The Official Phase Two City Contest: Amdeneir

[ohforf]

needs trees, lots and lots of trees

Fields as well, need to feed the population.

As of trees and forests, how can it be done without being an overkill? It possibly would be a FPS killer with so much models.

Technically, it is possible to create really nice Forests and Stuff and still being playable on an average Gaming PC.
A fine Example is Oblivion.  
One of the well known Tricks to reduce Polygon count is to make good use of Transparency - modeling a whole Tree with all Leaves and Branches would be insane.

[RlyDontKnow]

needs trees, lots and lots of trees

Fields as well, need to feed the population.

As of trees and forests, how can it be done without being an overkill? It possibly would be a FPS killer with so much models.

Technically, it is possible to create really nice Forests and Stuff and still being playable on an average Gaming PC.
A fine Example is Oblivion.  
One of the well known Tricks to reduce Polygon count is to make good use of Transparency - modeling a whole Tree with all Leaves and Branches would be insane.

that'd still be quite an overkill. instancing and dynamic impostering are often used to render very crowded scenes. there's some work in that area done in CS atm, however it's still not quite there, yet.

[LigH]

Xordan already implemented some instancing technology for foliage (grass) - but it possibly did not yet find a way into PS; it is generally disabled for some reason, probably.

I remember that the "Gothic" engine had a great technology for walkable dense forests - partitioning it into small areas which got substituted by solid textured prisms in the distance. That worked well with a usual polygon-based T&L engine comparable to CS 1.2 (PS 0.3.x); shader-based engines like CS 1.9 (PS 0.5.x) may even have more modern tools to reduce complexity in calculation.

[RlyDontKnow]

Xordan already implemented some instancing technology for foliage (grass) - but it possibly did not yet find a way into PS; it is generally disabled for some reason, probably.

it has many issues with transparency, HoM and such that are reviewed atm

I remember that the "Gothic" engine had a great technology for walkable dense forests - partitioning it into small areas which got substituted by solid textured prisms in the distance. That worked well with a usual polygon-based T&L engine comparable to CS 1.2 (PS 0.3.x); shader-based engines like CS 1.9 (PS 0.5.x) may even have more modern tools to reduce complexity in calculation.

that's what I meant with dynamic impostering.
basically you can render distant things to a texture and then just show that as long as the viewing angle/distance didn't change past a threshold, however CS doesn't support such things, yet.

[thorgrin]

Recently I have been playing Halo: Combat evolved and one of the levels, 343, Guilty Spark is partly played in an outdoors swamp forest. It is gloomy and the trees are huge. I wonder, can this be an inspiration for PS forests? I mean, instead of having lots of little trees, make rather fewer huge ones to minimize the impact and add some forest vegetation (bushes, grass)
I know nothing about map making and 3D stuff, but it seems that the engine draws the map from a short distance (as PS can do). There is a fog effect that limits the view and gives a gloomy feeling. Only thing is that the map of the swamp might be smaller than PS maps are, like 1/4th of the size.
The game (PC version) was released in 2003 and it might be on par with PS when it comes down to engine, graphics, etc.

Some screenies I have found:

http://hce.halomaps.org/images/files/lg/5screen212846shot00.jpg
http://hce.halomaps.org/images/files/lg/ACF5E1.jpg
http://shinyshell.net/library/img/articleart/343_1.png
http://halo.neoseeker.com/w/i/halo/thumb/1/10/Swamplevl.jpg/300px-Swamplevl.jpg

Obvlion looks very nice as well, trees are smaller, there is lots of grass and it looks much more demanding. The wild needs more forests/vegetation/trees. It's like someone burnt all the wild and all left is grass.

Edit: I've been searching and OGre engine has a feature called "paged geometry" suitable for forest and similar scenery:
http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=36655
Curious to see that a member that s/was involved in it participates in RoR development (Rigs of Rods, a vehicle + physics simulater) I played it for two years.

[Talad]

Phase 2 is completed!! Big thanks to everyone that made this possible. Amdeneir is now in PlaneShift 0.5.5.

Phase 3 will probably start soon. stay tuned.

[Baldur]

Congratulations everyone, even if I couldn't be there for a large part of the time

HIP HIP...!

[Earowo]

Phase 2 is completed!! Big thanks to everyone that made this possible. Amdeneir is now in PlaneShift 0.5.5.

Phase 3 will probably start soon. stay tuned.

I cant update to 5.5 sadly, both the update and rapair options freaze, and eventually, it stopped offering the update ooption

[Sarva]

you can always download the client again.

[Maisent]

Amdenier can only be accessed with Ptesaur's right?

[Phantomboy86]

Not at all actually. The Pterosaur NPC's dont recognize the city name as a destination.

[LigH]

There are possibly a few last bugs to be ironed out before the travel there will be available.

[Nikodemus]

Everyone who read this:
Tell your friends and think about it yourself:
This city quarter took 2 years to develop me, zwei and others. A bit too long huh?
Now think that the city is supposed to have 2 more quarters of similiar size and a smaller piece dedicated purely for landing platforms and then there is exterior and 3 separate mines.
If the development speed on this was supposed to be the same.... i predict 5 more years on city and another 5 years on exterior....
In other words, it needs more artists and I also need a break and a job i will make money for.
Commercial games make their stuff much faster, coz they have many more people working on a project like this one.
There is no other way than having more people.

[confused]

Well done to all the artists that worked on Amdeneir. I am very proud of you all for the quality work you produced. Pity I am no artist thus unable to help other than to cheer you lot along.

Yes, more artists are needed to speedily complete Amdeneir, with a guild house for the klyros. I love the alleyways with the streets. For the first time I really feel that I am living in a fantasy city of state city style of before the arrival of gun powder.

Congratulation once again to the team. 

[LigH]

Just a first glance of 2 minutes, and I already love it!