The Maunstraut 2009 Project

[Holy_Diver]

With permission I am in the process of reworking Tom Eversole's Maunstraut (and would love any help btw)

As the first fully featured proper Sword of Moonlight game created outside Japan (in English -- to further qualify) I really want to give this game a proper legacy...

Hopefully this will be only the first reiteration of DoM (Diadem of Maunstraut)


I'm going to use this thread for now to just post working screenshots to get everyone excited. I'm a fairly busy person, and this is not my only SoM contribution I've on my plate. Eventually I will release an Alpha version of the game, which will require extensive play testing, just get solid errors out of the way, as I'm sure there will be many due to the half hazard way I'm approaching this.

With errors out, I will sign off on a Beta version, which Todd will hopefully host on swordofmoonlight.com's front page. The Beta version will likely be the version everyone who is eager to will get to play. I won't declare a non-beta version until I'm able to implement everything I intend to with this version of Maunstraut.

I seriously doubt this version will be my last version -- and I hope others will take this work and do their own thing with it... or just generally pitch in and make this open source version of Maunstraut an ever evolving deal.

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I will kick this off with the first public screenshot. You will have to click the link for now, but Todd is setting me up an FTP login, and I will inline the image in the future...



The first encounter with the four Arch Demons in the Castle Imbrium banquet hall (from left to right: Earth, Fire, Water, Wind)



FYI: For anyone who wants to give the project a spin as currently is, there is always a fairly regular ~5MB backup here( http://anon.swordofmoonlight.com/holy/dom/M09_mini.zip )

^You will need to understand SoM and have Todd's devkit to try it however (and the original DoM music and splash screen files wouldn't hurt either)

[dmpdesign]

Very nice.

Tomorrow I will do my best to get Tom's objects and my own in a new installer so you can have probably 50 or more new items/objects to utilize in your project.

And yeah, i will get you that ftp stuff too so you can start hosting stuff here.

[Holy_Diver]

Here are some aerial screenshots of the new outside Castle Imbrium (I always wanna say Inebrium ) map work I've done...

http://swordofmoonlight.com/holy/dom/screens/Maunstraut09_lv00.png
http://swordofmoonlight.com/holy/dom/screens/Maunstraut09_lv01.png

You really get the feeling of a sprawling castle complex now, and what's there still just feels like the tip of an iceberg.

Unfortunately I can't really grasp the logic of SoM's frustum culling algorithm... for one thing it's obviously very bug prone. If you're draw distance is set very far at all I find even very close map pieces tend to get tossed out. Also for wide shots like these the outer "penumbra" of the camera pov get tossed. For some reason even objects seem to have some sort of occlusion power (even when they tend to be porous??) ...I didn't even thing far out screens like this were possible until I just started looking for a good screenshot and realized how far out I could go in some directions (but not others) before pieces started to be not drawn

[Holy_Diver]

Tomorrow I will do my best to get Tom's objects and my own in a new installer so you can have probably 50 or more new items/objects to utilize in your project.

I think I already have most (if not all) of Tom's stuff (and your stuff by way of Tom) after he uploaded his SoM data repository so I could get his DoM project space to not be buggy... what do you think??

[dmpdesign]

You might have mine, though I have been adding about 3 or more custom objects a week hehe.

i will get everything up on the network later today...btw how did you do that screenshot?

I cant figure how you got so high in the air?  That is very cool and I would love to see how some of my stuff looks from that height.

As far as map pieces not showing up that are very close to you, thats an odd issue, but check the following things:

1. Make sure there are map pieces between all placed map pieces, even if you have a hole or cliff or whatever, put the invisible dummy pieces between everything that would be left blank.  If you dont have a map tile connecting the map piece youre standing on and the map piece you want to see several tiles away, it will dissappear when you try to look at it.

2. Interior pieces with floor and ceiling act really funny when you try to layer them...in other words, if you tried to build a wall that was very high by stacking the same map piece behind itself, but 5.5 meters higher, most of the time the higher pieces will dissappear.  Its a shame really, I had a cool idea for a colosseum area that needed this to work but it doesnt, so I couldnt accomplish what I wanted without creating an entire new set of map pieces which I just dont feel like doing right now.

3. As for objects flickering out map pieces, thats one I havent seen.  I have seen objects flicker, this is based on the center point of the object being off the screen, but I havent seen it mess with map tiles.

[Holy_Diver]

^offtopic: But I have a hunch if you coat the outside of your colosseum with dummy pieces (if there aren't already pieces around it) it might work (my experience... increasing the draw distance some might help as well)

I had no trouble layering higher pieces like that with those castle screens obviously.

PS: About aerial screenshots... the angle did seem fickle, but in general just use F4 with a maximum draw distance (no fog) ...logical enough. But it's possible Tom's massive World Tree like Healing Tree setup on that map might've made that possible??

[dmpdesign]

So F4 in test mode lets you move the camera?

I never knew  :oops:

Other than the F1 and 2 keys for toggling counters etc, and one of them that made you pass through walls, i didnt know there were any other functions.

When you hit F4, what do you have to press to move the camera around?

John, does the manual outline the speicifics of the function keys during debugging?  If so I would like to document it as I didnt get to use them much (didnt discover them til about a month ago).

[Holy_Diver]

^Wow, I couldn't imagine debugging without F4?? I guess you have been using it for 4x speed and no-clipping purposes. Anyway the A and Z keys adjust your height. I was told this in these forums somewhere

[Holy_Diver]

I inlined the first screenshot, but the aerial shots are too big to post since the forum doesn't generate forum width appropriate preview images 8)


PS: I'd like to thank Todd for the swordofmoonlight.com server space

[dmpdesign]

I inlined the first screenshot, but the aerial shots are too big to post since the forum doesn't generate forum width appropriate preview images 8)

lol yes yes...this site needs work indeed  :oops:

Thats what you get when a newb tries to do a webpage.