Messages

876

Mods /

« on: 2 May 2008, 16:06:34 »

Go with Blender. It is far better than any other freeware modeler and also has a very small footprint and lower system requirements when compared with commercial modelers.

You should upgrade to 256 RAM (or better 512). It will only cost you a few dollars and you will be able to run a commercial grade piece of software (Blender) for free!

877

General discussion /

« on: 2 May 2008, 15:59:28 »

Thanks for the comments, I'll try to add some more foliage and make it look a bit more 'natury'

878

Mods /

« on: 1 May 2008, 16:49:56 »

If you want to create a mod on a more epic scale (as the topic suggests) then  the GAE will better suited to your needs. However remember that it is not completed yet (currently V0.2.7) and most of the features have not been fully tested. Also It isn't optimized at the moment.

I would advise you to test out some ideas in standard Glest (3.1.2) before diving in at the deep end with GAE. Most of the new XML functions are very barely documented and haven't been used by anyone but Daniel himself, who wrote the C++ for them!!

I'm not trying to discourage you and your mod sounds great. Possibily I will be able to offer some help in the future but I'm busy with various stuff ATM.

879

General discussion /

« on: 30 April 2008, 15:28:19 »

Finally got something new to show

880

Mods /

« on: 27 April 2008, 17:07:52 »

You model looks cool, hopefully it will get an awesome skin to finish it off.

To give better crits on the model it would be helpful to see a blender shot with wire views from different angles.

881

General discussion /

« on: 27 April 2008, 17:02:13 »

Thanks for the feedback guys.

@ Zaggy
If you would like to animate these you are more than welcome
I'll post up the .blend files for you.

@ charlieg
I don't really know much about licenses but I'm happy for anyone to use them in any way, they don't have to credit me, however they shouldn't claim them as their own work either (hope that makes sense). I suppose that probably makes them GPL or something?

Concerning the JCRPG Project, their engine only uses .obj or .3ds models. Currently the Glestimals are converted from blender to .g3d's. I don't have the time to start helping on another project so I won't export them to other formats. If someone from JCRPG wants to take the .blend files and do the exporting then thats fine.

882

General discussion / Glestimals

« on: 26 April 2008, 09:26:26 »

Glestimals is a set of animals intended for use with the new 'whatsits' code in Daniels GAE. However they are free for anyone in the Glest community to use in their own projects as well. The Glestimals are currently in version 0.1 and are static meshes. The final goal is to have 10 or so animated animals ready for the GAE.



If you want to take a closer look at the Glestimals they can be downloaded here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?i9niuxj4mmz

EDIT (by daniel.santos 2009-09-18): This thread is in reference to ideas discussed in the old GAE 0.3 planning thread.

883

Mods /

« on: 25 April 2008, 09:39:33 »

Nice tutorial for newbies Weedkiller. Explains the basics of importing and editing a model very well  

884

General discussion /

« on: 25 April 2008, 09:35:24 »

I would like to start documenting the new XML tags that are available via GAE  but I need to get a full list of changes from Daniel first.

885

Mods /

« on: 25 April 2008, 09:31:47 »

To expand on what Daniel said, XML cannot do math. It is possible for the engine to read XML values and use them but you would have to modify the C++ in order to actually make your inputs useful.

886

General discussion /

« on: 25 April 2008, 09:27:15 »

Theres alot of stuff to comment on here so I'll try to address it point by point.

While I agree that the viewing distance for the camera should be increased this is going to cause problems for slower machines. Currently the engine seems to load and unload models on-the-fly within a certain distance of the camera. Increasing the viewable distance means more memory is nessicary since more objects will be viewable at once.

Having mipmapping and LOD models will significantly lessen the load on the engine but from an artistic point of view the amount of work essentially doubles for each mesh, since 3 or more LOD models must be made. Adding bump maps will increase the time per model even more since a high resolution model must be created for each low-res one!

On the animal animations, I think this could pose some problems in terms of getting the animals to align correctly with world model (trees,etc). Also there is obviously a need for some simple AI to move these guys about randomly (anyone know AI programming ? ). However I think if you can pull this off it will be really pushing the boundries in terms of RTS.

The metadata stuff might be possible by updating the blender export script to read some additional info from blender. I'm not sure exactly what needs to be done here but in principle in would be easier than hand editing the xml files. Then the G3D format would have to be upgraded to cope with the new data.

Also, the best thing that can be done to increase scalability for old machines is to make as many of the new features optional in the configurator.

887

Maps, tilesets and scenarios /

« on: 23 April 2008, 11:00:42 »

Thanks Titi,

To answer some of your questions:

The tileset has both sand and grass on the same maps. The tileset is not perfect with stock Glest maps and looks much better on maps which are designed for it. I have a couple of example maps which I will upload.

There are currently 3 tree models in the tileset but they are all very similar, more trees will come in the final version.

There is currently a very basic grass 2d  enabled in the tileset (see the readme file for details) which is in the above shots. The plan is to have this grass available by default but with the option to enable true 3d grass for faster systems.

All the new stuff in this tileset was created by me and is free to use by anyone!

888

General discussion /

« on: 22 April 2008, 17:32:47 »

Yeah, this is how almost all RTS games have increased the difficulty setting since the genre was born. Most only have one set of AI but just allow it to build cheaper troops or collect resources faster.

889

General discussion /

« on: 22 April 2008, 10:29:33 »

Feedback and scrutiny here greatly appreciated!  What do you as the 3d & artistic talent need to make a really an awesome game into a really awesome game, thereby rendering the release of Starcraft 2 a joke?  I want to see gae/glest become the new halflife, unreal or quake engine that's reused in game after game.

From a 3D point of veiw no-one has really tested the limits Glest. I would say that you could comfortably double the polygon count and texture resolution for all the models in the game without a huge performance hit on an mid range pc. Most of the models for the FPM use slightly more polygons and already have twice the texture resolution (512 instead of 256).

IMO the biggest thing that needs overhauling is the Tileset/Terrain system. The plans for animated foliage is a good start. Also adding a good wildlife system with some simple AI could be a feature that really makes people sit up and take notice of GAE.

I don't really know how the tile system works in Glest but it needs some improvements to be on par with a commercial RTS engine.

Also, if you are planning on making the FPM as the showpiece for GAE. Then we are going to need an animator. My animation skills are nowhere near commercial standards as evidenced by the poor animations currently in the FPM.

890

General discussion /

« on: 21 April 2008, 13:51:28 »

WOW! This is awesome!  

You've hugely expanded the possibilities for Glest animations. I can't wait to start tinkering with the xml values to see what can be done with this.

891

General discussion / -

« on: 21 April 2008, 13:43:47 »

I made a small shrine model. I'm not sure if its what you had in mind. Its a similar size to the energy source building for magic.

892

General discussion /

« on: 18 April 2008, 15:02:38 »

wciow, I would like to get you up to speed on using subversion so you can get them checked into the right places.  

ATM I am using Tortoise SVN for transferring stuff. I just about got the hang of how to upload and download stuff but I still find it quite confusing since I've never used an SVN before (only an FTP server without any of the revisions stuff).

As for compatibility with Glest, breaking compatibility is not a bad thing. I personally see GAE as a standalone engine anyway since it could run without Glest.exe. If Martinho sees any part of the GAE which he wants to implement into stock Glest then he is free to do so, but my personal opinion is that backwards compatibility is not necessary. GAE should move on and be a great engine on its own merits rather than another way to play the original Glest.

893

Maps, tilesets and scenarios / Tropical Tileset

« on: 18 April 2008, 14:45:12 »

Tropical tileset version 0.8













Tropical tileset is now at version 0.8

Changes for this version include:

New better looking tiles (thanks ttsmj!)

LOTS of new models for more variety.

Two types of trees, palms for beach and forest, mangroves for swampy areas.

Improved 2d grass and optional full 3d grass.

3 new maps specially for the tropical tileset:

Tropical island:

A small and simple two player map on a beautiful tropical island.

Tropical Jungle:

A simple jungle map for two players.

Crossed Circle:

A more advanced map for 2-4 playes (good for 2v2 team games)

You can download it here:

Code: [Select]

[url=http://www.mediafire.com/?1gbdomvmdiy]http://www.mediafire.com/?1gbdomvmdiy[/url]
Please give some feedback about what you would like to see in the final version 

894

General discussion /

« on: 9 April 2008, 21:39:34 »

I,ve started working on a small set of animal 'whatsits' for use with the new code.

The first batch will include:
Wolf
Bear
Snake
Bird(s)
Spider
Deer
Heron

Each one will have a simple walking animation so that they can move about between tiles. Also some like the wolf and bear will have a larger animation set since they will be available as druid pets in the FPM.

895

General discussion /

« on: 31 March 2008, 14:12:27 »

I can't wait to see the rest of your new models wciow!

I'm now off on holiday for one week!  

896

General discussion /

« on: 29 March 2008, 15:04:03 »

Yeah it was planned for the path of reason in FPM to have a transport unit (some kind of wooden steam-tank). However its probably won't get done for a while since Daniel is a VERY busy man  

897

General discussion /

« on: 29 March 2008, 14:57:25 »

I have to agree with Daniel, since this is a mod of the original Glest its completely reasonably to expect players to download and install Glest first and then install FPM on top. FPM is not standalone even though it uses the GAE rather than Glest.exe.

I'll make a scaled up version of the graveyard. I intentionally made it the same size as the castle. Making it bigger might look a bit weird since it will be a fair bit larger than any other buildings in the game. We'll just have to try it ingame and see how it looks.

Also I can take the ground cover out if you want. I assumed that units would just pass through the graveyard rather than actually stop on it.

898

General discussion /

« on: 29 March 2008, 01:52:11 »

I finally got round to making a new model for the FPM  

Its the graveyard:



I've upload the files to the SVN so you can take a closer look...

899

Mods /

« on: 27 March 2008, 14:19:08 »

Daniel, please post your swordman I'm very interested to see it!

The dynamic weather system seems like a cool idea. Having a map change from rain to sun on the fly would be nice. Also you could add a randomize weather option which changes the xml values in the tilesets randomly.

As for the wind, the thought of making 8 animations for every tree and plant seems a bit daunting and would bloat the game out, since each tileset would be much larger. It may be easier to implement a physics library which works with models vertex (since g3d doesn't have skeletons).

Also my recent work making the pet models for the path of nature got me thinking about the possibility of including some wild animals in Glest. I know this has been discussed before on the Glest board but never actually got done.

900

Maps, tilesets and scenarios /

« on: 25 March 2008, 16:56:31 »

i believe i did write 1024 in the editor and it crashed, while writing 999 was fine...

I just tried both values. The mapper will accept ANY combination of values (the highest I tried was 1024) and they don't need to be power of 2 (34x700 is acceptable )

However I don't think the game would actually play a map which isn't a power of 2 value.