possible bloom fix ?

[ceriux]

so i was thinking and this is what i came up with. make an entity name it bloom_control or something. place it in brightly colored maps and have it detect how close it is to the center of the players screen . if its close to the center make the bloom effect raise. (this could be in use of a sun or a giant pit of lava.) other wise set bloom to a default level. if the entity is not available in the map set bloom to the default level. i think this will give mappers a new toy and could be hacked into existing maps. im not sure if this is doable in half-life but i do remember some people complaining about a bloom problem of some kind? just a possible (maybe even fun and customizable) way to .. improve? the bloom effect? sorry i was just high and thought i'd throw it out there..

 

[Thothie]

It wouldn't be able to take into account which way the players were facing.

We do already have something like this - a brush scriptevent that can adjust the bloom darken level when the players cross it. If you have two in a hallway, you can change your bloom level in the following area, and back again, while be more or less assured as to which direction the players will be facing when they cross them. You can see that in action in Catacombs (where you enter the ice section), and in a spot or two in Dragooncaves (Trigger script event: ext_darkenbloom;<level>).

 

[ceriux]

oh ? oh well. its how id do it in quake lol -.- just was thinking and thought id share it.

 

[Thothie]

Quake don't have no bloom. Granted, I'm sure your tweaked version does. It would explain the behavior I've seen in some very old games with bloom though - ie. when you look away from the bloom'ed area, your vision retains the same bloom effect, until you walk away.

It'd be possible to script something up to have a similar effect, but our darken bloom filter works in integers (ie. # of applications). 1 is the standard low ambiance, 0 is maximum, and at about 20 it's nearly as though there's no bloom at all. So there's not a lot of room for the bloom to slowly increase as you near a bright object or area. :/

 

[ceriux]

thats the thing you would want it to jump pretty quickly. basically you would make it to where bloom is really only bright around chosen bright objects. it would be a self adjusting bloom effect. iv seen more modern games do similar things. probably a little more advanced.

maybe even add some more ambience to some maps =)

 

[Thothie]

Although MiB hinted that it might be possible, I think mayhaps he changed his mind... The Bloom we have is a full screen filter, so there's no way to make individual brushes bloom and others not (save enhancing the bloom by making the object really bright, or putting a poly shell around it.) You can only toggle the effect on or off, and, somewhat, control the level of the effect.

 

[The Man In Black]

I thought it was possible before I actually looked at the code. Bloom just screen caps, turns the picture to a texture, adjusts it a bit, and layers it a whole bunch of times back onto the screen.