Eclipse Lighting Methods

[Jaz]

Does Eclipse Origins have a lighting feature similar to or different than that of Eclipse Stable?

[Helladen]

No.

[Homicidal Monkey]

I'll write some if Robin can deliver to me his sources

[Helladen]

Just download 1.1.0 and post a tutorial or learn the ways of SVN for Origins (@ Robin). :P

[Jaz]

I'm not interested in doing any development with ES or EO, it looks like it's being handled okay by the people doing it now.

Is there a technical write up somewhere on how the ES team has implemented their lighting feature?

[Robin]

ES team? Now you're just being silly.

The 'lighting system' is just cheap abuse of the BitBlt ROP API that was tutorialised at Mirage back in '03\. It's slow, useless and looks terrible. Ever wondered why ES runs at 12fps during the night? That's why. (As well as all the other slow systems.)

If you want a lighting system, your best bet is tile-based gamma correction or a D3D7/DD7 hybrid.

As for using an SVN for Origins archiving, lolno. It has no practical use for such a small project, especially as I'm the only developer.

[Homicidal Monkey]

@Robin:

> If you want a lighting system, your best bet is tile-based gamma correction or a D3D7/DD7 hybrid.

eh, I meant using image manipulation techniques, but that works too.

[Robin]

I suppose you could pre-render tile/lighting combinations onto a temporary surface and render that instead of the tileset.

[Jaz]

I'm not too familiar with DirectX or Win32 API, but yeah… Thanks for the fast reply all.

[Robin]

It's not the masked blting which is the main problem, it's the constant locking and unlocking of the DC which is required to do the BitBlt ROP rendering.

[Jaz]

That was a typo, I meant to use transparent blit.

Anyway, couldn't it just use the Windows GDI to remove the need for multiple locks? Like lock it once, get DC, unlock, release DC and do everything else in-between?

[Godlord]

@Robin:

> If you want a lighting system, your best bet is tile-based gamma correction or a D3D7/DD7 hybrid.

>Implying D3D has proper lightning (materials ftl.).

Regards,
  Stephan.

[Robin]

@Jaz:

> That was a typo, I meant to use transparent blit.
>
> Anyway, couldn't it just use the Windows GDI to remove the need for multiple locks? Like lock it once, get DC, unlock, release DC and do everything else in-between?

As I said, the original system was made in '03\. No one has touched it since then. It can be improved upon, but it'll still kill your FPS. The simple fact of the matter is that DD7 isn't suitable for those kinds of advanced effects. It's actually easier to simply port over to D3D8 than try and get alpha blending working in DD7 in a way which won't destroy your game.

[Jaz]

@Robin:

> The simple fact of the matter is that DD7 isn't suitable for those kinds of advanced effects. It's actually easier to simply port over to D3D8 than try and get alpha blending working in DD7 in a way which won't destroy your game.

A D3D8 or OpenGL port of EO would be tits. I'm sure it's been discussed to death, though.

[Robin]

@Jaz:

> A D3D8 or OpenGL port of EO would be tits. I'm sure it's been discussed to death, though.

Already done one.

[http://www.touchofdeathforums.com/smf/index.php/topic,64854.0.html](http://www.touchofdeathforums.com/smf/index.php/topic,64854.0.html)