The very first screens...

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Carsten
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The very first screens...

Post by Carsten » 2006-01-24, 12:08

Hello all,
as you probably know, I'm currently working on creating a very earily, very initial but "complete" TechDemo map.
It's going very well, and I expect to be able to upload a precompiled .cw file for your soon (today or tomorrow, CaPVS is currently running).

Here are some very early screens (taken without PVS info (thus the low FPS), and with low texture detail setting:

Image
Without PVS, we can see the entire map when looking off the border of the outdoor terrain... if you know the map, you'll recognize the washroom, the original player starting point, the big center room, etc.

Image
A simple transition from upper outdoor terrain to lower parts...

Image
Just arrived in the building, looking up through the glass...

I'll also fix the rendering of the blood decals today, which are still blue-green rather than red, as you can see in the first shot above.
Best regards,
Carsten
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Thrawn
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Post by Thrawn » 2006-01-24, 17:09

Unfortunately, you can't see much on the upper 2 screenshots. But the last one already looks good. Can't wait to play it :P
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Post by Carsten » 2006-01-25, 11:31

Okay, as CaPVS finished last night, I'm now able to take more screenshots. I just uploaded them to Dodgers new great gallery:

http://images.ca3de-community.de/main.p ... _itemId=36

Some notes about the images:
  • Taken with the Ca3DE debug executable.
  • Taken at "high" texture detail setting. These are the original D3 textures.
  • Everything is full-bright (white lightmaps), plus the player still has that terrible blue-green lightsource.
  • Especially the Bezier Patches still have many problems, neither the handrails nor the blood decals are right. Endcaps of pipes are not right, too.
I think that one can see that although additional work is required in many regards, things look very promising... :cheesy:

I'll also upload the precompiled .cw file and everything else that is required later today, so that you can see the map for yourself live. (Will post a separate notice.)
Best regards,
Carsten
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Post by Dodger » 2006-01-25, 12:25

Hi Carsten,

the screenshots look great already! Of course there is some tweaking to o, but you get an idea how it will look like when it is finished. The Outdoor screenshots look not as good. The water color looks unnatural. Is antialiasing turned of? cause the edges look very hard (difiicult to explain)

Kurz auf Deutsch: Die Seiten sehen extrem eckig und nicht weich gezeichnet aus. Ich hab ja nun mal echt keine Ahnung und weiss das es work in progress ist will ja nicht nerven. Kann man eigentlich auch eine Brandung in das Wasser einbauen? Also wie in farcry?

Ansonsten ist es echt schon klasse. weiter so!

Greetings

Dodger
"Off all things I have lost, I miss my mind the least!"
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Post by Thrawn » 2006-01-25, 16:06

Wow, the screenshots are already looking very very very good. This map really has much potential! I hope we succeed in using it fully ;)

Can't wait to play it.

And remember:

WE WANT TO MAKE A PLAYTEST ALLTOGETHER! LET'S TRY TO FIND A DATE WHERE WE CAN WALK TOGETHER THROUGH THE MAP!

Something like Sunday evening, when everybody is there...
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Post by Carsten » 2006-01-25, 16:21

Dodger wrote:The water color looks unnatural.
Sure: This water is not for drinking! :P
Is antialiasing turned of? cause the edges look very hard (difiicult to explain)

Kurz auf Deutsch: Die Seiten sehen extrem eckig und nicht weich gezeichnet aus. Ich hab ja nun mal echt keine Ahnung und weiss das es work in progress ist will ja nicht nerven. Kann man eigentlich auch eine Brandung in das Wasser einbauen? Also wie in farcry?
Yes, the outdoor scene does not look really nice. That's mostly due to the fact that the terrain heightmap is very small (128*128 to cover 1km^2 iirc).
That small heightmap makes the mountains/hills and the shore of the small lake look very bad. It also causes some LoD problems in the game. All these problems disappear though with a higher-res heightmap for the terrain!

The biggest problem indeed is the coastline, where there is a hard transision from terrain to water. I'll have to think about it...
Best regards,
Carsten
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Post by Carsten » 2006-01-25, 16:26

Thrawn wrote:Wow, the screenshots are already looking very very very good.
Even better after I fixed some material definitions... ;)
This map really has much potential! I hope we succeed in using it fully ;)
Me too! :D
WE WANT TO MAKE A PLAYTEST ALLTOGETHER! LET'S TRY TO FIND A DATE WHERE WE CAN WALK TOGETHER THROUGH THE MAP!

Something like Sunday evening, when everybody is there...
Ah, yes that's a good idea. (I'd prefer a workday, but Sunday would be okay, too.) Mhhhh. I really should set up a Ca3DE server on the same Debian system that hosts the Subversion repository... will do so over the weekend, so that the weekend after that we could play!
Best regards,
Carsten
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Kai
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Post by Kai » 2006-01-25, 16:45

The reason why the water looks so hard edged:

- The shape is based upon the intersection between the waterplane and the terrain, so the terrain seems to be quite coarse.
- There is no depth-blending, so the watersurface is always having the same "density".

I think i sended Carsten a waterdemo quite a while ago that showed edge blending and depth color bleeding.
And yes it is possible to add this effect like it is used in Farcry, its just a decal that moves on top of the water surface close to the terrain intersection edge (also based upon the angle)

So far the screenshots are promising, but i hope the performance will be better, haveing in mind that there are no dynamic lights so far or stencilshdows...
But its all still work in progress :)
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Post by Thrawn » 2006-01-25, 16:57

I'll host a teamspeak server for all the lucky guys who own a headset so we can be 10x more productive when visiting the map. Those, who don't own a headset (mainly Carsten) can join the server anyways to hear at lest the rest talking. People without headsets can communite with the others via ingame chat.

You could also spent 5€ on a headset and that prob would be solved ^^

@ Water: In case that it looks that edged even after having importet a high resolution terrain, we could smooth the whole beach with bezier patches (We will do that anyways I guess)
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Post by Carsten » 2006-01-25, 17:08

Kai, yes, I even analyzed the water demo that you sent me in detail before I wrote the water shader that can be seen in the current screenshots. Unfortunately, depth-blending requires render-to-texture, a concept that I want to address as a whole later.

But I like the idea with the moving decal!
Easy to implement and low performance cost! :cheesy:
I think we should keep that in mind and eventually use it.

Performance: There are dynamic lights and stencil shadows already, this is one of the main reasons why the FPS is so low. Both the dyn. lights and the shadows are not well visible, though, because the level is full-bright anyway and the light-source is close to the eye of the player. In fact, the light source is pretty big, and thus the main reason for the low FPS.

My old FX 5200 is also inherently very slow, I currently have approximately the same FPS in the TD level as I had in D3, even on an ATI Radeon 9800 it should be a lot more.

Of course, the geometrical complexity of the new TD map has much increased compared to that of ReNoElixir, and you're right that some BP's still don't cast shadows (which will cost additional performance).

However, a lot of the code (especially BP-related) is not yet optimized, and I've planned a performance profiling session anyway.

:right1: So there is no reason to worry at all, even if the FPS numbers in the screens are unusually low.
Best regards,
Carsten
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Post by Thrawn » 2006-01-28, 16:19

Thrawn wrote:And remember:

WE WANT TO MAKE A PLAYTEST ALLTOGETHER! LET'S TRY TO FIND A DATE WHERE WE CAN WALK TOGETHER THROUGH THE MAP!

Something like Sunday evening, when everybody is there...
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Post by Carsten » 2006-01-30, 12:01

Unfortunately, the weather was very good over the weekend, so that I spent some of my time airborne rather than in a dark chamber brooding over a dedicated Linux server... ;)

For quick results, I'd suggest that somebody just starts a server under Windows at the next opportunity. (Full control over your firewall/router is required to get the ports free, which I unfortunately don't have at my office.)

Maybe we should also discuss what results (if any) we expect to achieve on such a common walkthrough?
Best regards,
Carsten
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