Everything that needs to be done to make the gates 100% canonical

[JohnOptegrove]

In rough order of what I see to be (perceived) easiest to implement/should be implemented first:

• The chevrons on all gates are far too wide relative to their height. This happened sometime after the move to 9-chevron and 7x7 gates, and it seems odd why this happened when previous versions of the mod were pretty much spot-on with the dimensions. For comparison: Earlier versions of the mod: Current versions of the mod: (admittedly rather difficult to compare due to the angle) Footage from SG-1:
• In current version of the mod, Milky Way gates have non-top chevrons permanently in the "unlocked" state, when they should be permanently in the "locked" state and simply light up.
• Pegasus gates (and, presumably, Wraith gates as well) have chevrons that lock in a similar fashion to those from the 1994 movie. All chevrons should remain in the "locked" state permanently, only lighting up when activated.
• There should be around a one-second delay between when the final chevron locks and the gate actually activates.
• There should be a slight delay between when the chevron locks and the inner ring begins to move (or stops moving). In addition, the ring should "ease into" movement. (Admittedly a minor concern)
• Milky Way gates currently spin the ring when being dialed into and the chevrons lock one by one. In later versions of the show (which I would consider more canonical in their portrayal) the chevrons all lock sequentially in less than 5 seconds and the gate activates. This should be timed with the dialing gate so that both animation sequences end and both gates activate at the same time. (For more assistance with getting the correct effect, you should look to how the Carter Addon Pack for Garry's Mod handles incoming connections. They more or less have it spot on.) When Pegasus gates are dialed into, every single glyph lights up in a clockwise pattern, from the glyph directly to the right of the one under the top chevron, to the one under the top chevron.
• Pegasus gates (and, presumably, Wraith gates as well) have an inner ring that spins like that of the Milky Way gate. Only the glyphs should light up, rotating in a circular fashion before "locking" under each chevron sequentially, then always switching rotation direction, no matter what.
• In current versions of the mod, the entire top chevron moves to lock a glyph and the corresponding sequential chevron locks up instantaneously. In the SG-1 series the triangular lower half (clearly visible in the chevron image near the beginning of this issue) physically moves down while the "glass" portion moves up and lights up. Following a short delay the corresponding chevron lights up, followed by the top chevron returning to usual position and dimming. Rinse and repeat.
• Greg did an absolutely horrendous job on the unstable vortex animation. The "water" should form from the sides of the gate into the center followed by the unstable vortex, and it should be a "bulb" shape rather than the pointed polygonal mess he created. It should then collapse back in a reverse of the forming animation and the "water" (which wouldn't have really looked like water, rather just a messy blue texture) changes into an actual water texture.
• Right now you enter an address into the DHD and the stargate activates as if you're using a dialing computer. While this is perfectly acceptable behaviour for ComputerCraft or OpenComputers dialing, it doesn't make much sense if one's using a DHD. However, some people have pointed out that completely canonical behaviour is impossible due to how Minecraft's chunk loading happens, including Lochie himself. It should bear mention, however, that Lochie only mentioned having to "wait for the chunk to be loaded before locking the last chevron" (which in this case entails opening the wormhole), so it could probably be integrated into the delay between locking the last chevron and opening the wormhole. If this behaviour also does not work or is unsatisfactory, a similar system to that used by the Carter Addon Pack when dialing a gate from the gate menu (but using the DHD check box) would likely work, where the chevrons light up one by one after the address is entered followed by the wormhole, which gives a reasonable timespan of about five seconds to chunkload the other side.

My apologies if this comes across as a needy list, similar to how some of my suggestions or feedback have come across in the past. I, under no circumstances, advocate dropping everything for work on these aesthetic issues, but merely wished to present an easy checklist for improving the animations and aesthetics in the future, once more pressing issues are worked out.

[AfterLifeLochie]

I have now fixed all the issues which are actually aesthetic. The rest all require significant restructures to the code, which I have attempted to avoid needing to do. Apparently I can't do that now.

[FatherOwnage]

If I may recommend. Instead of using poly's for the vortex animation of establishing a wormhole, I would like to recommend possibly using particles instead. As John mentioned how it should work is correct and I think particles would look way better into a phase of the event horizon.

If I may help with this, I would love to so. As far as the graphics part goes I can be a big help, but I'm not very good with java coding just yet.

[AfterLifeLochie]

I don't understand how switching to particles instead of triangle-fan rendering would make the current animation better. Right now it's correct aside the missing 'orb', which I haven't gotten around to fixing yet.

[JohnOptegrove]

By "correct animation" do you mean the aesthetic changes to the wormhole that nobody has been able to see yet, or just the unstable vortex animation? Because Greg's stock animation for the wormhole both looks like crap and isn't canonically correct. Now, if you fixed it...I rest my case.

[FatherOwnage]

Well, currently using LanteaCraft-1.7.10-52 thats in the Bevo's Tech Pack provided by the ATLauncher. I'm not sure if the animation Lochie mentions is what I'm seeing, but what particles would do is make it look more fluid and flowing in an eye candy type of way that (in my head looks really cool) would be way more accurate then using solid poly's. What I can do is make an example animated gif of it would look like and show you and if you guys like it, we can work together on figuring out how to implement it when time permits.

[AfterLifeLochie]

No, it's not fixed. You've successfully given me the longest list of things which need fixing (aka, I did it wrong and now I may as well rewrite everything) and I don't really have the motivation to do it at present.

[JohnOptegrove]

@FatherOwnage In any other game, I would be inclined to agree with you. Minecraft's particles both look like crap and it would take a ton of them to get a remotely canonical effect, meaning an epic lag spike whenever anybody dials a gate.

No, I'm just in favor of simply putting more than Greg's 5 minutes of work into the animation, which would make it look far more realistic.

@AfterLifeLochie So why did you refer to it as "correct" or "fixed"? I understand it's not the highest priority item for the mod right now, don't get me wrong on that.

[AfterLifeLochie]

To fix half the 'aesthetic issues' you've listed here, I have to rewrite easily more than 50% of the mod as it currently stands. I can't keep working on other features or fixing other things until it is rewritten, so this implicitly has the highest priority.

At this point I'm wondering if it's worth rewriting the mod entirely from zero by myself so that I don't have to deal with an exceptionally long list of semantic issues - most of which aren't my fault.

[FatherOwnage]

@JohnOptegrove Yeah, i considered how much lag it would cause, but I have seen some crazy particle effects from other mods that didnt lag my game at all. Now that we are in MC 1.7.10 lots of optimizations have fixed a lot of lag issues and even further in 1.8. Just thought of the possibility for the gates to use particles, but not sure how many particles it would take to make it look awesome but now I am curious to find out.

@AfterLifeLochie I'm really sorry for the lack of motivation. I really wish I knew java programming so I could help out more in taking some of that load off of you. I am learning though, so there maybe some hope yet!

[JohnOptegrove]

It really isn't anyone's fault but Greg's. He wrote a subpar mod in the first place (both aesthetically and from a programming standpoint) and we, as Stargate fans or programmers, either have to live with the crappiness or almost completely gut the mod and start anew. From what I understand, almost none of Greg's original, unchanged code is actually used in build 52, and Lochie sure had a hell of a time just sorting it out and programming a proper multiblock, let alone adding some of the recent features.

@FatherOwnage It would take a metric crapload of particles to do properly, otherwise it would just look like a bunch of randomly placed water particles around the gate, and would properly look worse. While I do agree that the current wormhole animation leaves much to be desired, adding in a laggy, difficult-to-program revised animation would hardly be an improvement.

[AfterLifeLochie]

I think I can pretty much close this off now, as the engine (and most of the items on the list) are themselves resolved - @JohnOptegrove, please let me know if there's anything else which wasn't on this list which should have been fixed ASAP?

[lieven121]

could you also add the stripes on the side of the gate ? and even maybe the piece that's on the top ? (that's on every chevron)