sorry, i need to rephrase, they are behind the pillar, but i can still see the top of them from the camera’s perspective.
From the droid’s perspective, they should be invisible, but from the camera’s, i should still be able to see the top part of it, but as soon as it turns around that corner, it just disappears…
Yes, it seems as if the culling is calculated from the droid’s point of view instead of the camera’s.
[quote]sorry, i need to rephrase, they are behind the pillar, but i can still see the top of them from the camera’s perspective.
From the droid’s perspective, they should be invisible, but from the camera’s, i should still be able to see the top part of it, but as soon as it turns around that corner, it just disappears…
[/quote]
Well, it’s correct this way, albeit it may look strange or unlogical at first glance. The line of sight is calculated between the droid and the enemies, not between the camera and the enemies. That’s because it has to be independent from the current state of the camera and (more important) because the classic game defines it to be this way (what you see, is what the 001 device would see…there’s a section in the docs/intro of the classic game about this IIRC). I think that i just have to document this better…
umm…yer i understand the technological bit of it, but why? Surely its not logical to see a droid just disappear right infront of your eyes?
If you want to stick to the original i would recommend that you change the camera’s posotion to that of the droid’s.
Or disable occlusion culling…Cause this is really weird for a player to see this and would probably get alot of email regarding a non existant bug :-/
Anyways, its still a great game!
DP
But that would mean that neither doors or walls would affect visibility any longer which would render the doors pointless. It’s a vital element of the game to be unable to spot what the player’s unit couldn’t see. I agree that the choosen perspective from behind makes this look a bit like a bug sometimes, but then again, the classic game showed everything from the top (like Paradroidz does when you pressa ‘c’), which (in theory) is even more confusing.
If i would make the camera to see everything it could see from its current position, you won’t see anything because you would constantly stare at the floor of the upper deck… 
Edit: An idea - Would it be better if a single pillar won’t block the line of sight, but “real” walls and doors and stuff still does? Because i think that it’s most confusing for pillars…you simply don’t take the space behind them as another room/part of the level. It would also make it possible to replace them in the future with real pillars…
Yes, that’d be much better given the new perspective.
Cas 
Ok, new version is up…pillars are no longer blocking the line of sight, while doors and “real” walls still do.
The scoring has been modified. Now you are getting less points for winning a transfer game (was about twice the score you got for shooting an enemy before) but you’ll get a bonus depending on how much fields are in your color and on the remaining inputs that you haven’t placed. In addition, transfer and level complete scores don’t depend on the alarm status anymore.
Sadly, i had to clear the highscore table because of these changes.
Now for the tuning!
It would be most excellent if robots with supposedly better brains actually tried to win the transfer game, especially the 999. This was hinted at in the original game but I expect the constraints of the time prevented him even thinking too hard about implementing it.
Cas
Hmmm, I still think the culling looks weird. Why should I be able to see the walls which are out of sight of the droid, but not the other droids? And why should I see droids behind the player, but not occluded ones?
It just feels illogical.
I guess doing the occlusion tests from the camera’s perspective won’t negatively affect gameplay, but it will look much more sensible.
Or you could also not draw the walls and floors etc. which are occluded.
this is how it was defined in the original game. It was topdown 2d, and when the droid couldn’t see em, they would vanish, and that seemed really really bizzar for me, but it makes sense (in some odd way!). And EgonOlsen is only making a port really.
So this is discussion is leaning back to the ancient “exact port? or make it better?” kinda thing…
Thats my view on things…
[quote]So this is discussion is leaning back to the ancient “exact port? or make it better?” kinda thing…
[/quote]
Well, the basic question is: Would it be better that way? It would definitely affect gameplay, because it would remove the surprise effect (what is behind this wall?, what is behind this door? Is it a good idea to open it with a wrecked 001 device?) from the game and that changes the tatics you have to use.
I’m thinking about making it an option but because it would affect gameplay, it would also affect the difficulty level and therefor the scoring. We’ll see…
Anyway, here’s what the classic game had to say about why things are this way:
I’ve added the option to disable the line of sight, played some games that way and removed it again. It may sound like a good idea, but really: It isn’t. It simply sucks! If all droids are visible that the camera would theoretically see from it’s current position, the game loses very much of its appeal. Some formerly fun levels are becoming a mindless skeet shooting festival that way.
How strange the current culling may ever look sometimes…it is there for a reason. I won’t remove it, not even as a option.
Edit: Almost forgot to mention: New version with slightly better AI is up…
your da boss! ;D
I think you have made the correct decision to be honest. After understanding that it really isn’t a bug and thats how the game is supposed to be, i totally agree.
Btw, how are you implementing your rear view camera? Spherical coordinates? polar coordinates? or just a mix of stuff?
DP
[quote]Btw, how are you implementing your rear view camera? Spherical coordinates? polar coordinates? or just a mix of stuff?
[/quote]
It’s more like “a mix of stuff”. You can find the basic code in jPCT’s car example in the moveCamera() method. It’s something that i hacked together for this example without thinking much about it. But it turned out to be quite good and so i tweaked some parameters for Paradroidz and all was fine. I does cool things like moving away when you go faster, getting closer when you’re stopping and sitting on top of the player when turning very fast…and i never really checked out why it behaves this way… ;D
Reminds me of a Four wins AI that i once wrote for a competition…i hacked it together in 5 minutes to have an AI that does at least something and it turned out that it was unbeatable and whipped the floor with the competition…i never understood why… ;D
Hehe, and thats how you know, ladies and gentlemen, that your among a genius…when he writes something that he himself dont know what it is!
Thanks for the link to the car demo, i’l check it out.
DP
[quote]How strange the current culling may ever look sometimes…it is there for a reason. I won’t remove it, not even as a option.
[/quote]
Ok, fair enough.
I’m not completely satisfied though, so one last suggestion (are you getting tired of this yet? ;D)
Maybe it would be an idea to gradually make a droid disappear when it goes out of sight? So, when a droid is for 50% behind a wall, it will be 50% translucent, when it’s completely occluded it will be invisible. Maybe even also gradually fade its colour when it gets out of sight. I think it would make it visually more sensible while not affecting gameplay.
The faded colour effect could also be applied to walls and floor tiles, so that they are monochrome when they’re invisible to the player droid. Or just darker, or… anything as long as it’s different.
All maybe unimportant for gameplay, but I bet it will save you a good number of the same questions/bug reports…
[quote] (are you getting tired of this yet? ;D)
[/quote]
Nope! ;D It actually helps to improve things…I would never had the pillars excluded from the line of sight calculation otherwise but i’m quite happy with the results. It simply makes sense.
[quote]Maybe it would be an idea to gradually make a droid disappear when it goes out of sight?
[/quote]
Well, i’m already doing this…it fades from fully visible to none-existent in exactly 240ms and it’s 600ms longer visible than it normally would be. But obviously, that’s a bit too fast. I’ll try to tweak it…
Edit: Did that. Fade out time is now 500ms, additional visibility time is at 1500ms. Don’t know if it helps much…maybe a little bit. But if i increase it even more, it starts to look strange too (but in a different way… )
The game can now be ended by killing all the droids (you don’t have to kill yourself anymore to end the game). You’ll get an “You made it!”-message in that case and 5000 bonus points.
Population of the decks is now partially random, so that you can’t finish the decks using exactly the same tactics every game.
Cheating is still possible with various keys, but your highscore won’t be saved anymore in that case.
Have to work on some better textures now… ;D
An update…added some (simple) particle effects to the shots and for shots’ impact on walls and doors. They are currently using very few particles to keep object count low.
Added some “icons” on top of the enemy droids when in transfer mode to make it possible to decide if a transfer to them pays out or not.
http://www.jpct.net/paradroidz
So… what do you plan to do with this game in the long run then?
Cas