right-side of that pic looks kinda dark. The player won't like that much in a firefight . . . :p

[EDIT: w00t!!!! just hit 3.00 average posts per day!]

Only some of the surfaces have extralight 1.0
I had to rebuild most of the model several times and got tired of setting the extralight over and over, so when I'm done I'll do it once and only once In its current state, yes, it's obvious where that would cause some problems :p
While we're on the subject, should I make only the numbers and bar indicators full-lit, and make the frame only 10-20% lit... (so it's not totally black in the darkest of places)? Like what you see in the lower left (except that frame is 0% extralit :p)
as opposed to the frame being fully lit as well, as if they were bm's

I'd hace to say partly lit.

Looking good.

I like the idea of having the 'LEDs' on the Hud be full bright, and have the hud itself be somewhat lit/interact with level light.

So, a 3do Hud eh?

HUDs should have .1 light (for each 3do face), so you can see it in total darkness but dynamic lighting still applies. I hate to see a fully lit HUD in a dark room.