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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsFlotsam: A survival building sim in a flooded world
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The_Observer
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« Reply #400 on: April 25, 2017, 02:04:04 AM »

Also! I would love to follow your thread, how do I do that? ( pretty new here and new to forums overall)

I think you can use the notify button at the bottom of the thread for that. But replying also does the trick, so you should already get notifications.
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wazeau
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« Reply #401 on: April 25, 2017, 06:24:59 AM »

Quote from: Nebirvi
Yes, I don´t think harpooning would get very popular with all players, using nature to battle nature feels more "okay" somehow ( just like cavemen using wolves etc to defend themselves) I remember playing a great children's science game as a kid where the whole idea was to build and develop a base on an island to study marine life and pollution. A big part of that game is to tame and train the marine center's dolphin to destroy forgotten mines, find things in the deep etc. To train it you where to make it go through an obstacle course underwater ( like rings or something) and when it did a good job you gave it fish treats. After a while it understood what to do and could do it without problem. This of course was quite a simple way to train it since it was a kids game, but I like the base idea.

We're really trying to embrace the environmental message the game has, so killing animals feels a bit wrong in that sense, yes.
Training and breeding animals opens up a lot of unexplored design ideas for the genre I think. Hopefully we can make it work Smiley
Do you know what game that was by the way? Sounds like some good reference for this.

Quote from: Nebirvi
Maybe there could be areas in the game that is hard to get access to because of old "mines" and if you have a trained dolphin you could get rid of them and gain access to new areas?

Oh ye that would be cool Gomez Underwater places you can't reach unless you have certain trained animals.

Quote from: Nebirvi
The whale in the background of the building gif.( I know it is a small thing) But the animation would be even better if the tail and front fins did not move in the same direction. It looked in the gif like the fins moved down when the tail did so. It would put the whale out of balance. Better to make them go up when the tail goes down. Other than that I really like the animations!

Ye that gif actually made me realize some issues with the whale even though I didn't plan to have him in the shot! Tongue Now only the tail and fins move but the head stays still... You're right about the fins as well. We're going to fix that soon.
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JobLeonard
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« Reply #402 on: April 25, 2017, 06:42:53 AM »

Offtopic: is it bad that I only noticed all avatars of this dev team hug something?
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wazeau
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« Reply #403 on: April 25, 2017, 07:01:23 AM »

Offtopic: is it bad that I only noticed all avatars of this dev team hug something?

*hugs JobLeonard* It's alright. No worries. Panda
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Juwdah
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« Reply #404 on: April 26, 2017, 11:18:40 AM »

Anything! Really, it's always good to keep exploring, I'm definitely interested if you have more to share.
Here are a few more that I found inspirational:

Head On      youtube.com/watch?v=Bgop3NkdFa0

Inside Me ( Nils Frahm - Me Rework)   youtube.com/watch?v=y9yMUB9cUYI

Thought of You - by Ryan Woodward   youtube.com/watch?v=OBk3ynRbtsw

Swelter  http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/596056

gzilbalodis
Aqua   http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/597133
Priorities   http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/638503

Lucky Day Forever   http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/596083

Little Boat   http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/599588

Here are some "Collection channels" if you need more. Smiley
The CG Bros   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-1rx8j9Ggp8mp4uD0ZdEIA
CGmeetup  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSvhrtUgpZT3EU0x1Zoy-w



Whoosh, what a list.
Took me a while to get through it all.

A couple weren't really handy for Flotsam inspiration like "Head on" and "Inside me"

But damn, Little boat was the one that I liked most. What a beautiful small piece of animation.
Great mood all around. Superb color work, actual flotsam pieces etc. Even the fixing of the boat and the journey that it takes translates well into the game.

Swelter was very neat too, I love the theme around it and how the artstyle was executed wrapped it up into a nice package. It really showed "basic human needs" very well.

Other films like Aqua portraied the lonelyness (and dangers) of the ocean. All in all pretty sweet stuff man.
Thanks for the links, stuff like this is hard to just "find" by google searches and is usually passed through from person to person. Which makes it that much nicer.
If you find more stuff that could inspire the development, share Smiley


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io3 creations
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« Reply #405 on: April 26, 2017, 01:44:34 PM »

Oh, sorry. When you replied before, I thought "anything" meant inspiration in general (i.e. perhaps for other projects as well).  But looking at the list, subconsciously, I was still thinking of the theme because as you mentioned, many of them were still related is some ways.


Yeah, I know what you mean about trying to find animations with search engines.  Ever since I saw one of my favorite videos removed many years ago, I started an archive (of course, for personal use only).  Only few years ago, when I knew for certain that I had a video but didn't recall the title, I started adding labels/description.  That helped me to find quickly some that I listed. Wink  Having a thumbnail image still has helped with some searches before but labels/description based search is faster and I'll add that to all of archived videos. I'll let you know if I find other relevant ones.

I saw a few videos where image recognition AI can already do a decent job of recognizing what is in an image so chances are "soon" enough that won't be a problem but for now it still is.  I wanted to find one in particular where the main character is fighting a giant robot that has gears/chains but couldn't.  Most likely it was a student or personal project.


So for now here's a relevant one with an echo warrior ad that I just happen to see yesterday  Grin
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1dQ9a5EFZeI

And here are some, that are  ...  "maybe".  There are animals, survival, "chase" ...  or maybe just hilarious "what if" sequences. Grin  
https://www.youtube.com/user/rollinsafari
If nothing comes to mind, perhaps you could compile "blooper" videos.  Chances are you'll have certain things that are intended and comical, and of course unintended action/behavior during development and perhaps after release.  Maybe due to bugs or the AI considers things differently and need to be adjusted. Wink
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Juless
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« Reply #406 on: April 28, 2017, 04:16:44 AM »

A rather funny bug we’ve had in the game for quite a while: drifter’s heads would suddenly disappear along with other parts of their body.


The cause of this bug was pretty straightforward. In previous posts we’ve already mentioned the characters being generated using a generator. The artists made assets for different body and clothing parts which are later put together by code.


As you probably know, the disappearing head is caused by frustum culling (yeah, I’m referring to the recent twitter outrage).

To fix this, I decided to combine the meshes into one. At first sight, the Unity built-in CombineMeshes method seemed like the best approach. However, it turned out not to be as it didn’t support skinned meshes.

I combined them manually using the meshes’ information (UVs, vertices, indices, bones, bone weights, …) and grouped them by material. Original meshes that shared the same material are combined into one mesh which is used as a submesh in the final mesh. This saves a few material slots and draw calls as well.

The result is quite satisfying, next to the bug being fixed only one visible skinned mesh (and object in the hierarchy) remained, that’s fifteen less than original!


Oh, and here’s some nightmare fuel I came across.

   



« Last Edit: August 20, 2017, 02:23:37 PM by Juless » Logged

io3 creations
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« Reply #407 on: April 28, 2017, 01:18:04 PM »

As you probably know, the disappearing head is caused by frustum culling.
I'm just guessing but are you sure?  Seems like that the head parts are well within the view and if those disappear then shouldn't the barrels behind the person disappear also?

Oh, and here’s some nightmare fuel I came across.
     
Or maybe some people just get bored for being so long at sea and start applying on unique face and arm tattoos. Wink
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Juless
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« Reply #408 on: April 28, 2017, 03:00:17 PM »

As you probably know, the disappearing head is caused by frustum culling.
I'm just guessing but are you sure?  Seems like that the head parts are well within the view and if those disappear then shouldn't the barrels behind the person disappear also?

It didn't make a lot of sense for us at first sight either, why it only happened for the drifters at least, but it was definitely related to the camera. The bug only appeared when completely zoomed in too. It might not exactly be culling like you're saying because it doesn't look "cut-off" (if you understand what I mean with that?) but just disappears. So frustum culling is probably not the exact term indeed. Smiley

Oh, and here’s some nightmare fuel I came across.
     
Or maybe some people just get bored for being so long at sea and start applying on unique face and arm tattoos. Wink

Wow never crossed my mind, I actually really like the idea of the first picture being tattoos! Pretty badass Cool
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io3 creations
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« Reply #409 on: April 28, 2017, 03:58:43 PM »

Having tattoos can come in handy for the Flotsam: Pirates of the Infinite Sea DLC! Grin

It didn't make a lot of sense for us at first sight either, why it only happened for the drifters at least, but it was definitely related to the camera. The bug only appeared when completely zoomed in too. It might not exactly be culling like you're saying because it doesn't look "cut-off" (if you understand what I mean with that?) but just disappears. So frustum culling is probably not the exact term indeed. Smiley
One of the reasons why I'm insterested in it is because I'll be also using similar module-based characters for upcoming games and might need to do things differently if I encounter the same issue. 

By "cut-off", do you mean the situation when you can see the *inside* of the 3d models?  Could it be that some frustrum culling is done by boundary volume, hence the entire object disappears?  But even then, given the current camera angle, that wouldn't really make sense since the eyes and mouth disappears before the hair and head does.

I'm still relatively a noob with Unity, but I was wondering if perhaps you are using different cameras/shaders to render certain things differently and that might be an issue.  Also, does it happen consistently if you move the camera around (e.g. people are in water/boats; camera is from front/top) and only with the people that are generated?  Or does some of the structures also use similar-ish generation where the issue presumably hasn't happened yet?
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Juless
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« Reply #410 on: April 29, 2017, 02:00:40 AM »

Having tattoos can come in handy for the Flotsam: Pirates of the Infinite Sea DLC! Grin

This just gave me the lamest pun idea: Flotsam: Pirates of the Infinite DLSea Cheesy

By "cut-off", do you mean the situation when you can see the *inside* of the 3d models?  Could it be that some frustrum culling is done by boundary volume, hence the entire object disappears?  But even then, given the current camera angle, that wouldn't really make sense since the eyes and mouth disappears before the hair and head does.

Yes by cut-off I mean this



It appears that the culling is done by object indeed for some reason. Personally I think it is logical that the eyes, hair and mouth disappear before the head as they are effectively closer to the camera. Maybe it has more to do with camera distance rather than camera angle (at some angles it's easier to get closer so that's probably where your confusion comes from).


I'm still relatively a noob with Unity, but I was wondering if perhaps you are using different cameras/shaders to render certain things differently and that might be an issue.  Also, does it happen consistently if you move the camera around (e.g. people are in water/boats; camera is from front/top) and only with the people that are generated?  Or does some of the structures also use similar-ish generation where the issue presumably hasn't happened yet?

Interesting question! Gentleman
We're only using a single camera for the game at this point. It happens fairly consistently but only with drifters (to my knowledge). It was also worse a few weeks ago even though no one specifically targeted that bug before I fixed it by combining meshes. And as you just pointed out, it only occurs with drifters even though houses are built up in a similar way Shrug (although they are manually put together and not generated).

I'm convinced it could easily be explained by some feature we don't know the existence of, and combining wasn't that much of a pain and is better for performance anyways. Grin

One of the reasons why I'm insterested in it is because I'll be also using similar module-based characters for upcoming games and might need to do things differently if I encounter the same issue.

Hmm, I see. I couldn't give you any pointers on how to recreate the problem actually, it existed before I started as a dev. So unfortunately can't make you avoid it either, but I think it's a specific combination of other things so I wouldn't worry too much about it. The generation is a very satisfying modular way of creating characters and very useful, I wouldn't put the idea aside just because of some small fixable issues like this. (I know you probably wouldn't and just wanted to avoid these issues but it's still worth mentioning.)

Cheers for the interest in the technical part btw!  Beer!
« Last Edit: July 19, 2017, 08:21:11 AM by Juless » Logged

Juwdah
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« Reply #411 on: April 29, 2017, 10:18:43 AM »

Oh, sorry. When you replied before, I thought "anything" meant inspiration in general (i.e. perhaps for other projects as well).  But looking at the list, subconsciously, I was still thinking of the theme because as you mentioned, many of them were still related is some ways.


Yeah, I know what you mean about trying to find animations with search engines.  Ever since I saw one of my favorite videos removed many years ago, I started an archive (of course, for personal use only).  Only few years ago, when I knew for certain that I had a video but didn't recall the title, I started adding labels/description.  That helped me to find quickly some that I listed. Wink  Having a thumbnail image still has helped with some searches before but labels/description based search is faster and I'll add that to all of archived videos. I'll let you know if I find other relevant ones.

I saw a few videos where image recognition AI can already do a decent job of recognizing what is in an image so chances are "soon" enough that won't be a problem but for now it still is.  I wanted to find one in particular where the main character is fighting a giant robot that has gears/chains but couldn't.  Most likely it was a student or personal project.


So for now here's a relevant one with an echo warrior ad that I just happen to see yesterday  Grin
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1dQ9a5EFZeI

And here are some, that are  ...  "maybe".  There are animals, survival, "chase" ...  or maybe just hilarious "what if" sequences. Grin  
https://www.youtube.com/user/rollinsafari
If nothing comes to mind, perhaps you could compile "blooper" videos.  Chances are you'll have certain things that are intended and comical, and of course unintended action/behavior during development and perhaps after release.  Maybe due to bugs or the AI considers things differently and need to be adjusted. Wink

How do you archive your videos? Saved links? Or do you download the videos? (and with a possible tagging system?)

We had some fun testing different models as boats this week Smiley

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io3 creations
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« Reply #412 on: April 29, 2017, 01:11:05 PM »

How do you archive your videos? Saved links? Or do you download the videos? (and with a possible tagging system?)
Online videos can disappear any time and then links would be useless.  That's exactly what happened and that's why I started to download the videos.  Then I add description and labels manually to a text file to facilitate future lookup.

Speaking of inspiration, you've probably seen:  Sea of Solitude   http://seaofsolitude.com/
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« Reply #413 on: May 01, 2017, 10:31:31 AM »

How do you archive your videos? Saved links? Or do you download the videos? (and with a possible tagging system?)
Online videos can disappear any time and then links would be useless.  That's exactly what happened and that's why I started to download the videos.  Then I add description and labels manually to a text file to facilitate future lookup.

Speaking of inspiration, you've probably seen:  Sea of Solitude   http://seaofsolitude.com/

Yesss, Sea of Solitude is really cool. We are all big fans of the art Smiley

And I applaud you for keeping a video library, that stuff must eat storage Shocked

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io3 creations
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« Reply #414 on: May 01, 2017, 02:44:24 PM »

Thanks! Grin  Still have many 100GBs left on my 1TB backup/storage drive.  Plus a matching copy, because ... you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. Wink   When I started, 720p was the best available quality and I tend get those rather than 1080p.  Plus, online video websites tend to compress videos somewhat, too.

Regarding inspiration:
I remembered a student project that I found accidentally (when I was looking for the recent-ish Adrift VR game videos) called Skies Adrift.
Trailer: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qDmexmD_y4E
Gameplay demo:  https://youtube.com/watch?v=vJgZz31GIWg
The demo gameplay is mostly the same, but the part I wanted to show you is at 4:00 that was quite impressive as I was playing the demo. Smiley
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« Reply #415 on: May 01, 2017, 04:20:28 PM »

Loving the style of this. GL with all the development! Smiley
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« Reply #416 on: May 01, 2017, 05:22:23 PM »

Love the art and animation style of this game.   
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« Reply #417 on: May 08, 2017, 08:30:50 AM »

@eigenbom @mike.cullingham
Thanks guys!

Here's our screenshot saturday of last week. You may remember the ingame gif with the updated townheart. These are the designs I made for that building.

Because we won't be able to include a lighthouse in Flotsam for some time, I was super sad. Lighthouses are super iconic and cool, so I decided to add a lighthouse feel to the townheart instead! Gomez It's the perfect center and start for your town.


We're actually thinking of having different starting conditions for each character you choose. Most of these could have a different starting building this way.
Even if this is a feature we would add later on in development (maybe even after launch) it would be a good idea to keep this in mind for the 3D models.
Therefore I made the townheart modular like you can see in the image below. The top part could be changed from a campfire to a birdhouse or even an aquarium to keep glowfish. Right now I only made the default campfire lighthouse that will be used for most characters.


These are the final color studies before I modeled one of them.
The round one didn't really work that well in 3D so I switched to the right one with the normal roof.


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Juwdah
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« Reply #418 on: May 08, 2017, 01:48:57 PM »

Regarding inspiration:
I remembered a student project that I found accidentally (when I was looking for the recent-ish Adrift VR game videos) called Skies Adrift.
Trailer: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qDmexmD_y4E
Gameplay demo:  https://youtube.com/watch?v=vJgZz31GIWg
The demo gameplay is mostly the same, but the part I wanted to show you is at 4:00 that was quite impressive as I was playing the demo. Smiley

Not really a fan of the art of that game, but that part at 4:00 was really fkn awesome Shocked



Still researching underwater terrain,
Here's a rock that I'll duplicate a million times to see if it fits the style.

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« Reply #419 on: May 09, 2017, 12:58:00 AM »

the arts are amazingly cool  Hand Thumbs Up Left Hand Thumbs Up Right
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