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Ilves

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Posts posted by Ilves

  1. Unfortunately, I'm no programmer, all I can do is to write a simple circle program in C++ for scientific calculations, but no more, so I (at least, for some time) rely on external help on the programming part.

    But for my noob's point of view, animation isn't the best solution, since:

    - animations means pre-definition, while in game the turret should have an ability to conduct arbitrary direction of rotation, arbitrary degree of rotation (the target can be anywhere).

    - And what's more difficult - the turret has 3 levels of freedom: rotation of turret itself, erection of the gun (esp. important for anti-aircraft guns and artillery) and recoil of the gun

    - some units should have a limited sector of rotation (like 90 degress instead of 360)

    I had a curious idea about faction customization today. While I can't code a full ingame faction editor, is it feasible to make a "faction editor" relying on a external file, being written by players? The idea is that you have a table, you check "yes" or "no" there after each unit until you ran out of "unit points" available, pass it to the other player, synchronize it and the game adjusts the factions according to the table. Hence we get an easily done faction editor:

    2e62dc9ae4598f6a00b91f350d4d6450.jpg

    NOTE: "1"s denote here nothing else that this faction POSSESSES this unit in its factories, not the quantity of unit or anything else. Empty space denotes lack of unit in the build list.

  2. Thank you, but my audience most likely won't understand the presence of ancient Romans beside the tanks :D Also the skins lack alpha-channel there.

    If you would have time, can you screencapture the same scenes (night, forest and tile) with the tank but without ancient units and alpha-channeled skin?

    And in order I can make further screens, can you give me your code of the tanks and connected things (since my attempt in Kronos resulted in poor skin visualization)?

  3. developing Rogue Republic (the name of our game) would have been useless if all we were going to do is to create an another C&C clone. I've started all this because over years of RTS modding I collected a wide list of spicy ideas, "my dream RTS"-style.

    This includes:

    - Customizable factions - an ability to create your own army by selecting units, special buildings and powers

    - over 9000 countries available (not really that much, but still) - the Army Manager adapts the units after the country you select. You can create hi-tech Russia with combat laser emmiters and no tanks and same way - low-tech Russia with cheap rusty tanks and piston planes. The same for #enter_countryname#

    - customizable units - select upgrades and features for units in your army. For e.g. the unit I gave you is Main Battle Tank upgraded with Heavy Armour. There is also a stock version of the same unit and a Basic Armor upgrade version: http://www.moddb.com...lution#imagebox Except armor, player can also select a different gun for the tank, different shells, more powerful engine and Active Defense (destroys projectiles fired at the tank). However, the more upgrades - the more the cost of the individual unit and the more the technological requirements. So the player will have to think wisely before picking a basket of upgrades. Besides, there is a limit on both number of units and upgrades.

    - BTW, we also have navy

    - what we actually DO want to clone from C&C is the way they presented their storylines. If our resources will allow, we are going to make some kind of video\CG movies to present the campaign story. The global storyline consists of "episodes", each will be released as add-on and contains a full campaign. Our first episode deals with the fictional country of Dzungaria, whose eccentric ruler believes himself to be a reincarnation of Genghis-khan and using long-forgotten Soviet secret biological program plans to create a new Mongol empire.

    Well, this list can be continued very long, our design doc consists of many pages. We differ from C&C in many aspects. As for the combat system I opt for smth like C&C Generals, but with indirectly controllable aircraft (you just summon the aircraft on a selected area) and greater role of infantry squads.

  4. Forgot the alpha channel :| (you can notice the weird texture on the fuel canister and roadwheels). The screenshots look plain o-som, after researching through 3 different game engines, I didn't even dream of smth like that on a free engine.

    The tanks should be still scaled a bit lower, since if we will keep the real-life ration between tanks and infantry, the latter ones will be looking like ants from RTS perspective. In C&C Generals, for e.g. you can clearly see the lack of realistic ratio comparing a soldier and a scud launcher.

    Secondly, can I use this beautiful tileset for unit renderings?

    And thirdly, why my screenshots made at Kronos were so disturbing? :/ (speaking of textures, not the porn :D )

    BTW, my colleague (the 2nd 3D artist in our team) has finished today a new unit, Russian anti-aircraft system Tunguska-M1:

    gD2WkGscQ28.jpg

    And we're currently both working on a building, power generator (if some may be interested to comment):

    Nsxct8wW9V8.jpg

  5. I am not a programmer, I'm just a 3D\2D artist, and I will owe anybody who will implement the thing these project needs.

    I'd need to see it in action to get an idea of what is "wrong." Care to post the files in a zip? Just one tank won't hurt. ;)

    https://dl.dropbox.com/u/57592616/just%20one%20tank.rar

    Here you go, one top secret tank ;)

    Before I can continue further progress on your engine, I need to get:

    - turrets working

    - texture looking not mip mapped to hell (the skin is 1024x1024, but it looks like if it is 128x128 in the screenshots above)

    - shaders doing their work

    Cheers to anybody willing to help, cuz I have ran out of my few ideas

  6. Ok, guys, I wish I could say that everything is nice & easy now, but I'm afraid I still even haven't got shaders working (yes, I read and closely followed all your guys' instructions, but still..).

    This is how it looks like in the 3ds max standard renderer:

    6237bf9da718.jpg

    This is the ingame I get:

    b3b0ce5332edt.jpg

    I even doubled the normal and speculars intensivity in the material option - still no use.

    I also noticed that the texture is heavily impaired by mip maps :\ For God's sake, can this be turned off in 2012 AD?

    EDIT: after some playing with the material's setting I found out that the shaders are actually working in the screen. But still, kinda ugly :\ If I increase the normals - it gets bizzare, the speculars seem to be ignored at all.

    My top secret actor's code :P

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>

    <actor version="1">

    <castshadow/>

    <group>

    <variant frequency="100" name="Base">

    <mesh>rr/beagle.dae</mesh>

    <props>

    <prop actor="rr/beagle_turret.xml" attachpoint="turret"/>

    <prop actor="rr/beagle_tracks.xml" attachpoint="tracks"/>

    </props>

    <material>player_trans_parallax_spec.xml</material>

    <textures>

    <texture file="rr/su_t80u_hull.tga" name="baseTex"/>

    <texture file="rr/su_t80u_hull_nm.tga" name="normTex"/>

    <texture file="rr/su_t80u_hull_spec.tga" name="specTex"/>

    </textures>

    </variant>

    </group>

    </actor>

    Turret's code:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>

    <actor version="1">

    <castshadow/>

    <group>

    <variant frequency="100" name="Base">

    <mesh>rr/beagle_turret.dae</mesh>

    <material>player_trans_parallax_spec.xml</material>

    <textures><texture file="rr/ru_be_turret.tga" name="baseTex"/>

    <texture file="rr/ru_be_turret_nm.tga" name="normTex"/>

    <texture file="rr/ru_be_turret_spec.tga" name="specTex"/>

    </textures>

    </variant>

    </group>

    </actor>

    If somebody of you sussed out the turret dilemma - you're welcome to post me the code here :D I also want to know where is the code of the unit itself, the actor seem to provide only the graphical code and nothing else. Speaking shorter, I want to make a moving\shooting tank buildable from a building (and of course with rotating\shooting turret).

  7. Props are actors, and actors only affect graphics, not simulation. Actors currently can't take any information from simulation (that I can think of) except which animation they're playing. Entities are what define what units can do.

    so, can the turret be ever made? It's a matter of critical importance for this game, without the turrets we can't make this game :\

    and

    passed the props placing problem, it appeared that you need to center the models itself (not just their pivots) to the world origin to make props appear at the right place.

    Now next question is quite self-explanatory in the pic below:

    post-14981-0-44299800-1351808485_thumb.j

  8. Hi, guys.

    Thank you for your time, I'm sure that implementing turret will benefit not only my game but future 0 A.D. moders. Either way, came back with new complaint: linked helpers to the main part (the hull), exported both (hull and helpers) as the model for the main actor. Exported turret and tracks without helpers. Surpsingly, it worked, but the attachment's positions seem to be totally independent from the prop's positions. No matter how I move the props in the hull's dae, nothing changes. What to do?

    post-14981-0-06617200-1351797309_thumb.j

  9. it really encourages a rooky engine explorer when a community is as willing to help as yours ;) Still, the noob (i.e. me) doesn't seem to be out of questions.

    I did as insctructed (prefixed with prop_ all the meshes but 1) and even linked them to hull of the tank, yet the scenario editor refuses to cooperate with me:

    3ea143d9e48d.jpg

    d6421bc38da2.jpg

    Looks like there is yet something to know or is it just him having a bad mood? ;)

  10. About the requirements: For buildings you can go higher than that, especially for rarer buildings. Generally speaking I think the things to be cautious about are: gradual transparency, how detailed animated objects are, and to a lesser degree model resolution/texture resolution. And of course, units/buildings/objects which there will be fewer of on the screen at the same time/are big enough to take up a lot of the screen can be more detailed.

    If you won't mind, I am going to tell I'm a former veteran of 3D C&C modding and there 800-poly building were never popular :huh:

    We use 1000-2000 polies for units (depending on the unit), 600 for infantries and 2000-3000 for buildings. Unit number - currently unknown precisely, but approximately I think that it should be the same as in C&C Generals, were you had 30 units simultaneously. 1024x1024 skins for most vehicles, 2 1024x1024 for tanks (one for the hull, second for turret and an another one for tank tracks). 2048x2048 for buildings.

    For any later version of 3DS Max Collada (.dae) support should be built in iirc. I don't have Max installed so I don't know the exact menu commands etc, but look for Collada/.dae in the export.

    The problem is not with Collada, which works, but with Prometheus 3ds Max propping tools, which do not launch

    I do not know how difficult it is to adjust code to make it possible. Currently, your complete tank would turn towards the target, similar to how ships do it in 0 A.D (which will be adjusted in time).

    That kinda sucks :\ The only absense of rotating turrets makes a modern warfare game impossible. Browsing the renders I put above you can judge how many units have rotating weapons, i.e. almost everyone.

    Appoximate list:

    - ability to capture neutral "towns" which have a town hall and 3-4 civilian buildings. Destroy the buildings - the owner of the town gets lesser income. Buildings self-rebuild with time.

    - BFME1-style base-building - in the start you have a main building and a fenced area of concrete with "build here" slots were you can place any building by clicking on it.

    - ability to select your own combination of units, buildings and etc, in other words - a faction editor.

    - squaded infantry

    - indirectly-controlled planes: you "summon" a plane like a magical special power by clicking a button in the interface, select an area where the plane should "work" and after that the plane does its work interdependently from player by attacking foes in the selected area.

  11. Good day, guys. I and a bunch of other fellows make a game dedicated to tanks, cruise missiles and jet planes instead of horsemen and chariot. Namely, this one: http://www.moddb.com.../rogue-republic

    We were reviewing several engines and now I finally reached yours :P

    q1.jpg

    3ccea3265343.jpg

    So I have a pack of questions:

    1) I was trying to export an object into 0 ad - it seemed to allow only objects consisting of single mesh. Quickly enough, I sussed out that you need to use prop objects in that case. But what a scorn! I'm a user of 3ds max 2011 and the plugin include in your wiki doesn't seem to be willing to co-operate with this version. So, is downloading Bible-old 3ds max 6 a necessary move or there is a solution to import prop object using just 3ds max 2012?

    2) in the same wiki you mentioned that the recommended properties of the models are max 800 polies and 512x512 textures for buildings. Are those requirements still actual or is there major improvement since then?

    3) again 'bout prop objects. Can a prop act like a rotating-shooting tank turret attached to a tank hull? (or can it act only static)

    4) and all-in-all, is it feasible to create a modern-warfare type of RTS using your engine?

    with best regards

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