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Hardware accelerated display, OpenGL back-end & Simutrans 3D

Started by eddielexx, January 02, 2010, 03:38:33 PM

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IgorEliezer

svn:// addresses are not "understandable" by Internet browsers so they display "Page cannot be displayed" or "Firefox doesn't know how to open this address. You'll need to get a Subversion Client in order to be able to open a svn address.

TortoiseSVN is, say, the most "famous" among subversion clients out there. Below are an article about svn and a list of subversion clients:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversion_%28software%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Subversion_clients

Fabio

by the way, i'll give you my 2 cents about 3D.
I think the game would benefit the most from a first 3D rendering of vehicles. They could ride normal roads/tracks, but with much better turning/climbing. Also, still being a long 3D painting work, it would be much smaller than painting in 3D all buildings. Additionally, (1) i believe that most of vehicles have somewhere 3D sources and (2) the same vehicles could be rendered on-the-fly for both pak64 and pak128 (i exclude pak96c, as it has a completely different style :::))

eddielexx

Quote from: fabio on January 04, 2010, 08:05:20 AM
by the way, i'll give you my 2 cents about 3D.
I think the game would benefit the most from a first 3D rendering of vehicles. They could ride normal roads/tracks, but with much better turning/climbing. Also, still being a long 3D painting work, it would be much smaller than painting in 3D all buildings. Additionally, (1) i believe that most of vehicles have somewhere 3D sources and (2) the same vehicles could be rendered on-the-fly for both pak64 and pak128 (i exclude pak96c, as it has a completely different style :::))


Well, my goal is to create working 3D game, and if Community find to like it, then we should start creating 3D models. I just need a way to extract graphic engine from the game, but it is gonna be otugh, cuz I dont know where to start :D I downloaded source code... I thought just to convert graphic system into 3D and all game mechanic should remain intact. What do u think

Isaac Eiland-Hall

I really don't think it's anywhere as simple as you seem to think, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem. If you can managed to get a workable 3-D engine into Simutrans, I'd be happy with that.

I wouldn't be surprised if you don't find much in the way of coding help here, though - we're a pretty small community, and most everyone who can work on things is already spending their free time doing so. So if you make calls of "help me!" and very few respond, if doesn't mean everyone hates the idea; I think it means more than everyone who can do, is already doing.

eddielexx

Quote from: Isaac.Eiland-Hall on January 04, 2010, 09:55:03 AM
I really don't think it's anywhere as simple as you seem to think, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem. If you can managed to get a workable 3-D engine into Simutrans, I'd be happy with that.

I wouldn't be surprised if you don't find much in the way of coding help here, though - we're a pretty small community, and most everyone who can work on things is already spending their free time doing so. So if you make calls of "help me!" and very few respond, if doesn't mean everyone hates the idea; I think it means more than everyone who can do, is already doing.

That's good, just, in the coding chaos (english + german, now I need even a translator :D:D) I really can't find any library or cpp that is responsible for graphic rendering. I have an Idea of importing Irrlicht in game, but firstly I have to remove old engine. And I really dunno where is it. For now, that is the only help I will need.

Dwachs

the drawing happens in simview.cc, the display routine there.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and maggikraut.

skreyola

Quote from: Hajo on January 03, 2010, 11:43:18 AM
Mac OS and Linux fans will cry if Simutrans 3D gets done with Visual Basic, I think.

I cry when anything is written in Visual Basic. ;)
--Skreyola
You can also help translate for your language with SimuTranslator.

Reddog785

Quote from: skreyola on January 04, 2010, 08:50:59 PM
I cry when anything is written in Visual Basic. ;)

You...Cry. You actually...cry. Why? Is it because you can't understand it?

Spike

#43
No, because this language is one of the least portable languages. That means, using Visual Basic will look lock out a lot of people from using Simutrans 3D (but the thread is so old, I doubt the project is still going. And I'd assume a serious try to use a language that is easier to link with C++, the language Simutrans is written in).

Edit: Typo fixed.

vilvoh

Every time somebody writes code in Visual Basic, God kills a kitten.

Escala Real...a blog about Simutrans in Spanish...

VS

We could make a silly poll to determine which language/framework should be used for "new Simutrans" of any kind. Here are some serious contenders:

Erlang
Perl, Ruby, Python (take your pick)
assembly with AT&T syntax
Lua
Matlab
J2ME (mobile, whee!)
Cobol
autotools
jQuery
bash

...not all on this list are actually jokes :)

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Reddog785

Quote from: VS on February 08, 2010, 10:11:29 PM
We could make a silly poll to determine which language/framework should be used for "new Simutrans" of any kind. Here are some serious contenders:

Erlang
Perl, Ruby, Python (take your pick)
assembly with AT&T syntax
Lua
Matlab
J2ME (mobile, whee!)
Cobol
autotools
jQuery
bash

...not all on this list are actually jokes :)

Lua! Woo Hoo!

Spike

Lua is cool actually. We could compile the C++ code of current Simutrans into a library and use that from Lua ;D

At least I have successfully intertwined C++ and Lua code in the past.

Fabio

Quote from: vilvoh on February 08, 2010, 09:45:29 PM
Every time somebody writes code in Visual Basic, God kills a kitten.

This is why I don't see too many kittens around me... These days at work I have a wide use of Visual Basic, ihihihih

robofish

You forgot Haskell!!

Simutrans is going functional :)

(You can actually use SDL with Haskell - and it even looks quite nice [at least on the first glance])

jamespetts

Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

Isaac Eiland-Hall

How about I SLAP YOU AROUND?

;-)

jamespetts

Only if you can write a "slap you around" programme in QBasic...
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

Spike


jamespetts

Or maybe:


10 print "Slap"
20 pause 10
30 goto 10


?
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

The Hood

That would be the additional feature in slap-you-around-experimental ;)


skreyola

Quote from: Reddog785 on February 08, 2010, 09:11:58 PM
You...Cry. You actually...cry. Why? Is it because you can't understand it?
I used to write GWBasic programs, so I doubt I'd have trouble understanding it. As someone already suggested, it's not the most portable language in the world; hence the crying.
--Skreyola
You can also help translate for your language with SimuTranslator.

mjhn

I have a theory that the best eficiency in results would be to use a partially 3-D engine, where the ground, track, and building foundations are 3-D, while everything else is the existing sprites. This could probide opportunities for several gameplay changes that at least I would consider improvements, such as variable heights and diagonals on slopes, as wells as removing the incredible numbers of sprites that the grounds in the current version of simutrans are using, while not requireing all of the building and vehicle sprites to be replaced.

as for languages, any language will do as long as it will compile and run on either http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC_Computer or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_(Discworld)

prissi

The problem is, that the routing of vehicles is tile based. Changing that (efficiently) is not easy.

Isaac Eiland-Hall


mjhn

Prissi: My idea was to have a map that's tile based in 2-D, but with height not being fixed points. Existing buildings would be usable (with 3-D foundations) as they would be on flat squares as currently in simutrans. Trains would still work as the fact that the vehicles fail to line up on slopes would often be less visible than currently as the slopes would often be less steep. Track, trackobjects, stations, and bridges would need new graphics to follow the terrain (partly, as left to right would still be kept flat with some kind of foundation)

Issac: You need a cheese industry

eddielexx


kierongreen

Quote from: mjhn on February 21, 2010, 03:29:46 PM
Prissi: My idea was to have a map that's tile based in 2-D, but with height not being fixed points. Existing buildings would be usable (with 3-D foundations) as they would be on flat squares as currently in simutrans. Trains would still work as the fact that the vehicles fail to line up on slopes would often be less visible than currently as the slopes would often be less steep. Track, trackobjects, stations, and bridges would need new graphics to follow the terrain (partly, as left to right would still be kept flat with some kind of foundation)
The current system has the advantage it is easy to see whether a tile is flat or if it is a slope. With variable slopes this becomes more difficult.

Yes you can reuse building graphics but all track has to become 3d (it's impractical to draw all the possible combinations). Likewise bridges and stations have to go 3d. Then it becomes tricky making graphics consistent between 2d and 3d parts of the game...

Fabio

Quote from: mjhn on February 21, 2010, 03:29:46 PM
Prissi: My idea was to have a map that's tile based in 2-D, but with height not being fixed points. Existing buildings would be usable (with 3-D foundations) as they would be on flat squares as currently in simutrans. Trains would still work as the fact that the vehicles fail to line up on slopes would often be less visible than currently as the slopes would often be less steep.
I very much like this idea!

Quote from: kierongreen on February 21, 2010, 06:15:08 PM
Yes you can reuse building graphics but all track has to become 3d
Not necessarily. Slopes could be not entirely free, but, say, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% (existing ones).
Tracks and roads could limited to 10% (roads and tracks), 20% and 30% (roads only).
Steeper slopes would need to be smoothed in order to host ways, whereas only roads would need more (and only 3) different slopes.

VS

#65
Railroad Tycoon 2 uses something similar, I think... terrain is 3d-like, but some items like buildings and trees are 2d. It's also exceptionally ugly compared to Simutrans ;D And the whole world is simpler, there are not so many things interacting with terrain.

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Spike

Quote from: kierongreen on February 21, 2010, 06:15:08 PM
Yes you can reuse building graphics but all track has to become 3d (it's impractical to draw all the possible combinations). Likewise bridges and stations have to go 3d. Then it becomes tricky making graphics consistent between 2d and 3d parts of the game...

Why do stations need to become 3D models? I think 2D sprites like now would still work in a 3D landscape, given that the landscape isn't freely rotatable  and the stations are only build on flat ground.

kierongreen

Quote from: Hajo on February 22, 2010, 09:00:04 AM
Why do stations need to become 3D models? I think 2D sprites like now would still work in a 3D landscape, given that the landscape isn't freely rotatable  and the stations are only build on flat ground.

Because once you have variable slopes it actually starts to become tricky to get perfectly level ground. You can try and code workarounds for this but it would get tricky (only practical way is to automatically level terrain when building stations, adjusting height of surrounding tiles when required, but this introduces problems too). Similarly for bridges it becomes less obvious whether there is enough height difference between two ways crossing.

Spike

Settlers II and III flattened the area for a building. I'd  assume that it's possible in Simutrans 3D, too. But you are right, this requires extra thought and maybe some tricks.

Another idea for moderately level ground would be 3D foundations to have level ground for the station, while the track is slightly sloped. This may or may not work, most likely one would have to make a few mockup screens to judge the visual appearance.

itec

before this gets to far along could anybody give an example of a commercial game that was isometric and then moved to 3d and get better? I personaly cant think of any!