Time  Nick      Message
05:11 celeron55 Taoki|away: the only place where the filesystem is accessed is Server::fillMediaCache(); that is where the files are listed, filtered and read to memory
05:11 celeron55 they are then sent to the client
05:12 celeron55 when the client receives sound files, it puts them into the sound manager
05:12 celeron55 and when it receives textures, it gives them to the TextureSource
05:12 celeron55 those then store them into RAM
05:12 celeron55 and will use them when asked for it
05:14 celeron55 maybe if you used irrlicht's createMemoryReadFile() with the original filename when the meshes are received, irrlicht would use them directly from memory when you ask the file with the name
05:18 jyfl987_  celeron55: cool irrlicht support read directly from memory?
05:18 jyfl987_  i am considering to use lua for generating dynamic texture
05:20 celeron55 Taoki|away: that you will need to do in Client::loadMedia()
05:21 celeron55 Taoki|away: irrlicht has kind of it's own filesystem in memory, so you can "inject" a file into it with a name you want, with what i said above
05:21 jyfl987_  celeron55: what's the goal of minetest-engine?  and minetest-game
12:19 Taoki     For everyone who's interested in the progress of 3D models: http://minetest.net/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=48827#p48827
12:19 Taoki     Pretty much, everything is done apart from the code to switch animations. I'll be getting to that next
14:48 celeron55 Taoki: #minetest is quite flooded so i'll ask here: where exactly are you stuck now=
14:48 celeron55 ?*
14:48 Taoki     celeron55: With the models... the situation is as follows:
14:49 Taoki     celeron55: With the obj format, I had no problem loading the mesh. I'm switching to b3d because it's an animated format. But now the code wants to load the mesh differently, and puts it through another function which it didn't with obj. That function apparently interprets eash format distinctively
14:49 Taoki     It's client.cpp line 808, bool Client::loadMedia(const std::string &data, const std::string &filename)
14:50 Taoki     obj meshes didn't go through there, but b3d ones do. Images and sounds are handled there, but each with their own specific codes I can't understand. Apparently, mesh would need its own interpreting code there too
14:51 celeron55 did you read what i said... umm... this morning?
14:52 celeron55 in here
14:52 Taoki     My main confusion is why the mesh format is making it go through a different function. What could be different between obj and b3d to do that? Worst of all is how to fix it, because that suddenly goes into very complicated matters I can't understand, and it's likely someone else will have to help there
14:52 Taoki     Just a sec, I think you replied to multiple things
14:52 celeron55 through a different function? what do you mean by that?
14:53 Taoki     Ah, I read now. That seems related to this issue undeed
14:53 Taoki     celeron55: client.cpp line 808. For the obj format this function wasn't used, because it's filtered by extension and I didn't add anything there.
14:53 Taoki     What I meant
14:54 Taoki     Yes, apparently I didn't read what you said this morning yet, or at least in detail. It is the problem I'm running into
14:54 celeron55 i think there can't have been any difference in the obj and b3d formats themselves in this regard
14:55 Taoki     celeron55: So in this case, for Client::loadMedia() I need to find the way to translate mesh files and put them in the memory. Same way sounds and images are
14:55 celeron55 nothing is translated in any way at any point
14:55 celeron55 it's just the raw file data that is moved around
14:56 Taoki     ok. Thought that because images and sounds appear to have different codes from each other to put files there. Hard to understand either
14:56 Taoki     As I tried inspiring myself from those
14:56 Taoki     But I thought MineTest handles it. If Irrlicht does, I need to poke more into its functions
14:57 celeron55 yeah, they are handled specially due to... well, due to... well, due to because they need to have special handling (irrlicht doesn't support sound and textures need to be constructed into atlases and "texture modifiers" applied and whatever)
14:57 celeron55 models should be able to go directly into irrlicht at this point
14:57 Taoki     That's good. Need to find its functions for loading stuff in memory then
14:57 Taoki     One mor major concern though:
14:57 celeron55 i have never used irrlicht's internal filesystem like i described this morning
14:57 celeron55 but it *should* work
14:58 Taoki     Does this means models can't be set or controlled by the server any more? eg: That I need to send animations to the client and apply them to the mesh there? Hope not, cuz then there's nothing I can do
14:58 Taoki     Or each client knows what happens with the model on the server
14:58 celeron55 umm...
14:59 celeron55 i am not too knowledgeable of what kind of information needs to move around for mesh animation
14:59 celeron55 does the mesh file contain the animations?
14:59 Taoki     For textures and sounds at least... they're completely configured on the server right? The client just noticed them and their usage, and the caching is just for the file data
14:59 Taoki     yes
15:00 celeron55 then you need to think in terms of how you need to have the animations trigger
15:00 Taoki     I'm aiming to make it LUA-triggered, but that's server side
15:00 Taoki     Irrlicht has the function to set a mesh to loop from frame X to frame Y
15:01 celeron55 think of launching sounds - there are walking sounds that the client will play based on things it knows, and then there are custom-played sounds that the server tells the client to play
15:01 Taoki     Normally that would work, but I don't know how the code pipes and if maybe each client expects that done
15:01 celeron55 just replace "sound" with animation and it is this case
15:01 Taoki     Íd need to see first is it already knows to see the animation
15:02 Taoki     But, for obj format it already worked. And I think it's all server side
15:02 celeron55 for server(mod)-selected custom animations you could just add an active_animation field into object properties
15:02 celeron55 or something like that
15:03 celeron55 for client-side triggered, it needs some more information... dunno how that'd exactly go
15:03 Taoki     First step is to get b3d meshes to render like obj ones did, then I must see how animations and other details would be sent
15:05 celeron55 anyway, first get the basic mesh to transfer and load and then you can start thinking how to trigger animations
15:06 celeron55 (i'd do it that way)
15:07 Taoki     celeron55: Ah, an interesting question would be: Currently, how does the client know what textures each voxel block has? Does the minetest code have to send the information to all clients, or does irrlicht automatically know to tell all clients about each block (and minetest code only needs to texture the blocks server-side)?
15:07 celeron55 the server doesn't run any irrlicht code, except use some vector and other basic datatypes from the headers
15:07 celeron55 and irrlicht doesn't do any networking
15:08 Taoki     ah
15:09 Taoki     Yet oddly, obj worked. Without me adding client settings (I think). Mesh displays and is textured
15:09 celeron55 irrlicht basically just wraps opengl/direct3d, loads files and adds some 3d scene management and gui stuff
15:09 Taoki     Maybe that means I won't have to for b3d either
15:09 celeron55 if irrlicht supports b3d, it should work just like obj
15:09 Taoki     That's good then
15:10 celeron55 you don't need to transfer it over network for testing
15:10 celeron55 (eventually that has to be done though)
15:10 Taoki     A mystery remains however: Why wasn't Client::loadMedia used for obj, but is now used for b3d. Because Client::loadMedia filters by extension, and obj was never there yet it worked
15:11 Taoki     Might mean obj managed to squeeze through there if not
15:11 celeron55 if you didn't add any code to Client::loadMedia, that couldn't have mattered at all
15:11 celeron55 you have some other problem
15:11 Taoki     ok. Interesting
15:16 Taoki     celeron55: I ran a test with an interesting result. I put a return; at the beginning of Client::loadMedia (disabied that function) and tried with the obj mesh. Although that cuased all textures and sounds to no longer be loaded, my mesh still displayed, and was properly textured. I imagine this means something bad ?
15:17 celeron55 it means you don't transfer it over network
15:17 celeron55 which is expected (to me, at least)
15:18 celeron55 there's really *nothing* automatic in it; you either make it do something, or it doesn't do it 8)
15:18 celeron55 (it may seem different from the modding standpoint though)
15:19 Taoki     ok. Need to figure where I get it to be transfrred over the network then
15:20 celeron55 *if* you add it on the server-side media gathering file extension filter list, it will end up in Client::loadMedia
15:20 Taoki     In content.cao.cpp I simply do scene::IAnimatedMesh *mesh = smgr->getMesh(m_prop.mesh.c_str());
15:20 celeron55 in which you need to actually load it to irrlicht
15:20 Taoki     But yes, thinking about it that doesn't transfer anything over the network
15:20 Taoki     Plus it sets the model server-side. Then again everything else is set server-side so this part shouldf be separate from the sending
15:21 Taoki     Ah, it is added on that file list
15:21 celeron55 that makes irrlicht first check it's internal filesystem cache for a file named m_prop.mesh, and if it isn't found, it checks the real filesystem
15:21 Taoki     I added models there already, so that should be sending it to the client. Which explains the b3d issue
15:21 celeron55 you need to load it to irrlicht's in-memory filesystem with the wanted name in loadMedia
15:22 celeron55 (or, that is one way to do it, which i would try)
15:25 celeron55 (the alternative is to create a "mesh manager" or somehting like that to load the mesh into, and add an interface to it into IGameDef... and then make the CAO get the mesh from there, but it's overcomplicated if the mentioned way works)
15:28 Taoki     yeah. I first need to make Client::loadMedia get the mesh from memory. That should be it
15:40 Taoki     Asking on #irrlicht, but it's hard to explain all of the code in minetest. Apparently it's more minetestps-ecific code in Client::loadMedia
15:41 celeron55 your situation is, from a generic standpoint:
15:42 celeron55 - You have the data of a mesh file in one point of the program, which you want to insert into irrlicht for future loading
15:42 celeron55 - You want to load the mesh afterwards multiple times in an another completely different place of the program
15:43 Taoki     Yeah. Issue is how I load the mesh in the client function. Which function gets it as a raw file or what it's needed as
15:43 celeron55 and the reason for that is a custom network content distribution system
15:44 celeron55 as i said, createMemoryReadFile()
15:45 celeron55 if it works, that is how it works
15:46 Taoki     ok
15:47 celeron55 http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/docu/classirr_1_1io_1_1_i_file_system.html#ac60a4b7912a7f2364426dc1aaf9bccae
15:48 Taoki     I'll try with that again
15:48 celeron55 have you tried with it?
15:48 celeron55 because i am not sure whether it works, and there are many things that can go wrong
15:49 Taoki     Yes, I already have it in my attempt, but thought more is needed
15:49 Taoki     io::IReadFile *rfile = irrfs->createMemoryReadFile(*data_rw, data_rw.getSize(), "_tempreadfile");
15:49 Taoki     assert(rfile);
15:49 Taoki     But I think after that comes something to read and understand the file
15:49 celeron55 the things that come to mind that can go wrong are: 1) it gets loaded AFTER getMesh() is used, 2) you use a different filename in getMesh() and it
15:49 celeron55 you need to use the same name
15:50 celeron55 that is how irrlicht knows it needs to get it for getMesh
15:50 celeron55 also you need to set the last parameter to true
15:50 celeron55 so that it will keep it in memory
15:50 celeron55 AND you need to drop() the result
15:51 celeron55 if all of those go right and my assumption about what the fileName parameter is supposed to do, then it will work
15:51 Taoki     Think I am getting closer to the source of it slowly, must mess with these settings a bit more
15:51 celeron55 otherwise no
15:52 celeron55 also i have noticed you have been using the full path in the mesh field in object properties; you want to change that to the filename without the path (or whatever goes to createMemoryReadFile)
15:52 celeron55 if that is not the same, nobody will tell you
15:52 celeron55 if it is the same, it might work
15:54 Taoki     I fixed that with RealBadAngel last night, he aaid it's the right way to do it. It seems odd to me too... I'll see if it gets fixed during this
15:54 Taoki     But to be sure I'm right: io::IReadFile *rfile = irrfs->createMemoryReadFile(*data_rw, data_rw.getSize(), "_tempreadfile"); ---- and ---- assert(rfile); Should be the only things needed in that client function
15:54 celeron55 RealBadAngel basically outputs completely random things from his hands, was it code or discussion 8)
15:55 celeron55 i once looked at some of his code
15:55 celeron55 won't look anymore
15:55 Taoki     Was asking for help about how to do something
15:55 Taoki     Anyway, I guess pastebin can help. This is how I changed the function so far, and I'm not sure if I should continue the code somewhere for it to be complete: http://www.pasteall.org/36557
15:56 Taoki     line 80 in that paste - Wasn't sure if mor eneeds tob e added there like its done for images
15:56 celeron55 irrfs->createMemoryReadFile(*data_rw, data_rw.getSize(), "_tempreadfile", true); assert(rfile); rfile->drop();
15:56 celeron55 AND
15:56 celeron55 replace "_tempreadfile" with the name you will be supplying to getMesh()
15:57 celeron55 which is called filename in there
15:57 Taoki     ah, right
15:57 celeron55 you don't need to load the model at all in there
15:58 celeron55 remove everything after // Read model
15:58 celeron55 you have nowhere to put it
15:58 Taoki     Yes, correct.
15:58 celeron55 the only thing you can do is hope irrlicht will store it as filename somewhere inside itself
15:59 celeron55 so that you can get it back by referring to filename in the CAO
16:00 Taoki     Did it like this now: http://www.pasteall.org/36558 Am going to compile that and test it
16:00 Taoki     After replacing _tempreadfile, forgot to do that and doing it now
16:01 celeron55 also, don't log it as "Client: Attempting to load model ", rather something like "Client: Storing model into irrlicht: "
16:02 celeron55 good logs are very helpful
16:02 Taoki     Weird, minetest crashes once i try to connect to the server
16:02 Taoki     sure
16:02 celeron55 to the assertion? 8)
16:03 Taoki     Looking at the output
16:03 Taoki     ouch, big crash log. Just a sec
16:03 celeron55 i hope it's crashing in the code using getMesh() with an unknown filename
16:03 Calinou   (totally irrleevant, feel free to ignore) talking about logs, I think debug.txt should be disabled by default, it writes a lot to disk when it's big and takes space
16:04 Taoki     http://www.pasteall.org/36559
16:05 Taoki     ^ crash backtrace
16:05 celeron55 run it in gdb
16:07 Taoki     ok, doing so now...
16:08 Taoki     celeron55: http://www.pasteall.org/36561
16:09 celeron55 hmm, what does the gdb command "bt" do after a crash like that?
16:10 Taoki     celeron55: Continued right from that last paste: http://www.pasteall.org/36562
16:11 celeron55 you appear to not run a debug build, you might want to do cmake . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
16:12 celeron55 that'd make it give line numbers rather than just functions
16:12 celeron55 aaanyway
16:12 celeron55 it's quite obvious that ->drop() kills it
16:12 celeron55 i don't understand why though; can you paste the code as how it is now?
16:12 Taoki     ill try without that
16:12 Taoki     sure,
16:12 celeron55 do you call drop() twice?
16:13 Taoki     celeron55: http://www.pasteall.org/36563 And not that i know of
16:13 celeron55 "filename" lol
16:14 celeron55 you are either trying too fast or not thinking
16:15 Taoki     Yeah, I don't know how that happene...
16:15 Taoki     I get very tired when spending hours on one issue like wtih :P
16:15 Taoki     I will fix it, sorry
16:15 celeron55 that doesn't cause the crash but... i meant you have to use the filename variable
16:15 Taoki     Yes the "" were a typo
16:16 celeron55 just remove the rfile->drop() line for now, irrlicht is probably broken or irrlicht's documentation is broken
16:17 celeron55 i actually love figuring out crap like this; it's sad other people don't, and also it happens way too rarely 8D
16:18 Taoki     ok, now it starts and no more errors. But the model doesn't render either. The causes for that can be a different story
16:18 celeron55 then check that the filename is the same in both places
16:19 Taoki     I'll try with the filename only. In LUA I still use mesh=modpath.."/models/player.b3d",
16:19 celeron55 hmm... shit
16:20 celeron55 i just started browsing irrlicht's documentation
16:20 celeron55 eh
16:20 celeron55 source code, i mean
16:20 celeron55 it seems the filename does nothing in that
16:20 Taoki     the path was good, now it gives werros it doesnt see the mesh
16:20 Taoki     ah
16:21 Calinou   Taoki: what if we want model replacements?
16:21 Taoki     Calinou: Model replacements?
16:21 Calinou   we lack sound replacements already :| (or, is it possible to use sounds/all?)
16:21 Calinou   eg. put textures in textures/all
16:21 Taoki     Calinou: Ah. My script allows setting models to anything easily
16:21 Taoki     I can get to that later
16:22 Taoki     celeron55: How else should I attempt to change that code?
16:22 celeron55 so this looks like a mesh manager needs to be written
16:22 Taoki     ok
16:22 Taoki     So there's no way to get the file from that emmory stream?
16:23 celeron55 i'll look at the scenemanager end of this, wait for a bit
16:23 Taoki     celeron55: I need to go now for 1-2 hours, but I'm still here and will read when I get back
16:23 celeron55 well, in fact there is a trivial spaghetti solution to this
16:23 Taoki     If it requires a whole new mesh manager and bigger code, it means I need to find someone else to take it from here sadly
16:23 celeron55 actually no
16:23 celeron55 it isn't rivial.... forget that 8D
16:24 celeron55 a mesh manager sounds way more complicated than it is
16:25 Taoki     I need to go, will read when I get back. If a mesh manager is needed, that's bad... will see who can look into it
16:25 Taoki     Ah, before I go,
16:25 Taoki     celeron55: All my changes can be read here if it helps, and it's also the GIT branch the code is on: https://github.com/MirceaKitsune/minetest/compare/models
16:25 celeron55 i'll think of a reasonable solution while you're away
16:26 Taoki     Thanks, I'm glad someone is helping. I'll push those useless changes on GIT too so it's easier
16:27 celeron55 apparently irrlicht's scene managers contain a thing called "mesh cache"
16:28 Taoki     Pushed. https://github.com/MirceaKitsune/minetest/compare/models
16:28 celeron55 CMeshManager->getMesh() first looks in it's mesh cache and only after that from the real filesystem
16:28 celeron55 and you can actually push meshes directly into the cache
16:29 Taoki     But yeah, https://github.com/MirceaKitsune/minetest/tree/models is the code and https://github.com/MirceaKitsune/minetest_game/tree/models is the data with script and mesh
16:29 Taoki     Would help if you could add to the code in case you find a better way, I'm barely understanding any of it any more.
16:29 Taoki     Anyway BRB now, thanks a lot for the help so far
16:30 celeron55 so...
16:31 celeron55 1) load the mesh from the data in loadMedia()
16:32 celeron55 2) somehow get the SceneManager from somewhere... i can't immediately figure out what is the right "data path" for making that happen
16:32 celeron55 3) smgr->getMeshCache()->addMesh(filename, loaded_mesh);
16:32 celeron55 THEN smgr->getMesh(filename) will work in the CAO
16:35 celeron55 (2) is done like this: video::ISceneManager *smgr = m_device->getSceneManager();
16:37 celeron55 so there it is; i'll leave it for Taoki to try (should be simple enough)
17:59 Taoki     celeron55: Back. Solving some non-minetest matters first then getting to testing that
18:00 Taoki     celeron55: If however we can't solve it for now, I'd also like to know: Is there any way to NOT load the mesh through the data stream and use the direct paths for both server and client? That is a very bad idea... but if we don't figure out the data stream, I still wish to finish the animation system and have a way to test it. In this case I could leave the stream for the last
18:00 Taoki     As functionallity shouldn't change no matter where it's added from
18:01 celeron55 you can just load it like you were doing for the .obj file before
18:01 celeron55 but i don't see why the above would not work
18:07 Taoki     ok. So it works the same as the obj file did... means the reason it's not being rendered is a different one
18:44 Taoki     celeron55: http://www.pasteall.org/36567 This how the code looks now, and it compiles. I'll try to add the getMesh part in CAO and see if that changes
18:45 Taoki     I wonder what I should do about the texture though, if that is sent through the stream too
18:45 Taoki     Ah wait, it's already there in CAO. So it should work already if it does
18:49 Taoki     ok, now it crashes again: Could not load mesh, because file could not be opened: : player.obj
18:49 Taoki     ^ output in console for minetest client when the crash happens
18:54 celeron55 scene::IAnimatedMesh *mesh = smgr->getMesh(filename.c_str());
18:54 celeron55 you can't do that in loadMedia()
18:55 celeron55 the file is in the data parameter of loadMedia
18:55 celeron55 it does not exist anywhere else
18:55 Taoki     ahh
18:56 celeron55 you need to make an io::IReadFile of it like for images
18:56 celeron55 and... umm...
18:57 celeron55 yeah, you can then stuff that into smgr->getMesh
18:58 celeron55 from which you get the mesh, which you then proceed to feeding to the mesh cache... ehm
18:59 celeron55 actually, if you supply the correct filename to the memory file, SceneManager will already cache it when you getMesh() it the first time from it :-D
19:00 celeron55 this is quite unintuitive to design
19:02 Taoki     Niiice, seems to be working now
19:02 Taoki     For the obj file at least
19:02 Taoki     But, how do I know it's being read from the stream this time and not the old direct path?
19:02 Taoki     Actually, I think the answer is to use the filename directly
19:02 celeron55 as long as you are giving getMesh() only a flat filename without any path, that is likely
19:03 Taoki     not yet, trying now...
19:04 Taoki     yep, it surely works now. Awesome stuff :D
19:04 celeron55 simple things, but not that simple to get right
19:06 Taoki     This felt very complex. But, I got it so it's good
19:07 Taoki     One little detail: Should I mesh->drop() after I get the file through cache?
19:09 Taoki     eh... the textures array isn't sent through though. Wonder what I did wrong there... will have to check now that I have a basic understanding of how it all works
19:29 jin_xi    wow, this is cool. nice work Taoki and celeron55. its textured also! sweet
19:30 Taoki     jin_xi: Yes. Now I'm getting to the part of adding animations, which will be tricky but if things keep going well it will be ready in a few days at most
19:30 Taoki     And aniated players will be possible
19:40 jin_xi    what about mobs?
19:46 celeron55 players and mobs are basically the same thing
19:51 Exio      entities? :P
19:52 Taoki     Fron what I know, anything the player can be set to draw as any other entity can. I looked at the code and I'm pretty sure it's the case
19:52 Taoki     So yet. You can set the player to render as a voxel if you want, or you can set a voxel to render as a mesh (which is normally bad, but in some cases you might want that)
19:53 Taoki     So you can expect that in that whole blocky world, you'll smoeday come across a high-poly vase or chair or something :)
19:54 Taoki     Or that you'll see a player of the detail of an Unreal Tournament character. Imagine that XD
19:54 Taoki     I'm not sure yet if I might try to port Erebus from Xonotic ;)
19:55 Taoki     Meaning this guy: http://pics.nexuizninjaz.com/images/rebu6x8rmgfvijtlqls.jpg
19:55 Taoki     (and yes that's a GPL model). Of course not by default, but as a custom mod on servers :)
19:56 Taoki     Just saying it will be possible after the code is ready
19:56 Taoki     Not sure if MineTest has directional lighting and such however... at least yet
19:58 celeron55 minetest's lighting is pretty crudely implemented
19:58 celeron55 that is, it doesn't use 1) any shaders, 2) even any of the fixed pipeline
19:59 celeron55 it just sets vertex colors and that is it
19:59 Taoki     celeron55: Any plans to make it directional? Doesn't mean to add dynamic shadows, but simple directional lighting based on sun and moon direction. That would be really awesome
19:59 celeron55 i have zero plans
19:59 Taoki     and since we use Irrlicht, easy too. Might be a few lines of code
19:59 celeron55 for anything
19:59 Taoki     ok
20:00 Taoki     It's on my mental list to look into this too. Later... the models are important for now until they're ready
20:00 celeron55 (except putting somebody else in charge of plan-making 8))
20:01 celeron55 the problem is, hardware lighting does not fit well at all with the no-lighting vertex color setting stuff
20:01 celeron55 the brightnesses are almost random
20:01 celeron55 you need to do one or another
20:02 Taoki     Yeah, will have to see how it looks first of course
20:02 celeron55 to mix voxel lighting and traditional lighting, you basically need to write a custom shader
20:03 Taoki     Ahhh... seems Blender has native support for the .x model format (directX). I wonder if the format is free otherwise... Irrlicht supports it
20:03 Taoki     as b3d seems to be giving me a hard time
20:03 celeron55 which tends to make many of our supported old-ass GPUs really struggle with the huge polygon count
20:03 celeron55 (huge for them, laughable for recent stuff)
20:03 Taoki     I see. Thought we could just set lighting to directional and it'd work :P
20:11 Taoki     OMG! I got a mesh to animate :D Really sweet
20:11 Taoki     Not code-controlled yet, it triggered on its own
20:11 Taoki     x format
20:15 celeron55 you can probably get something somewhat reasonable out of it by setting a directional light... but it requires some trickery to make it behave sanely in caves and so
20:16 Anchakor  I think these days the way to do lighting is to use shadow volume shaders
20:16 Taoki     celeron55: Yes. It will require an amount of ambient light (existing light) as well as directional light
20:16 Taoki     BTW. How are torches currently doing it? Aren't they a normal directional light?
20:16 celeron55 Taoki: minetest has a special voxel lighting system
20:17 Taoki     makes sense
20:17 celeron55 they are far from what you imagine 8)
20:17 Taoki     I can understand then :P
20:17 celeron55 Anchakor: that means dropping for example my laptop out of the supported HW
20:18 celeron55 (except for view distances of like 8 nodes)
20:18 Anchakor  celeron55: I know, I think both the very simple voxel model should be supported along with the new shader shizzle
20:18 Anchakor  (if it even comes into existence)
20:18 celeron55 that is probably quite complicated
20:19 Taoki     Yeah, a configuration setting would toggle both
20:19 Taoki     But I can imagine it's complicated
20:20 celeron55 for example the voxel lighting makes servers do quite much more work (at least at map generation time, but at other points too), and many high-end people would want to take it out
20:21 Taoki     What I don't understand is: As I worked with the mesh code, I'm seeing that voxels are vey similar to meshes. Only that they're cubes where the surfaces and form is created by the code, not exported from Blender or something. So I'm thinking that theoretically, the same lighting technique could be applied
20:21 Anchakor  well worst case (aka if it is implemented rather badly) for all people there would be some redundancy in transfer & processing
20:21 Taoki     It would get messy at first, but theoretically
20:22 celeron55 yeah sure, you can disable the voxel lighting and just use plain old directional light and set light sources to the nearest torches or so
20:22 celeron55 it looks completely different and there is no way to for example make caves dark without shaders
20:23 celeron55 except... well, *everything* is possible with enough trickery, but whether irrlicht exposes enough of the underlying graphics APIs is an another thing
20:23 Taoki     But can't you also set simple ambiental lighting? Like a minimal texture brightness, so lack of lighting doesn't mean complete blackness
20:24 Taoki     That way caves have no lighting, until you place a torch that is
20:24 celeron55 that doesn't change the fact that everything is lit exactly the same
20:24 celeron55 if you have sun outside, sun will be in caves too
20:24 Taoki     Ahhh, damn. I think I got the issue
20:24 Taoki     The sun would shine through objects
20:24 Taoki     Yes
20:24 Taoki     And the only way to stop that woud be... *drum roll* dynamic shadows :D
20:25 celeron55 not exactly
20:25 celeron55 with some backbuffer rendering and tricks it's completely doable
20:25 celeron55 but not with irrlicht
20:25 Anchakor  even with dynamic shadows, if the top of the cave is not yet loaded it would appear as open to the algo
20:25 Taoki     Yes. But a new shader would be needed to check if another block is in the way
20:25 celeron55 no
20:25 celeron55 i could do a reasonable implementation without shaders
20:25 Taoki     Dynamic shadows are something I plan to add separately, and as an optional effect only
20:25 celeron55 with some aid from a simpler voxel lighting than we currently have
20:26 Taoki     Sounds nice
20:26 celeron55 but it's not doable with irrlicht
20:26 celeron55 only plain opengl
20:26 Anchakor  implementation of what? sun lighting?
20:26 Taoki     meh, that is sad
20:26 Taoki     Wonder what is with Irrlicht. Must be some alternative somewhere
20:26 celeron55 Anchakor: implementation of lighting that would fit models and the voxel world well together
20:26 celeron55 without shaders
20:27 Anchakor  so software implemetation - on CPU
20:27 Taoki     celeron55: If we go the other way around though, how hard would it be for your lighting system do support directional lighting? So instead of making everything in an area bright, see where the source of the light is, and brigthen or darken based on face orientation
20:28 Anchakor  I don't think that would be a good alternative for the older machines
20:28 celeron55 Taoki: not doable
20:28 Anchakor  it's not like they got shitty GPU but fast CPU
20:28 Taoki     For voxel cubes that would be easier I think cuz there's not a lot to calculate. The more "straight" or "parallel" a face is to the light, the brighter
20:28 Taoki     ah, ok
20:28 celeron55 very expensive for voxels, even more expensive for high-poly models
20:29 Taoki     For models yeah. For voxels, well there are 6 faces at most since they're cubes. You'd only calculate how well each is facing the source of the light
20:29 Taoki     But I wouldn't know too well
20:30 celeron55 if somebody wants to reimplement everything; go for it; but i do not wish to use my free time for that
20:30 celeron55 i have other projects and want to leave minetest to the hands of people with more ideas for it
20:32 Taoki     sure
20:32 Taoki     Just curious: Are any of them other FOSS games?
20:32 celeron55 of course i'm occasionally hanging around like now, but i don't want to start implementing a new rendering/map/object/whwatever systems
20:33 celeron55 -a
20:33 Taoki     Yeah. Wasn't sure if you meant other minetest projects or other projects apart from minetest
20:33 celeron55 not at the moment at least
20:33 Taoki     ok
20:34 celeron55 they are quite low-profile and obscurish projects 8) not something to easily gain such popularity as minetest has done
20:35 Taoki     yeah. MineTest is quite an asweome thing :)
20:37 celeron55 most of the other things i do in my free time are more indie gamedev minded, not so much FOSS... i just start making different things and see if i get inspired to continue
20:38 celeron55 minetest is one of many
20:38 celeron55 i am no sure if there's something else to it than just releasing it under the GPL and making a website
20:39 celeron55 and it being a minecraft clone at the time when minecraft clones were rare
20:39 Taoki     nice
20:39 Taoki     I work on other FOSS games sometimes. Most very rarely. The one I contributed a lot to over the years is Xonotic, previously called Nexuiz
20:39 Taoki     Written in QuakeC so was easy to learn
20:39 Taoki     Helped me a lot to learn programming over the time. And now MineTest helps with learning actual C++
20:40 celeron55 i mean, it's VERY hard to find such a spot-on new niche now compared to minecraft clones back then
20:41 Taoki     MT is the best MineCraft-like game. Followed byterraria I think
20:41 Taoki     Terraria has much more beaufiful and fantascit environments. But is not as cunfogiurable and far as MT
20:41 Taoki     arely has some ite,s, IIRC only creative mode too
20:41 Taoki     *barely
20:42 celeron55 a funny thing is that there are many minecraft-like voxel games around, almost all of which use more cutting edge rendering stuff and so on
20:42 celeron55 but people just don't seem to like them
20:42 Taoki     Can confirm with Terraria. I don't like them because they're too simple so far. No items, nothing to do... not even multiplayer
20:43 celeron55 i don't like to compare MT or MC with terraria
20:44 celeron55 i guess it's just because it's 2D
20:50 celeron55 i actually am working on a project right now that would accomodate more devs fairly easily
20:50 celeron55 but i want to keep it not open source
20:53 Taoki     In my case, I like open-source too much to feel ok with not open-sourcing sometihng I do :P
20:53 Taoki     Even art (which I'm bad at) I release under a CC license. Just my like with everything I do being free, but it doesn't mean it's necessary all the time
20:54 celeron55 i generally open source everything i do except not all games
20:55 celeron55 well, i can't even say that yet because the games i haven't released as open source wouldn't be ready for release anyway
20:56 celeron55 they are basically prototypes that could grow with the right inspiration
20:56 Taoki     I guess it's safe to say that for quite some time, I've been planning to make an open-source project, very related to voxel worlds. Something betwen MineCraft and Second Life. But to get a better image of what I dreamed of, imagine MineTest but with smooth terrains, high quality textures (1024 x 1024), all items as high-poly meshes, and basically graphics like UT3 / GTA4/ Skyrim).
20:56 Taoki     AND, smooth terrains, not blocky. Which requires marching cubes
20:57 celeron55 sounds like a million hours of work 8)
20:57 Taoki     I already have some small code which doesn't do anything setup. My intent was to do it with OGRE and PolyVox. I'm unsure at this day if MineTest will ever have the features to allow me to do what I'm planning instead
20:57 Taoki     yeah
20:58 Taoki     Minetest actually would. But I'd need new features to get it where I want, which would be difficult and will probably take years. Not sure if all of them would be accepted either
20:58 Taoki     eg: You'll kill me, but I eventually want to add BulletX physics :P Doesn't mean they get merget to trunk of course, but I'd like that
20:58 celeron55 i won't kill you for that
20:58 Taoki     Made a topic about it too. Of course it's not a priority or anything
20:59 celeron55 but it's a lot of work compared to how much people expect to gain from it
20:59 Taoki     yeah, just that some might be unsure with the idea especially because it can take a lot of resources
20:59 Taoki     true
21:01 Taoki     Ahhh. Someone mentioned that the LUA API doesn't allow responding to key handlers yet. Is that true? Might need a way to implement that for player animations
21:01 Taoki     Since my aim is to have LUA set a new animation / frame range when pressing a new key
21:01 Taoki     Don't wanna hard code them, especially since each player mesh can have different animation ranges.
21:02 celeron55 i would love to see a "minetest re-incarnation", keeping it as simple as possible, made with C, plain simple TCP and with almost nothing fancy except the qualities gotten from it being light per voxel
21:02 celeron55 i have a base of a game that could be used as a base for that kind of thing too
21:03 celeron55 i would love to make it but i love more making something different
21:04 celeron55 if it'd make it, i'd be stuck at making it for at least months, taking out from something truly interesting and educative
21:05 celeron55 and possibly something that could make some money sometime
21:06 celeron55 aaaanyway
21:06 celeron55 Taoki: handling keys like that in server-side Lua would introduce quite a bit of lag to it
21:07 celeron55 lag is a tricky question; there are always exactly two options: 1) allow lag to exist, making things simple, 2) fight lag with complicated systems
21:07 Taoki     I aim to animate everything from LUA. But how do I detect that the player is mining, walking forward or back or strafing, and all that
21:08 celeron55 you'll want to detect those in the CAO
21:08 celeron55 otherwise it'll just going to be laughably laggy
21:08 celeron55 no options
21:08 Taoki     Ah. And animate players from the code?
21:09 celeron55 what does that mean
21:09 Taoki     Must I trigger player animations for walking, mining, etc. from the code? Like I said I'd rather do it in LUA if it's possible and not laggy
21:09 celeron55 where are you going to do it if not in code? 8D
21:10 celeron55 ah you mean C++ vs. Lua
21:10 Taoki     Wanted to do it in LUA
21:10 Taoki     yeah
21:10 Taoki     I'd like LUA to trigger animations
21:10 Taoki     But for players, it would need to know what the player is doing
21:10 Taoki     At least for walking and mining
21:11 Taoki     If I can't get the pressed keys LUA-side, maybe I can use other factors. eg: detect if player has veolcity and touches the ground
21:11 Taoki     If the player is moving horizontally and touches the ground, I can get direction versus rotation and determine if he's strafing or walking forward or walking backward
21:12 celeron55 i would define in the object properties what the waking animation is, what the mining animation is and so on (and allow defining "no animation" too)
21:12 celeron55 for the sake of getting rid of lag
21:13 celeron55 walking*
21:13 Taoki     Those must be defined in LUA, since each custom model can have different animation ranges
21:14 Taoki     Cut on the C++ vs LUA side, the only C++ code I want to add is the one that gets the start and end frame from a LUA command and executes them. I'd like LUA to fully decide when and how to run them
21:14 Taoki     Which can be tricky
21:15 celeron55 ugh... i don't really want to even suggest anything; this is so horribly nontrivial
21:15 Taoki     My plan was / is to make start and end frames an object property like mesh is, this makes most sense. But then, I need a LUA function to detect what the player is doing so it knows how to switch
21:15 Taoki     ok
21:16 Taoki     I'm curious if currently, LUA can at least detect a player's speed and if the player is mining a block
21:16 celeron55 the latter it can't
21:17 celeron55 you'd need to begin with making it know those, somehow
21:17 Taoki     ok. If it can detect speed and if the player touches the ground, walk animation is easy
21:17 Taoki     yeah
21:19 Taoki     celeron55: I wonder how laggy this would be: Whenever the player presses a key, a LUA function is called once (also sending it that player). Same when un-pressing it. But otherwise not loop anything or constantly check tihngs
21:20 celeron55 there is the network in between, to both ways
21:20 celeron55 and also the server's execution tends to be somewhat choppy
21:20 Taoki     ah, yes
21:20 celeron55 (sometimes waiting for some slower thing for hunderds of milliseconds)
21:21 celeron55 (or in the case of current map generator mods, many seconds)
21:21 Taoki     If the animation updates a little more slowly that's ok. But I hope it wouldn't slow down or lag the server or cause other problems
21:21 Taoki     I'd still rather get the keys... feels like the best implementation. It can be a bit slower... later there might be ways to improve it
21:24 celeron55 oh well, just do it somehow... it can't be made perfectly the first time anyway
21:26 celeron55 i have talked too much tonight 8)
21:26 Anchakor  you can make up to it in following months
21:26 Taoki     sure
21:27 Anchakor  celeron55: btw is the latest version of minetest which is coded solely by you can could be used under much more liberal license ten GPL available somewhere?
21:27 celeron55 just take your own initiative and talk with other devs than me 8)
21:28 celeron55 Anchakor: i don't think it is specially marked in any way
21:28 celeron55 i have said it in multiple e-mails and multime times in IRC though
21:29 Anchakor  ok I think I got the version number somewhere in my logs
21:29 Anchakor  though if I were ever to do something close to minetest I would probably code it from the scratch :)
21:30 celeron55 i think the commit is called "extended content type range"
21:30 Anchakor  when you moved to git, were the hg commits preserved?
21:30 celeron55 90d793f8f369bf1431d7a915198cd49b98bbe2d7
21:30 celeron55 they are all there
21:31 celeron55 (you can thank tango_ for that)
21:31 celeron55 the repo literally contains all commits ever made to minetest
21:32 Anchakor  cool thanks
21:45 Taoki     This is weird. In LUA, you register functions to several C++ hooks. For exmaple, minetest.register_on_punchnode. But if I grep the word register_on_punchnode in the code, it does not exist. WTF?
21:48 celeron55 it's implemented in Lua 8)
21:48 celeron55 grep it in builtin/
21:49 celeron55 the registered things will end up in registered_punchnodes or something like that, which will be found in C++
21:49 celeron55 registered_on_punchnodes*
21:49 Taoki     Ah. So the hooks are in another source folder than src?
21:49 Taoki     I'll look
21:52 celeron55 so here's the unarguably best picture of today: http://c55.me/random/2012-10/natsikarhu2.jpg
21:53 Taoki     ahhh, one of those things that are probably hilarious and I don't get :P
21:54 celeron55 it's utter nonsense with style
21:55 celeron55 me sleeps ->
22:03 Taoki     night
22:14 Taoki     Anyone know if ther's a way for LUA to read settings from minetest.conf?
22:17 Anchakor  lol that pic has so many funny things