You Died test

[673f57c2bbd82ZylonBane]

I got a silly notion last night, wondering if it would be possible to have a Dark Souls-style "You Died" screen pop up in SS2 when you die.

The challenge of this is displaying a message that fills the screen, that's resolution-independent, maintains the same orientation no matter which way the player object is flopped around, and can have its scale and transparency animated. Dark doesn't want to let us do any of these things. Not easily anyway.

At first I thought attaching a cube to the player with the message on the inside might work, but this clips into the terrain, so that won't work.

Using the camera attach system to put a flat plane in front of the player almost works. This is how the compass overlay is attached to the player. It's supposed to not clip into the terrain, but for some reason when this was used for a screen-filling transparent object, it clipped into the terrain anyway. Somehow this was fixed by configuring the attachment to place it VERY close to the player camera. I don't know why this makes a difference, but it does.

But that still didn't quite work, because there's no way to configure camera-attached objects to always face the player. There are options for locking various rotation axes, but none do what I needed. So the message would spin and wobble as the player turned and looked up and down.

The solution: instead of a flat polygon, camera attach a bitmap object. These always face directly at the player. It turns out that if you set up an object for an animated bitmap, but leave off all the animation properties, you basically get a simplistic worldspace bitmap. Maybe a worldspace bitmap would have worked here too.

Also since the fade-to-black when you die also fades out any camera attached objects, that fade had to be disabled, since I wanted the message to be full brightness even as the background was blacked out behind it. The fade to black is now handled by the background of the message overlay. But that means if you're playing on an ultrawide monitor, the sides of the image won't be covered. Oh well.

And the final challenge, HUD overlay elements display on top of everything. This meant that if the player got killed while for instance looking at the automap, the "YOU DIED" message would be completely obscured behind it. So I had to hide all overlay elements. That part was easy. The hard part was restoring the overlays after the player respawns. To simplify things, I ended up noting whether the player is in use or shoot mode when they die. If they die in use mode, shoot mode is forcibly activated. I didn't want to do this because it makes an audible kerchunk sound when the player respawns, but it's the cleanest way to deal with the dozen or so different overlays that could be active in use mode. The alternative would have been trying to sensibly preserve whatever UI state the player was in. E.g. MFD and PDA panels would be fine to keep open, but container, keypad, etc, panels would have to be shut off, yadda yadda. Madness.

Anyway...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khJQEosEerg

EDIT: Testing complete, posted to the mods forum.

[673f57c2bc087sarge945]

Now we just need an Estus Flask mod...

[673f57c2bc1ecJDoran]

That looks great to me. Though perhaps:

"You Died.

Resurrecting"

might be better.

[673f57c2bc37bvoodoo47]

"terminal damage detected, reconstructing" if we want to go with something more shocky.

I don't think I need this but the technical side of things surely is fascinating.

[673f57c2bc492sarge945]

I wonder if it would be at all possible to play a video file...

I would love to see the "rebooting" screens from SS1

[673f57c2bc580ZylonBane]

Playing a video file is trivial. Multiple video files play during the space station training sequence.

[673f57c2bc660sarge945]

That's why I suggested it. I thought it wouldn't be super hard to do.

[673f57c2bc744ZylonBane]

Apparently in Sargese, "I wonder if it would be at all possible" actually means "I already know it's possible, doi".

[673f57c2bc90bsarge945]

The "I wonder if it would be possible to...." wasn't some vague question about the engine or about the feasibility of adding a video to a mod. It was directed at you specifically as the mod author. I was 95% sure the engine could do that, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily possible or even desirable for you to do in your mod.

Are you telling me you've never heard anyone use "Would it be possible to" in place of "Would you please" in any conversation? Like "Would it be possible for you to close that door? Thanks."

https://www.phrasemix.com/phrases/would-it-be-possible-to-do-something

How about instead of assuming everyone else is stupid all the time you take some time to analyse how polite conversation actually works. You might learn something by being less of an asshole.

[673f57c2bcd31ZylonBane]

Are you telling me you've never heard anyone use "Would it be possible to" in place of "Would you please" in any conversation? Like "Would it be possible for you to close that door? Thanks."

Yes, I have heard people talking like that. And in all cases where they already knew that the thing was possible, they were without exception being passive-aggressive shits.

In the link you provided, every example was of using that phrasing when the person did NOT already know the answer.

So no, rejected. No moral high ground for you. Just ask for things or make suggestions like a normal person next time. Or at the very least don't act indignant when someone literally answers the question you literally asked.

[673f57c2bcf8cJDoran]

Apparently in Sargese, "I wonder if it would be at all possible" actually means "I already know it's possible, doi".

What does 'doi' mean, please?