Epic (working name)

[@kukac@]

Then i think I don't have much to do...  

[Botjer]

programming?

[Botjer]

when playing this game you would see citys sppread out in a vast landscape, small villages, carts and smalls boats and ships going back and forth from resources to cities or city to city. Armies marching either face off with other armies or to take care of smaller raider threats or even attacking ancient ruins to get the treasures within.

The game will take alot of time to play, its more of a rts version of master of magic than just a largescale rts.

This game is to be aimed at players who enjoy building, trading, exploring and actually have the time to run some form of battlefields tactics.

Game time. several hours, not determined yet but something on the lines of a long game of Cossack (8-12 hours). or even longer.

[Gildor]

I don't know if you solved this yet (in the building list it looked like you had by not having some buildings show) but you could hav the castle build a "build spot" type thing that creates really fast then click on that to build the building.  the building spots would be free. i dont know if this is possible ive never done anything like that before.  might be unneeded now. just an idea.

[Botjer]

interesting idea. you place a build spot and then you click on the build spot to choose building?

[Botjer]

having a little bout of inspiration.
Modelled:
Human spearman
Human swordsman
Human bowman
Human Sergeant(medium cavalry), modelling a horse was actually quite fun, never done that before, a cavalry model will clock in at somewhere between 400-500 polys.

it would be nice with the option of randomizing the texture on the models as they are created to make for some interesting armies and not just clones. That way you could actually add alot of different models... dependin on the texture some things would be invisible.

Example: swordsman, i model an axe in his hand as well. but in one texture only the axe will be visible. in others only the sword... this way you could actually make LOADS of different looking infantry in one model, by just having different textures... yes more textures = more work for the computer. but dont we got alot of that to spare?

[Gildor]

ya make the build spot thing look like a foundation or something and have it disappear after a certain time so you can't end up with 50 of them or something

[daniel.santos]

Gildor,
The only problem with that is that it may limit the size of the building, unless you use a morph skill which allows you to resize.  Then again, if you mess up and put something near it that won't allow it to expand, then the morph will fail.

wciow,
sorry for the misunderstanding.  I didn't model anything (hehe), I just played the 1st part of the Guard's dying animation.  Also, I figured out that I only need 9 frames for each tree, one in the center and one frame with it pulled in one direction or another.  Then I can morph between the different animation frames (will take some code mods I'm sure).

Botjer,
I completely agree on the effects, dust, smoke, flying leaves, debris, sticks & stones, I'm 100% with you on that!!

[Botjer]

@kukac@
well if you are interested you are welcome to work on the xml. ill probably need all the help i can get

[Botjer]

Question:
i read somewhere that if you use the alpha channel and paint an area white. it will be coloured by the player's color?
if i want to make see through materials, i just leave them seethrough in photoshop?
There isnt any shinyness you can use? or bumpmaps?

[Duke]

not quite, if you paint it white it stays white, but if you make it transparent that transparency is replaced by teamcolor.
if you put a plain blue/red/green/yellow layer under your texture you can see the final result.

If you want real transparency instead of teamcolor that has to be changed in the mesh unfortunately.

lightmaps aren't implemented yet.

[Botjer]

changed in the mesh as in modelled or changed in the mesh as in som setting?

[Duke]

some setting

[Botjer]

anyone know more specifically?

[Botjer]

hmm ok as squads of units is not possible, (maybe something for GAE?) ive switched to making the basic buildings first.

Being in order
Castle- produces units and builds the city buildings.

Builders hall(city building, only 1 per castle), builds resource buildings.

Farm(resource building), generates food.

"Housing"(city building), demands food to be contructed and has food as upkeep. Generates Gold. and maybe population...

I love modelling but hate unwrapping models

[hailstone]

hmm ok as squads of units is not possible

This got me thinking, you can assign a group like "control + number" but when you deselect the group and click on a unit you only select that unit. Would it be better to select the group of the unit that you clicked on and then click again to select the individual unit?

[Botjer]

actually i wouldnt want it to be possible to select any member of a squad individually.

[weedkiller]

He botjer,
i think you can choose between teamcolor or transparenzy for each modell-mesh: If the "two-sided" flag is on in blender it should use teamcolor where is transparenzy on the texture. Else it is transparent...

Transparenzy in the tga-textures is via the Alphachannel.
I use GIMP for that.

To model-unwrapping: Thats one of blenders easiest functions (compared to gmax for example). If i shell help you just ask.

[Botjer]

well im using 3dsmax, and i know how, i just dont got any talent for it

im just gonna go ahead and model my stuff, ill post pics soon, th ecastle is in game, its just too small. ive been scaling it up but it seems as if there's some kind of limit on how big something can be...

[Botjer]

playing around with the xml.
just added the build skill to my castle added range to it.
removed the move-skill call because its a castle, it doesnt have one thus it gave me an error message as i tried to start.

right now i cant start because i get an error message but its empty

[Botjer]

i gave the castle a move skill. and set it to 0....
it still wants to walk to the site, so the problem i gather right now is to give build-skill a range.

      <skill>
         <type value="build"/>
         <name value="build_skill"/>
         <ep-cost value="0"/>
         <speed value="105"/>
         <anim-speed value="100"/>
         <animation path="../../../../../magitech/factions/tech/units/castle/models/castle.g3d"/>
         <sound enabled="true" start-time="0.5">
            <sound-file path="../../../../../magitech/factions/tech/units/worker/sounds/worker_build1.wav"/>
            <sound-file path="../../../../../magitech/factions/tech/units/worker/sounds/worker_build2.wav"/>
            <sound-file path="../../../../../magitech/factions/tech/units/worker/sounds/worker_build3.wav"/>
         </sound>
          <attack-range value="200"/>
      </skill>

[Botjer]

anyone?

[weedkiller]

hm i dont really understand. The only way i see is if the that part with
 <attack-range value="200"/>
is used. Have you added it yourself, or do other buildskill-definitions have this too ?

[@kukac@]

I have an idea, but it just might work...:

Use morph skill! I will write an example for you: (> = morph)

Castle>Castle with barracks
Castle>Castle with farm

Castle with barracks>Castle with Barracks and Farm
Castle with farm>Castle with Barracks and Farm

I hope I gave you some good ideas, but this has also a problem: if you have more than 5-6 types of buildings, it needs too much morphs...

If you want to build a separate building, I think you need a moving unit.

[Botjer]

weedkiller it was just an attempt to make building range based.

An entity can have several objects? or would the farm actually be a part of the castle. because that isnt a bad idea. though if im doing it that way, it will be towns. and the idea is not stricken out, only problem is that i cant seem to make the buildings bigger than a certain degree...

Building at range, thats what i am trying to achieve.
I want the castle to be able to build other buildings.