Trees outside hydaala

[Mister moo]

Just got back on game since restart the trees outside hydaala now have blue boxes on them. I\'m sorry I dont know how to include any more relevant info but this prob was not there before.

[Karyuu]

Before meaning when, before CB? :] It\'s a known issue with transparency - the Klyros wings also have this problem. It\'s bound to be tackled at some point, as soon as such a thing will be possible - but it\'s fairly obvious, aye.

[Mister moo]

Ok. at least it is known. It has only appeared since the crash this weekend was fixed. Got some info from other threads about how to post bugs properly. Sorry for wasting your time on this Karyuu

[Karyuu]

No waste of time at all :) Sometimes the boxes around the trees disappear unless you view them at a certain angle. I believe it\'s something to do with the way crystal space renders, but I\'d really have to ask someone else for the details of why this occurs :P

[LigH]

Yes, it is a problem of the CrystalSpace graphic engine.

There are different ways to define that a texture actually is transparent: One is to say that a specific color means transparency (chroma keying). Another is to use a fourth component (alpha channel) which can gradually define more or less transparent / translucent areas.

But the main problem is for the engine to determine what should be drawn behind the transparent textures. To me it appears that it sometimes draws not the landscape behind it, but the sky box - it seems to mis-calculate that the transparency is absolute and does not stop at the next part of landscape. It is probably caused by some wrong drawing order.

A related problem is that labels are sometimes invisible in certain areas, like the forest junction.

[jorrit]

Originally posted by LigH
Yes, it is a problem of the CrystalSpace graphic engine.

No it is not. It is caused by wrong usage of the Crystal Space engine in this particular case. The wrong render priority is being selected. It is something that can be fixed by fixing the maps.

But the main problem is for the engine to determine what should be drawn behind the transparent textures. To me it appears that it sometimes draws not the landscape behind it, but the sky box - it seems to mis-calculate that the transparency is absolute and does not stop at the next part of landscape. It is probably caused by some wrong drawing order.

Exactly. The drawing error is defined wrong in the maps.

Greetings,

[LigH]

:O Okay okay ... jorrit knows it better.

But if it\'s in the maps, then I wonder why it isn\'t reliable.

[Asraniel]

and i hope it gets fixed:-) because as soon as the grass near the magic shop becomes strange you cant see much when running around there..

[Mister moo]

Another thing that might be related - whenleaving sewers the ground looks.... um funky. like it\'s not replacing the graphic below the portal correctly. Don\'t know if that is to do with the transparency or unrelated.

[LigH]

Not correctly updated graphics, while being inside a \"portal\", is another bug known for months...

[jorrit]

Originally posted by LigH
:O Okay okay ... jorrit knows it better.

But if it\'s in the maps, then I wonder why it isn\'t reliable.

The reason it is not reliable is because it depends on which order the maps are loaded in. The problem is (most likely) that a model name is being reused in several maps (i.e. the name of the tree model) but with a different definition. So if you start from ojaroad and walk to that section it will use the version loaded from ojaroad and if you start from hydlaa it will use the version loaded from hydlaa.

Greetings,

[Wired_Crawler]

Yes. The problematic map is hyojapath, it has definitions of textures grasstuft01.tga, smtree01.tga and treetops01.tga different than other maps, \"binary alpha\" tags are missing. It seems, that problems with trees and grass transparency is visible only, when you login in sector hyoja02 (part of the forest between magic shop, ojaroad and famous rogue).
There are at least two workarounds:
1) by editing file \"zoneinfo.xml\" - make section of zone hyoja02 look like the following:

Code: [Select]

 
   
   
   
   
  Map \"magicshop\" contains \"proper\" texture definitions and will be loaded before hyojapath.

OR

2) by editing file \"world\" contained in hyojapath.zip. Add binary alpha tags to textures mentioned above, for example:

Code: [Select]


smtree01.tga
   


Originally posted by jorrit
Exactly. The drawing error is defined wrong in the maps.

Yes, but in similar cases CS interprets render priorities not the same way every time the map is loaded. Sometimes semi-transparent objects are less transparent, sometimes more transparent, sometimes you see sky throuhg them, sometimes other objects... Some kind of fuzzy logic is involved