Mythruna

Since I'm rebuilding a lot of the engine from the ground up... sometimes I have some fun and experiment a little.

(http://i.imgur.com/qfufPpx.png)

Shhhhhhhh...

Another pic better illustrating what might be going on:

(http://i.imgur.com/vrVL64a.png)

i like that this little test area seems to be floating above a mythruna world  :) looks neat.

So what your showing is that the light from the blocks isnt completely going through the wall?

What color are the lights? ;)

Is the lighting just a bunch of squares? ;)

Other than that, the light propagation is not much different than it used to be.  Walls could block light before, etc..

Note: I wasn't trying to be mean above... just mysterious.  I reread it after some sleep and could read it either way.

My closest fun guess is water, lava, electricity.

So, as many are already aware, Mythruna currently does not have "smooth lighting".  A particular empty space is basically just one light value.

I've been experimenting with smooth lighting to see if I can get it into the engine.  The current approach to doing it is also letting me support colored lights.  The above is just an extreme example using really saturated colors.

this isn't that coherent, but I would like to ask a really important question:
You have so much into Mythruna, and do so much in one day, how often do you back up, and do you back it up to a flash drive, or disk?

I keep it all on one old 486 machine that sits perched over a bucket of water on a rickety shelf.  Also, there's a leak over that shelf so whenever it rains, snows, or drizzles... or someone takes a shower, drops of water drip down through the case... but I have it positioned in just a way that the water mostly avoids the electronics.  Because of the water situation, I felt it would be too dangerous to put it on a UPS or a surge protector... it's raw unadulterated mains power for me, baby.  ;)

I have my source control spread over multiple RAID systems.  There is also a checked out version of the source wherever I happen to work.  Short of catastrophic failure of all parts of my house (total house fire, nuclear bomb, giant megasaur), the code is recoverable.  At worst, I lose the version history.  Short of burning to physical media and keeping it offsite or in a fire safe, there's not much I can do.

Though, if a megasaur comes and stomps my house, I don't think Mythruna source code will be top on my mind.

Nice to see this little factor coming along!

It's really hard not to just wholesale copy things from one directory to another... but sometimes I get some benefits by rethinking things as I port them to the plug-in framework.  I'm giving myself this weekend to see how far I get with a new geometry generator.

There is also another little surprise that I hope to get working for the next release.  I already have the basic code working but I'm not sure I can make it look right once the rest of the geometry is there.  I'm hopeful... and if it looks even halfway good it will be really cool.

its always the little things that can really push a game along  :)

Well, and this is kind of a big thing... but I want it to be a surprise. :)

Plugged colors into the real Mythruna lighting material:
(http://i.imgur.com/7B9nVDU.png)

So far the theory is sound.  I just need to see if I can keep the new lighting propagation code nice and tight.

The cool thing is that technically I could probably retrofit colors into the old system now... but without smooth lighting.  It's the smooth lighting that forced the propagation redesign.

looks and sounds good paul, does this mean the whole lighting would become more complex and have different materials depending on there matt to shininess reflecting different amounts or just reflecting different colours from the sunlight or is this just for say coloured glass lamp shades making colourfull lights

I could potentially do reflection... but it gets tricky to calculate quickly.  This lighting propagation is already a little more intense than the normal one though I've streamlined it in some other ways that will hopefully balance it out.

The smooth lighting thing will make the engine look much nicer overall.  I kept fearing that it was going to look really bad in comparison to all of the new fancy menus... so there will be a bit of a visual facelift on this and some other things.

The colored lights will let me make fire yellow, lava orange, magic lights white... as well as potentially having magic lights of different colors.  I can also have materials like water tint light a blue color when it passes through.  I wish that I could properly support colored glass because that would be really interesting for lighting.

Sound great Paul, looking forward to the update :)

What about different light intensities?

Paul it would make my day if you could give water a reflective surface  :o

You already have different light intensities.

Haha, Small flame, Flame, I get it. :) . He meant different coloured light intensities because the example you showed with Mythruna materials seemed dark and dull. Less dull, more dark though.

Yes, well, turn on a 100 watt blue light bulb in a room and see how dim/dull it looks... pretty dim, actually.  I have a dance floor in my basement with different banks of lights in various colors.  If you turn on just the blue lights or just the red lights, it really seems dark.

It's also brighter when you are right up in it instead of looking at it from an oblique angle... also, the block material helps a lot.  Blue light on brown is going to always be pretty dim... but on stone it's brighter.

(http://i.imgur.com/0SVrEx6.jpg)

It's also brighter when it's not pure blue... as one would expect:

(http://i.imgur.com/hXhUEXM.jpg)

That one is blue with a half-intensity white mixed in.

And to be thorough... what it would look like casting white light at the same intensity.

(http://i.imgur.com/MbXfE7c.jpg)

Should look like the familiar magic lights (same intensity) except now it's smooth.

So many colors...

These updates just keep getting better and better.

altogether. (Sponge-bob reference.

Edit: Gah D:| I forgot my 1000th post. Also, First user to make 1000 posts (That isn't the creator of course.)

To really sort of drive the point home, I tried to setup a similar scene in the regular engine and take some comparison shots.

Here is regular magic light in the old engine:
(http://i.imgur.com/YHRCeUF.jpg)

And here is the smooth lighting version:
(http://i.imgur.com/tPzQhFX.jpg)

I'm still playing with the values of the second one but I need to wait until I have more of the geometry complete so that I can do proper comparisons.  Having a big sand block in the way instead of a little light block skews the whole view.

How strange... That looks like a different sand texture than the one now. Maybe my eyes are off...

Should be the same texture... it's the same file.

Since I made it, I might as well show it...

Smooth lighting even on partial blocks.  Trilinear interpolation is a pain to code.
(http://i.imgur.com/trTeO6Y.jpg)

now that you've shown a comparison i can see how great that is! the old lighting would have bugged me for sure.

That looks so much better than the original lighting engine. But, is the old lighting system going to be completely scrapped or will it still be available similarly to the lighting option in Minecraft?

I don't know.  It's not hard to support the old one but there also isn't a whole lot of point.  It's only at geometry generation time that the speed hit happens.  Technically the old engine supported smooth lighting but it was always setting all values in the cell the same.

I may allow turning it on/off just to test the performance of the generation.  Though I already made that faster than in the old engine so it may not matter as related to the old engine.  There are still many things to work out... so we'll see.

Wow, that comparison really does help give some perspective. Lookin' awesome!

Looks great Paul, looking forward to Feb 14th (?) :)

The following Monday at best.  The 18th, I guess.

You mean my birthday? ::)

Awesome! I can't wait.  8)

*completely shunned

Is the 18th your birthday?

Oh, wow, happy birthday Unn! It's only 20 days early and a derailment to this thread that didn't happen in the very next post after you announced the good news! (IOW, not completely shunned)

I'll start baking the cake.

I don't like celebrating my birthday.. (sad I know, don't see a point..)

All i do since last year is ask for something if i want something (which i didn't last year, and I ended up getting like $80-$90 :))

Well that's a relief, because the cake was a lie.   :D

i didnt fully understand what you where meaning by smooth lighting untill i saw this.... wow its going to make the game so much better ;] i cant wait to have a look at what some places will look like with the difernt lighting. but it also might make building a slight bit harder because there wond be defined blocks itl look so real hehe

seems strange due to you posting the date of your birthday or something about your birthday on at least 2 different topics :PPPPP

Colored lights. Add zem for the new update. Unless you already have them planned. Inverted lights would be better. Maybe blackholes.

I'm confused.  Isn't that what the majority of this thread has been about?

it was a silly derp by Moonkey :D

Sounds like a book. Anyway, I meant WILL there be colored lights to choose from though? I thought you were just showcasing the new smoothing. It would be cool to have an RGB slider pop-up when selecting magic lights. They are magic anyway. :)

There will be specific lights with specific colors.  It can't be a slider really because it still has to boil down to some block type + geometry.

So this is where modding kicks in to get people to create different colored lights. :)

Paul is this lighting also to help you finish the menus and effects for that?

I think he used the Menu's lighting and ported it over :).

Nah, that uses more conventional lighting.

I'm sort of redoing/refreshing the engine from the ground up and I'd been meaning to investigate smooth lighting for a while.  One thing led to another and smooth lighting = colored lighting, also.

Right now I'm getting the block libraries to work again in the new framework.  Fortunately, I was able to keep the groovy API mostly the same for those but there are enough changes to keep me busy... plus I want to make some of the types more "pure" than they were before from a coding perspective.  By this weekend, I hope to be actually loading real terrain again. :P

Also note: the menus and their effects are pretty much done.  I haven't hooked up all of the paths but I can create and load worlds, etc... I should make a video of the world selector because it's pretty cool.

please do :] id love to see it and thanks for replying about the lighting in menus and game

this game is in perfect development for me because in a couple years when i'm getting my programming degree i can practice with making Mythruna mods!  ;D

but til then, go Paul go!

Don't forget about meh D:

How did him not mentioning you in a post about himself constitute forgetting you?

I think it looks much better with proper light blocks... less jarring context.

(http://i.imgur.com/9aMA28u.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/UVGqL4o.jpg)

AMAZING!! :D

Yea, they do look better. The trailer for Mythruna when it releases needs to have review quotes with one from Unn saying "AMAZING" and "Paul is Master". >:D

This is the quote:
:)

lol i still have to be on the forums to post mods yknow.

Paul as enough pizaz/flair to make a kickass trailer. one thing i suggest when you do though... MAKE MOST OF IT ACTUAL GAMEPLAY

"Race-choosing game that will destroy Minecraft" @.@ I'm confused. Again, with all these Minecraft quotes.

Yeah, I personally make a point to not mention it at all in anything public I produce... so you can guarantee if I were even to have quotes like this (not that likely) then I would heavily filter them.

you know what I mean

We do know what you mean, and it doesn't make it any better.

It means "I want to compete with Minecraft" and get people hyping over it. We are not, and I repeat, NOT, competing with anyone.

Or maybe he is competing with every single other game on the market? Well, I guess it boils down to whether or not Paul is a 'glass half full' guy or not.

Heheh... the world is going to compare me to what it wants to compare me to.  I don't need to make it easy for them.

Whenever someone says "This game is better than X" they run the risk of marketing X to people that didn't even know about it.  Believe it or not, there is still the occasional Mythruna player that hasn't heard of Minecraft or has never looked into it for one reason or another.

These days, I think I'm competing with myself.

So... You're competing with The Elder Scrolls... And you never told me...