Wonders, Special Buildings, and Special Projects

[Pureon]

I love it! It's perfect

Can we see a screenshot of it in-game? That's always different (sometimes much better) than the 3D render.

[zoot]

Looks wonder-ful Apart from the hanging plants, which I can't even imagine how was done (look very voluminous, at least in this render), I like how the geometry isn't rectangular and flat, it actually bends inwards in some places.

[Enrique]

I love it! It's perfect

Can we see a screenshot of it in-game? That's always different (sometimes much better) than the 3D render.

Not yet

It's going to be a PITA to import it since I'm using several different textures for the flora. I'd better try to finish it first in blender taking some feedback from you guys

(I'll also bake the AO manually into one texture, since the structure will be divided into several .daes)

BTW, I used the following historical description found in wikipedia, (also several concept-arts are based on it):

Strabo (ca. 64 BC – 21 AD) described of the Hanging Gardens as follows, in a passage that was thought to be based on the lost account of Onesicritus from the 4th century BC:

"Babylon, too, lies in a plain; and the circuit of its wall is three hundred and eighty-five stadia. The thickness of its wall is thirty-two feet; the height thereof between the towers is fifty cubits; that of the towers is sixty cubits; and the passage on top of the wall is such that four-horse

chariots

can easily pass one another; and it is on this account that this and the hanging garden are called one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The garden is

quadrangular

in shape, and each side is four plethra in length. It consists of

arched vaults

, which are situated, one after another, on checkered, cube-like foundations. The checkered foundations, which are hollowed out, are covered so deep with earth that they admit of the largest of trees, having been constructed of baked brick and asphalt – the foundations themselves and the vaults and the arches. The ascent to the uppermost

terrace

-roofs is made by a stairway; and alongside these stairs there were screws, through which the water was continually conducted up into the garden from the

Euphrates

by those appointed for this purpose, for the river, a stadium in width, flows through the middle of the city; and the garden is on the bank of the river."

[fcxSanya]

I encountered two problems regarding flora, one is that it wastes a lot of polys to cover a big portion of space (polycount is really high now).

This should not be the problem, because of "big portion of space" and because there will be maximum one such building on the screen (and not in each game). The point of such special structure is that it should be impressive rather than optimized (in the contrary to e.g. house), so I think you should not save on polygons much. In any case it will not have much more polys than e.g. a patch of forest of the same obstruction size, will it?

[myconid]

Wow, awesome work, Enrique! It's totally looking like a ziggurat pyramid.

Ziggurats were huge religious monuments built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.

Not yet

It's going to be a PITA to import it since I'm using several different textures for the flora. I'd better try to finish it first in blender taking some feedback from you guys

Noooo, my programmer's OCD can't take it! Would it be impossible to copy all the textures you need into a new image?

[Enrique]

In any case it will not have much more polys than e.g. a patch of forest of the same obstruction size, will it?

Ehmm It's like 3 roman CCs now (pretty heavy). I stil have to do some cleanup, but I'll also add more flora so...

Noooo, my programmer's OCD can't take it! Would it be impossible to copy all the textures you need into a new image?

If you are asking that regarding the AO don't worry, I'll bake it manually with all its props in blender and then export them separately, but conserving the second UV set where the AO image will be mapped .

If AO is not the issue, could you please explain?

[myconid]

If you are asking that regarding the AO don't worry, I'll bake it manually with all its props in blender and then export them separately, but conserving the second UV set where the AO image will be mapped .

If AO is not the issue, could you please explain?

Having the buildings in pieces like that just feels... disorganised. I can understand having general-purpose "utility" textures that are used between multiple simple buildings (like houses etc), but going overboard to use those textures everywhere (and as a result cutting up the buildings this way) seems unnecessary and counter-productive. Instead, for complex "special" buildings like this, duplicate the textures you need into a new file, so everything is loaded from the same place.

[Enrique]

I understand your point, and I totally agree with you (it will also make much easier to import entire models) but with flora assets there's an inconvenience (not problem per-se):

Several "branches/leaves/bushes" textures (if not all) are mapped into triangles that expand further away the texture space, this helps keep the polycount low for flora assets (can be mapped in one single triangle because the "outside" uv space is just transparency stretched) but merging them into one big texture means creating the texture with notable transparency margins between them which may result in a bigger than necessary texture and some extra work.

Anyway, I'll start merging textures for future structures, don't know what to do with this one though...

[Pureon]

Instead, for complex "special" buildings like this, duplicate the textures you need into a new file, so everything is loaded from the same place.

Wouldn't that mean an additional 1 MB texture file being created specially for this building, and any others we create? Bigger game download size, more files in the already full/messy texture folder, and more photoshop work doesn't sound all that good to me. I agree with main struct textures for each civ being in 1 big texture file, and that's something I've been pushing for myself, but for something like this i don't see there being enough of a benefit I'm afraid.

[myconid]

Wouldn't that mean an additional 1 MB texture file being created specially for this building, and any others we create?

I'm talking only about really complex buildings (which would need to be split into a large number of pieces), so this will be done very rarely. For other buildings, we can merge the small textures into a larger atlas to reduce the number of drawcalls, without increasing memory footprint (I've started looking at how we can do this for the Greek structures).

[Pureon]

Enrique I think you should continue the way you're going with the design, it looks really cool and the plants look perfect to me. The layout of the building works very well IMO

[Gen.Kenobi]

Beautiful!

[Mythos_Ruler]

It's pretty awesome. I question the need for all of the interior geometry though. There are things you can do to insinuate hallways and such, without actually modeling the entire interior of the building. From the way you described it in our discussions, it sounds like you can shave off a couple thousand triangles by eliminating all that interior stuff.

[Pureon]

It's pretty awesome. I question the need for all of the interior geometry though. There are things you can do to insinuate hallways and such, without actually modeling the entire interior of the building. From the way you described it in our discussions, it sounds like you can shave off a couple thousand triangles by eliminating all that interior stuff.

Lets see how many polys it is in-game first though

[Gen.Kenobi]

I don't think we should save to many polys in Wonders... They are wonders after all. They will only be built once and they must look amazing.

They must wonder the players

[Mythos_Ruler]

Lets see how many polys it is in-game first though

You're going to look into this cavernous (un-historical) interior less than 1% of the time, yet 100% of the time it will need to be rendered, complete with an unnecessarily larger ao map. Anyway, he and I already talked about it yesterday.

I don't think we should save to many polys in Wonders... They are wonders after all. They will only be built once and they must look amazing.

They must wonder the players

Models should always be optimized.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

I'm kind of leaning toward more green also. I think he already said he was adding a bit more foliage, so I guess I'll just have to wait. It sure is impressive.

[oshron]

hey, someone took one of my suggestions!

[oshron]

what do you all think of some of my other ones, like a repurposed Rhodes Colossus for the Spartans?

[Enrique]

Added more green to the building as suggested, looks great:

Sorry, couldn't resist, srs update coming soon

[myconid]

Enrique, would you be interested in using detail maps? You could put extra greenery as decals on the walls, without using extra vertices.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

I would recommend the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. That was actually in Sparta and made for Spartans.

[Enrique]

@Myconid

I think it won't be necessary, I'm adding extra flora with just 4 planes now, it's not much geometry and not wasting time modifying textures.

On the other hand I'd like to make some tests to make building damage using detail maps... I tried some time ago with the "default" UV sets but due to the texture sharing and tiling it looked very bad

[fcxSanya]

Added more green to the building as suggested, looks great:

Now it reminds me Minas Morgul somehow:

[oshron]

I would recommend the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. That was actually in Sparta and made for Spartans.

while that would definitely work better as teh Spartan Wonder, do we actually have any idea what it looked like as an actual building? i did some quick research and didn't find anything about what its thought to have looked like (though maybe i didnt look hard enough)

in any case, an ACTUAL Spartan monument would definitely be better than repurposing one an island nowhere near it (though i still think that the Colossus should be included as a Wonder available in the editor in any case, since its so iconic of the Ancient World)

also, going on my earlier suggestion of there being editor-only versions of the playable civs' Wonders, what does everyone think would be some good effects for Wonders that have been decided on so far. for example, what special bonus would the editor-only version of the Hanging Gardens give? perhaps a reduction of food costs? (water in this case would be represented by food, and the Gardens were a symbol of early man's ability to make things grow even deep in the desert)