[HN Gopher] Diablo 2 Parallax
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       Diablo 2 Parallax
        
       Author : marginalia_nu
       Score  : 109 points
       Date   : 2023-12-19 15:44 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (simonschreibt.de)
 (TXT) w3m dump (simonschreibt.de)
        
       | quadcore wrote:
       | Ah, it was on my list, now I can cross it, thanks.
       | 
       | If someone knows how the sky of world of warcraft is made (and to
       | a lesser extent the ground of warcraft3 which I think is a clever
       | use of marching squares), please let us know, Ive been wondering
       | for 10+ years. It has an incredible amount of features (day,
       | night, clouds, moon, stars, etc), it's gorgeous, light, updates
       | beautifully every other frame or so and no, it's not rendered-to-
       | texture. Well pretty sure it's not. It's so smooth, you dont see
       | a poly nor a texel. It also runs on a 2002 computer. A marvel of
       | tech-artistery.
        
         | dtech wrote:
         | It isn't just a skybox?
        
           | quadcore wrote:
           | The original sky is mostly procedural, I forgot to mention.
           | The newer skies are more traditional skyboxes.
        
         | dantondwa wrote:
         | Here is a breakdown of a WoW skybox by a Blizzard artist:
         | https://80.lv/articles/how-to-create-skies-for-3d-games/
         | 
         | TLDR. it's multiple skybox meshes layered
        
           | quadcore wrote:
           | That's for the newer skies, the original is mostly
           | procedural.
        
       | theodric wrote:
       | Not loading for me, so here's the archive link:
       | https://archive.is/igjBu
        
       | Dolototo wrote:
       | Is that usable in D2 remasterd?
        
       | kzrdude wrote:
       | It sounds like the dev was very satisfied with parallax, but I
       | don't recall ever using it. I think it just felt weird after
       | already getting used to the default.
        
         | NohatCoder wrote:
         | It also degrades the visual quality of the sprites by not
         | rendering them in 1 to 1 scale. From a modern standpoint where
         | a bit of 3D does not have a wow factor I think it actually
         | looks worse.
        
         | hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
         | It did give a sense of 3D back then when the character is
         | moving fast with a lot of obstruction objects (walls and trees)
         | passing by. Some rendering also gave better lightning effects
         | AFAIR.
        
         | chewbacha wrote:
         | I also found that it was "closer" in and I couldn't see as many
         | of the enemies. For casting, this was an issue.
        
       | simonschreibt wrote:
       | Thanks for sharing my little article :) <3
        
       | jvanderbot wrote:
       | One bit: > However, I don't know why the lower edge of the sprite
       | is bent that way. For the perspective it wouldn't be necessary
       | (below is a 3Ds Max scene to show that the horizontal lines are
       | straight if the camera isn't rotated around its front axis):
       | 
       | I think (think!) this is necessary to simulate a vanishing point
       | "below" the ground for vertically-oriented sprites. The 3dmax
       | scene didn't show much of it b/c it was straight-on with the
       | viewport?
       | 
       | In the moving example, the three stakes would indeed spread out
       | w.r.t. the eye position in real-ish life as you got closer. The
       | 3dmax render does not illustrate this well.
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-19 23:00 UTC)