Messages

51

Mods / Re: Dark Magic Project Incomplete

« on: 10 February 2017, 05:47:12 »

We can collaborate if you want. 
I think the basic goals are to fix balance, and finish/update the graphics.

I can't find it anywhere, I thought I had it. 

52

Mods / Re: Dark Magic Project Incomplete

« on: 9 February 2017, 18:54:08 »

I would be willing to finish it at somepoint, or join any effort to do so.

53

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Big Update January 2017!)

« on: 6 February 2017, 23:02:42 »

Moved everything over to Github and into a Techtree. https://github.com/virtushda/EgyptRemaster
It should work fine now and everybody has easy access to the latest version.

54

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Big Update January 2017!)

« on: 6 February 2017, 04:51:06 »

I'll make a techtree out of the next version, which will be soon.

I have no idea why there are errors, I packed it straight out of my copy of MG there shouldn't be any missing files.

I'm not having organizational issues, but I'll switch to github anyway, then I don't have to relaunch everything to provide small updates.

55

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Big Update January 2017!)

« on: 4 February 2017, 10:48:55 »

So I decided to do more audio work than I probably should've, but here's an update log of what's changed in terms of sound since the last update.

-Mummy Denoised(No longer get strong hissing and popping when mummies fight)
-SpearThrower Revoiced by me(previously used Magitech audio)
-Slave Revoiced by me(previously used Magitech audio)
-Priest Revoiced by me(previously used Magitech audio)
-Spearman Revoiced by me
-Anubis Warrior Denoised
-Spearthrower's spear makes more appropriate noise
-Spearman's attack redone
-Chicken's redone(previously was Titi's mouth?)
-Farm now clucks because there are chickens in it

I plan to redo the Ibis, Snake, Scarab, and make other adjustments. If you have any suggestions or would like to help out, just lemme know.
I found it difficult to voice four separate characters with foreign-ish accents and have it sound halfway decent.

56

MegaGlest / Re: Megaglest and Steam

« on: 18 January 2017, 01:18:09 »

I feel like we can make the staging and backgrounds a lot more epic, with units fighting, or huge cities built.

What are the aspect ratio and size limitations that Steam lays out?

57

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Big Update January 2017!)

« on: 14 January 2017, 03:59:50 »

@Omega: Next/Final update will go into the Mod Center, and thank you. 

@Carl: I probably won't work on the new units for awhile. But, updating some of the silly sounds is something I want to do before I put this up on the mod center.

Currently, I'm working on a small VR game, and trying to learn C# along the way. And hopefully, I will have a new job in a couple weeks. So don't expect big updates for a little while, but I'll still be around and working on stuff slowly.

58

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Big Update January 2017!)

« on: 12 January 2017, 18:23:16 »

I suggest to first start with a modcenter release, using faction links to provide a full megapack clone.
Replacing the egypt faction in the game is for sure a future option. Only problem I see is that the new egypt faction looks a lot better than the other factions. This is of course very good, but you must admit that the result might look a bit strange maybe. Thats why it simply must be played when its complete to see how alien this higher quality looks like in the game.

update: maybe I am forced to update some models in the other factions too

Alright, I'll put the next release on the modcenter. That'll be very soon.

The Megapack has always looked pretty strange, it's also a strange combination of historical and completely fictional factions, and you have Tech and Magic in there too. But I see what you mean. 

I'm not done working, I think Indians is the logical next faction to look at. And.. on the backburner for now, I have a well-progressed remake of another faction that could possibly become MG's 8th official faction. So there's plenty more to come this year.

59

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Big Update January 2017!)

« on: 9 January 2017, 22:37:41 »

Maybe you should provide this as a standalone faction and put it in Game Mods until it gets as default part of megapack.

You mean standalone as in it's own 'tech'? I'll put it up in the Game Mod system if Titi doesn't want it to replace the original Egypt faction.

It's great job Archmage, thanks!

Thanks Victor!

60

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Big Update January 2017!)

« on: 9 January 2017, 17:16:30 »

With the snake, I traded width for length, but I can see how it might be hard to find. It also does have a selection plane underneath it like you proposed earlier, so selection is no issue.
I'll beef up the snake a tad.

Any other suggestions?

Tom: I'll add your mirrors to the first post. Thanks.

Disclaimer: Please note I have not virus scanned these.

Edit: Snake updated - Considerably thicker, and selection plane follows snake more on movement anim. Will be in next/last release alongside any other suggestions.

61

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Big Update January 2017!)

« on: 7 January 2017, 02:19:14 »

I'm pretty much finished! 

Check out the first post for an updated image gallery, and downloads!

I'm calling this update 0.98 because then I have a little room for feedback. 

62

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Beta Up 7/21)

« on: 24 December 2016, 00:37:17 »

More updates if anyone cares! 

(click to show/hide)

Updated Update Log:

-Desert Camp Optimized: 400 Triangle Reduction
-Farm: Chicken's Animated
-Obelisk: Redone Destruction Animation(Tri Count cut to 2,230 from 9,310, 65% Filesize Reduction), Vertex Normals Fixed(No more blobby look), and Slight Mesh Update
-Priest: Summoning and Healing Animations Done
-Pyramid: Re-Textured Again, Resolution is 1024 from 512 (Original was 256, super blurry), Vertex Normals Fixed, Slight Mesh Update
-Vertex Normal Fixes on Farm and Temple
-Texture Enhancements to Ibis, and Sphinx
-Update Construction Model for Farm
-Scarab Modelled and Textured

Planned:
-Update Construction Model for Temple
-Scarab Animations
-Various Animation Tweaks
-Texture Palette Tweaks to Align Colors

63

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Beta Up 7/21)

« on: 13 December 2016, 04:27:39 »

Update Log for anyone who's wondering:

-Desert Camp Optimized: 400 Triangle Reduction
-Farm: Chicken's Animated
-Obelisk: Redone Destruction Animation(Tri Count cut to 2,230 from 9,310, 65% Filesize Reduction), Vertex Normals Fixed(No more blobby look), and Slight Mesh Update
-Priest: Summoning and Healing Animations Done
-Pyramid: Re-Textured Again, Resolution is 1024 from 512 (Original was 256, super blurry), Vertex Normals Fixed, Slight Mesh Update

Planned:
-Vertex Normal Fixes on Farm and Temple
-Texture Enhancements to Ibis, Slave, and Sphinx
-Update Construction Models for Farm and Temple
-Complete Remake of Scarab
-Various Animation Tweaks
-Texture Palette Tweaks to Align Colors

@Titi: What do you think about making the Scarab high armor melee unit? The Snake and Ibis are already ranged, and the Scarab looks quite goofy currently. Don't worry about the art, I'll be redoing the Scarab either way.

I shall be putting together a before/after album that will appear days before release.

64

MegaGlest / Re: Megaglest and Steam

« on: 11 December 2016, 02:47:46 »

So it's been Greenlit for awhile. Any idea on an ETA for when it'll actually be available to Steam users?

65

Feature requests / Re: Animated Particles and Other Particle Options

« on: 7 December 2016, 22:48:48 »

Child Particles: Awesome! Didn't realize they were in.

Animated: This is done by shifting the particle UV to each frame in the spritesheet. No video files or anything more complex like that. I also wrote a small python program that generates sprite sheets from image sequences, and the logic for reading a sprite sheet would be similar to assembling one. If you want, I'll upload that little program.

Random Starting Rotation: This isn't to do with particle lifetime or intensity. It's to do with the visual rotation of the particle with respect to the camera.
Pseudo XML:
<particle-rotation>
     <rotation-value min= "-30"/> (degrees, negative 30 would be 330 degrees)
     <rotation-value max= "30"/> (degrees positive, clockwise)
     <rotation-random= "1"/> (value of 0 means particles spawn only at 30, and 330 degrees, value of 1 means particles spawn anywhere between -30 and 30 degrees)
</particle-rotation>

If you don't understand or want to see the purpose of the feature, let me know, I'll make something quick in Unity.

Soft Particles: The purpose is to hide the ugly intersections between 2D sprites and 3D geometry. Scene depth is Unity's term for the distance between each pixel and the camera. The simple way to handle intersections is to lower particle opacity per-pixel based on the depth of the pixel before the particle is drawn. This would probably require a setting in the menu as it does have a small performance impact, most of which could be negated by having a switch in particle XMLs that defaults to off. This would be a substantial visual update, making bigger particle effects appear more volumetric.

(click to show/hide)

66

Mods / Re: Unit capturing

« on: 21 November 2016, 01:41:26 »

I can't imagine who wouldn't like seeing this. It would be helpful for possible campaign missions in the future as well. 

67

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Beta Up 7/21)

« on: 14 November 2016, 06:22:21 »

Steam Happened. 

That it did! I expect to put out a final release before the year is up.

68

Tools / Re: Real-3d-painting_likeBluePrints

« on: 6 November 2016, 05:10:08 »

Decimate is still giving you bad topology. Sorry to be that guy. 

69

Feature requests / Re: Global Damage Multiplier in Custom Game Options

« on: 3 November 2016, 06:49:19 »

I really think my original post sums it up pretty well.

When it comes to strategy games, the more options the better!  Have you played Civilization? The game has endless possibilities, partially because it has so many options on the create a game screen(especially with mods).

You could also hide it behind the advanced toggle as with other advanced features so that the menu is kept simpler for new players.

Currently, if a player wants differently paced or more realistic combat, they'd have to modify every single XML file for the whole tech tree. And then give it to anyone they wanted to play multiplayer with. Further, tech tree XMLs could even specify their own default multiplier. This would allow every faction to be designed to play against the Megapack at a 1.0 multiplier, while also playing differently within other tech trees due to the tech tree specific multiplier.

70

Tools / Re: Real-3d-painting_likeBluePrints

« on: 30 October 2016, 20:57:54 »

I would take a look at the code behind Blender's smoke simulator, and how it interpolates between voxels.

Or, you could try some sort of distance-limited convex fill.

Have you also thought about generating the meshes from vector images? Then you would have vectors for interpolation. 

71

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Beta Up 7/21)

« on: 30 October 2016, 07:43:51 »

Then give the mod a test! 

I've optimized the sphinx a bit more, and my performance tests didn't find much issue. MegaGlest is a mostly CPU limited game in my experience.

Edit: When I said high-poly sculpt, I meant that I made one AND baked it's detail back onto the low poly mesh. It's currently only ~2300 tris.

72

Tools / Re: Real-3d-painting_likeBluePrints

« on: 29 October 2016, 08:22:41 »

It looks like you're trying to recreate 3-dimensional lofting in a very brute force way. What you're describing is kind of how Solidworks functions. 2D planes, and lots of cool 3D vector math at high precision. This type of modelling is good for engineering, but terrible for game art. You're never going to get a game ready result unless you write an automatic retopology addon for Blender, or you retopo every model by hand, or you somehow generate proper topology right when you generate the first mesh. The remesh modifier cannot replicate detail geometry and holes without generating an obscene amount of polygons(and even then it has a lot of artifacts usually), and the decimate modifier creates very poor topology and only works well for static models.

Simply put, your results are interesting, but the topology of the models it'll generate will be very hard and time consuming to texture, and/or animate.

I'm not entirely sure if you're doing this just for fun, or  to get around modelling in Blender. In the latter case, if I were you, I'd study other people's techniques to get better at modelling. 3D lofting isn't really a thing when it comes to game/movie modelling(afaik) because it would require an immense number of planes to create anything of reasonable detail, and that is far less efficient than using modelling tools.

73

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Beta Up 7/21)

« on: 25 October 2016, 17:22:00 »

Decided to sculpt a high-poly for the Sphinx. I'm pretty pleased with the result. 

74

Feature requests / Animated Particles and Other Particle Options

« on: 22 October 2016, 00:32:35 »

Suggested Features:

• Animated Particles Using Spritesheets
• Random Starting Rotation (needed for animated particles to look good)
• Soft Particles: Not sure how hard this would be in MG's engine, but simple soft particles just modify opacity based on scene depth. This effect is relatively cheap, and hides ugly geometry intersections.
• Child Particles: Nothing too fancy, just a reference in the particle xml that would call another particle xml to run at the same time. This would be a better way to handle multiple particle effects than stacking them for each unit. This also could be used to handle projectile children, a feature we'd all like. (For fire arrows!  )

For animated particles, I have quite a few spritesheets that I made using Blender. I have usable art assets now, already being used in Unity engine. I would be willing to give you guys a couple fire and smoke sprite sheets.

Here's what I've got going in Unity - Fire - Smoke - Explosion Sim as Fire

I may think of some more features, but for now, those are the main ones I've been thinking about.

75

Mods / Re: Re-Mastering the Egypt Faction (Beta Up 7/21)

« on: 11 October 2016, 05:17:12 »

I was originally banking on MG heading to Steam, and having a larger audience. The lack of news on that, and the emptiness of the forums has made me disinterested.
I have another Glest project on the backburner that is also very well progressed. I would like to get back to these projects, and would be willing to train people in Blender and such so that I have help for other remastering projects. However, there are so few people active on the forum these days, and it takes a lot of time to redo assets and all their animations. It's just not worth the time right now.

If anyone requests, I'll grant them personal access to all my source files for this project. And again, I may try to pick this up again soon, but I can't make guarantees, I'm becoming a busy person.