Plan for Eric Lund
by Eric Lund · 06/12/2002 (11:46 am) · 2 comments
It's been a few weeks since I got Torque and I thought someone might be interested in what steps I took and accomplishments I made during this time. Besides reading some of the code and scripts:
* I went through several Milkshape tutorials. The audio + video ones at www.planetquake.com/polycount/cottages/blackboard/tutorials.htm are very very helpful and to the point. Highly recommended. I'll likely register Milkshape this week.
* I located a picture of a Walther PPK on the web, modelled it in Milkshape, and skinned it. The front/back look great, but I haven't quite figured out how to skin the sides correctly. I scaled and imported this model into the torque demo. Sweet. I initially found picking the right vertices kinda difficult, but grouping them helped a bit. Without scaling the PPK in torque was HUGE ... I scaled the object inside the Torque editor (after importing), but that left a very large grid box around the object -- I assume this is the bounding box for collision detection. When I performed the scaling directly in Milkshape the box looked more appropriately sized. I gather I could also have tried applying the scaling in the exporter.
* I bought Truespace 5.2 for $300. This seems like a mistake now, but I didn't know better at the time; I saw Truespace mentioned on GG and I thought it was more supported than it is. Worse, Truespace 6.0 is coming out in July and they want $130 to upgrade to it ... ack. I was able to create some shapes and export them to 3DS, then get them into Torque via Milkshape, but the results weren't as good as I'd like. I'll have to play with this more and hope for better results. If not, this was a waste of money... that is, unless I get off my tush and write a TS plug-in... it would be nice if GG could negotiate a lower priced 3D Max license for Torque users. I'd be interested in that. I'm trying to be a good boy and make sure I'm legal with all my tools. Anyhow, Truespace has a steep learning curve with it's "nouveau" interface, but once you get past that you can start making some cool stuff.
* I installed Quark (quark for torque, v6.3). I haven't played around with the editing features much yet, but I did export the default "room" to torque and replaced several of the demo pyramids with them. I used the terrain editor to flatten out and adjust the height of the terrain so none of the buildings looked like they were floating or had too high of a lip at the entrance. I have not discovered how to align the room floor exactly with the terrain yet. I also installed Hammer and played with that a little, but since the consensus is towards Quark, I see no reason to continue with it.
* I created several PNG maps in PaintShop Pro and used them as height maps with the terrain terraformer. Some interesting effects. The fireworks picture tube worked well to create a region of rocky peaks. Most of the other effects I used were a bit too harsh on the terrain. I suspect I can use some of the color filters to remap some of the colors closer together and reduce the severe height differences. I'll have to play with that.
* I went through two of Desmond Fletcher's environmental effects tutorials, which were enlightening, but regardless I had poor results. Rain wasn't very satisfying, either it didn't look like rain falling or it looked like static. My snow was a little better, but still I had problems getting the right density (plus snow looks stupid if it doesn't accumulate). I didn't like that the effects could bleed through portals (go inside a room, look out the portal, and it looks like some of the rain/snow is dropping right in front of you no matter how far you are from the door). And the up-close snow effects looked pixellated. Anyway, I went though particle nodes tutorial as well, but my "campfire" looked like Space Invaders in reverse. I had better luck using the editor, next...
* I installed the particle editor, and created some very neat effects. I still have to figure out how to sew these effects into the mission, but I don't think it'll be hard. I made a bubble generator that looked like these bubbles were floating away lazily in the wind, nice. Doing particle images in PSP was entertaining, although getting an interesting effect was far easier than getting a specific look. I made something that looked like a giant wire brush spinning out of control ... I suppose this could be useful in Alice II ...
* Last night I installed the compass control gui. There's a bit of an outline visible on the inner ring, I'll have to play with that. Tonight I'll probably draw my own compass images just to see how it looks, I'd definitely like something more ... ah ... petit. I had trouble placing the compass using the gui editor; all the other objects moved to their proportional locations when I left the editor, but the compass seemed to go by it's own rules placement. Probably a setting I missed.
I've had several crashes since I installed the latest HEAD. Not sure why. I was also having issues during the rain tutorial. The system must have had a leak but didn't crash, because I was banging my head for hours trying to intall new rain images; no matter what I tried, it looked always like my first rain image. At first I thought maybe it was caching the image, and started deleting temp files and DSOs like mad, but the only thing that fixed it was a reboot. Odd.
Steps to go:
* Further reading of the code and scripts.
* Ditch the scripts entirely and write my own "minimum app" that just displays a single object. The scripts are useful, but I didn't pay $100 to be a Tribes 2 modder. :)
* Animate an object.
* Model several interiors in Quark.
* Create some new textures of my own to work with for terrain, skies, and water.
* Get precipitation working properly.
* Play around with multiplayer. I haven't done so yet because it's not big on my list. Although I've played quite a bit of MP, I'm more of a single-player kind of guy and that's likely where my focus will be. But still, good to learn.
* Put some working weapons in the game, and get them firing. Attach particle effects. Perhaps work with some of the inventory systems I read about here.
* Bots. AI. Farther down the road.
In the long term, I think I'd like to put together a strategy game framework with an emphasis on SGs outside the overcooked, overdone RTSG genre.
Plenty left to do!
* I went through several Milkshape tutorials. The audio + video ones at www.planetquake.com/polycount/cottages/blackboard/tutorials.htm are very very helpful and to the point. Highly recommended. I'll likely register Milkshape this week.
* I located a picture of a Walther PPK on the web, modelled it in Milkshape, and skinned it. The front/back look great, but I haven't quite figured out how to skin the sides correctly. I scaled and imported this model into the torque demo. Sweet. I initially found picking the right vertices kinda difficult, but grouping them helped a bit. Without scaling the PPK in torque was HUGE ... I scaled the object inside the Torque editor (after importing), but that left a very large grid box around the object -- I assume this is the bounding box for collision detection. When I performed the scaling directly in Milkshape the box looked more appropriately sized. I gather I could also have tried applying the scaling in the exporter.
* I bought Truespace 5.2 for $300. This seems like a mistake now, but I didn't know better at the time; I saw Truespace mentioned on GG and I thought it was more supported than it is. Worse, Truespace 6.0 is coming out in July and they want $130 to upgrade to it ... ack. I was able to create some shapes and export them to 3DS, then get them into Torque via Milkshape, but the results weren't as good as I'd like. I'll have to play with this more and hope for better results. If not, this was a waste of money... that is, unless I get off my tush and write a TS plug-in... it would be nice if GG could negotiate a lower priced 3D Max license for Torque users. I'd be interested in that. I'm trying to be a good boy and make sure I'm legal with all my tools. Anyhow, Truespace has a steep learning curve with it's "nouveau" interface, but once you get past that you can start making some cool stuff.
* I installed Quark (quark for torque, v6.3). I haven't played around with the editing features much yet, but I did export the default "room" to torque and replaced several of the demo pyramids with them. I used the terrain editor to flatten out and adjust the height of the terrain so none of the buildings looked like they were floating or had too high of a lip at the entrance. I have not discovered how to align the room floor exactly with the terrain yet. I also installed Hammer and played with that a little, but since the consensus is towards Quark, I see no reason to continue with it.
* I created several PNG maps in PaintShop Pro and used them as height maps with the terrain terraformer. Some interesting effects. The fireworks picture tube worked well to create a region of rocky peaks. Most of the other effects I used were a bit too harsh on the terrain. I suspect I can use some of the color filters to remap some of the colors closer together and reduce the severe height differences. I'll have to play with that.
* I went through two of Desmond Fletcher's environmental effects tutorials, which were enlightening, but regardless I had poor results. Rain wasn't very satisfying, either it didn't look like rain falling or it looked like static. My snow was a little better, but still I had problems getting the right density (plus snow looks stupid if it doesn't accumulate). I didn't like that the effects could bleed through portals (go inside a room, look out the portal, and it looks like some of the rain/snow is dropping right in front of you no matter how far you are from the door). And the up-close snow effects looked pixellated. Anyway, I went though particle nodes tutorial as well, but my "campfire" looked like Space Invaders in reverse. I had better luck using the editor, next...
* I installed the particle editor, and created some very neat effects. I still have to figure out how to sew these effects into the mission, but I don't think it'll be hard. I made a bubble generator that looked like these bubbles were floating away lazily in the wind, nice. Doing particle images in PSP was entertaining, although getting an interesting effect was far easier than getting a specific look. I made something that looked like a giant wire brush spinning out of control ... I suppose this could be useful in Alice II ...
* Last night I installed the compass control gui. There's a bit of an outline visible on the inner ring, I'll have to play with that. Tonight I'll probably draw my own compass images just to see how it looks, I'd definitely like something more ... ah ... petit. I had trouble placing the compass using the gui editor; all the other objects moved to their proportional locations when I left the editor, but the compass seemed to go by it's own rules placement. Probably a setting I missed.
I've had several crashes since I installed the latest HEAD. Not sure why. I was also having issues during the rain tutorial. The system must have had a leak but didn't crash, because I was banging my head for hours trying to intall new rain images; no matter what I tried, it looked always like my first rain image. At first I thought maybe it was caching the image, and started deleting temp files and DSOs like mad, but the only thing that fixed it was a reboot. Odd.
Steps to go:
* Further reading of the code and scripts.
* Ditch the scripts entirely and write my own "minimum app" that just displays a single object. The scripts are useful, but I didn't pay $100 to be a Tribes 2 modder. :)
* Animate an object.
* Model several interiors in Quark.
* Create some new textures of my own to work with for terrain, skies, and water.
* Get precipitation working properly.
* Play around with multiplayer. I haven't done so yet because it's not big on my list. Although I've played quite a bit of MP, I'm more of a single-player kind of guy and that's likely where my focus will be. But still, good to learn.
* Put some working weapons in the game, and get them firing. Attach particle effects. Perhaps work with some of the inventory systems I read about here.
* Bots. AI. Farther down the road.
In the long term, I think I'd like to put together a strategy game framework with an emphasis on SGs outside the overcooked, overdone RTSG genre.
Plenty left to do!
#2
06/13/2002 (8:49 am)
Thanks, Jeff. It's working out for me so far. :) Last night I made my own skyboxes with Terragen (again thanks to Desmond's tutorials), very nice. I also learned how to get my newly textured compass gui positioned where I want, but somehow in the process I torched the mission editor gui ... whoops ... backups are a good thing. 
Torque Owner Jeff Tunnell
Jeff Tunnell GG