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Gnostaria WIP2

Name:	ando
Date Posted:	Oct 06, 2007
Rating:	Not Rated
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Blog post

Dunno if you got my last blog, I showed a few pics from Gnostaria (work in progress) if you compare the shots from that blog to this you will see the difference, still work in progress but a big jump.

I wanted to push the visuals more especially the trees as some wooded areas are featured and it is no doubt the most common and in your face art asset in the game. Having sorted the tree it was onto the caves, pain in the ass this was. Making blocky DIF look natural ain't fun but toss in some models and it improves.

I use 3DWS for my DIF builds but it seems the newer MAP2DIF stuff seems to not like 3DWS (pink and green crap appearing on edges and in water reflections) What I done was load the 3DWS made .map into constructor and compile out of it, problem solved but a little goofy.

I am learning Constructor slowly but I can make 3DWS stuff far faster and more efficient at this moment. The next milestone in this contract is a small town dock, church, inns, etc... that will be fun, hopefully I keep you posted on that.

Check it out... www.gnostaria.com/

Recent Blog Posts

List:	08/15/08 - Anybody want to make a game :) 05/14/08 - 1.7 Good Stuffage 02/04/08 - Stuffage 12/15/07 - Gnostaria WIP4 10/12/07 - Gnostaria WIP3 10/06/07 - Gnostaria WIP2 09/19/07 - Gnostaria - Work in progress 06/11/07 - TGEA bling

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Wade Lawrence (Oct 06, 2007 at 18:37 GMT)

That looks great. I saw some other pics on the site nice. But your players look a little funny. There all bald?

ando (Oct 06, 2007 at 18:49 GMT)

I really cant answer that, I am just a contract artist doing the environment work, hopefully one of the Gnostaria guys can answer that.
Edited on Oct 06, 2007 18:50 GMT

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier (Oct 06, 2007 at 18:54 GMT)

Nice work Ando.

Florian (Oct 06, 2007 at 19:07 GMT)

ah, i see you did something with my feedback(feels good to know you don't post for nothing xD)
your trees looks way better know, they really blend in, also, the leaves look better know, way better :)

caves in DIF are a pain in the ass, damn convex brushes -.-

anyway, the only thing you might wanna do is add some stalactites or stalagmites or something

Nikhil Sharma (Oct 06, 2007 at 19:08 GMT)

Shadows look.. odd (out of place, unrealistic, too soft.. etc., basically not good compared to models). Everything else looks great though.

Matt Kronyak (Oct 06, 2007 at 20:23 GMT)

@Wade: The character screenshots have some textures we aren't using anymore as well as a bunch of deformities in the model. We have since had a majority of those issues fixed. Also at the time we hadn't completed our "style" system yet (means of transmitting a list of U32 keys to each client which handles changing the material, visible meshes (and other things) based on a client-side lookup in a SQLite database) and were somewhat haphazardly testing out different things and taking screenshots. We've tightened things up quite a bit since then.

We have been cleaning up the character model a lot but have been holding off taking any new screenshots until its ready (should be about another week or so).

The characters are customizeable and do have hair (note these are fairly old screenshots):

Perhaps I will post a blog here on GG in another month or so after we open up our closed test server to more officially announce and explain Gnostaria ;).

@Florian: I knew I forgot something. I remember emailing ando about stalagmites last week but was so impressed with the level (it really kicks ass "in game") that I forgot about it.

@ando: as always, great work! Looking forward to seeing your progress on Milestone 3. (btw, stalagmites...)
Edited on Oct 06, 2007 20:23 GMT

Julian R (Oct 07, 2007 at 01:26 GMT)

Nice to see you guys are using our compass artwork pack :) Let me know if we can help contribute any further artwork to your game. Great looking screenshots by the way!
Edited on Oct 07, 2007 01:35 GMT

Stephan (viKKing) Bondier (Oct 07, 2007 at 08:55 GMT)

Quote:
Shadows look.. odd (out of place, unrealistic, too soft.. etc., basically not good compared to models). Everything else looks great though.

I have to disagree here, I really enjoy the softness of the whole scene. This is something Ando is very good with. :)

Tim Heldna (Oct 07, 2007 at 12:17 GMT)

Quote:

Shadows look.. odd (out of place, unrealistic, too soft.. etc., basically not good compared to models).

I tend to agree. Soft shadows are great and certainly have their place however I do not adopt to the notion of thinking soft shadows "are more realistic and therefore no other shadow algorithm is required."

Sure, soft shadows exist in a real life scene but so do hard shadows. A strategic combination of both is often required, this is an option that is currently missing in Torque (both TGE & TGEA).

Another thing that is missing is a depth light to cast shadows from the foliage of the trees. Check out the SpeedTree Unreal Engine demo to see how necessary and effective proper shadows from trees and foliage (and in general) are.

Andy Hawkins (Oct 08, 2007 at 00:59 GMT)

@Ando - Looks great. How do you get such hires textures? My textures imported into Torque are always muddy. I use the standard 26x256 maps.

Tim Heldna (Oct 08, 2007 at 02:37 GMT)

Crank up anisotropic filtering to 16 and use high resolution textures. ;)

256 x 256 is a little small for todays standards.
Edited on Oct 08, 2007 02:55 GMT

Andy Hawkins (Oct 08, 2007 at 03:56 GMT)

but the engine only take 256x256 textures for the terrain. Unless there's an update?

Tim Heldna (Oct 08, 2007 at 03:58 GMT)

Ah, then you will need to use a smaller square size and a nice detail texture as well as a bump texture.

Tip: The detail texture can contain color ;)

Tim Heldna (Oct 08, 2007 at 03:59 GMT)

P.S. the terrain would still look somewhat blurry up-close, even the ones Ando created. The above screenshots have all been taken from a distance.

Kyle James (Oct 08, 2007 at 05:05 GMT)

One problem with decreasing the square size is that it would also shrink his map. I am sure he doesn't want to resize his formations to fit the scale.

Looks awesome btw ando.

Andy Hawkins (Oct 08, 2007 at 05:26 GMT)

Yeah I thought that too. Ando's maps look big.

Tim Heldna (Oct 08, 2007 at 08:08 GMT)

It's all in the detail texture, trust me.

DJ-Ready (Oct 15, 2007 at 05:29 GMT)

yay late comment but still
You should try to use triangles instead of squares to build caves and the likes with as DIF objects.
And once you're into it its actually quite easy to create stuff that way
something like this
http://esf-world.gamers-desire.de/ready/screens/hl_ingame%20(10).jpg
Not TGE but it the same principle (Half-Life 1)

JoZ (Oct 24, 2007 at 23:18 GMT)

Hi Ando... I see you have a nice compass working in your scene... I'm just attempting to have the compass working in my tgea project but I have some issues with it... it is continuosly flickering all the time... Just wanna ask you if you encountered a similar problem or not and if yes... can you send me in the right direction to solve the problem? Tnx,
JoZ.

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