Hi,

I have constant problems trying to use the overlay flag. All I want to do is have the black (RGB 0,0,0) areas of the entity not be visible by setting the overlay = on. My problem is that for some reason it never works when I do this, the black areas are still drawn.

I can do other things to get them to disappear, such as setting transparent = on and alpha = 100 (overlay = off)--and that gets rid of the black areas. Also using flare = on in combination with overlay = on also seems to do it. My problem is however by doing it in one of these ways it causes me other problems and headaches...I just want the overlay flag to work as it should without messing with those other commands...what could be the problem I have here??? Thanks in advance for any help.

Describe the entity, is it a model, sprite, or map entity?

No clue what your problem is.

It tends to happen on different entities. This one in particular is an .hmp file with black areas on it. Overlay doesn't get rid of them, however transparent and alpha = 100 does--but I need to find another way because this interferes with display of some sprites over the .hmp.

I've also had instances of sprites with black areas that don't completely disappear with overlay--but instead leave black parts and artifacts and look crummy. I usually clear this up by combining overlay with flare. As I understand setting the overlay flag by itself should be sufficient to clear these problems up, shouldn't it? Thank you.

Hmmm (?),

I would test in 16-bit mode, then in 32-bit mode (never in 8-bit mod¨!). Then I would test MY.AMBIENT = 0; and MY.ALBEDO = 0;

I've had the same problem on one of my maps, but what ever I do I can't get the overlay flag to work. I might try using the "transparent = on and alpha = 100". Could this be a bug?

Thanks for the replies.

DocJoe: Yes I've tried both 16 and 32 bit modes. I know I also played around with the ambient and albedo values (although I don't think I set them to 0).

Basically what it boils down to is that for me the overlay flag never really has worked (without combining and/or using other commands to get the same effect...I don't know.) I thought maybe it's a driver problem with my video card although that seems highly unlikely? Whatever the problem is it has been extremely frustrating and made things much more difficult for me in certain situations.

Hmm, sorry if I can't help with coding, but maybe the following concept can help:

I think, you always want to make VISIBLE/NOT VISIBLE the same parts of an entity. So maybe you make 2 entities. The first (main) entity is the part you never want to disappear, the second is the part you want to disappear (look for an exact overlapping in MED). Now you can create every tick the second entity and give it a same SKILL in model1 and model2 (maybe SKILL44), witch controlls the visible stuff.

FUNCTION fn_first_entity();
FUNCTION fn_second_entity();

DEFINE skill_visible, SKILL44;

ACTION my_action
{
.....
.....
.....
fn_first_entity();
}

FUNCTION fn_first_entity();
{
WHILE (ME)
{
ent_create(.....2.mdl, MY.X, fn_second_entity);
wait 1;
}
REMOVE(ME);
}

FUNCTION fn_second_entity()
{
MY.skill_visible = YOU.skill_visible;
VEC_SET (MY.X, YOU,X);
VEC_SET (MY.PAN, YOU.PAN);

IF (MY.skill_visible == 1)
{
MY.VISIBLE = ON;
}
ELSE{
MY.VISIBLE = OFF;
}
wait 1;
REMOVE(ME);
}

Don't afraid of the continual creating process, it's no problem (maybe make max_entites = 1000; for testing or something similar)! You have to do it one time and you'll see you can make a lot of phantastic tools with this concept!!

Thanks for your input DocJoe. That's an approach I hadn't thought of although I need a bit of time to get experiment and get used to it to see if it may work out. I think I follow your example looking through it somewhat quickly.

Again, that seems like a good "out of the box" line of thinking...