Looking for a programer

[PH3NOM]

Update, showing the current state of things.

This is a pretty large map (5.5mb) BSP, the commercial Quake 3 Arena used significantly smaller maps (1mb-1.5mb).
Still not using Juguefre's content; this is the freeware build .

[bogglez]

Links are borked btw, cutting off the beginning helps

[PH3NOM]

Thanks for taking a look! Another small update...

I have added a simple shader system that allows the specification of surface parameters in a text file that can be modified without changing the BSP or MAP.

The shader can specify weather or not to apply blending for transparency, and what factors to use for blending (src blend factor, dst blend factor, texture environment).

The surface can also be set as punch-through, using the PVR's punch-thorough list for creating things like bushes, as seen in this shot:


Another thing I have been working on is a scripting system that handles the placement and movement routines of AI entities, used for the terrorists as seen here:


Oh yeah, the shaders can also manipulate texture coordinates, used to create a flowing water effect on the fountain in this screen:


bogglez - are these links still borked? Thanks again for having a look

[bogglez]

They work in the last post.
And nice progress!
I'm finishing my thesis now, it hurts to watch your progress lol

[juguefre]

Hi,

Ok lets bump this thread!

How about this hands for the game?





PH3NOM already have a part of the level and is performing some tests so I guess we will be showing some advances pretty soon

Both hands are low poly and ready to go into the engine I just need to animate them.

Cheers!

[PH3NOM]

We will eventually start a site for our project, but for now I will continue to update here.

Blender, even most recent versions, can export into the Q3 Map format I am using

Here is juguefre's MAP that we have been working on. Still Work In Progress, I do not want to give all of the details away

[hilltopper06]

Awesome progress! Can't wait to see what you guys do next!

[PH3NOM]

Due to complexity of the maps we would like to create, I am working at getting away from using the .BSP format due to its inherent limitations.

Experimentally, I am using my own map format, that performs a direct conversion from .obj models.
The conversion includes pre-computing lighting, collision meshes, and vertex arrays for fast lighting, collision, and render on DC.

Here is what it looks like when rendering the collision mesh on top of the world geometry:


And here is what it looks like when using the collision mesh for fast collision detection:

[RyoDC]

Phenom, are you going to release your engine? Not now, but maybe someday?

[bogglez]

What were the limitations you hit? Great work! I'm writing some docs for now to help newbies out and then I want to get back at OpenGL

[juguefre]

Ok one of the bad guys have a few animations on it and looks like this for now:

https://youtu.be/O9aQrOErHpY

Any feedback?

[bogglez]

Looks great! I like the subtle jitter.

Three minor points:
Second animation: looks like he wants to shoot straight but aims upwards
The back of the shotgun should lean against the arm to avoid recoil. As it is now the shooter would drop the gun after shooting
The texture looks a bit stretched/pixilated on the forehead? I noticed this especially on the closeup shot on the front-page

[juguefre]

No stretching on the texture, and the aiming is done with that purpose, remember when thugs started aiming the pistol sideways? well he grabs the shotgun in a weird non professional fashion.there will be be professional gun users in the game wich will handle weapons the right way.

[PH3NOM]

Thank you for you input bogglez!

The textures are VQ compressed, so that is the pixelation you see.

We have hit all kinds of limitations, and found solutions to work within them. If you can be more specific, I can explain a bit more

[bogglez]

Thank you for you input bogglez!

The textures are VQ compressed, so that is the pixelation you see.

What resolution is that mask texture or is it one texture for the whole mesh?
Are you using texture filtering and mipmapping?
I think the suit and such look fine, but the face is something I think people pay a lot of attention to, so I'd up the quality there.
Maybe you're already doing this, but since the face texture is symmetrical you only need one half of it and can instead increase the resolution?
Maybe the eyes should be half-spheres with vertex colors instead, depending on whether you intend to show the character up close. I'd avoid close-up shots on low-resolution textures like in the announcement picture.

We have hit all kinds of limitations, and found solutions to work within them. If you can be more specific, I can explain a bit more

You didn't really say what caused problems, so I was wondering in general. It seems to be less of a performance problem and more of an artistic problem? Is the blender exporter hard to work with maybe?

[juguefre]

What resolution is that mask texture or is it one texture for the whole mesh?

It seems to be less of a performance problem and more of an artistic problem?

Can you elaborate on the artistic problem? we been solving all kind of issues here and there and maybe we miss something and that is why all feedback is ALWAYS important.

[bogglez]

http://i68.tinypic.com/w2p1qs.jpg
There you have the texture in case you want to check it in detail the one used in the engine is 512x512

I resized it to 512x512 and saved as PNG, then converted to VQ and back to PNG.
I overlayed the head sizes from your first announcement picture, so you can see by how much this texture is potentially scaled. The left head would be a magnification (this is where I noticed pixelation) and the right one would be a more common size.
By the way I hope you store the texture as PNG and it's just tinypic.com changing the image format to jpg.

So if you want to show the head at such a close distance I would increase its size.. Are you sure you don't want to mirror the suit for example?
The back of this enemy will probably rarely be seen entirely, usually just half of it, if at all (since enemies will usually face the player at a close distance).

Can you elaborate on the artistic problem? we been solving all kind of issues here and there and maybe we miss something and that is why all feedback is ALWAYS important.

ph3nom said he switched the map format due to some limitations, especially because you as the artist were limited by the Quake format. I also don't know what he means, just curious

[juguefre]

Hi bogglez,

Most parts of the suit cannot be mirrored as left and right are different, I mirrored the face, arms, shoes and hand as those are exactly the same.

About the quake map format ph3nom told me about an issue with the map not being perfectly sealed but the map was, I snaped the parts of the map to the vextex so there was not any gaps in it but yet he was still getting these gaps, when he changed the map format the issue was gone but the file was the same so it was an issue with the quake format.

[juguefre]

................

[juguefre]

And the first gun is ready.