Fantastic work, but a few questions!

[myles]

Hey, maybe some of you remember me from roughly 4 years ago when I worked on the Starship Troopers mod? Since then I've worked in the industry for a few years as an Environment Artist.
I usually try and keep up to date with whats going on with Glest, especially GAE. I'm really impressed with the feature list now, so much I'd like to consider doing a full game for it with a professional attitude. I had a few questions/ issue though that used to bother me about Glest, I've searched around but I couldn't find any clear answers, I was wondering if somebody could clear things up for me

1.) Texture Size Limits. I remember there used to be a max texture size previously, I could probably work with small sizes, but it'd be comforting to know I could go up to perhaps 1024x or 512x in some situations.

2.) Cliffs. When working on the maps I felt they really needed a little more height, Is there a way to add cliffs? Perhaps with paths that would lead up to the top, though if not, just having them unaccessible would work.

3.) Environment (Map) Objects. Being an Environment Artist by trade, I like to add a lot of character to my maps, though I remember having trouble with collision and most of all having a set limit of map objects I could use.

4.) Lighting. Seeing that you now have some basic Normal Map/ Specular map implementation, I was wondering if there were dynamic lights in the engine? That could be attached to units/ effects?

I probably have a lot more questions, but these would be a good start. Thanks!

[Zoythrus]

oh wow, Myles, it's been quite a while since you've frequented these forums. i'd like to be the first to welcome you back!

now, about your questions:
1. idk

2. MG has cliffs!

3.im not too sure if we still have a limit...

4. that's a relatively new feature, only someone like Silnarm would know.

sorry that i wasnt as helpful as you probably wanted..

[myles]

Hey Zoy, glad to see your hanging around here, good to see you still working on that sci-fi mod. I'll checkout MG tonight, thanks for your answers, hopefully this Silnarm can fill me in a little more.
A few more questions if you don't mind,

5.) Full map effects. Things like particle effects of rolling rog/ mist that would go over the entire map, maybe only at certain heights.

6.) Stationary Rotation. Where a static object, like a defensive turret, would rotate to face what it is firing at, is that possible?

7.) Rotating Parts. Such as the turret on a tank, the actual tank could be facing in one direction, and the turret ontop would be firing in another direction. This would include some sort of 'move and fire' command.

These may seem like silly questions to some of you, but I'm just going by what were 'issues' when I created my SST mod.

[John.d.h]

6 has been possible for years (just look at Tech's Air Ballista) but 7 is not (yet).  I'm not sure what you mean by 5 though.

[ultifd]

2.) Cliffs. When working on the maps I felt they really needed a little more height, Is there a way to add cliffs? Perhaps with paths that would lead up to the top, though if not, just having them unaccessible would work.

Yep, you can do all of this with the MegaGlest Map Editor.

[wciow]

1) I'm prety sure 2056x2056 might be ok, 1024x1024 definitely is.

2) As stated already MG now has the ability to add cliffs to maps, they also use a 6th custom texture so they don't take up any of the 5 ground textures.

3) Basically all the problems with the map enviroment still exist. The only two major changes are in MG which has cliffs and allows you to add particle systems to tileset objects. The evergreen tileset has some nice fog/mist effects that are worth looking at.

Collision is still done by simple walkable/unwalkable tiles. Objects are still placed randomly from the list and orientated randomly as well.

4) The new normal and specular maps are great, but I don't think dynamic lights are possible atm, although its probably not a huge task to add lights to units so fingers crossed.

5) Apart from changing fog color/density, weather chance and sunlight colour (as in vanilla Glest) there are no changes to global map values.

6) This is possible as stated by John.

7) This is much requested on the forums but difficult to implement. It is slated but will be later rather than sooner.

Also if you pick up a copy of either the GAE or MG map editors you will find them much improved from the VG version  

[Omega]

1. There isn't any limit I know of, but as pointed out by problems with Mrise, using large textures can overload and crash the game. He had many 512x and 1024x textures, and had to convert to 256x in order to stop the game from crashing. 512x can be used for buildings, but otherwise, larger than that is unnecessary at Glest's zoom level.

2. At the moment, MegaGlest is the only one with true cliffs, though they can be replicated roughly by having a sharp drop-off and using a ground texture, though MegaGlest does this automatically and with a sharper drop-off when the height difference is large enough.

3. Depends on what you mean. There is 10 different map objects, 5 different resources (actually a part of the techtree though), and 5 different surface textures (6 with the optional cliff texture). However, you can have an unlimited (?) number of these objects, such as 10 different variations of trees (object 1).

4. GAE has specular and normal mapping. This is done by putting _normal or _spec (?) to the end of a filename with the same name as the texture. For example, if a unit's texture is called "my_texture.png", then the normal map would be "my_texture_normal.png". Note that you'd need the GAE 0.4 beta to use normal or specular mapping. The G3D hack tool would also be helpful for that.

5. Besides the fog in tilesets which has always been possible, there isn't a true way to have the entire map have a particle effect, though MegaGlest supports particles on tileset objects, which can replicate it fairly well.

6. This is done by having a move skill, but no move command. If there is no move skill, the hold position command will not rotate the unit.

7. There's been discussion in the GAE board about it, but it's a big change, and a long way in the future.

Since you've been gone a while, you may be interested to know that MG and GAE will be merging (if you didn't already know).