216 replies to this topic

[fuzion]

logo

j

Attached Files

•  amberlogo.jpg   22.32KB   28 downloads

Edited by fuzion, 09 August 2011 - 01:07 PM.

[mort]

logo

j

I was hoping you would post one mate, cracker !

any chance of a psd or quick tutorial how you do the lines and glow some time ?

Edited by mort, 09 August 2011 - 01:11 PM.

[cainer]

Still fixing this nobby?

i was about to do it thismorning but my box set of every series of Neighbours arrived so im gonna watch them first

[c0nfu53d]

Project Amber by Guitar - making FME his bitch.

Edited by c0nfu53d, 09 August 2011 - 04:18 PM.

[Guitar]

Not a great amount of detail but highlights a few more features of the emu.

Attached Files

•  Amber demo2.wmv   29.7MB   60 downloads

[mort]

Not a great amount of detail but highlights a few more features of the emu.

fantastic video mate, i need to look at it in more detail, but, but, you have solved the great BAF and LAF debate, controlling the background contrast is a genius idea, well done mate

Love the various dimming and strobing that is going on as well (i think i can spot strobing but not sure) but certainly can see the dimming stuff happening.

Edited by mort, 09 August 2011 - 07:43 PM.

[mort]

I have often thought about this being done in MFME in the past, using a slider to control the background art levels, but with MFME you have an OFF lamp graphic entity which is static with regard to its contrast/levels, so if you pushed the contrast down on the background art, the off lamps would look odd as they would be stuck in the original contrast setting.

Does Amber not use the concept of seperate ON and OFF lamp images ? preumably you are just alpha blending between the original off and on complete images ? Do u then just create the lamp boundaries in Amber, and use your transparancy tool to do the masking so to speak ?

[mort]

What I am saying in summary is that I presume you create a master off and on image in Photoshop, you then run the master on/off in your transp. tool to create the master on image in masked format.

You then feed the master off image untouched into Amber, then you create the lamp boundaries, then you feed in the master on image which is masked, and then the alpha blending controls everything from there ?

[Guitar]

Should have changed the title to here is what your going to have!!!!

Or "Here's some features MFME would never have" hehe.

[Guitar]

What I am saying in summary is that I presume you create a master off and on image in Photoshop, you then run the master on/off in your transp. tool to create the master on image in masked format.

You then feed the master off image untouched into Amber, then you create the lamp boundaries, then you feed in the master on image which is masked, and then the alpha blending controls everything from there ?

Pretty much.

You have an on image and an off image. The off image forms the background, and the on image has the auto transparency applied. This gives you a black square with just the lit bits (black being transparent in directx). The lamp then simply shows nothing for an off image, and shows the area of the lamp of the transparent layer when dragged into place. The upshot being you can drag a lamp around and not have to cut lamps out, the emulator simply picks an area of the on image based on where the lamp is. You can also use a classic style of on lamp for area's which overlap.

The lamp brightness is then applied as the brightness of each individual lamp texture, and hey presto a lamp with multiple levels of brightness. I then allow the user to set the brightness of the off layer which allows you to adjust the layout to a nice level how they want, and it also means the background doesn't have to be darkened manually, so the auto transparency works even after the layout is finished if you eed to edit the background lamps for any reason.

There will then be a sepearate "lamp group" setting allowing for multiple lamping situations with a few lamps in one mask, or allowing for different coloured lamping. This will be explained in more detail at release, mainly because I haven't written the lamp groups yet.

As you can also see from the andy capp layout, super bright works quite well too!

Edit to add: Directx based menus for starting a game so you can play layouts full screen, - these took a lot of work to get in, especially with someone as artistically retarded as me, please notice them .

Edited by Guitar, 09 August 2011 - 08:16 PM.

[mort]

Thanks for that mate, I need to read that post a number of times to digest that properly.

One query I have though is in the past as a designer you have to light the lamps in Photoshop to the level you want them to be. If you can control the level of lamp/blend in Amber, then how do you know how bright to make the lamps in the ON image in Photoshop ?

[mort]

I particularly like the DirectX menus you have when launching Amber

Reminds me of a number of games I play having that DirectX launcher, all you need now is a slider for AA and AF (maybe the AF setting will be good for when you make Amber into a fully 3D environment)

[mort]

Thanks for that mate, I need to read that post a number of times to digest that properly.

One query I have though is in the past as a designer you have to light the lamps in Photoshop to the level you want them to be. If you can control the level of lamp/blend in Amber, then how do you know how bright to make the lamps in the ON image in Photoshop ?

I would guess we create the lamps in Photoshop for the highest brightness setting i.e. the 100% alpha blend, and Amber then does all the fading down to 0% (regardless of original PS background art levels)

[mort]

All in all it's a great method that you have put in place here, I am not just making this up in that I have often thought about things similar to this in the past. Sometimes it's when you create a new emulator from the ground up that you have the opportunity from looking at the existing emulators to see what can be improved. I see this as a fantastic way of doing the lamps, and dare I say it should make layouts easier to do, particularly for me as I always create a complete OFF and ON image, and I don't edit the extracted lamps to light them like other peeps do.

It has all the scope to offer the next level of lamping realism, and I hope that designers can embrace this and see what can be achieved. I don't actually play layouts too much, rather I just like to watch the attract/lamp effects, so maybe I am a bit biased, but there you go

Thanks for the update, I wil re-re-re-read your post above now to understand how it works more.

[Guitar]

I would guess we create the lamps in Photoshop for the highest brightness setting i.e. the 100% alpha blend, and Amber then does all the fading down to 0% (regardless of original PS background art levels)

Spot on

[Guitar]

New channel for Project Amber Video's

http://www.youtube.c...eFMEInnerCircle

[hitthesix]

Wow!!! that looks brilliant, well done so far.