it would be nice to be able to have different jump textures depending on how you jump ( jumpgates one type, wormholes another, jump drives a third, mantis a forth etc)

Really nice work though, I'm gonna have to try them out

I think if Vice likes them and ruckage is the designer, a sort of agreement can be easily made so that all the design can be implemented in game and maybe used in different kind of jumps as Verbosity is suggesting..... maybe even randomizing the colour so that any kind of interfering factor can have a place in the phenomenon.

That would be awesome!

I second the idea!

I like the first series a lot and was thinking the blue could be used for the jump drive and one of the others for jump gates (that would keep the texture use limited to 2 256X256 images, only about 190K of extra memory). If that's something you'd be interested in Ruckage and would be willing to donate two of them, I can look into adding such an effect.

I'm interested! I think it's a good way to go.
Adds some variety to the game! More "eye candy"!

Looks good to me.

No problem, I can scale them as needed also. I think the blue already looks really good for the jump drive and maybe the varied colored one for jump gates. I may try adding them into the game engine later today to see how they look.

Coooooooooooooooooooooool

Nice jump textures! The first type in blue and multicolored are my favorite. The star texture is a bit bright for my taste, but still well done! You have a talent for design, and EL will definitely benefit from the new textures.

-Accountant

EDIT:
Vice, not sure how easy/feasible this is, but is it possible to add a fade-in and fade-out to the jump textures? Especially when the ship exits the jump, the sudden disappearance of the jump texture is very noticeable.

I tried adding a fade-out to black on the top and bottom of the texture, but the texture is tiled so that approach didn't work.

[Edited on 6-5-2009 by Accountant]

Yeah, that's an effect I want to include also. One method that would work is texture animation, but that takes a memory hit and isn't very smooth, depending on the number of frames. The other option is to reduce alpha blending. Still looking into options on this, but it is on my list.

Warp tansitions would definately be a great addition, I have an idea of a way to achieve it but not sure how easy it would be for you to implement. I guess at the moment the texture is wrapped onto a cylinder and then the texture is moved to create the impression of the rotation and forward movement - the cylinder itself is actually stationary - relative to the player. It looks as well as if the texture is stretched across the whole length of the cylinder but is tiled twice around the circumference - is that correct?

For the transition out of warp, how about having a separate transition texture that you apply at this point and instead of changing the texture coordinates physically move the cylinder past the player, the same could also be done for the entry but would maybe require a bit more fiddling to get the effect right -probably the use of 2 cylinders, a lead in cylinder with the 'transition in' texture and the second cylinder with the tiled texture used during the actual jump. Not sure if that all makes sense but hopefully you get the idea.

I've made some transition textures in case they are of use - they should hopefully give the appearance of the energy dissipating rather than simply fading to black.

Yes, that basically described the setup. The idea is good, it would come down to timing the appearance/disappearance of the effect with the correct stage of the texture (I wish I could just run it out to complete black based on speed, but I'm limited to 'scrolling' it within certain UV confines). I've got the textures up and running in the game now, with a few added lines to give the same kind of 'tunnel bars' effect it had before and it looks good. I may try some fading ideas later also. Thanks!

Hi Vice, since you mentioned tunnel bars I figured I'd do my own interpretation. Rather than completely straight bars I thought they would look good a bit more irregular so i've come up with the textures below. I tried it out in game and I personally like the effect (though obviously I'm a little biased ) You need to see it in action really to appreciate it but there is a screenshot below anyway.

Very nice, I'll give it a try after I get back from getting something to eat. How do they look on the jump gates? That was where the pulsing bars also helped give a solid sense of motion/movement. I think the variation would look really cool.

Yeah, I think it looks good on the actual gates. I tried to get a screenshot but you can't really tell from a still image.

One more minor change - I've just adjusted the levels a bit to give more contrast. Quite subtle but makes a big difference in game. You can compare it with the previous textures and see which you prefer, I think the extra contrast definately improves the look of the gates as the movement is more apparent.



[Edited on 6-7-2009 by ruckage]