dsjenkins
Joined: 16 May 2007
Posts: 4
Location: Portland, Oregon
(Programming section) Post: Color reading.
Can Reality Factory 'read' a color at a pixel coordinate at runtme? Like, a specific pixel, and its rgb 255 colors, in a 100X100 pixel bitmap? Can it read that data from a file, and return that result to a script as a variable?
Jay
Joined: 08 Jul 2005
Posts: 512
Location: Germany
No that's not possible. What are you trying to do? Maybe we can find a workaraound.
btw this topic could be moved to Scripting.
Well, the ability to read a color from a bitmap is an intuitive way to create data for levels, and other things. I came up with it years ago, trying to design an rpg. By 'painting' the trees on a bitmap, then saving, the program could read, and generate the levels with much more complexity and subtlety than text alone, and GMs could bash out 'maps' for large areas of the game quickly. While the players are walking along in one map, they could be fleshing out the next. The players actions, say cuttingdown a tree, or building a ford for a river, as well as campsites (for enemies to track) could be added to the 'map'
So the players would be creating persistant environments, where there actions actually change things. Then in a MMORPG, we would have persistant world that evolves with the usage by players.
Even if RF can't do it by itself, that faciltiy to read the data, the 'render' or generate the required text files to place pre-existing tree actors, and bush actors, and references to grass texture and alpha maps into foliage entities would not be too hard. Then, it would be a level interpreter, updating level data when the player gets near a portal to a new level. I was just hoping that RF had some of the openness within its current tools to read graphics and output some numbers from it.