Quote: "I don't think I'd ever consider using this in an FPSC game."
Ok first off I never imagined using this throughout a whole game, unless every level has polished floors, unlikely scenario.
I didnt post this sayng "everyone should do it" I posted it because I think it may help some folks who might 'want to do it' its called 'sharing your knowledge and idea's' and is something I do a lot on these forums.
Quote: "Now that's what I call brute forcing an effect, lol"
LOL,Yep it is 'brute force' but having done it once I reckon it would be much quicker and easier in future.
As for lag....well the columns and walls are one entity, 3360 poly's, the lights were placed so the top floor could be flipped and merely placed below so it all fit together nicely this means the two entities making up the above and below share the same texture, with no lightmapping in FPSC, so lag and build time is pretty minimal. The floor is a plane with shadows and textures baked as per the walls etc, the thing about semi transparency in fpsc is the object needs to be dynamic for it to work properly, if its static you get 100% transparency.
The figures were the real hard part and could not be characters per se due to collision problems, if you combine two rigs with meshes they both adopt the collision box which pushes the entire character above the floor, so these are merely animated entities which are for effect for now; the fact is that the spider, which could have permanent animation on, may still be used as a character with the appropriate scripting (as BenjaminA did with his game Spiderz) and it would still look ok, you can have characters if you place invisible segments beneath and take collision off the plane. Of course these wouldn't have reflections, but whose looking at the guy's reflection when your trying to kill him? This is FPSC x9 for cripessakes, you want Far cry?
I reckon it would be best if using people that these would be npc's, as for moving entities, your looking at them.
The best use of this kind thing would be a puzzle or player entry at the start of a level.
Quote: "it probably kills you to think this could be done in X10 just by moving a slider."
I dont have x10 so cant really say what the performance hit is when using water for reflections but even using a mod in x9 its pretty high, also is water level constant and through the entire game level? if so then its even more limited than this way which I believe is not uncommon in game design.
Quote: "
I've used it myself on PS2... In the first level, put a bunch of alpha'd mud puddles on the ground with some darkened and distorted geometry underneath (poor-mans Fresnel LOL) then never do it again the rest of the game."
Its not such a big deal really, but as you say Errant it has its uses whatever your game is, I am sure many folks could come up with ideas for using this, and it needn't be the lag fest or as difficult to create as some would believe.
Quote: "I also did this a time ago. And indeed while doing it, you encounter some wierd bugs for characters. I never came on the idea, to do that with the characters"
Those are really nice segments Red eye
Quote: "And I'm actually also freaking out about that spider character...is there anyway to buy that
"
As for the spider used its a freebie off Turbo squid, just search 'free animated spider' I have no idea of the license usage for this in your games, I have no intentions of using it myself I just wanted to save time with rigging and animating for the purpose of this little experiment.
