Mythruna

And now begins the endless process of tweaking the color and the look of the flames so that it actually fits the rest of the scene.

I've highlighted in this image a particularly troublesome problem... it's a little blurry in the conversion but the same issue is on the docks in the lower right of the daytime pic.  While the close up looks nice and moody... from far away it just looks stupid.  And I'm not overly fond of the redness of the up close version now that it's in context.
http://i.imgur.com/dXgOd8w.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/dXgOd8w.jpg)

So now I will start tweaking the colors... and I may do like the last flames and have them fade to alternate colors with distance (I had this problem before, you may remember).

I'll also have to find a light color that I like... a flexibility that I didn't have before.  I have it tweaked a bit too orange in those pics.

...but: progress.

Note: you may notice that the flames look identical in the lower right pic when they should vary from flame to flame.  That's an easy fix, I just haven't done it yet.

I notice that from the original flame (top-right picture) that its fluorescent light is yellow, but the new flame (bottom-right picture) contains more red in its fluorescent. Did you have to change that by yourself or does the engine actually grab the color of the image, and use that as the light fluorescent?

All old light was always white because there was no colored light.  Now when I create the block type, I give it a light value.  I just picked something randomly that I thought might be fire-like.  I have done zero tweaking on the color or brightness because I needed to get it into the engine before I could see that stuff anyway.

Now that I can compare old and new, it will be easier to tweak to get similar brightness and potentially less dramatic coloring.  It partially depends on what flame coloring I settle on which depends on the light color which depends on the flame color which depends on the light color... you get the idea. ;)

I wish the new fire glowed a bit more like the old fire did.

the moodiness is ok, but it needs something to make it stand out from far away like the old flame did. somehow.

Yeah, it's 100% based on the brightness of the color... so if I make it more yellow and bright then it will glow more.

Yep, it looks bad right now.  It was a few hours of work just to get it into the engine... so I will reserve a new set of "many hours" for making it look right. :)

As part of my sanity saving measures, I'm trying to first get the new flames to look close to the old ones... good parts and bad parts.  Then I can work towards making it better after I've got everything else the same.

As such, I've temporarily turned off colored lighting, tweaked the lighting models to be similar, etc..

This may be about as close as I can get to duplicating the old flames "aesthetic" with its problems and all:
http://i.imgur.com/KubiEKo.png
(http://i.imgur.com/KubiEKo.png)

Now to try to take advantage of some of the new features to make it look better than the old.

It does look more flamey now. Great work.

I had doubts about the new flame, but that looks amazing (considering that you haven't added the 'coloured light' just yet), I just love the flow of it, great artistic abilities Paul (with the help of Photoshop). Best programming luck to you!

i agree with moonkey, it does look more flamey.

tbh i mainly just wanted to use the word flamey... but my comment stands.

Tried to figure out exactly why lighting was brighter before and stuff... spent the last two+ hours digging through lighting equations and stuff.

Some day, hardware will support real lighting with full radiosity solutions, etc.  Some young programmer will be complaining about how his frame rate drops a little when he has too many high albedo objects or something... and I will walk over and kick him in the shins.

More random pics...

Showing how the flames vary now... so you shouldn't see repeats in general.
(http://i.imgur.com/jEAFzgt.jpg)

Same view as before but with slight lighting tweaks and the varied flames:
(http://i.imgur.com/xxF94Jr.jpg)

The classic temple... just thought it looked kind of cool:
(http://i.imgur.com/9pnIhgk.jpg)

I still need to add the wind effect from the old one... and this one should be a little better, too.

ahah, it looks amazing now, lets see how the wind effect adds in ;)
Good luck!

Great stuff Paul

Wind "Effect"? You're going to skip out on adding wind? Aww, I was hoping leaves would smack me in the face, then I could assume which direction birds would fly in :3. BIRDS THAT ONLY FOLLOW THE WIND FOR THE WI!

The version of fire that you guys have moves with the wind just like the grass.  I'll be adding that to the new fire but in this case I can also increase the "speed" for extreme angles to make it look like a fire burning extra fast because of increased air flow.

Just a bunch of flowers and fire... I thought it was funny.  I may need sleep.

(http://i.imgur.com/5aNKCQ0.jpg)

HA XD

So how far down the path would setting stuff on fire be?

Hopefully not too far.

There's something I'm working on in the back of my head about "attribute overlays".  Basically a way to store sparse meta-data about blocks in an efficient way.  Colored paint, smells, and maybe smoke and water could be handled this way... and fire.  This things don't necessarily need to be associated with every cell but can be overlaid on the world, sort of.  Like a separate set of cells but stored more efficiently.

Fire would be best done that way.

there goes Paul and his crazy ideas again.

I was thinking of fire particles that come off fire and flow in the direction of wind to set other things on fire. Like say, you start a campfire on a windy day and the wind blows hard. "Only you can prevent wild fires"

That would be nice.  We'll have to see how feasible it is.

It would create a good story to come back with.

Indeed... but accidentally setting your stuff on fire is something that could happen even without wind in what is already designed. :)

Gave flames a subtle orange tint (jpg made it less subtle in these pics). Shown here with some comparison lighting. In game it's hard to notice until you go somewhere with the white magic light... the part of me that took film production classes really loves playing with subtle lighting effects. :)  (Of course, these brightly colored red,green,blue lights are just bonkers.)

http://i.imgur.com/ofTZGM3.jpg
(http://i.imgur.com/ofTZGM3.jpg)

That looks amazing! (PS: Great collage ;D)

Thanks...

And the video to go with it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQLccF24w-c

Youtube always makes these so dark from my perspective but I can't properly show off the lighting/fire without walking around in dark places.  :-\

That is just amazing, that flow of the fire is so nice and clean. Its just so hysterical how amazing that you can get these things done.

Oh, and dear Donators, you rock the awesome sauce :)

These new flames definitely make it look more dramatic. How far out does the light from flames propagate? Is it shorter than magic lights?
It just seems a bit short to me.

I should just stop uploading lighting videos to youtube.  No matter how many times I say that youtube makes them a bunch darker... no one notices I say that. :)  Or they don't believe how bad it is.

The flames propagate out slightly farther than the old flames did... which was always shorter than the magic lights which are really bright in comparison.  The picture is a better indicator than the video... and I'll be posting a release to Friends of Mythruna soon for others to try.  Then proper criticism can be leveled. :)

I love how I have to pay you to become a friend. Where's my VISA? Found it. Oops no money :-\

Haters are going to hate

Very well.
I was trying to mentally compensate for YouTube, but it's difficult...

It is.  I even tried using youtube's built in enhancement stuff but it didn't help.  Next time I make a video, I will see if there is something I can do on the creation side as this has been the worst case yet.

cool green flame

I figured out a better source format for my videos that youtube seems to like better.  The colors get a little washed out but at least the brightness is much better.  I uploaded a new one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lELy_e86iUo&feature=youtu.be

Also, because that video didn't stay in one place very long, I created another video... just a stationary camera watching a single log fire for 60 seconds.  I think it better shows the character of the flames.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KhqPKHo728&feature=youtu.be

The perfect flame for an rpg ambient feel. U can really feel it in that second video.

I noticed the second video has an animation of breeze in it :o

Yep... so did the first link.  At least I'm 90% sure it did.

It might have, you just didn't get to stare at a flame long enough to notice much.
Are the flames your special algorithms to add wind animations or did you just make some more sprites/models for the fire to do that wind animation?

It uses the same wind as the grass and the old flames did... (and now the leaves do).

I plan to improve that soon, though.

Ah, I know what would give that fire a final touch: Smoke.

Yeah, it's planned.  Smoke is something else entirely though.

I will also do some little spark particles or something.

SPARKS!? AHHA! I will be able to make my tank after all! *Uses fire-powered spark batteries and tosses them in engine* Let's get a rollin' rollin' rolling, let's get on rollin'!!!

Make sure it's mesmerizing. :)