Zombie Madness @ Game testing & comments

[v0.1.45]

- why so big map?
- why so many trees?

In my opinion we dont need so big maps. I think that we should limit the car to move only on the road... (we can put a fence near the side of the road) ... This would downsize the maps and allow us a beter FPS rate...
What do you think?

Edit: Why is the game so slow? I cant get it to go above 35FPS(70FPS)
??? Is the engine slow?

I think Edi just wanted to show you what the engine can do!
I think the engine is slow! Imagine using high poly cars...!
I hate that logo in the corner!

I think the plan is to make a short road, high mountains in the background so that landscape could be small and views limited to those mountains...I like the trees...

Nitro: - why so big map?
So the car can drive little more then 10sec.
I'll change the width \ 2!

Nitro: - why so many trees?
500 is not many, read TO-DO Thread, there will be option for setting up the Level of Details!

Nitro: I think that we should limit the car to move only on the road... (we can put a fence near the side of the road)...
Already in plan.

New version:
http://gs.gamer.hr/forum/viewtopic.php?p=896#896

- With road (low detail)
- Engine little more optimazed
- Form: Options at startup (fullscreen, resolution, number of trees, tree type, view distance)
> Next ver with some physics (car rotation on hills/bumps...)
> sideroad blocks...bah..my eng

Miskec, in that editor, you should make a gridline for drawing fixed items like road, siderad blocks/fence and stuff... road should be drawn on map_terrain.jpg, items in that map ini file...more to discuss, later...

cya and have fun

Edi, this version is great. Fast, smooth, 100-130FPS@1024x.5000trees.billboard

About the road - wouldn't be easyer to put it in as a floor mesh? I don't like the idea about puting it as a part of the terranin jpg file...

Nitro wrote:

Edi, this version is great. Fast, smooth, 100-130FPS@1024x.5000trees.billboard

Mmm, nice results!!! What's you configuration? (CPU, Graphic card, RAM)
Mine: (I have 3 of them, I'm programming on this one) CPU566Mhz, GeForce2 DIMM 32Mb, 256 DIMM
FPS: ~60 (I'll try to keep it that way)

Nitro wrote:

About the road - wouldn't be easyer to put it in as a floor mesh? I don't like the idea about puting it as a part of the terranin jpg file...

I know (it looks to smooth)Then, I'll need a mesh that looks like this in 3D, front view: /-----\ (those dashes little up).
Walls are slow for engine. But I'll try then anyway!

Nitro wrote:

About the road - wouldn't be easyer to put it in as a floor mesh? I don't like the idea about puting it as a part of the terranin jpg file...

edifreak wrote:

I know (it looks to smooth)Then, I'll need a mesh that looks like this in 3D, front view: /-----\ (those dashes little up).

I can make a road mesh very easily with a loft. The cutaway view (in purple) shows the road shape as a line. The line (road shape) is lofted along any path. It's relatively low in polys depending on how round you want the curves. The biggest problem would be shaping it to the contours of the earth since the engine displaces a height map to create the contours. I can take the height map and import it into 3ds Max and probably match the road to the contours with little problems.



- David

David, the road we need is straight...
But I believe that we don't need any models for the road mesh.
The engine has it's own floor mesh. (Edi, you can check that Test demo by Miskec and me.)

BTW, my configuration: P4 1800mhz, 256DDR,GForce4 64mbDDR
nothing too fast.

Nitro, I see. I misunderstood the posts because I though you guys wanted a separate mesh for the road (outside of the engine, I mean). :wink:

I'm getting some funny results with the newest version. The frame rate is much higher with the mesh trees than with billboard. I thought it would be the other way around! Also, I don't see any road at all. I did the two patches by the way.

RES 1024x786
TREES 250 (mesh)
RANGE 5000
FPS ~85

RES FULL SCREEN
TREES 250 (mesh)
RANGE 5000
FPS ~217

RES 1024x768
TREES 250 (billboard)
RANGE 5000
FPS ~43

I have a PIII @ 450Mhz with 64Bit AGP Radeon7500, 512M SDRAM

- David

David@Max-Realms wrote:

Also, I don't see any road at all. I did the two patches by the way.

I had the same problem but look in the game folder, move the new map into the map directory

My bad, I forgot to put destination folder for maps in setup (fixed patch .exe).

One thing first, If you encounter any errors in this and future versions, press "S" and screenshot will be taken and saved into the game folder (with random name, so you can take more of them if needed).

Nitro, I know for Floor function (it's slow).
David, yes I need a mesh for the road, because it's easily imported and useful for mapeditor (road is not going be on the same place on every map)

Road looks nicer this way, more compacted with the map.

Using this texture: (I accidently deleted the .bmp file, now I have to draw it again)

This type of mesh I can create in about 30 seconds. Using your template, I got this image in 3D using the sample texture above. Let me know if you want this (or a similar) mesh. If so, do you want .x or .3ds? I can scale it however you like after you test it. :wink:



I'm not sure if the texture is aligned the way you want it, though.

- David

In my opinion, it would be much easier if the mesh is flat...

maybe I'm mistaking...

Sorry for not replying yesterday, I lost 10 hours making shadows in the game and I failed. I’ve been on TrueVision Forum and they are saying that dynamic shadows are coming with next version of the engine. I thought dynamic shadows are those scaling shadows (moving light source)…
I’ll try them when new engine gets out (supposed to be soon).

David, that road is ok, inner line was supposed to be on the road but who cares, it’s ok like this…send me both versions (.3ds and .x), I heard that .x is slower…is that true (does it hold more information), you know better?
I’ll update the game the moment you send me the road.

Nitro wrote:

In my opinion, it would be much easier if the mesh is flat...

It’s the same, I just don’t like the idea where the road is the same height as the map. I saw this type of road many times in other games and it looks great (in real life to, outer city roads).

Here ya go:

X and 3ds Road Meshes

If they work okay, I can of course modify them to make them better.

edifreak wrote:

David, that road is ok, inner line was supposed to be on the road but who cares, it?s ok like this?send me both versions (.3ds and .x), I heard that .x is slower?is that true (does it hold more information), you know better?

The .x file is larger than the .3ds file and therefor requires more time to load. The amount of information is the same except the .x file has to do the format conversion since the file was originally made as a 3ds file.



- David

Hi,
I had lots of problems with the road.
- 3ds file does not work, it freezes the screen when it loads! (works with .x, with flaws)
- Had some problems with textures, showing on the other side of road (fixed)
- When I scale the road, some strange bugs with the TV3Dengine happens

I need a cubic shape for road(X and Y to be the same width), but little thinner(Z), and those borders, stretch them a little, and for now, let's just use this texture(provided below), that white.jpg confused me for a moment



Is there some program with who I can rotate/scale/etc the 3ds/x models?
Thanks.

Okay, try this version. I stretched the road's shoulder and lowered the z axis some. I also unwrapped the mesh UVW coordinates into a bmp file and re-did the texture so the stripes fit the way you want it with only one texture.



I saved an x file and another 3ds file. Here's the zip:

Road Mesh Zip File

edifreak wrote:

Is there some program with who I can rotate/scale/etc the 3ds/x models?

You would need any 3d modeler that can import a 3ds or x file. There are free ones on the internet you could look for.
-David

David wrote:

[quote="edifreak"]
Is there some program with who I can rotate/scale/etc the 3ds/x models?

You would need any 3d modeler that can import a 3ds or x file. There are free ones on the internet you could look for.[/quote]Never mind, I just wanted something small and fast...

I did the collision detection with the (old)road (little buggy still), I'll import new one in the morning. Cya
P.S. nice work

Road too big , I'll scale it down by double.

Hi,

Would it be better if I scale down the models before I upload them? 3D space is relative, so I don't know if it will make a difference in the game engine.

-David

David wrote:

Would it be better if I scale down the models before I upload them? 3D space is relative, so I don't know if it will make a difference in the game engine.

You don't need to, I just have to remember all the scale numbers for the editor... and yes, all objects I tested are upside down or rotated 90deg in some direction...how is that possible, isn't Z axis the same thing in both 3Dspace's we use (3dmax & game)...

edifreak wrote:

...isn't Z axis the same thing in both 3Dspace's we use (3dmax & game)...

The Z axis is "up/down" with respect to the earth in both programs. But, the reference coordinate systems for 3dsmax and Truevision may be different as to the initial reference.

I can understand all models being either upside down or rotated 90 degrees. But I don't understand why one model would be one way while another is a different way.

-David

Just as I read thease last two posts....my brain produced a lot of heet...
My head started rotating...you are confusing me...!

Hi,
I'll reply on all posts later, after coffie I was just programming all night... I'll upload new ver also.. cya

Edi, what's with the road in the 0.2 version?
It's huge!

BTW, the car tilting works nice...

The 2 main things that i think are the most noticable, is that the view simply ends, and it should really fade away. And the other thing is that you do not slow down when turning or off the road.

Just the 2 things i noticed needed the most help.

Matt wrote:

the view simply ends

I'm working on that.. fog will do the trick.

Matt wrote:

you do not slow down when turning or off the road

Physics are quite hard, now I'm working on a collision test with meshes/objects, real driving will come last because it's easiest to do and easy stuff always comes last.

Road as a 3d model? That's really stupid...
You should use only terrain and textures for road. Models could be sidewalks and other stuff but not the road!
More less, I know exact development of Need For Speed Underground and everything can be achieved with TrueVision that is in NFSU...

If you have questions, just shoot...

That's really NOT nice of you (for the road)!

I'm the programmer of this game and still learning the 3D world so you cannot say something like that, even if you didn't knew that.

Sometimes....or most of the time, roads Are 3D objects, ussualy created differently then models, because terrains use low detailed textures so there's no way to draw a perfectly looking road on low tex. :wink:

Can you tell me which is the link for the last version...