Draco - Friday, 7 December 2007

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Draco - Friday, 7 December 2007

Post by Draconisaurus »

Name: Draco Astreus
Position: Team Leader, 3D modeller, event scripter, sound design, level design, texture design
Occupation: Aspiring Game Designer, Boyfriend, Restaurant Front Worker
Age: 20
Listening to: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings


Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? JPDS hasn't really had much going for it in quite a few months. Back when my HD fried, I lost a month's or so of work, in addition to any new .max files from the past year, but thankfully I hadn't been working on JPDS a ton at that time and Slash still had a recent backup of JPDS1 and the JPDS engine. What I lost was basically an hour or so of careful terrain object placement, a couple object fixes, new mountain road terrain objects, and a new tree model. The new tree model is the only major loss, really. Fortunately, I have recovered some of the new textures for it, but the model itself is gone. I can, however, show you what it looked like:
Image

It's based on the Acacia species, from the African savanna. Might not make sense to find it on a Central American island, but really, the point of the Plains in JPDS1 was to feel like an African savanna, anyway. Maybe Hammond planted them here a while back. Anyway, the model was built over the course of a month or so.. (large gaps of time in between working of course) using bent cylinders and such to make the curvy branches. It was quite fun, as it's based on a certain image of my favorite Acacia tree... :P Thing is, now Sam/hppav has formally reintroduced me to using lofts for such things, so building it the next time will be a new experience..

So, what HAVE I been doing since I got my computer up and running again??? Well, two things mainly. First off, EastDock, as you all know by now very well. Let's have a look at that. *major spoilers*

Image
Very early image of production on ED. The JR hunter jeep was used as placement for Sam's jeep (which took quite a while to finish, some several weeks actually...), and the old wooden fence from IT was actually going to be the fence in ED. What eventually got me to make a new fence was that it would mean far fewer objects rendered on screen, less poly, AND fewer textures. Using the IT fence still provided an excellent base for the new fence.

Image Image
We were originally going to fill the level with 24-bit rain if we could, can you imagine that? Before the super-detail jeep was included, it was actually possible to play with these rain objects from TC's test~zone covering the area all around the jeep, and it looked pretty cool. Now they can cause lag even just being at the tunnel's entrance and exit... an idea, btw, which was posed by machf, and was crucial for making the effect work as well as it does.

Image
Heh, Dennis was originally going to be blinded in ED (having some sort of blurry vision) until you found and put on his glasses (which can still be found in the starting area). Even more realism. Sadly, no way could be found to attach any object to the camera or mysterious "head" subobject, so the idea had to be ditched.

Image Image Image Image
Creating Dennis Nedry took over a week and many hours, as I recall. Even once machf got him, it took a while to sort out other errors. One of the problems was that the health monitor JP logo on the left side of Nedry's coat could not readily be seen by the player, at least not while alive, and so the ID badge ultimately had to be used instead (another idea of machf's), which in the end is kinda cool.

Image Image Image Image
Finally the Jeep went in, looking awesome as you all know... although the windshield's texture, as machf would have predicted, shifted to the right. I remapped the texture to be slightly left-offset on the model, and that did the trick nicely on the first try.. Oh yeah and, with a few days of work and tweaking, the Barbasol can got an upgrade. Was Slash's idea to apply a simple noise modifier to a cylinder for the shaving cream.

Image
Zombie Nedry, come to take back his embryos...

Image Image
Ah yes, the coolest part of the level... ME! jk :mrgreen: :P For some reason, at first there were no gaps between the 3 textures, but there were after I split up the mesh and introduced the animated textures, even on the non-split mesh..

Image Image Image
Ah yes... there were some... troubles, at first, with the boat animation. For a bit there, we were beyond flustered. The initial problem was that apparently, the use of the ASA file requires that the model begin with an orientation of 0,0,0. There's really no way around that; due to the strange nature of the rotation data in ASA format, you can't manually edit it, you must get the info out of TresEd, and no amount of work-arounds would do any good. So it was that I altered the mesh in Max and got the boat to start with a rotation of 0,0,0. But then...
Image
..it got even worse. The ASA was auto-rotating the boat still, and thus the CEntityAttached objects were mis-oriented with the main model. It wasn't until I had a talk with Slugger that we realized the problem - I had to delete the ASB file out of the data directory in order for the new ASA file I had made to be read and used. THEN it worked perfectly. ^_^;;

PS: Notice the time - when I originally set the delay for 5 minutes, the ASA started in 7. Go figure. It never did make complete sense..

Image
Oh yeah, don't piss this guy off by not bringing the embryos to the dock. He's got a short temper... ;) lol it was quite fun making that, if a bit involved. Taking the successive photos was easy, after finding just the right outfit for a BioSyn Agent, it was making the opacity maps and then resizing everything into 3 levels of images for 6 frames of animation that was the hard part.. it was also my first animated-texture object ever, w00t... I'm still not entirely sure how I got it to work XD

Image Image
Then came the rain and washed the dilo out... Hehe, it was quite a struggle to get rain-looking rain, but it was really very simple.. After getting in touch with BR, he told me about how "Solid" needed to be set to 0 in the .ini file. Particle rain actually looks much better than I ever thought it would, no reason to ever go back to 24-bit except when needed for transitions..

Image
Aha, yes here was another interesting discovery we made through ED. You can't make out anything that texture says, can you? It is a 256x256 texture, anyway it's not being rendered to full resolution... Well so, it's been said to edit your registry to display 256 as max texture res instead of 128, but that's never done that much for text clarity on images. Sam's texture for the camera was actually one of those types where all the pieces (front, sides, lense, etc.) were on a single texture, and I noted that a bit of red was bleeding onto the side of the lense piece from a distance (due to greater mipmapping). I told him to fix this, I could give the camera object MipMap = false, so we did it... And my, were we surprised at what else we got.
Image
Beautiful. Just beautiful. Apparently, MipMap = false will force any texture on the model into its true resolution at all times. Amazing!!! Thus we have conquered the unreadable text debacle of all Trespasser levels to come, which will be invaluable to JPDS...

Image
Ah yes, we subsequentially applied MipMap = false to some objects already in ED (note that they must be reimported to do this). Now the Barbasol textures can be seen in their full glory ingame... try to read the back of the can sometime. ;)

Well so... obviously I haven't covered everything in East Dock, but that should be all the stuff worth noting. Of course ED covers 3.5 months of time, much else went on before it was over, which I'll talk about now.

First off, as most of you recall, my major level release during Week of Tres was JPDS~testing. That took a bit of time to prepare, along-side East Dock.. I mention it because I have some neat things to share from it:
Image
(Destructable box-wall)
Image
(More Alberta fun)
Image
(Drinking Compy)
In addition to these images, I have uploaded a few videos from JPDS~testing. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6X8ORcwt-0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHchdTqSacE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7Qslf4BMNM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xPziQC-Dac

If you're in the mood for another video, here's a tutorial vid I made for JPDS foliagers about a year ago, for instruction on how to properly select the invisible "vege" objects that are needed for underbrush to make sound as you pass by it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEMkpIJzg6I

One more thing about Week of Tres. I don't recall if it made it into the final cut, but there was a kawoosh modelled by me for Slugger's sg_prvw, last I knew there was a problem with it blipping in and out, due to how it was scripted... At any rate, here's an image:
Image

Alright so, I proceeded to work on ED, up until I left for Orlando, Florida in the middle of November... I did not go to sleep at all the night before, trying to finish ED, but despite how close I thought I was, there was yet a fair bit of work to be done, if all the new models were to be included, so it's just as well. My vacation is an adventure of a tale in itself, more even than I can cover here, but let's get started.

I was staying at Grandma's house - we used to go there for 2 weeks every year, for the past 4 years or so though, for various reasons, it hasn't quite been happening like that. My grandma turned 80 during my trip 2.5 years ago - a few months afterwards, my grandpa died from liver cancer. My mom went to be with Grandma for a couple weeks during November, while I was in 12th grade. He was in fact an architect at Disney Imagineering, having designed various places at Disney World, Epcot, Disney Land, and Disney France (if I have all that right). The Pinnochio Restaurant is one of his, as are the buildings in what I think is called the "German Pavillion", and the waiting building for that one train ride in Disney World.. Anyway, because of his work, my grandma gets to go to any Disney themepark for free, also being able to bring 3 others for free (with additional tickets, and all merchandise at the parks, with a nice discount). 1.5 years ago, my grandma decided I shouldn't come to Orlando because I was "busy with college preparations." Said preparations were in fact very brief and easy, considering that I went to a community college, so I could have gone anyway. This year, the family decided to have a family reunion, for Thanksgiving of course, and I noted that I could easily attend during November this year. So, that's when I went, and it was the best time I've had in Orlando.

Let's see, skipping to the good stuff... first we visited the Animal Kingdom (a Disney park), that was quite fun. One part is this ride that goes through a wide-ranging area of the park filled with animals, where they make like you've been brought on a safari to a wildlife preserve in Africa, I think it's called "Haramba". This area here made me instantly think of the Plains...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGNr8dHN3eU
Oh yeah, it was fun to go to a Disney themepark during Christmas, for a change. There's Christmassy things all about the gift shops, but also there's a lot of Christmas music playing - some of it actually sounds rather good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw3I_1pUmic

Eventually, we came to Dinosaur Land. That place was pretty cool. They even have their own brand of french fries.
Image
We came around the corner to find a hadrosaur that was friendly enough to let children play on him/her. Quite a sight...
Image
Heh and yeah... this whole place (dino land) was initially funded by McDonalds, so there's some interesting stuff around.
Image
Oh and yes, the Tree of Life is quite a sight to see, it's rather giagantic.
Image Image Image
Hmm and so back to the dinos... This T-Rex was thankfully skeletal by the time we met up with him. Poor guy..
Image Image
And of course, his friend the Carnotaur was inside to meet us. Obviously we kept him waiting too long.
Image
There were some rather nice dino paintings inside..
Image Image Image
Finally, we arrived at the real deal. We were introduced to the whole Time Rover concept - these four-wheel-drive vehicles have been outfitted for time traveling capability, allowing a trip into the age of the dinosaurs... apparently, our guide also has an alterior motive. The vid is a bit dark, hopefully you can see it with enough brightness..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqbb-kR-9z0
And so we proceeded to the loading room.
Image Image Image
Then we were on our way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32EYWnZWi14
We're having a bit of difficulty in finding this guy's Iguanadon.. we seem to be finding just about every other inhabitant of the time period. Also, as luck would have it, the Time Rover seems to be breaking down... we even get frozen in time!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1z-K8tsFOI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p73G_1OPnA
Whew, well we made it back okay, good thing for JPDS and ED. ;)



Aaaaaaaaand I think I'm going to split this particular developer journal in 2. I'll be posting another very soon, featuring the rest of my stay in Orlando and then my visit to Isla Nublar. ;) After that, I'll finally return to reading and posting as usual here on TresCom. There is one more thing I will be doing in this half of the journal. I'm officially announcing the Christmas level contest now, before it gets too far into December. Have a look. And so, hopefully I will post the next part tomorrow, if not then on Sunday. Until then!

- Drac.
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Re: Draco - Friday, 7 December 2007

Post by machf »

Draconisaurus wrote:Name: Draco Astreus
Position: Team Leader, 3D modeller, event scripter, sound design, level design, texture design
Occupation: Aspiring Game Designer, Boyfriend, Restaurant Front Worker
Age: 20
Listening to: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings


Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? JPDS hasn't really had much going for it in quite a few months. Back when my HD fried, I lost a month's or so of work, in addition to any new .max files from the past year, but thankfully I hadn't been working on JPDS a ton at that time and Slash still had a recent backup of JPDS1 and the JPDS engine. What I lost was basically an hour or so of careful terrain object placement, a couple object fixes, new mountain road terrain objects, and a new tree model. The new tree model is the only major loss, really. Fortunately, I have recovered some of the new textures for it, but the model itself is gone. I can, however, show you what it looked like:
Image

It's based on the Acacia species, from the African savanna. Might not make sense to find it on a Central American island,
Does it make sense finding it on the park behind my house, and everywhere else around here? (Don't park your car under one, BTW, those leaves are sticky...)
but really, the point of the Plains in JPDS1 was to feel like an African savanna, anyway. Maybe Hammond planted them here a while back. Anyway, the model was built over the course of a month or so.. (large gaps of time in between working of course) using bent cylinders and such to make the curvy branches. It was quite fun, as it's based on a certain image of my favorite Acacia tree... :P Thing is, now Sam/hppav has formally reintroduced me to using lofts for such things, so building it the next time will be a new experience..

So, what HAVE I been doing since I got my computer up and running again??? Well, two things mainly. First off, EastDock, as you all know by now very well. Let's have a look at that. *major spoilers*

Image
Very early image of production on ED. The JR hunter jeep was used as placement for Sam's jeep (which took quite a while to finish, some several weeks actually...),
I remember that...
and the old wooden fence from IT was actually going to be the fence in ED. What eventually got me to make a new fence was that it would mean far fewer objects rendered on screen, less poly, AND fewer textures. Using the IT fence still provided an excellent base for the new fence.
You mean the wooden fence, or the electric fence? For the latter, I've got some suggestions to improve it... I was going to ask your permission to implement them.
Image Image
We were originally going to fill the level with 24-bit rain if we could, can you imagine that? Before the super-detail jeep was included, it was actually possible to play with these rain objects from TC's test~zone covering the area all around the jeep, and it looked pretty cool. Now they can cause lag even just being at the tunnel's entrance and exit... an idea, btw, which was posed by machf, and was crucial for making the effect work as well as it does.
Speaking of the tunnel, I've noticed there are tree shadows visible... I guess that means the tunnel walls themselves don't cast any shadows, it might be better if they did. And placing occlusion objects behind the tunnel walls might help a bit with the lag problem (the engine would only attempt to render what's visible through the tunnel entrance)
Image
Heh, Dennis was originally going to be blinded in ED (having some sort of blurry vision) until you found and put on his glasses (which can still be found in the starting area). Even more realism. Sadly, no way could be found to attach any object to the camera or mysterious "head" subobject, so the idea had to be ditched.
Well, maybe next time. It may still be possible to use ActionType 4 for something...
Image Image Image Image
Creating Dennis Nedry took over a week and many hours, as I recall. Even once machf got him, it took a while to sort out other errors.
Oh, yes... all that.
The problem lies either in TresEd's .TPM export routines, or the TPM import script, I'm not sure yet which. (Probably the former, I've noticed it tends to round values to 3 decimals)
One of the problems was that the health monitor JP logo on the left side of Nedry's coat could not readily be seen by the player, at least not while alive, and so the ID badge ultimately had to be used instead (another idea of machf's), which in the end is kinda cool.

Image Image Image Image
Finally the Jeep went in, looking awesome as you all know... although the windshield's texture, as machf would have predicted, shifted to the right. I remapped the texture to be slightly left-offset on the model, and that did the trick nicely on the first try..
Yes, a cheap trick is to not use the leftmost 8 columns (pixels) of the texture at all... I still would like to fix that problem, though.
Oh yeah and, with a few days of work and tweaking, the Barbasol can got an upgrade. Was Slash's idea to apply a simple noise modifier to a cylinder for the shaving cream.
Speaking of the can, it may still be possible to do something about the way it's held on Nedry's belt.
Image
Zombie Nedry, come to take back his embryos...

Image Image
Ah yes, the coolest part of the level... ME!
Ah, yes, the silly-looking guy in the trenchcoat, as I said earlier... ;)
jk :mrgreen: :P For some reason, at first there were no gaps between the 3 textures, but there were after I split up the mesh and introduced the animated textures, even on the non-split mesh..
Do you want to make an actual 3-D model for that at a later time? I'm going to do something like that...
Image Image Image
Ah yes... there were some... troubles, at first, with the boat animation. For a bit there, we were beyond flustered. The initial problem was that apparently, the use of the ASA file requires that the model begin with an orientation of 0,0,0. There's really no way around that; due to the strange nature of the rotation data in ASA format, you can't manually edit it, you must get the info out of TresEd, and no amount of work-arounds would do any good. So it was that I altered the mesh in Max and got the boat to start with a rotation of 0,0,0. But then...
Image
..it got even worse. The ASA was auto-rotating the boat still, and thus the CEntityAttached objects were mis-oriented with the main model. It wasn't until I had a talk with Slugger that we realized the problem - I had to delete the ASB file out of the data directory in order for the new ASA file I had made to be read and used. THEN it worked perfectly. ^_^;;
Always remember that.
PS: Notice the time - when I originally set the delay for 5 minutes, the ASA started in 7. Go figure. It never did make complete sense..

Image
Oh yeah, don't piss this guy off by not bringing the embryos to the dock. He's got a short temper... ;) lol it was quite fun making that, if a bit involved. Taking the successive photos was easy, after finding just the right outfit for a BioSyn Agent, it was making the opacity maps and then resizing everything into 3 levels of images for 6 frames of animation that was the hard part.. it was also my first animated-texture object ever, w00t... I'm still not entirely sure how I got it to work XD

Image Image
Then came the rain and washed the dilo out... Hehe, it was quite a struggle to get rain-looking rain, but it was really very simple.. After getting in touch with BR, he told me about how "Solid" needed to be set to 0 in the .ini file. Particle rain actually looks much better than I ever thought it would, no reason to ever go back to 24-bit except when needed for transitions..
Agreed.
Image
Aha, yes here was another interesting discovery we made through ED. You can't make out anything that texture says, can you? It is a 256x256 texture, anyway it's not being rendered to full resolution... Well so, it's been said to edit your registry to display 256 as max texture res instead of 128, but that's never done that much for text clarity on images. Sam's texture for the camera was actually one of those types where all the pieces (front, sides, lense, etc.) were on a single texture, and I noted that a bit of red was bleeding onto the side of the lense piece from a distance (due to greater mipmapping).
For those cases, I suggest the background of the texture should closely match the color of whatever is on it. In other words, let the color of whatever you draw on the texture "bleed" a bit past its bounds, as in those children's drawings...
I told him to fix this, I could give the camera object MipMap = false, so we did it... And my, were we surprised at what else we got.
Image
Beautiful. Just beautiful. Apparently, MipMap = false will force any texture on the model into its true resolution at all times. Amazing!!!
Duh... what did you expect when telling the engine not to use mipmaps at all...
Thus we have conquered the unreadable text debacle of all Trespasser levels to come, which will be invaluable to JPDS...
Beware, you can't use that for everything or you'll have serious problems. I'll just remind you that RGB textures aren't mipmapped, for example - and you've seen yourself what happens with the rain objects.
Image
Ah yes, we subsequentially applied MipMap = false to some objects already in ED (note that they must be reimported to do this). Now the Barbasol textures can be seen in their full glory ingame... try to read the back of the can sometime. ;)
And there's an additional problem you may run into... apparently, GeomAdd doesn't optimize the addition of textures, so you may get an error message at some point while adding a non-mipmapped texture (when actually there's more than enough space left for adding new textures), but no such error if the texture is mipmapped.
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Post by Draconisaurus »

machf wrote:Does it make sense finding it on the park behind my house, and everywhere else around here? (Don't park your car under one, BTW, those leaves are sticky...)
Haha, whoa really? Fascinating... well then, that debunks some complaints I had about them. Heh, got any images of the Acacia in that environment?
You mean the wooden fence, or the electric fence? For the latter, I've got some suggestions to improve it... I was going to ask your permission to implement them.
Yeah the wooden one. The image link seems to be broken again atm.. hopefully it will return.. Hmm and well, sure go ahead. :yum: How're you planning to improve it? This general area will be in JPO as well, but with none of the environmental effects in ED, also being somewhat in the future..
Speaking of the tunnel, I've noticed there are tree shadows visible... I guess that means the tunnel walls themselves don't cast any shadows, it might be better if they did.
Originally, they did, but it didn't look good because they didn't *always* seem to cast shadows, so the tunnel floor was a mix and match of dark and light gray.. I can try that again sometime just to make sure it doesn't work, but there were a lot of objects in that area I gave Shadow = false to..
And placing occlusion objects behind the tunnel walls might help a bit with the lag problem (the engine would only attempt to render what's visible through the tunnel entrance)
Heh, maybe, but to be honest, I never had lag or crash issues when inside the tunnel, and I think you instance of crashing might be due to the teleporting Dilo.. still, I could do that. Do you seriously want me to release a patch? :P
Well, maybe next time. It may still be possible to use ActionType 4 for something...
Possibly, but I don't know when "next time" will be, I've got 3 JPDS levels and Tres Reloaded to worry about now. :yum:
The problem lies either in TresEd's .TPM export routines, or the TPM import script, I'm not sure yet which. (Probably the former, I've noticed it tends to round values to 3 decimals)
Ah, yeah that might do it. 3DS is also known for losing element data, but it's not as complete a loss..
Speaking of the can, it may still be possible to do something about the way it's held on Nedry's belt.
Really? It orignally looked fine, but after I fixed the way he holds it in his hand, it sticks straight out.. Getting the magnets to work properly took almost a day just in itself, I'm not too eager to dig back into that.
Do you want to make an actual 3-D model for that at a later time? I'm going to do something like that...
A 3D human? Well I've hinted before that JPDS will have something like this, even just for the cutscenes I will be needing some full-body humans (not to mention the main female character), plus there will be certain things in the level itself.. So hold that thought.
Duh... what did you expect when telling the engine not to use mipmaps at all...
Weeellll, we were certainly dumbstruck. We expected the resolution from the first shot to be maintained from all distances - not the creation of a resolution greater than that which was ever used normally. It has huge implications. Haha, Slash suggested using this on all the models in a level, I have no doubt that would cause ginormous problems..
Beware, you can't use that for everything or you'll have serious problems. I'll just remind you that RGB textures aren't mipmapped, for example - and you've seen yourself what happens with the rain objects.
Haha, indeed. For JPDS, I plan only to use it for objects where readable text is needed.. also I'm planning setups where the texture for the text is on a CEntityAttached object, so that the other textures on the object will not also be un-mipmapped..
And there's an additional problem you may run into... apparently, GeomAdd doesn't optimize the addition of textures, so you may get an error message at some point while adding a non-mipmapped texture (when actually there's more than enough space left for adding new textures), but no such error if the texture is mipmapped.
Eh? Interesting, I'll try and remember that...
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Post by hppav »

10:56 PM) Draco Astreus: hmmm, a note (which we shall ignore)
(10:56 PM) Draco Astreus: when it mipmaps,
(10:56 PM) Draco Astreus: some color from other parts of the texture bleeds through
(10:57 PM) Draco Astreus: so from a standing point on the ground, the lense thingy has some red in it

(10:57 PM) The Mulleted One: Heh, can't mipmapping be turned off though?

(10:58 PM) Draco Astreus: o-0 well I think so but..... every ocean I've worked with has had mipmap turned off.. but it still seems to have some sort of mipmapping going on..
(10:58 PM) Draco Astreus: I'll see about that now. will have to reimport the object

(10:58 PM) The Mulleted One: kk

(11:00 PM) Draco Astreus: O,O

(11:01 PM) The Mulleted One: holy **** o_o

(11:01 PM) Draco Astreus: x.xfx frakin hell
(11:01 PM) Draco Astreus: that's.... wow....
(11:01 PM) Draco Astreus: *goes to reimport Barbasol can*
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Post by machf »

Here, Draco, try importing this into the level:

.tpm file:

Code: Select all

// Trespasser Model File (.tpm)

fileinfo
{
 formatversion = 1.0.1
 name = "FenceB.max"
 version = 1.2.2
 source = "FenceB.max"
 date = 08/12/2007 05:44:18 p.m.
 comments = ""
}

material "FencePerimWire00-00.mat10"
{
 colormap = "Map\ed\MetalFence05.bmp"
 opacitymap = "Map\ed\MetalFence05o.bmp"
}

mesh "FencePerimWire00-00"
{
 m = "FencePerimWire00-00.mat10"
 v = (137.872,-64.9187,0.0)
 v = (137.872,65.6294,0.0)
 v = (-137.872,-64.9187,0.0)
 v = (-137.872,65.6294,0.0)
 v = (137.872,-64.9187,0.0)
 v = (137.872,65.6294,0.0)
 v = (-137.872,-64.9187,0.0)
 v = (-137.872,65.6294,0.0)
 t = (12.9935,0.00499517)
 t = (12.9935,9.995)
 t = (0.0064941,0.00499874)
 t = (0.00649488,9.995)
 t = (12.9935,0.00499517)
 t = (12.9935,9.995)
 t = (0.0064941,0.00499874)
 t = (0.00649488,9.995)
 n = (0.0,0.0,1.0)
 n = (0.0,0.0,-1.0)
 f = (3,1,4),(3,1,4),(1,1,1),1
 f = (2,4,1),(2,4,1),(1,1,1),1
 f = (5,7,8),(5,7,8),(2,2,2),1
 f = (8,6,5),(8,6,5),(2,2,2),1
}

instance "FencePerimWire00-00"
{
 mesh = "FencePerimWire00-00"
 position = (341.443,377.387,26.4543)
 rotation = (82.5,0,17.1431)
 scale = 0.046126
}

.values.txt file:

Code: Select all


group FencePerimWire00-00 = {
    int ext_GeometryType = 2
    bool Shadow = false
}
No need to overwrite the textures, of course...
You'll notice a huge reduction in the polygon count - from 520 triangles to barely 4. Given how many instance of that part of the fence there are in the level, their impact will be greatly reduced now.

And don't say I didn't tell you to do this before...

There are several other things I want to try to improve that level, actually...
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Post by machf »

OK, Draco, here you may find some acacia trees, these are the only pictures of the park I've been able to find:

Image
Image
Image

See the branch tip on the right side of this other one?
Image
That's one of the two acacia trees that are practically right behind my house, unfortunately I never thought of photographing them...
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Post by Draconisaurus »

Ahhh hmm yes, that fence perimeter wire, I remembered thinking of your method after I did it... are you sure it renders exactly the same? It very well may.. ah well, it's probably a good idea anyway. Maybe I should have had you beta test! XD

Oh and, hmm I *think* I can spot the acacias, but they seem to be a somewhat different breed.. just a tad.. perhaps it's the moss that's not there, which would obviously be a separate organism. Anyways that's cool that they are there.


So I guess no one has any comments about my vacation so far... :yum:
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Post by Shadow Wolf »

so the biosyn guy was based on you or not?
and about the acacia tree, I have a banana tree in my garden and it get's forking cold in that part of the garden it's growing in in winter :lol:
post something intelligent before I go insane from a combination of exhaustion and boredom
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Re: Draco - Friday, 7 December 2007

Post by TheGuy »

Draconisaurus wrote:Image
Heh, Dennis was originally going to be blinded in ED (having some sort of blurry vision) until you found and put on his glasses (which can still be found in the starting area). Even more realism. Sadly, no way could be found to attach any object to the camera or mysterious "head" subobject, so the idea had to be ditched.
Couldn't you just have a fog trigger so that when the level starts the fog is quite high with a long distance, and then when you put the glasses, somehow trigger the fog to go back to normal? A little like this...

Image
ImageImage
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Post by Draconisaurus »

Shadow Wolf wrote:so the biosyn guy was based on you or not?
and about the acacia tree, I have a banana tree in my garden and it get's forking cold in that part of the garden it's growing in in winter :lol:
Lol, nice. And yes, it's based on me. :) I have posted images of myself on the forum before, hmmm well you'll be seeing some more of me in the next developer journal. ;)
TheGuy wrote:Couldn't you just have a fog trigger so that when the level starts the fog is quite high with a long distance, and then when you put the glasses, somehow trigger the fog to go back to normal? A little like this...

Image
Lol, I had thought of that, but still you wouldn't be able to tell that you were wearing the glasses. The image-overlay actiontype might work but I've never used it before, so I'm not sure about how it reacts to various different things, I might try something like that sometime. And well, I wanted it to be blurry still on the exterior of the glasses, so that you could only see out of the area on the screen that the glasses covered, making Nedry's job more difficult (for realism).
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Post by Shadow Wolf »

Draconisaurus wrote:
Shadow Wolf wrote:so the biosyn guy was based on you or not?
and about the acacia tree, I have a banana tree in my garden and it get's forking cold in that part of the garden it's growing in in winter :lol:
Lol, nice. And yes, it's based on me. :) I have posted images of myself on the forum before, hmmm well you'll be seeing some more of me in the next developer journal. ;)
rather you than me working for biosyn :lol: the only dino company I'd work for is pre lost world InGen, back when hammond was in charge
post something intelligent before I go insane from a combination of exhaustion and boredom
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