Is there a "Predator style" rendering

[hgdagon]

Is there a "Predator style" rendering for Quake yet? Via cvar or any other way? If no would it be difficult to implement one?






P.S. As you've already guessed, screens are from Q2

[Syluxguy28O3]

this could be an interesting replacement for the ring, but it would make you more visible to the trained eye, which might ruin mp.

[gnounc]

Both darkplaces and fte support shaders.
Thats what you're looking for.
I'd be willing to bet with some digging, you can even find the exact shader def you're looking for. Probably from the guys who did that one for q2.

[Spike]

fte's 'high' particleset has a teleport effect that creates distortions.
the glsl:
you could take that apart and use the surface normal instead. if you move the point forwards and transform that 3d pos into screenspace, you can then use that new screenspace pos as a texture coord.
if you do the custom transform in the fragment shader, you can include some texture displacement map (as well as bumpmaps etc), and adjust the scroll speed/alpha. combine two scrolling textures additively for more of a ripple instead of scrolling.

the qc:
If you set the entity's .skin to 100-109, you can get fte to use a shader named "gfx/skin100" (hexen2 feature for global skins, except fte allows shaders instead of just textures).
csqc can use the .forceshader field in order to avoid the use of the global skins feature.

doing it in dp instead:
I really have no idea.

[LambentHammerBurst]

I imagine in Darkplaces using the shaders used on water (refraction and all) might work. Make a liquid-like texture, use those shaders and place on model.

[Seven]

Hello hgdagon,

Just like gnounc said. You can do this via shader.
Spike explained how it can be done for his FTE engine (which I am not familiar with).
If you want to use the DP engine, you can use its existing dp_refract shader keyword for such a "Predator style" visual.
DP also supports several Q3:A shaders, so you can give it a nice looking motion via 'tcMod xxx' usage. That makes it even more looks like you want it to.

If you want to go with DP, here is one way to do it:
- A relatively new DP engine (because older ones do not support these shaders on models !)
- A texture that can be used for this (like OoPpEe mentioned too)
I used for the below screenshots the water0 textures from the DP pretty water v0.55
- enable r_water 1
- A shader. I used this one, but this is just a most probably bad example:

progs/soldier.mdl_0
{
qer_editorimage textures/water/water0.tga
qer_trans 20
surfaceparm nomarks
surfaceparm trans
surfaceparm water
surfaceparm nolightmap
q3map_globaltexture
{
map textures/water/water0.tga
tcmod scale 1 1 // texture scale
tcMod scroll 0.1 0.1 // texture cross movement
blendfunc blend
}
dp_refract 2 1 1 0.7
}

You do NOT want to use dp_water for this, because you only need the refraction and not the reflection for this visual effect.

As mentioned, this visual depends heavily on the texture and its normal. Search for a better one than water0 if you want.
You should defenitely use the tcMod scroll shader keyword as this boosts the visual a lot.
Unfortunately a screenshot can not show this moving effect.

Good luck,
Seven

[hgdagon]

Case closed. Seven, you're a genius!!