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shrimp
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« Reply #20 on: May 15, 2009, 10:34:42 AM »

This looking great. I wondering though maybe put some stuff be higher? Everything I like the idea of climbing actual mountains  instead of hills. Also the clouds felt really low too.

I guess the main reason the mountains are so low is because with the current map size, the slopes would get quite steep and that was causing some trouble with the camera (at the time). However, we will definitely be experimenting with these parameters, and also perhaps adding some variety to mountain faces. Maybe if we have mountain trails and step-like scramblable cliffs, mountaineering would be pretty nice!

I think the clouds will probably come and go depending on the weather, the current fixed height feels very claustrophobic when underneath, which is meant to contrast with the feeling of being above the clouds.

Quote
I found the third camera (the one farthest back) the clouds were usually in the way.

Ahh yeah.. I really should remove those other camera modes. I think we're pretty much settled on the default over-the-shoulder one.

So, it's all procedural, right?

Landscape and placement of trees etc is procedural, yep. The clouds are just a solid layer at the moment so are only procedural in a trivial sense. Depending on priorities, design decisions, etc, we might have some sort of cloud pattern. Sprites and textures are pre-authored. Happy that you like the clouds!


Code tasks for this weekend: Improved towns, roads and farmland, and maybe some little features like forest clearings and SPOILERS
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« Reply #21 on: May 15, 2009, 06:43:00 PM »

Oh man, that art looks fantastic! Can't wait to see what you do with it.
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« Reply #22 on: June 06, 2009, 12:58:05 PM »

Long time no update. PG town plans have been causing me a lot of headaches and wasted weekends.... but hey, even dead ends are a learning experience, right?  Droop

One of my algorithms had a tendency to try to make swastikas (in roads), which freaked me out a bit...

Anyway, I took a new approach and left the code alone for a day and made some rough building models in sketchup so that I had a clearer idea of what the PG town code needed to do to make something that would look good *to the player* rather than generating flat maps and fixing theoretical problems with no real thought for what the game actually required!

So, here are some (roughly textured, windowless) buildings and a mockup in sketchup, and a screenshot of the current broken planning code but with the building models slapped in. Needs rewriting from scratch with a much simpler algorithm:







Mmm... jpeggy..

(Also, some work has gone in on more sensible town placement on the island, and determining what regions should have mines or farms etc. This is what the text in the bottom left is, along with an example of a whimsical PG town name)

Next jobs:
- Optimisation of model rendering (see the FPS count on that shot)
- Fix vertex normal import/export problem
- Load in world object library from a text file
- Make a simple, non-nazi PG town planner

Slightly further away:
- Farm and mine buildings etc placed in regions near towns
- Improved roads and other details painted onto the terrain texture
- Cliffs and other geometrical interest in the terrain, maybe some rethinking of the terrain renderer code
- Write up the design for the first playable version of an actual game in the world
- Everything else...
« Last Edit: June 06, 2009, 01:01:36 PM by Ed » Logged

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« Reply #23 on: June 06, 2009, 01:01:24 PM »

damn that's so hot, ed Kiss

keep up the PG work Wizard

swastikas are silly  Tiger
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« Reply #24 on: June 06, 2009, 01:21:58 PM »

Haha thanks  Embarrassed

By the way, the buildings are supposed to be somewhat central/eastern European, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wroclaw_1a.jpg, although I'm not being particularly purist.

Also, here's a slightly older pic of a road:

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« Reply #25 on: June 06, 2009, 03:17:11 PM »

Haven't had a chance to try it, but I really like the look of it! Keep it going!
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« Reply #26 on: June 08, 2009, 04:30:45 AM »

I tried the build, and was it good! You have something going on here, absolutely.

A little feedback:

It is super awsome that you can get above the clouds, but make them higher! It kind of ruins the feeling of openess/large spaces when you have a compact roof just a few meters above your head. I'd put the clouds at least three times higher above the water level, and make some mountains extremely high and steep instead, maybe so steep that you can't just walk/jump up, but need some kind of climbing equipment? Then the reward of those beutiful above-cloud views would be so much more rewarding.

I see that you have a swamp ground type that you use in transitions between forests and water. This is super cool, but maybe you could do some kind of check if the water is sea-water or a lake? Then you could put beach tiles where the ground meets the ocean.

Maybe some precipices and rivers?

Make the trees bigger! It would be cool if they were quite a lot taller than the character, to really create the feeling of walking in a forest.

Could you possibly add a little haze? Not so much that it covers stuff up, just so that distant mountains get a little bluer and toned down.


Looking forward to see where this goes, best of luck!
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shrimp
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« Reply #27 on: June 08, 2009, 02:14:31 PM »

Hey, thanks for the feedback!

These ideas match closely with a lot of stuff that is planned or semi-implemented, so that's cool!

I got a bit carried away rambling about the various things you mentioned, but I'll post it anyway:

Clouds - yep, the height needs reviewing. I currently have them turned off by default whilst working on other stuff. If the mountains can be made higher the clouds can go up with the snowline.

Mountains - I agree, they could be more dramatic. I want to do some interesting stuff with cliffs as well, something like steps and chunks of non-heightmap geometry, so that should make it easier to make big dramatic hills without the dreaded stretchy-ground cliff effect. Special climbing equipment would fit nicely with the skiing and gliding ideas, although there is a chance that these might not make it into the first game in this engine, we'll see what happens...

Haze - there is a *little* haze, but it's probably too subtle. Hopefully I'll get round to some sort of dynamic weather system and this and the clouds will be controlled by that. (Actually, maybe there was no haze in that build though... can't remember...)

Trees - Current trees are very different and maybe 3-4 times the height of the character. I don't want to post a screenshot yet because they're ripped off from somewhere. When we have some homemade ones I'll post, maybe with another test build.

Rivers - ya, these would be good. Apart from anything else they would lead the eye into the world, although they will be tricky to do well.
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« Reply #28 on: July 09, 2009, 02:10:02 PM »

Just a small update with what is and isn't happening with this project.... it's not dead, just hibernating Wink

Unfortunately I have a slight wrist injury which has prevented me doing more than a few minutes real work on this over the past month or so.

Last "real work" I was doing was with towns, but after taking an enforced break, I realised that the towns were giving me a lot of trouble and were not really serving the main theme of the game, i.e. wilderness exploration, so we've decided to drop them.
   
Rather than have a populated island with all the baggage that entails, we're going to go back to an (almost?) unpopulated island, with an interesting variety of somehow coherent things scattered around. Stuff like ancient overgrown technology from a long-dead civilisation, as well as natural "wonders" like giant Totoro-ish trees and that sort of thing.
The discovery aspect of it may be something like triggering memories of the old civilisation. The survival elements should still be present.

Concept art to follow....
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shrimp
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« Reply #29 on: July 09, 2009, 02:16:10 PM »

Concept art from a previous incarnation of this world/story... with the same player character Wink





(NB - painted/pixelled by Ray, not me!)

Also, here's a pic with the new trees. Ignore the crappy pale green plants for now!



Next job is probably to do some optimisation or use of higher-end OpenGL functions (vertex buffer objects etc) to raise the FPS to some sensible level....
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undertech
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« Reply #30 on: July 14, 2009, 07:21:53 AM »

Very good work Mr. Ed. This quiet world has filled me with a quiet joy. Ran plenty fast enough for me though, so I take it you are targetting lower spec machines with this?
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« Reply #31 on: July 14, 2009, 09:53:44 AM »

Woohoo can't wait to see how this progresses! :D
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shrimp
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« Reply #32 on: July 14, 2009, 11:52:52 AM »

Thanks!! We will definitely try to maintain the atmosphere as it develops.

Ran plenty fast enough for me though, so I take it you are targetting lower spec machines with this?

Well, the framerate problems are mainly with the new 3D models. The code is just not really optimised at any level. On my development PC it runs at around 8fps, and on Ray's it's 1fps.

The ideal framerate for this game seems to be about 25fps so hopefully we can achieve that on Ray's mini-laptop-thing. My dev PC (which we'll call the "Recommended Spec") is about 5 years old, and was a pretty good PC at the time, if that's any indication.  Hand Thumbs Up Right
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« Reply #33 on: July 24, 2009, 11:35:17 PM »

Is it the PC behind the cat? And if so, is it proteus code that is being displayed on it? Just curios Who, Me?
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« Reply #34 on: July 25, 2009, 04:16:55 AM »

Is it the PC behind the cat? And if so, is it proteus code that is being displayed on it? Just curios Who, Me?

Yeah it is! He gets quite possessive over computer seats, I was in some danger of being bitten  Tiger
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shrimp
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« Reply #35 on: July 25, 2009, 06:39:34 AM »

Still haven't been able to do anymore development, but I did manage to collect some inspiration/reference material. These are from Langdale, Cumbria, UK.


  Low clouds over the peaks at the end of the valley. The wind was

at that level and was pretty interesting to watch the bottom of the cloud layer breaking into curls of mist. Definitely going to try and rewrite the cloud layer to give this kind of effect, and allow the clouds to blow over/around hill tops, CPU budget permitting.

  A mysterious-looking structure. I think this is a shelter for sheep/shepherds, built onto a naturally-occurring boulder (the wind is blowing from the right). In game terms, this would be a nice "interesting" thing to find, but also could be a valuable resting place.

  Marshy meadow, hills, trees. It would be great to be able to recreate this kind of scene.


More here...


Some other reference:

Industrial ruins. Might have been tempted to (illegally) look around this old cement factory, but (fortunately) didn't get the opportunity!

Older, mysterious ruins. (a bit of a Norman castle)

Also been watching

, which turns out to be a pretty similar story/world!
« Last Edit: July 25, 2009, 06:46:52 AM by Ed » Logged

DrDerekDoctors
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« Reply #36 on: July 26, 2009, 12:02:27 AM »

I like the vibe this has, slightly Robinson's Requiem (http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/robinsons-requiem/screenshots) / Archipelagos (http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/archipelagos/screenshots) -esque feel to it. Pity about losing the towns as by just making them more decrepit you could have had some nice rooftop platforming going on without ever feeling you needed to populate them in some manner. Love the idea of a cloud-layer, particularly when you get above it and just see other peaks of interest in the distance. Like that it'll be really explorey, will you have lots of little spritey wildlife buzzing about and little bits of life like that?

Control in the build is obviously very primative, it'd be nice to have some real sense of inertia and speed in there so as you're crossing large tracks of terrain it goes whipping by. Very cool start, though, I can't wait to see what mysteries you pack into the world.
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« Reply #37 on: July 26, 2009, 02:10:52 PM »

Hey, thanks a lot for the links and the thoughts! I will have to have a go on Robinson's Requiem someday, very interesting. The fuzzy painterly style is rather nice, especially something about how the fog works. I dug up

and

. The FMV is... ummm... yeah...  Facepalm Durr...?

I should say that the survival stuff will be much, much lighter than in RR. The first aid stuff looked great though.

Archipelagos - also something I'd only vaguely heard of, and very interesting to read about!

Wildlife - yep, planning to have dragonflies and other insects, and also ambient stuff like dandelion seeds blowing across meadows. Possibly also birds flying about, buzzards circling above.... Maybe extra buzzards when you're in bad shape Wink

Sense of speed - I think normal walking will be fairly slow, but the special movement modes (e.g. gliding, skiing) should supply that feeling. Bit vague at the moment... The extent of these and any platforming stuff may rely on a physics engine.

Towns....... yeah. Would be a shame to lose them. One of my favourite things on Fallout 3 was clambering about on buildings, running along railings, etc. See also, this bit from Conan. (specifically around the 2 minute mark).
Even without platforming, exploring collapsed, overgrown streets would be cool.

Ruined towns should be doable, especially if they are fairly planned and "inorganic", like barracks towns, or maybe really heavily sunken into the ground. Going to do some thinking and try not to get carried away with overcomplex town-gen stuff.
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« Reply #38 on: July 27, 2009, 10:11:57 AM »

Hey, thanks a lot for the links and the thoughts! I will have to have a go on Robinson's Requiem someday, very interesting. The fuzzy painterly style is rather nice, especially something about how the fog works. I dug up

and

. The FMV is... ummm... yeah...  Facepalm Durr...?

I had the Atari ST version which was forever asking you to swap discs. The footage on those videos made it look like that version was height-mapped (3D0 version, I assume from the tags) whereas the ST/PC ones were voxel-based, making them look even odder but more clunkily organic.

I should say that the survival stuff will be much, much lighter than in RR. The first aid stuff looked great though.

Yeah, s'nice idea but somewhat over the top, like boiling water to make it safe or adding disinfectant pills to it - still, it's kinda' nice in games like Arx Fatalis where you drop a raw fish near a fire and it crackles and turns into a cooked fish, or when you mix two things (like pastry and apples) to make a pie when you otherwise wouldn't have a use for the pastry. But RR's habit of making you move slower because you're injured is just no fun at all.

Archipelagos - also something I'd only vaguely heard of, and very interesting to read about!

I mostly bought that game because I liked the cover (Facepalm - I know) because it had a tornado on it and it reminded me a bit of the haunting final scene from The Quiet Earth (30 seconds in) as I had an obsession with clouds.

Wildlife - yep, planning to have dragonflies and other insects, and also ambient stuff like dandelion seeds blowing across meadows. Possibly also birds flying about, buzzards circling above.... Maybe extra buzzards when you're in bad shape Wink

Be nice to use buzzards to maybe show where dead bodies are as a clue as well. Smiley

Sense of speed - I think normal walking will be fairly slow, but the special movement modes (e.g. gliding, skiing) should supply that feeling. Bit vague at the moment... The extent of these and any platforming stuff may rely on a physics engine.

Well, you can use pretty simple physics to provide platforming and other stuff. I mean look at the side-on flying in Super Mario World when you have a cape - simple dynamic but really nice feeling. If you give more depth (literally height) to the world then I can see hang-gliding being really nice, especially as it's third person.

Towns....... yeah. Would be a shame to lose them. One of my favourite things on Fallout 3 was clambering about on buildings, running along railings, etc. See also, this bit from Conan. (specifically around the 2 minute mark).
Even without platforming, exploring collapsed, overgrown streets would be cool.

Yuss, very true, as long as there was stuff to find in there. Will the game have combat at all?

Ruined towns should be doable, especially if they are fairly planned and "inorganic", like barracks towns, or maybe really heavily sunken into the ground. Going to do some thinking and try not to get carried away with overcomplex town-gen stuff.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be awfully complex, as long as it acts as a visual beacon of "ooh, what's that over there?" and quite often delivers by giving the player something interesting they'll have done their job. That's half the reason Fallout 3 was so compelling, just the constant sense of "hello! woss that?".
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« Reply #39 on: July 27, 2009, 12:03:19 PM »

...whereas the ST/PC ones were voxel-based, making them look even odder but more clunkily organic.

Looking at that video it looks almost like a collage, partly because the polys are fogged as whole units, but also some weird fuzzy pixelly effect. Might be partly video compression artifacts...

Quote
Arx Fatalis [...] pastry

Yeah, this will probably be the maximum. I'd quite like to put some cookery in there, although I would say it might be slight feature creep for the first version. We'll see what happens once the inventory UI is in. That kind of cooking by dropping something by/in a fire sounds really neat.

Quote
the haunting final scene from

(30 seconds in) as I had an obsession with clouds.

Maaan.... that's one of those films I saw late at night on Channel 4/BBC2 as a child and was totally captivated/mystified by. Another one being The Andromeda Strain. I'll have to find and watch that one (TQE) again, looks pretty relevant to this game.

Quote
Be nice to use buzzards to maybe show where dead bodies are as a clue as well. Smiley

Yeah, that's a great idea! Whether we have dead bodies is another issue, but they could also mark something less explicit, like a wrecked aircraft.

Quote
Well, you can use pretty simple physics to provide platforming and other stuff. I mean look at the side-on flying in Super Mario World when you have a cape - simple dynamic but really nice feeling. If you give more depth (literally height) to the world then I can see hang-gliding being really nice, especially as it's third person.

I need to do some investigation into what's easier to do, simple but solid platforming/flying physics or integrate a physics engine. I'm a bit worried about the possible complexities of the tops of ruined buildings, but maybe that can be worked-around.

Quote
Will the game have combat at all?

Probably not, at least not in this version/edition/chapter. We're pretty keen to make a non-violent game, and focus on exploration and adventure. (I might post something about "Chapters" later, that's a very long range plan)

Quote
Yeah, it doesn't have to be awfully complex, as long as it acts as a visual beacon of "ooh, what's that over there?" and quite often delivers by giving the player something interesting they'll have done their job. That's half the reason Fallout 3 was so compelling, just the constant sense of "hello! woss that?".

Yes, that's exactly what we're aiming for.   SmileyHand Thumbs Up Right

I'll see if I can knock together a newer build - i.e. roughly corresponding to the most recent screenshots
« Last Edit: July 27, 2009, 12:46:16 PM by Ed » Logged

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