Alright! Let's actually talk about this waterfall thing. It is an amazing showcase of many things that I adore from late 90s graphics. I am replicating this in Blender, through mere observation of the final game, so some things might not be exactly accurate to what the PS1 does.
First off, this is what I started off with, straight from the Noesis exporter into Blender.
"Looks boring!" "What are those weird gradient quads?!" Oh we'll talk about those too, don't worry.
Let's start simple, figuring out the Layers.
We've got the base level geometry, then two layers of water, each with a different texture.
Let's focus on the bottom Water layer first. A waterfall's water falls, and the age old trick to replicate that behaviour is to scroll the texture along the mesh by offsetting the texture coordinates every frame.
Simple enough. Not too convincing yet.
Let's do the same with the other layer.
Look at it goooo!
An often-used trick to enhance the waterfall effect is to increase the distance between vertices (or squash texture coordinates) as the geometry goes down.
This affects the scrolling velocity for the texture in each section, making it look like gravity is accelerating the water.
MGS pulls yet another trick on top of that:
Vertices are subtly animated to oscillate, making the water flow seem more irregular.
It seems to be something similar to what is done to geometry when the camera goes underwater in the docks or vents area.
One opaque layer of water on top of another is no good.
Alpha Blending is an expensive technique and it'd not give the desired effect.
Additive Blending is used instead. The lower layer is rendered first, the second layer is then rendered on top, adding the color values together.
Now we get to talk about those weird quads.
They are darkening gradients! Instead of using Additive Blending, they do the opposite, the color value from the texture is subtracted from the scene that was rendered below, effectively creating shadowed areas.
Who needs HBAO+ anyway?
Lighting pass!
I just threw a few point lights to try and replicate the original vibes of the scene.
MGS, instead, uses lighting information baked into the vertices of the scene to create this mood. And what a mood it is!
Here's an additional example of the same techniques used in the bottom part of the same scene. Although the game seems to be rendering that water mesh as (almost?) completely opaque, there is an actual floor mesh under it.
There, I fixed this post.
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Me at the beginning of this year: I’m so gonna fix my life dude this is gonna be the year everything changes I’m not gonna let anything slip through the cracks it’s time to live
People against piracy fail to realize that no, I can’t just ‘buy it.’ They stopped making DVDs and Blu-Rays. They’re barely offering digital copies for download. I am not spending money I could use for food or bills to pay for a subscription service just so I can always have access to a beloved piece of media. Especially not when the service will remove media on a whim without concern for how the loss of access to that piece will make its artistic conservation nigh impossible.
For example, I recently learned that Disney+ had an original film called Crater. It’s scifi, family friendly, and seems cool - I would love to buy it as a holiday gift for my little brother! But: it’s exclusive to D+ and THEY REMOVED IT LITERALLY MONTHS AFTER ITS RELEASE.
The ONLY way I can directly access this film is through piracy. The ONLY available ‘copies’ of this film are hosted on piracy websites. Disney will NEVER release it in theaters, or as something to buy, and it may NEVER return to the streaming service. It will be LOST because we aren’t allowed to purchase it for personal viewing. If I can’t pay to own it, I won’t pay for the privilege of losing it when corporate decides to put it in a vault.
it’s a multi-vortex tornado. i dont remember the tribe it originates from (i think it was cherokee), but there’s a native american legend…? saying? that goes “if you see a man in a tornado, you are about to die.”
the most infamous shot of a dead man walking tornado hit jarrell, texas in 1997
it did so much damage to the town it caused the scale that tornados are measured by, the fijita scale, undergo revisions, and it made anchoring buildings in the tornado alley region pretty much mandatory. (it took the entire town off the map. only those who had taken shelter outside of the town or in underground bunkers survived.)
two more examples of dead man walking tornadoes looking like a person are a tornado from 2011 that hit cullman, alabama
and a tornado from 1975 that hit xenia, ohio
edit: it has been brought to my attention that the native american “legend” part of this post was a rumor spread by a documentary.
i have been asked to remove it, but i believe in letting my errors stand because i’m not perfect. i make mistakes
if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.
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no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.
I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.
I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.
If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.