The game with no name

Valmond · Post by **Valmond** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 7:44 am

@Nadro

Nadro for president!
This looks like Exactly what I need, a big thanks for sharing!

I have downloaded it, checking out asap!

@grumpymonkey

Well, runeskape definitely had Something (making you like dig iron 3 hours
a row without notice) and yes it's an old game and no I won't copy it ^^.
The features in runescape that will take up my time, what was that?
I mean, any feature will take up my time no?

Saumane · Post by **Saumane** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 11:30 am

Nadro, that's amazing! Thank you! I will use that, for sure.

Valmond, did i get it right, that you have an exe that can convert the .raw texture layer alpha files to a single RGB selector map? It would be really great, if you'd like to share it

I'm trying out freeworld3d too, but making the selector textures manually in photoshop really slows down the process.

pera · Post by **pera** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 7:23 am

Game looks great.
What are your next plans to implement?

Valmond · Post by **Valmond** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 8:51 pm

@Saumane

Sure:

AlphaPacker

Running the .bat combines the raw alpha maps and that is about it...
I included the MSVC project (and the .exe) feel free to do what you want with it and please tell if something doesn't work out as expected.
(note: the baseimage must be of the correct size, ie. like the alpha layers, don't really remember put sure at 90%).

@pera

Thanks!

I'm ironing out bugs at the moment but next step could be one of the following:

* Redo the terrain shader (with Nadros 16 textures

)
(then rebuild the terrain etc)

* Implement stats (attack, force, damage bonus, armor etc) + GUI for that (like a 'paperdoll' window with you+your actual characteristics).

* The quest system

Parallel I'll try to make an easy system to update the server and so the client recognises it is
too old / incomplete etc. so I can start make some serious testing

Saumane · Post by **Saumane** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:51 am

Thanks man! Works great. But there was something weird going on with the exe that was included in the rar, my console said that it is corrupt or something, so i re-compiled it and now it works!

Valmond · Post by **Valmond** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 9:23 pm

Thanks to Nadro and his Excellent IrrCg Binding (+ his patch + his Help!) I now have Mip maps on my terrain!

The image doesn't say that much but without mipmaps there are so much flickering or blinking
or whatever you call it when you move the camera that you'll get sick of it.

Next up will probably be the Characteristics (level, force, armor, damage and all that).
or the PaperDoll view ...

Nadro · Post by **Nadro** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 10:11 pm

This looks really nice, but I see one planar mapping on this terrain, so on hills texture is resized. I think You should use triplanar mapping (NVIDIA Cascades) for it. I've done example for it to IrrCg, but I wasn't release it yet, but if You are interesting in it I can share code for it:

Code: Select all

void main_v(float4      Position	: POSITION,
            float3      Normal      : NORMAL,

        out	float4      oPosition	 : POSITION,
        out	float3      oUV          : TEXCOORD0,
        out	float3      oNormal      : TEXCOORD1,

    uniform	float4x4    W, // World matrix
    uniform	float4x4    WVP ) // World View Projection Matrix
{
    float3 UV = mul(W, Position);

	oPosition = mul(WVP, Position);

    oUV = UV / 10000; // frequency of texture sampling
    oNormal = Normal;
}

void main_f(float3      UV           : TEXCOORD0,
            float3      Normal       : TEXCOORD1,

        out float4      oColor       : COLOR,

    uniform	sampler2D   Color0       : register(s0),
    uniform	sampler2D   Color1       : register(s1),
    uniform	sampler2D   Color2       : register(s2) )
{
    // NVIDIA Cascades paper
    float3 blend_weights = abs(Normal) - 0.2;
    blend_weights *= 7;
    blend_weights = pow(blend_weights, float3(23,23,23));
    blend_weights = max(float3(0,0,0), blend_weights);
    blend_weights /= dot(blend_weights, float3(1,1,1));

    float4 color1 = tex2D(Color0, UV.xy);
    float4 color2 = tex2D(Color1, UV.yz);
    float4 color3 = tex2D(Color2, UV.xz);

    oColor.xyz = color1*blend_weights.z + color2*blend_weights.x + color3*blend_weights.y;
	oColor.w = 1;
}

This screenshot for it:

You can see where is usage other mapping plane (other texture - other mapping plane). You can easy prepare this shader for working with Your terrain shader.

but remember, after scaling terrain mesh not regular (eg [x,y,x] etc.) (no via ISceneNode::setScale(..), but via IMeshManipulator::scale(..) You have to recalculate normals via IMeshManipulator::recalculateNormals(..), because as You see shader use normals for select properly mapping plane.

Valmond · Post by **Valmond** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 8:23 am

This look really amazing!

and it would clearly do away with all those quite ugly textured slopes I have...

I'll definitely dig into these triplanar mappings and your code (and learn Cg better too ^^)!

Thanks again for sharing this kind of stuff!

*Off to work*

Valmond

Valmond · Post by **Valmond** » Fri May 22, 2009 2:53 pm

phew, that was hard...

but finally (I'm nu shader guru so that might explain it took some time :p) here is the terrain with triplanar mapping :
(check out the old one without)

Thanks again Nadro!

Here the base layer only (the rock) is triplanar but I can switch any layer from/to triplanar/"normal alphamask" by a comment/uncomment in the shader.

Also added XP, stats (both for items and player class), levels (and upped stats when leveling up), armor and
damage calculations according to level / armor / stats / critics etc.

I also got a new character

If it wasn't for my mini PC:s (Atom + SATA-CompactFlash) like wrong read/write speed (I got it all set but writespeed
is down to like 10kb/sec so any MySQL stuff takes forever) I'd make a prototype-test...

So next would be one of the following: character window with all stats / Bonus system / Quest system / proto testing.

Nadro · Post by **Nadro** » Sat May 23, 2009 12:34 pm

Now it's look very good

Cloudef · Post by **Cloudef** » Sat May 23, 2009 2:34 pm

Indeed, looks much better now.

Valmond · Post by **Valmond** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 12:18 pm

just a quick update before I'll leave for holidays (Yes!):

Characteristics implemented according to player type (Warrior,Thief,...), armour, damage dealing etc.
New GUI system implemented (with a 2D "sceneroot")
Heightmap "cut up" (A big heightmap can be cut up in for example 4x4 heightmaps) so if needed I can cull (better)
Multiple heightmaps so I'm having a endless (theorically ^^) seamless world
New player character (Mesh) a woman (see below

)
The quest system is up and running perfectly (okay, some GUI improvements might be needed for the non-programmers

)
and finally: Jumping ! (Server controlled, lag-correction,...)

Well, soon I'll have some items (up to level 10-12) and after the integration I'll try to make the first (real) quests
and maybe integrate "objects" (meshes) ingame (like rocks you can stand on, flowers you can collect,...)

But first, holiday

pera · Post by **pera** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 12:34 pm

looks great! cant wait to test it.

Virion · Post by **Virion** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 2:29 pm

looks good so far, but from artist point of view, the whole scene is very flat. you might want to bake ambient occlusion into your character textures as well as lightmap to the terrain so that it has more depth. just my 2 cents.

Valmond · Post by **Valmond** » Tue Jul 14, 2009 3:30 pm

Thanks pera, I guess I'll try some tests after the holidays (+some time)

Virion, yes, definitely it doesn't look very cool and for the graphic part the todo list is as follow (not necessarily in order and maybe not everything):
* light color and fog color & strength per terrain (and blending between them)
* terrain lightmap
* objects on the terrain
* easy system to use shaders with those objects
* change the terrain textures (and their "zoom") and redesign the terrain
* darken the player when it is on a "darkened" part of the lightmap

extras:
* normalmaps in the terrain shader
* water

I don't know anything about ambient occlusion but a quick check it seems like a) a quite heavy shader tech or b) a baked texture effect ?

Thanks for the feedback