221 replies to this topic

[Chasarsis]

Further refined some forms, and changed a bit of the existing elements. Just about ready to start on the low poly and the texture now. I've also got ideas for some cool shader effects. More to come

[ambershee]

Taking time, but looking fairly sharp and unusual. Be careful with what you envisage shader wise, because anything will need to be set up using UT3's material editor, which may give you some limitations - and if you're not familiar with the material chain, I may be the one to have to do it.

Also, the game calls for differentiation between the player and other characters through what I'd assume best to be their emissive colours; yellow for the player and 'the one', red for 'the lost' and blue for 'the many'.

[Chasarsis]

gotcha
Shaders effects shouldn't be too much of a problem for me to handle. I had to get real familiar with this past quarter

[Darknet]

The model is looking good. I am trying to work on the models and the texture that very simple.

[Myles Lambert]

Looking pretty sweet there Chas,

Id suggest bringing the shoulders inwards slighting, so the armpits arent as arched as they are.
The waist should be thickened out a little.
The knee caps should stand out a little more.
And the shin area brought forward more.

But its looking great, a good start.

[ambershee]

Personally, I don't mind the abnormal shape; the character is of course only an Avatar, and not necessarily a human being. So long as it fits the UT3 character skeleton, all is good.

Anyway, you should all have had an e-mail, but I've had no response. I want to have a meeting with the current staffing (regardless of how much input they currently have) to get everything on track smoothly, and to get the ball rolling on the final design.

I'm currently looking at the 19th October, 20:00 GMT via MSN Messenger - the meeting may last as long as two hours. Please let me know if that's good for you, and if not, please suggest other times when it's convenient for you. There's a few people on this project now that haven't so much as spoken to one another, and it'd be a good start to get everyone connected...

I'll try to get a full document out in time for the meeting; but it is quite lengthy, so you may or may not get time to read the whole thing.

Until then, here is a brief overview of what's not in the script or current code version;



Summary

DataRun is a 3rd person adventure set in a Cyberpunk dreamworld. The player must explore an open world and solve minor puzzles in order to find fragment objects and challenge levels. Challenge levels may be completed in order to progress the game story, and fragment objects may be collected to detail the backstory, and unlock an alternative game conclusion.

Abilities

The player has the following abilities;

• Data Healing - This is used only in the challenge world. When standing on the appropriate rune, the player can scan, then heal a corrupt data object.
• Object Moving (Telekinesis) - This is the default ability and can be used anywhere. The player can pick up small nearby objects with the left mouse, and let go with a subsequent click.
• Grappling Hook - This may be used when the player uses the right mouse click on a nearby grapple able object. The player may then use this to swing across gaps. Note that the player only swings (with maybe some elasticity), and is not pulled.
• Combat Beams - When in an area marked with combat runes, the right mouse ability is replaced with the ability to shoot shock-rifle-esque beams, which kill The Lost.
• Salvation - When in an area marked with salvation runes, the left mouse ability allows the player to pick up the Lost and hold them for a period of time to convert them into the Many.
• Freeze Time - After touching a time rune, everything in the world except the player will be frozen in space. The player can then use thrown objects as a means to cross gaps, or even walk across water, or through fire and explosions without damage.
• Switch World - When visiting either the Massive or the Dead City, the world will be changed to the Light or Dark (good or evil) respectively. This is required for certain objects to exist in the game.

Open World

The game world is largely open for exploration. Initially, many areas will be sealed off, requiring unlocking at a later stage, or must be accessed using powers the player does not have. There is also an instance when the player will be forced to take a particular route. This ensures that the main game plot, and the back-plot is delivered at a suitable pace, The abilities required to access these areas are delivered by attempting and completing challenge levels. There are also 50 (or 100) fragments distributed between incidental locations in the game world.

Challenge Levels

There are five challenge levels; DATA-Structure, DATA-Tree, DATA-Flow (DATA-Stream?), DATA-Operation and DATA-Storage. Each of these levels is to be completed in order to access the game ending. Notably, it will not be possible to progress to later challenge levels without first completing the predecessors. The challenge levels are free-form environments, wherein the player must complete the challenge and heal all corrupt data objects and reach the exit before the world turns completely dark. The player will be scored on their time, as well as on how many power-ups and other objects they collected, and on how many registry entries they brought back to tables. These scores are saved to an online profile for comparison against other players.

Fragments and Incidental Locations

There are 50 (or 100?) Fragments to collect in the game world. They are persistent until collected, but some may only exist in the dark or light world. Each fragment contains a name, and a small number of random facts. Many of the fragments are located in incidental locations. Incidental locations have no purpose, but are a representation of a historically important location that gives away the back-story behind the games world; when a collection of related fragments are collected, the player will be able to review a part of a file, with information about the location itself.

(Note that I'm in the process of writing the incidental location plots).

[xiongmao]

I'll try to be there

[Myles Lambert]

I'll try to be there

Me two

[Chasarsis]

I'll be there,
also got the materials on the player character set up, though right now he's only a static object.

[ambershee]

Looking great. I'm assuming the material is sort of a transparent overlay (like a bump offset) with a more solid core object. My only qualm is the over-bearing emissive. The bright emissive is indeed important, but it's quite strong. Perhaps it could do with some tweaking, so that it retains it's more 'in-set' nature, like it would appear on the high resolution; using the normal map to bake shadow into the emissive layer might do the trick?

[Myles Lambert]

That looks pretty sweet,
Although will you be keeping the base texture so 'red' ? Maybe it should be a little more grey with a hint of blue.
I agree with Ambershee, but maybe you could add a outline around the overlay, to add some more structure to it?

Anyway lovin' it

[Chasarsis]

That looks pretty sweet,
Although will you be keeping the base texture so 'red' ? Maybe it should be a little more grey with a hint of blue.
I agree with Ambershee, but maybe you could add a outline around the overlay, to add some more structure to it?

Anyway lovin' it

Knocked down the emissive and desaturated the colors some. Looks better, but further thoughts and concerns?

Most of the rim light is from a fresnel node with a setting of 8. I don't quite understand the bump offset yet, so I didn't use it. And oddly the normal seems kind of washed out, even without much of anything in the way of other effects applied to the model, which is weird . . . but tends to happen everytime I import something into unreal =/

Edited by Chasarsis, 17 October 2008 - 01:32 AM.

[ambershee]

Looking sharp. If you want to upload a package to SVN, I'll take a look at it and see what I can do with those normals.

[Myles Lambert]

Looking sharp. If you want to upload a package to SVN, I'll take a look at it and see what I can do with those normals.

Ahh about the normals, when you import the normal map make sure compression setting is set to normal, it makes a BIG difference.

[Myles Lambert]

Sorry for double post, tree retexture. I dont think the metal is defined we enough and there are too many LED's but im working on it.



Cheers!

[Darknet]

Wooh that looks great! ^^)>

[Chasarsis]

Added the package to the svn
@ Myles: Is that speedtree edit or a mesh from scratch? Looks cool, though it might be able to use some more foliage

[Myles Lambert]

Cheers,
Its the mesh from one of the packages that comes with UT3, its just a edited texture.

Did you change the compression on the normals on the file in the SVN?

[Chasarsis]

Cheers,
Its the mesh from one of the packages that comes with UT3, its just a edited texture.

Did you change the compression on the normals on the file in the SVN?

Yeah, that's the changed version. Which did look a little better, though it might have just been because I reimported it =/
Unreal keeps on lowering the res of the textures after I reopen the file

[ambershee]

Depending on your compression settings, Unreal may not use the high-res imported texture, and may instead use the highest resolution valid mip-map.