At long last I have found the missing answer to controlling where, how, and when anything and everything is drawn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3SHBPEvfFU

Very soon I will post a video of a practical application for this discovery .

If one of the practical applications entails intercepting all the scene geometry and using sun position, weather status, etc to generate shadows (statics and architecture in both games have none), please do share your findings with the Oblivion Graphics Extender team. Their most recent thread is here: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1092614-oblivion-graphics-extender-thread-15

In fact they are pretty far along with some things, like having initial SSAO implementations, as well as "Godrays", but the project has stalled on several occasions or changed "management". In the previous attempt they were attempting to implement "Crysis Water" but only managed a few things like Motion Blur and Underwater Chromatic Dispersion/Distortion.

But despite all the progress I'd really love to have SHADOWS some day... They have achieved shadows in Morrowind Graphics Extender to my knowledge but I don't recall if they're in a usable state. Anyway, now I'm rambling.

You're a bit sparse with the technical details, btw... I don't want to sound critical but for many years many different groups of people have tried to unlock or intercept different aspects of the graphics rendered by Gamebryo, so it would be nice if you could share this discovery with the rest of us.

Well the technical details are trivial in this case. This is just a first experience for me! But as promised I want to show an example of what transformations of these graphics can do..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1mMir8X1Ls

Ok, that video was really neat! I am sure that any modder that watches it will have a few new ideas spark in their minds. Good job

Does it just look like water or does it counts as water. As in, can you drown in high water?

Ty. I have made flooding videos before, but I used models which were animated to scale . In this case here I am adjusting the water's position graphically by modifying the Z value before it is officially used to transform the vertex data. The stride of the water I found to be 36, and with a vertex count of about 4, it is most likely only the water will be affected. But the actual triggering of the player needing to swim does not happen, and so it goes over my head as if I am not "really" underwater.

This is very early prototype and I am willing to bet there are ways to fix the glitches.


@harmy
a work around, might be to make a script which is mathematically in sync with the water level, and you can script in the need for air.

Well, the question about tides was asked recently on the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1090214-the-fallout-3-modding-wishlist-thread/page__st__140 so there is definitely interest in that aspect (and I'm sure many other aspects as well). :thumbsup:

One thing that comes to mind, is the bathtubs, pools and jacuzzi's have hope to work realistically now. Maybe even barrels that fill with rain water.

Nice one! Forgot all about bathtubs being empty or full all the time.

And for some reason I just had an Austin Powers "easily escapable death trap" flash back

Maybe you should actually explain to people that you re simply using a hook/injection method. You know that you are simply grabbing function calls and events, modifying their values and the output?
And that you have not actually "hacked" the gameengine, but that you are just messing with the output data?
Just to put this better into perspective: This is basically the same method you would use to create a wallhack for a firstperson shooter.

Yes some nice visual gadgetry, problem is that it has little effect on the gameworld. Which is why you aren't swimming or drowning when you raise that water(which is not a glitch like you are trying to fool people with). Let me know when you have actually found a REAL application for this, not everyone is fooled by your little streetmagician tricks. Lotsa smoke, sadly not so much substance.

Prove me wrong. I wouldn't be so ticked off, if it wasn't obivous that you trying to fool people and make them go "oooo" and "wooow", like with the example mentioned above.


There is actual one good example for a current use of a hook/injection method via a dll and that is Fallout Stutter Remover. But Skyranger atleast isnt as arrogant as to claim HE HAS COMPLETE CONTROL OVER THE GRAFICS!!11
Make something that works for once and does something practical, instead of spamming the boards everyday with a new thread.
Yes there are applications for this technique, but all you are showing off are some random experiments, nothing mindblowing or usable. And you have not just invented the [censored] wheel, people have been doing this since more than a decade.

/gives Kai a cookie and a backrub

A pretty sensational claim, this. If you have indeed done so, please do share the your work with the OGE/OBGEv2 group, as we've been trying to graphically improve Oblivion for a while, but Gamebryo is a bit of a closed book, so any advance in knowledge would be very beneficial.

Dll injection and hooks are nothing new. I never claimed they were. I also have explained many times how I accomplish my feats. I am also confident that I never have claimed to hack the game engine. You are extremely presumptuous and entirely too competitive when there is no need to be. Your request that I not post in this forum unless I meet your standards is just about the only arrogant thing I see going on.

My thread titles and ways of advertising my mods are for me to decide, not you. Also I will not provide you with any more proof than I would for the rest of this community. You no doubt have contributed your fair share of content for people to enjoy, but could you please spend your energy improving your own work instead of bashing mine?

What I do with the game is my own business and I would appreciate it if you could respect me when I choose to share my work with the public. The only thing you and others can reasonably be upset about is that I rarely release my special modifications . But even so, you need to lighten up and pitch in to help or stay out of my topics.

Fine, then please do share what information you have so the OGE group can profit from it. Since you did claim you have complete control over the grafics, so apparently you already know more than they do.

Look the thing is you come here eeeverytime, promise something the world has never seen before, be it a Fallout multiplayer mod or just a damn squirrel, and nothing has come of it. But each time you make a big [censored]in ruckus about it. If you release something cool , great go for it. If you're just gonna be handing out hollow promises again, save yourself the trouble.

The difference is, I can sit here write this and I will still get my [censored] done and release things and not get people worked up over nothing, yet again.

Yeah, where are those squirrels anyways

All kidding aside though, something as simple as getting the bathtub water ( as an example ) to move up and down is something pretty cool. Maybe you could set up a little resource with a room that has a working bathtub in it so modders can figure out how it works and use it in their mod?

Right.. I think I will take this time to elaborate on what my definition of "complete control is". Pretty much all transformations for the game's models and such can be altered. Translation and such. So when anything that has geometry is being drawn I can change where it will be drawn. More important is the fact that I can also draw my own custom geometry anywhere and in any way.

For instance, with enough logic or condition checking I can draw my own rain, have it descend, and prevent it from piercing through solid objects. Also the current method of having the rain storm follow the player would IMO become obsolete. The reason for this is the radius or area the rain will cover is not limited by the properties set on the particle system and the rain storm itself will have far less performance issues when keeping up with the player's movements.

I have never heard of the OGE group until now. I don't own Oblivion and never have either. While it may not be too difficult to transition into using Oblivion, I see no reason why I would want to. I can offer my source code and such , but it is up to them to judge if my progress is significant enough that we would benefit from a convergence.


Miss Sparkel said,
Yeah, where are those squirrels anyways

All kidding aside though, something as simple as getting the bathtub water ( as an example ) to move up and down is something pretty cool. Maybe you could set up a little resource with a room that has a working bathtub in it so modders can figure out how it works and use it in their mod?

I say, sure. But I am waiting for ian patt to give me the link for a FOSE Example plugin again. I have made a FOSE plugin before, so pretty much as soon as he can put up that template again, I will have to wait before I can make a scripting function modders can use for experimenting.

That sounds fricken awesome. That would hugely benefit Oblivion and Fallout 3 if truly possible.

I am ambitious enough to hope for real accumulation of flooding, and even a way to have the water be displaced when the player move through it. Even more ambitious, would be water flowing down hills or sides of buildings windows etc.

All luck to you. It would be an enormous contribution to the modding community if you can do this.

Sorry I have been sleeping the past few hours. But here is a quick video which shows I am in fact rising world space water... (I hope)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKH6nNIHTlc

I will begin working on the rain now

http://fose.silverlock.org/beta/fose_plugin_example.7z. Updated so you don't need to add the exports.def file manually.

Also, take a look at the Ni* header files in the OBSE source code. They contain everything you need for manipulating the scene graph without extra weird function hooking or whatever. There are probably some changes between the Oblivion and Fallout runtimes, but probably nothing serious.

So the water is rising but has zero effect on the player, and assuming the same for NPC's.... I assume you plan to make the water have an actual effect? If not, then what's the point...

I'm just a member of OGE, not a spokesperson, but the way I see it is that it can only be a good thing to share your findings with others. As to why you would want to, I would hope that seeing as you're into modding, you're altruistic enough not to expect any personal reward for it beyond a feel-good factor and some praise, but should you make the information available you may benefit from the flow of ideas (eg. you get stuck, one of us may provide a solution, etc).

It's not so much about convergence as publishing your findings as a form of research, as it's pretty hard to converge across two games and two versions of the engine, but if you make your information public, you never know, and nor do we until you do so. As such, we can't judge anything until we see exactly what you've done. :shrug:

There's a link to the latest OGE thread in my sig if you need it.

If you've truly conquered all, could you maybe take a crack at getting the player's body to render in 1st person?

@NillaCakester:
It’s nice to see someone that does something we have not seen before in this game or other games build on the same game engine.

1. Would you please explaining to us all over what you have control at the moment?
(is it only the positioning of objects in the game world)

2. Give us an insight in what you think would be possible in the future.
(what would be possible to be controlled in later stages)

Please don’t mind those that criticize your work, you have done a wonderful job so far and others always expect stuff they want to see.