BRAVE - Awwwright! - London 2
by Andy Hawkins · 04/13/2008 (5:51 am) · 32 comments
Very, very, VERY happy now. I started spending some money and time on content and started getting some VERY pleasing results. This is an update of my world building of London for BRAVE - due in 2 weeks EEK!!!
So kudos to RRGT (Really Really Good Things Studio) for the amount of effort Alan and Kyle put into helping me. I was uncertain of the speed and performance of their District Pack so Alan sent me a sample city block "on loan" to trial it. He even went ahead and added another LOD so that buildings go to simple blocks at a distance, which was really important for me to make sure I could cram heaps of buildings into the scene.
I generated these pics below and on my crappy lappy the frame rate rarely dips below 60 fps.
The guys also stayed up til 3:45am to deliver files for me even though they were restructuring their website - how cool are they? Kyle painstakingly typed the same info over and over again in email after email of me asking "so do I get the source files too?" and he's like "well, yes, yes you do" - he didn't flinch and go "jesus Hawkins, read your frickin emails properly the first time", even though I asked the same question twice - so these guys deserve lots of praise.
Finally they saved me heaps of time. Considering how long it would take for me to model all these objects, not to mention downtime tracking bugs and problems, these packs have saved me heaps of time - thanks guys!!! Content packs save you time - remember that!
So finally I'm adding several ship classes, there are ally planes, landers, mutants, harvesters and motherships. Once I get the code from the previous alpha in to TGEA I will start creating missions, adding content and polish and polish and polish.
These screens are my shape replicators, London aerial map, RRGT sample city block, and my new British Aerospace Harrier AV-8B, leveraging FGE - Decane's Flight Game Engine all running in TGEA 1.0.3
EDIT: Added link to FGE
So kudos to RRGT (Really Really Good Things Studio) for the amount of effort Alan and Kyle put into helping me. I was uncertain of the speed and performance of their District Pack so Alan sent me a sample city block "on loan" to trial it. He even went ahead and added another LOD so that buildings go to simple blocks at a distance, which was really important for me to make sure I could cram heaps of buildings into the scene.
I generated these pics below and on my crappy lappy the frame rate rarely dips below 60 fps.
The guys also stayed up til 3:45am to deliver files for me even though they were restructuring their website - how cool are they? Kyle painstakingly typed the same info over and over again in email after email of me asking "so do I get the source files too?" and he's like "well, yes, yes you do" - he didn't flinch and go "jesus Hawkins, read your frickin emails properly the first time", even though I asked the same question twice - so these guys deserve lots of praise.
Finally they saved me heaps of time. Considering how long it would take for me to model all these objects, not to mention downtime tracking bugs and problems, these packs have saved me heaps of time - thanks guys!!! Content packs save you time - remember that!
So finally I'm adding several ship classes, there are ally planes, landers, mutants, harvesters and motherships. Once I get the code from the previous alpha in to TGEA I will start creating missions, adding content and polish and polish and polish.
These screens are my shape replicators, London aerial map, RRGT sample city block, and my new British Aerospace Harrier AV-8B, leveraging FGE - Decane's Flight Game Engine all running in TGEA 1.0.3
EDIT: Added link to FGE
#22
I've got the citiblock converted to a single LOD dts (based on the second LOD in the original sequence) and it's showing some pretty strong performance. I know it won't do you any good right now (since BRAVE is currently 1.0.3) but when you port over to 1.7 it could offer a lot of advantages. Maybe we could collaborate on a Big City, snap to grid type of thing.
Again, good luck!
04/14/2008 (4:43 pm)
Hey Andy, glad things are back on track. When you're done with the contest, and not under the gun let me know. I've started to covert the downtown district to dts models designed more for TGEA poly soup. (Yeah I know, another update...)I've got the citiblock converted to a single LOD dts (based on the second LOD in the original sequence) and it's showing some pretty strong performance. I know it won't do you any good right now (since BRAVE is currently 1.0.3) but when you port over to 1.7 it could offer a lot of advantages. Maybe we could collaborate on a Big City, snap to grid type of thing.
Again, good luck!
#24
@ Alan - polysoup? Yeah that would help - but I think realistically I should refine my processes and scope of the mission - I mean I'm not really going to have time to build inner London - so I should focus more on just making it look busy and like a city, with some landmarks, and focus on making a fun shooter. I really need more assistance in building city blocks like you have done because this makes world building easier. I noticed you had many types of buildings in a block, but when I tried to do this it crashed after having 3 types of buildings.
04/14/2008 (6:19 pm)
@ Stephen - I'm not experiencing that. For example, I place a bunch of difs, then relight, have a fly around. Save a quit. Then when I run the game again, it relights. Maybe it's a setting thing?@ Alan - polysoup? Yeah that would help - but I think realistically I should refine my processes and scope of the mission - I mean I'm not really going to have time to build inner London - so I should focus more on just making it look busy and like a city, with some landmarks, and focus on making a fun shooter. I really need more assistance in building city blocks like you have done because this makes world building easier. I noticed you had many types of buildings in a block, but when I tried to do this it crashed after having 3 types of buildings.
#25
DIFs are cool and I love modeling with a CSG based editor ( I know I'm insane ), but the performance of the DTS objects combined with polysoup collision is hard to resist -- and I don't have to make collision meshes!
If you'd like, sketch out a couple building/street layouts that you would like and email them off to me, I'll try and knock out a couple more city block "modules" that will work with the existing ones. Maybe a couple lower level buildings or angled streets type of thing. Maybe I can save you a few hours since I'm reasonably proficient at the whole process and your focus now could be used in other areas.
- Alan
04/14/2008 (6:46 pm)
Like I said, *when you're done* with the contest you could take a look at porting over to TGEA 1.7 like Stephen mentioned. =) I know you're focused right now on getting together things for the contest, but BRAVE will go on after, I imagine, and then you can look at some things that can be used to make some substantially larger mission levels. DIFs are cool and I love modeling with a CSG based editor ( I know I'm insane ), but the performance of the DTS objects combined with polysoup collision is hard to resist -- and I don't have to make collision meshes!
If you'd like, sketch out a couple building/street layouts that you would like and email them off to me, I'll try and knock out a couple more city block "modules" that will work with the existing ones. Maybe a couple lower level buildings or angled streets type of thing. Maybe I can save you a few hours since I'm reasonably proficient at the whole process and your focus now could be used in other areas.
- Alan
#26
04/14/2008 (7:42 pm)
Alan, that would be awesome of you if you can. Perhaps journal how you did it too, so I can learn from it. I'll send of the specs tonite.
#27
That definitely doesn't sound like it should. Are you in any other way modifying your .mis file, or deleting/ignoring the cached lighting somehow? Saved light caches should be in the directory your .mis file is, and end in .ml (and have a funky string of numbers). The numbers are a basic checksum to determine if the current .mis file matches any of the cached lighting files--if not, it will regenerate.
04/16/2008 (12:09 pm)
Quote:
I'm not experiencing that. For example, I place a bunch of difs, then relight, have a fly around. Save a quit. Then when I run the game again, it relights. Maybe it's a setting thing?
That definitely doesn't sound like it should. Are you in any other way modifying your .mis file, or deleting/ignoring the cached lighting somehow? Saved light caches should be in the directory your .mis file is, and end in .ml (and have a funky string of numbers). The numbers are a basic checksum to determine if the current .mis file matches any of the cached lighting files--if not, it will regenerate.
#28
Right now TGEA 1.0.3 is driving me insane. I fly around a bit, shoot some bad guys and in about 1 minute it crashes. I run a debug session in Visual Studio and the problem doesn't reoccur, so I can locate the error. Here's my log. There's a few errors in this bug nothing that should crash it right?
04/16/2008 (4:25 pm)
I'll double check. You're probably right. I'll do a relight then quit, then reload.Right now TGEA 1.0.3 is driving me insane. I fly around a bit, shoot some bad guys and in about 1 minute it crashes. I run a debug session in Visual Studio and the problem doesn't reoccur, so I can locate the error. Here's my log. There's a few errors in this bug nothing that should crash it right?
clientCmdSetAmmoAmountHud: Unknown command. clientCmdSetAmmoAmountHud: Unknown command. clientCmdSetAmmoAmountHud: Unknown command. clientCmdSetAmmoAmountHud: Unknown command. clientCmdSetAmmoAmountHud: Unknown command. terrain_water_demo/server/scripts/shapeBase.cs (35): Unable to find object: '' attempting to call function 'getState' terrain_water_demo/server/scripts/shapeBase.cs (37): Unable to find object: '' attempting to call function 'schedule' clientCmdOutOfMissionArea: Unknown command. terrain_water_demo/server/scripts/shapeBase.cs (35): Unable to find object: '' attempting to call function 'getState' terrain_water_demo/server/scripts/shapeBase.cs (37): Unable to find object: '' attempting to call function 'schedule' game_BRAVE_Level1_->spawnPlayer called. Client: 1736, name: Jeff game_BRAVE_Level1_->createPlayer called. Client: 1736, name: Jeff out game_BRAVE_Level1_->onDeath called. Client: 1548, name: 11 clientCmdOutOfMissionArea: Unknown command. clientCmdSetHUDScore: Unknown command. game_BRAVE_Level1_->spawnPlayer called. Client: 1548, name: Test Guy game_BRAVE_Level1_->createPlayer called. Client: 1548, name: Test Guy out clientCmdSetAmmoAmountHud: Unknown command. clientCmdchangeHudSelectedWeapon: Unknown command. clientCmdSetAmmoAmountHud: Unknown command. clientCmdchangeHudSelectedWeapon: Unknown command. clientCmdSetHUDScore: Unknown command. terrain_water_demo/server/scripts/shapeBase.cs (35): Unable to find object: '' attempting to call function 'getState' terrain_water_demo/server/scripts/shapeBase.cs (37): Unable to find object: '' attempting to call function 'schedule' clientCmdOutOfMissionArea: Unknown command. terrain_water_demo/server/scripts/shapeBase.cs (35): Unable to find object: '' attempting to call function 'getState' terrain_water_demo/server/scripts/shapeBase.cs (37): Unable to find object: '' attempting to call function 'schedule' clientCmdSetAmmoAmountHud: Unknown command. terrain_water_demo/server/scripts/item.cs (39): Unknown command hide. Object ammo_pulsar(1524) Item -> ShapeBase -> GameBase -> SceneObject -> NetObject -> SimObject terrain_water_demo/server/scripts/shapeBase.cs (35): Unable to find object: '' attempting to call function 'getState'
#29
04/16/2008 (11:32 pm)
Crashing seems to relate to DIF's - if I take the DIF's out it doesn't crash. Possibly to do with detail and min_pixel setting as it seems to crash on a LOD change. Anyone else had this problem?
#30
(in engine\math\mathrandom.h)
04/18/2008 (4:41 pm)
it's a getRandom glitch - here's the fix.(in engine\math\mathrandom.h)
...
#include "console/console.h"
...
inline S32 MRandomGenerator::randI(S32 i, S32 n)
{
if (i>n)
{
Con::printf("MRandomGenerator error '%d','%d'. Check your inputs - aborting function", i,n);
return 0;
}
AssertFatal(i<=n, "MRandomGenerator::randi: inverted range.");
return (S32)(i + (randI() % (n - i + 1)) );
}
#31
the code engine\math\mathrandom.h
inline S32 MRandomGenerator::randI(S32 i, S32 n)
{
AssertFatal(i<=n, "MRandomGenerator::randi: inverted range.");
return (S32)(i + (randI() % (n - i + 1)) );
}
game throw the "MRandomGenerator::randi: inverted range." error
11/08/2008 (2:42 am)
my game crashed at the sentence %obj.getAimObject , the code engine\math\mathrandom.h
inline S32 MRandomGenerator::randI(S32 i, S32 n)
{
AssertFatal(i<=n, "MRandomGenerator::randi: inverted range.");
return (S32)(i + (randI() % (n - i + 1)) );
}
game throw the "MRandomGenerator::randi: inverted range." error
#32
11/08/2008 (8:27 am)
@Tan - yes so you see what I did? I just told the client about it and returned 0 instead which allows you to see the error come up but doesn't crash the game. This bit...if (i>n)
{
Con::printf("MRandomGenerator error '%d','%d'. Check your inputs - aborting function", i,n);
return 0;
} 
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