Introducing SSAO+ and LOOT system news

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Since a couple of weeks before, we been teasing you with something called SSAO. What exactly is that, and why is so important? Grab a cup of tea, big explanation inside with fancy images!

Posted by SysOp. on Dec 30th, 2015

We on TOP 100 thanks for the incredible support!

Since a couple of weeks before, we been teasing you with something called SSAO. What exactly is that, and why is so important? Grab a cup of tea, big explanation coming!

SSAO stands for Screen space ambient occlusion. SSAO+, which is our version, tends to corrects the artifacts of SSAO, and uses new different algorithms, while not that accurate, renders the scene in a much faster way.

A super easy explanation (borrowed from DarkSystems):

Press your hands together. You will notice that there is darkness at the connection point between both hands regardless of how the edge is illuminated. This is called Ambient Occlusion.

SSAO is a relatively cheap technique to obtain that effect in games. It tends to make the contact between objects more realistic.

Poor implementations of SSAO can back fire, and actually, decrease the quality of the scene, like in this example of Farcry 3 (the black outlines):

Here's our take on SSAO+. Please remember this is not complete and will look better :)

SSAO+ (click to enlarge)

OFF vs ON

While subtle, I can be, actually, a quite an improvement.

All those effects will be able to be disabled, in case you wish to increase your performance with ease.

LOOT system (click to enlarge)

The loot system we implemented is inspired on games like Farcry, Dying Light and Fallout. While is not exactly super complex as Fallout, is a blend beetween those and lets the player explore the contents of cabinets, boxes, containers, NPCs and much much more. This way, the player can find items to defend himself, but also, will be able to find things like rare weapon skins... so think twice before going to the next area without exploring!

The system have been successful for these games and we don't expect it to be any different for ARRANGEMENT.

That's it for today! Now is time to do arrangements for new year holidays. We wish you an awesome start of 2016, and we will meet again next year!

For those that wave not watched the video, you can find it below. Cheers!

Comments

Dragonlord - Dec 30 2015 - 1,934 comments

I don't want to be mean but this is no SSAO at all. SSAO is not blasting a constant thick black halo around every object.

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Author

SysOp. - Dec 30 2015 - 1,039 comments

The thick black halo is from Farcry 3, not our mod - Check reference pictures :)

I do understand there's a few artifacts, but that's the trade off. However, this is going to be improved gradually.

Probably we going to use a HDAO, as an option, to make a 100% perfect ambient occlusion, but that will hurt performance a lot.

Time will tell!

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Lesbian_Owl - Dec 31 2015 - 136 comments

Hes right, that no SSAO. But anyways, it works. But have a huge problem with your 3D getting more and more 2D. That ssao is stealing the 3D depth... You need to extremly tweak that SSAO with an depth buffer.

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SysOp. - Dec 31 2015 - 1,039 comments

We already use a depth buffer :)

Here's our approximation:

//
// SSAO fragment shader
//
#version 120
uniform sampler2D depthMap;
//sys values blur 0.1 bias 0 far 3000 near 400 radius 5
//defaults:
//0.04, 100, 0.1, 0
//near, far, radius, bias
uniform vec4 local0;
varying vec3 pos;

void main (void)
{
float zFar = local0.y;
float zNear = local0.x;
float radius = local0.z;
float attBias = local0.w;
const float attScale =1;

vec4 rndTable [8] = vec4 [8]
(
vec4 ( -0.5, -0.5, -0.5, 0.0 ),
vec4 ( 0.5, -0.5, -0.5, 0.0 ),
vec4 ( -0.5, 0.5, -0.5, 0.0 ),
vec4 ( 0.5, 0.5, -0.5, 0.0 ),
vec4 ( -0.5, -0.5, 0.5, 0.0 ),
vec4 ( 0.5, -0.5, 0.5, 0.0 ),
vec4 ( -0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.0 ),
vec4 ( 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.0 )
);

float zb = texture2D ( depthMap, gl_TexCoord [0].xy ).x;
float z = zFar*zNear/(zb * (zFar - zNear) - zFar); // get z-eye
float att = 0.0;
vec3 plane = -vec3 ( 1 );

for ( int i = 0; i < 8; i++ )
{
vec3 sample = reflect ( rndTable [i].xyz, plane );
float zSample = texture2D ( depthMap, gl_TexCoord [0].xy + radius*sample.xy / z ).x;

zSample = zFar * zNear / (zSample * (zFar - zNear) - zFar );

if ( zSample - z > 0.1 )
continue;

float dz = max ( zSample - z, 0.0 ) * 33.0;

att += 1.0 / ( 1.0 + dz*dz );
}

att = clamp ( (att / 8.0 + attBias) * attScale, 0.0, 1.0 );
gl_FragColor = vec4(att,att,att,1.0);
}

Contributions to improve the shader, for this free project are welcome!

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Greatest problem is the distance. Look at the sky. It is not supposed to have shadows. But that building is shadowing it. Not good. There should be a small radius and distance. You need to set that.

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ZikShadow - Dec 30 2015 - 507 comments

When i see that white bar for the loot system, the one image that seeps to my mind is the loot system of NOLF2.
Still, actually checking out enemy equipment rather than simply taking their one weapon's mag should be more interesting.

Wait, weapon skins as in variation of submodels or like actual texturegroup reskins?

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A video of this is coming soon :) - The NOLF 2 system, actually is kinda similar to our idea. No inventory for special items, but is close to Dying Light, and would use a quick menu display, from FO4 and some ideas from FC3.

Weapon skins would be like the ones in CS:GO (mostly, textures). There's an article about this here: Moddb.com

The item drops works in the same way as RPGs, where there are chances of dropping and rarity, but there's a few ingredients mixed in to keep up the things interesting.

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SabreXT - Dec 30 2015 - 296 comments

Scavenging for loot seems a strange choice. I thought this was an action game, not a survival game?

Yes, is still a tactical action game, but we thought the idea blended perfectly, as it increases realism. There are many tiny details that helps that too, way too many to specify, perhaps in another article :)

A few days ago, we implemented the fast camera move aim penalty from SWAT 4, and fits perfectly! (doing fast mouse movements decreases your aim)