Sorry your browser is not supported!

Hello my dear friends and brothers in FPSC World.

I am here again with another of my crazyness things... Sometime before i have done some crazy and long scripts (level of difficulty screen, custom pause menus, for each levels, mission objectives,...) however many folks here found my work usefull, and i am very happy for being able to give something good to this beloved community which also helped me a lot to learn (and still helps me) FPSC.

I don`t want anyone think of me that i am promoting my ownself or showing off, no, i just want to share my thoughts with the community here and also i was asked by a member here, some time ago, to this .

As i have commented, i want to create a fan game for Goldeneye 007 (Nintendo Wii Version), but for this i decided that i need to study a lot, learn everything from modelling, animation, shaders programming, script and such. As i have a modest background on 3D, because i came from the merchandising industry (tv commercials, video editting and such), i have find easy to learn 3dsmax for games (i used Cinema 4D for almost 5 years).

And indeed, FPSC is very limited on the level design, if you work using the standard features of the map editor, however, as on this beloved community always we have some "very smart and intelligent folks", like Rolfy, we also can overcome FPSC limitations, and take it to another level.

When Rolfy created his little demo, Dark House, i found amazing how he could model all his level on 3dsmax, light the scene entirely in 3dsmax, bake the lights and shadows on the texture, then export it to FPSC, thus having the advantage of more freedom to build a level (using a 3d aplication), and also using all the features 3dsmax has with the lighting, which off course, is better than any lighting system from even some famous game engines (like UDK, Crysis, and such...)

But also i have seen some time before, an old FPSC user, Daarboven, who also had a tutorial on how export a level made on Google Sketchup to FPSC. So from those ideas i have thought a lot about, and decided that the best approach to create something unique in FPSC, is indeed to model the level in a 3d aplication then export to FPSC.

And whenever i begin a project, first of all i start to collect the resources, especially download a lot of plugins and scripts for 3dsmax which indeed help you to do some repetitive tasks, and even they allow you do some "professional" things in a "dumb" way.

While searching for a good lighting plugin for 3dsmax, i found VRAY, which is very know amongst the world of architects and visualizations. And indeed, VRAY allows you to use a system called Global Illumination, which is an algorithm (code) that simulates the real movement of the light. Whenever a light strikes on an object, it bounces to all the directions, so this primary light hits the object, then it is splitted on to inumerous secondary lights (bounces) which hits another objetcs sucessively, and whenever the secondary bounce hits an object, it ilumminates this objects (secondary ilumination).

And indeed, Global Illumination is the key to achieve a Photo Realistic Image.

So i am studying 3dsmax and Vray, i downloaded a lot of sample scenes for training, exercise. And the most amazing thing is that YES, it`s possible you have a "photo realistic" scene inside FPSC, like those photos you see of Architecture and Visualization which look so real that you even doubt that this is 3D!!!

I am coming here with a proof of concept of a new method of Designing Levels in FPSC, a new aproach to FPSC level design, and if we adopt this method (althougt it really needs a very good 3d skills), we can create games in FPSC that look like (or even better!!!) than games created on Unreal Engine, Crysis, and such.

Off course that only good graphics does not make a good game, and even for this method to work, you will need to assign custom shaders to those "props" and 3d object that compound the scene to you have a real "eye-candy" game.

As i said, i am still studying, i think i need more 3 or 4 months untill "get the thing", but i would like to share with my dear folks here what i am doing, maybe this will serve as an inspiration for you, and maybe you can adopt this new method.

And for those who don`t use 3dsmax, this plugin, VRAY, is also avaiable to Google Sketchup!

Those scenes below, they were not modelled by me (i respect the author`s copyrights), they are training scenes that i downloaded for free over the internet, however, all the Lighting thing was done by me.

I used "low" settings for rendering and low resolution baked shadow maps (768x768), to don`t take too much time to render, however, the quality is good, so you can have an idea of what i am doing.

All those scenes you see are in "real time", i mean, the lighting and the shadows are "baked" (painted) over the objects textures, so everything you see on those scenes inside 3dsmax they will look exactly the same thing inside FPSC.

The proof is that scene of the green spaceship, which i rendered using VRAY, then exported it to FPSC and run a teste game, so you can see that all the lighting and shadow thing looks inside FPSC exactly the same thing inside 3dsmax.

Hope you enjoy this W.I.P,

Cheers,

007.

I don`t want to be rude, but that has been done allready several times before. Rolfy uses a similar approach. The point is, that you will run into some really severe problems using that technique. One of them is collision for AI

You could just have said: "I am using VRay to lightmap my scene, check this out!" .

There are alot of features Unreal Engine applies in terms of post-processing, so you wont come close to that, take only AA, AF, it's Unreal Lightmass etc. Altough using the right lightmapper is indeed really the key to a well designed game in FPSC.

Using this technique is a quite nice idea, but still if you want to use shaders only on some objects, you're screwed. Also I think that DarkLights is an amazing lightmapper. It only takes much memory and that probably will be "fixed" in future FPSC versions.

I think, FPSC needs to be optimized for level streaming (including textures, models and scripts) on the fly. So we can have as big or as detailed levels as we want because the chance is very little to have the whole level in the memory. Also you could make FPSC bake DarkLights shadows automatically on the universe model, or give it dynamic shadows that actually work without any need to give a shader to every single object. This way you'd get a pretty low memory consumption (at least for FPSC) and it would be just fine. You can overcome too many polys in the scene by using occlusion culling which works pretty well most of the time.

And if even this doesn't really help: Well, does Skyrim run absolutely smoothly on EVERY PC?

Greetings,
Jan

nevertheless nice looking screens, 007.

Never my friend, i am not a person who thinks that "i know it all", and yes, any critic, both positive or negative is wellcome. I know the collision problem, but on Dark House, i think everything works very well, because rolfy used custom floor segment with the texture baked.

And by the way, i loved your new Project "In to the Dark", it looks amazing. Ah, i also purchased Legend of Chulhu some time ago, loved that game. Also i loved to see the photos of the making off.



Yes, i think i exagerated a bit on my saying . But the point is that you can have a very good looking scene in FPSC using this technique, and MAYBE have something CLOSE to Unreal Engine.



Yes, off course TGC have done a great job on DarkLights, but in my opinion, fpsc lighting should have much options, like on a 3d modelling program, in example, light type (omin, direct, spot), and control the shadow parameters, density of individual lights, just like in any 3d application.



Thanks my dear friend. And by the way, how is going your project Habitat? The last video i sawn was Amazing, the HUDs, really looked very, very well.

Thanks for all the comments.

007.

i wanted to edit the above, but well, isnt a doublepost

i like this technique a lot, rolfy´s darkhouse and his new project look awesome. yes, this limits in using shaders, but then gives very nice textures and appeal. it looks more baked than using standard fpsc-tech, wich is good for a game. go on, i am curious.

p.s.: had a break on habitat for rebreathing, now got 2 new maps in raw state this week, restarting dev, so an update will come next week. thanks for asking.

If someone finds this info interesting, i was searching today on internet about Vray for Games, and i found something very interesting and i will try to see if it works on FPSC.

http://on-mirrors-edge.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4675

This is a tutorial on how to create a custom level for the game Mirror Edge (MOD), however, the guy who is creating this level is also using 3dsmax to model the level and VRay to light the level.

This game runs on Unreal Engine 3, however, i think that this concept can be applied to FPSC.

The great trick here is that this guy extracted normal maps and light maps from the meshes to be used on a custom shader that will give the "specular" bright of the surfaces alongside with the bump map information, so indeed, even if the material has some kind of reflection, as you can see on the final render, you can get this visual information on the meshes using shaders, so you will not be so limited on using shaders even when using already baked lightmaps and textures.

Soon i will try it out,

Cheers,

007.

@007 what's your name on the OME forums? I'd love to know. I'm wrayayrton.

No friend, i don`t use this forum, i just surf all those foruns about game modding (hacking) avaiable on the net. I do some dirty work secretly..... Just kidding.

By the way i am a frequent visitor of Facepunch (garrymod), FPSBanana, and the like...

By the way, i really LOVED your new game, Nephilism Protocol. I loved the way you created those AMAZING Buildings, and in fact, your levels look imense, very big, you really created a very good sense of big open space.

Congratulations!

Cheers,

007.

oh, thanks 007! it means a lot. if you'd like to do the same to your maps, you should check out the cyberpunk model pack wolf and I are putting together!

If honest about it, it is possible to run into collision problems using this method but if you break down the scene into entity's and segments then there are no more collision problems than with any standard created FPSC game design. Personally I have found there to be no collision issues that cant be fixed with a little more planning, far less any serious ones.
Maybe folks should try the method out before commenting on it, the guy is right, you have far superior lighting control and I see no reason why shaders shouldn't work in the same way as they do with stock FPSC entity's and segments. The only difference in using this is you may require full illumination on the baked objects and there are already shaders in stock FPSC with illumination and bump effects combined, not to mention bond's new shaders which with a little tweaking can be put to very good use.
If using shaders which require normal and spec maps then your only going to get problems if you use the baked textures to create these (ala crazybump, not the best way to create a normal map by any stretch, but if you must, then use the unbaked diffuse) It will not affect the bump appearance simply cos the diffuse texture has lightmapping baked in if your normal and spec map is created properly.
I have experimented with this and found it to be very successful not least in the way it can reduce the memory required to build the game, I have barely scratched the surface of using it.

Its good to see that someone is trying to at least look at different methods of creating their game, so what if you run into problems, what FPSC game doesn't?

Your proof of concept however would have been a lot more impressive if you had taken the time to show one of those scenes rather than the green spaceship, you need to be more patient before showing your work or your just opening it up to flaming from the skeptics among us.

Keep it up and don't be put off.

Edit* Just an aside but I don't use only baked textures you will find its a mix of these with static and dynamic lighting to get whats required....you still need lights in the scene you just dont need lightmapping.
You can use lightmapping and ambient lighting if you wish to add some stock which use different shaders too, you can trade off lighting by adjusting the illumination maps on the baked objects and careful placement of lights in the scene, its not as limited as it first appears..

Dear Rolfy,

Thanks man for the kind comments!

And by the way, i don`t care to have my post being "flamed" by the skeptics among the folks here

Thank you really for those informations, those technical tips. They were very usefull.

I just liked to show the guys here, like you said, a new aproach to design levels in FPSC, just my idea was, and is, that the marjority of the people who create games in FPSC try to use this way, design a level entirely on a 3d Application than export it to FPSC, this way we could have more "professional" looking games made in FPSC.

I have seen so many good games here made even with stock media, however, if the guys who develop games in FPSC take sometime to perfect their 3d Skills and begin to create games using custom media and different ways of design, be sure that we would have even more "eye candy" games.

And as i am at the right moment studying VRAY, i did not want to go yet on the exhaustive way to slice those scenes on 3dsmax, export to segment creator, make entities, and such.

I will do this, off course, whenever i finish my study and go to create a test scene, for training everything i learned.

One more time, thanks for the comments.

007.

Its not really a question of more professional looking games using lighting from Max or whatever external source, its really about using whats available. You cant expect this to be for everyone, if I wasn't into modeling then I would probably feel the same way as some others do about it, it is entirely possible to create a professional looking game using everything FPSC has to offer already, only the seriously skeptical will say "no you cant" and I don't figure why they hang around here if they feel that way. Dark lights is only limited in some areas and its still a very good lightmapper, its great that you want to try different methods, just remember its each to his own and I have seen some amazing work done using FPSC as is.

I dont think anyone intended to flame this but you have to understand they may feel that you are saying this is the only way to get 'professional' results.

Thank you 007 and Rolfy for the information. Gives some of us a different way of development, and using some "outside-the-box" thinking is a good way to start. We've gleaned the information from you both for our notes to try later.



Many years ago, there was a man that said the world was round. There were many skeptics, and look where it lead them. You will always have skeptics- it's the ability to not let them dissuade you from your objective that holds value.

Even when your completely wrong


They fell off the edge...because they believed.

I dont want to hijack the thread, but since I couldnt believe that you guys are talking about something I have been working my butt of to figure out this weekend,just thought I would post a shot IN-FPSC (made for the screenshot compo) that uses this exact method.

There was a lot of baking (not just of lighting but spec highlights as well) involved as well as a lot of adjustment within FPSC itself, but hey, I didnt expect it to turn out even 1/4 as well as it did

Also a note, I only made this for the screenshot compo, so collision and other gameplay aspects did not even cross my mind, but im sure its possible (as rolfy said).



Cheers,
Anayar

As I read this thread there's a little use popped up for me.

This technique would be pretty cool to make those extremely complicated shadows of, for example, wire fences and all the things like that where DarkLights stops working.
Or maybe a baked shadow of a dynamic animated object where the player wouldn't notice the not-animated shadow...

Oh well, thanks for giving me this idea guys!

Greetings,
Jan

Thek.
This is animated shadows using frame by frame baking and an atlas walk shader to animate the baked textures in FPSC.
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=176447&b=21
Thats nice work Anayar.

Yes Anayar, your screenshot looks awesome! I am very happy that others users are applying this idea of baked shadows.

And thanks rolfy for the forum thread about animated shadows, i was looking for this sometime ago.

Cheers,

007.

this is a really good idea. I may have to experiment. Good job anayar & 007 plus rolfy! I have a feeling FPSC can be great, its such a little scrappy engine that will surprise you with a good community of certifed rocket scientitsts!

Yep! This is exactly the same feeling i have. I think FPSC is being turned into a great engine, and i think in more 2 years it will be almost in the same level of technology of those "famous" game engine on the market.

Maybe people say i am dreaming a lot, and i have seen a lot of people here saying "oh, you can`t do it in FPSC, you can`t even do something similar of it in FPSC..."

However time will show and also the great FPSC "scientists" here will show that "nothing will be impossible to FPSC"....

I just dont understand why i can see visable pixels in FPS. Perhaps I'm using the incorrect rez?