Quest for Higher End Graphics Support

[shaneroach]

Here lately on Minecraft I finally got around to trying some of the shaders. They look great during the day, but seems every one of them I try has some sort of problem with night, and even some with the transformation between day and night. One of the better effects basic Minecraft has is a nice sunset.

Any Shader mods in the offing for Minetest yet? Also still curious if anyone has looked at VoxelFarm and/or Everquest Landmark and thinks that is something Open Source folks would be interested in or capable of? Like perhaps there is even a fork already I am not aware of working on it. It looks like the basics of it have been discussed on the forum before. That is to day, smaller voxels in comparison to the player model and some method for smoothing the transitions from one voxel to the next have both been discussed here before, and seem to be part of the mix. I guess some real work on textures and how they should be applied depending on terrain type, and more stuff on biomes are also related to this issue.

[Jordach]

Here lately on Minecraft I finally got around to trying some of the shaders. They look great during the day, but seems every one of them I try has some sort of problem with night, and even some with the transformation between day and night. One of the better effects basic Minecraft has is a nice sunset.

Any Shader mods in the offing for Minetest yet? Also still curious if anyone has looked at VoxelFarm and/or Everquest Landmark and thinks that is something Open Source folks would be interested in or capable of? Like perhaps there is even a fork already I am not aware of working on it. It looks like the basics of it have been discussed on the forum before. That is to day, smaller voxels in comparison to the player model and some method for smoothing the transitions from one voxel to the next have both been discussed here before, and seem to be part of the mix. I guess some real work on textures and how they should be applied depending on terrain type, and more stuff on biomes are also related to this issue.

The sunset in SEUS is actually quite good.

Afaik - we need extra render passes in Irrlicht before we get to that sort of thing.

[Inocudom]

Here lately on Minecraft I finally got around to trying some of the shaders. They look great during the day, but seems every one of them I try has some sort of problem with night, and even some with the transformation between day and night. One of the better effects basic Minecraft has is a nice sunset.

Any Shader mods in the offing for Minetest yet? Also still curious if anyone has looked at VoxelFarm and/or Everquest Landmark and thinks that is something Open Source folks would be interested in or capable of? Like perhaps there is even a fork already I am not aware of working on it. It looks like the basics of it have been discussed on the forum before. That is to day, smaller voxels in comparison to the player model and some method for smoothing the transitions from one voxel to the next have both been discussed here before, and seem to be part of the mix. I guess some real work on textures and how they should be applied depending on terrain type, and more stuff on biomes are also related to this issue.

The sunset in SEUS is actually quite good.

Afaik - we need extra render passes in Irrlicht before we get to that sort of thing.

Irrlicht's graphics are based on polygons by default.

[rubenwardy]

Irrlicht uses opengl or directx9 shaders. default lighting in Irrlicht is per polygon (rather than per pixel). Minetest does not use the default lighting, instead the sides of nodes are coloured accordingly.

You don't need to change Irrlicht at all to get extra render passes. There are code snippets / libraries that can do this for Irrlicht. See XEffects as an example; there are others.

[Inocudom]

Irrlicht uses opengl or directx9 shaders. default lighting in Irrlicht is per polygon (rather than per pixel). Minetest does not use the default lighting, instead the sides of nodes are coloured accordingly.

You don't need to change Irrlicht at all to get extra render passes. There are code snippets / libraries that can do this for Irrlicht. See XEffects as an example; there are others.

An important thing to remember is that frame rate is heavily determined by the number of polygons visible and the effects given to them.

[shaneroach]

I must have misread or misunderstood, but I had thought some months back someone from the crew here on Minetest had said that the code for Minetest was substantially modified from Irrlicht.

Any links to any docs about the relationship between the two as it stands these days? Or did I just misread or misremember and Minetest is basically built right on top of Irrlicht?

[shaneroach]

The sunset in SEUS is actually quite good.

Indeed. I have yet to get fog running the way I might like with it though. Also, there used to be a specific resource pack they liked to recommend? I forget (Ah, ChromaHills, downloading now)

But one of the ones I used just shut off all light at times. (CreativeOne's resource pack. Medieval sort of blocks.)

Just in general they all seem to have bugs. I like to mess with them to get nice views and then go back to normal MC for play, which is less than ideal really.

P.S. So I loaded up SEUS with CHroma Hills and indeed, the problem is it begins to render night light qualities while the sun is still in the process of setting, which is pretty much my complain about all the shaders so far.

[rubenwardy]

Irrlicht is the 3d rendering engine. It is used to draw 3d stuff (kind of, this is a simplification)

Minetest is a game engine. It handles sound, player input, networking, etc.

Minetest does not use a modified version of Irrlicht. It builds on top of it.

[shaneroach]

Irrlicht is the 3d rendering engine. It is used to draw 3d stuff (kind of, this is a simplification)

Minetest is a game engine. It handles sound, player input, networking, etc.

Minetest does not use a modified version of Irrlicht. It builds on top of it.

I can't find the reference. It's entirely possible I misremember. But the impression I got was that Minetest was originally built on Irrlicht but did not so much keep strictly with its updates, but rather went its own way with it.

This might or might not explain a lack of higher end graphics support, especially if emphasis is given to the program working on older hardware.

But at the end of the day I am probably just not quite remembering correctly, and I can't find the topic I thought I read that on so...

Thanks for trying to clarify though.

[Morn76]

MT does its own lighting calculations and then puts these light levels into the Irrlicht scenery by manipulating texture contrast I think. So in that sense you could certainly say that MT goes its own way with Irrlicht; it certainly does lighting very differently from other Irrlicht games.

The problem that has been discussed in other threads is how to combine MT's internal lighting algorithm with more modern lighting approaches. Also, realistic lighting in PC MC has some playability issues (e.g. caves going pitch black far too early), so the question is how to avoid those.

[shaneroach]

MT does its own lighting calculations and then puts these light levels into the Irrlicht scenery by manipulating texture contrast I think. So in that sense you could certainly say that MT goes its own way with Irrlicht; it certainly does lighting very differently from other Irrlicht games.

The problem that has been discussed in other threads is how to combine MT's internal lighting algorithm with more modern lighting approaches. Also, realistic lighting in PC MC has some playability issues (e.g. caves going pitch black far too early), so the question is how to avoid those.

That's interesting. Maybe that is what was being referenced I was not able to find.

I keep wondering if someone will use Blender's game engine to do some voxel gaming. I guess I need to get off my hump and start learning like... everything.

I guess I just do not know what exactly I am doing. I want a specific kind of game, and yet such things have to be done in large groups, and I have as yet no real skill at anything such a group would need. My main interest in learning technical stuff is in the production of models and textures, but the real meat and potatoes of what I want done would seem to require coding. Or then sometimes I daydream about setting up a server and trying to get some sort of basic game together and try to get donations to direct overall development from there.

For that little daydream, Minetest would seem to be a pretty good bet.

Meh, I dunno. Anyhow, thanks for the input. =)

[rubenwardy]

Minetest does not use a modified version of Irrlicht, but it does modify certain things, like the lighting.

Blender's game engine isn't suitable for anything more than making small FPS. Generally.

[shaneroach]

Minetest does not use a modified version of Irrlicht, but it does modify certain things, like the lighting.

Blender's game engine isn't suitable for anything more than making small FPS. Generally.

I certainly have not heard or seen anything out of Blender's engine to gainsay your opinion, but can you elaborate?

I hear a little about Ogre being superior to Irrlicht for more modern games using the latest hardware. What exactly has been done to the lighting such that folks are saying shading is not not possible for Minetest? As in what Morn76 said. Is its dependence on textures the issue? If I were hiring a game designer and wanted him to create a 3d voxel game with modern graphics and shading, would he advise me to just ditch Minetest and start from scratch, or are the changes necessary to get shading relatively minimal in comparison to all that has been done with the world gen, combat, and so forth?

I'm quoting Rubenwardy here, but it is not necessarily a question I have specifically for him as a question I have for those who understand the issue he is referencing.

[Inocudom]

I am just going to state a little something here. Did you guys know that OpenSpades has directional, dynamic sunlight in it (dynamic as in it changes when blocks are placed/removed?) Looking upon that, inspiration can be gained concerning how it could be done in Minetest (of course, the effect relies on OpenGL.) Here, give the video of OpenSpades below a look:
http://youtu.be/TQbQ3Cr_z5w?t=1m58s
This topic reminds me of a mod by Hybrid Dog:
https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8642

[hoodedice]

If you hired just *one* game dev, he would recommend unity3d, as it is the fastest and easiest way to just start making games. TBH, if you are looking to make a voxel game for selling, you would go with higher end packages and stuff for the game. But with Minetest, which is free and entirely open source, you would go with the ones that are free and open source themselves, and also fulfill a certain number of things you need in the game.

As for Ogre being superior, well, maybe you might want to try RigsOfRods, or VDrift....
Stunt Rally does it better tho

[shaneroach]

If you hired just *one* game dev, he would recommend unity3d, as it is the fastest and easiest way to just start making games. TBH, if you are looking to make a voxel game for selling, you would go with higher end packages and stuff for the game. But with Minetest, which is free and entirely open source, you would go with the ones that are free and open source themselves, and also fulfill a certain number of things you need in the game.

As for Ogre being superior, well, maybe you might want to try RigsOfRods, or VDrift....
Stunt Rally does it better tho

This is all information I already had, and while I thank you for the time my purpose is to try to figure out what can be done with MT using Ogre or Irrlicht, not what can be done with proprietary software.

Sorry if I was not clear. =)

The question basically is summed up as, "in order to get better graphics, how far back do we have to go and redevelop the rendering?"

[sfan5]

how far back do we have to go and redevelop the rendering?

We don't have to go back at all.

[hoodedice]

how far back do we have to go and redevelop the rendering?

We don't have to go back at all.

How about fixing the Alpha rendering crap that causes the transparency to be messed up, which was a problem that was directed at the Irrlicht level?

[Calinou]

Lighting system is likely not to be redone anytime soon: please think about the gameplay consequences.

Currently, lighting is computed in software (pretty fake lighting), but each node has a light level. This light level is in turn used for plant growth, mob spawning…

If you get realistic light sources, you would need a way for the engine and Lua to know the “light level” of a node. How hard is this if you use real time lights with shadows? Probably painfully hard, especially with dynamic sun…

The problem that has been discussed in other threads is how to combine MT's internal lighting algorithm with more modern lighting approaches. Also, realistic lighting in PC MC has some playability issues (e.g. caves going pitch black far too early), so the question is how to avoid those.

Changing the light table may help, see this page.

[shaneroach]

Ok now I see what has happened. Thanks guys. It was never my intention to cause a kerfuffle! I just wanted to understand what the underlying issues were.

So again, thanks.

Further discussion along these lines would be appreciated, but not at the expense of anyone's emotional well being. ;-)

It occurs to me that light levels for things other than the display COULD be a whole separate thing from light levels for gaming mechanics. While it is an interesting study in realistic simulation, I think actually trying to nail down the actual activity of light as it pertains to plant growth and atmospheric behavior is going to be difficult to resolve without many more resources than appear to be available at this time.

[Inocudom]

Changing the light table may help, see this page.

...And that was never added to Minetest? I never had any luck finding the lights.cpp file in Minetest either.

[Krock]

Changing the light table may help, see this page.

...And that was never added to Minetest? I never had any luck finding the lights.cpp file in Minetest either.

There it hides.

I changed it in my older minetest builds to test how it looks - it really looks better.
But it's not realistic to the "real" light.

[RealBadAngel]

Ahem, is that lighting only that defines "high end game"? ;P
Anyway to clear things out: shaders for MT are being developed all the time. There are some features already done, like bumpmapping, parallax oclussion, generation of normalmaps on the fly, some geometry shaders (waiving stuff).
I have lately rebuilt whole shaders system to allow shading per tile, which was needed for water surface shaders for example.
Next step are rendering passes and post process shaders.
Somewhere in beetween will come hardware lighting (most propably mixed up with current lighting system, reduced only to calculate only light level for each node).

Thats the roadmap.

Also, to be clear. Minetest engine is not modyfing Irrlicht in any way. It just uses it.

[shaneroach]

Ahem, is that lighting only that defines "high end game"? ;P
Anyway to clear things out: shaders for MT are being developed all the time. There are some features already done, like bumpmapping, parallax oclussion, generation of normalmaps on the fly, some geometry shaders (waiving stuff).
I have lately rebuilt whole shaders system to allow shading per tile, which was needed for water surface shaders for example.
Next step are rendering passes and post process shaders.
Somewhere in beetween will come hardware lighting (most propably mixed up with current lighting system, reduced only to calculate only light level for each node).

Thats the roadmap.

Also, to be clear. Minetest engine is not modyfing Irrlicht in any way. It just uses it.

The thread title pretty much says it all. Quest for high end GRAPHICS.

If I didn't like the GAME I would not be here for long, eh?

Thanks though. That's the most thorough answer so far for sure, and apparently from someone actually working on the graphics. So awesome.

I had noticed waving plants were part of the shaders for Minecraft and it had confused me a touch. So that is part of classic "shaders"....

I can't help but imagine sooner or later someone is going to want to take the next step and smooth the landscape a la VoxelFarm... Anyone know anyone interested in that?

[Inocudom]

Dynamic shadows... Colored light rays would be easier, but...
https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1262
https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5631&start=75
Dreams are dreams and facts are facts. To put it simply, some things are simply not meant to be. This is similar to how the vast majority of open source shooter games either don't have custom player models or don't support them. In the case of Minetest (and maybe the fork of it known as Freeminer as well,) the feature frowned upon is colored light rays. Understanding that, you can now see just how unlikely dynamic shadows are.

[shaneroach]

These links are not terribly informative. They do not seem to indicate that it is impossible to implement shaders. It looks like colored lights might need some significant rewriting.

I have a ton of questions, but no time to really follow up right now, but I guess my bottom line is graphics seem to be progressing apace in the outside world, so open source voxel code needs to hitch a ride with some active graphics open sourced code, and I keep coming back to Blender when I think about that. If Blender's built in game is not useful, perhaps the trick would be to just tie Minetest to the open sourced rendering one can find in Blender as a separate project.

I am not suggesting people here need to do that. I am saying that is more and more what I'd be interested in if or when I begin to get the kind of resources in time or money to get truly involved in all of this.

I am more or less just on a fact finding mission I guess at this point.

[Jordach]

These links are not terribly informative. They do not seem to indicate that it is impossible to implement shaders. It looks like colored lights might need some significant rewriting.

I have a ton of questions, but no time to really follow up right now, but I guess my bottom line is graphics seem to be progressing apace in the outside world, so open source voxel code needs to hitch a ride with some active graphics open sourced code, and I keep coming back to Blender when I think about that. If Blender's built in game is not useful, perhaps the trick would be to just tie Minetest to the open sourced rendering one can find in Blender as a separate project.

I am not suggesting people here need to do that. I am saying that is more and more what I'd be interested in if or when I begin to get the kind of resources in time or money to get truly involved in all of this.

I am more or less just on a fact finding mission I guess at this point.

In time - it's possble.

For those interested in this; Minecraft does not have coloured lights, that's what MCP, Forge, FML and others provide.

It uses a light gradient similar to the ones found in our engine.

However; Blender's engine would take too much time to cross implement. Even though coloured lighting would be instantly possible.

(The only limit known to the engine; is that - will the devs do it?)

[shaneroach]

"However; Blender's engine would take too much time to cross implement"

The whole Blender thing is really just my own personal private obsession. I feel like having a game engine attached to blender gives the game engine legs. Blender has demonstrated a long and robust history of keeping up with current technology most open source projects could only dream about, so attaching a game engine to Blender seems to me to me strategically important even if from a strict coding viewpoint it might appear to be more work than it is worth.

More than anything, I think just making a voxel engine for interactive play space that cooperates with Blender's video tech is the main hurdle. Blender already has the capacity for characters, models, etc.

In view of all of that, I am curious as to what you mean exactly by attaching procedurally generated voxel terrain to Blender or else somehow borrowing Blender's rendering code for a procedurally generated voxel terrain would be too much trouble? Like in specific coding terms?

I'm bothered by the fact the fellow at Voxel Farm seems to have been able to hop scotch past Minecraft and every other voxel based scenery generation tool to pretty much own the state of the art all by his little lonesome, apparently only recently taking on employees. It just seems odd that this concept has stood in stasis for so long despite so many people (even in the Minecraft community) asking for a smoother, more realistic rendering of terrain with voxels.

That plus the more robust lighting is really the only thing in the universe Sony has in their new Everquest efforts, and I am somewhat perplexed as to how it all happened. I guess the open source community is notably fragmented, but these seem to be some pretty high profile types of things a lot of folks would tend to be interested in, yet it just sort of never happened.

[shaneroach]

Meh. Apparently someone is working on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUq6alNnHFk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCJa5H-oOxc

[rubenwardy]

You may want to see 'build a world's graphics - it uses the Irrlicht engine.