Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Released! - Discuss progress and updates on the biggest Trespasser level endeavor ever, JPDS - a dark Tres mod by Draco and co.

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Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by Draconisaurus »

Name: Draco Astreus
Position: Everything except what tatu & Nem do
Occupation: Artist, Writer, Mytholographer
Age: 22
Listening to: The ringing in my ears from staying up to late xP



Time to roll out another little dev journal. Major development: JPDS~streams, the starting level, has been completely constituted by me and now passed on to Nem to do various things including dinosaur placement, AI scripting, and additional foliage/object placement. I've already finished the gun placement and am quite happy with it - no island-extinction-causing-adventurer to play as, this time. You'll need to search hard if you want weapons, and use them well when you do. It's not the bare scarcity of TC_Isle but it's close.
My work on the level is not 100% done. I want to make some signs for important locations, place bakers, script a few more things. But the areas meant for JPDS~streams are in a completed state and I cannot describe the pleasure it is to see all those assets combined once more. Some of the things which I had to bring into JPDS~streams, I had not encountered or even thought of in YEARS, hahaha. Only a few areas were included in the sublevels, which is all I've worked with for a very long time. I even found some cages buried deep underground in the old JPDS1 that must have been placed long before the terrain was finalized. I'm also very pleased to say that, at least on my computer, 99% of the level retains a steady 60 FPS when not looking around, occasioinally going down to 40 or 50. The smaller level size and rampant use of occlusions probably helps a lot. I'm pleased that the somewhat excessive use of CWaterEntity does not seem to have damaged FPS..

So, this whole endless marathon thing has been taking a tole on me health-wise. I decided to forego exercising many weeks ago in an attempt to expedite release of JPDS from my hands. It didn't work out because the required work increases in detail exponentially as you approach a finished version, and it was then met with unforeseen errors involving the recombination of the levels. So anyway here I am now and I'm frakin tired of it. I still have many other things to do before I can pass all JPDS material out of my hands, and I can't wait that long to regain my health, so for the next few days I'm going to start making exercise and health my primary goal, with JPDS work filling in the spare time, the reverse of what it's been. I won't be able to have the full physical activity I was at before so this presents the perfect opportunity for JPDS while I get back up to speed, and this is the right time to do it because now both Nem and Tatu have level files to work with (though I think Tatu needs to get a bit more focused ;)) on their own.

And last but not least, new screenshots. Enjoy. There will probably be a trailer coming around one of these days, I may even coax TheGuy into doing it, since I know he likes that stuff ;)

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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by machf »

Draconisaurus wrote:The smaller level size and rampant use of occlusions probably helps a lot.
Something I've noticed while working on the Pens is that apparently there's a limit in the number of occlusion objects Trespasser can process in a scene, much as there is a limit in the number of physics boxes... I'm not sure of the exact number, but a few large occlusion objects will work far better than a lot of smaller ones (because several will actually be ignored)...
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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by Draconisaurus »

Ahhhh, thanks.. Well as it happens there are only 16 present in JPDS~streams, and I think similar amounts in the other sublevels, where I modeled large terrain occlusions using a heightmap mesh in Max a few years back, and have filled buildings with occulsion squares and then combined them per-building in Max. Wait... What about buildings that have occlusion textures in their meshes? And the hundreds of objects for fence around the Plains all have occlusion textures, too, I wonder if that counts... Maybe it's a matter of total faces?
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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by machf »

Take a look at GUIapp... in Options->Occlusion->Settings there are two values: Area Threshold (set to 1.0 by default, available range 0.1-250.0) and Max in View (set to 25 by default, available range 1-100). Don't know if Trespasser uses the same default values (most likely) or if they can be changed, and if so, whether they are included somewhere inside the level files... and yes, I guess everything counts.
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Sound name listings for the Demo (build 117), Retail (build 116), Beta 103, Beta 99, Beta 97, Beta 96, Build 55, PC Gamer Alpha (build 32) and E3 1998 Alpha (build 22) TPA files
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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by makairu »

Eagerly anticipating release, just don't push yourself too hard.
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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by Slugger »

Nice bridge!
0066521C: 'Cannot create local swap file - Is Trespasser installed??',0Ah,0
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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by Draconisaurus »

Yeah I'm workin on it.

Hehe, thanks - I believe when I made it, I was partially inspired by one of the bridge image refs you'd pointed me to. It's not entirely accurate, but looks close enough..
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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by Draconisaurus »

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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by makairu »

I like it :D
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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by Draconisaurus »

Thanks - and for anyone who doesn't remember: http://trescom.org/index.php?page=image&id=301
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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by machf »

You should have corrected the spelling... it should be like this:
¡ESTÉ ALERTA!
ZONA DE
DEPREDADORES
Visit The Carnivores Saga - a forum devoted to modding Action Forms' Carnivores, Carnivores 2 and Carnivores: Ice Age games
Tres WIP: updated T-Script Reference and File Formats documents
Sound name listings for the Demo (build 117), Retail (build 116), Beta 103, Beta 99, Beta 97, Beta 96, Build 55, PC Gamer Alpha (build 32) and E3 1998 Alpha (build 22) TPA files
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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by makairu »

I knew something was off. Guess my 3 years of spanish were pointless.
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Re: Draco - Wodensday, 11 August 2010

Post by Draconisaurus »

Aha... thanks. Combined that with an update from Slash, is now fixed. Look for final version ingame..
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