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Work in Progress / Operation Desert Fallout (Dissertation project) Image heavy!

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Fallout
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Posted: 4th Feb 2006 11:08
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haha. Don't worry. I got the joke! And thanks for the props man. I'm sure a decent modeller wouldn't have taken half a day to UV map a building, but I guess that's what experience gives you. Anyway, I'm happy.

More good news is, the game had crawled down to 50FPS rendering that scene (and I'm intended to have a lot more detail on screen in the final game). But I realised I was running it with Milkshape and Ultimate Unwrap 3D open. I closed those down, and it shot back up to 170FPS. I have a twin GPU 6600GT, so I'm taking that into consideration. The scene runs at 360FPS with shadows switched off, so I'll definitely have an options switch for that.

Anyway, onto texturing and animating the troops today and then onto the map.

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Fallout
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Posted: 4th Feb 2006 15:46
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After finishing the Rocket Soldier and doing a first cut running animation, I thought I'd make a quick moving demo of the game so far, to give everyone a feel of it. I think the cinematic music might over play what's going on in there, but its still pretty cool. Just a simple rotating around the scene movie with some units moving about in their test modes.

ODF- Concept Vid (4MB - WMV)

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Hawkeye
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Posted: 4th Feb 2006 16:01
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The heli's movement is quite impressive And music/sfx is more than half of the atmosphere in a game anyway, I think it's supurb. Looks very pro. Good stuff!


I am but mad north north-west; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw - Hamlet, Hamlet
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TEH_CODERER
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Posted: 4th Feb 2006 16:58
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25 fps is a little low but it looks and sounds great!

[url]andrewneale2004@yahoo.com[/url]
http://www.elbsoftware.dbspot.com
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Fallout
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Posted: 4th Feb 2006 17:45
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That's a frame limiter imposed by fraps when recording. It's running at 170FPS on my compo at the moment.

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TEH_CODERER
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Posted: 4th Feb 2006 18:27
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Ahh! O.K. Great!

[url]andrewneale2004@yahoo.com[/url]
http://www.elbsoftware.dbspot.com
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Cavex
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Posted: 4th Feb 2006 19:53
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That does lot grat I must say. Out intead how to get more money in this game?
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Megaton Cat
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Posted: 4th Feb 2006 21:36 Edited at: 4th Feb 2006 21:36
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Downloading vid...

I have the full version of Fraps by the way, so if you ever need a high FPS video, shoot me a call...

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Fallout
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Posted: 4th Feb 2006 22:26
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Cheers megs, but I have the full version too. I use it so much, I thought it was worth the investment. A handy little tool, no doubt.

Anyway, I was pretty pleased with my character animations, so I thought I'd do another short vid. There're four animations per unit - Standing/Aiming (can hardly see the animation), running, death and death from explosion (flying into the air). They all turned out really well.

Human Unit Animation Vid (2MB - WMV)

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Megaton Cat
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 00:55
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People dropping like sacks of potatoes for no reason...good stuff. Animation looks solid enough.

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Bizar Guy
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 01:31
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Man, you're definitely going to Ace this project. I admire you speed and quatlity. I'd wish you good luck, but I dbout you need it.

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Wiggett
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 06:42
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(oh the woes of getting a wmv file to play on a mac)

That was absolutely fantastic Fallout! I'm so surprised at how fast you have popped this game out, you must have been working around the clock to get such an awesome test engine. The sound effect on teh chopper was awesome, and the animations on the dying guys were excellent (there were 3 kinds!). You could talk to the tgc guys and have this game of yours showcase DBP. Well done.

Syndicate remastered: Corporate persuasion through urban violence.
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Mattman
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 07:55
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I think that the second death was my favorite. This is amazing dude! Guessing you will be another DBer to land a job with a big name company along with Jeku! Congrats on an awesome start!

Why make sense when you could make brownies?
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Fallout
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 11:04 Edited at: 5th Feb 2006 11:15
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Thanks for the kind words people. They are very much appreciated. Well, I still have a long way to go yet. There's not much code in there, and that will be the big test. If I can make a convincing A.I. opponent, then I'm home and dry, otherwise the whole game will suck!

Today I start work on the landscape ....

@Wiggett - yes mate. I've done five 9:00am - midnight days on to get this far! I can't help thinking a decent modeller would of bashed all those out in a couple of days, but I can't complain. And sorry about the WMV, it's just Windows Movie Maker is really quick to use, and you know all windows users can play WMVs. I used to release AVIs with DivX, but so many people didn't have the DivX codec.

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dark coder
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 11:58
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i like the trees and the people/anims the buildings and vehicles could use real world references, but it still looks cool .

so when is this project planned to be done?

Halowed are the ori.
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Sergey K
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 12:26
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nice animations dude! keep up the good work and make some particle fire

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Fallout
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 12:35
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Although I've made up my own buildings and vehicles to add playability and originality to the game, here're some of the real world references The tank and chopper are fairly self explanitory, but the jeep is definitely made up. I was toying with the idea of a hummer with a guy on the mounted machine gun, but that'd add complexity, and I'd have to think about what happens when he gets shot etc. The war factory and barracks can't be based on real life, else they'd have to take up the whole map! So I just went for similar buildings to C&C:Generals.

Civilian Buildings (Agadez)


Rocket Truck (MLRS)


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MikeS
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 17:00
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Wow, Fallout, this is simply one of the best looking DBP projects around already, huge potential here! I'm also very glad to see that you're going to carry this one through to the very end.
It always saddens me when I see great looking projects come to an end on these boards(Equillibrium, for example).

Sounds are already very impressive from the video's you've posted(love the 3D sound on the chopper).

Not much else I can say really, I'll be watching this thread.



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
(Formerly Yellow)
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Fallout
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 18:45
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Cheers Mike. Glad you like the progress so far! I think this may work out well.

Right, I had my first pass at a landscape today. I tried a .X model made in milkshape with shoddy results. Alpha roads looked really good and blended well, but the landscape itself was just too rigid. So, I've decided to go with my auto-matrix engine I made a while back. This automatically generates meshes which you can apply textures to. It then automatically creates blend textures and blends the pieces together.

You start with something like this:


Hit spacebar, and it makes this:


It does it by using a single texture and mapping the new blend textures to blank slots on it, before reUV mapping the blend squares. Here's a screenie of a blended landscape and the blend textures its made applied to the main texture (show on a plain in the top right).


The bad thing about this is there are no welded vertices, so there are a lot more vertices than required, so it has a significant performance hit. The good thing is it's really flexible, and looks better than multi-texturing (advanced terrain style), as textures have more character rather than a single detail texture. I'll try and adapt this for ODF tomorrow, but hopefully it'll do the job.

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TDP Enterprises
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 19:01
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well, youre making awesome progress, lets hope you dont lose any steam any time soon

Box World.....WIP coming soon....
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Mattman
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 19:03
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Confused on how it works but it defanitly looks great!

Why make sense when you could make brownies?
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MikeS
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 19:07
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Excellent Fallout, that makes perfect sense now! I've been wondering how to make alpha blended terrains for ages. Just excellent.



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
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Fallout
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 19:25
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There are seaming issues with it still though. I'm wondering if I have time to get all that sorted. And it doesnt work with mipmapping. Hmmm ... torn between .X model (having another go) my terrain engine, or advanced terrain ....

So my decision is, I'm going to go and make dinner.

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Cavex
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Posted: 5th Feb 2006 19:50
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Looking good. Have you desgin the hud yet for the game?
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Wiggett
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Posted: 6th Feb 2006 07:49
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heh its ok, we got a special mac version of windows media player that plays it.

Syndicate remastered: Corporate persuasion through urban violence.
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Fallout
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Posted: 6th Feb 2006 11:35
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No hud design yet. I'm working on the landscape now and then I'll have to go off the project for a little while to capture with all these programming lab books. We have to write a couple of programs a week and do a 10 page or so write-up on them, annotate a load of code, do screenshots etc. Pain in the arse, and very time consuming, and I've not done them for the last 6 weeks or so. Those are due in before this project, so I'll post up some progress of the landscape stuff once sussed, then will be off the build for a little while.

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Fallout
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Posted: 6th Feb 2006 17:34 Edited at: 6th Feb 2006 17:35
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Here's progress on the landscape so far. This is a simple scene I whipped up. Everything should be more densely populated later on.



The ground itself will change a little. I'll be adding more detail in built up areas, such as brick floors and worn/cracked ground etc. Still unsure at the moment.

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Mattman
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Posted: 6th Feb 2006 22:23
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Very very nice, love the streets. The choppers supposed to be that dark?

Why make sense when you could make brownies?
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Peter H
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Posted: 6th Feb 2006 22:53
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Looks good!

"We make the worst games in the universe..."
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Chris Franklin
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Posted: 6th Feb 2006 22:53
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WOW superb

Fps world of mayhem 10%

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Fallout
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Posted: 6th Feb 2006 23:10 Edited at: 6th Feb 2006 23:12
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Quote: " The choppers supposed to be that dark?"


It's wrong side of the sun syndrome! They are black textured anyway, but with shadow shading on, the side away from the light source is shaded even darker. To answer your question though, yes, because I think its realistic that way, especially in a desert environment where sun glare make darkness seem darker. When you rotate the camera round to the otherside, they're quite bright.

Actually, you encouraged me to double check that, and as a result I tested shadow shading over water, and it works well! So I'm happy.

The Darkside


The Lightside


Edit: Also, always turn off mipmapping when using transparency. Thats made the trees look much crisper and got rid of the funny white line.

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Fallout
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Posted: 6th Feb 2006 23:28
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Ok, didn't see any point using shaders for the water as it goes against my project analysis, and also there's nothing to really reflect on the water or anything. So I built shader free water, but I think it turned out pretty damn good. Just a combination of transparency, ghosting and a darkness map underneath.

Short vid: Water (1MB - WMV)

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Fallout
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Posted: 7th Feb 2006 01:51
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Ok, the level has been pretty much made. It's not huge, but its pretty big, and populated with around 100 trees and buildings, plus two oasises (is that a word? ... probably oasis ). I might return and add some more detail as I still have texture room for some funking up of the ground. I'll leave you with some simple screenies of the towns. These are all fairly close together, so should provide ample cover during combat. Must sleep now .... brain ... dead.






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Cavex
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Posted: 7th Feb 2006 09:56
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Very nice. So what do plan to do next?
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General Sephiro
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Posted: 7th Feb 2006 13:28
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hmm how did i not see this project before? oh wel, just noticed the name "Fallout" reminded me of an old game i played anywho, nice work keep it up


http://www.hybridwolves.co.uk
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Fallout
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Posted: 7th Feb 2006 15:50
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Thanks chaps. Ok, good news and bad news ...

Good news is, I minimized realtime shadow distances on all objects, carved up the landscape into individual limbs and wrote a quick object culling function. The result is a minimum of 230FPS when looking at any static town scene on the map, and a maximum of 430FPS. This is on a twin GPU 6600GT, so I'd estimate 70/80/90 FPS on a FX5600 for example (I have a compo with one and normally get that sort of FPS tally up). So all good so far, although the units and particles will eat away at that FPS later.

Bad news is, I'm gonna have to leave the project for a bit now to carry on with other work. I'll do a bit here and there, but this will take a backseat for a bit.

Next step when I get back on it will be the particle system - smoke effects, dust, tyre marks in the sand, rocket trails, explosions etc.

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Wiggett
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Posted: 8th Feb 2006 05:36
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absolutely amazing work.



Quote: "Bad news is, I'm gonna have to leave the project for a bit now to carry on with other work. I'll do a bit here and there, but this will take a backseat for a bit."


you know in some countries they will kill you for doing that.

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TDP Enterprises
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Posted: 8th Feb 2006 12:37
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Quote: "Bad news is, I'm gonna have to leave the project for a bit now to carry on with other work. I'll do a bit here and there, but this will take a backseat for a bit"
he's a true weekend warrior...

Box World.....WIP coming soon....
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Fallout
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Posted: 8th Feb 2006 16:25
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.. you'll have to find me first ....

Actually, I'm still working on a few things in the background. I'll be toying with the particle system on and off.

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Professor
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Posted: 8th Feb 2006 19:56
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Well, when you finnish with what your doing, post another thread (if this one goes dead, depending on how long.) and post more updates. The game looks realy good!


vive le blackout
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Chris Franklin
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Posted: 8th Feb 2006 20:13
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can you post the current exe then?

Fps world of mayhem 10%

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Cliff 3degs network
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Posted: 9th Feb 2006 00:00 Edited at: 9th Feb 2006 00:04
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i dont belive the exe would do much sense yet as he have the pathfinding and unit controls yet to be done or?
looking good anyway.
hmm if you do get some kind of code that runs that hi in the fps with over 20 units on screen please tip oss off on how you did it.
i have only got it to be around 51 fps with 22 units runing around on screen.
but iam using an matrix as landscape and that eats fps have i heard.
but iam not that god at programming yet only an happy beliver to soon be one.

AMD ATHLON 64 3200+ AGP8X 1GB RAM 1MB CACHE.ATI RADEON 9800PRO 128MB AGP8X.
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Fallout
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Posted: 9th Feb 2006 01:57
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No, you're right. An exe would be useless. All the proggy does at the moment is make a landscape. There are no controls to do anything else.

As for the FPS, the secret is a Gigabyte twin GPU 6600GT. I'm guessing it'll run about 80FPS on a 5600 (which I have in my other compo). More info later though. I might test it on the other machine tomorrow.

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Cliff 3degs network
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Posted: 9th Feb 2006 19:31
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I understand wath you mean.
I also want an better gfx card like that.
my rts will not compete with yours in anyway as iam going for an more cartoon and worms like game.
hard to explain right now as i dont want to tell to much untill i have done more on it.
have mostly bin working on the pathfinding and unit physics towards the ground and stuff.(tanks tilting on slopes)
and my game will be really low polly as it helps the toon vision of it and saves fps on slower computers.
you can see on the screenie one of the tanks to explain wath i mean.
something i doddled as an beta version tank.
cheers and good luck on the game it looks great...

AMD ATHLON 64 3200+ AGP8X 1GB RAM 1MB CACHE.ATI RADEON 9800PRO 128MB AGP8X.

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Fallout
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Posted: 9th Feb 2006 23:06
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I like ya tank mate! I can get a vibe of the sort of RTS you'll be making just from looking at that. We need variety between cartoony and more serious games, so good luck to you.

On the FPS front, I just moved the proggy over to my other compo to test FPS. So P2.2 1GB FX5600 had a minimum of 62FPS and max of 112FPS. Averaging around 70 I'd say. So that's not bad, but not great. So long as it runs around 30FPS, all will be good. I think my old compo is likely to be around the minimum/average spec, so sorry to people who have much older graphics cards.

Either way, there will be a facility to turn off realtime shadows, which should dramatically increase the frame rate. Actually, on a quick test just now, viewing an area with shadow shading on this compo gives 230FPS, and with it switched off, gives 540FPS ... over twice the frame rate. So with shadows switched off, it should fly on lower spec compos.

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The Core
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Posted: 10th Feb 2006 00:30
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looks great do u export you're models as a .X because i use game space and am having alot of problems exporting files with it and losing texture's

great work

The Core
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Fallout
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Posted: 10th Feb 2006 00:41
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Bit of news I'm happy with .... Just secured another FPS increase by improving my object culling routine. You really can't rely on DarkBasic to cull all the objects offscreen totally. It does a lot of the work itself, but if you have a fairly rigid camera, you can improve it dramatically. Seeing an average 20% FPS increase now.

@The Core

Thanks. I'm using Milkshape and exporting .X using the DirectX8.0 exporter for static models, and the DirectXJT exporter for animated models. No problems with them at all.

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Cavex
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Posted: 10th Feb 2006 09:49
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IS their any changes of seeing your cull object code?
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Fallout
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Posted: 10th Feb 2006 13:06
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No probs, but it probably won't do you much good, as it's optimised to work with a fixed camera x-angle on a specific type of landscape, from a specific maximum height. It might help someone making a similar RTS or top-down-ish view game, but nobody else.

Basically, find the four corners of the screen on the landscape using pre-calcuated distances and angles (for speed). Work out the minimum and maximum values on the z and x axis defined by these four corners and this gives you a square. Cull everything outsie and show everything inside. It also requires the dimming of a few arrays.



Feel free to use it if you can get anything out of it.

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Cliff 3degs network
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i wonder dosent this doe the same thing as i got about the same fps increase with it?

only nag is that you now have to put this routine inside the loop for all objects you want hiden when not on screen.
like this.

iam planning to make this to an function instead to save lines of code but are currently working on the camera movement on an landscape with alot of height differences.
and its now extremely smooth yust a few adjustments.
you dont know an good routine to rotate the camera around an axis around the middle of the screen?
this is my only current issue with the camera movement.

AMD ATHLON 64 3200+ AGP8X 1GB RAM 1MB CACHE.ATI RADEON 9800PRO 128MB AGP8X.
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