Adaptive skin

[Rabid-wolf]

I have an idea for an Adaptive/reactive camo skin.

Basically, your skin would adapt at the start of the map by reading the major colors and rendering your skin in those muted colors.

Example: if you were in the Alaska Outpost map, you skin would be in shades of white, gray and black, if you are in Pine Ridge, your skin would be in shades of green, an indoor map would render in shades of the decor (cabinets, floor, walls..etc.).

Once set at the beginning of the map, your skin would not change during that map.

Is this even possible?

[GreatEmerald]

Hmm... It could even read the zone's fog colour to help with blending, and that colour is usually the one you want... Then somehow manipulate textures, and it could be possible...

[jefe]

I've seen something like that on the Death Warrant monster mash server. There is a dinosaur-like creature that camouflages itself with whatever texture it is standing on.

I like Emerald's idea though. I know you can set up a color modifier in Unreal Ed for textures. If you could somehow make that modifier dynamically match the level or zone fog, it might work. It obviously won't work if no fog color is set.

[Wail of Suicide]

This general concept of a dynamic skin is definitely possible, but determining what colors are in the level's palette as a whole does not seem like it would be.

Probably the best way to do that would be to look at all the default texture packages in UT2004 and develop a skin for each major theme (e.g. Arborea, Alleria, Abaddon, etc.). At that point you'd just want to adjust the skin based on a texture found in the map (or, perhaps, if you're ambitious, you could do something like looking at all of the textures in the map and summing the number of textures from each package and using the most frequently occurring known texture package). Custom texture packages would pretty much throw a wrench into this, naturally.

[Lorin-Slasher]

There is the drawback of being unable to use them in maps with custom textures if what you're saying is true.

[GreatEmerald]

Yea, plus a map can have, say, textures from alleria but also from abaddon (like fog ring etc. etc.), then the script might give the wrong colour.
Why can't it get the colour of the ZoneInfo's fog, create a texture that only has that colour, and apply it to skins?

[Lorin-Slasher]

... I have an idea.
This may be hard to do but it may be possible, I dunno.
Remember how Camo's done with splotches all around... I'm guessing that we CODE specific splotches in a texture so that they'd use the RUT (Recently Used Textures) in the Map.

[Kazimira]

It could turn out good or very very bad but thats the risk of useing that skin.

[Rabid-wolf]

Modification to the idea: what about making a set of skins (urban, urban night, jungle, jungle night, arctic, arctic night), make a mutator that included an ini file in which you enter a map list. When the map loads the mutator looked in the list and selected the appropriate skin (based on the list you entered for each skin).

I'm sure, since UT2k4 has been out so long, this has all been thought about, however, I've only been playing a couple of years and get these ideas, just no skill set to implement them.

Thanks to all those who have put so much in to it.

RW

[GreatEmerald]

Possible... Make your mutator look up the INI, find if the current map name matches, and with a help of some IF statements you should be good to go.

[Lorin-Slasher]

I see a flaw with that... Good idea, but it's a bit flawed. That means you'd have to make an IF statement for EVERY Custom map out there. Knowing the number of maps out there, that's gonna take a long time... unless...

... unless one can adjust the INI accordingly with the maps they got. Put in the name like... DM-Zeitkind=UrbanNight

[GreatEmerald]

Why for every map? That's what Arrays are used for.

[Wail of Suicide]

The easier and more realistic solution is to make a skin shader which draws from several different other textures (which could be retrieved from the map) to make a patchwork/camo effect. Whether the skin dynamically adjusted itself or only once per map would be something that could be determined later.

[Lorin-Slasher]

...

Or... make a bunch of SELECTABLE Skins and use them in whatever map the user wants.

[Rabid-wolf]

The only maps you would be concerned with are the ones on your particular server.
Server A has map list A in the server side mutskin.ini
Server B has map list B in the server side mutskin.ini
I have the client side bit of the mut on my system and the severs push the mut.
I join Server A, the server knows the map in play and tells the client which skin to display during loading. At map change the same thing happens again. The skin would only load once per map and it would be up to the server admin to decide which skin goes with which map.

Similar yet unrelated bit of fluff that popped out of my head: While playing ChaosUT:Carball, I noticed that my name on the car's license plate. Q: how hard would that be to add to a clan skin? I don't want guests on the server to have to load a skin for each clan member, but, would like them to be distinctive.

Thanks,
RW