Beta update available with deferred decals
Entry posted by Josh ·
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An update is now available on the beta branch.
A new decal entity type is available. Decals are used to project an image into surrounding geometry. A decal requires a material using a decal shader, located in the "Shaders\Decals" folder. The FPSGun.lua script has been updated to add bullet marks and gunshot wounds to objects a bullet hits. You can also place a decal in a map for adding large details to walls, terrain, or anything else.
Decals are rendered similarly to the way a deferred light works; they are rendered onto the screen gbuffer. This allows them to work on any geometry, including animated models and GPU-generated details like tessellation. They will also map onto any surface, based on the direction of the surface normal. There are two new commands, Decals::Create() and Decal::SetRenderMode().
Because decals render onto the scene gbuffer, a way to differentiate pixels is needed. Otherwise, a scene decal will appear on objects that pass through that area. The Decal::SetRenderMode(int mode) command can be used to indicate whether a decal should be a static scene decal (mode=0) or a dynamic decal, like for a bullet mark (mode=1). Materials also have a new parameter for their decal mode, which can be 0 (static), 1 (dynamic), or 2 (none).
The blending of decals required that I modify the channel allocation of the gbuffer, and the lighting and model shaders have changed. Previously, data was stored like this:
0: Diffuse RGBA
1: Normal XYZ, specular
2: Emission RGB, material flags
Now the gbuffer is storing information as follows:
0: Diffuse RGBA
1: Normal XYZ, material flags
2: Emission RGB, specular
Any modified model shaders or shaders that are rendered before lighting need to be changed to accommodate this change, as well as any post-processing effects that read the specular value or material flags.
Particle emitters will now use simple collision if the emitter has a collision type other than zero. This is a nice touch that makes bullet shrapnel bounce off floors instead of going straight through.
I previously talked about four big features I was researching, terrain tessellation, terrain horizontal offsets, deferred decals, and vegetation. I made headway on each of these, but discovered that deferred decals were fairly easy to wrap up, while the other three features were more involved. Based on this development, I am revising my plan to release a new version in August with decals and the other recent improvements, then focus on finishing the vegetation system for a subsequent update. The important thing is to have the final update with vegetation out by November 1, at the latest, although that could end up being much sooner if things go smoothly.
I also expect to release the game launcher in August, as an early preview release on Steam.
(Build #691949 was update to #711604.)
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