D2X-XL Worklog
Notes on features and problems from the development of D2X-XL, newest first.
Lighning And Way Points | |
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Lightning Improvements D2X-XL has several different ways to compute lightning paths, one of them being Perlin noise based. While in theory that one should have provided the best looking result, I was never quite satisfied with it in D2X-XL. As it has turned out, that was a result of my slightly flawed application of Perlin noise, rooted in my incomplete understanding of the method. Until recently I had never found the time to deal with it again, but recently I did, and the result is very pleasing. As a cherry on top of that cream, lightning bolt thickness can now be varied, too - this has been made possible by applying glow to lightning effects, which very much improves its looks. Here is a picture showing an example of an application:  Way Points Quite a while ago, after having finished the lightning effect implementation in D2X-XL, I had had the idea of adding a mechanism allowing to move lightning effects along a path to simulate electric discharges wandering between two antennas or crawling up a structure. At that time, I had added way point handling right to lightning objects to see how it worked and looked, but the result was pretty disappointing, which was owed mostly to the lightning effect not looking good enough. That is something that has changed significantly with the advent of real time glow in D2X-XL, so I had another go, this time implementing a separate way point object together with the required mechanics. The advantage of the new system is that it works independently of other object types. Still, the only application I have built into DLE-XP and D2X-XL is moving lightning effects. I had to overcome a few hurdles until I had a fully working implementation, like having to find a way to even out slight differences in the path lenghts for corresponding objects (like a lightning effect's start and end points), but I managed to solve everything to my satisfaction. Here is a little video clip I created to demonstrate the application of the feature in one of my levels: A full explanation how to use the feature can be found in the effects chapter of the DLE-XP documentation on my web site. | |