Official forums for BZFlag.org

New release here: https://bz-next.github.io/mapviewer6/mapviewer.html Standalone windows build: https://github.com/bz-next/bz-next/releases/tag/Windows_Prerelease_3 In addition to shader and shadow-mapping support, this release adds improved mouse navigation. When you click and drag, the scene rotat...

New update: https://bz-next.github.io/2024-03-21-shaders-release/ Windows build here: https://github.com/bz-next/bz-next/releases/tag/Windows_Prerelease_3 Online viewer release here: https://bz-next.github.io/mapviewer6/mapviewer.html Finally got around to finishing the port of functionality to webg...

You can try out the new shadow mapping and clouds in the browser here: https://bz-next.github.io/mapviewer5/mapviewer.html There's a new menu: Scene, which allows you to enable/disable shadows, change the shadow map size, and enable/disable cloud rendering, so you can see how it performs in your bro...

Oh awesome! I'll definitely try that out for future comparison shots. (Also adjusting the fov to match bzflag would be a good idea too).

Okay, thank you for the clarification, that makes sense to me. There are a few things (mostly ImGUI and shader related) that are based on MIT licensed stuff. I'll do another pass over the various components and update the license info to accurately reflect the current state of things. I have zero re...

One thing that is generally bothering me is the idea of copyright assignment. If in the future this code gets merged as "BZFlag", the current copyright assignment scheme would make it impossible to include code or assets from other sources that are permissively licensed. So far, I have mad...

Thanks :) I finally got the cloud/atmosphere shader properly synchronized with the raster pipeline, so that the projection used by both matches, and there are no weird artifacts when transforming the scene. Just as a test I loaded up The Duck Who Knows' phantom map, which has mountains hard-baked in...

The cloud rendering is fixed now, so clouds don't look all weird and blocky. There is still a bit of work to do to sync the sky render with the world camera position (the shader takes an eye position and a look_at direction and fov, and does ray casting. So it's important to get the shader's interna...

Well, it's certainly rough around the edges. The cloud shader needs to be adapted to play nice with the scene, but I was able to hack it to make it "pretty close" to correct. At least it demonstrates that you can pull in shaders from other sources and plug them into the renderer. Here's an...

Getting there with a test of fancy clouds: a raymarching cloud shader ripped from shadertoy:
The idea is to just render this behind the world for a quick sky/cloud/sun ensemble.

Gamma correction results in gentler-looking shadows, which is more in line with shadows in the current version of BZFlag. gamma.jpg With the new system, rendering to intermediate textures and setting up a shader pipeline is really easy. I currently have an HDR render target texture that is working. ...

There's now a cool sun adjust widget so you can move the sun around and see how the shadows change:
It'd be cool to apply a sunset color to the sunlight at high angles for evening/morning.

Performance wise, in order to have tanks and other dynamic things cast shadows, we need to update shadows every frame anyway. The advantage here, though, is that is all done on the GPU in a really simple rendering pass. For playability of older maps, it might be good to have an option where things o...

Another few neat screenshots:
There's still a lot to optimize, but it's promising. It's neat that tanks can cast shadows on themselves.

Basic shadow mapping now works. The code needs to be cleaned up a bit, but all the moving pieces are there now to dynamically cast shadows on world geometry based on the position of the sun. shadow.jpg With shadows, you can keep investing time and code into making them better, so the question really...

Thanks :) I think the biggest thing to improve right now is navigation (support panning around and stuff, rather than just rotation and zoom). GEP linked me to some example code that should improve navigation quite a bit, so I'll add that in once I get a chance (currently digging around in some lowe...

I am also looking forward to seeing it working :) It is quite a challenge, but I think once shadow mapping is implemented, it will prove that the infrastructure is in place to do basically anything, graphics-wise. The challenge with shadow mapping, and what it implies for the engine, is basically: -...

Some progress towards getting shadow mapping and a custom shader pipeline working: a depth map rendered for a light source for shadow mapping.

The client now supports animated tanks. Treads and wheels are animated. Explosions (tank pieces going flying) is ported over, and squish factor (squish on landing, tiny/narrow/thief flags) and transparency tweaking (PZ, going through a teleporter, etc) seem to work. https://bz-next.github.io/2024-02...

Just a cool demo pic of connecting to a server using the experimental client, with all the various debug widgets on display.

Finally, I think it is time to work on rendering the tanks. Once that's done, there'll be a bit more architectural stuff to do.

New version up at https://bz-next.github.io/mapviewer4/mapviewer.html

Adds some new ImGUI widgets and some built-in maps that you can load.

There's now a prototype / demo up at https://bz-next.github.io/mapviewer4/mapviewer.html

I've added a couple maps by DucatiWannabe, ahs3, as well as Fairground by Ian.

Cleaning up some of the UI and adding some more widgets to aid with further development. Current UI Widgets: - Material Browser - Texture Browser - Material Viewer - [Obstacle, DynamicColor, MeshTransform, TextureMatrix, PhysicsDriver] Browsers - Cache Browser - BZW Map Editor - GL Info - Profiler -...

Just a cool screenshot of starting a map from scratch in the editor:

It crashes for me with "TypeError: this.props.server.countryCode is undefined"