Pixelation

General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Crow on January 05, 2017, 04:34:35 pm

Title: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Crow on January 05, 2017, 04:34:35 pm
This year's off-topic thread! Not quite as late as last year's (http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19591.0) :P
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: surt on January 06, 2017, 08:40:30 am
Image editor tile-map editing idea:
Boundary-correct multi-tile editing
Pseudocode:
Code: [Select]
workList = []
boundaryList = []
foreach tile boundary intersecting brush
  workList.append([tileIndex, boundaryId, brushOffset])
while !workList.isEmpty()
  [tileIndex, boundaryId, brushOffset] = workList.pop()
  boundaryNeighborList = getBoundaryNeighborList(tileIndex, boundaryId)
  neighborBoundary = mirrorBoundary(boundaryId)
  neighborOffset = brushOffset + boundaryOffset(boundaryId)
  foreach neighborIndex in boundaryNeighborList
    neighbor = [neighborIndex, neighborBoundary, neighborOffset]
    if !boundaryList.contains(neighbor)
      workList.append(neighbor)
  boundaryList.append([tileIndex, boundaryId, brushOffset]);
foreach [tileIndex, boundaryId, brushOffset] in boundaryList
  drawBrushToTile(tileIndex, brushOffset)

Oh, and I'm still waiting:
Quote
Some non lazy person make the following:
Pico-8-like virtual console, hybrid of NES and SMS specs
Can fairly accurately simulate specs either NES or SMS or be an amalgam of the best bits of both (eg. both tile and sprite flipping)
In-virtual-console editors plus on-desktop editors for less constrained editing
No 128x128 resolution, NES and SMS resolutions as well as integer scaled or aspect corrected fullscreen (no black-bars) approximations (eg. 384x216, 480x270)
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: yrizoud on January 06, 2017, 01:23:37 pm
I think you intend this for "material" tiles which have many combinations, like these :
(http://www.gamedev.narod.ru/Tut/MapEdit/SelectedTile.png) (from http://www.gamedev.narod.ru/TileBasedMap1_new.htm)
But then I'm not sure it's safe to deduce the edges from a sample map... You can miss some links if your sample map doesn't have all cases, and you can get false positive which makes your drawing deface unrelated tiles.

Personally, in such case, I would re-edit the tileset with a smaller grid size which cuts each tile in 4x4 =16 smaller squares. There will be many common sub-tiles, and thus drawing on them will repeat the drawing on the similar graphic elements which are in an other tile.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: surt on January 06, 2017, 07:51:45 pm
Oops, messed up indentation in the pseudocode.

I think you intend this for "material" tiles...
Not particularly. For any continuous transition across tile boundaries where a tile can connect to more than one other for a boundary.

But then I'm not sure it's safe to deduce the edges from a sample map... You can miss some links if your sample map doesn't have all cases, and you can get false positive which makes your drawing deface unrelated tiles.
That's why it would be a mode, not an always-on feature. You would use it when your image is in a fit state for it to be used, when your work image is laid out with all desired tile connections.
Alternately one could use manually specified connectivity data but that would require special user interface.

Personally, in such case, I would re-edit the tileset with a smaller grid size which cuts each tile in 4x4 =16 smaller squares. There will be many common sub-tiles, and thus drawing on them will repeat the drawing on the similar graphic elements which are in an other tile.
I don't see how that helps matters. It multiplies the number of transitions in the tilemap, it reduces the number of transitions in the tileset but at the cost of tile variation and doesn't solve the problem of duplicated effort for matching tile transitions.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: eishiya on January 06, 2017, 11:19:29 pm
I tried writing a shader today to do Photoshop-like "darker color" blending for 2D rendering, and never again. Since I can't sample the existing buffer safely, I have to make a copy between each "layer", which requires restructuring some otherwise perfectly fine code in a way that makes it worse (I have to use textures everywhere to be able to sample from them, instead of using more general render targets), and I got stuck trying to get the correct position into that copy anyway, so I just decided to make do without it.
I might still play around with shaders for other purposes, but multi-layer multipass rendering requires more caring than I can currently muster. I can do single-pass stuff, and I can do post-processing after everything is rendered. That's enough.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: surt on January 06, 2017, 11:33:52 pm
Don't know what API/version you're using, but OpenGL's Image Load Store (https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/Image_Load_Store) is handy for this kind of thing. So long as you are operating on pixels independent of their neighbours no need for for a copy and bypass sampler nonsense, can bypass all the render-to-texture nonsense too if you use compute shaders. D3D has an equivalent too but can't remember the details that'd be RWTexture*.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: eishiya on January 08, 2017, 10:24:51 pm
Don't know what API/version you're using, but OpenGL's Image Load Store (https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/Image_Load_Store) is handy for this kind of thing. So long as you are operating on pixels independent of their neighbours no need for for a copy and bypass sampler nonsense, can bypass all the render-to-texture nonsense too if you use compute shaders. D3D has an equivalent too but can't remember the details that'd be RWTexture*.
Using OpenGL, and that's handy! I decided not to do the darker color shader because even with that it's more hassle than it's worth it to me xP But I'll probably find a use for that in the future when I'm more comfortable with shaders in general. Sticking to really basic stuff for now.

More OpenGL shader ???ing, in case anyone's in the mood to read about a noob struggling with the basics!
I'm playing around with applying color maps and I've just broken my brain. As far as I'm aware, OpenGL texture coordinates have their origin at the bottom left, and that's how it's worked so far. I am using this colormap for testing:
(http://i.imgur.com/48C7u2G.png)
It has its origin at the top left, and the y coordinate corresponds to green (high y = high green). So, this should mean that in my shader where the origin is at the bottom, high green should mean low y, achieved with y = 1.0 - green:
Code: [Select]
vec2(pixel.b/16 + floor(pixel.r*16)/16, 1.0-pixel.g)But that makes a mess, and it seems I should be directly using green as my y coordinate:
Code: [Select]
vec2(pixel.b/16 + floor(pixel.r*16)/16, pixel.g)This gives me the desired results (hardly any visual change to the image). Am I misunderstanding something? Having a brainfart? When the green component is 0, I'd expect that second coordinate to mean the bottom of the color map, so why is it giving me the top?

Edit: Maybe it's something to do with SFML and how it handles textures? Now that I think of it, I think my previous attempts also had y = 0 at the top, it just didn't matter as much on those so I didn't notice.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: surt on January 08, 2017, 11:53:18 pm
The idea that OpenGL texture coordinates are upside down comes from clip space being positive up, so if you directly map your UV coordinates to clip space position it will draw upsidedown. UV 0,0 still equals texel position 0,0.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: eishiya on January 09, 2017, 01:19:17 am
I think I understand! So as long as I'm sampling from textures rather than drawing them, the coordinates start at the top left?

Another question to demonstrate my ignorance of all things GPUs: Can I expect rounding in GLSL to work the same from GPU to GPU or is it a crapshoot/implementation-dependent?
For example if on my computer my math maps the colour #212842 to R=2, G=2, B=4 on that colour map (position 36,2 in the image), can I expect it to map that way for everyone, or might it be a pixel off for some people? With the colours on that test map it doesn't matter, but with another map it might.
The reason I ask is my manual calculations don't match the output, and it seems like rounding issues. In my calculations I floor everything. I suspect it's actually not a rounding issue though, but just it landing on a boundary between pixels and failing to correct for it. Though that said, some of my values are off by significantly more than half a pixel. Will keep pondering it! If I fix my math and it still doesn't work as expected, then I'll complain properly.
(Edit: Making sure I was sampling pixel middles fixed the inconsistencies and everything is beautiful.)

Thanks for your explanations so far! It feels nice to be a total noob at something again.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: surt on January 11, 2017, 12:01:02 am
Colour selector idea:
HSL wheel/sliders but lightness interpolates between an arbitrary black-level colour, the HS mid lightness colour and an arbitrary white-level colour.
Facilitate hue shifting to light and shadow colours.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: Ai on January 15, 2017, 08:09:04 am
Surt: That's kind of like a variation on GPick's 'Blend colors' Secondary View (if you made the color selector inline instead of DnD). Some of its other panels like Variations also bear a relation. (I'm biased because I proposed Blend Colors, but it has turned out pretty much as awesome as I'd hoped :)

EDIT: Oh, and the topic I actually wanted to post on: Anyone going through Nicolaides 'Natural way to draw': Normally I would try to avoid spoilers, but I have been struggling for weeks to sort out a logistical requirement for Schedule 11, and only just sorted it. I would have appreciated some advance notice myself, so passing it on:
Two areas of wall/pinboard/?? in which you can pin/tack up 3 foot * 5 foot cloth. You need to be able to shift around and the entire area of the cloth must be visible at once, so the actual area you need per cloth is more like 6 feet * 7 feet
.

Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: EvilEye on January 23, 2017, 04:00:50 pm
For all interested I just posted a video of a close to complete RPG game I'm working on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3cjMyFVWUk&lc=z13jhbxgxyifc5qpu04cednbomy0dlsbxrk0k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3cjMyFVWUk&lc=z13jhbxgxyifc5qpu04cednbomy0dlsbxrk0k)

It's been in development for about 7 months now. Hopefully only 1 month to go.

-Chris
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: Atnas on June 19, 2017, 04:50:20 pm
Graphics Gale is freeware as of yesterday. :)

https://graphicsgale.com/us/

edit: oh whoops someone already posted about it: http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=3467.msg187602#msg187602
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: EvilEye on June 27, 2017, 10:55:17 pm
MazeQuest, our RPG game for the IPhone / IPad is finally released!

Commercial with in-game play + links below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX6TTiVC5j4
 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX6TTiVC5j4)
If you liked the 16 bit SNES RPG's you will likely enjoy this game. All the art was done by myself, as well as the programming.

Hope you guys enjoy!
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: PixelPiledriver on June 28, 2017, 07:17:52 am
@EvilEye gratz!  :y: ;D
Will check it out!
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: 32 on June 28, 2017, 11:50:43 am
10 years on Pixelation today ^-^

Wanted to say thanks to the amazing community, Ptoing and the other admins and mods for keeping the place running for so long, the oldies that I syphoned knowledge from and the newbies who keep the chain alive.

Everything I learned about art started here and I wouldn't have the career or life I do today without it. Truly a unique place and amazing place to be on the internet. Here's to 10 more :D
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: MysteryMeat on June 28, 2017, 06:38:46 pm
10 years on Pixelation today ^-^

Wanted to say thanks to the amazing community, Ptoing and the other admins and mods for keeping the place running for so long, the oldies that I syphoned knowledge from and the newbies who keep the chain alive.

Everything I learned about art started here and I wouldn't have the career or life I do today without it. Truly a unique place and amazing place to be on the internet. Here's to 10 more :D

Ayyyy
I've certainly made good progress myself, this place is rad!
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: Crow on June 28, 2017, 07:23:16 pm
10 years on Pixelation today ^-^

Wanted to say thanks to the amazing community, Ptoing and the other admins and mods for keeping the place running for so long, the oldies that I syphoned knowledge from and the newbies who keep the chain alive.

Everything I learned about art started here and I wouldn't have the career or life I do today without it. Truly a unique place and amazing place to be on the internet. Here's to 10 more :D

Thanks for following our Twitter account :p I think you did that only recently.

I guess I've also been part of Pixelation for quite a while now, so let me chime in and say that I'm glad I got the opportunity to help out such an amazing community.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: 32 on June 29, 2017, 01:18:45 am
I've had the wotpstatus twitter bookmarked for a long time, I just didn't have a twitter account way back then :lol: Hope the outreach works.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: 32 on July 23, 2017, 03:03:22 am
Wow I just found out about this photobucket external hosting thing. Kinda switched to imgur already but still who knows how many images on the forum are going to be dead now, mine and many others :'(. I hope this hasn't decimated the featured threads.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: Crow on July 23, 2017, 07:43:35 am
Photobucket couldn't be properly used for direct linking for a few years now already anyway. Shouldn't cause any additional issues ;)
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: 32 on August 31, 2017, 09:24:10 pm
Hey guys, I'm doing a little charity drive for Hurricane Harvey. Would be great if anyone could help spread the word ;D https://twitter.com/AngusDoolan/status/903561273324912640
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: llamaosbeano on October 18, 2017, 09:22:40 pm
someone please tell me the finger cramps will go away after awhile....  :sry:
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: eishiya on October 18, 2017, 09:45:00 pm
someone please tell me the finger cramps will go away after awhile....  :sry:
Do you mean from clicking too much?
Sounds like you may need to click with a lighter touch, or perhaps use a tablet. You can also reduce the strain on your fingers by being smarter with your tools. Line tool, shape tools, using a larger brush and erasing away instead of drawing a shape per-pixel, etc can help you get the result you want with less manual pixel placing. Save the mouse work for the polish stage.

If you're doing something that causes finger cramps, you'll keep getting them. You need to eliminate the cause.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: surt on January 31, 2018, 08:09:43 pm
"Tilemap" palette editing mode
Analogous to on-canvas tile editing in tilemap-aware pixel editors (tilemap-and-tilesets being abstractly identical to indexed-images-and-palettes).
Painting on canvas doesn't change pixel indexes but changes the palette values instead.
Would need either a second palette or RGB[A] painting for source colours.
Could be useful for colour theming perhaps?
Or useless?
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2017
Post by: yaomon17 on March 02, 2018, 03:12:59 am
2 months on the official off topic thread of 2018    :'(
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Crow on March 02, 2018, 07:12:10 am
No idea what you're talking about :P
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: pistachio on May 08, 2018, 10:04:13 am
This is probably stretching the rules to say now, maybe something is in the works to address it, and I usually wouldn't be the first guy to bring this up here but what are we doing/can be done about the spam other than deletions?

(sup)
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: yaomon17 on May 08, 2018, 08:06:42 pm
I request some way to automate removal of thread titles that start with https if possible (I don't have experience with smf though).
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Rydin on July 26, 2018, 08:59:37 pm
Such nostalgia.

What's new everybody?  :)
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: yaomon17 on July 26, 2018, 11:10:13 pm
Crow has left us. Such tragedy has stifled the last light of the forum.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Rydin on July 27, 2018, 08:44:54 pm
Don't be down. There's going to be a pixel art come back. I can feel it.  :y:
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: yaomon17 on August 11, 2018, 01:55:11 am
Ant Man and the Wasp was pretty good.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Rydin on September 05, 2018, 08:20:06 pm
Currently reading "The Timeless Way of Building"
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Ai on September 13, 2018, 12:24:20 pm
Just noticed: the 4 rightmost 'Featured' banners produce an error page, titled "URL Shortener":

"Destination

Unknown

Everything's working on our side, so the short link you clicked is either wrong or has been retired."

I'm pretty sure that the last banner links to 0xDB's glossary/topic summary thread.. which is definitely still here (https://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19594.0) and accessible if I hunt it down in the forum. The URL in the banner differs in one way -- it's http:// rather than https://.

There's no apparent logic to it -- the first banner link is https and works, the second and third are NOT https but still work, and the fourth and all after that are not https and do not work.

Can anyone else confirm this behaviour? Again, banner links 1,2,3 work, and banner links 4,5,6,7 bring up the error page.

(hopefully an easy fix might be to make all the links https...)
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: 0xDB on September 13, 2018, 01:02:42 pm
Just noticed: the 4 rightmost 'Featured' banners produce an error page, titled "URL Shortener":

"Destination

Unknown

Everything's working on our side, so the short link you clicked is either wrong or has been retired."

I'm pretty sure that the last banner links to 0xDB's glossary/topic summary thread.. which is definitely still here (https://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=19594.0) and accessible if I hunt it down in the forum. The URL in the banner differs in one way -- it's http:// rather than https://.

There's no apparent logic to it -- the first banner link is https and works, the second and third are NOT https but still work, and the fourth and all after that are not https and do not work.

Can anyone else confirm this behaviour? Again, banner links 1,2,3 work, and banner links 4,5,6,7 bring up the error page.

(hopefully an easy fix might be to make all the links https...)
It appears to me that the links that don't work are still pointing to wayofthepixel.net instead of pixelation.org, so the forwarding/redirection appears to be broken.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Ai on September 13, 2018, 01:42:59 pm
Yeah, that's probably it :) It's good you noticed the domain difference.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Indigo on September 13, 2018, 07:11:03 pm
Fixed.  Thanks for the catch
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: ProgramGamer on October 27, 2018, 12:09:01 am
Uhh, I think there's some spambots having a party lol
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Kiana on October 27, 2018, 10:09:14 pm
I didn’t know it was possible to post that many threads  :-\
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Elm on October 27, 2018, 10:17:42 pm
A newfound hate for lurking spam accounts.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: eishiya on October 27, 2018, 10:42:40 pm
A newfound hate for lurking spam accounts.
I hope you were able to mass-delete their posts and didn't have to do it post-by-post D8
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: yaomon17 on October 27, 2018, 11:52:43 pm
I didn’t know it was possible to post that many threads  :-\
I'm taking that as a challenge. Here we go!
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: ProgramGamer on October 28, 2018, 07:58:48 pm
We actually had a worse one on tigs where a korean flower shop spam bot managed to post about 1000 threads in a single day.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Elm on October 29, 2018, 02:05:21 pm
A newfound hate for lurking spam accounts.
I hope you were able to mass-delete their posts and didn't have to do it post-by-post D8

I think out of about 1000, we could do 50 at a time.

I didn’t know it was possible to post that many threads  :-\
I'm taking that as a challenge. Here we go!

Remind me to delete you.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: eishiya on October 29, 2018, 02:28:41 pm
Aah, that's a relief. 50 at a time isn't so bad.
A forum I help moderate doesn't have any form of mass deletion, so I hope that we don't get anything like this, or that if we do, someone will be around to stop it early.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: Elm on October 29, 2018, 02:42:20 pm
Definitely could have been worse, and much more painful.
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: pistachio on October 30, 2018, 02:10:01 pm
Makes me want to kick it back into the community updates thread. :-\
Title: Re: Official Off-Topic Thread 2018
Post by: robalan on December 14, 2018, 05:26:26 pm
As I visit for the first time in almost 7 years, I feel the need to make at least one post so that I'll know how long I was gone when I poke my head back in around 2024. How's everyone doing? Seems a bit quieter around here.