Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · 8d

Liquid shader is back for the CS2 charms, this time with not-fake physics and not-fake refraction!*

*it's all fake, it's a videogame

8 6 84

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · 20d

The Grandaddy show in Seattle last night, they had a slideshow of old photos taken from various places on tour mostly. The headline got a chuckle from the audience when it popped up. It was followed by a cool horse.

2 1

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · 20d

@quantick.bsky.social fame

1 1

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Jun 23

You should check out this new game @counter-strike.net prettyy good

27

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Jun 13

I hope this was interesting, it's nice when people take an interest in how things are made. There are lots of little ideas and solutions that go into this kind of thing and it's really fun to work with the awesome people at Valve to make it happen.

p.s. we're always hiring www.valvesoftware.com/en/

Valve Corporation

We make games, Steam, and hardware. Join Us.

www.valvesoftware.com

2 29

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Jun 13

I don't really have anything to add about the bottle shader but do check out @doomquasar.bsky.social 's video if you haven't seen it!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XWx...

The CS2 version is pretty much the same, although the physics/not physics is done a bit differently.

1 21

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Jun 13

The caustics from the interactions come from sampling the buffer again, this time reprojected to fit the underwater geometry from the direction of the sunlight. It has its limits and the fade happens when you approach the edge of the buffer. It's also refracted in the same way as the frame buffer.

1 15

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Jun 13

The blue channel was originally just to add silt being kicked up but ended up used for more general long-lasting interations. It's used to carve out a path in the surface debris and the normal derived from this channel allows us to push the UVs apart a bit so it feels like you're moving it around.

2 1 29

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Jun 13

The green channel is used to define where foam should be and is combined with other textures to make it look more detailed than the buffer can handle by itself (although I wish this looked better to be honest).

You can also see here how the red channel perturbs the UVs to give it a parallax effect.

interaction buffer showing where foam effects will be drawn

the foam as it's drawn, a combination of the interaction buffer and other textures

1 16

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Jun 13

The red channel's ripples become normals and are combined with ambient normals along with those from the surface debris and a little from the foam shape too (as we're calculating it anyway). These are then used for the lighting, reflection and refraction effects in the shader.

combined normal mapping on the surface of the water

1 20

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Jun 13

Exactly as stated, the red channel is used for waves/ripples, green for foam, blue for softer and longer lasting interactions. The buffer is sampled directly in the water shader - 3 times for the surface so we convert the channels to normals too.

1 13

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Jun 13

The buffer is smaller still on lower settings. The reason it's not shrunk the same in both dimensions is we noticed the limitation of where it starts to look too blocky happens sooner in the vertical due to the foreshortening you usually get when looking out horizontally across the plane.

Hillsguy @hillsguy.bsky.social · Jun 11

Buffer size is ¼ of the horizontal and ½ of the vertical screen resolution.

Red channel is used for waves and caustics.
Green channel is used for splashes and foam.
Blue channel is used for dust and trails on mud/junk on the water surface.

Everything is rendered using flat 2D textures.

Some of the multichannel textures were split for viewing purposes, some were desaturated or cropped.

1 15

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Jun 13

Interactions are where particle effects would tend to be anyway. E.g. when a character intersects the water plane a particle system is spawned containing both the splashes (normal particles) and the water interaction (water plane oriented interaction effects).

1 16

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Jun 13

This is a great thread @hillsguy.bsky.social, I'll add a bit more context here for anyone interested.

Yes there's no fancy sim - it just uses a water interaction buffer as a target for the particle system rendering, so we could use the power of particle system we already have.

Hillsguy @hillsguy.bsky.social · Jun 11

Decided to check out how water is rendered in Counter-Strike 2.

Given how interactive water in CS2 is, I expected to see some cellular fluid simulation, but turns out they just use a low-resolution off-screen buffer with flat 2D decals used for various aspects of water. Reminds me of HL2 water :)

4 52 240

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · May 25

My cat tree has fruited! Does anyone know if this plump beauty is ripe for the picking?

4 1 46

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Apr 16

Munoz on -1 for a double game week though

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Apr 16

The hardest chance. Phew!

1 2

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Apr 16

8 goals now so far and 1 assist 😭

1

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Apr 15

How's it going on twitter sorry the everything app sorry twitter

3 11

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Mar 23

It might also be the Harold Shipman beard. Hope you're well mate!

1 1

Reposted by Matthew Wilde

tomg @tomgiardino.bsky.social · Mar 14

Today we shared the 2024 Year In Review, a summary of all the cool new tools and features we added to Steam last year. (plus some interesting data points about how the platform is growing).
store.steampowered.com/news/group/4...

Steamworks Development - Steam Year In Review 2024 - Steam News

At the end of every year, our team looks back at the features we shipped and the problems we solved. We summarize that work for the developers and publishers of PC games.

store.steampowered.com

2 21

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Feb 13

Genuine question @dominos-pizza.bsky.social : Is that stuffed crust or classic?

1 3

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Feb 9

On reflection I blame @vizcomic.bsky.social

2

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Feb 9

I'm not even sure where I got that picture. This was the early 90s, it's not like today where people are accustomed to being able to Google pictures of Peter Beardsley's cock and balls whenever they want

3 9

Matthew Wilde @skilful.bsky.social · Feb 9

Clearing out my parents house which isn't much fun, but it was heartwarming to see my mum kept hold of the t-shirt I made with Peter Beardsley's cock and balls hanging out

Badly home made t-shirt featuring a transferred photo of 80s footballer Peter Beardsley with his cock and balls hanging out

Honestly if you can't see this I envy you

2 29