GLSMAC - Open-source OpenGL/SDL2 remaster of SMAC

[dino]

Blurring the shadowing would probably fall under low effort.

But we hear you, it's just that you show us the map rendering, so we are commenting on the map rendering, nothing more to it, prioritize as you see fit.

[DrazharLn]

Sorry if I came across as nagging or demanding, I was having some fun trying to understand what I liked about SMAC's map appearance and maybe derailed things a bit!

[afwbkbc]

All good
Made some changes to lighting, maybe it looks a bit better, not sure.

Blurring shadows may be easy, yes, I'll research it tomorrow.

[afwbkbc]

I'll leave lighting like this for now.
I didn't find simple way to blur shadows, they are generated in shaders from interaction between lights and terrain geometry, each tile consists from just 5 vertexes ( center, left, top, right, bottom ) so can't be smoothed much physically. Adding more vertexes would be terrible for fps, so it's a no. Usually other techniques are used to smooth edges in 3D games (without actually modifying geometry), if somebody knows exact formula you can try modifying shaders here - https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac/blob/main/src/graphics/opengl/shader_program/Orthographic.cpp
Once terrain edges are smoothed - shadows from them will smooth too and that's the right way.

[dino]

Sure, it looks good enough already, move on if you want to.

I'll just add, that I've made a mistake, I've meant lightmap, not shadowmap. Prebaked lighting is faster than realtime and it possibly could be done in a way were you could get a single lightmap texture for the entire map geometry, then a blur filter could be applied to it, to smooth the shading and I imagine the result could look at least simillar to the original, if not outright being the same. I'm not a programmer, or 3D graphic artist, so I may be wrong, I'm just throwing an idea to consider somewhere down the line.

[afwbkbc]

> Prebaked lighting is faster than realtime
Yes, at some day I'll do that. My approach is to not apply any optimizations until they are needed, I determine that by checking FPS, for now it's around 3000-4000 FPS on fullscreen map which seems good enough 
For example, UI was rendered in realtime at first, then I noticed that it started lowering FPS a lot (depending on number of UI elements) so I made framebuffer and redraw only when something changes. Same will be done about lighting - as soon as I notice FPS drop I'll start doing optimizations.
Yes, with prebaked lighting it should be easier to blur too (in theory), good point. I'd like to put some sprite and voxel units on map first (and maybe cities), at least to be able to test it, for example if I do all lighting stuff now later it may turn out it's not compatible and needs to be reworked. Better to focus on lighting when everything else is already there.

[afwbkbc]

Ok, I managed to blur it now  And water looks smoother too. Ok, moving to coastlines for real 

[Buster's Uncle]

That almost-plaid pattern in the fugus is going to need some jiggering, of course.

[DrazharLn]

That looks pretty good!

[afwbkbc]

Improved fungus pattern a bit. Lines can still be seen but that's hard to eliminate completely (without cutting big part of texture off and stretching other one which loses quality too much)

[afwbkbc]

Worked on coastlines a bit (not final version yet)

[DrazharLn]

Nice start!

[dino]

Blur on shadows and water looks great, but I'd try to maybe make it a bit less intense for both, I feel like smaller bumps on terrain almost loose shadowing, I'd also make the coastline a bit less rugged, but if you disagree with any of these suggestions, then it's perfectly satisfactory to me as it is.

I'd like a graphic option, rather disabled by default, to use a simple nearest neighbour interpolation instead of texture filtering, for the original sharp grainy look. It may be a preference not shared by most, but I think these low res textures in old games are designed in a way that every pixel counts and hints at something, so these textures feel to me somehow less detailed and defined after filtering.

[afwbkbc]

> but I'd try to maybe make it a bit less intense for both
Shadows are just consequence of terrain sharpness, if you compare land elevations then they look a lot more flat in SMAC. Also in SMAC water is generally less deep, except for few places. Current mapgen in GLSMAC is just quickly thrown together to test things, it's possible that mapgens won't generate that much mountains so problem won't be seen. Mapgens will play big role in how world is seen.
Other difference is that SMAC uses 55-60 degrees 'camera angle', in GLSMAC it's currently 45, but I'll change to SMAC-like if SMAC sprites won't look good at 45.
So many things will change with rendering still.

> I feel like smaller bumps on terrain almost loose shadowing
There will be bumpmapping later which will solve it

> I'd also make the coastline a bit less rugged
Yes I'm still playing with numbers trying to find optimal ratio.

> for the original sharp grainy look
There will be 'sharpening' post-processing filters later, amongst others (maybe even 256-color filter just in case). And there will be many settings once settings UI is done 

> but if you disagree with any of these suggestions
Actually I agree, it's just a matter of priorities For now I won't focus on graphics too much, need gameplay first. Coastlines are last time-consuming visual thing before I move to sprite and CVR units.
And yes, as I said - SMAC was in development 3-4 years so they had time to align every pixel perfectly I need to find balance to be able to make it playable within reasonable time.
There's also possibility of somebody joining project later and working on improving graphics here and there while I continue with main things.

And I think I almost finished with coastlines for now (just maybe need to draw small border at edge, but maybe it's already good as it is).

[Buster's Uncle]

It sure ain't bad at all, as-is.