there isnt really any kind of "glow" feature. i know there is a pixel shader that does a "glow" effect in MMF2 HWA, but nothing that cant be done with simpler non cpu intensive methods. should be as easy as using the alpha channel in an image.
What I did (and this is so simple that it works in TGF1) was to create the light source as a ball of solid color that gradually goes more and more towards white as it gets closer to the edge. Then have this object be transparent.
Oh I wish there was a glowmap feature. The glow shader doesn't even work like that, Bloom 2D does but it's contained within the active and doesn't spread out.
What I just tend to do is load the image into photoshop. Add the glow effect in there, save as PNG and import back into MMF2. You have to jump through hoops to get the collisions working again though.
Well that Puzzpower one just looks like an OR ink effect, or whatever the older ones were before Add came along. Luor is most likely using photoshop enhanced objects. All you do for that is create something in pixel art, copy into photoshop, remove the black background, duplicate the layer and blur the lowest layer. Save as PNG and import into MMF2.
What they should add is proper post-processing effects that takes a bloom map and overlaps it over objects/layers. HWA supports shaders and its a start, but real PP would be excellent.
I did some lasers with some careful use of the alpha channel. Just put a fluorescent layer outside the laser/fireball, and make it semi-transparent. It works much better than some glow effects with lasers.
Main problem here is that the laser glows will be part of the collision too
Alpha channels won't slow down the game nearly as much as proper image filters, so it's a nice, low memory way to get special effects, if you're willing to hand draw all the alpha channels.
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Now that I am playing around, I used Gimp and gave it a glow with the laser but the laser indeed hit's the wall with the glow and explodes before it should in other words the glow is colliding with the obstacle as well, I tried putting collision with the laser but can't figure out how to do it properly, What I did is "Place LaserX (the collision) on Laser x0 y0" but the gun fires alot of lasers at once so it goes on the first laser, another thing is I did when laser dies the LaserX object teleports out of map/level view but you see it doesn't work properly when there is more then one laser at the same time, create LaserX I cannot figure out how to make it so as the laser is summoning alot of LaserX at once. (I putted create LaserX on "Always")
btw I am using "Shoot Object" when you press Shift to fire the laser btw, if you hold shift it fire the laser every 5 seconds as it's a rapid firing laser machine gun.
About drawing alpha channels I have no probs with that, I draw the alpha on Gimp, calculate the size of the glow with the object first and then put a blank glow object to apply on the projectile.
Muz, for the fluorescent layer do you mean making the transparency color fluorescent and using the alpha channel to create varying degrees of transparency for that color?
I've only really just started messing with the alpha channel feature a couple months ago and am still learning how to do it right. Right now I just use it for shadows mostly.
Edited by Del Duio
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The alpha channel is basically a texture map for each pixels transparency. You could set each colour to be more transparent than another in a proper image editing app.
I hope they add support for more maps/channels in MMF3 like a bloom map, bump mapping etc alongside Alpha and Transparent colour.
OK This is what I did I put pressing shift shoot laser and the glowmap, the glowmap doesn't have collision and dies when the laser dies, they are seperate objects and you shoot them both at once, is this the correct way to do it? because I think there is a better way to do it but this is my guess.
you can do this to get rid of extra actives.
put the collision map on one frame and the glow map on another.
1. force animation to collision map frame
2. detect for collision
3. force animation to glow map frame
doing this, it will use the collision map for the collision but mmf will only render the glow map.
this probably wont work if your laser is animated though.
edit: btw this is a good way to do detectors for anything else as well. instead of having a separate active for each detector you just use one active and have detectors on different frames, and force to that frame right before detecting for that specific collision. great trick.
Recently I just got across something known as fast loops, do fast loops work for what I am trying to achieve here? I'l search for tutorials about fastloops in the meantime.
LavaWave, if you have separate objects for the glow and actual laser beam then fastloops are definitely the way forward. When you create the beam and the glow, give them an identifier in their alt values. There's a couple of ways to do this, the most common being Spread Values. However setting the Alt Value to the "Number of Objects -1" also works (the -1 is necessary since fastloops are 0-index based)
Then to position the glow, start a fastloop with the same number of loops as the number of laser objects and add the condition:
-On Loop ("Loop Name")
+Alt Value of laser = LoopIndex ("Loop Name")
+Alt Value of glow = LoopIndex ("Loop Name")
then
Position the glow at 0,0 to the beam.
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Edited by LavaWave
