Old discussion and screenshots thread

[Holy_Diver]

Snake Eater's grass gave me some ideas.

First of all you can definitely see the interlacing when spinning the camera in Snake Eater. My only guess is the KFIV technique was an attempt to have faster turn speeds without noticeable interlacing artifacts. That I think was a good idea... but apparently the KFIV team for all the beauty of that game were too stupid to figure out the analog stick. Because while moving slow there would be no interlacing probs. And while moving fast the blur effect would've made more sense.

Anyway the grass in Snake Eater is the same mud sprinkled with green globules, but it has a lot of tall grass models liberally planted everywhere to make up for the underbrush. The grass doesn't move realistically under the NPC's feet. It actually just shrinks into the ground like some rascally rabbit was pulling carrots into his burrow from under the ground. Still if you don't pay attention it's a pretty effective illusion.

Now I've already been thinking about an alternative simple shadow technique for Som. If I can get the lighting really streamlined, I figure it will look better to replace the flat shadows with per pixel ambient black light sources which only effect the tile graphics. That way the lights would not light the feet of the monster/npc casting the shadow because that would probably not help the illusion. Objects could also be shadowed that way if they were flagged as non monster/npcs in this new system I'm working on.

Anyway by adding the shadows to the shader constants, the same shadows could be used in a custom vertex shader to signal to grass that it's being walked over. The closer the grass is to the shadow the more it lays down so to speak. The bigger the shadow, the bigger the area of grass it covers. The details are not really important, I'm sure it would work out one way or another however your 3D (2D grass would probably not work so well) grass was setup.

[Verdite]

I wouldnt know much about a city park, i live rurally also.

Yeah, i could spend time making my own grass set. To be honest diver i'm trying my best to get this demo up and running... I'm thinking to throw a load of textures in there and let users send me feedback (if they care about a sequel that is.) Though all or most of your advice is good stuff, especially Todds too... In fact the advice ive recieved on the forum has contributed greatly to my own made textures. Though to save time ive used some free stock textures.

*Shrug*  I've got alot of rehashing to do before i put up the demo though... Textures overlapping... Not nice.

I made my own lowpoly high grass that is essentially 3d grass. It works nicely. I need to retexture that too.

Actually i'm going to redo some items, when i first started i used highpoly models to shape or whatever. I've come a long way now. 

I'm not touching the produce though. I'm proud of my swedes. 

[Holy_Diver]

About that flat grass texture. It's just a pet peeve of mine. You see it in a number of indie games, and I have a feeling it's probably the same texture more or less every time. I've never seen grass like that in a big studio game, and I reckon the reason why is the same reason it unsettles me. It looks detail rich at first, but it's just unnatural looking, and grass should be the last thing in your game drawing attention from the players eye, much less demanding it. Because frankly grass may well be the single toughest thing to render realistically, and any game that would do so will probably have to devote a good chunk of it's processing time to grass in grassy areas (and most consumers aren't thinking about how great the grass will be when they reach for their wallet)

PS: I'm not at all sure (no idea at all really) what exactly you mean by "texture overlap" (I'm going to assume lining up the seams between textures) but it reminds me of I think a real prob Som seems to have. The problem really isn't with Som. As much as the texture mapping on the tiles. The floors (just for instance) seem to be off by about one texel (pretty much just like the .mdl files) which makes them really jar when two different tiles are placed side by side with different rotations. Ie. the grain in a wood floor (for example) will be a texel off along the seam. I wish there was some slight adjustment I could make with Ex to correct for that, but I remember trying everything one day without satisfaction. I might sit down and give it some real thought again some time. Worst case scenario they need to all be adjusted by hand. And I have a feeling the textures don't necessarily wrap in all four directions, so a little "Photoshopping" might also be in order. However if you're making all your map tiles from scratch you probably don't need to worry about this for your game. And your game (Rathmor) should be interesting because it won't suffer from that failing in the presentation dept.

[Verdite]

Yeah thats what i meant. The seams crossed over and created a flicker. Thats pretty much fixed today. Done alot of tweaking. 

Worked on a new underground level... And worked a bit on a skeleton, fixing his eyes.

[Holy_Diver]

Is it possible to capture this "flicker" in a screenshot?

How BTW did you fix the eyes? Other than 'shopping them to your own taste...

Was it because some pixels from the texture were getting mapped that were never filled in? If so there is a lot of that in nearly every enemy/npc I think. The UVs themselves don't actually line up properly, but filling in the bordering pixels is not a bad tactic for polishing your game. Ultimately I'd like to see the UVs themselves corrected, but we need more tools first.

I've also noticed the lighting normals are a little dodgy around the skeletons eyes, but with so few polygons I suppose it could be worse.

[Holy_Diver]

^Also, can you do me a favor...

If you know for sure the .prf file that is your custom skeleton. Open the file up in a text or hexeditor. and see what .mdl file is written in there.

Then find that .mdl file and attach it to a post. So I can see if it has your custom skin in it, or the old one.

[Verdite]

I just wanted to touch up a few areas that wernt looking great. The eyes for example, i thought, lacked depth so i wanted to make a more menacing looking skele. Didnt turn out as good as i wanted it to, but ive still got some polishing to do.

The 'glow' around the eyes didnt work out as i'd planned, because i didnt realise the texture would stretch that much... Anyway like i said, ill do a bit more on that bad guy and make a few variants.

I dont use tim viewer, or the tim extractor / whatever "tim"ness is used to import and export the textures. I use eneedit and bmp2txr to import and export, so i dont think it would be attached. I could be wrong.

Whats it in aid of, btw?

[dmpdesign]

Heh, I must be weird, i really like the skel mod personally.

Keep in mind, most of the time you see them will be at a distance, so the fact its not exactly what youre after isnt that big of a deal.  The glow effect in the small screen shot gives it alot more life in my opinion.  Its too bad we cant make them lightsources so at a distance all you can see are the glowing eyes.

[Holy_Diver]

You could replace the eyes with the same purple flame the skeleton magi have to that effect.

PS: I'm in no hurry but it would it would be helpful for everyone to know if the enedit tool somehow replaces the mdl files' tim textures with the external txr files.

[Verdite]

Pleased you liked it. Having glowing eyes in the dark would be really good... Its the kinda thing that would liven enemies up a bit.

I've spent 3+ hours on an armour tonight, but it looks effing amazing, and i loved designing it. Ah todd btw :) i increased the polygons in this one, so its suitable for all kinds. I intend to use it for other modelling purposes too.

Not showing it yet though. It'l be on the main title screen for Rathmor.

Thanks for the idea diver i may use that on another model. Oh, heres some more info for you... When i use the enedit through my method, the models in the som enemy display dont display their new textures, but in game they are fine. If thats any help.