Announcements
Join the ongoing conversation on Discord: https://discord.gg/w6Tpkp2
Please read the current update for instructions on downloading the latest update. Players with Mac versions of the game will not be affected, but you will have a slightly longer wait for your version of the new maps. Please make a copy of your character folder before running the new update, just to make sure you don't lose any of your custom work.
It looks like we can give everyone a list of minimum specs for running City of Titans. Please keep in mind that this is 'for now' until we are able to add more graphics and other system refinements. Currently you will need :
Windows 10 or later required; no Intel integrated graphics like UHD, must have AMD or NVIDIA card or discrete chipset with 4Gb or more of VRAM
At least 16GB of main DRAM.
These stats may change as we continue to test.
To purchase your copy of the City of Titans Launcher, visit our store at https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/ A purchase of $50 or more will give you a link to download the Launcher for Windows or Mac based machines.
Is it suppossed to look like Robot Chicken?
On the Day five video at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGGHigW4rZc
about 8:15, Bob mentioned that allowing the player to control the glow might not be feasible.
Both Champions and CoX allowed both color and intensity of glows to be controlled.
So clearly...it IS feasible.
In fact, it was feasible six or eight years ago.
The question is HOW it's done.
Yes, I know it's hard. I wonder if you could give Unreal a call?
I wouldn't be too quick to assume we're talking the same kind of glow here. I think it might be more accurate to say that Champions and CoX had controllable glows - how those glows were implemented might be a very different story from the one on the firefairy wings. Sheep will probably give you a better answer shortly.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
On the PR ninja sword. I think I would like it to have an effect when you swing it. Tie the PR logos to the animation in this case so swing the sword and "Awesome", "City of titans", "Freem", or one of the others gets displayed. This would ease the clutter of the PR sayings.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
Personally I'm pitching for comic book style sound effects to come out. Imagine a sword that actually said, in big special effect font, 'SLASH' when you, well, slashed. Mind you, I said I'm pitching it. I'm Community Manager, not tech. Don't get excited yet. But it sure looks doable.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
I am certainly enjoying Devmas and look forward the second half.
I distracted myself when the" FREEM!" came out in the video. I was about to say, the the intent is to just have a single random word, or perhaps two, come out during an attack with the sword, not a never ending and overlapping set of them, but I still have more to setup for that.
As far as customizing of glows, I could definitely set up for very adjustable glows, but I didn't want to promise too much because I'm not sure what decisions have been made by the Systems and UI folks. Seeing how easy it would be to make a superbright visual griefing in my video, it is likely there would need to be some limits. I have no idea if the final form will be some set of sliders, or selectable "dim", "glowing", and "bright" pre-sets
. I'm really just a 3D team member who happened to point his video camera at his computer screen at the right time.-- sorry about the video quality :)
Lets fill our world with some Happy Trees!
To clarify this slightly: what Warcabbit is talking about here is primarily a question of business / legal issues; these are "player-sourced assets" in the sense that players would be creating them, and receive compensation accordingly (for whatever that meant, in the details), but would still be handled through the "main" distribution process, as with any other asset, including quality standards and requirements regarding appropriateness and such.
I suspect that those who have played "sandbox" games where players are able to create their own assets whole-cloth, such as Second Life, will have a fairly immediate understanding of why; "time to crate" is not the only metric of its nature.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Implementing it is actually trivial, the question is more one of how we end up choosing the allocate the available palette; glow intensity is just another form of information, but like all other forms, takes up some "space" in a (very) finite chunk of data.
The default way of handling this is limited to 32 bits worth of total information, normally split into four distinct channels, which leads to either four user-specified colors, or three user-specified colors and a glow intensity for one of them.
I am aware that Champions has four-plus-a-glow, but it also does not allow the full range of colors that can otherwise be expressed. This is not, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing -- there are always tradeoffs to be made, but we have not yet finalized the decisions on whether we want to jump to using using two full samples worth of data (64 bits total), narrow the color choices in exchange for having limited glow levels (and if so by how much), and so on.
There are also a couple of other tricks that we need to look at related to how we can efficiently allocate things such that we don't have to make needless extra calls which would cause people's graphics cards to cry for mercy during costume contests and the like, without triggering limitations such as "only able to have emissives *or* translucency on a single costume" which would make for a sad sheep. Implementing these may end up needing to "steal" a couple of bits from the total as well.
[hr]
[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
This actually is (or was) one of the ideas of how it might operate. The details are still very much up in the air, and hearing feedback is useful.
For those wondering what it might look like if done that way, check one of the older videos (I think it may even be the "main" KS video, I don't recall for certain) for the bit where Blockman is shown leaving a trail while running. The technique is actually quite simple to implement but requires that the mesh be set up with a couple of specific things in order to support it, so we may have run out of time to set that up for the Devmas work (I've had my head buried in code for most of the duration).
It is also extremely flexible, enough so that it should be possible to have it distinguish between "movements that should leave a trail" and "movements that should not." Causing the trail to be a word rather than a solid sheet of "light" is, interestingly enough, just a texture trick.
It might even end up being an option that can be switched -- *probably* between one or the other or off; having both enabled seems like it would be cluttered to the point of making it obnoxious for others, but the final call on that is separate from any technical consideration, so I can't really speak to it.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Not using RGBA from Painted Vertices? ;)
Seven Days... till you see the fruitcake?
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
We're all fruitcakes, here. *grin*
Be Well!
Fireheart
Shoulder dragons, check.
Thanks, Novembertrees!
K9T eating the ham, check ^_^
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
This is the danger of a company giving very, very early peeks at the raw underpinnings of their game.
Most people don't understand that what they're looking at is just the underlying framework that will allow all of the pretty stuff to lie on top and function.
Like the raw scaffolding that is hidden under a beautiful building--most people can't see that it's just a framework that will make the beautiful building possible.
Don't worry, BrandX-- the art hasn't even been applied yet. If you stripped the art off of even a game like, say, Terra, the underlying scaffolding wouldn't be pretty.
But it would show what the scaffolding will allow all of the pretty art to do once applied.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I just noticed one of the shoulder dragons is using one of the ninjato. ^_^
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Yep... i havent done allot of 3D development [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2pSMWacsv8]myself[/url], but that looks about right for a testing mock-up. ;)
And probably recording the Monitor with a camera takes away some the quality, but thats to be expected. ;)
*peeks in*
o_o
Those lil dragons seem to be getting into everything.....
Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.
--H.P. Lovecraft
On the other hand, it is rather less prone to having problems than several of the alternatives we've tried, which mostly seem to get exceedingly unhappy with anything but the highest-end rigs. However, this probably has more to do with not having done very much in the way of optimizing assets and their setup yet, than anything else (I can say this with some comfort mostly because I've also toyed with spawning a bunch of things that *were* at least moderately optimized, and the numbers coming out of the engine looked fairly sane).
But as the great Knuth has said: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Or, for the layman, "first make it *right*, then figure out where the time is being spent, and only after *both* of those should you be trying to improve speed."
Beyond a minimal level, anyway; something that takes five minutes to render a single frame is an issue just because it slows down the development cycle, and is so obviously broken in some truly pathological way that it is almost guaranteed to not be doing what you expect, under the hood.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Just RGBA texture samplers in the rendering pipeline.
Note that there have been some *very* interesting developments in the UE4 rendering pipeline in the most recent version, that are still fairly experimental, and we have not yet had a chance to really do much about evaluating them.
However, suffice to say that if they prove to be usable for our needs, certain problems suddenly become a great deal less tightly constrained.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
And, folks, we have to keep some secrets. Otherwise, y'all won't have anything to talk about.
[color=green]All Purpose Frog[/color]
Wait until you see the... nope, that would ruin the surprise.
Is it "November Trees"? or "No Ember Trees"?
*waves*
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Well, yes, that *is* how I've trained them, after all. :)
It is only when we stand up, with all our failings and sufferings, and try to support others rather than withdraw into ourselves, that we can fully live the life of community.
[color=#ff0000]Business Director[/color]
That is actually one of the two other particle system effects I did for the sword.
I had words being left by the blade as a kind of glowing word trail, but ,without an animation to time it to, I had to give it a drift speed out of the sword. This made for an effect that wasn't looking good in time we had for photos or video... either it was too fast, and looked very strange with the character not moving, or, too slow and s t r e t c h e d way out when moving. I know the technique is doable, but I shelved it till I can research the kind of variables I would need to track, or manually time the sweep to an actual animation.
The Whole Word particle system is meant to drop one at a time, but I set it up quickly with what I hoped was a slow semi-random popup on the word types, and ended up with some of them synching up too much. It works in general, so, I was pleased that it came together after the sweep words effect went on hold.
I know how I want to change it to drop single words, but my time has been making sure the 12 Days objects get onto SantaOdo and pics and videos taken... fun stuff!
Lets fill our world with some Happy Trees!
Besides, Robot Chicken is awesome!
Be Well!
Fireheart
Nice. :D
Ohh.. Maybe have each letter appear separate and form a Trail?
[img]http://www.cgmotionbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Rocket-Ship-Trail-of-Letters-in-After-Effects.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/1oaOfEv.png[/img]
Oh wait... thats more a time controlled projectile of specific letters :/
Never mind. ;D
It's supposed to be november, but I apparently can't type around my cat >.<
Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.
--H.P. Lovecraft
As noted in a previous post, the technique normally used for that approach is one we've proven in the past, but it requires some additional bits of setup to work -- not difficult, just something that the time crunch limited. For those actually wondering about it in UE4, look for "Anim Trails" -- they're a lot more powerful than they look at first, but also really easy to get into weird states if you're not careful, since they often act as a sort of hybrid between "mostly world space" and "mostly view space," along with having interactions with the spawning logic that are not always terribly intuitive.
The nice thing about them, in fact probably the thing that makes them worth the hassle in most cases, is that the same flexibility that makes them so tricky to get set up right, when combined with the information that gets passed to them as part of the triggering logic, allows for things that are otherwise nearly impossible, such as cleanly following a curved "blade sweep" path or automatically compensating for a swing that does not have a constant speed and/or acceleration over the relevant part of the animation.
In short, a bit of voodoo to get properly nailed down, but darn nifty voodoo once it is.
Oh, and in fairness to Bob's current particle system, I should point out that the "base" project he's doing the work under does not really have much support for "melee" of any sort straight out of the box -- meaning that it lacks anything convenient like a "contact / hit" event when the weapon strikes a target, which rules out one of the more obvious options for "how to keep it from constantly spawning."
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I should clarify here that nothing has fully ruled out using vertex coloring as some or all of the way to carry information, but that data is then, for the most part, limited to only the vertex shader, not the pixel shader. The balance between those being another deeply technical item that we have not fully sorted out in terms of decisions and their implications.
It also seems like it might have some problematic constraints when dealing with multi-patterned costumes, but being able to carry some forms of metadata there that *aren't* pattern sensitive may well also be exceedingly useful.
Basically, nailing down some of the "deeply technical" bits in a way that can give us a coherent approach that provides what we need without frying the sanity of too many of the artists (or for that matter, other folks in Tech) is pretty high on my list of things that need to happen after the current work.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Yep. ;)
I havent tried it myself, but you might try making any Swoosh Trail a Prop (like the sword is) and dock it to a socket on the Sword Prop.
This way... Short Wands, Hammers, Fishing Poles (all of varying length ) will have the Swoosh the correct position... just scale the Swoosh Plane to fit the length (assuming the Pivot is somewhere in the middle of the plane). ;D
And if you're feeling adventurous... Each Swoosh Prop (that you attach to the Sword) can have its own Box Collider's positioned where the Letters should spawn. But to have it work fast, the Sword (Prop's) would need to use a Raycast to check the distance of the Swoosh'es Box Collider's as its swung.
Ehhh.. Bye Bye Particle Effects?!? Too much work though. :{
I LOVE HAM.
______________
IANAL, IMHO, WYSIWYG, YMMV, IIRC, AFAIK, ETC
[color=#ff0000]Composition Assistant Director, Composition Team[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Definitely a *lot* simpler to use anim trails, I suspect. Otherwise you get back into all the problems that were being run into with the normal particle spawns. Remember that you can accomplish some pretty profoundly fancy (and strange) effects by doing things as simple as panning the texture at a rate that is bound to the trail spawning (which can be set to be time and/or distance based).
There is a tutorial for UDK that demonstrates this pretty well, actually; if I remember rightly, it uses a pan across a noise texture to get a "turbulence" sort of effect that isn't quite so window-shade-snappy, though for something like words you actually probably *want* either that, or a very particular sort of alpha fade that is bound at least partially to the overall word rather than just the time that the particular bit of it spawns. That'd be one of those spots where, honestly, the only way to really tell is to try out several options and see what actually looks good.
Believe it or not, the trickiest part is likely to be arranging for it to not trigger off of minor "bobbing" from things like combat-ready idle animations, since that requires setting up events that don't exist yet so that the system can know when a "real" strike is happening. Otherwise you'd get weird little bits of words or word fragments in a trail an inch or two long every time it shifted because the hand twitched, etc. At least, that's the simplest approach that comes to mind, we'll have to see how it works out in practice.
However, the real question is actually "did we just discover a legitimate use for Comic Sans?" I mean, obviously the answer is "no" because there is no such thing, but it is an amusing little philosophical question to contemplate, since Unreal can generate text+font based procedural textures on the fly.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Yep, you are right.
I guess I was hoping to find a solution that allowed more freedom to the 3D Prop Designers.. where they can add certain Bones, Mesh Colliders, etc.. and name them a certain way that can be interpreted by the Developers.
So a few bones that have a Prefix of "ParticleEffect..." would emit a trail.. and the scale (or other) of the bone would signify the number of particles. :/
Day Eight!
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
I noticed DeathSheep's pack in the Youtube video, but no update yet ;)
Must be processing issues.
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[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Someone cabbit-shaped didn't push the go button. Try now.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Alright so on the kickstarter update it says that I could switch the different tools out, is that still possible?
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/24.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
That remains the plan.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I have to ask, is that cityscape another test map, or is it a map that is or resembles an actual in-game location?
A test map, using low-quality pieces as stand-ins.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
sweet! can I attack with them?
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/24.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
And now we come to the topic I mentioned the other day, having also managed to find some additional tidbits in the engine source code recently (in fact, very recently, like "late last night").
While this cannot be an absolute promise because I try to act like an engineer, which means nothing is ever truly guaranteed until it actually exists, I currently see no obvious reason why it would not be workable -- and in fact, at least potentially "chainable". A body wearing a muttonpack with an arm holding a gun that fires sharks that have... okay, actually, once the sharks were fired, it isn't tied into the main mesh and skeleton anymore, so that would end up depending on the particle system. But you get the idea.
Now, there is one crucially important caveat to this: while there is nothing *preventing* something such as swinging a sword with the muttonpack arm, that does not mean that we will necessary be able to support using arbitrary weapons stuck to it as part of combat, at least not at launch. However, this is for the simple reason that the animations have to be created, and are separate from the normal humanoid animations, so (assuming that this all works out) how much we can support there is primarily a function of the time / resources available to do that work.
Again, this doesn't mean you can't stick a sword or a gun or whatever onto it -- any asset with the right flags set on it would be selectable -- or that you can't go into combat with it, only that until the animation support is there for that particular combination it would not have a "combat animation" as distinct from its normal animation.
My guess would be that due to the simplicity, most ranged weapons -- at least anything with a "point and shoot" interface, if you will -- will end up being the simplest, as the guidance required to get a robotic arm into a suitable position seems likely to actually be *more* forgiving than a normal character animation, but I am not an animator. For which, by the way, you should all be extremely thankful. My one attempt at animating someone waving their hand was... bad. Painfully so. Biomechanics, I can do, but standard animation comes from a completely different approach.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
alright sounds fair. Having at least some costume piece interactions with animation will be a step up from a lot of supers MMOs today :)
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/24.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
I shall not ignore the rough unfinished buildings. They are clearly the coolest thing I've seen all Devmas! <3
Let's see: Four more days, and three (maybe just two) more items I found in my recent Kickstarter Archive Dive:
[url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/629250]Petalstorm's Brush[/url]
and
[url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/650275]Warcabbit's Hammer and Toolbox[/url] (which might be two separate items).
This means [I]at least[/I] one more thing that will be a complete surprise to me! I can't wait!
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
*wipes eyes* it's it's beautiful. First thought... MAH HA HA HA.... second Ohhh I can make an upgrade Meat Doctor!
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
You should look at xsplit/obs for monitor recording. Sure these are mainly used by streamers, but they are also good at capturing video that later needs to be edited.
Xsplit requires a license for high quality capture (anything above 720p resolution) whilst OBS is free.
Just out of the box recording I would say that OBS is easier, even though it doesn't offer AMD hardware encoding as standard, it does support NVENC and Quick Sync (Nvidia and Intel) hardware encoding. And these actually *reduce* the hardware specs needed. As in it can reduce the processor load from 15% usage down to 2 or 3%....
It is also a case where recording video the higher the bit rate is better (and faster encoding options) are better for lower spec machines, because you have more room to play with.
And trust me, if someone is able to stream with an 8 year old computer[1] using OBS, I think that using it just to record video is FAR better than using a webcam/blurry mobile phone to capture it.
And yes, I am willing to help you developers set it up...
[1] Not kidding on this one. The person has to run their chat software on a tablet instead of their main computer because of the problems that it has with flash.... OBS runs fine, and they are able to stream at a decent/watchable quality. Their records using the same hardware are obviously better quality.
When the camera swung around to the back it looked like the actual building and sky were being reflected on the Muttonpack.
Were they? If so, is the plan to make all appropriately reflective surfaces in the game accurate and not just texture fakery like in CO?
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
Forget needing to plan on it, with Unreal 4 it's practically automatic.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
Good to know. Thanks!
I'll have to be careful not to get caught admiring myself in windows too often :)
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
Oddest thing about the Penthouse in CO.
[URL=http://s1363.photobucket.com/user/Foradain/media/MirrorCheck2_zps0ea32450.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1363.photobucket.com/albums/r720/Foradain/MirrorCheck2_zps0ea32450.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
That's what we see looking over Xandra Jade's shoulder: Balconey, firepit, next building over...
[URL=http://s1363.photobucket.com/user/Foradain/media/MirrorCheck_zps5b094962.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1363.photobucket.com/albums/r720/Foradain/MirrorCheck_zps5b094962.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
But in her mirror all we see is the next building over. Like it's a window into an alternate universe where the building she's in doesn't exist.
Makes it very hard for her to check her hair and makeup. ^_^
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
MERRY DEVMAS! Nine days, nine tails!
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
A Nine-Tailed Salute!
(That's eight more tails than my Kitsune in CO had to settle for!)
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
That would be a classic "static reflection" mirror, which reflects only what is present when the lighting is baked.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Least amazing Origin Story
Went to Wentworth's. Bought some Hamidon Goo. It tasted like ham. Now I have powers.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing. It might not be the BEST thing to do, but it is sure as hell the least strain on the persons computer at the end. If it has issues with this, then it would also have issues with the game textures in general.
It is worth noting that baking in effects can be used by the developers so that "lesser" specced machines still have something to fall back on, instead of rendering garbage.
Just like how a game that has DirectX 11 and DirectX 9 versions of it, the DX9 version is *generally* the faster/smoother running[1], even though it might not be the "best"[2] looking. Because the DX11 version might render all the effects in real time, the DX9 version could well end up using baked in effects because it is not suitable/supported in DX9 to do it in real time.
[1] Not joking here. Generally speaking the DX9 version is for the older PC's even though they could be running a modern OS with DirectX 10/11 on the system.
[2] Subjective. It wont be as "flashy" looking most of the time. It all depends as to what effects get cut back/alternative rendering methods get used.
Quite, although I will note here that UE4 has basically dropped DX9 support. That said, we're still quite a ways from opening, DX11 has been supported on pretty much everything for quite a while now, and there isn't actually anything that prevents using this sort of technique as a fallback controlled by sliders set to lower quality.
There are also ways to do various "hybrid" tricks such as using a static reflection texture as the "base" and then using masking and dynamic reflection for *just* the dynamic / "foreground" elements (in this case the PC), although that is definitely not the simplest thing in the world to pull off and given both the age and target of the CO engine, I can hardly blame them for not attempting it -- in fact, the mirror in the Penthouse is one of very few places in the entire CO world that does mirroring at all, and really, I have to give them props for pulling it off in the first place.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Unfortunately, I have to post a correction to this: it is not, in fact, "practically automatic," or in fact even particularly close. That doesn't mean it isn't *possible* under various circumstances, or that we aren't going to try for it, but right now we can't even promise it will actually be there -- some of the requirements for handling it involve how the lighting system is set up, and which things are or are not baked, and for various technical reasons (primarily the sheer size of the "chunks" of world we are dealing with) the normal lighting assumptions are actually unlikely to be applicable.
Epic themselves specifically note that trying to do a "standard" lighting setup for anything larger than about a medium-size "level" is basically impractical; assuming you can even arrange enough memory on the machine doing the baking (and we're talking about something that can push the limits of what is physically possible to shove into even a high-end server, even today, for a good-size level) the amount of time it takes to process that much data can be measured in days or weeks rather than minutes or hours.
Note that this is far less applicable to "interior" settings, for obvious reasons. It also does not mean that you cannot do a variety of tricks to make large exterior scene lighting work, or even have fancy bits to it, only that a bunch of the normal assumptions do not apply in the same ways and what is or is not possible (or semi-automatic) may be very different.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
No Cubemap Switcher? :{
ex: http://youtu.be/_pyUBWaof1A?t=4m3s
Day 10! Hammer time!
If you make a virtual _virtual_ hammer, is it real?
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Yes. But it is also inside-out.
To get a truly real one you have to virtually make a virtual _virtual_ hammer... virtually.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Cubemaps are one of the things you can usually still do, but they are very limited compared to some of the other things that UE4 supports.
But, as noted, I'm not saying that it won't happen -- only that given the unusual nature of some of what we are doing, it isn't as automatic as it might be for "normal" setups, and it is not yet clear just what will or won't prove to be workable, especially on lower-end cards.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Wait.. will the Toolbox have enough Hammer Space? :O
[img]http://www.i-do-t-shirtsstore.com/products/square/37122.png[/img] ;D
I apologize. I was sure I had seen this indicated in a video on UE4 capabilities, or I would not have said it. As is I will try to always leave such questions for you or other techies to answer from here on out (especially when I know you're already watching a thread)
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
I knew it wasn't the finished product, what I can't tell is how close it is to the final product. Why I asked.
Makes me want to find my copy of Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and watch it!!!
edit - found it and am loading it up now!
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
You asked "is it supposed to look like Robot Chicken?" Which was obviously implying something.
What I inferred from your question is that you didn't like what you saw and didn't know how close it is to the finished product--which you just confirmed with your last post.
So I answered by not just saying that it wasn't the finished product--which you just said you already knew--but by explaining how close what you are seeing is to the finished product.
Did I not explain it well?
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Beard didn't get [I]his[/I]hands on the wrong hammer, he got [I]Odo's[/I] hands on the wrong hammer. ^_^
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Both to forestall possible arguments, and to give a slightly more authoritative answer here:
Everything you see in the Devmas posts should be considered approximately "second stage" concept art. It is slightly more "real" than hand-drawn concept art, but primarily in the sense that it requires us to have managed to create *something* that is visible in the engine proper.
However, I can also state that due to time constraints and in some cases "learning curve" and/or information from previous discoveries not being perfectly shared among everyone, there are going to be a fair number of rough edges still present.
As an example -- and I wish to be very clear that I'm not picking on anyone here, it just happened to have produced useful discussion for me to point to as an example -- consider the ninja-to. At least one person made a statement that a proper one is straight, and of a somewhat different size, which is correct. I do not know whether we will actually take this change into account, but primarily because I suspect that being a dev item, it may end up depending on whether the dev in question happens to prefer a proper one, or the example as it stands right now.
Similarly, the particle system shown is only one of the possibilities, and was used because there was a failure of knowledge transfer and/or a lack of time to set up the mesh to be able to use the other approach cleanly. Frankly, I don't consider this a terrible thing simply because it resulted in us getting useful feedback about whether folks like the notion of the "floating words" vs. the "sweep words", along with various valid concerns being raised that we have taken note of and expect to address in one fashion or another.
So in all cases, if something about it seems to be ugly or otherwise wonky, and was not already addressed (or not addressed sufficiently to make things clear), folks are absolutely welcome to speak up about it. That said, I must in fairness note that speaking up with specifics, or at least clarity about what the concerns or questions are, is helpful to us (so that we can be sure we are understanding the concerns or questions) and is thus much more likely to result in addressing the actual issues perceived, rather than something similar but not quite on target.
To put it another way, we're not fragile china or glass, and "uhm, that looks kind of, well... less than stellar" is not going to break our hearts. But unless the object in question is a skyscape, we're more likely to be able to actually address the causes if you can tell us something more precise than "less than stellar" -- that is likely to get a "we know, and it isn't final" but not much else because, well, there isn't a lot else to be usefully said.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I happily bow to a more authoritative answer.
Thanks for the additional info, too!
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
On the ninja-to, I should point out that the ninja-to is an imaginary weapon invented by Hollywood. Ninja would probably have used a Wakizashi or something. So the one we made is, in fact, more authentic...except that in its current size it is basically a Katana.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
People gonna disagree bout that, man. But then again, they'll say ninja should dress like stagehands.
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
On the subject of finished/non-finished appearances, I've been taking only the specific dev items as even remotely indicative of the type of detail we can expect to see. What I take from Odo himself is more structural than visual presentation: it looks like he has all the joints required to give us some really good lifelike motion.
Having seen the level of detail in this sample of costume items, I'm now even more interested (if that's possible) in seeing what character faces will look like. Any chance we will see just one example of a detailed character face any time soon?
Spurn all ye kindle.
I'm kinda wondering the progression of Items that will be worked on 1st, for the Character Creator.
Where would you start off?
- Build a Biped Mesh, with (or without) a rig in MAYA (other)?
- Di-sect the Biped Mesh into parts, so you can swap them out. Limbs being on the list.
- For the Leg, subdivided further into subsections
ex: maybe like this?
[img]http://i.imgur.com/6LyjiMQ.png[/img]
This way, you dont Need Shoes.. you can always go with RoboCop footwear. ;)
ex: a movie prop
[img]http://www.yourprops.com/movieprops/original/4cfe6a8f99df0/Robocop-2-robocop-screen-used-feet-and-piston-1.jpg[/img]
Day 11. What will happen next?
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Izzy, don't you remember this picture?
[img]https://s3.amazonaws.com/ksr/assets/002/531/618/5c33a8394863ade1b8c6e080d5ed709f_large.jpg?1409786627[/img]
Looks... kinda like what you posted there, doesn't it?
[color=#ff0000]Project Lead[/color]
Yes Yes.. totally forgot. :(
But i bet the most popular thing might turn out the be the Sparkles. ;D
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Y6nNT2p.jpg[/img]
Do they Sparkle Shimmer when you move them around to catch the suns reflection? ;D
What if shoulder pads (bionics) were part of the body too?
ex:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/fxnQglo.png[/img]
And if you really want to make things super easy, just imagine the whole body as a machine with all joints being separate. That way, you wont have to worry about upgrade-ability for the future.
Oh wait, "ODO-San" has that already. Never mind. ;D
Way ahead of you :P
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
Oooh, Beard with Green Eyes. Very Rare!
And naturally, the first power to be tested for Petalstorm's Brush is ... a Petalstorm. ^_^
So, all the thank-you parts that I remember from the Kickstarter have appeared, except for Warcabbit's Toolbox, which as of yesterday was not ready yet. That means that tomorrow will be something new! Or they'll surprise us by getting the toolbox ready after all.
Sounds like a win-win to me!
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
After Day 11:
Bob, you are having WAY too much fun here! ;-)
[h3]-- Mewkychan =^.^=m mew![/h3]
Virtually! :)
[h3]-- Mewkychan =^.^=m mew![/h3]
Did I hear "breakage" in the video? O_o
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[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
"Mk1" just had a full body with no divisions (as does Odo, but he isn't really a "pass" at all, more of a separate thing that happens to be really easy to slap together and use for showing off various things). While useful for what we needed, it was never set up to be "sliceable" and would not have worked terribly well for that for various technical reasons.
"Mk2" was constructed using a handful of approaches, and rigged using the ART ("Animation and Rigging Toolkit", a set of scripts that Epic publishes with the engine that go together as a Maya plugin) suite. The "color-coded" image is the Mk2 female mesh. While we are using it for a number of things, including "the visual test asset for the fusion code", it has some fairly serious issues of its own. One example of this -- not the only issue, but a good example -- is the "stair-step" diagonal that is visible where the legs join the pelvis, which is an artifact arising from having built a standard topology rather than one adjusted so that it properly allows for the necessary "slices" to happen without causing crease-lines that cause the entire mesh nearby to distort in very broken ways when you start moving it around.
In short, Mk2 was about introducing the actual "slicing" process, and learning (the hard way, in many cases) what sorts of issues that causes when done with a "normal" model. Also, the weighting to some of the physics-driven joints is sufficiently problematic that I feel comfortable saying that the only place you'll ever see a Mk2 body with those activated is in some sort of "bloopers reel" (should one ever happen).
However, since "start to learn and catalog what sorts of things we don't know that we don't know" was one of the purposes of the Mk2 body, those issues are valuable for the very fact that they have shown us a great deal of what needs to be addressed in working up a Mk3 body. And, as noted, they give us something we can use as a viable "stand-in" for the interim, in several cases, especially when paired with Odo for things that need to move but don't need to display details of a high-quality character mesh.
As a point of interest, the order proposed (build overall and then divide it up) is exactly what we did for the Mk2 bodies, and part of what became clear is that it actually won't work for a production approach -- although it is an excellent way to get several of the necessary *measurements* for a production body.
What we ran into was, quite simply, that if you want to be able to consider the parts of the body to be truly interchangeable, you have to start from a basis that more closely resembles what programmers use when building modular systems: a set of information that describes the boundaries and interfaces where those parts get joined together. Because if those don't match up right, or don't happen along "lines" that result in the overall result behaving well, it doesn't really matter how awesome you can make any individual part, the collection of things when put together just isn't going to work.
This is, at least to me, one of those things that, in retrospect, seems like it *should* have been glaringly obvious -- especially because my day job involves creating exactly those sorts of structures. But I'm fairly sure that's a "hindsight is 20/20" thing, because it definitely *wasn't* obvious until we tried it the more traditional way and I had a chance to sit down and look through the details of what did and didn't work. So we learned at least some of what we needed to learn.
Personally, my view is that we learned enough that I'm hopeful that we can stop at Mk3, or maybe an eventual Mk3.5 (as in, not involving discarding lots of stuff, just updating Mk3). We definitely have a much better handle on the shape and approximate size of "what we do not yet know", and several of the specific items have passed into "we know, and have a possible fix that we need to test".
For the record, the list of places to divide up the body (and some portions of details on exactly *where* on the body to "cut") came from a combination of "places we need to have a boundary so that we can support thematic-match replacements for some of the legacy costumes," general human anatomy / physiology, archaic armoring, modern armoring, and some discussion of commonly seen costuming "tropes" that we wanted to have good support for.
And to be extra-clear: there are *no* promises made in this post about what might be available eventually in terms of "look-similar" (definitely not "look-alike") legacy costume pieces, only that we are specifically trying to ensure that we don't accidentally rule out the possibility of doing them.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
In black jeans, t-shirts, socks, shoes, and hats? :)
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Pretty much. Odo is based on a thing called a "proxy geometry" -- an ultra-simplified mesh that is generated based on a skeleton and very generic human proportions, and exists largely to act as a stand-in for those needing something visible but not expensive to render, for working with. The fact that he looks like a pose-figure is not even remotely coincidental; the primary industrial use of a proxy is for animators to work with prior to having the real mesh available (they normally work in parallel with the folks building the high-detail mesh, so it may well not be available before nearly the end of their work).
This one may be a little while yet, for technical reasons. At least, if you do see one, it probably won't be on a usable body. The short form of the reason is "UE4 does not yet support some of the required 'things' when used in the way we have to use it to have a multi-part character" -- i.e. there are some chunks of support code that we probably will end up having to write on our own, although we do at least have examples to look at. But a lot of the "fine detail" stuff happens to be carried in those particular types of data. They work fine on a "one-piece" body like Odo, so it isn't impossible, but I can't speak to any timelines, either.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
While I don't know if they happen to do so right now, a sequin-sparkle effect is one of the cheapest lighting / material interaction effects you can possibly do; just a comparison if the sight-line raycast and the light-source raycast to the point on the costume involved, and testing whether they have the same angle and relevant orientation to the normal at that spot (plus or minus a given amount).
That's about as close a promise as you're ever likely to see me make, and it mostly means "there is no obvious technical reason it would be an issue", so it comes down to whether the art department likes the resulting look enough. :)
You didn't think that the whole extensible-skeleton-and-attachment setup mentioned a few days ago came out of nowhere, did you?
Foot bone's connected to the... leg bone,
Leg bone's connected to the... hip bone,
[and so on... except that's the inside-out version]
As for shoulder pads... more on that later.
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[color=#ff0000]Developer Emeritus[/color]
and multipurpose sheep
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Even with the rough state of Odo's example, I was impressed by the similarity to CoH's movement style as Bob had him running around the test area. Considering how unsatisfying many of the CO and DCUO movement animations have been for me, I can't wait this style to return.
Other noticeable hints at the visual quality, which caught my attention...
Sparkle version of the wings and glowing Beard eyes (though it appears that the green version is less glowy at the moment, due to a glow intensity control or just color?).
I can see glow features being quite popular, especially with a diverse color palette in the avatar builder. If carried over to a wide variety of magic/tech/circuit/powered armor costume pieces, it will definitely bring us to equal or better than CO's quality in this aspect of customization.
Metallic texture adjustment to the slide rule bumped its realism up significantly; nice. One of the better contrasts between paint and new metal that I've seen in MMOs.
Even viewed at 480p the petals generated in the Brush "storm" mode seemed quite detailed, showing potential for all sorts of cone blast powers and associated materials. Looking forward to seeing this style of attack coordinated with gesture animations and a variety of props.
Very cool.
Sooo... the elephant in the room would be... Morph Targets, on individual body parts. :P
Just me assuming thats the approach used to scale the different body regions. One slider affects more that one body part sometimes (or most of the time).
And how to make sure they all share the same vert' locations after adjusting Morph parameter(s). :{
Maybe its too early for that though. ;D
Good Job Guys/Gals. ;)
I know everyone else wants to see the City Fleshed out with all the finishing touches, but I dont care for that.. as much as the Character Creator, at this time.
I'm also curious about using a [url=http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=DepthMask]DepthMask shader[/url] technique for cutting out holes for doors into buildings without any interior that was done in Houdini to speed things up, and avoid having to do the [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/door-entrances-was-black-interior-too-immersion-breaking]Black Door[/url] mission entrance thing.
That way, you can have allot of building made in Houdini that dont really have an interior.. and have a separate mesh inside of the building look like a small hall, you walk into and fade to black. But thats for much later. ;D
If there was any implications, maybe wondering if the idea is to make CoT more cartoony than CO?
Odo does not represent our intended graphical look in the slightest. Sheep has explained where we are and why on the models in far more detail than I can.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
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