Katrix

If you're looking for recent updates concerning the community, you won't find it here. We no longer post updates and announcements here. All new announcements are posted to our new website found here: https://info.yukkuricraft.net/announcements/

Project Esper Bunker

---

It sounded like Jason didn't quite trust Sidna. That was reasonable. They were, after all, currently engaged in combat. Only a fool would trust the enemy like that.

"Well, that depends on your definition of freedom. I couldn't have you walking around on the street like you are now. Would simply cause too much commotion. 'Why is there a soldier in the city?', 'He looks big and scary,' 'Has I done something wrong?'. What I can give you is freedom to carry out your day as a commander within a military base as you want, as long as you follow the orders of your superiors. That's how it is for all of the military," Sidna tried to explain to him, changing her voice to ordinary citizens when imitating them.

"Explaining why I will leave the people here unharmed is more complicated, but it boils down to politics. I can see why it would be hard for you to understand. We never really covered that too much. Here's the basic gist. There's always a good guy and a bad guy. For society at large, we are the good guy, but for the soldiers' family, if that soldier dies, we're the bad guy. We don't want to be the bad guy. So why are we attacking? Well, when a good guy finds a bad guy, the good guy needs to beat the bad guy, or at least make it look like they do, or they're not a good guy. Hopefully, you can work out the rest yourself. Oh, one last to make it a bit more complicated. There needs to be a bad guy."

"So, what you say? I'd prefer an answer as soon as possible. Not really in the situation where we can think it over for that long."

Sidna hoped that she had explained to him in a simple way that we would understand, where she still seemed somewhat impartial. If he again said no, then that placed him entirely on her kill-list.


Aircraft above project Esper Bunker

---

"We got a person approaching at 40 mph", one of the soldiers called out.

Ceres walked up to the monitor showing the person. "That's Accelerator, head away from him at 150 mph, and make sure the optical camouflage is turned on. We do NOT want to engage in combat," she yelled out to the aircraft.

Right, so Accelerator was heading towards them, what could she do to avoid a battle? And if she did end up in a battle, what advantages did she have when fighting him? What sort of weapon did they have around here that she could use that did not produce a vector? Information, one of her most potent weapons, her voice, was one such choice, but it might not work here.

"Correct the weather forecast to go into effect 1 minute from now," she said to one of the soldiers at the monitors.

"Prepare my personal battle suite and a railgun that I can use from up here. I want it to include the optical camouflage, be weatherproof, have a good encrypted link to the targeting system, and include an eye monitor where I can receive video feeds from all over the battlefield," she ordered.

A few seconds later, a message was sent to all the soldiers on the ground. "We now bring you an update to the weather forecast earlier today. It looks like the pressure is changing rapidly, so we recommend anyone that doesn't already have their rainwear on to put that on now. That's all for. Thank you for your attention."

Project Esper Bunker

---

Ceres guessed what would happend next as soon as she saw the grenade in the videofeeds from the soldiers. The next moment they were all dead. She'd likely have to fake the next part. Jason was supposed to be dead after all. "Focus on the figure that just entered the frame", she told one of the operators.

"Would you look at that. A clone, just as we anticipated. Seems like a rather good one too. Considering that, and the fact that they were able to grow it so quickly, I'm glad we found this rebel site. Would be a real hornet's next if we had left it any longer.", she said once Jason was shown.

Of course, it wasn't really Jason she was looking for. He was old news. It was that girl with the electric powers. Sadly she hadn't shown herself yet. Luckily she wouldn't be too hard to locate once she used her powers. She would act almost like a beacon, if you just knew where to look.

After that Ceres sent a message to Sidna. "We found Jason, you can talk to him using one of the soldiers radio's if you want" she wrote, together with one of the radios around Jason

---

"Hi Jason, Tethys here. Having a bit of a fit are we? Look, I'll get right to it. I'm sure neither of us like the current situation. I'm being threatened with being decommissioned if we can bring you back, and you or some of your new friends might end up killed. So here's the proposal. You come with us, peacefully, and no one will have to get hurt".

Although it wasn't uncommon for Sidna to lie, it wasn't uncommon for her to make deals like this either. If she gained from it, she would gladly hold up her end of the deal. In this case, sure she would benefit from the deal in quite a few ways. If he turned bad again later, or she couldn't keep him after all, there were always quieter ways to kill someone.

"I'll even throw on a few extra perks. Make you captain of some secret force, or something like that. Give you some free space, and even maybe tell you where some of your family is. You decide, but to me, that sounds like a pretty good deal"

Honestly as someone that has used the Replay mod for a small cinematic showcase the TH8 areas of Genso 2, I don't think it would be the right tool for the job. Why? Now, don't get me wrong, it's great for trailers and such, but "Gensokyo ~ The Second Dream" isn't a trailer, it's a feature length movie. Sure, we could do it just for the trailer, but I don't like the idea of the trailer looking so differently than the full length thing.

So why do the videos look so janky and amateurish? I think there are two main reasons. 1. We export a low bitrate, low framerate 24fps 720p video. Why not try to go to atleast 1080p high bitrate? (Higher framerate could be harder because of shaders). 2. reason, Remi doesn't know how to hold and move around with a camera. He makes it mostly up as he goes, and in some cases, the Replay mod could help with that, in others, it could very well make it worse.

So, let's talk Replay mod in detail, what it does, how it could benefit stuff, and how it would not.

How does it work? It works by recording all the packets you receive during a play session, and converting that to it's own format where it notes the entities visible at a given point, they locations, movements etc and all other things visible are tracked.The way I see it, it takes the role of two different tools depending on how it's used.

For mostly static content, it's a 360 degrees global camera that can be placed anywhere and moved around in the scene without a player, sometimes changing the pace of time while doing so. This is where the mod is at it's best.

For dynamic content (this is what we have), it's a camera placement and revising tool. When using it in this fashion, you decide roughly where the camera is in a let's say 32 block radius around the recorder, and what it's looking at. That seems oddly specific, why? Because one of the things the mod tracks is loaded chunks. Meaning that if the camera moves too far away from the recorder, it enters unloaded chunks. So even though it might be tempting to use a higher speed in an area where you want to go fast, you might not be able to, unless you also go fast through time. If you do that however, you can't have any entities around at all or it will look really weird. There is also the problem of tight corners indoors. This is not really a place where it's easy to turn without colliding with the walls.

So, how it would most likely work if we decided to do this is that everyone would still meet up with Remi at recording day. Remi would enter spectator mode so that he would have a bit more control over his speed. From there he would go around recording everything and look at everything as if this was the final recording. This is important to make sure the he wouldn't run out of time in a specific area. Once that would be over he would jump into the editor, redo the entire journey again using keyframes. Once he's done that he needs to go over every keyframe again, tweak it's settings, make sure it doesn't collide with anything, or that the camera does any other weird motion (this sadly happens more often than you would think).

Ok, so I've gone over some of the bad parts. What are the positives? In my opinion, 3 big things. The first is a smooth camera. Now, do note that I say smooth camera, and not smooth panning. We can already do the later in minecraft. Remi just hasn't bothered turning it on for any of the videos. Second is roll. Normally in minecraft you can look up and down, and side to side, but you can't tilt the camera itself. Normally this is fine, but in some cases it could also give a better feel when going around corners and such. The third and IMO biggest advantage is rendering. You can render with wonderful shaders at 60 or more fps. One of the big sources of a janky feel in the videos is a low fps. This would go completely around that.

Let's look at a real example. Here's the video I mentioned at the top where I used the mod.



Let's go over some of the noteworthy things in the video:

• First off, while you get smooth camera, the speed isn't always as smooth. It's more noticeable in some places than others.
• Next off, sudden blackout at the bridge, why? Because I was an idiot, and wanted to go after something else. Tried going with the flow there, but it just didn't really work. So, I went with the bridge there instead. However, to do that I had to skip a lot of time to get back to the point where those chunks were loaded. That's why the timeskip is there too.
• The sundown over the roof looks cool, and requires a lot of time manipulation. You can partially see this with the rabbits that suddenly pop up as the recorder got close enough to them.
• You can really feel me struggling with the corners in Eientei
• Rolling camera is cool :P

Now, I have glossed over it here and there, but the biggest reason why I don't think we should use the Replay mod is time. That two minute clip took hours to make. Just getting the camera path just right took hours.

So, what can we do instead that would take much less effort?

• Use the cinematic camera mode in Minecraft
• Plan out the whole thing in detail
• Have a script
• Do multiple takes, and begin recording after say the third one
• Use spectator mode for increased movement options, and no "Stop flying quick drop"
• Upload better fotage
• Teach Remi basic cinematography

Project Esper Bunker

---

Ceres looked down at the soldiers from above. They were about a kilometer away from where all the action was happening. Close enough to keep track of the soldiers as a whole, but not close enough to give them orders. Not as specific as she wanted them to be anyway. While it was true that she preferred to keep her distance, that only applied if she could actually take aim at the target. No such luck with all the trees in the way. The next best option? Being down on the ground. Preferably with her optical camouflage, and doing the work herself. Unfortunately for her, that wasn't an option either. Sidna had given her a clear message that she would not put herself in harm's way if not needed. Thus there she was, on lookout for something interesting.

"Got any binoculars with thermal vision around this ship?" she asked around her. Maybe she could spot something interesting if she saw the world differently?

"You sure? It will likely be just as useless as your normal vision soon," one of the soldiers replied. Despite that, he still moved towards some boxes which Ceres assumed contained the binoculars.

"But they won't be useless right now. Might as well take advantage of that small window". She tried to sound confident. It was just a lie though. In truth, she just wanted to kill time.

"Here you go," the soldier said while handing her the binoculars. "Just ask if you're unsure about the settings."

Ceres took the binoculars and eyed all the different settings. Normal operation, thermal imaging, night vision, and more. It even had a digital mode. That could maybe come in handy later.

Before she got any further, the radio kicked in. "Status update to Ceres, we've breached into the circular room, and are getting ready to place more charges to break into the main bunker. We recorded the audio of the charges going off, and we're hoping you could use them to better analyze the structure of the base."

"Sure, just upload the files, and I'll take a look at them. No promises though." She said. In truth, she would just hand over the files to Sidna and let her to the processing.

Got my hands on SEUS PTGI E6. Path traced minecraft rendering is insane. Kind of reminds me of this old picture I rendered some probably five years or more ago. http://i.imgur.com/7rVzYIH.png

First off, let's see how the shader actually tackles the same scene. Still got some more to go, but remember, this is realtime gameplay.

Spoiler

Here's another scene that showcases how nice the light bounces around the scene, and prevents those hard edges you usually see with indoor shaders.

Spoiler

Next off, Tengu village. The shader is still a bit finicky with leaves, but I still get a good result here too.

Spoiler

Next off, one that really shines with this shader. Indoor stuff is where the real difference is.

Spoiler

And another indoor scene, this time the SDM.

Spoiler

Here's another lava scene. This time only with lighting coming from the floor. Love how it casts those soft shadows on the blocks above.

Spoiler

Wouldn't be fair to only do one shrine. Here's another example of where the light comes in through the entrance and lights up the room.

Spoiler

And finally Haku. Kind of cheated a bit with this one, taking the picture right after switching from day to night, and as a result, some of the light is still present. Looks nice though.

Spoiler

Project Esper Bunker

---

Sidna wasn't too happy about the sound she got, although she did manage to map out a cylindrical room, and some more rooms further ahead. "Here's the map data, it's noisy, but hopefully useable. As you can see, there are four people behind the cylinder room. Destroy the cylinder room if you want a better map" Sidna said as she sent the map data to Ceres.

Ceres then sent the data along to the soldiers. "Here's the map data we have at the moment. Seems like there's a cylindrical room that's preventing us from mapping out the rest. Please place some charges to get rid of the rest of the wall. Remember we need to be able to get all the infrantry down into the bunker before it starts to rain" she ordered them.

Project Esper Bunker

---

After the ruble was cleared from the blast, a torch was thrown into the hole to lighten it up. Seeing that there was a floor, a rope ladder was lowered down, and a few soldiers began climbing down into the hole. "What do you see," Ceres asked through the radio. "For the most part concrete walls, no idea how thick, although they look rather solid. The wall opposite to the ladder looks like some sort of metal though. Likely steel" one of the soldiers responded. Who would use metal in a pure form for walls Ceres asked herself. "Inspect the steel wall. Hear if it's conducting any kind of sound. If not, hit it with something hard and listen for the sound. In addition to that, when listening for sounds, place your radios against the wall, the more, the better, somewhat spaced out from each other, and send the audio back. You're authorized to use the high-quality band for this. Once the radios are in place, snap a few times at different places in the air so we can get location information from them easier" Ceres said.

Turning her attention away from the soldiers in the hole, she began issuing more commands to the soldiers on the surface. "Get a few sonars down there. We need more information about the layout down there". Once done with giving orders, she contacted Sidna. "Sending you some audio from multiple radios pressed against a metal wall. Hoping to add a sonar to that soonish. Could you analyze the data, and construct a rough map of what lies beyond?"

Project Esper | Forest above (A few minutes before)

---

"Alright, I hope everyone is ready for what you will be facing very soon. I want the majority of the attention focused on Accelerator, but don't be affraid to go a bit after a few others too. Now, I need to be clear about this, we don't know what we'll find down there. Whatever it is, keep going" Ceres said to the soldiers that were standing in front of her, trying to boost their morale as best as possible. "I also want continous updates at all times. If the video feed breaks up, tell me what you see, and who you see down there. I want to know it all" she continued. She wanted an as detailed list of this terrorist organization as possible, both so she could direct people away from the targets to preserve, and for future information.

A few minutes later, the bombs in the ground that had been planted a few hours ago to break down into the bunker went off. After the rubble was cleared, the soldiers began pouring into one of the corridors.

Phone call between Sidna and Logan

---

"Another one to keep alive? You know what you're doing I hope" Sidna said, sounding slightly inconvenienced. "I'll make sure the soldiers get the message that taking down the other terrorists is the priority. Can't exactly tell them to leave them alive though. Might hurt morale and stuff. Besides, if she falls to simple soldiers like this, I wouldn't think she would be of interest to you. As for Ceres, I'll tell her to keep her hands off this Misaka girl. Don't you worry about her, she'll be a few kilometers away from the battlefield, and she knows how to defend herself if stuff takes a sour turn."