2D Toolkit Forum

2D Toolkit => Support => Topic started by: ryf9059 on June 01, 2013, 06:00:26 pm

Title: Just had an awesome feature in mind, can 2dtk support it?
Post by: ryf9059 on June 01, 2013, 06:00:26 pm
Just thought of that if a sprite can show its contour would be totally awesome, can be conbined with many situations to make cool effect, for example, is an object is selected we can have highlight contour arond it (I mean the actual shape, not the rectangular texture).

Makes sense to you? Can you consider supporting this feature?
Title: Re: Just had an awesome feature in mind, can 2dtk support it?
Post by: unikronsoftware on June 01, 2013, 07:23:23 pm
By that you mean the outline? All generic techniques to display outline require custom data, and are pretty specific, or require a custom shader + distance field, and only works with certain kinds of things. I don't think there is any general technique which will work well in all cases, AND run well on bad hardware, eg. mobile phones.
Title: Re: Just had an awesome feature in mind, can 2dtk support it?
Post by: ryf9059 on June 02, 2013, 04:44:09 am
By that you mean the outline? All generic techniques to display outline require custom data, and are pretty specific, or require a custom shader + distance field, and only works with certain kinds of things. I don't think there is any general technique which will work well in all cases, AND run well on bad hardware, eg. mobile phones.

Just found another post http://unikronsoftware.com/2dtoolkit/forum/index.php/topic,503.0.html
It's kind of like this effect demonstrated.

I'm desining game on PC so performence shouldn't be a concern. I think of this because there was a editor that just made an update and in that update when I mouse over a sprite it will show its outline, and I thought that is pretty cool.
Title: Re: Just had an awesome feature in mind, can 2dtk support it?
Post by: unikronsoftware on June 02, 2013, 12:02:33 pm
That approach Finnegan posted there would be incredibly expensive at runtime, and will also only work on certain kinds of sprites. I can't see that being part of the core toolkit for those reasons.

What I'm planning on expanding on is a plugin system similar to the animation editor plugin system, which will make it possible to add metadata like this into the sprite collection build. This could be really useful in doing some lower level game specific systems like this.