HWA Stuff, One for Francois

[Pixelthief]

Hey, Pixelthief here, if you remember back to GDC I was asking about if it was at all possible to get the same "Angle" rotation effect for Layers & Frames as you have for Active Objects. The way you can apply shader effects or alpha coefficients/masks looks like its copy/pasted the exact same as how AO's were written, so I imagine it might be possible to just uncomment some code or add identical code into the graphics pipeline, just to let anyone give an Angle to the layer/frame textures.

Necessarily it would mean that the rotation would have blurred or black edges because the frames/layers are bounded, but I don't think thats any reason to not include it- you can work it by circumscribing a frame window inside of the rendered area to cut off the corners, so all that artifact zone wouldn't matter. Its how I'm doing Asunder right now, but I need to use a Pixel shader on the 512x512 frame, which I imagine is alot more inefficient than having a vertex rotation.

I'm guessing that even if it isn't any faster persay, it would still let me have more objects on screen using pixel shaders (I can only get one or two before my game slows down on most computers, presumably because 60 FPS of a 512x512 texture is hogging any juice set aside for shaders), by leveling off the load onto vertexes. But beyond my own uses, I'm more interested in it because I've gotten so many requests from people over the years asking "How do I rotate the entire frame" as an effect, and I'd be a lot happier to see that built in efficiently than have to use an inefficient shader I wrote.

Also on that whole HWA note, I'm curious if you guys made any impact on the HWA alpha blending problem that was brought up a year ago;
http://community.clickteam.com/showthread.php?t=63068
It makes a huge difference on how a lot of HWA programs look, so Im just curious if any of the techniques people were discussing to fix it were fruitful
Nothing really high priority here, I'd just be super glad to see any of this make it into Build 256 if at all possible! I know that ones stumped Yves before, but hey, I wish you good luck


Oh and it was great to read your blog from the GDC events, thanks for posting that up! I've been cranking away on my project hard, and looks like you guys have too

[Yves]

I could add rotations on layers but, even if it's not complicated, that will take some time and currently I've a huge task list to "purge" before adding new features to MMF2 unless they have a high priority like options for the new runtimes, etc. Most likely this will be added in MMF3 only, unless I've 5 minutes free (i.e. "a couple of days") to add such a feature.

[Pixelthief]

Well if its possible to scrounge up those 5 minutes / couple of long years necessary some time on a coffee break or whatnot, I'd be very thankful No rush though and not critical by any means, but I've got a sneaking suspicion you might even have the code in there already, commented out (if the code for AO's was copy/pasted over). God speed with all the rest of your task list

[Outcast]

I would also be very interested in this feature. Is there any example or explanation on how to do this method of using pixel shaders for rotation in the meantime?

[Pixelthief]

For PC/HWA runtime only, this should help:
http://community.clickteam.com/showthread.php?t=58282

But the problem being that a 512x512 texture eats up all the resources when a vertex shader wouldn't, so you can't apply other shaders without getting significant slowdown

[Outcast]

For PC/HWA runtime only, this should help:
http://community.clickteam.com/showthread.php?t=58282

But the problem being that a 512x512 texture eats up all the resources when a vertex shader wouldn't, so you can't apply other shaders without getting significant slowdown

Thanks I am trying to understand how this work. But I have 0 programming knowledge so its very hard to get exactly how the shader is supposed to apply. Sorry :/ I have tried to do an example from what I could deduce from the information. I created an app that is 512 * 512 in size and then applied the rotation shader to the layer inside the frame. I did get my image to rotate, but it seems like it is disformed and squeezed a bit in the rotation. Am I on the right track though? I have an example here

[Pixelthief]

I editted it quickly, you have to use the Layer object to apply effect parameters to layers in the event editor, but otherwise you did it right
I think your problem was just in the level editor display (where layer effects appear warped). When you run it, it should look proper
Unless I'm using a different version of the shader than you;
Rotate2.mfa

[Outcast]

I editted it quickly, you have to use the Layer object to apply effect parameters to layers in the event editor, but otherwise you did it right
I think your problem was just in the level editor display (where layer effects appear warped). When you run it, it should look proper
Unless I'm using a different version of the shader than you;
Rotate2.mfa

Ah thanks for helping me with this So if you want to add a character and make it interact with the world, is the best way to add him to another layer? (like in this example)

[Pixelthief]

Thats one way. In Asunder, I actually have the character himself move around the objects and platforms, and rotate the entire frame so that he'll always appear on top in the same spot

[Outcast]

Thats one way. In Asunder, I actually have the character himself move around the objects and platforms, and rotate the entire frame so that he'll always appear on top in the same spot

How do you do this? Is the frame somehow set to the characters angle?