Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Black Wolf on March 07, 2004, 10:30:12 am
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Because we have these, and you don't. :p
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/WebScreens/Island1.jpg)
I have been resisting the temptation to post this since about 5 PM this afternoon. It is now 12:20 tomorrow morning. I have low powers of resistance. I'll leave it up to Flipside as to whether he posts any of the other screenies. Keep in mind the following things
That water moves.
If you crash into it, you can go under it and take damage.
We can simulate night, day or dawn, as well as battle conditions you wouldn;t imagine.
In short, Flipside is a god.
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Neat. Coded?
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no it looks like they just made some ubber HTL model
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You've got rainbow blobs and we don't? How... quaint.
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That space debris(?) is FUBAR-ed there, tho. I'm surprised there's no use of env. mapping for the 'sea'.
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How can it be 12.20 tomorrow morning?
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Originally posted by Gank
How can it be 12.20 tomorrow morning?
Tis in Oz. So it's tommorrow to us.
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Night fighting.... sort of.
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/Flipside/KoolSky.jpg)
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Sorry, i don't like it.
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the env mapping is why everything looks so bright - i forgot to turn off/down the ambient lighting. :nervous:
here are the other pics: (also with ambient lighting on full by accident :( )
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/WebScreens/Island2.jpg)
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/WebScreens/Island3.jpg)
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/VasudanAdmiral/WebScreens/Island4.jpg)
oh, and the water doesn't just move, it's animated so well it looks better than most current games, and the shine and environment maps make it look quite real. :D
...except for the space debris, yeah :blah:
i'll see about getting some with propperly set ambient lighting shots later on. :)
also, for the actual islands in-game we will have larger land masses, better beaches etc, plus certain.....other....features. :drevil:
all kudos to Flipside :)
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I am OFFICIALLY impressed... Question as those crab/squidlike machines mechas? Can they scuttle around like a normal mecha or are they stationary (or hover like a suacer)? Now if only the gravity problem canbe solved we can have ground units and mechas that act normally. Then I can use it to go back and make all the robotech missions I had to skip cause they weren't in air/space (like the SDF-1 ambush on Mar's surface!)... ALL HAIL THE NEW FS2 GODS!
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ooooo! so can you implement hostile waters?
heh!
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:eek2: :eek2: :eek2: :eek2: :eek2:
At this rate, they'll make an entire continent some of these days...:nod:
are any of these modifications going to be put in the actual SCP or are they entirely separate? (i hope they arent separate :p )
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This is definately something we haven't seen too much on FS2 ;)
Looking good, but I'd really like to see some shots without the ambient light.
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So long as you can bounce off the islands I'll say 'neat' for the graphics and 'meh' for the usefulness of this in any game.
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LE: Exactly my thoughts. If only, a moddable HW equivalent would definitely earn my nomination for "greatest game ever made, ever".
And it's... well, it's ugly. It doesn't have to be ugly, with some decent textures and so on it could be downright cool, but at this point it's an eyesore. The sky looks fine, particularly if it's animated, everything else ranges from "nothing spectactular" to "this had better be a beta". I'll give the robot/bunker things the benefit of the doubt that it's all the lighting, but for God's sake fix the land texture, and the sea could look much more like an actual sea- see the aforementioned Hostile Waters, even without the fantastic breakers that game did it'd still be a significant improvement. And if you can get those... christ, that would kick ass.
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The is a WIP. More screenies later.
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I agree that the island is kind of ugly.
Mmh, where did Aki put his macross island model? ( like you're the only ones having stuff like that ;) )
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More shots without environment reflection and less ambient light.
This is also possibly the first time an 'Aesir' ship has been seen in public :D
'tis a freighter before you ask.
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/Shinobi/Island1.jpg)
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/Shinobi/Island2.jpg)
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/Shinobi/Island3.jpg)
And here's one showing off Lightspeeds new Hornet missiles...(and the dodgy WIP island textures :cool: )
(http://www.sectorfiles.com/ti-file-dump/Shinobi/screen04.jpg)
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this had better be a beta
Dude, it's not even an Alpha, let alone a Beta. I imagine after some creative meetings they'll see what can be done to improve the aesthetics.
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I think some people are losing site of the fact that FS2 has come so damn far. This kind of thing would never have been possible a few years ago. Look at it now! Sure it's not as beautiful as Breed or Halo or Farcry but for a 5+ year old space sim, it's damn impressive. And as they've pointed out it's not even a beta yet. I'm impressed. Nice job guys!
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I do like the blue thing.
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Crikey
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today an island, tomorrow the world? :p
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I'm interested to see how far this engine can be stretched.
Looks awesome!
Cheers!
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looks much better w/o the reflections. But the island map is bad, sorry. If I'm saying that, it'sbecause I believe it can be way better, not to be an ass. Otherwise I wouldn't even bother posting.
That map has obviously been photoshoped, then use as both a diffuse and bump map, the result has been rendered/backed up and then has been reassigned to the island through a top UV mapping ( if I'm wrong, I'll make you a map :p ).
You're gonna tell me it's easy to criticize when you've not done it yourself, but funnily enough I've done about the same thing last month ( for my new Oleon Wars project ):
(http://www.swooh.com/premium/venom/oleon/Plymouth01.jpg)
(http://www.swooh.com/premium/venom/oleon/Plymouth02.jpg)
(http://www.swooh.com/premium/venom/oleon/Plymouth03.jpg)
( it's not top notch, but it worked for why I needed to do with it, and the choice of colours is made to make it cartoonish )
I see a few ways of improving the thing:
1) make your work based on the shadows of the mesh render ( paint with your brush as fusion, low opacity, and be patient ), force on the darker parts ( canyons ). Use the hard brush, not the one that fades on its borders.
2) paint the peaks with brighter colors ( can be easy to overdo it, so mght be wise to do that on a separate layer )
3) don't hesitate and try fancy brushes for the green parts ( plants )
but, the most important part:
4) don't rush the map. On landscapes, Maps ARE the most important part, you can get away with a low polycount, but not with rushed maps.
Oh, yeah, my island is meant to fly, but not yours, so I'd add an additional layer and would paint the foam along the island' edges, would make the thing blend better with the sea ( think about having the most outer border unregular and blue as the ocean, or you'll still have the hard edges and that will defeat the whole purpose of the thing ).
Voila, hope it helps.
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HOLY CRAP! I did not think this was possible. I hope sometime in the future a campaign is made with this.
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Originally posted by Nico
I agree that the island is kind of ugly.
Mmh, where did Aki put his macross island model? ( like you're the only ones having stuff like that ;) )
Macross island model?? Where??
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
I think some people are losing site of the fact that FS2 has come so damn far. This kind of thing would never have been possible a few years ago. Look at it now! Sure it's not as beautiful as Breed or Halo or Farcry but for a 5+ year old space sim, it's damn impressive. And as they've pointed out it's not even a beta yet. I'm impressed. Nice job guys!
Hear hear! :nod:
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Well, the island was literally thrown together to be honest, I just wanted to see if I could everything in a mission at the same time, running under FSO. Now I know it works, I'll spend some time honing it :)
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Originally posted by ryuune75
Macross island model?? Where??
Give me a bit of time, I might be able to scrounge it up on the RT forums :)
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@Nico
Thanks for the pointers, I'm sure Flip'll take them into consideration :)
@Triple Ace
Yep, Twisted Infinities. Check my sig. for website :)
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now to get rid of those space debris pieces
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Originally posted by ryuune75
Macross island model?? Where??
Don't wet your pants, it remained in beta stage, not mapped nor anything. But I remember seeing an avi of it showing ingame, was nice.
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Bah I say! You know how I feel. :p
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Heh, the thing that kind of ruins it is the lack of the islands' reflection in the water, but Since FS2 wasn't designed for this, and it would involve, I believe, a certain amount of raytracing, it won't be happening :)
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Sniff* ;) Oh well. I still wanna see a standalone mission where you have to defend a moon base from Shivans ;)
either that or a mission to save an orion class destroyer posessing an advanced engine prototype that fell into the ocean and needs to be repaired within 10 minutes else it sinks to the bottom...heheh...
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Originally posted by Flipside
Heh, the thing that kind of ruins it is the lack of the islands' reflection in the water, but Since FS2 wasn't designed for this, and it would involve, I believe, a certain amount of raytracing, it won't be happening :)
Unless you add the island to the texture you're using for the water.
*Blanantly throws down the guantlet. Hopes no one picks it up and makes me eat it* :lol:
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LOL
Problem is, it's tiled... it's possible I suppose, using a different texture for one part of the material, but that would be a mega-nightmare job :( I'll have to wait for shadows from the SCP guys and live with that ;)
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bleh, they dealed with that problem in FS4 before ( yeah, you read right, the old DOS based flight simulator ). You thought they had raytracing? :p
Make the sea half transparent, mirror the island downward, put it under the regular island.
voila. Now, of course, your sea is animated, so you can't make it transparent, I suppose? There lies the problem.
As for "non tweaking" versions... well, there's games with real time reflections ( I can only think of dead or alive 3 right now, tho ), so it's possible to code it. How difficult it is, I couldn't tell, not my job anyway :p
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well, there are planse for animated transperency.........
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i know it wouild be a pain, but couldnt we update the ani's?
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once for every different island?
and if you do it Nico's way, and the SCP makes animated transperency, you could make sexps for when on subsystem on the island explodes, the same happens under water.
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Problem is, the framerates are already stupidly low. Adding another island wouldd probably make it unplayable :(
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well, I suppose the framerate is down because of the animated sea, not the island. I doubt that mirrored island would change much.
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You are correct Nico, that's a 512 x 512 ANI, and it eats a lot of CPU :( The island is actually only about 5000 polys, and as you said, it would be perfectly happy, and not look all to different being half that ;)
Thanks for the advice on skinning the island btw, that one was a bit thrown together, but I've got something like a high-class version of Bryce, which exports the landscapes as .OBJ files, I used it last time for the shape, but I've found it can export textures/bumpmaps too, so I might give that a go :D
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you know, there might be a better way to "animate" the sea than use an ani. I believe you can have opacity chanels on normal maps, right?
I figured the "sea waving" pattern works quite ok for that:
make two planes ( almost overlaping, one on top of the other ) with a greyscaled version of them as opacity maps, and make them scroll two different ways.
Of course, that would need some source editing, I know there's map pan on the beams, but I suppose that doesn't exists for meshes.
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*stares for about 5 minutes* :eek2:
Awesome.... :eek:
This engine is just begging for an AirForces total conv... *bites tongue* Nevermind. :sigh:
About water... does the revision you guys are working with support partial transparency? I suppose it could help with the water plane.
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just one question. What is the name of the water texture?
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It's a home-made animation, I think I called it 'Waterplane.ani' if that helps :D
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hmmm...alright...
*goes back into his dark lurking hole to think*
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What do you use to creat the terrain? If you like I could make some for you with terragen?
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Terragen sounds good, Bryce'd do even better if it came to creating exact terrains. (God bless grayscale maps).
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A refreshing change from space combat: ground combat
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terragen is horrible for creating actual terrain meshes IIRC, but i *think* bryce is what flip used here, not entirely sure tho. thanks muchly for the suggestions and offer tho :)
hmm, actually i wonder if terragen could be used to create the terrain's map - taking a screenie looking straight down at it may in some cases work, except for lighting. :D and terragen'd water can look amazingly real on high settings :)
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Originally posted by Kalfireth
I think some people are losing site of the fact that FS2 has come so damn far. This kind of thing would never have been possible a few years ago. Look at it now! Sure it's not as beautiful as Breed or Halo or Farcry but for a 5+ year old space sim, it's damn impressive. And as they've pointed out it's not even a beta yet. I'm impressed. Nice job guys!
:yes: True dat, I think we need to have a good long look at how far we've come. Well said, T. :)
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Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
terragen is horrible for creating actual terrain meshes IIRC, but i *think* bryce is what flip used here, not entirely sure tho. thanks muchly for the suggestions and offer tho :)
Well, you *can* sculpt the terrain to what you want. It can be a pain in the ass though.
hmm, actually i wonder if terragen could be used to create the terrain's map - taking a screenie looking straight down at it may in some cases work, except for lighting. :D and terragen'd water can look amazingly real on high settings :) [/B]
Well, the offer is open so pm me if you want. :)