As Promised, An In Game Video

[Cogburn]

Piece by piece we're putting the art pipeline and engine functionality together.* This video is just a small sample of what we've done.* This post is a little bit of how much it cost in money and man hours to get there. :)

The main purpose of the video was to test the LOD limits of the trees to make sure I had them correct.* As you can see in the video, they don't "pop" in and out of LODs.* The trees themselves were generated by the program that br0lli purchased for us: TreeMagikG3.* He's gonna be our flora and fauna guy. :)* I felt that I needed to understand what it would take to get the trees he would create actually into the engine. Figuring out that program and how to generate unique trees that didn't look like utter crap took about 4 hours.* Once I had the trees, converting them to an engine acceptable format and combining the different LODs took at least 6 hours of tinkering in Milkshape.* Figuring out the LOD limits that were acceptable for the particular terrain took about 2 hours.* So all in all, it took $75 worth of software and 12 hours of research and mistakes but now I can do it each time, every time, perfect.*

Some things to look for when watching the video:

* Ridgeline foliage at distance (just for you abathur* ;D)
* I'm carrying the mechanical prototype for the VT SMG.* Notice the tracer fire and the lighting on the trees as the rounds fly through the grove
* The grove contains 200 150-poly trees in a 100 x 200 meter ellipse.
* There are 10,000 pieces of foliage
* The viewdistance is 750 meters
* Foliage sways and the shoreline ebbs
* The skybox is the one submitted by Secant
* An animated cloud layer to compliment the skybox
* When I "zoom" in, LODs are corrected (trees and foliage) for the new camera POV
* Ignore the FPS.* This is running on a debug build and with no optimizations running.* It is in no way indicitive of actual performance.

In one shot there's a structure in the background that you'll see in later Milestone 0 videos...* But I'll leave it at that for now. :)

Here it is. (http://www.versusthegame.com/cogburn/milestone0_v0.1.wmv)

[Aftiel]

DLing now...my cock is already hard.

The Eagle has landed I repeat, Aftiel has spooged.

[GreatMazinkaiser]

Fucking amazing...

The water laps the bank of the pond...

Drools...

[fredthedeadhead]

Truely awesome.

Will there be explosion damage and the like going in later on?

[DIZZE]

Thats freaking sweet Cog :o

[MasterCalaelen]

Downloading now, can't wait!

*EDIT* Awesome Cogburn!

[Hawkeye]

Thats freaking sweet Cog :o

[nadir]

Cool stuff. No a fan of the tree model. It is not bad just meh to me. Like the movement of the vegatation though. That kicks ass.

[FlamingPotato-J]

Wow...thats awesome! :D

[Secant]

"Like the movement of the vegatation though."

Please god tell me you dumped that on a vertex shader and not processor ;P

As for the trees; are you planning on shadow baking or doing some basic stencils? As well as animating the limbs at one point or another? similar to the foliage. It requires a bit more setup on the part of the trees; but i made a convinient shader that doesn't require actual limbs/bones to be used for animation and just uses a vertex list procedural matrix for bending the ends of tree limbs (can be effected by a global wind variable).

Any additional plans for shoreline/water refraction?

The dynamic lighting from the gun fire could use a bit of toning down; 50 people firing into the distance = lose on FPS when you end up with like 50 point lights out there lol; consider using a spot light /w a projection image as opposed to actual lighting?
I'll have some free time towards the end of october to really start contributing to this project again :(, really pushing on my current project with the ILM group as we have an interest from the sci-fi channel for next quarter (Omg *crosses fingers*).

[Cogburn]

"Like the movement of the vegatation though."

Please god tell me you dumped that on a vertex shader and not processor ;P


The foliage doesn't have shaders. :) It's creative color selection based on how I know the engine operates.... If you pick the right colors, TGE will generate "errors" in the rendering at different LODs of foliage billboards. Rather than fix the problem, I USED it... The fact that you thought it was shader driven lets me know its the right way to go. ;)


As for the trees; are you planning on shadow baking or doing some basic stencils? As well as animating the limbs at one point or another? similar to the foliage.* It requires a bit more setup on the part of the trees; but i made a convinient shader that doesn't require actual limbs/bones to be used for animation and just uses a vertex list procedural matrix for bending the ends of tree limbs (can be effected by a global wind variable).


Shadows are baked, but I do not have the lighting code installed yet. Not that it's all that taxing on the engine (its not taxing at all, actually), I just don't have it in yet so no static shapes cast shadows.


Any additional plans for shoreline/water refraction?


Yes, in Phase 2. Phase 2 also add paralax for items under the surface of the water.


The dynamic lighting from the gun fire could use a bit of toning down; 50 people firing into the distance = lose on FPS when you end up with like 50 point lights out there lol; consider using a spot light /w a projection image as opposed to actual lighting?
I'll have some free time towards the end of october to really start contributing to this project again :(,* really pushing on my current project with the ILM group as we have an interest from the sci-fi channel for next quarter (Omg *crosses fingers*).* *


Yeah, but don't forget this was just a test. ;) The tracer lights were extra bright so I could test the dynamic lightmapping on the trees.

Good luck w/ your ILM project. We'll be here when you are done. :)

[RebelCommander]

OMG, DLing.

OMG OMG OMG

Saved. For prospective sponsorships shit later.


And god dammit, Secant, check your fucking PMs!

[Secant]

I did lol; i'm making sure my boss gets in contact with you rebel.

[br011i]

as for the trees. FYI thats not what hte trees look like, look below.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/br011i/tree5.jpg

[Secant]

good luck rendering that high quality of an alpha map (assuming you're using a texture) without some serious distance LOD by DDS degredation Oo

[nadir]

good luck rendering that high quality of an alpha map (assuming you're using a texture) without some serious distance LOD by DDS degredation Oo


QFT.

[abathur]

Moving water reminds me (I'm not sure I already asked)... what about weather induced flooding and possibly even water flow (so we can have more than flat lakes and rivers,) and what about physics effects of moving water (or high winds in a storm, for that matter?) Not really sure we should have wind effecting bullet physics, but flight physics are another bag. ;)

[aWarlikeDonkey]

that looks so sweet, this is gonna be great

[Cogburn]

Wind can affect anything from projectiles and snowflakes to avatar run speed.

Weather effects are a given, but the code on making them dynamic is a little shakey but that's already on my to-do list.

We COULD do waterfalls, but my concern is in the FPS performance.

[abathur]

I wouldn't be as worried about a waterfall as a moving river. Plenty of rivers have no notable waterfalls. Also of note would be the fun of flooding low-lying areas during a storm, or, even having hurricane-like weather systems that can raise the sea level by 20 feet in an area, etc.

[Greasy]

Oh dear God, please tell me that smg sound was just filler. Want me to hit the shooting range and record some good audio of a few different guns? Hell, have you figured out yet how much audio will be done from scratch as opposed to using royalty free sound packs of some kind? Understood, not the greatest priority for right now. I'm just curious, as the various sound aspects of the game are really the only way I can contribute besides offering my services as a tester or give pats on the back, and I really am itching to help out with this in any way I can.

Yeah, I'm pretty excited about this whole thing. :)

[Cogburn]

VIOLENT weather systems? Hmmm...

Interesting idea... I'll have to meditate on the technical aspects of it.... Certainly does make a nice addition to earthquakes and meteors :)

[TerranLegend]

OMG THE VID WAS SEXY

[Thelmia]

Kinda reminded me of OFP, but better looking. Deifnately better looking than PS. Cool. Nice wind effect on the foilage.

[MadCat360]

OMG, nice.

*Nerdgasm*

[LukeFilewalker]

Doesn't seem to be working for me.the Link.

[Dredboss]

This thread appear dead, and the link to the video broken, but I really want to see what has been done so far.

[Aftiel]

Video has been taken down for now, check www.versusthegame.com for further updates. This area will probably be shutdown soon.