question about cazic thule

nilbog · #1 06-01-2009, 04:14 AM

I am completely new to this part of the forums so I'll try to make sense.

I have a discrepancy with how the green bubble connects to the ceiling in the cazic thule zone.

this is how the bubble/water/ceiling looked circa 1999. (how i would like it to be!)

but this is how it looks now (via titanium for me)

is this an optical illusion.. are other peoples green bubbles malfunctioning? or can openzone help me ?

OrisonSeven · #2 06-01-2009, 08:37 PM

Openzone could work for you, but i dont think this is what you a re looking for unless you wish to export, manipulate, and then reimport the entire zone into the game. So, it IS possible to use openzone for a such a task, but it would only be part of the process.

Basically you would need to:
1. Export the zone from eq to 3ds Max.
-To do this you need a max script, 3ds Max, and zone converter which are explained within another thread on the forum, easy to search for it.
2. Once the zone is in 3ds Max you could either export it to a .3ds file to import to openzone,
or,
Use 3ds Max to modify the sphere so that it is at the correct height.
3. Import the zone and all its contents to openzone where you would then need to specify all water within the zone using the water tools (it appears clear unless textured, and by clear, i mean you would be swimming in air)
4. After water is set, you could then compile the zone using openzone, and then replace the zone files with the new ones created.

Now, after saying all of this, there are a lot of things that will happen durring this process. Within EQ, texture blending at the time the zones came out was done simplistically by manually creating a tile with the textures blended together. Any objects that have there textures blending from paths and such would most likely have the uvw map coordinates of some (not necessarily some or all, really depends on the map) of the poly incorrectly aligned. This really only means that textures wouldnt blend together at the seams as well. Manyally fixing these is possible, but another task as well.

To be honest, I think you would be better finding a .s3d file from the past where the zone was how you remember it from the first picture and just replacing it which would therefore bypass the entire process.

If you wish to go about modifying it your self, feel free to ask me questions or to be more detailed if you need that.

Dibalamin · #3 06-02-2009, 09:10 AM

Strangely enough, the sphere is fine, the water is hanging from the ceiling....took me a while to notice it as well.

So we could grab the S3D file from say, the Kunark disc and it would work? Hmm, didn't think about treating it like Nektulor or LS... Brilliant! Thank ya!

OrisonSeven · #4 06-02-2009, 06:04 PM

Your very welcome. Glad that it helped!

Dibalamin · #5 06-03-2009, 01:09 AM

Unfortunately, even the s3d from Kunark is the same here. If you fly up around the ball, it is correct and the ceiling is not sloped, however from the wall looking at it the ceiling water slopes that way.

OrisonSeven · #6 06-03-2009, 05:12 AM

Sounds like a texture issue. Ill experiment and see if i can figure out what is causing that by exporting the zone and seeing if the textures are off kilter or if they are simply that way because of angle of view and whatnot. Im guessing that it is simply a texture/view angle issue. Maybe easy fix, maybe now. Will check tho.

Sorry that the easy fix didnt work... though this makes me scratch my head because if the file is the same... then it may be the way the coding of the titanium engine manipulates the given zone files.

Hmm, now im intrigued. This will be entertaining since im building a library of old zones to rebuild them from scratch the way my team has imagined them.

OrisonSeven · #7 06-03-2009, 05:14 AM

After further review of the photo... when you look outward from the bubble does the water buckle as well making the outer wall have a similar issue by looking outwards from the center. If this is the case, then the water's model (i.e. then mesh is changed from a flat rectangle to something more.

Shendare · #8 06-03-2009, 11:31 AM

My first thought when I looked at it was, "Oh, it looks like the water render is happening after the sphere, and isn't acknowledging the sphere in the z-buffer."

I wonder if it's related to the new water rendering system that was put in place. Is there an in-game option or eqclient.ini option to switch to old water rendering systems so some testing could be done?

- Shendare

nilbog · #9 06-03-2009, 03:35 PM

Sorry I'm just now getting back to respond to this conversation! I'm glad to see other people are interested though. I turned on flymode for more tests and screenshots.

Quote:

when you look outward from the bubble does the water buckle as well making the outer wall have a similar issue by looking outwards from the center.

here is a pic of me from inside the bubble.. near the center, looking forward.

now, panning upward just about 2 degrees or so, the dark square/water area vanishes, and you can see through the bubble again. (similar to when you were near the top layer of water, where it met the sky, you could clearly see underwater, from a certain view)

it most definitely is not touching the ceiling

ground view, looking up.

OrisonSeven · #10 06-03-2009, 05:31 PM

i feel like it is the textures that are being manipulated by the game engine. This would cause them to look distorted.

Shendare · #11 06-03-2009, 06:31 PM

Ohhhh, the sphere is actually partially transparent! That totally makes sense to me now.

I've noticed for a long time that the EQ client doesn't handle well the situation where multiple objects are rendered to the same area of the screen when transparency is involved.

My understanding of what happens is that transparent textures don't get written to the Z-buffer, so if you have multiple transparent objects rendered in the same frame, later renders always render on top of earlier ones, even if the earlier objects are closer.

This is a client graphics engine related problem, and I don't think there's anything that can be done to fix it.

Generally what happens in this sort of situation is that the graphics engine makes sure to render transparent objects from farthest away to closest, so the closer transparent objects get rendered on top of the farther ones, as the eye would expect to see.

The fact that the water ceiling is so big means that the graphics engine isn't going to be able to follow that ordering method. The closer parts of the ceiling will be closer than the sphere, while the farther parts will be farther, so the sphere is going to intersect with the ceiling from some angles and give visual anomalies no matter what.

Like I said, I don't think there's any way to fix it. It's just a result of the way they created the graphics objects and a side effect of the rendering method. If the sphere were 100% solid instead of having transparency, the problem would go away, since it would be written to the z-buffer and the transparent ceiling wouldn't render over its areas of the screen.

- Shendare