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Enrique

WFG Retired
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Posts posted by Enrique

  3. Crowd-sourced Civ: Mauryan Indians

    in Official tasks

  6. Post-processing effects test (SSAO/HDR/Bloom)

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Enrique

    That looks great! So are you guys are thinking that if you had a seperate set of UVs, you could leave the diffuse the way it is today and the second UVs would be used when rendering the SSAO pass?

    Yes, that's right. This second UV coordinates is used to map the precomputed/baked AO texture with multiply blending causing the effect.

    You can also use it (if more texture layers are supported) to add another layer of detail to the texture, especially useful to hide tiling textures with dirt, cracks, moss.... wich helps variation and details overall)

    If there was only a way (maybe a script?) to automatically generate these SSAO models/textures in batches out of blender or maybe even Pyrogenesis.

    I'm not sure about this, at least in blender. The first problem that pops to my head is that importing/exporting collada files into blender destroys the UV seams on the model and should be done manually.

    *EDIT: just found an option in blender to generate the seams based on the limits of the UV islands on the unwrap :yes3: . Maybe someone with phyton skills could make a script.... :P

  7. Post-processing effects test (SSAO/HDR/Bloom)

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    Thanks for your detailed answer Philip :), much clearer now. I was aware of both methods, but I didn't know how the process works on the engine/precomputed side.

    For the standard level of zoom playing on 0AD I think SSAO may look grany/with artifacts, so precomputed seems to be the ideal option.

    For those who want to see the difference between precomputed and SSAO here's a video from Overgrowth's dev blog that shows both effects:

    I think the main disadvantage compared to SSAO is that it's much more work to implement, but probably not infeasibly so.

    Then may we stick with SSAO as a toggle option while working on high priority features until precomputed AO implementation starts? :)

  8. Post-processing effects test (SSAO/HDR/Bloom)

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    I did some digging around and my memory failed me. It appears that mirroring UVs is only a problem when you are developing the normal map and baking the map. Once that is complete, you are ok it seems. Two good tuts I've came across are here:

    I thought you were talking about a pyrogenesis rendering limitation or something I wasn't aware about it, but now I know what you mean :)

    Also, I don't know if you follow our IRC chat, but there was some brief discussion about SSAO a few days ago in #0ad-dev, and one suggestion was that we calculate an AO texture in advance when models are loaded and cache the result, I guess to avoid the overhead of doing that every frame in screen space. You might be interested in reading that conversation, it seems relevant to your interests.

    I read the discussion you linked. I have some questions about it.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but that means that the models in the game allows more than one UV coordinates?

    How is mapped the precomputed AO into the model to show the effect?

    and last question, If the effect can be applied also on the terrain, will the game re-bake the AO each time a structure is built/destroyed?

  9. Post-processing effects test (SSAO/HDR/Bloom)

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    Nope. That's true for object-space mapping, however the thing I'll work on next should overcome that limitation.

    A suggestion: OK-looking maps can be generated automatically from the textures (e.g. with the GIMP), while the existing UV coords will be reused. If they choose to do so, the artists could batch-generate maps for various models, bake portions of particular types of texture (e.g. rooftiles) and simply replace parts of the batch-generated maps with the baked maps. While the sculpting/baking work for the texture-types will need to be done by the artists themselves, the rest can be done by any volunteer who can use an image editor, and the artists will just do the QA. Not the best solution, perhaps, but I hope that at least it makes sense.

    That's how I thought it would be. Using a normal map generator plugin on PS or GIMP from the existing diffuse textures, then tweak the parts that may look goofy or is going to be more noticeable (like rooftiles). These plugins usually make a good work achieving decent normal maps without too much effort (in most cases). Having to do hand-made sculpts to bake normals for every model/texture on the game is just out of scope. (I'm speaking of normal maps, I do not know what kind of maps are needed for parallax)

    For example, on many and most all of the unit maps the leg and arm portion of the texture is shared by both the left and right. If I recall correctly this goofs up the normal maps.

    Is this true? I never heard that normal maps can't be shared in different parts of the model without looking goofy. If this happens to be the case, then I do not know a feasible way to create normal maps for the existing content.

  11. Phase II requirements

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Otherwise you could be able to upgrade to the Town phase immediately at the game start. Which might not be a bad idea if it's intended by the map maker, however, as the phases are meant to simulate the growth of a city over time it does sound a bit weird if you're able to upgrade to the Town Phase without even having five Village Phase buildings.

    I think the problem is that the game's default starting resources at 1000 is too much. Try starting something around 250 all resources and 5 is not a big number.

  12. Phase II requirements

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Town Phase "Requires 5 village structures of any type.". 5 houses do count, I wrote the code for this ;).

    Oh, that's some useful info. The tooltip is correct, but I also thought that it had to be different buildings ^_^. That will make the start of the game more "open"

  13. Post-processing effects test (SSAO/HDR/Bloom)

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    This sounds awesome myconid! drool.gif

    I think terrain could look really nice with bump/parallax/specular, but some buildings and specially units aren't big enough to notice it unless you zoom a lot. I'm curious how much impact may have on performance.

    I have to do some research on parallax mapping... I never worked with it due to my humble graphic card blush.gif

    Or even for WFG to expand upon the game for 0 A.D. Part 2 or anything that comes after.

    Sounds like a plan happy.gif

  14. Wall Creation

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    IMO 0 AD should be completely playable without having to use the keyboard ( mouse only).

    Hotkeys are for multiplayer / pros ;)

    I like to be able to build everything / drag walls with mouse only.

    Actually, you can. You just have to hit the build wall button again with your mouse and continue the wall ;)

    I don't see the point why the shift key is so annoying when building walls, I think it's quite intuitive due to the functionality that already has like "multiple" modifier as vts pointed earlier. Probably my most-used hotkey ^_^ (until "center camera to last event" is implemented :blush:)

    • Like 2

  15. Suggestion Floods

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I personally much prefer lots of different threads. A 90 page thread is a terrible organizational structure. Of course replacing one giant thread with 50 variants of "my suggestions" doesn't help anyone either. I would favor a suggestions sub forum with threads being about one idea e.g. "Town Bell", "Farm Reseeding".

    +1

    Can't think a better way to organize suggestions :)

  16. Animation Pipeline

    in Art Development

    Posted

    I agree with him. Our animations are well made but are not really...fluid. Now, I'm not saying that can do better, I can't. But it would be really useful for us to get a rig done. I would like to make new models too, but that seems too much work :P

    After my exams(which end on the 6th of May) I hope to study animation a bit and get a good rig in game :)

    What do you guys mean with a new rig done? one that works ingame due to the engine/game restrictions? (like max bone number, strict hierarchy...) or you mean a more elaborated one with IK/FK for arms, legs, etc?

  19. Suggestions for 0 A.D.

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    What about those cultures that did not have slaves? :(

    An idea I had would have used the Market and the concept of a finite "global team pool" of slaves, depending on the number of enemy units killed. Basically, the more enemy units your team kills, the greater number of slaves become available for purchase at the Market. They would cost Metal, have a finite lifespan (you're working them to death), have no attack, and are bonused at gathering resources. They can help build, but do not have the list of buildings in their GUI (they can't lay foundations). They would become available once you hit City Phase or research an unlocking technology.

    Hey! That sounds awesome! It even fits better with the slave-market concept. And bonuses and restrictions sounds like a balanced system/unit to me! :D

    Again, excuse my ignorance, I thought that slaves was so common on every culture on ancient times as iphones nowadays :blush:

  20. Language..

    in Introductions & Off-Topic Discussion

    Posted

    dry.gif You're all making me feel pretty dumb :-( If you discount the three programming languages (Javascript, PHP, and Ruby), I only know English.

    I've been trying to learn French, but there is a lot involved in it. e.g. "ou" (or) v.s. "où" (where). Why does one accent make a different word? *sigh*

    That's the advantage learning english as second language. No written accents, regular verbs, easy to comprehend grammar (although I know that I probably make a lot of grammar mistakes ^_^)

    Spanish on the other hand has written accents following different rules, has no regular verbs (which I think is a pain if you have to study that, I remember when I was a child and I had to memorize all the past, future, subjuntive tenses...) and more things that I am skipping, mainly because it's my native language I guess xD

  21. Suggestions for 0 A.D.

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    I would like to see slaves taking some role on this game, like they had on ancient times. I've been searching if slaves suggestions were made on the forums for a while and I found some ideas that didn't match the gameplay designs planned.

    Now reading this posts about auto-generating resources it came to my mind the following idea:

    Why not use slaves as some kind of treasure to collect around the map (like small tribes in small groups of cabins). Once you've collected them, you can move them to any resource gathering point and that particular resource will increase slowly over time... or maybe speed up construction? or even pop-cap free citizens?

    I know I should work more on the idea... but there's the concept xD

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