Messages

851

Announcements /

« on: 31 May 2008, 20:59:30 »

Nice work I love the new trees!

I just did some quick and dirty benchmarks with the new trees.
My system is:
1.8Ghz dual core
2Gb Ram
Radeon x1650 (256 ram)

Resolution 1024x768

w/ full shadows (shadowmapped) + trilinear filtering + 3d textures
new tree -  45fps
old tree  - 90fps

w/ full shadows (projected) + trilinear filtering + 3d textures
new tree  - 50fps
old tree  - 100fps

no shadows + bilinear filtering
new tree  - 70fps
old tree  - 120fps

Seems like the trees cause a considerably drop in frames for me, but its ok because they look so good! Even 45fps is still playable.

852

General discussion /

« on: 28 May 2008, 17:40:25 »

I've been playing around with the new 3.2 alpha today and the scripting support works really well. It should now be possible to create some really good objective based missions. I'm going to look into learning LUA myself so that I can write some scenarios.

853

General discussion /

« on: 27 May 2008, 14:46:16 »

Glestimals V0.9

This is a new version of glestimals with some new animals:



Download it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?klznbvjluum

I only have one model left to complete for V1.0 (the fox). Then it will be a case of going through and improving all the skins for possible future versions.

854

General discussion /

« on: 26 May 2008, 18:39:30 »

Well we obviously appreciate any help that you can give but since this is an open project (everything is published and updated as it's done) we don't really have any need for internal testers.

If you want to test the game just grab a copy of the latest GAE/FPM  from the  GAE thread and give us your feedback  

855

General discussion /

« on: 26 May 2008, 12:53:05 »

-Neutrals (ex: monsters that have lairs; do not produce much; do not use resources; are mostly defensive)
-Unique units (would be very powerful, but you could only have 1 at a time)
-Training area (perhaps under housing; would speed up morphing)
-alternative ways to win (defend for x time, perhaps ctf-ish thing?)
-Special conditions (ex:All units are granted strength temporarily; would especially make campaign interesting)
-Switch between full screen and windowed
-Powerful upgrades that cannot be used until x time has passed since beginning of game (instead of having to have research going?)

Hmm, some nice ideas there  

Neutrals - This will be possible with the new wildlife system
thats going into the GAE.

Unique units - This is one of the most talked about and requested features for Glest. Personally I'm not a fan of hero units in RTS games since it feels a bit too much like an RPG. Anyway, this can be done quite easily in GAE now without the need for a special heroes feature.

Training area - This is (probably) possible in GAE now using a hackish system of a building with some kind of emanation but i'm not sure wether its really needed tbh.

Alternative wins/Special conditions - Hopefully this will be covered by Martinho who is currently working on implementing LUA scripts for campaigns!

Full/Windowed Screen - I think somebody made a patch for this before?

Daniel is the main man for the GAE so he can give you a better idea of what is possible right now and in the future for GAE.

856

General discussion /

« on: 24 May 2008, 14:32:56 »

Well it looks like people want option 1 or 3. The easiest plan seems to be making it option 1 and then adding an xml value for option 3 later.

857

General discussion / -

« on: 24 May 2008, 11:28:36 »

So possibly still free are: (am i right?)
-entwined tower
-ranger
-lookout

Yeah all those are still free to be made. Also there are still plenty of models to make for the paths of enlightenment and reason. Please don't think that because I am listing models that have been completed that I have some kind of monopoly on them. I am very happy for any modelers of any skill level to jump in and help out the project. All blend files are available and if you want to modify anything I've already made please go ahead.

The entwined tower is basically the mages tower wrapped in vines to symbolise its take-over by the forces of nature. Hopefully this can have a cool animation with the vines climbing up the tower as it is built.

The tower looks great! Its always refreshing to see another artist come up with something in a way which you never imagined it. Please keep going with it

Lastly I'm gonna show my own recent WIP. This is the mobile harvesting unit for Path of Reason. My basic idea was a kind of steam powered medieval tractor. This version is just the basic texure and lacks any details/teamcolours.

858

General discussion /

« on: 23 May 2008, 21:52:06 »

This sounds amazing, my only concern is how many cycles this weather simulation is going to be chewing up. This is truly pushing the boundries for RTS games!!

859

General discussion /

« on: 20 May 2008, 17:03:18 »

In blender press F10 then under the animations tab set the end frame to 1. This is what the export script reads when it exports your model.

860

General discussion / -

« on: 20 May 2008, 11:17:59 »

I'm just gonna write a small update to keep things moving on the FPM.
I have been concentrating on the Path of Nature and trying to work out exactly what is needed. Here is my version of the PON tree:



I've looked at the current SVN and the PON is a big construction site right now. I'm not really sure what the treebond upgrade is or how it will fit in?

On the modeling side the wolf and bear models are complete (glestimals is nearly done :shock: ) so I've been forced to crawl away from my computer and expose my pasty geek skin to the sun 

Hopefully there will be some progress soon...

861

Mods / -

« on: 20 May 2008, 11:00:31 »

Are you using the Lsystem script for Blender? I've never tried it but its a tree generating script.

http://jmsoler.free.fr/util/blenderfile ... system.htm

The preferred system for generating forests is called Speedtree ( http://www.speedtree.com/ ) but its aimed more at first person games I think. Also it probably wouldn't be implementable in Glest without a major code overhaul and finally its commercial software so a BIG no-no for Glest.

862

Mods /

« on: 20 May 2008, 09:52:10 »

I also have this problem with the tropical tileset. I'm not really sure either but maybe it is because the engine cannot properly decide how to light flat planes  and gets confused, so some models are lit entirely as front face and some as back face?

Btw, your tileset looks very nice

863

General discussion /

« on: 19 May 2008, 17:06:12 »

You need to rotate the model in blender so that it is facing the right way. The easiest way to do this is to import an original Glest model and align your model with it.

864

Mods /

« on: 16 May 2008, 19:15:18 »

Very nice artwork Look forward to seeing some progress with this. Please stick around and feel free to ask questions if you need to know anything about Glest.

865

General discussion /

« on: 13 May 2008, 10:53:48 »

Looks great and very professional too  

866

General discussion /

« on: 11 May 2008, 19:31:04 »

I just think about it..  you use blender right? Have you ever tried baking shadows and AO(ambient occlusion(?)

I just looked up Blender baking for the first time in ages and found something really cool! Blender finally has the ability to create tangent normal maps rather than the old way which was related to camera position and only looked good from one angle.

Blender can also create bump maps and combine them on-the-fly with your diffuse map to create self shadowing.

Heres a link if anyones interested http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Render_Bake

@Daniel
Have you ever worked with normal maps? Do you have any idea how much processing power it would use up if they were implemented? Can the current Glest lighting system cope with them?

867

General discussion /

« on: 11 May 2008, 19:10:21 »

Well, until you specify another license , for this version I'll add a special license file, containing this quoted text (above). Also I will specify you as author of it in the license. You have done a great job, so thank you again!

@Zaggy
I don't know if you fixed the wolf model yet? You can just use ctrl-r to add a ring to the legs then remap (all the vertices are pinned) and relink the texture file.

868

General discussion /

« on: 7 May 2008, 12:17:10 »

I've played a few times to check this out. It only happens when I have alot of units (60+) and tends to get worse as more units are added. It could be something about my system configuration. Since we have such a small test group its possible that it won't happen on other systems. It might also be down to a graphics problem similar to the building placement bug in Glest which only occurred on some systems.

EDIT:

Good news (sort of), this isn't a GAE bug. It also happens with Glest 3.1.2, although slightly less pronounced. I have found that it is not clicking units which is the problem but ANY left clicking and also drawing boxes with left click. When GAE is running at its top frame rate one click will cause a small skip, repeated left clicking will slow the game down to single figure frames!!

Please don't waste too much time on this since I am almost certain that it is related to my system and in paticular openGL.

869

Maps, tilesets and scenarios /

« on: 6 May 2008, 19:05:24 »

I haven't forgotten about this, I'm just busy with other stuff right now!

I will try to use ttsmj's tile's if he doesn't mind, since they are better looking than mine  

870

General discussion /

« on: 5 May 2008, 21:45:04 »

The GAE currently allows particles for any skill (previously only attacks had particles).

Adding  <particle value="true" path="particle_proj.xml"/>  to the stop and/or walk skills will cause particles to be emitted.

I'm not sure whether they will be emitted constantly or just once each time the unit moves or stops though  

871

General discussion /

« on: 5 May 2008, 19:52:48 »

I looked in the glestadv.ini and found the maxrender property. I tried changing it around but it didn't make any difference. Is this implemented yet or just placeholding?

872

General discussion /

« on: 4 May 2008, 22:31:23 »

Some excellent stuff in this version!  

Unfortunately I'm having a little problem. Whenever I click on a unit there is a small pause of about 1/3rd second. My frame rate is fine otherwise (I have a dual core CPU and can play all settings on, at fastest, without slow down).

873

General discussion / -

« on: 4 May 2008, 22:17:47 »

Heres the newer version of the grove:



I added some Glest trees and bushes and some extra vines on the stones. I'm still not completely happy with them but I'll improve it later.

Also whilst playing FPM I noticed a problem. Troops produced by the house of service (paladins/crusaders) require a barracks to be built. If you only have HoS and no barracks then you can't make troops.

An example would be after an attack where the enemy has destroyed your barracks but left your HoS. In this situation it would be very handy to be able to produce some paladins before the next attack!!

Also nice work applying the wall texture Zaggy it looks excellent!

874

General discussion /

« on: 3 May 2008, 10:31:57 »

@ Weedkiller
Nice work,

@Daniel.Santos

I just reread the beginning of this topic and remembered the stuff about animating trees. Would it be possible to create breakable trees with the new death code? Example: when a cell with a tree is hit by a catapult the tree model is replaced with a broken tree model and then the top piece is set to automatically move away based on impact direction.

Also would it be possible to have particles on environmental objects. If so then when a dragon breaths on a tree (for example) then it can be set to eject fire particles. After a certain time the fire will become smoke particles and then the tree is replaced by a burnt tree model.

875

General discussion /

« on: 3 May 2008, 10:09:09 »

OK as promised here is a link to the .blend files for the Glestimals. There is also a new wolf model included.

http://www.mediafire.com/?xsfjscmisij