PlaneShift

Fan Area => Fan Art => Topic started by: Induane on December 04, 2006, 04:45:55 am

Title: Community Modeling Project Final.
Post by: Induane on December 04, 2006, 04:45:55 am
(http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/183/cmpcu0.png)

It has been quite a journey.  We set out to create a whole new area for PlaneShift.  I think we succeeded to the extent that it reached game quality, but unfortunately I couldn't convince everyone of this, so while its not going into PS, I'm going to provide it all here, boldly licensed now under Creative Commons.  Perhaps some more time put into it could have pulled it up by its bootstraps and  polished it enough that it could have made it in game, however I simply ran out of steam alone.  Many people helped a great deal with this, especially at first, but near the end it was me alone trudging along on and on and on. :D Not that that was bad - it was a great learning experience for me and I had an immense amount of fun along the way.  I know public posting and licensing will prevent it from being used in game but I had a good time making it so no love lost - at least not much! ;)

Update:  I touched up a few things and corrected a license violation. Fixed the waterfall and landscape export. Water is animated to rise and fall a little bit as well.  Also some modifications to the terrain LOD settings have been made for performance reasons. 

Lets have a quick list of those who contributed:

Initial Proposal:
 - JosePhoenix made the initial proposal and provided a hidden forum for us to do much of the planning work. KUDOS!

Technical Assistance:
 - Wired_Crawler didn't do any modeling or anything but helped me solve so many problems I couldn't even count it all.  His knowledge of PS and CS were invaluable.  I can safely say we would have failed without his council.

Concept Artists:

Mesh Modeling:


Texture Work:


There is also a good deal of background story but I never managed to have time to get it all into readable form.  My sincere apologies. 

Lets get this party started shall we?  How about a few early screenshots so you can see how bad things started out!  I'll try to progress screenshots so people can see some neato things I hope.   Later on I'll provide a finished world file and all the source files and textures associated with the project, all in one handy zip file.  Be warned though - it will be one big file.  :D

Upon second inspection I don't have all the old shots I thought I did! OH NO!! Well... that just means a few older shots then a tour of the real thing. 

Here is an early shot of some experiments with some forests:

(http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/3845/forestuf6.th.png) (http://img201.imageshack.us/my.php?image=forestuf6.png)

Some work on the trees:

(http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/8767/progressgj8.th.png) (http://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=progressgj8.png)

More early landscaping and bad ground textures:

(http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/7109/shot2nh1.th.png) (http://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot2nh1.png)

Did I mention bad ground textures?

(http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/6271/shot1jo3.th.png) (http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot1jo3.png)

More fun with attempting landscaping:

(http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/6897/screenshot1ky8.th.png) (http://img245.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot1ky8.png)

Our initial cave entrance by Archon:

(http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/4492/shot3cd0.th.png) (http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot3cd0.png)

Another shot of our old entrance:

(http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/1504/shot8ss7.th.png) (http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot8ss7.png)

But something just didn't quite fit and so Minetus came up with this concept work of a new cave entrance (yes there is a cave - we'll get to it!)

(http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/9758/cmpcaveentrancesx6.th.jpg) (http://img301.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cmpcaveentrancesx6.jpg)

Which he later turned into this:

(http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/8759/entrancefk3.th.jpg) (http://img142.imageshack.us/my.php?image=entrancefk3.jpg)

And finally another shot of some of our old terrain with a lake:

(http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/3600/shot7bh5.th.png) (http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot7bh5.png)

Newsflash! Found a shot of our old cave  stuff! - Bad isn't it? :D  Well, live and learn!

(http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/1628/2oz9.th.png) (http://img176.imageshack.us/my.php?image=2oz9.png)

Now lets descend into the cave shall we? :D  Here is some of the tunnels leading to the main cavern:

(http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/9210/shot1wg3.th.png) (http://img225.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot1wg3.png)

and

(http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/2854/shot2va5.th.png) (http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot2va5.png)

Long ago when you entered the cave one of the things you saw was a waterfall.  The waterfall went through a lot of revisions, and then once I had it just right... the particle system I was using was brutally removed from CrystalSpace! Oh NO!! I cried and cried... metaphorically of course - I'm currently investigating new methods of putting the waterfall back in.  As of the time of this writing however I've been forced to remove it. :(

Still though here is the first iteration of it:

(http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/8564/screenshot2tf8.th.png) (http://img137.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot2tf8.png)

Looked great from a distance but up close was very very ugly.  Later versions looked more like this:

(http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/2779/shot6lh3.th.png) (http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot6lh3.png)

And here is a shot of us testing it ingame on a test server.  Notice the bad experiments I was doing with waterfall color.

(http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/1784/shot02yj7.th.png) (http://img156.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot02yj7.png)

One of my favorite parts of the cave is the bridge that lordbug modeled. You can see it in the previous shot, but this shot shows it a bit more clearly:

(http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/3688/screenshot1jl4.th.png) (http://img150.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot1jl4.png)

As you can see the lamp posts and ground textures needed work, and the flames looked awkward.  Obviously we needed to do more hard work!  The textures were later easily fixed.  The hard part came when I decided to do the fire so that it looked nice.  Not all the fire is perfect yet, but it all looks good enough I think.  While those render lets have a look at the shack and a few more interior cave shots.  I still love those luminescent fungi growing wild lighting the cave.

This shack shot is just how the shack looks in blender - I'll have a better render soon.

(http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/1279/shackdc0.th.jpg) (http://img247.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shackdc0.jpg)

AND some more shots of the cave interior:

(http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/2797/shot4lu8.th.png) (http://img218.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot4lu8.png)

and

(http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/811/shot5jx2.th.png) (http://img176.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot5jx2.png)

Whew! That was a long wait!  I'm exhausted from it!  Good thing you guys don't have to read this post in real time as I write it! :D  I don't like the new waterfall quite as much but its better than nothing.  Feel free to improve it if you know how.  Anyways this is the view when you first enter the cave itself:

(http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/3553/enteringqi7.th.png) (http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=enteringqi7.png)

And now a shot of the new lamp posts and their flames!!

(http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/1568/flames1ga8.th.png) (http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=flames1ga8.png)

And now a lantern!

(http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/5404/lanternpu0.th.png) (http://img92.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lanternpu0.png)

Or perhaps some vids would help!  You need the theora codec to play them!

http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/Video/lampfire3.avi (http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/Video/lampfire3.avi)

http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/Video/fire.avi (http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/Video/fire.avi)

http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/Video/campfire3.avi (http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/Video/campfire3.avi)

Or how about the landscape? How did that turn out?  Well, sounds like time to check it out!!

(http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/9753/landscape1us3.th.png) (http://img242.imageshack.us/my.php?image=landscape1us3.png)

(http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6577/landscape2vf4.th.png) (http://img225.imageshack.us/my.php?image=landscape2vf4.png)

(http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/1194/lanscape3qx5.th.png) (http://img170.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lanscape3qx5.png)

(http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/7623/pathqb3.th.png) (http://img143.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pathqb3.png)

And now for some of the updated screenshots:

(http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/4672/lakeht6.th.png) (http://img413.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lakeht6.png)(http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/7968/lake2ta0.th.png) (http://img246.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lake2ta0.png)(http://img446.imageshack.us/img446/7997/land4zh4.th.png) (http://img446.imageshack.us/my.php?image=land4zh4.png)(http://img446.imageshack.us/img446/4858/land5id0.th.png) (http://img446.imageshack.us/my.php?image=land5id0.png)

(http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/2059/land6uz1.th.png) (http://img142.imageshack.us/my.php?image=land6uz1.png)(http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/1853/treept6.th.png) (http://img141.imageshack.us/my.php?image=treept6.png)(http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/5074/treetestnl2.th.png) (http://img141.imageshack.us/my.php?image=treetestnl2.png)(http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/5572/fallsvk9.th.png) (http://img241.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fallsvk9.png)

And now the grand finale!   Download this file:

http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/cmp.zip (http://vaalnor.mine.nu/CommunityModelingProject.zip)

And if you want just the world file to explore:

http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/CommunityModelingProject.zip (http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/CommunityModelingProject.zip)

The souce files and a world file "cavetest:.zip" is included in the archive.  BIg project though - about 90 mb so be patient.

A big thanks to everyone who helped! If I left anyone out then let me know.

P.S. There are a few glitches left that I'm aware of in case anyone feels like having a go:


And if you want to export the project for yourself, here are some tips:










Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Nikodemus on December 04, 2006, 09:06:38 am
Thats disappointing, nice shots though...
Maybe showing your great efford is better than waiting for a miracle? I gues at some point it may be just too much to wait for something what won't come.  ;/
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Induane on December 04, 2006, 09:34:11 am
Quote
Maybe showing your great efford is better than waiting for a miracle?

Not just my effort.  The project is the work of the community, not any one person.  But yes I figured it was finally time :(
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Gondric on December 04, 2006, 09:57:42 am
Looks awesome. way good enuough to go ingame i think. but alas for some strange reason stuff on the forums cant be ingame *sigh* meh id luv to see it ingame
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Acka on December 04, 2006, 10:03:22 am
Congrats on the work done to everyone who contributed. It looks like it turned out pretty well. Too bad it didn't make it.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: LigH on December 04, 2006, 10:33:18 am
I remember I've seen early stages of the "mine" level. Especially the outside and the entrance was a bit "choppy" (on my old hardware - 800 MHz, GeForce2 GTS), and the ladder stairs a bit too high to be climbed in "walktest". That was the state a few months ago...

I will have to download the new state and check again to see the development. For now, the screenshots look already promising.

I am quite experienced in creating heightfield terrains (I know e.g. Terragen very well) - if you need some support here, call me.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Induane on December 04, 2006, 01:34:16 pm
Quote
I remember I've seen early stages of the "mine" level. Especially the outside and the entrance was a bit "choppy" (on my old hardware - 800 MHz, GeForce2 GTS), and the ladder stairs a bit too high to be climbed in "walktest". That was the state a few months ago...

With a few exceptions the map works well for me on my geforce2 mx400 at work, but thats a p4 computer.  I don't know how older graphics card plus older computer hardware would handle this. 

Also some of the original choppyness came from some double exported portals - thats fixed though other problems are sure to endure :)

Quote
Looks awesome. way good enuough to go ingame i think. but alas for some strange reason stuff on the forums cant be ingame *sigh* meh id luv to see it ingame

I knew that posting it in the forums or anywhere public would completely ruin its chances of getting ingame but I'd given up on the waiting game :(  Perhaps I"m just not patient enough.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: neko kyouran on December 04, 2006, 01:42:35 pm
Quote from: josephoenix on July 02, 2006, 03:52:23 pm
Woah.

I present thee with a Gold Star of Kickassness.

(http://josephoenix.ps-mc.com/kickass.png)

josePhoenix
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Proglin on December 04, 2006, 04:55:08 pm
My mouth was open the entire thread.

All who helped... you guys are amazing. Wish I could do something to  help getting it in-game.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Ralleyon on December 04, 2006, 05:04:23 pm
All I can say is... wow... Awesome work from the Vaalnor team, don't lose hope guys.  :thumbup:
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: ThomPhoenix on December 04, 2006, 09:11:59 pm
Wow, so that is why you went missing for the four last days!
Great job on this Induane! And of course everyone else who worked on this project too!  :flowers:

 \\o//
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Akaye on December 04, 2006, 10:04:31 pm
 :thumbup: Nice work, must have been very time consuming. Thumbs up to all who worked on this project. Practice makes perfect, and who knows maybe we are looking at future PS dev's. 
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Nikodemus on December 04, 2006, 10:29:37 pm
Overybody look at this with so positive attitude. I would say wow if it made it in game. Not only because it is great piece of art, but also because PS would start developing in more rapid way. Every screenshot is really cool and everything, but a lot of it is wasted efford for me. I just look at this from all sides.
Great, Inuade and everybody else did so much, probably learning a lot at the same time, but the whole story is depressing and sad.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Akaye on December 04, 2006, 10:48:15 pm
Quote from: Nikodemus
but a lot of it is wasted efford for me. I just look at this from all sides.
 

 :) Obviously Jekkar, Minetus, Lordbug, and Archon didn't feel it was a waste of time. They have talent. Maybe they didn't have what they made put into the game but maybe that will only make them strive to do bigger and better. There is obviously a certain standard you have to meet for your creations to go into game and they didn't meet it. Who's to say they won't after this little project? Maybe then the sad story you see will turn into a happy one and then you can look at this thread in a positive light as the rest of us do as you pointed out.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Nikodemus on December 04, 2006, 10:56:58 pm
The thing is that creating such thing is not only a mater of talent, but time you need to spent on creating specifig things, something what can't be used in future work, if any...
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Kalika on December 04, 2006, 11:10:26 pm
 \\o// wow looks amazing :D great job all of youse :D
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Baldur on December 04, 2006, 11:27:49 pm
I agree with Kalika, youse have done an excellent job :)
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Phinehas on December 05, 2006, 12:28:13 am
Ah. You know I was behind you all the way on this one, Induane. It's a shame that they didn't accept it. Truly a shame.

/me mourns the loss of his tower.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Akaye on December 05, 2006, 12:53:51 am
Quote from: Phinehas
It's a shame that they didn't accept it. Truly a shame.

It is a shame and I find myself curious as to why it wasn't accepted. What was the over all review? What did the dev team think of it? BTW I love the lights found near the water fall on the bridge and around it. Very neat.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Jekkar on December 05, 2006, 02:11:59 am
/me mumbles something to himself about devs
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Induane on December 05, 2006, 02:30:55 am
Quote
Practice makes perfect, and who knows maybe we are looking at future PS dev's.

Well we sure did get plenty of practice thats for sure.  As for future devs, I've applied twice - the first time I didn't get any response at all, and so I reapplied later on.  I think the 2nd time I did get an email back saying that my skills weren't needed or something but to be sure to try again sometime.  Applying twice was enough for me.  Jekkar also applied to the 2d dev section but didn't make it either :(  I guess in some ways we spent a lot of time on this was to in a childish way say "see what you missed" :D Or at least it helped me with motivation a bit - I don't know about anyone else.

Quote
The thing is that creating such thing is not only a mater of talent, but time you need to spent on creating specifig things, something what can't be used in future work, if any...

We ended up licensing it creative commons just so that it could be used elsewhere freely - hopefully it will be put to good use!

Quote
It is a shame and I find myself curious as to why it wasn't accepted. What was the over all review? What did the dev team think of it? BTW I love the lights found near the water fall on the bridge and around it. Very neat.

This is a tough one to explain correctly but I will try.  I was in contact with Talad at several points during the process.  He was quite helpful in pointing out areas that needed improvement and I am glad he was kind enough to review the things I sent him.  Eventually though near the end of the process I kept trying to ask him "if we finished this completely would he put it ingame" - he usually politely told me more things to improve.  So we would work on those things and check back.  Finally though I went and asked: "Straight up man, if this gets finished completely will your allow it ingame, yes or no?".  He just responded "Well in game is tricky."

Looking back I get the overall impression (I could be wrong here as I'm just speaking instinctively) that Talad was uncomfortable in accepting artwork which was not a part of the plan for the world of PS that was already in place.  He never said this and was never rude to me in any way but I really wish that if this was true he would have simply told me so that I could prioritize things in the best possible way.

Quote
* Jekkar mumbles something to himself about devs

/me mumbles along :)


Quote
There is obviously a certain standard you have to meet for your creations to go into game and they didn't meet it.

Here is my tiny egotistical rant ;)  I truely think that there are many many places in planeshift that are not near the quality of our attempted contribution.  Sure those things are going to be "fixed" in the future, but in my opinion our stuff could have gone ingame as well - if they had I would have made it a top priority to fix any and ALL glitches.

All in all though I can't say I regret it. I eventually had to make a decision - call the project complete - or at least release it and show what we had worked so hard on, or melt away and not post it thus preserving a glimmer of hope that it would someday find its way in game.  I ended up going with the first option after a long period of reflection.  I used 4 or 5 days to just totally adsorb myself in the project and bring it close to completion, and the result is what you see.  I've already fixed the waterfall more like it used to be (kudos to caedes for adding a rain preset in b2cs).

All in all its quite a mix of a sense of extreme accomplishment and disappointment.  I wish to look mostly though at the good - knowledge gained is rarely useless. :D
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Under the moon on December 05, 2006, 02:49:33 am
There is a lot of empty space out in the hills, and you obviously know how to edit the world files... *raises an eyebrow in a hinting way*

Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Induane on December 05, 2006, 02:59:47 am
Yep we left plenty of room.  What did you have in mind?

Oh and Phinehas - give me a concept drawing (doesn't have to be good) of your tower and I'll see what I can do.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Akaye on December 05, 2006, 03:01:07 am
Thanks Induane for taking the time to explain and feed my curiousity. Much appreciated. It takes a lot of love of a game to make the art you all did and I congratulate you all on finishing it. Your attiude on the situation is humbling and I can understand how disappointed you all might feel. You still shared your work after all and just know it is appreciated by the fans of planeshift.  :flowers:
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Under the moon on December 05, 2006, 03:02:07 am
Ehem. I raised the wrong hinting eyebrow. There is lot's of empty room in the hills outside of Hydlaa, and even more in the BD area.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Induane on December 05, 2006, 03:04:41 am
Ahh yes.  Quite tricky - especially now with the binary world files. Docconv can change them to standard files and back to be sure though.  Just need some mods to vfs and an exported building as a library file. :)
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Kiirani on December 05, 2006, 05:13:23 am
That is seriously awesome :) Too bad it won't make it ingame..
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Easton on December 05, 2006, 06:22:52 am
/me hugs Induane

It definitely isn't all a failure, not even a tiny tiny bit. You're an inspiration to others who have ideas and want to pursue them without knowing the end product. It takes a good amount of courage to do something like that. I know i don't need to tell you this but take great pride in what you and your friends have created. And who's to say its over? Keep going. Expand the idea. Go beyond whatever limits you (or others) may have set. You have all of this.. stuff.. so make more. do more. always. and one more time.. this project is an inspiration.

Easton
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Karyuu on December 05, 2006, 08:03:24 am
Quote
(http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/6271/shot1jo3.th.png) (http://img89.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot1jo3.png)

My favorite, and absolutely gorgeous. What was the poly count on the trees?
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: LigH on December 05, 2006, 08:07:10 am
About the mumbling:

Dreams usually have the habit to be hard to control. They develop themselves. But aren't the surprises the fun about dreams, Talad? ;)
__

About Karyuu's signature:

(http://www.phosted.com/x12/buypens.gif)

Don't let artwork hurt you!  :o

 ;D
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Induane on December 05, 2006, 02:11:08 pm
NEar the end after some cleanup the trees were running around 800 to 1000 polys.  I had planned on making them disappear in the distance and be replaced with a billboard of the trees but never got around to it.  Its something I could easily add though.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Idoru on December 05, 2006, 02:39:25 pm
I honestly think it is some beautiful work. Congratulations to all those who were involved.

I would love to hear the reasons for it not being implemented in the game though, from the horses mouth.

Come on Talad, I doubt you could rain on their parade by pointing out the reasons. They are probably as dejected as they can possibly get anyway now. I cant imagine how bad it must have felt to do all this hard work in vain.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: neko kyouran on December 05, 2006, 03:47:58 pm
One little note, from my personal view.

Whether it was excepted in game or not, it never was work done in vain.  I'm sure they learned quite a bit during the creation of it.  That knowledge will help them in the future.  There is also the thought that just making it, a sense of personal accomplishment would come from that.  To be able you were able to create something like that alone, should make it worthwhile.  Yes, it would be nice to see it used for greater and better, but thats something for the future.

k, i'll be quiet now.   :-X
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Jekkar on December 05, 2006, 07:08:24 pm
Quote from: neko kyouran on December 05, 2006, 03:47:58 pm
One little note, from my personal view.

Whether it was excepted in game or not, it never was work done in vain.  I'm sure they learned quite a bit during the creation of it.  That knowledge will help them in the future.  There is also the thought that just making it, a sense of personal accomplishment would come from that.  To be able you were able to create something like that alone, should make it worthwhile.  Yes, it would be nice to see it used for greater and better, but thats something for the future.

k, i'll be quiet now.   :-X

/me pets the bird in the sig
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Gentar on December 05, 2006, 09:16:14 pm
This is truly impressive! The fact that such a large project was completed with the collaboration of so many members of the community amazes me. Great work.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Induane on December 06, 2006, 01:41:53 am
It was brought to my attention that I had used the PlaneShift skybox.  I completely forgot I had done that.  That\ can't be creative commons as its atomic blue licensed.  I'm working to create a new skybox that fits the style and will upload as soon as possible.

Update: Finished a new skybox - will upload when I get off of work.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: LigH on December 08, 2006, 03:33:00 pm
How do I open the project under Windows now?

- The old "Binary Artist Package" 0.99 r0 (January 27, 2006) is not anymore compatible (e.g. "unexpected: 'indexbuffer'").
- It is also not directly compatible with CelStart v7 (missing a "celstart.cfg" inside at least).

I tried to make it more or less CelStart compatible by adding an icon (160x120 JPEG) and a basic celstart.cfg (based on the one inside castle.celzip); but I don't know what I missed, probably the "world" file misses some starting coordinate or similar in a format required for CelStart ... it didn't work.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Induane on December 09, 2006, 02:22:03 am
Due to changes in crystalspace and PlaneShift updating to the newer crystalspace I updated the maps to be planeshift compatible.  As a result the antiquated binary package for windows will NOT work with the CMP maps.  Your only choice afaik would be to do 1 of two things - compile crystalspace newly enough, OR compile a server test it on a test server.  You would need to add something like this to both the server and clients zoneinfo.xml to make it teleportatable.

<!-- death-realm -->
−
   <zone sector="Cave" loadimage="Loading Death Realm Background">
<region map="cavetest"/>
</zone>
−
   <zone sector="Tunnels" loadimage="Loading Death Realm Background">
<region map="cavetest"/>
</zone>
−
   <zone sector="Canyon" loadimage="Loading Death Realm Background">
<region map="cavetest"/>
</zone>

Or alternatively use this file http://vaalnor.mine.nu/zoneinfo.xml (http://vaalnor.mine.nu/zoneinfo.xml)

I havn't gone through the steps to give it its own loading screen though one is provided in the package.  Thus it will load like the DR.  I still havn't uploaded the new skybox version as I've been a bit busy.  It will be done before the weekend is out or my name isn't... uh.. Induane!! :D

Cheers
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: LigH on December 09, 2006, 12:34:31 pm
Pretty alternatives: Compile, or compile.  :surrender:

I am afraid I really must set up some C++ development environment, and waste gigabytes of space and weeks of troubleshooting until I can watch it...

Maybe Thom could add it?  :flowers:

Or you may discover what CelStart needs to load it.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Induane on December 09, 2006, 12:39:36 pm
Looks like I can make a cel exported version of the map :) I'll try to add that to the next package for download. :D
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project DONE! ... well - close enough!
Post by: Seytra on December 22, 2006, 09:45:58 pm
This is really amazing! If I ever get PS to compile and work, I'll put that on the local test server. Nothing compared to having it ingame, though. I would be very surprised if the PS world was not only completely planned already, but also in such detail that it wouldn't have any empty spots. And I agree, there are places in PS that are of much lower quality than this (looks like). I think a straightforward definitive answer would have been in order, but whatever.

Well done!
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project Final.
Post by: Induane on December 25, 2006, 02:13:40 am
I couldn't help fixing a few other things, so I've upload a new version, and this time the world file is downloadable by itself if you don't want the source.   This will be the last version unless another copyright violation is found that I overlooked.  Thanks to everyone, and enjoy our work :D
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project Final.
Post by: Jekkar on December 27, 2006, 06:21:41 pm
Work continues on the CMP project, now named Vaaloria.  The first change is to use a custom shader to generate the waterfall effect combined with standard particles for foam. Induane sent me a video in the CoV chat today and it was looking very good, so here a little video.
http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/Video/waterfall.avi

To view this video you will need the theora codec installed, or just play it with VideoLAN.
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project Final.
Post by: LigH on December 28, 2006, 01:10:14 pm
Custom Shader ... so this effect may require a FX class graphic card?

Furthermore: The dimensions of 1202x911 pixels gave me a distorted picture, I had to disable YV12 overlay output in ffdshow. You should ensure that video has at least even dimensions, preferably even divisible by 16 (for MPEG based codecs).

Newest builds of ffdshow - *the* universal Windows video decoder (no more need for risky / crappy / illegal codec packs):

http://sourceforge-net/projects/ffdshow-tryout
Title: Re: Community Modeling Project Final.
Post by: Induane on December 28, 2006, 05:42:37 pm
No its just a quicky shader that wiggles a uv map and normalmap around. Simple stuff - works fine on my geforce2 mx400 here at work.  65 fps.  The foam at the base of the falls is a generic particle system.  Nothing fancy there either.

Thats one good thing about it going into a different game.  It opens the ability to do cooler stuff like this.  I doubt I could have convinced anyone to include the 15k shader with PS.  Its useful for creating streams, waterfalls, lakes... all kinds of stuff.  Very simple to use too.  As for the image dimensions it all plays fine in VLC media player, and in my web browser no problem... the theora codec is common and not illegal - its open source and free to download.  It keeps the stuff small for my screen capture program.  Plus I can't figure out how to change what its default output is and I'm too lazy to re-encode :D