I've been running 2.8 over the weekend and have noticed a marked deterioration in the way background sprites appear on screen.
Frequently they are barely visible.
For simple images with high contrast things seem okay but for any of the photo's or more detailed images I've added, I'm now getting rather murky results. All the images I use are jpg and grayscale.
I noticed that Andy has made some changes to the way colourmaps are handled and am wondering wether this is might be the cause.
I extended the duration for the backgrounds and the colormap being used does appear to make quiet a difference as to wether you can actually see the background or not.
Foreground sprites appear fine.
Is anybody else having a similar experience?
I suppose my next step is too try and make a small list of "good and bad" colormaps and see if there is any common element.
On the upside I've discovered that my monitor has some quick adjusting options which I've never nticed before.
Everyday there's something new!
2.8 and background sprites
Moderators: BTT, andy55, b.dwall, juxtiphi
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JayPro
- Posts: 738
- Joined: Sat May 01, 2004 10:51 pm
- Location: Huntington Station, Long Island, New York
Sprites seem to be working fine with me (OS X 10.3.
.
In fact not only is the phas-in and phase-out of photosprites smoother than ever, I also notice *much* less of the instantaneous "burping" in framerate that happens when a large sprite file loads.
It may well be that given the revamped prefs and functionality of the colormap structure, it might be difficult to see some of your images. That's happend with me too. I'm looking into this iMap pref myself to see what changing it would do.
.In fact not only is the phas-in and phase-out of photosprites smoother than ever, I also notice *much* less of the instantaneous "burping" in framerate that happens when a large sprite file loads.
It may well be that given the revamped prefs and functionality of the colormap structure, it might be difficult to see some of your images. That's happend with me too. I'm looking into this iMap pref myself to see what changing it would do.
"God is syntax."
Hi nuytsia! I have run every GF release since GF2.6.2 (including betas) and am currently running 2.8. Every upgrade has improved on the previous one in every respect, and I say that without any reservations. Waveshapes, FlowFields, and ColorMaps have all played better than in the previous version... I am really looking forward to GF3 with bated breath.
As far as Sprites are concerned, the improvements on their presentation has been been at least as good as those cited above, and I am a BIG sprite fan, currently running 2,474 high resulotion (150 dpi) JPEG sprites in addition to all of the stock GF sprites.
If you are having problems with sprite displays, I would look at your local GF configuration before laying any blame on G-Force. I normally make no changes to to stock GF Prefs setup and have no problems. If you choose to customize, make one change at a time, and check how it works before making an additional change. Take care.
As far as Sprites are concerned, the improvements on their presentation has been been at least as good as those cited above, and I am a BIG sprite fan, currently running 2,474 high resulotion (150 dpi) JPEG sprites in addition to all of the stock GF sprites.
If you are having problems with sprite displays, I would look at your local GF configuration before laying any blame on G-Force. I normally make no changes to to stock GF Prefs setup and have no problems. If you choose to customize, make one change at a time, and check how it works before making an additional change. Take care.
2.8 and Background sprites
Hi Toby,
Seems like we have a great deal in common.
Glad to hear that you get the same level of enjoyment out of GForce as I do. I've been using it since version 2.0 and I also have been wowed by what is a great piece of software. As you say it just keeps getting better and better and I too look forward to GF3.
I must say I'm quite literally staggered with your enormous collection of sprites. To be quite honest, I'm almost embarassed by my measely 170 odd.
In terms of improvement (in sprites), to my thinking the presentation appears to be a lot slicker.
Sadly (as I originally posted) they also often appear somewhat duller.
I say this as I have a couple of song scripts which now in places seem a tad murky. Same colormap, same flowfield, same waveshape, same background sprite but for some reason less impact.
It's obvious from the feedback that no one else is seeing this so I'm at a loss to understand why I alone am observing it.
I've tried a reinstall but it's still the same.
Like you Toby I don't tend to alter the prefs. My only adjustments are to set the displaying of track text and the screen resolution. I let GF install over, as my changes are mere minutes.
Don't get me wrong, I'll quite happily do a quick tinker in the prefs, but to my mind it's never really been necessary.
Of course it would help if I knew what to tinker and wether this "murkiness" is actually tinkerable (is that a word?) but I don't know what the reason for the problem is. My assumption is the colormap changes as in the revision notes they appeared to be the major changes.
But that's an assumption and I could well be wrong here (and probably are)
If you can shed some light on this matter I would be very grateful.
Actually, now looking at my original post I suppose I could have been a little clearer. I'm using windows by the way. No, don't laugh!
As I'm out on my own on this one, it's obviously not a problem.
In all honesty it'll probably be just a couple of hours of image editing to readjust the levels on the background sprites (if that is the answer; that's the obvious one to me so far). It'd be nice though to have confirmation that this was the case and if anyone else had an alternative work around.
One question I do have though is why your images are 150dpi? I know high res images are necessary for decent printing but wasn't aware they were necessary elsewhere?
Also does anyone know is there a benefit to grayscaling sprite images?
Take care.
Seems like we have a great deal in common.
Glad to hear that you get the same level of enjoyment out of GForce as I do. I've been using it since version 2.0 and I also have been wowed by what is a great piece of software. As you say it just keeps getting better and better and I too look forward to GF3.
I must say I'm quite literally staggered with your enormous collection of sprites. To be quite honest, I'm almost embarassed by my measely 170 odd.
In terms of improvement (in sprites), to my thinking the presentation appears to be a lot slicker.
Sadly (as I originally posted) they also often appear somewhat duller.
I say this as I have a couple of song scripts which now in places seem a tad murky. Same colormap, same flowfield, same waveshape, same background sprite but for some reason less impact.
It's obvious from the feedback that no one else is seeing this so I'm at a loss to understand why I alone am observing it.
I've tried a reinstall but it's still the same.
Like you Toby I don't tend to alter the prefs. My only adjustments are to set the displaying of track text and the screen resolution. I let GF install over, as my changes are mere minutes.
Don't get me wrong, I'll quite happily do a quick tinker in the prefs, but to my mind it's never really been necessary.
Of course it would help if I knew what to tinker and wether this "murkiness" is actually tinkerable (is that a word?) but I don't know what the reason for the problem is. My assumption is the colormap changes as in the revision notes they appeared to be the major changes.
But that's an assumption and I could well be wrong here (and probably are)
If you can shed some light on this matter I would be very grateful.
Actually, now looking at my original post I suppose I could have been a little clearer. I'm using windows by the way. No, don't laugh!
As I'm out on my own on this one, it's obviously not a problem.
In all honesty it'll probably be just a couple of hours of image editing to readjust the levels on the background sprites (if that is the answer; that's the obvious one to me so far). It'd be nice though to have confirmation that this was the case and if anyone else had an alternative work around.
One question I do have though is why your images are 150dpi? I know high res images are necessary for decent printing but wasn't aware they were necessary elsewhere?
Also does anyone know is there a benefit to grayscaling sprite images?
Take care.
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JayPro
- Posts: 738
- Joined: Sat May 01, 2004 10:51 pm
- Location: Huntington Station, Long Island, New York
Just A Thought;
Perhaps the murkiness of your background pics has something to do with the new iMap pref, with which I have been doing alot of noodling.
The default of i^2.5 is supposed to show a display that allows background colors to dominate. This seems to cause the sprite to blend more with the flowfield.
Setting iMap to plain "i" re-distributes the colormap evenly and in my observations makes the sprite "stick out" more.
PS: I've got 202 so far in my Auto-Backgrounds folder. A few biggies are causing some minor burps; but I like 'em.
Perhaps the murkiness of your background pics has something to do with the new iMap pref, with which I have been doing alot of noodling.
The default of i^2.5 is supposed to show a display that allows background colors to dominate. This seems to cause the sprite to blend more with the flowfield.
Setting iMap to plain "i" re-distributes the colormap evenly and in my observations makes the sprite "stick out" more.
PS: I've got 202 so far in my Auto-Backgrounds folder. A few biggies are causing some minor burps; but I like 'em.
"God is syntax."
Hi,
I just like/love images, which is why I love G-Force, and I think the purdy pichers in the background can add a lot to it. I have pictures ranging from photos of cave-paintings, to paintings by the old masters back to the 1300s; the new masters, like Jackson Pollock, Escher, Picasso, Erte, even a couple Andy Warhol, even though I don't really like him, quite a few abstract and nonobjective paintings, and some sculptures that I particularly like. I've got lots of astronomical photos, pictures of aurora, close-up pictures of bugs and plants, pictures with strong perspective that point mainly toward the 0,0 gridpoint, and a lot of scenics, with some historic sites, like the Lincoln and Washington Monuments, Mount Rushmore, Eiffel tower, and a lotta stuff that I just think looks neat, including some pretty good high-contrast infrared shots. They just all add up after awhile! If you're interested in checking them out, let me know, and we can figure out a way to send them to you... even as JPEGs, it's 77 MBytes total, which could be painful if you're on dial-up.
I can't say for sure, but I think that the apparent sprite murkiness under recent GF releases might be an artifact of Andy's attempt to smooth out and make all images to show better. Since sprites are only an small adjunct to the overall picture, he doesn't really care whether they suffer a little bit. They're just a few candy sprinkles on the icing on top of the cake, if you know what I mean. Overall, I think it's a small price to pay for the overal improvement of the images, but maybe we should bug him about it, at least a little bit. Maybe he could improve things a little bit. He has always been fairly open to suggestions when it doesn't impinge on his overall concept of how he thinks it should be.
I actually have a good reason for the higher resolution sprites. My Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop has a fabulous 1200x1920 pixels on a 8.1"x13" screen, for close to 150 dpi in both directions, well worth every penny extra that it cost me. As you can imagine, however, even using larger than average screen fonts, eye strain is a definite problem if I spend all day on the compute, but damn! Everything is sure sharp! At least until I start to blur !!!
The only reason that I grayscale everything is that, somewhere in the documentation, a year or so ago, it was recommended to do so, so I did, and I've been doing it ever since.
And I promise I won't laugh about your Windows. It only took them 20+ years to do so, but I think that Microsloth finally got it pretty close to right with Windows XP Pro! It still ain't as good as a really good version of UNIX, but you can at least get good software to go with a "pretty good" operating system... bite my tongue... I never thought I would ever be able to say such a good word about Windows, but, now it's done! Thank you, Mr. Gates, sir!
Take care.
I just like/love images, which is why I love G-Force, and I think the purdy pichers in the background can add a lot to it. I have pictures ranging from photos of cave-paintings, to paintings by the old masters back to the 1300s; the new masters, like Jackson Pollock, Escher, Picasso, Erte, even a couple Andy Warhol, even though I don't really like him, quite a few abstract and nonobjective paintings, and some sculptures that I particularly like. I've got lots of astronomical photos, pictures of aurora, close-up pictures of bugs and plants, pictures with strong perspective that point mainly toward the 0,0 gridpoint, and a lot of scenics, with some historic sites, like the Lincoln and Washington Monuments, Mount Rushmore, Eiffel tower, and a lotta stuff that I just think looks neat, including some pretty good high-contrast infrared shots. They just all add up after awhile! If you're interested in checking them out, let me know, and we can figure out a way to send them to you... even as JPEGs, it's 77 MBytes total, which could be painful if you're on dial-up.
I can't say for sure, but I think that the apparent sprite murkiness under recent GF releases might be an artifact of Andy's attempt to smooth out and make all images to show better. Since sprites are only an small adjunct to the overall picture, he doesn't really care whether they suffer a little bit. They're just a few candy sprinkles on the icing on top of the cake, if you know what I mean. Overall, I think it's a small price to pay for the overal improvement of the images, but maybe we should bug him about it, at least a little bit. Maybe he could improve things a little bit. He has always been fairly open to suggestions when it doesn't impinge on his overall concept of how he thinks it should be.
I actually have a good reason for the higher resolution sprites. My Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop has a fabulous 1200x1920 pixels on a 8.1"x13" screen, for close to 150 dpi in both directions, well worth every penny extra that it cost me. As you can imagine, however, even using larger than average screen fonts, eye strain is a definite problem if I spend all day on the compute, but damn! Everything is sure sharp! At least until I start to blur !!!
The only reason that I grayscale everything is that, somewhere in the documentation, a year or so ago, it was recommended to do so, so I did, and I've been doing it ever since.
And I promise I won't laugh about your Windows. It only took them 20+ years to do so, but I think that Microsloth finally got it pretty close to right with Windows XP Pro! It still ain't as good as a really good version of UNIX, but you can at least get good software to go with a "pretty good" operating system... bite my tongue... I never thought I would ever be able to say such a good word about Windows, but, now it's done! Thank you, Mr. Gates, sir!
Take care.
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JayPro
- Posts: 738
- Joined: Sat May 01, 2004 10:51 pm
- Location: Huntington Station, Long Island, New York
BTW;
I had to change the iMap pref from the current default as stated in my previous post to a simple "i" because it was taking a colormap or two of mine and doing strange things to it.
I have a palette called "Fade to Blue" which is a simple earth-toned map with...you guessed it...a razor-thin blue border. The "i^2.5" was changing said border into a prismatized sorta display, i.e. blue to red to green or something like that.
Setting it back to "i" solved the issue.
So don't be surprised if you see a familiar palette looking different with iMap at the current default. It's not a big thing as I experiment with thibngs; but it could be seen as a drawback that is indeed quite user-fixable, depending on whether colormap integrity or sprite definition is more important.
I had to change the iMap pref from the current default as stated in my previous post to a simple "i" because it was taking a colormap or two of mine and doing strange things to it.
I have a palette called "Fade to Blue" which is a simple earth-toned map with...you guessed it...a razor-thin blue border. The "i^2.5" was changing said border into a prismatized sorta display, i.e. blue to red to green or something like that.
Setting it back to "i" solved the issue.
So don't be surprised if you see a familiar palette looking different with iMap at the current default. It's not a big thing as I experiment with thibngs; but it could be seen as a drawback that is indeed quite user-fixable, depending on whether colormap integrity or sprite definition is more important.
"God is syntax."
Hi Duane
I'm still tinkering with this on and off (other things have cropped up that I've needed to deal with) and frankly I'm not really sure.
I've changed the iMap value from 2.5 to 1 and to 0.8.
I've also extended the time that background sprites are up for, to see how colourmap and flowfield changes impact.
As JayPro states lowering the iMap value will make the background sprite show up better but I'm noticing what colourmap is loaded seems to make a huge difference on sprite legibility. I also think that some flowfields can be less back-sprite friendly.
Have a bash and see what you think.
When I get a few moments I'm going to reload 2.7 and run a scripted comparison to make sure that I'm not imaging things and actually try to give a more detailed evaluation rather than a whingey unspecified post.
First thing I need to do is run GF in verbose mode and record good and bad combinations.
I'll report back later but it might be a month or so as I'm being sent to Australia for a month.
I'm still tinkering with this on and off (other things have cropped up that I've needed to deal with) and frankly I'm not really sure.
I've changed the iMap value from 2.5 to 1 and to 0.8.
I've also extended the time that background sprites are up for, to see how colourmap and flowfield changes impact.
As JayPro states lowering the iMap value will make the background sprite show up better but I'm noticing what colourmap is loaded seems to make a huge difference on sprite legibility. I also think that some flowfields can be less back-sprite friendly.
Have a bash and see what you think.
When I get a few moments I'm going to reload 2.7 and run a scripted comparison to make sure that I'm not imaging things and actually try to give a more detailed evaluation rather than a whingey unspecified post.
First thing I need to do is run GF in verbose mode and record good and bad combinations.
I'll report back later but it might be a month or so as I'm being sent to Australia for a month.
Nytsia,
I just checked this out on my laptop that still has 2.7.
Used a script and ran it on both computers.
2.7 definitely has brighter sprites!
Ialso looked in 2.7 prefs and there isnt a imap setting in there like there is in 2.8.
So we are not crazy!
I changed to imap setting in 2.8 to 1 and i really didnt see much of a change.
Ahh but changing it to just "i" without ^ or a value did seem to help like Andy said!
hopefully there are no other side effects to this.
Duane
I just checked this out on my laptop that still has 2.7.
Used a script and ran it on both computers.
2.7 definitely has brighter sprites!
Ialso looked in 2.7 prefs and there isnt a imap setting in there like there is in 2.8.
So we are not crazy!
I changed to imap setting in 2.8 to 1 and i really didnt see much of a change.
Ahh but changing it to just "i" without ^ or a value did seem to help like Andy said!
hopefully there are no other side effects to this.
Duane
Hey nuytsia! I have been thinking a lot about this subject ever since your original posting, almost a month ago, and I have been having second, maybe even third, thoughts on the subject. As you might remember, I am a sprite-freak, with almost 2,500 background images in my collection, and I dearly love it when they display. But, we must remember that they are only there to enhance the beautifully flowing graphics of G-Force, which they do, not to be a principle focus of the display. If they were intended as a primary focus, they would be displayed in the 'foreground' , with the flowing G-Force graphics acting only as a matte or a pretty frame. If you really want to emphasize your images, you might want to play around with some of them in the G-Force\Sprites\(Auto Foregrounds) directory, instead of the (Auto Backgrounds) directory. I don't lnow whether it will work, but you might want to give it a try. If you do try it, please let me know how it turns our, positively or negatively.
I have desided, however, that I am going to leave mine right where they are, in the '(Auto Backgrounds)' directory, where they can continue to enhance G-Force, not the other way around. Take care.
I have desided, however, that I am going to leave mine right where they are, in the '(Auto Backgrounds)' directory, where they can continue to enhance G-Force, not the other way around. Take care.
Background sprite and GF3.
Hi Guys,
I know this is really, really late in the day but I thought I ought to just finish off this post.
Got back to UK to find GF3 (Platinum! Thanks Andy!) and what can I say but WOW!
To my mind the sprites presentation seem better than 2.8. Mind you it could be a case of abscence making the heart grow fonder!
I'm still convinced though that the colourmap that is running has a huge effect on the detail that is revealed in your background sprite.
The upshot from my work in Oz is that I've been offered and accepted a job out there, so as you can imagine my life has been turned upside down.
(not literally you understand: Im not out there yet!)
I'm sorry I haven't had the chance to pursue this more but I might pick this up later when I'm settled in Hobart (fingers crossed).
Mind you, the way GF keeps developing this might all be redundant.
Anyway thanks for the feedback.
Nuytsia
I know this is really, really late in the day but I thought I ought to just finish off this post.
Got back to UK to find GF3 (Platinum! Thanks Andy!) and what can I say but WOW!
To my mind the sprites presentation seem better than 2.8. Mind you it could be a case of abscence making the heart grow fonder!
I'm still convinced though that the colourmap that is running has a huge effect on the detail that is revealed in your background sprite.
The upshot from my work in Oz is that I've been offered and accepted a job out there, so as you can imagine my life has been turned upside down.
(not literally you understand: Im not out there yet!)
I'm sorry I haven't had the chance to pursue this more but I might pick this up later when I'm settled in Hobart (fingers crossed).
Mind you, the way GF keeps developing this might all be redundant.
Anyway thanks for the feedback.
Nuytsia