How will bullet hole decals work for thin walls?

P

peoplesuc

Spy
Joined
Jul 9, 2003
Messages
170
Reaction score
0
Can you create a decal that is a shader that is 100% transparent? So that if you shot a thin wall or a sheet of aluminum then the decal would be added on both sides and you can see through the thing. That would be a cool gimick to add.:eek:
 
I'm willing to bet if its not there its easy to add. As always. :dork:
 
nope. wouldent work me thinks.


UNLESS SOMEONE proves me wrong.


but no. it ant possible. No way. nope. nay. Nein. Neitz. etc
 
i dunno but im pretty sure in the E3 video when he gets those aliens that helpu out and sends them into the sentry guns the bullet hole are on both sides off the walls so the bullets appear to go through.
 
CS does that. remember. :p
he is talking about a transparent (see through) hole in the wall that you can look through
 
and remember, nothing phsyical actualy goes through nethin. Its hit scan remember. No actualy bullets
 
sorry my bad, now i know what he means i feel so dumb.
 
Originally posted by marksmanHL2 :)
and remember, nothing phsyical actualy goes through nethin. Its hit scan remember. No actualy bullets
Click to expand...

Just because there arent physically bullets modled in the game , does not mean that there cannot be penetration values. If im not mistaken SWAT3 didnt have modled bullets but it did have the best penetration values ive seen so far.
 
exactly what i meant by my post :O


i meant that there are no actualy bullets. But they can penetrate like *Swat three* differently on different surfaces like i implied by the CS post
 
I aint making this very clear am I? lol


Basicaly i understand you completely and i understood without you telling me. :) I am just too tired to explain what i mean. Its 12.05 here. I am knackered
 
Yes bullet decals show up on both sides of the walls/doors/glass.


Look at the E3 vid, the 2 sentry guns shoot the hell out of the place and you see bullet holes on the other side of the glass and doors...
 
Originally posted by marksmanHL2 :)
exactly what i meant by my post :O


i meant that there are no actualy bullets. But they can penetrate like *Swat three* differently on different surfaces like i implied by the CS post
Click to expand...

Ah ok , np lol.
 
Again that aint what the orininal poster meant.

He meant a transparent shader. WHICH MEANS U LOOK DIRESTLY THROUGHT THE HOLD FROM ONE SIDE TO THE OTHER. (not directed at you but hopefully next person might read, :p)
 
that post was so badly spelt etc its quicker to opologise in this post than to correct it. (told u i was knackered, and a bit drunk :p)

oh and np Dimitri
 
Originally posted by peoplesuc
Can you create a decal that is a shader that is 100% transparent? So that if you shot a thin wall or a sheet of aluminum then the decal would be added on both sides and you can see through the thing. That would be a cool gimick to add.:eek:
Click to expand...

It's a good idea, but it doesn't work. Decals are separate 2D objects. If the decals are transparent, you just don't see them, it looks like nothing happened. What you'd have to do is modify the texture that's applied to the face that was shot, which is considerably more difficult.

Good idea though.
 
Yes bullet decals show up on both sides of the walls/doors/glass.


Look at the E3 vid, the 2 sentry guns shoot the hell out of the place and you see bullet holes on the other side of the glass and doors...
umm ya... CS does this, too, but what about a straight hole? all I saw in the E3 vid was translucent glass
 
grrrrrrr. No allready. it cant be done. please read the answers gived before you start asking questions. It makes it much easier. :)
 
You could always just put a hole in it. With having it set up to be shot apart (which would take time, but look great)

if you see any object in the game that has partial transparency, then maybe you can. I am trying to work out how it would work in my head, and nothing is coming to my mind. You know how they have bumb maps, specular (shiny stuff) maps, then what about transparency maps? if the deformation maps(not sure, maps is getting over said in my mind, and loosing all meaning) can be dynamicaly changed, then if there's a such thing as transparency maps, why not program that to be dynamicly changed so it puts a small circle where the "bullet" "hit" on both sides of the brush.


This is probably going to be the first thing i try to do. >:D
 
i always thought that partial transparency is limited to one face at a time of a surface not the texture map. But i could be wrong. But tbh, i think we would have seen about it allready if its possible
 
It may be possible to acheive such an effect with objects during render time. If a dedicated backbuffer is created for an object when the zbuffer determines its time to draw it, and the decal has it's own special alpha value, then it could be done. I can see it being done, but I'm afraid I'm not too good at explaining such things verbally. Maybe this'll help: Assume that you have a decal like this:

XXXXOOOXXXX
XXXOOOOOXXX
XXOO++OOXXX
XXXOOOOOXXX
XXXXOOOXXXX

the O's are the color of your decal, black/dark pixels.
the X's are alpha color keys, so that your decal can appear round, not square when pasted on an object.
the +'s are the secondary alpha that comes into play later

Anyway, so the zbuffer has drawn all the world from far away and has come to this object. The object and its decal are pasted together on a separate backbuffer, then that backbuffer is blitted onto the primary backbuffer. The +'s should be the same color as the alpha value of the separate backbuffer. Now when the conglomeration is slapped on the primary buffer you can see "through" the +'s and onto whatever is behind.

This effect wouldn't use much more processing power than the game would use normally to render a frame, but it would consume slightly more video memory. It would also work only for paper-thin objects, because since you'd be able to see through the hole no matter what angle you're looking at it from, long drilled holes in thick material would not work (from a visual standpoint, at least with this method) Again, I apologise for my ineloquence, but what i'm trying to say is that the bullet hole would be look-throughable even if you weren't looking directly straight through the hole. (understand? :p)

In addition, don't look for this effect in any upcoming hl2 mods, because (at least the method I describe) is created purely in the rendering portion of the core engine, something I don't think is available to modders.

Overall, a neat effect, and as far as I can see the easiest way to implement it - and yes, it may look nice if used in the right places, but it's too time consuming and its limited usability make it a bit of a white elephant.

Edit: I try to spell things correctly, but my keyboard defies me! ;)
 
:) The best way i could see that in use , is have an object type that allows those kind of effects. So thus, its not on every thing. And can be set for thin walls that allow you to use it. I want to see if it can be done! >: D (need space, other post not like it)
 
wow lol, thats basicly the same description my bro just tried to give me. lol


yeah well "what he said" again


but yeah one thing i do know is that if its that simple there must be a gud reason its not being used. IE the processor and Ram etc. System resources.







But neway, i g2g. Bye bye. sleep tight, dont let the bed snarks bite. :p
 
Now that I think about it the way that I would have gone about implimenting it is wrong. Adding a transparent bullethole decal on a plane or a really really thing surface would just show that surface because that layer is transparent!

Like putting a sheet of 'Serran Wrap' on a wall wouldn't allow you to see through it. Lol.

So what about a 'X-Ray Vision' mod where the player can see through walls up to a certain horizontal distance?!? THAT would be interesting.

*Gordan spends an abmormal amount of time next to the women's bathroom door.*
 
i wonder if a mod can be made where the point of impact of the bullet triggers another set of calculations that determines what part of a solid to be cut away (in the path of a bullet) , not sure if its possible, prob not
 
if i'm not mistaken, Gabe said that they experimented with realtime bullets, with velocity and all that good stuff, but it didn't fit the feel of the game, so they switched to hit scan
 
I wonder how useful this would be.

You have holes you can look through now all over the map screwing up vis.

Most of the holes are out of reach so you can't walk up and look through them. The ones that are within reach are at a height you can't look through at the player's ducking or standing height, and of the ones that are perfectly at eye level, most of them are so small you have to adjust your position for a lot longer than you want to be standing in a single place just to line yourself up correctly to look through it at the angle you want.
And when you do, what do you see? Nothing. Because the AI enemies on the other side of the wall effortlessly saw you through the holes the moment you pulled the trigger and are now coming up behind you.

I'll pas on this until we have videogames that are indistinguishable from film and more advanced AI.
 
yo man there won't be any assholes in the walls. or any alumaniam shiiiiiiits ok.

HL2 is over I am so ****ing, ooohh I ll go sleep. ce ya tomoro all..........;(
 
Well the Source engine uses displacement mapping from what I saw in the E3 footage, so technically it's possible that bullet holes can actually change the shape of the wall instead of it just being only a texture.
 
DO you remember when the scanner hit the car/s and gordon was on the other side of the car/s there was not any hols or any effects for bullits that hit the car/s. means HL2 will not include in all objects any modern texture.:flame:
 
Yeah, but we'll see in the final game.

And I said POSSIBLE for the Source engine since they mentioned that ANY surface in the game can have its displacement mapped (unless there isn't full truth to that statement), I didn't say it meant it would be done in Half-Life 2 though it definitely should be.
 
I think all the displacement map would allow you to do would be to make bullet indentations in walls.

(Can a wall/floor/surface have more than one displacement map? If yes, then do they add to eachother? Usability and effects-wise, the answers to these questions hopefully are yes, then no, respectively.)

Just for the heck of it, I drew a picture of the only decal method that would work as a render pipeliney flowchart thingy - I used this method in a d3d8 game on a less interactive level a while ago. It's not worth the effort, and it doesn't look that great. I would much prefer displacement map indentations.

I find a picture is a far better way to convey a method/idea, so
anyhoo, look at the exaggerated piccy:
 
Yeah, but the thread starter was talking about a very thing wall... if it's a very thing wall and displacement mapping occured for a bullet... then it would have to make a complete hole straight through the wall.... unless the bullets are not simulated.
 
Yea, if you had "inviso" bullet holes, it would screw with vis, thats why i say, make only a type of wall to allow it. Kind of like the brush, then the func_'s like func_breakable, and wall, etc. If hl2 has any thing like this you make a func_bulletholewallthingyofdeath. So Only that kind of "wall" will allow it, and the map author can deside on it. So not all walls get it, and vis might not get screwed over.

I really want to try this now...

Make it so i can happen to doors, and etc.
 
The only surface that the transparent decal techneque would look good on is glass.

SoF2 SP had something similar except they just used lots of seperate bits of geometry to represent holes in glass. If you really wanted, you could make a thin wall out of lots of tiny peices which either get knocked out or explode (with some kind of particle effect) when they are shot.
 
heres the thing. I foresee people attempting to shoot through the wholes. thus adding a whole nother dynamic to what you are speaking of....that being having to code being able to shoot through the decals in addition to being able to see through them, but only on things that are of a certain thickness....

from all that I'd have to jumpy to the conclusion that this isnt included and that its not possible on the engine..

maybe its possible from a different approach (not decals at all but actually chip away the item you are shooting) but i doubt it would be able to be done in large amounts..

just my 2 cents. :)
 
Ok perhaps this is not very feasible but we all saw the tech demo with the camera and the screen. Since the technology is already there could'nt you just code it so that when you shoot the wall it creates a small circle shaped entitiy that shows what a camera is seeing and have the camera(tiny and invisible of course) sitting directly on the other side of the wall where the bullet would theoretically come out. Also have it do this the other way around so that it looks like you are seeing through a bullet hole :) of course there are numerous problems with this but it might be fun to try presuming you can do it.
 
i think that would that would eat up your processor and spit it out, no matter how fast your comp is. especially with the amount of bullets sprayed aroundf the average deathmatch level....but its a uniqe idea thats for sure :)
 
making holes in walls/deforming the map = bad multiplayer gameplay
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

B
Barking Dog Studios' work for Valve
Replies
0
Views
12K
Barnz
B
MFL
Fascinating look at the ongoing psychological evolution of flat hieirarchies.
Replies
2
Views
2K
Tollbooth Willie
Tollbooth Willie
B
Community Interviews: Tony Newton, co-creator of Redemption
Replies
0
Views
5K
Barnz
B
-smash-
Using Unity at Valve - Vision Summit 2016
Replies
5
Views
6K
Ennui
Ennui
-smash-
HalfMapper: A Tool for Capturing Unique Views of Black Mesa
Replies
7
Views
6K
Red Slug
Red Slug
Back
Top