So that is how they did that!

[ag88t88]

Alright, 2 years later and I finally found out an answer to something I wanted to know for kind of a long time.  You see a long while ago I noticed that the floor in City Hall in Atlas Park was reflective, but only partly.  This was well before we got actual reflective glass in I17 with "Ultra Mode".  Take a peek at the screenies here.



And here



Now if you look at the floor, it looks nice and shiny and glossy and it reflects the room around it. The walls, the statues of the heroes, the ceiling, the information desk etc.  Except something always bothered me.  My character and the NPCs in the room were not reflected.  Now I can't speak to the Longbow and Super Group Registrar and the City Hall Rep, but I know my characters were not vampires.   

For the longest time it bothered me, and then I noticed it again in the Arenas on the main floors.

Here


Here


And Here....



Once again, the environment is reflected but none of the characters are.. 

I always wondered what trick was being pulled to make it seem reflective, but only for certain things.  Since the reflections shift with the perspective, they aren't just painted on the floor so I knew it had to be something.

Well today I was touring city zones, playing around with No clip to sort of have fun and explore things and for a moment I was really disoriented when I flew through the arena floor and saw things upside down...



And then it hit me.  Those freaking floors aren't reflective at all, they are mildly transparent and glossy to give the illusion of reflectivity!   Each of those maps has upside down rooms under the semi-transparent floor to make it look it's a reflection!





And then more for City Hall







You aren't looking at a well polished floor, you are looking into an upside down universe! 

Okay so I have to admit, that was pretty clever of some one to think of to give the appearance of it being reflective.  It makes sense that characters weren't reflected because you would need upside down NPCs, the player characters couldn't all be duplicated by the game, and if the animations ever got out of sync itd be kind of messed up looking.   Even still, pretty damned cool that I finally got to figure out what the hell was going on there.

Sorry if I'm slow to the party and other people knew this a long time ago, even still the screenies are kind of cool. 

[Captain Electric]

I always suspected that it was some kind of reflectivity fakery, but I never would have expected this. Very cool discovery! And very cool trick, you nutty Paragon Studios devs!

[blue storm]

Nice catch !!

[The Fifth Horseman]

Yep, been known for some time. The screens are still great.

[GuyPerfect]

This is an ancient graphical trick that doesn't require hefty processing, and could be done with OpenGL's fixed functionality even as far back as the 1.0 days. I've used it myself on occasion. I think the first time it was brought to my attention was with Super Mario 64, though, in the room with the painting to Snow Man's Land.

[ag88t88]

You know I've been hacking and editing my video games since I was 12 or so, I never knew about this trick. Even still, its quite cool, and a little trippy to float around in the room below the floor seeing it above and below. A little MC-Escher ish. 

[Gun-Nut]

Thinking back I can't recall every wondering if my characters reflection was happening in those rooms so I never put much thought into it but its cool seeing the trickery used...

[doc7924]

A lot of us knew that for a long time.

In fact there was a bug / glitch where you could teleport INTO the 'reflection'. And you couldn't get back out that way so you had to petition a GM to move you back the real building.

[GuyPerfect]

Or made a friend with someone who had Recall Friend. Otherwise they'd have to use Teleport Foe, and that wouldn't work because they couldn't target you.

[Aggelakis]

Or use one of the gazillion teleport-somewhere-else powers (e.g. Pocket D port, base port, mission port, whatever).

[Angel Phoenix77]

I was always impressed with how they did reflections ingame I have to admit, I never noticed that the characters weren't reflected.

[Codewalker]

Or made a friend with someone who had Recall Friend. Otherwise they'd have to use Teleport Foe, and that wouldn't work because they couldn't target you.

I'm assuming we're talking about pre-Ouroboros days since otherwise it would be trivial to get out, so in that case, have your buddy get confused in an arena match, port to atlas, join team so they can target you easily, and use Teleport Foe to get you out...

[Captain Electric]

I'm assuming we're talking about pre-Ouroboros days since otherwise it would be trivial to get out, so in that case, have your buddy get confused in an arena match, port to atlas, join team so they can target you easily, and use Teleport Foe to get you out...

*Twirls mustache* A clever escape, Codewalker! You got away this time!