The game shader views looked up each shader's technique in the manifest's
"techniques". Property scenery manifests are cached by browsers for a day
(world ones for an hour), so after the update a browser drew the property
view from the manifest the older server had sent, which has no
techniques: every shader fell back to LEGO, whose decal texture alpha
laid the see-through tree, rock and water textures over white vertex
colors. Nimbus Isle came out with white trees, rocks and water, a yellow
build surface and a solid white build border.
- Manifest URLs carry the conversion format the views are written for
(?format=5, scenery-core.js SCENERY_FORMAT), so a kept manifest from
an older server is never used; SceneryCoreJs checks it matches
Scenery.cpp FORMAT_VERSION.
- A manifest without techniques (an older server's) is drawn with the
viewer's own lights and its textureAlpha table instead of every
shader guessed as LEGO.
- A material whose NiAlphaController animates its alpha is drawn at its
highest key. The AnimAlpha shaders now use the material alpha, and
effects resting at 0 in the file (the Venture Explorer's lightning)
had vanished. Conversion format 5.
Checked by rendering the world view of every zone with models and the
property view of every property template (headless, fixed cameras)
before and after, and the Nimbus Isle property with a manifest stripped
of its techniques, which reproduced the white look.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
NifFile::TechniqueFor maps every mapShaders gameValue to the client's
technique family (fixed function, LEGO, Basic/AlphaAsAlpha, metal, clear
plastic, ocean distortion, flat surf, BrickWater, darkling, terrain mesh),
its eShaderLook bits, texture alpha and eTechniqueFlag bits (moving
texture, both sides, blend, alpha test, additive, no ambient, glow,
super emissive, grayscale, shiny glint, not drawn, ...), from res/shaders
and the verified technique setups. Values it lacks are the LEGO shader,
as the client falls back to it. TextureAlphaFor and ShaderLookFor read it.
The scenery manifests carry it as "techniques" (replacing textureAlpha
and shaderLooks), the flairs' manifest a Flair.fx technique, the
lighting its specular color. /api/scenery/env/:name serves the
environment cubes the client's shaders load themselves (default
reflection, polished and brushed metal, brushed noise). Conversion
format 4.
scenery-core.js: techniqueOf, gameLook with the family and flags,
blendingOf, parseDdsCube; its test checks the flag and look bits against
NifFile.h.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
NifFile::TechniqueFor maps every mapShaders gameValue to the client's
technique family (fixed function, LEGO, Basic/AlphaAsAlpha, metal, clear
plastic, ocean distortion, flat surf, BrickWater, darkling, terrain mesh),
its eShaderLook bits, texture alpha and eTechniqueFlag bits (moving
texture, both sides, blend, alpha test, additive, no ambient, glow,
super emissive, grayscale, shiny glint, not drawn, ...), from res/shaders
and the verified technique setups. Values it lacks are the LEGO shader,
as the client falls back to it. TextureAlphaFor and ShaderLookFor read it.
The scenery manifests carry it as "techniques" (replacing textureAlpha
and shaderLooks), the flairs' manifest a Flair.fx technique, the
lighting its specular color. /api/scenery/env/:name serves the
environment cubes the client's shaders load themselves (default
reflection, polished and brushed metal, brushed noise). Conversion
format 4.
scenery-core.js: techniqueOf, gameLook with the family and flags,
blendingOf, parseDdsCube; its test checks the flag and look bits against
NifFile.h.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
NifFile::ShaderLookFor knows Polished Metal (98), Brushed Steel (99) and
LEGO-Emissive (53). The UGC mesh route sends each mesh's look (from its
multishader tag), and the UGC 3D view draws metal as reflective and glow
unlit. The zone views draw LEGO-Emissive objects going to their vertex
color by its alpha, as the shader does.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Shader 94 ("Basic") draws with vertex colors: its class's technique setup
names Technique_Basic_Lighting_VertColor, as 38 "Basic VC" does. The views
treated it as having none, so Nimbus Station's glom pines (tag S84) came
out as their grey texture, white. The other shader looks in use were
checked the same way (33, 35, 37, 70, 82, 84, 105 hold).
- Two layer shaders: NiTexturingProperty's dark texture and the UV set each
texture's flags name are read, and the views draw "Two Layers Blended" as
the dark texture under the base one by the vertex alpha (no longer as
opacity) and "Two Textures Added" as in TwoLayersAdded_PS. Avant Gardens'
snowy grass mounds were see-through hills. The client ships no technique
for the blended ones, so that blend follows the meshes' data.
- The near plane follows how far out the camera is (distance / 400, 0.5 to
20) instead of a fixed 0.5 over a far plane in the thousands, so ground
overlays, floor rings and road pieces stop fighting in far views.
- Conversion format 3 (new model data), so kept conversions are made again.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A "Scenes" choice in the world and property 3D views: every scene (as
before), the scenes the game keeps loaded around the camera or the followed
player (the scene under it from the terrain's scene map, the scenes its
transitions connect to, and the global scene, following as it moves), or
scenes picked from a list (world view). The lighting blends to the lighting
of the scene under the focus, as the client blends between scenes.
The scenery manifest now carries each object's scene, the zone's scenes with
their neighbours and lighting, and the scene map as runs (37 KB for Avant
Gardens); scenery-core.js finds the scene at a point exactly as ZoneScenes
does (checked against it on 2000 points of Avant Gardens).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Glom models (multishader) drew their trees, rocks, fences and water white.
Their conversions kept on disk from before meshes carried their multishader
tag were still served (the cache format version was never bumped), so every
part fell back to the LEGO shader, whose texture alpha lays the (mostly grey)
texture over the vertex colors that hold the actual colors. Browsers also
kept those models for a week.
- Bump the conversion format so old conversions are made again, and put it
in the manifests; the viewers add it to model and texture URLs.
- Light scenery as the client's shaders do: the scene's sun and ambient
light from its .lvl (read as level_read_lighting_info, 0x0102f8f0, and
EnvironmentManager::SetLightEnv, 0x01088aa0, do), per vertex, clamped,
instead of the view's own lights, environment map and tone mapping. The
zone takes the lighting most of its objects' scenes have.
- Programmable shaders read vertex colors and ignore NiMaterialProperty's
color and alpha; unlit and untextured shaders (by mapShaders gameValue)
leave out lighting or the texture. Fixed function stays as it was.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
