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Work in Progress / Building the RPG with no name...

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Van B
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 03:22
Hiya all.

Just thought I'd post up this screenie of me building a little shack thingy in my new side-project.

Everything is built from chunks that I move about blockland style. It already works on LAN because of the way I've done the file handling, but I plan to have real multi-user editing, so my team (my son & little brother) can build it at the same time. Only 2 weeks into it but already the editor is very usable and vertice lightmapping is now in.


Van-B

Quote: "How could I condescend you?, you don't even know what it means!"

Van-B's mom.

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Nack
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 03:38
Ooo....looks very nice. Always admire on ur work...espeically ur vertice lightmap XD...will figure how to do that....one day hehe


I have NOT abandon these ^......^_^V hehe
Van B
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 04:01 Edited at: 30th Mar 2005 04:02
Cheers .

Here's a better screenie.

Edit: Yup, he's scratching his butt.

Van-B

Quote: "How could I condescend you?, you don't even know what it means!"

Van-B's mom.

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Ace Of Spades
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 06:10
I wish I could model like that. The house/building is better than anything I can do (a cube). Lighting is looking good too.

Can't wait to see more screeny's

Drew Cameron
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 07:01
Wow! Looks really, really good Van.

Drew Camerons free games - http://www.drewsgames.com/
Hawkeye
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 07:44
First reaction (after only seeing the "Building the RPG with no name..." bit): awww not another newbie making a rpg...

Second reaction (after seeing the thread was started by Van-B): *raises eyebrows* what a joke or is he really doing it...

Third reaction (after viewing screenes): woah that's neat I like yout design style *a lot*, pretty cool looking.. jeep it up, I'd love to see more screenes

Mitchell
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 08:11
first reaction:
Cool! VanB is making an RPG. That guy is talanted!

reaction after seeing the screen:
A bit disapointed. Not ugly, not at all, but the overall design is not as good as stuff I've seen from you before. Though it's a start, and I certainly hope you prove me wrong further in developement! Good luck!

"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever"
- Shigeru Miyamoto
Van B
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 08:12
Thanks guys, I'll upload more screenies once I get more segments made, I can only really make castle things right now.

Been working on the lightmapper, got it just how I want it - trying to get a unique look early on so I can get on with other things, now it uses the vertice normal to determine the light colour, this is only for the main light, I will be adding virtual lights as soon as I've got some light fitting models to screw them into. Those test lightmaps are just using light 0 as the light source.

The editor is gonna be as easy as pie to use, because I'm planning on having my team design most of it, so I can work on media and my other projects at the same time.

It's quite a massive world to fill, but it'll have underground dungeons and mines etc as well so there's a lot of building to do. The terrain heightmap is 1024x1024 if that's any kind of indication.


Van-B

Quote: "How could I condescend you?, you don't even know what it means!"

Van-B's mom.
Van B
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 08:26
Mitchell,

It's just a baby remember, I mean that's a matrix there - that'll be a vert lightmapped terrain with a shedload of textures. It'll always look chunky though, it's designed as a 3D equivalent of the 2D classic RPG's.


Van-B

Quote: "How could I condescend you?, you don't even know what it means!"

Van-B's mom.
Nack
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 09:29
Wow....this looks cool! Just finish my exam and HAVE to check this thread again, dun no why.....but somewhat in luv with ur little character ^__^ lol Nice lightmap on the new screen too lol


I have NOT abandon these ^......^_^V hehe
Ace Of Spades
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 10:46
Any chance of posting a simple walk-around demo?

MikeS
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 11:38
Looking excellent Van! You've perfected your vertice lightmapping technique I can see. Also have to admit, having a brother and a son to work with on games seems like a load of fun.



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
(Formerly known as Yellow)
Raven
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 13:26
I have a question... what the heck is that builder doing with his hands in the second screenshot?! :/

Oh and off-topic a sec. "Mike please report to the rstudio ftp and MSN. We have an eStore that needs fixing on isle 3!"
Seriously though Mike, I've got the eStore working, but I now need to secure, remangled to how I want it to look & work.

Also been hearing from scary crap about PayPal on the osCommerce website, be cool if ya could help me come up with a way to protect me against the onslaught of retards.

back to the RPG. i see a long and dark days ahead! heh
BearCDPOLD
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 15:49
Dude he's scratching his butt?

I have one question for you Van-B....will there be a "scratch butt" action button?

Crazy Donut Productions
Current Project: A Redneck game
Van B
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 17:54 Edited at: 30th Mar 2005 17:57
Nah, no scratchy butt action, just an idle anim (if he stands round for too long he scratches his butt or stretches). You know how it is when you've got a funny looking dude on your screen and you just have to make him do something rather than just stand there.

It's actually my teams game idea, so you can blame them if it goes pear shaped .

There will be a weather and sun/moon system, like the sun will rise and set and so will the moon, and the lighting will change to suit the time of day. The days will last a lot longer than a lot of RPG's because I want people to barely notice the lighting changes, like they hang around too long and before they know it's dark and there's so bulbous eye's peering at them. I reckon about an hour for a game day would be fine.

I doubt there'll be a walk around demo as the media requirement is too much to justify the download. The terrain textures and building textures are optimised to hell, like there's 2 actual textures in the game so far, I'm using big matrix-tile style textures because that's the only way to vert lightmap a single mesh. If the textures are about 10mb on their own, then by the time it's at demo stage it'd be massive. This method means nice easy portable finished programs but big bulky bloated demos. When I get a decent sized building with furniture in there, I'll upload a video - but I doubt there'll be a demo version for a long time yet.

The collision system is unique, it's like a 3D mask which is far less accurate than other methods, but lends itself to some neat tricks. Like, If I model a cabinet I can leave square holes for drawers to sit inside, then if I model a drawer I can put it in it's slot on the cabinet. In the game you'll be able to push and pull any reasonably movable object, so drawers will need a little lump at the back of them to stop them coming completely out of the cabinet. Strangely this is inspired by the Bitmap Brothers classic Cadaver and other retro isometric games rather than any modern RPG influence - we seem to have lost this sort of object interaction and I miss it. Personally I can't wait to be able to hide stuff properly, like drop an item in your bedroom and kick it under the bed for later . The whole point is to provide some really interesting puzzles using the system (like mechanical almost, fans of The Crystal Maze and Fort Boyard will not be disapointed).


Van-B

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Van-B's mom.
Dr Crazy
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 18:18
Nice work Van B! Looks better than my shoddy RPG . Well I suppose I am busy working on collision and camera - trying to get it near perfect. Could you possibly give me a hand with it please? I'm not asking for a whole source code, I just need a bit of help to make it a bit better. Email me at nrakosi@gmail.com
Cheers,
Nick.

1.9GHZ/Windows XP Home Edition/NVidia GeForce4Ti 4600/512+128MB RAM/60GB Hardrive
Van B
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 18:44
Should be able to help out a little SAS, feel free to email me some details and I'll get back to you this weekend.


Van-B

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Van-B's mom.
Wiggett
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 19:19
damn van tahts awesome, but i did come up with the idea for a block land style multiplayer game

Van B
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Posted: 30th Mar 2005 19:45
- that's not the game my pirate buddy, that's just the editor - it's actually a retro style RPG game we're making.

I made the editor like blockland for the benefit of my team and to keep it fun. If I get the time, I do plan to release the editor and a basic engine to go with it as an SDK, it does need some strange approaches to texturing and modelling, but the benefits gained from this make it worth the effort.


Van-B

Quote: "How could I condescend you?, you don't even know what it means!"

Van-B's mom.
Drew Cameron
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Posted: 1st Apr 2005 07:08
Will it be like Pokemon on the gameboy?, kind of square level design and pint sized characters etc... (I can't think of any old style RPG's, but I think I know what your thinking of)

Coming April 1st - a treat in the WIP board
Van B
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Posted: 1st Apr 2005 17:40
Yeah that's the ticket - the engine system demands a grid approach, so I'm building it on a strict grid system as if it was a 2D game, like a wishing well for example that I want to be 2 grid blocks wide, I'd just make a quarter tube thing and position and rotate it 4 times, then add a roof part on a seperate layer. The system allows layer mixing, so I can put 4 different meshes in the same space, should be enough to get some nice detailed scenes in there.

I have a pretty complete engine that I could have used for this, but in 3D with modelled parts rather than building blocks - but I can't imagine how long it would have taken to fill the game world like that, it's tricky enough to fill Lonewolf levels.


Van-B

Quote: "How could I condescend you?, you don't even know what it means!"

Van-B's mom.
Nack
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Posted: 1st Apr 2005 23:29
its not that long to fill up the world using that method, i am using the same method for my editor. I tested it for a long time, but the only problem u mite run into is a FPS problem if it gets too large. then..again, u probably got a way to fix that >_<


I have NOT abandon these ^......^_^V hehe
Van B
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Posted: 2nd Apr 2005 00:08
Collision is the main factor, and because of the collision system I've come up with it needs to work like I have it now. Your right in that filling the area would be possible in a more free 3D environment, but my concearn is that RPG's need buildings, lots of buildings with lots of rooms and secret bits etc etc, that's why retro 2D RPG's seem so much bigger than games like Fable. To be able to fill the world with lots of different buildings, the first thing to do is forget modelling each one as that'd take forever, re-using media is vital. This is just one step further in using building blocks - but it'll allow those massive castles with dungeons etc to be made in an afternoon, not the 2 weeks or more to model something as big. Another benefit is that by using a single image as a master texture (like a big texture cut into bits) - you spend far far less tinkering and organising media, you just organise everything on your big texture, and UV map in a corner, then you can scroll the texture to change styles. Like on my master texture, the top row is wall textures, then under those are wood textures to match the wall textures - then I can simply tell the engine that I want to use texture set 1,0 to use the set to the right of the default one. Coupled with this master texture, you have the ability to combine your meshes any way you see fit, vert lightmap because it can be a single mesh, then disable lighting to make it render 20% faster .

I mean, with a 3D engine, like proper 3D - you have to use polygonal object collision or you have to do some clever object intersection checks. Other methods like box collision are impractical for this sort of thing because you'd spend more time dropping in collision boxes than modelling the stuff.

The collision system I'm using is cool though, cool enough to let you push things about, and hide stuff under your bed etc, that would be a nightmare with a more complex collision system, but fairly easy with this system. Strange how using a simpler retro collision method is actually making the collision capable of more.


Van-B

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Nack
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Posted: 2nd Apr 2005 00:35 Edited at: 2nd Apr 2005 00:39
COLLISION!!! lol yea, i totally understand what u r saying. its so hard for those to work properly. I guess NGC collision wont be much help in this case since its wont match tile collision style. I cant wait to see ur collision system. ya, Polygonal collision wont work for tile, since some tile cant be collied with and stuff...yea, guess collision will be a mystery...hehe but Ur col. system still more complex and advance than mine, i wonder what that would be like *Ponder of rainbows and unicorn* LOL

Wouldnt it be ok to load object bigger than the tile size? As long as one follow the constrant of the size, it should work no matter what. That would help with collision too since its one whole entity. Like if the size is 5, as long as the building is divisble by 5 (15x15x15) size, it would still work. Just a comment hehee

Interesting way of using a master texture, i use pre-cut textures, but those r REALLY slow in loading. WHats the speed in master texture? Faster? lol

Nack


I have NOT abandon these ^......^_^V hehe
Van B
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Posted: 12th Apr 2005 05:31
New vert lightmapper screenie, just added torches.


Van-B

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Van-B's mom.

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Drew Cameron
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Posted: 19th Apr 2005 00:57 Edited at: 19th Apr 2005 00:57
Looks good as always Van.

Incidentally, and quickly off topic, I found that bug you got once in D&C - I got the bug on my end recently, and checked the line number. Fixed. The reason your line number didn't give me anything is because I had changed the program since the demo compile Obvious now... anyway - all sorted

Keep up the good work Van!!! I'm really going to have to look into lighting for my next project..

Dumbo and Cool - 50% complete today!

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