Mark geometry as invisible for commanders

sumguy720

<div class="IPBDescription">Planned?</div>So one big un-polish thing I notice abut NS2 that was also in the final NS1 was the fact that you could see so much one-sided geometry and so many odd polygonal artifacts as the commander. In the spark editor will there be an option to make certain walls/ceilings/objects invisible to the commander so the top down view doesn't have such immersion-reducing artifacts?

Or perhaps UKW has other plans for solving this problem. I just wanted to know what other people know so far.

Thaldarin

There is a layer mappers add to their levels where they can mark all faces, props etc. as "Commander invisible".

Open up one of the maps, such as Rockdown is a good example for this, and you can hide/show it.

Sometimes though it's a good idea to have some of those "artifact" looking faces, so that way you know a skulk isn't floating in mid-air, he's actually attached to a piece of wall high up.

sumguy720

Oh cool, I haven't actually looked at the mapping tools because I'm not really into mapping for NS2, but the fact that they were there indicated that either the option was not there to remove them or there was a reason for having them there.

Is the converse also available? So perhaps commanders could see full metal roof supports with no ceiling while the players only need to render the bottom three faces of the supports because the ceiling geometry covers the fourth side?
Er, so basically, can you mark geometry as commander-specific as opposed to commander-excluded? If you could have elements that correspond to the real map but look completed for both both parties I think that would add a lot-- I mean, I made maps back in the day for CSS and I would never release a map with untextured surfaces or missing polygons because it detracts from the visual appeal and thus the polish/believability of the product.

Chris0132

The game should back face cull anyway, and one polygon isn't going to make a difference in a game of this complexity.

The game is already using massive amounts of commander-invisible geometry, that's why you can use commander to begin with. You also shouldn't be putting visible things across the roof because it's just going to get in the way, the commander needs functionality, not prettiness. You aren't going to get a perfect view from the commander's perspective, and it isn't important anyway.

Kouji_San

Currently it is only possible to make stuff invisible for the commander and it is planned to have an opacity 0%-100% for props (only for models), but this one is still only affecting commanders. The people on the battlefield will still see it regardless of opacity.