Thanks for the continued ideas chaps. They have been a real help and inspiration. While I think I'm going to take Drew's advice, and not implement any more major ones, I am definitely going to make a few more tweaks to improve it where possible.
@Cash
I tried all the ghosting modes, on your advice, but no success ... although it did remind me of the usefulness of Dark Ghosting. I'll keep that one in mind. I also had a go at using the ENABLE OBJECT ZBIAS command, to play with the overlapping, and couldn't quite suss it out. I could bring the paths infront of the fog, or behind the landscape, but not ontop of the landscape and behind the fog! So I think it's a transparency engine limitation or something. I'll most likely follow the advice of ...
@Dark Coder
Yeah, I think a shader based effect would be best. You're right. However, I think I am going to make it as good as it can be, without shaders, and leave them till the polish stage at the end. This may be a mistake. Perhaps it's easier to design your engine around shaders, but since I've hardly used them, I don't want to get bogged down just yet learning how to write my own. Thanks for the tip though.
Quote: "Honestly I'd suggest adding some variation to the terrain texturing. "
I agree. I'm thinking about doing this by adding in more decal layers (like the path ways). The problem with just switching textures is blending them, since all the meshes here are prefab models. As soon as you add 1 new texture, you have to make 20 more to blend into all the other variations together. So I'll have to think about the best way to do this. I haven't decided how I am going to blend out of the forest leaves texture into (for example), a grass tundra texture either. Once I've figured that out, that may open the doors to changing the texture within the forest.
Quote: "I've skimmed through this thread, but I don't think anyone has mentioned audio yet."
No!!!! Don't even mention audio. I love doing audio. Let's just pretend audio doesn't exist until I've got all the hard work out of the way.
Quote: "with those towering trees, everything would be dark below. add rays of light finding their way through the limbs for contrast and life; occasional strange flowers flourishing where it might make sense. old trees, untouched, wild ones, have twisting limbs (character) and thick, gnarly bark. weeds, dry grass, fallen limbs and twigs scattered about."
Some good suggestions there. I think I will work on the vertex lighting where the trees cast shadows, and add some fallen tree/twig models.
Thanks again guys. More work on the todo list for when I get home.
