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Old 11-10-2003, 03:14 PM   #1
Roger Sewell
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Default 3D Target Indicator Information

The target indicator is 4 concentric circles textured in such a way that a repeating texure is UV animated towards the center. Each con color can have completely different settings. It is not a particle effect, it is a specially generated procedural object that works independantly of other visual effects and can be toggled on/off in the options window. There is a command, /indicator [on|off] which performs the same function.

When the indicator is turned on, this ini file is reloaded and exiting the game should not be required in order to tweak settings or images to your satisfaction.


Section: TargetIndicator

This section defines properties common to all indicators. The entries have the following purposes:


* FadeStart : How far from the target does the ring begin to fade out.

* FadeEnd : The distance of the last visible point on the ring.

* OpaqueStart : The distance from the target that the ring begins to become visible.

* OpaqueEnd : The distance from the targe that the ring is fully visible

* InitialLength : This is an override on the FadeEnd value, and is intended to be used to make the ring quickly expand to full size using the GrowSpeed as the rate of expansion.

* GrowSpeed : How fast to expand the target ring to full size. A value of 1 will make it instantly appear.

* FloorOffset : How far off the ground to place the ring.

* Additive : Set this to 1 to enable additive rendering mode for the ring, 0 for alpha blend.

* PointCount : This is the number of points that the ring will use to define the circle. There are four circles that reprsent the ring, each has their fade level determined by the fade/opaque settings above.



Sections: Trivial, VeryEasy, Easy, FairMatch, Difficult, Deadly

These sections can be used to configure the target indicator differently for each consider type.

The entries have the following purpose:

* Texture : The prefix of the texture to use. ".tga" is appended before opening. If FrameCount is above zero, it will format the filenames as "Texture%d.tga" to allow you to load any number of frames of animation to use for the indicator. Please note that this is a fairly memory intensive way to animate a texture so limiting the number of frames is a good idea. Performance may vary dramatically for various cards.

* FrameCount : How many frames of texture to try to load.

* Duration : How many milliseconds to show each frame of the animated texture.

* TwistFactor : This is a control value that is intended to control how fast each circle of vertices in the target indicator rotates on the Z axis relative to each other. Changing this to any value besides 1.0 will probably not produce anything worth looking at, but it won't break anything either.

* TwistSpeed : This value was intended to rotate the entire indicator on the Z-axis but unfortunately it does not work as intended at this time. This will get corrected in the future but for now you probably want to just leave it at 0.0 unless you want the target indicator to "pulse".

* TextureScale : How much of the entire texture is visible at one time.

* TextureSpeed : How fast to move the texture towards the center in texels/msec.

* ScaleMin : Not used at this time. This and the other two scale values were intended to be used to expand the ring when targets are changed, but unfortunately this part was not completed.

* ScaleMax : Not used.

* ScaleSpeed : Not used.

* Alpha : The transparency, combined with any texture alpha values.

* Red, Green, Blue : Tinting (ie. Vertex color) for the ring.


I hope this answers some questions for you all.
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Old 11-10-2003, 11:29 PM   #2
Haliken
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Quote:
* TwistSpeed : This value was intended to rotate the entire indicator on the Z-axis but unfortunately it does not work as intended at this time. This will get corrected in the future but for now you probably want to just leave it at 0.0 unless you want the target indicator to "pulse".


I LOVE having my target indicator pulse. If this is going to be "fixed" can a way to make the target ring pulse on purpose be added? I set this value to 0.001 and it produces a very nice pulsing effect that I don't want to lose when this is "fixed."

Enok

Last edited by Haliken : 11-11-2003 at 04:39 PM.
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Old 11-11-2003, 01:14 AM   #3
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Hear, hear!
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Old 11-11-2003, 01:41 AM   #4
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Quote:
* OpaqueStart : The distance from the target that the ring begins to become visible.


hmm still cant make it under thee feet.. hmmm
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Old 11-11-2003, 12:12 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally posted by kenney
hmm still cant make it under thee feet.. hmmm


FadeStart=0
...
OpaqueStart=0
...

...should do the trick, although the results probably are going to be very crude with that.

I believe from FadeStart towards the target is where the alpha scales (linear?) towards 100% transparency which is overlayed by a (again linear?) decreasing transparency from OpaqueStart towards OpaqueEnd.

Pure speculation, though....going to try that later, I'll let you know if it worked...
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Old 11-12-2003, 08:59 PM   #6
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Thank you for the information Roger..I was wondering if there was a way to make the ring shrink or even disappear when the mob dies or when targeting a dead mob..There isn't a different section for dead mobs (Futile consideration) but however I noticed that the animation (pulse) of the ring stops when the mob is dead.
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Old 11-13-2003, 11:20 AM   #7
Panamah
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I can barely see the blue indicator, especially in places like Miragul's dungeons. I think the way it interacts with Ultravision it gets really washed out. Is there a way to make that darker and more intense? I tried fussing with the Alpha but it didn't seem to help.
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Old 11-13-2003, 01:34 PM   #8
Ascher
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Default reguarding hard to see lightblue

I haven't messed with this setting yet, but it should work:

I would just change the color of it to something more visible if you are having that problem, use the RGB portion of the ini that is mentioned in Rogers post.



Quote:
* Red, Green, Blue : Tinting (ie. Vertex color) for the ring.
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Old 11-14-2003, 06:27 PM   #9
JGC84
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i've been trying to make just a tight ring, without big wide fading area, so i made:

[TargetIndicator]
FadeStart=1
FadeEnd=1
OpaqueStart=.99
OpaqueEnd=1
FloorOffset=.5
Additive=1
PointCount=16

thinking that should do it, but i still get a big aura... any clue why?
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Old 11-16-2003, 07:43 AM   #10
orkon
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Mebbe i am misunderstanding some of the information that roger posted, but here's what i am trying to do.

I want to setup the target indicators to be larger than the 20 units it looks to be.

So i change FadeStart to 40, and FadeEnd to 50, and then to a /indic on to reload. But the size of the rings remain identical.

Has anyone been successful in using the default Target Ring Object but made the width of the rings larger or smaller?

From about an hour's worth of playing, i would hazard a guess that the values for Fade and Opaque are hard coded

Also, the FloorOffset i was trying to use to display the ring round the waist of the mobs (probably about 10 units off the ground). Setting the Floor offset to 10 makes 0 difference as well.

It seems from fiddling with any of the follow

FadeStart=10
FadeEnd=20
OpaqueStart=1
OpaqueEnd=1.5
InitialLength=1
GrowSpeed=1
FloorOffset=0.5
Additive=1

doesnt make any real difference to the rings.

Anyone have any ideas/infirnation that i can use (short of making my own indicator) to use the default object, but make the rings larger?

Thanks
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Old 11-16-2003, 12:44 PM   #11
kenney
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as far as i can see alot of things do squat...........just a few you can change like the color and movement...
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Old 11-17-2003, 04:54 AM   #12
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All right, I posted some Info above, which was untested and promised to come back after testing. I DID testing...a LOT of testing....but I never saw any changes, no matter what settings I put in.

Now comes the clue: I accidentially stumbled across THIS THREAD!

There is the Problem: I'm using an ATI 9800 Pro...so none of my settings show up. Looking at the target ring as displayed on an NVidia card I assume that all my assumptions considering the settings of the variables are actually right, I just won't see any effect of it.

I just hope they get this fixed for all supported graphics accelerators soon....
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Old 11-17-2003, 06:21 AM   #13
whitedawn
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Question I cant get the ring why ?

I heard that radion cards dont work with it, is there a way around it. ?? what do i need to put into my ini file ?? thanks
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Old 11-17-2003, 11:58 PM   #14
Alontier
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Try incresing the PointCount from 16 -> 32 -> 64
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Old 11-18-2003, 01:07 AM   #15
xpanmanx
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Quote:
Originally posted by JGC84
i've been trying to make just a tight ring, without big wide fading area, so i made:

[TargetIndicator]
FadeStart=1
FadeEnd=1
OpaqueStart=.99
OpaqueEnd=1
FloorOffset=.5
Additive=1
PointCount=16

thinking that should do it, but i still get a big aura... any clue why?


Did you get it yet?
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