waterfalls with dx9?

[ScarleTomato]

Does anyone know of a good way to render a waterfall with the new dx9 engine? I hear the computer class doesn't animate anymore. Are there any particles that ta5 handles really well en masse?

[GSH]

Computer class is fixed in latest private builds.

-- GSH

[TheJamsh]

You can create some really nice water fall effects using a carefully made texture and scroll it accross a computer class object. As GSH said it has been repaired in the private betas. There ARE other methods but this is certainly the best way.

Things i also do are use hp_emit effect hardpoints, to generate a light steam accross the water surface, and a three-arm watery splash sprite used to simulate some kind of 'spray' at the bottom. It looks really good when done properl, but takes time. There arn't really any good examples to use as a basis, so its something you will have to create from scratch.

Note that in TA5 (and possibly previous builds), you can have more than 1 layer of water on a map (max of 15 i think), so its possible now to have real water falls, with a higher stream and a pool at the bottom.

Sprites always face YOU dead on, as do twirls, so its not really possible to create an effect-based waterfull without annihalating youre FPS, or using larger particles and making it look VERY strange from the side.

[Nielk1]

Multi-water levels have been around a long time. Since 1.0 IIRC.

Using tricky draw geoms can make things that look how you want from any direction.

[TheJamsh]

Forgot about geoms... they never look very good though...

[Nielk1]

Forgot about geoms... they never look very good though...

spAce made good looking ones.

[ScarleTomato]

well right now i'm using draw_trail to make a placeholder waterfall. You can recognize what it is, but it aint pretty. I'm pretty dang close to releasing the map. I just need to play on it a little bit and see how well units pass through the mountains.

is there any kind of descriptive list for all the renderBases and what they do? I'm extremely new to graphic odfing.

[TheJamsh]

Draw_trails have two planes at right angles to each other, so it wont be flat.

Have a look at my effect tutorial. It was written pretty hastily, and i havent covered anything, but you can get it around here somewhere.

[Avatar]

You can also make an actual object-based waterfall with an animation...  just use powerplant class and it'll animate a loop...

Given that treads animate the texture coordinates it'd be cool if an actual class could be made from them to support things like waterfalls.  I'm sure the Devs would have done so given more time...  as Mire is just begging for some good waterfalls.

-Av-

[Rocket]

you could actually use a geometry based, with particles too. could look good if done right...

Have a look at my effect tutorial. It was written pretty hastily, and i havent covered anything, but you can get it around here somewhere.

um.. don't you mean "everything"? 

[TheJamsh]

oh yeh haha. i've realised recently that some of the details are wrong too, mainly based around draw_trail but for the most part its a fairly good basis...

i am yet to find the difference between sim_chunk and sim_ember. It seems to me that sim_chunk's were meant to expire when they hit the ground, but they never did.