360-degree panoramas - Bugs List and Features Requests

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360-degree panoramas - Bugs List and Features Requests

Postby GM-Support » Tue Oct 09, 2007 1:22 am

Dear AM users and forum members,

To help improve the 360-degree panoramic feature of Adventure Maker, please post on this thread your feedback and your suggestions concerning that feature.

In particular, please post about the blocking aspects. In other words, assuming that you are interested in this feature, what are the bugs and the limitations that really stop you from using it?

Thanks a lot,
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Last edited by GM-Support on Wed May 14, 2008 1:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Imari » Tue Oct 09, 2007 2:48 pm

This is great, GM! AM is a fantastic program and to be able to use the panoramic plug-in would make it about perfect.

It's been a long time since I did much with the panoramic plug-in, but I recall that there were problems with the inventory not working properly and videos on hot spots being somewhat distorted. If possible, I'd like both of those problems to be "fixed", please.

For myself, there were two big drawbacks with the panorama. One was the pixelated appearance of the frame in AM. The pixelation might have to do with the limited size of the panorama. Since AM uses a cylindrical panorama, the size of the JPG cannot exceed 2048 x 2048. If it were possible to switch AM to a cubic panorama, then each side of the panorama could be a quarter of that size. It might also make for a less distorted video-on-hotspot feature. The second problem was the limited movement of the cursor up and down from center. There were large areas of the frame/screen that could not be "reached".

I really look forward to your improvements, GM. If you need anything tested, please don't hesitate to ask. I think that I should also have several old "tests" for the panorama plug-in stored away somewhere. I'll try to find the time to reload them, so that I can better recall the problems that I had with it.

Thanks again.
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Postby ZeornWarlock » Sun Oct 14, 2007 4:44 pm

GM,

As I have stated in the suggestion/request tread, the thing, which to me is complicated, are animations via hotspots. Say I have a room with a person sitting on a bench in a 3d Panoramic view, without being able to make transparencies on animations we always get to see the square shape of the hotspot "sticking" out of the scene. Maybe it is not easy to fix or modify as I have seen this problem in some of Ubisoft's own clicked adventure games.

Again, like I have suggested in the other tread, being able to link hotspots from both ends of the panoramic view.

These are mostly what bug me from that great feature.

ZW.
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Crazy Panoramic

Postby tribalxdude » Tue Oct 30, 2007 4:24 am

Camera still goes crazy in windows XP even after removing all Codecs and reinstalling the ones you gave me. Works fine in vista and wonder if it has something to do with using that media player ocx instead of using the direct sound buffers directly to play sounds?

I am not concerned with video too much a Pain in the rump to render, Codecs ruin the color, and it makes games boring.

Would like to see inventory working but I can switch to 2D frames for that and hide it when going to a 360.

The cubic panoramic control sounds very interesting.

You should have a look at Pipmak for some inspiration or contact them to see if they can help with your panoramic situation. Their engine is really cool. I hate the scripting language but it?s a young system and has a long way to go. I think they are on the right track as far as game creation systems go and really wish they had a compiler for their games. I will be watching them. If AM?s drawing engine was like theirs you would be in good shape.

Here is a link:

http://pipmak.sourceforge.net/index.php
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Postby GM-Support » Tue Oct 30, 2007 3:41 pm

Hi,

Thanks Imari, ZeornWarlock, and tribalxdude for the info and feedback.

tribalxdude: I still have not been able to reproduce the camera problem. When I installed the updated OGG codec on my 3 test computers they worked fine.

Thanks for the link. I will look into it asap.

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Camera Bug

Postby tribalxdude » Tue Oct 30, 2007 5:32 pm

I got all excited yesterday and thought I had pinpointed the problem. I know it has something to do with codec?s and the media player. If I do not add sound to it works fine. I got Codec-Sniper and killed 2 broken codecs and killed a duplicate Vorbis.

I ran the project at 640 X 480 and it ran fine but anything higher and the camera freaks out and this game works fine on the same computer booted to Vista.

Can?t really make a game this day and age at such a low resolution.

The fact remains that it is reproducible on 2 out of 3 of my computers and not producible on vista and a 3rd machine with XP.

Both problem computers are laptops with ATI graphics cards and the 3rd is Intel integrated system of the early 2000?s.

If people installed the same codec pak as I have and this is the problem then if I compile a game and distribute it then I will be in big trouble.

I have installed the same codec pak only the Vista Version on Vista and don?t have any problems running the panoramic system.

The fact remains that the problem does exists and I can?t really do anything until it?s fixed.

The Pipmak thing is open source and I was running the demo yesterday and thought WOW! If AM could do that with the Inventory system it ALL WOULD BE GOOD!

I think I will try using a screen-shot movie maker and posting the movie on my site so you can see exactly what the camera is doing.
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Postby Candle » Tue Oct 30, 2007 8:53 pm

you can post a link to it and let others try it and see if it happens to them.
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Don't know

Postby tribalxdude » Tue Oct 30, 2007 9:59 pm

It does not happen to just one project it happens to all of them. GM and I have narrowed it down to something in the MCI and codecs. I have sent it off to GM and he has not had the problem but he also did not install the codec pak that I did and it seems to be a conflict of some kind with the MCI.

I would sure hate to post it and it ruins other folk?s ability to create their games. It seems once you got it, it just won?t go away.

I have set my game project to a 2D game and have found that AM is perfect for making that kind of game. The panoramic control just needs a whole lot of tender loving care and should and more features added.

I am going to keep plugging away till I find the exact cause then I will send my notes to GM so that he can discover a solution.

I image that I am one of those unlucky fellows that installed the one codec that Pisses AM off and I am alone in the world with my troubles so the only one who can fix the problem is GM but only if I give him all the information I can about the problem.

Shy, of reformatting the XP drive (which at this time I am not planning on doing because it?s a pain with Vista controlling the Boot) and reinstalling the operating system I have not come up with a solution but will keep searching for the problem.

Half the battle is won already just by knowing that there is a problem. If someone else comes to this forum that has the same problem I have they will at least know that the problem is known and that is in some small way being addressed.

Anyway thanks for your offer but I really don?t want the father of a bug that could spread.
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Picture size

Postby Roland1958 » Sun Feb 10, 2008 12:15 pm

I m testing the better picture size for use as panorama for my next game.
As I read on faq and forum the maximum size is 2048X2048. But When I use the aspect ratio 1X1 I have a bug when panorama is displayed. Some part of the picture are frezz. Than I use aspect ratio 4X1.... But quality is not so good and the quality between fixe background and panorama is too big.
When I used a picture larger than 2048X2048 I have an error message who said "you cannot use images larger than 2048X2048" BUT after I closed this popup, I can test the frame, run the game and compile and install the game on the hard drive with no more error message...
What do you think about that?...It s mean I can use biger pictures than 2048X2048 or it works only on my computer maybe why I have a good video card?

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Re: Picture size

Postby GM-Support » Sun Feb 10, 2008 8:04 pm

Roland1958 wrote:..."you cannot use images larger than 2048X2048" BUT after I closed this popup, I can test the frame, run the game and compile and install the game on the hard drive with no more error message...
What do you think about that?...It s mean I can use biger pictures than 2048X2048 or it works only on my computer maybe why I have a good video card?

This is indeed very surprising.

What size did you test?

Are you also able to edit the frame and add hotspots if the picture is bigger than 2048x2048?

It might be good news for better quality panoramas. I need to do more tests about that.

Thanks,
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Postby Roland1958 » Mon Feb 11, 2008 6:37 pm

I ll do more test and I, say the result in this post .
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Postby Roland1958 » Mon Feb 11, 2008 7:05 pm

Ok I see... In fact I can use panorama biger than 2048X2048 but the problem is to navigate in the frame and place my hotspot where I want.

Is it very difficult to change that and make possible to move in a frame bigger than 2048?

I think about something, is it crasy to imagine possible to import QuicktimeVR panorama?
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Postby GM-Support » Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:22 pm

Is it very difficult to change that and make possible to move in a frame bigger than 2048?

It shouldn't be too difficult, but the problem is that I don't think that all the computers can have panoramas with images bigger than 2048x2048. I have just tested on my Window XP machine (dating back to 2003) with images bigger than that, and I always get a DirectX error message. It probably depends on the graphic card and the allowed textures resolution. What is the exact size of the images you tried with?

I think about something, is it crasy to imagine possible to import QuicktimeVR panorama?

Importing Quicktime movies (and I guess Quicktime VR as well) is possible in Adventure Maker. Just follow this guide.

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Postby Imari » Fri Feb 15, 2008 12:43 am

Just FYI -

After reading Roland1958's post, I tried panoramic frames using JPG's sized 3072 x 3072 and 4096 x 4096. Amazingly, both ran in AM with "Run Game". However, as Roland1958 said, you only can see a very small portion of the full sized image when working on it on AM. Using a 1:1 ratio, I also could not move the cursor very far up or down from the center of the screen, so only the center swath of the image is clickable.
Much better image though. :)
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Postby time-killer-games » Sat Dec 17, 2011 11:21 pm

It would be awsome if AM supported spherical panoramas, since sweet home 3d does not support any other type.
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