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[Alex May]

I love the frontal view as well. It just needs definition on which bits are raised

p.s. this is also an isometric view anyway

[nikki]

Hello again!

I've worked on the texture-set for each biome. At the moment this is the score:



Since i've got this little helper program going, the tweaking will be sweet.
The next thing to think about are the patterns you can make with these textures.
And write algorithms that do that.

bye.

edit: ps) @Mipey
are you making progress with your terrain and the continents ?

[nikki]

News about the trees ! ,

there not yet finished, the leaves are not there, the bark and other textures neither.
The swaying is roughly implemented though (thanks PetetheGoat for the tip !)



and this time i've made a little test app (directx)
my own laptop does 145 FPS.


I am curious if anyone has major slowdowns or white rectangles.

[Mipe]

edit: ps) @Mipey
are you making progress with your terrain and the continents ?

Not much.   Well, now I can load a world map from heightmap image (P2 .pgm file), I'll probably have to use imagemagick plugin for other formats. That's it for the world scale; regions are generated procedurally in real time as I travel through them. Still not at rivers, biomes and stuff, though.

Want to generate a normal map so I can define slopes, which should make plotting and digging rivers so much easier. Added bonus: light mapping!  

So far, you are quite a few laps ahead of me... Oh hey, swaying trees! 240 FPS on my dual core, not bad. 

[Eclipse]

I am actually pretty happy with someone not liking this specific perspective.
Now atleast I can explain why I have chosen this, and why not the isometric.

Originally I had ofcourse also thought about the isometric solution.
Its like a standard of showing terrain with height since... well Qbert (1982) i think.
It is a good perspective if you want to make a terrain where almost everything is always visible. If you look at those populous shots, you can almost see every side of the mountain. And in alot of cases this is good, becauze otherwise the player can't see what he/she is doing. but this doesn't mean it's always the best solution.

I used to have this book on simcity2000 where a chapter is about the failed perspectives, the one i use looks abit like one....

The simplest reason i don't like the isometric , is that i love a frontal view on the things.this is not possible with an isometric view.

The other thing i really don't like about isometric , is the way people tend to choose this perspective without actually thinking why. Its just the standard way to go, every beginner book on programming explains about it, maybe thats why, and thus you have thousands of isometric games. I don't wanna make the thousands+1 th

anyway, the choice i've made is a bit different then the most standard, this can be perceived as ugly, it's ok with me.
I do have to look in the proper shading/lighting because in some cases you can flip the perspective in your minds eye, and thing get very strange.

ps I love to disagree friendly

 

well yes, isometric "just works", it's something well tested and that could avoid you some game design dangers. That said there's still space to try new or at least not widely used things
Just keep in mind that if something is widely used and other things are not there's almost always a good reason why! When the same problem is showed to a lot of people most of them will solve it in a similar way, maybe it will be not the most "clean" way but for sure the most intuitive one in average. In programming and game design there are common "design patterns" too that should be at least kept in mind.
That said nothing stops you to try new ways
Good luck! I'll gladly follow the project development

[kiwi]

mem 100-120, fps round 44-45,if there are any memory leaks,I can't see them.

However the swaying trees have artifacts and the movement of the seams is 100% uniform, which makes me think you put the trees on a render target and used a displacement map, which is a very good idea, it just needs some improvement

[Lee]

I don't get how your terrain could be said to be 3d, it looks like a geometric mess to me, you say it's a frontal view? then why are no trees obscured? and there is no element of distance (trees further away = smaller). I fully support what yo are doing but it just doesn't make much sense graphically to me, I don't understand what it is supposed to represent and have no idea what parts are slopes etc.

However I really like the world map, but it seems to be split into rectangular bands vertically and rivers seem to be very straight (already mentioned).

[nikki]

Hi robolee
I understand that some things you see don't make fully sense to you, that's ok
And other things could be further developed aswell. Thats what i'm doing

Bear in mind though that this is a development-log, and the work has started on 22 december 09, So some of your feedbacks could take some time before they are implemented.
I hope you'll follow the progress.
 
back to business:

I've been working on the trees some more today.
The generative tree could almost become a different family (as in conifer,broadleaf, etc.)
Some cleaning up to do in that department. Before i'm done

I have also looked some more in leaves and bark, essential offcourse.
And the swaying is a bit more smoothed and filtered.





TREEGROWER006.EXE Its a pretty relaxing sight...

ps (its flat land, and the creation phase takes roughly 4 seconds)

Next up I need to write the tree types I need all down (+-25 types) to the specific seed-values I need. the leaves need improvement to so more exotic possibilities arise.
But that i keep for another day.

bye

[Parthon]

Looking very cool so far. :D

[Petethegoat]

Ahh, the new trees are much better!
The leaves especially are much nicer, as is the swaying.

I'm getting about 350 fps, and mem around 130-ish. That said, I have a somewhat un-indie PC, but whatever.
Also, the textures sets for the biomes reminds me of Love, but less foggy, which is good. 

[Izzimach]

The leaves makes that scene a whole lot better.  Is each leaf a tiny random texture, or a colored shape or something?

Also, do you plan to generate other procedural "decorations" such as rocks, flowers, etc.?

[nikki]

hi ghauss
the leaves are tiny colored shapes, ellipses in this case. no texture is applied to them.
I am figuring out some more leave-shapes as i go, this is on my next-up list

And i for sure plan to generate more   .
with the textures (a few posts above) and some intelligent patterning (either in the textures or the heightmap) I hope to be able to create alot of decorations without the need of adding new content.

for example: by raising some tiles here and there just a bit and applying a rocky texture at those tiles, i've created a rock 

As for vegetation specific, my goal is to define a couple of families of trees, shrubs and plants. where a flower would probably fall under the category 'plants'.

[nikki]

Hello everybody!

Since most of the most basic terrain stuff is in place, and alot of tweaking is next up.
I've decided to show something that will eventually be in the world aswell.
Procedurally generated humanoid inhabitants.

This is from a project i've been working on alot longer than the terrain.  

when you have inhabitants and a world that they .. inhabit , the need for habitats arises
Thats something i have been looking into also:

Because the housebuilder program needs some work  to work well together with the terrain I showed. Originally i had thought of the houses as a nice surprise.
Anyway, At the moment i am looking into one of the un-tested thing that i know i must learn : generative roofs, so It could be a while before you hear anything again about it.
(because it looks hard) (ps If anybody has some experience in these types of roofs then tell me about it please )


bye bye

[Alex May]

I'm dead impressed with all this.

[increpare]

the little people look great - the terrain 006 demo runs at 579fpx on my rather powerful pc at work.  There are still some problems with how you portray the terrain height (in that I can't really read it from seeing a screenshot), but I'm sure you'll sort it out before long.  Tree swaying in the new one is good.

Keep things moving along though...

[nikki]

thanks and thanks !

at the moment i am doing the stuff i love doing :
learning new techniques and algorithms, how to generate the houses of the roofs ,

I found out I basically forgot ALL the highschool math one needs for that (polygons,trigonometry etc) but it's coming along.

btw, I never knew about hipped roofs, must be an american, hurricane thing, but my little people will have houses with gable,hipped,flat and mixed roofs.

[Eclipse]

the trees test app runs around 650 and 850 fps on my pc

[nikki]

The roof part is going well, Hopefully i'll be able to post some proper screenshots soon.
I've also been busy with writing documentation of the house designing program.

When the roofs are in place, and the housebuilder is crudely finished.
Would anybody here be interrested in proof-testing too see if he/she can make cheese of my manual + pre alfa-software ?
And create a nice virtual house along the way..

Pm me or let me know ! 

[kiwi]

Would anybody here be interrested in proof-testing too see if he/she can make cheese of my manual + pre alfa-software ?
And create a nice virtual house along the way..

Hmm I guess I would. I have to pass my finals for this semester now, so I don't actually know how much time I can put into it right now, but after Februrary 12 I should be able to find more time to help with this

[Petethegoat]

I'd love to do some testing.

In addition, is there any chance of giving us some info on the gameplay?
I want to see where all this procedural generation is going.