The Gibson screensaver

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 5:59 pm

I'm working on a project in my spare time to recreate the Gibson from the 1995 movie Hackers in the form of a cross-platform screensaver. What else is there to say?

These are some screenshots:

Download: is at http://sites.google.com/site/lazerblade ... Gibson.zip

See here and the readme for details: http://sites.google.com/site/lazerblade ... bsonpart15

Why build my own when there is already one out there? I have a few reasons:

* The one out there is not very true to the movie

* You can hardly see more than a few towers in front of you

* The floor texture seems boring and repetitive

* The camera movement loop is unsatisfying

* The one out there was a trojan piece of malware(at least one version)

* I didn't write the one thats already there

kazymjir · Post by **kazymjir** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 6:09 pm

Nice.
Will you release source?

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 6:11 pm

Of course.

It should be noted though, that this uses a hybrid between my Irrlicht based engine dubbed "Ray3D" and Irrlicht calls.

Zurzaza · Post by **Zurzaza** » Mon Jan 31, 2011 8:12 pm

hehe, i knew the image before reading your post...very great idea...but you mustn't forgive the "Garbage" Folder

Nice work...keep up the task !

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 5:17 am

After I patched DavidJE1's effects class, I started to play around with some effects:

Motion blur:

Bloom:

Unfortunately, using more than one effect at a time really cuts the framerate. So I'll be stuck picking and tweaking one effect/shader for the final version.

kazymjir · Post by **kazymjir** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 5:27 am

AAAAAAAWEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can't wait for first vid/release

bitplane · Post by **bitplane** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 7:27 am

Looks good, though from the look of your comparison screenshot, making it look like the real thing would be immensely challenging. They're ray tracing, using area lights on the floor, reflection and refraction on each tower, plus some post-processing bloom-type filter. Getting that effect even on a modern PC would be pretty tough!

I guess you could use a lightmap to get the area light effect and use a post-processing shader for the bloom, but reflection/refraction would be tough... unless you could somehow do it in 3 calls (all the towers are aligned, so it may be possible)

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 4:03 pm

bitplane wrote:Looks good, though from the look of your comparison screenshot, making it look like the real thing would be immensely challenging. They're ray tracing, using area lights on the floor, reflection and refraction on each tower, plus some post-processing bloom-type filter. Getting that effect even on a modern PC would be pretty tough!

In fact, only the blue pulses were CG in the original. They felt that 3d would look too artificial. Plus if that was back in '95, it would've had to take like 2 years to render or something.

I'm stuck with one effect/shader, which will probably be bloom. No clue about what I'll do with reflection/refraction though. Especially since I want it to run on systems as old as like 2004 or so. (Read: Dell Latitude D610, not my current rig though)

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Wed Feb 02, 2011 6:50 am

Right now things are getting really bumpy and I'm not 100% sure if I can finish *everything* by the time I want. (That time being the sometime on the 7th, my time zone)I will try to reach my goal. If I can't I will probably put up a video showcasing the current WIP version.

I've repented and switched to followSplineAnimator, but it seems to be acting really, really weird. I'm having a lot of trouble setting up a decent spline loop for the camera. SpecialFX are pretty easy though, and I'll keep tweaking them until the last 3.141519265 seconds as always.

kazymjir · Post by **kazymjir** » Wed Feb 02, 2011 6:57 am

Problem with splines?
Consider using my PathCreator:
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... p?p=225123

Unfortunately, I deleted accidentally vid from youtube

But it's very useful in creating paths for followSplineAnimator,
you just moving camera and setting waypoints pressing for example space.
Path are being rendered in realtime.

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:08 am

Looks really cool. You saved me from writing one myself.

I've recently started to suspect my older SVN build of irrlicht to have a bug in followSplineAnimator.

It's 1 o'clock in the morning for me now though, so I have to get some sleep.

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Wed Feb 02, 2011 6:21 pm

kazymjir wrote:Problem with splines?
Consider using my PathCreator:
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... p?p=225123

I just tried it, and its seems that the host is down(or gone).

An upload to mediafire or something would really be appreciated. Even a post of the source would be pretty cool.

Thanks!

kazymjir · Post by **kazymjir** » Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:26 pm

I don't have this file on hdd (release),
but have files that was in development (it is working correctly, but have no documentation):
http://www.mediafire.com/?mnbr6czuz4d8d7n

There is no makefile for demo, but you need only to attach PathCreator.h to your project and follow instructions from PathCreator thread.
Btw, in "Debug" folder there is demo binary.

And here is screenshot how it works:

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Wed Feb 02, 2011 7:56 pm

Awesom! Downloading now...

P.S:
I see Fedora.

Linux = my preferred.

lazerblade · Post by **lazerblade** » Fri Feb 04, 2011 7:26 pm

More screenshots:

And an update on my blog:

https://sites.google.com/site/lazerblad ... bsonpart14

Irrlicht Engine

The Gibson screensaver

The Gibson screensaver

Fun with post processing effects