Jaggies when using 360 pan

[kori]

I was playing with the AM demo, and I really like it. I was trying to decide whether to make my game still image or 360 pan. I have a question about the 360 pan feature of AM. When I played the demo 360 pan game with AM, the edges of all objects are jagged, and they move when you pan. I would not complain, but it is very noticeable. I don?t remember seeing anything like this when I played Exile, which I am using as an example of the best type of adventure game to mimic.

What is causing this, and will it be fixed with future upgrades of AM?

Kori

[Skye]

Hi Kori,

I seem to remember this problem from before the forums crashed. I myself and GM didn't have any problems but others did. As I recall it had something to do with the configuration of the computers (video cards or something of the sort.)

I think there was a solution hacked out. Imari would be the best person to help you because I recall she had a number of issues in getting the panorama to work nicely with her images.

Skye

[kori]

Well, it looks like a antialiasing problem to me. All the edges of objects have jaggies when any angle is not vert or horz. When you pan the scene, the jaggies wiz along the edges of objects like a moving saw blade. It has to be solved so that anyone playing my game would not have it happen. I can?t depend on everyone having the right display card.

Kori

[Imari]

Hi kori,
For an explanation of the specifics of how to make panoramas for use in AM, you should read GM's very nice tutorial, which can be found here -
http://adventuremaker.com/help/360_degree_panorama.htm

Though I have experimented extensively with trying to make them and have upgraded my video card, I personally cannot get the panoramas to look acceptible to me when played back in AM. I mostly suspect that this is due to the limited size of the panoramic image, which can be no larger than 2048 pixels square. When viewed on my 23" monitor, the panoramas appear quite pixelated, especially across the horizontal center. (The pixels appear at approximately 200% magnification.) This effect is not visible when I play commercial games using panoramas.

The best looking examples of a 360 degree panorama that I've seen so far are the ones in Cheyenne's Mayabin demo, so you might want to see if those look acceptable to you. You can download the demo from this page -
http://adventuremaker.com/games_for_windows.htm

I'm not sure what results other people have achieved, though I believe that CBSection (?) mentioned that he'd had good results.

Sound and panning are also a bit jittery for some people with older video cards. You cannot use water effects, hotspots tend to stretch making placement a bit difficult, and there are some limitations regarding inventory items. The panoramic plug-in does, however support videos and of course all of the other marvelous features of AM!

I keep hoping to be corrected, but at this point, I think that AM's considerable strengths are best used with still frames. At present, I am unaware of any other program that combines the features of AM with Myst-quality panoramas.

[CBSection31]

Nope, it wasn't me that has had good results. I've had trouble making quality panoramics.

[kori]

Thanks for the information Imari. It's a shame it does now work better. I would really like to make a game using 360. It makes the game so much more expansive.

On another topic. I don't suppose there is anyway to change the white color used in most AM working windows, to gray. (Perhaps there is a shareware program that would work.) I can't take black text on white backgrounds for very long. My eyes start burning. Any good text editor will always let you change the background color, to help with eye strain. I noticed that most amateur software makers just use white background, with black text, with no adjustment for background color. I am not talking about the full screen background. I know it can be adjusted. I am talking about the working windows in AM.

Kori

[Imari]

Just a note, I seem to get the best quality playback of the panoramas in AM by following GM's suggestions for shooting your scene at 2048 x 512 and then expanding the image in your paint program to 2048 x 2048. When you do this, however, the vertical range of view (the perceived upward and downward movement of the camera) is annoyingly limited.

One thing that can be done to improved this is to use a wide angle lens when rendering (or photographig) your scene, and to use a ratio of 1:1 or 1:1+. In Vue d'Esprit, I used an 18mm lens setting and a minimum pixel setting of 2048 x 2048. Increasing the size of the render to 4096 x 4096 improves the quality of the image to something comparable to GM's suggested 2048 x 512, though it of course makes the rendering time per panormama pretty outrageous, and I still find the images too pixelated for serious use.

[CBSection31]

Well, the problem I've always had is that the software I use for modelling does not offer a panoramic render option. As such, I have to manually render still shots rotating the camera (16-32, depending on the scene) and use stiching softrware to stitch them. The stitching software does not allow you to specify resolution.

[kori]

Well, at the risk of sounding like I am going over to the dark side of the force... is there any other game engine for pre-rendered point-and-click like AM that has the panorama feature. (I have looked at other engines, and have found none.) If that is the case, it's AM or nothing.

I have mixed feeling about panorama views anyway. It adds a lot of extra work to the game. The only reason I am so interested is, over at the Just Adventure forum, most game players (someone started a subject on the use of panorama in a game) like to have at least one panorama view in the center of each new set they enter. They do not require that all scenes be panorama, but they do like to have some to help them see how the set is layed out before they start hot spot hunting. I can understand this. I often wanted Riven to have some panorama views. I much prefered the way Exile handled panorama views.


Kori

[Skye]

The only reason I am so interested is, over at the Just Adventure forum, most game players (someone started a subject on the use of panorama in a game) like to have at least one panorama view in the center of each new set they enter. They do not require that all scenes be panorama, but they do like to have some to help them see how the set is layed out before they start hot spot hunting.

Kori, I agree that it is nice to do a panorama when you arrive at a new location and in my game I have done something along those line but without using the panorama plugin. Instead of rendering only 4 views for that location (N,S, E, W) I have included the 'half-way' shots as well (NE, SE, SW, NW) that way the player can get a good look around and the shots do overlap so the player can see that they are not missing any of the view.

I guess if I really were ambitious, I could render the images so that they would mesh together seamlessly and then use the slide transition to move from one to the other.

This is not a perfect panorama but if there are problems with the plug-in, it might just be the next best thing

Skye

[CBSection31]

Well, at the risk of sounding like I am going over to the dark side of the force... is there any other game engine for pre-rendered point-and-click like AM that has the panorama feature. (I have looked at other engines, and have found none.) If that is the case, it's AM or nothing.

Unfortunately, there isn't anything public at this time. As for in the future, your guess is as good as mine.

[Imari]

Hi Kori,
I've experimented with the side-scrolling transitions, and you can get good results... not great, but good. The problem is that gamers are now so used to full 3D motion, that a simple slide show approach is not always well received. However, though the side-scrolling method is perhaps not as desireable as a full 360 degree panorama, as Skye says, you can see all the way around.

I'm mostly working in Vue d'Esprit Infinite, and in Vue, the most efficient set up that I've found for this is to render four views of each scene with the camera using a wide angle lens setting (like 18mm) and the panorama render setting set at 90 degrees. The distortion of straight lines is minimal (unless you are nose-to-nose with something) and, except for a slight angularity where the frames join (which you can only see as the frames are moving), the edges of the frames should match up pretty nicely.

When necessary, you can also render your scene so that you can look up and look down, though this is something of a pain. When you render the view where you need to look up or down, render it at the same settings except render the picture three times the height of your normal frames. In other words, if your frames are 800 x 600, render this quarter-panorama at 800 x 1800. You will then need to cut your frame into three parts to use as the up, down, and normal/middle frames.

This does take some extra planning when you lay out your scene and decide on where to place your camera. You'll need to make sure that you have a good view in each frame and that nothing is cut in half. I lay everything out on paper, keeping everything important along the four cardinal axces, and trying to leave as few key items at sky or ground level as possible.

(I just played the demo for Scratches, which was just about perfect for me. I would dearly love to see our panoramas functioning properly in AM so that we could make games like that with it.)
~Cleo

[CBSection31]

^
Keep in mind that Scratches uses a (brilliant) cubic panoramic system, though, so AM works completely differently. Unless AM changes, the results won't ever be identical to Scratches.

[Imari]

I'm hoping that RealmWarrior will come up with something (http://adventuremaker.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1305) or that the size limitation of the current pano plug-in can be increased, but I'm guessing that it's pretty tough to make panoramas in AM or we'd already have them.

[Kain]

Well, at the risk of sounding like I am going over to the dark side of the force... is there any other game engine for pre-rendered point-and-click like AM that has the panorama feature. (I have looked at other engines, and have found none.) If that is the case, it's AM or nothing.

You wrong, seek better.
I'll give you a hint: 'sourceforge'