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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSyW6zbw6eU

Is that vast landscape with dense forest achievable in Dark Basic Pro with a descent playable frame-rate ?

Please note that all the trees have shadow enabled using shadow mapping - even those that are rendered as imposters.

Is this achievable with blitzerks terrain and dark imposter ?

Watch this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHf3Xgwvb6s

The tunnels might be a problem though

There is no shadows for the trees. In the previous video shadows were visible for trees visible in the frustum area.

@ Juggernaut:

Looking at this video i'd say that its very do-able in DarkBasic Pro,
but you would want to lean heavy on the optimization.

I recommend:
A a quite limited visibility range, if you notice, even though they fly through the forest, the aren't very many trees visible at any one time, and with the use of Fog you can easily conceal whats out of the small-medium range.
B Also only trees that are within that visible range should be projecting shadows and billboard sprites should be used as a percentage of the distant trees.

As for the tunnels you need to use a modeller that can subtract from the terrain and create a hole through it, like a CSG subtraction.

@Nytus Sermus: Thanks for your comments.

What I am stuck thinking is I will buy

1. Blitz Terrain plugin to render the vast landscape.

2. Dark Imposter to render large number of trees and foliage using LOD.

3. Dark Occlusion to do occlusion culling for trees and foliage that overlap each other partially. Correct me if I am thinking wrongly. I do not know yet if Dark Occlusion will work on trees and foliage or not.

I will also use Evolve's Shadow mapping shaders to cast the shadows
for trees that are within visible range.


BUT ..... I do not understand -

1. How to design such a vast level and have access to individual trees, rocks, foliage and houses. Because I will need to add shader effects to those 3D objects at run-time through code when they are within the visible range. If you say I will have to do it using code only then the question is how to ascertain the precise location on the terrain - where to put the houses and how to create foliage and trees of varying density ?

2. If I apply shadow mapping shader to 10-15 trees visible within frustum area, will Dark Basic Pro be able to handle the rendering so that the frame rate does not drop to something non-playable.

Sorry for my long reply because I am speaking my mind.

Right, so the first video posted was created in the C4 engine, and by the looks of things, that engine features a world editor, its own shader editor, script editor, shader editor, shadow editor and their cheapest option costs $750

There is a lot of stuff created for you in that engine, just looking at the video I can see alot more going on that trees and terrain; there are atmospheric particles and an almost undetectable LOD system.

So in a word; no. DBPRO isn't going to give you all of that easily; and it will definately not run smooth on a common PC. IF you want sunshine, clouds, water, shadows and LOD ready from the word go, you're better off creating a MOD for a AAA title like the Counter Strike guys did with Half Life. Waste of time trying to compete for quality in DBP, not its strength, gotta use its strengths.

But you know what, it is about the user not the tool. Some people can't do jack with £5000 worth of equipment that I can do with £100. Bert Monroy creates stuff in photoshop from scratch with pixels that look like they where created in 3DSMax. Ask him to create a tree or a building and he uses the most unexpected method to get it done in less than 10 minutes what would take me, a long time user, 1 or 2 hours. Look at his stuff and you'd think they where photographs.

The point is that you'd be having to working like that to achieve good in DBPRO, finding solutions using alternative means. Photoshop was not designed to create sky scrapers out of boxes and layer styles, but because Bert 'misused' the tools in wierd ways Adobe adapted photoshop to be more of a painting, 3D and CG effect tool. Now Adobe goes to him for feedback on what features to add to it.

So in DBPRO you'll spend your time finding ways to get around many limitations, filling in missing features and grey areas because DBPRO is low budget.

Think of Miyamoto (creator of Mario), he had crap loads of limitations; something like 8 colours, 32x32 pixels, 8 bits or something like that; Mario had to be a certain size in order to fit the sprite sheet into RAM along with all the other characters. They had to draw Mario's nose with like.. one pixel..; but they adapted to the limitations and created something out of it, ended up defining the industry.

Applying science, sometimes using tools in ways they where not initially designed for is required; EG: using particles as grass, sprites as dust particles, combinding things, combinding Dark Imposters with native LOD.

I actually used Imposters to work with Tree Party, but that took a day and needs optimization. You could do the same with TreeIT.

So if you think you will be programming the game for the next 4 months and will stick to it, you will probably figure it all out over time; you won't have a clue at first; I never do. I always end up finding a way, or end up finding out that the problem isn't a problem at all.

The good thing about DBPRO is that to create something unique, there is no need to do any work to water things down; might sound funny, but it sometimes sucks to have to configure and cut down intensive features of an engine to create something unique. Loads of games look realistic, but few look unique; being unique is the key with DBP because realism isn't its strength.

There will be more people logging into world of warcraft by the time you finish reading this sentence than there are people on this forum; yet their engine does not look realistic, some of their textures look over scaled, blocky looking characters, but it is fun to play.



You'll need to make a level editor or download one. FPSC maps for example are simply Dark Basic objects with sub objects. You can load your map from a 3D modelling program, and everything will be in place. You just need to create programs for each type of entity or item in such a map. For example, position the placeholder tree in the editor, load it in game, and load the real trees and replace the placeholders; add some random scaling, random texturing and bob's your uncle.

I don't think shadows will run smooth; note that Blitz Terrain 2 has its own render system, not a ordinary object, although you can convert it into one.

Evolved has a terrain system that integrates with his lighting system; it is DBP based and quite impressive.

I think you should speak with this guy, his work is pretty impressive, he obviously knows alot about terrains and trees DBPRO. His work looks good for a DBP game, but it took a lot of work.

@Chris Tate: I am grateful that you took the time to give such a detailed reply and that you spoke from your heart. I agree that there are lot of games which are realistic looking but the real thing is how much is the game enjoyable by the player in its own unique way - very much true.

I have contacted the guy you have referred in your post. Hope he will give some practical advice on how to this.

So do I need to create my own world editor for Dark Basic pro in order achieve what is shown in the C4 demo ? I did not find any ready made option.

Technically speaking, you could create the a scene not quite as good, but pretty decent with no world editor whatsoever. If I had to build something like that in a day or lose my life; I'd load up Evolveds lighting, water and terrain system; randomize locations above water, loop these positions and spawn some tree party trees and plant magic plants.

Infact Evolved also has a special tree system, quite cpu intensive, somewhat more complex than the ones in the C4 demo; but these are for close range.

Quite a while ago I spent a brief moment playing around with grass for my game here. Nothing final, it was an experient using planes and special meshes for grass. DBP randomly places grass along the floor near the camera. I made the blades 10 times bigger than usual because I was testing how bushes would look. In the real game I'd have proper textures used.



We just don't get to have a nice all in one 'DarkWORLD-EDITOR' tool for our games, not sure why nobody has created an open world editor. (I should have gone into tool development) you'll have to create the whole editor or just part of it.

Most people will get put off creating their own editor or 3D World Studio, Blender or Mapscape because they are not truely for open world environments with integrated design tools. It is simply not easy to create worlds in these tools alone, and it is not easy to build your own.

Its best to think of your world editor as an operating system, a series of procedures with different tools. For example Blender is good with curves, 3DWS is good with texture setting, terrain and placement; mapscape is good with entities and displacements; you also have your DBP plugins, Tree Party, Tree IT, Plant Magic, these can be all combined to create your world building system.

Also forgive me for the long post.

Whats funny is when i look at alot of posted plugins, effect projects and examples, most of them are actually piggish in their use of memory, lack of optimization, and bog-effect into something un-playable. This doesn't have to be the case, DBpro is alot more capable than people give it credit.

It doesn't need to take six months to create what is shown in that video, in fact, aside from the tunnels in the terrain, the rest looks fairly simple and straight forward.More like a few days worth of work, if you really have to write your own editor and all then i guess it could become longer like a couple weeks maybe.

I used to code terrain generators that randomized the placement of trees and foliage across the landscape.
As far as the time it takes, a lot will depend on just how specific of a layout your need or want, like do you need extensively defined areas with that certain tree placed in an exact spot, or would you settle for a landscape similar to the video that is generated, then later edited or tweaked somewhat.

Try building from the ground up, one layer at a time, and try to maintain your desired frame rate throughout the design process.
[For instance its alot easier to add your features one at a time while observing the framerate-hit per feature, than it is to pile on the needed plugins then try to somehow sort out whats crushing your frame rate and hogging up the video/processing capacity]

If you like see my post here about the All-in-One program
i'm dreaming up, where this could be achieved in 30 minutes or less versus 1 to 6 months.

Those tall grasses are pictures - I mean textures used as billboards - right ? Or are they 3D models ? Does DBP have in-built command to place grass automatically over the terrain surface or floor that is
near to the camera ?



Does this mean shadow mapping, light mapping and custom shaders will not work on the terrain rendered by Blitz Terrain ? Can you please confirm this ? If not, then I won't buy BlitZ Terrain.

You also mentioned that Evolve has a LOD terrain system as found in his water terrain example. Which is better in your opinion BlitZ Terrain or Evolves LOD Terrain ?



Suppose I have added my 3D objects or models ( both static and animated ) over a terrain surface in DElED and exported the whole thing as .DBO file or .X or .B3D file. Now when I load the .DBO, .X or .B3D file using code, how do I get access to each individual elements ( 3D objects or models ) that are present in that .DBO or .X or .B3D file ? Does DBP have inbuilt commands to do such things ?
Again each 3D model may be made up of smaller individual 3D models.
How do I get access to each individual parts of a 3D model ?

evolved uses blitz plugin, he just made a editor which uses his shaders system so the answer to your question is yes, blitz terrain can be used with shaders


that's quite simple to do, you don't need special commands for that.
Use set object position command


that's not a very good practice.
You should create a level and then instead of placing real game objects you place placeholders and then after you load that object into your game you replace placeholder objects with real ones


use limb commands

How do I get access to each of the place holder objects through code ?

limbs

They are objects with textures. All those grass blades couldn't be polygons.

I had to create the placement code myself. The RND() function was used to position the objects apart whilst clamping their distance using the Clamp command in Matrix1. They are all scaled and rotated differently. What you see is actually about 20 objects, each object has a number of faces as limbs. It is a primitive procedure because it was more of a test, but the principle applies. You'll get a nice demonstration of placement when you get imposters.



Just download the free version.

Blitz Terrain 3 is in the making, and seems like it will differ but all plugins should be shader ready anyway.





All the better, so you got an example to work from; I thought he made the terrain with his own memblock commands, but if Brendy boy says then I mistook the editor as a creator.





Limbs indeed. Check out the BASIC3D help file to see how. Make sure you have Matrix1 installed for useful limb commands. If you struggle to save limb names in your editor, you can read texture names. Sometimes classing objects by their texture is better than using names.