Zone Creation Part 2
by Todd "Winin" Edwards
Even though I create the zone on my PC, I have to remember to see how it will look on the small screen.
I’m back. I’ve spent the week working on DangerForest, and it has gone through lots of changes. On the one hand, we want to make a full 3D world that is dark and dangerous. On the other hand, we want to have a cartoon-like look and feel. How do we merge them? And to get the best performance, what limitations do we have to live with, and what can we get away with?
This week, we went from the extreme realism level to the absolutely toonish. Below are some pictures in process. We even toyed with the idea of making it a 3D, but with a fixed camera like in a isometric 2D game (like Diablo). In the end, a new beta of the game engine we are using (ShiVa) came out. It has more options for lighting, so we can now get away with a lot more than before and we are back to realistic world with toonish elements.
One thing that has stayed the same is the underlying terrain beneath the textures and models. It is amazing how the same land can be appear so drastically different.
The other thing I worked on were the trees. I want to give the feel of being inside a humongous forest, but players have to be able to get around, and the game has to run well on older iPod/iPhones. I tried using tree models and a natural looking sky. I tried a leafy sky with tree models that just had trunks. I tried mixing and matching. The jury is still out.
I’m still having fun tooning up the models and placing them in my world. Until next time…
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i like 512 texture test 2 (the last one) ahs a very foresty feel.
does your engine allow for Line of Sight?
At first we had to go with 256×256 pixel textures, but it looked blurry up close. So we tried the toonish look, but it didn’t really do it for us. Then Dave came up with some good ways to optimize the engine so we could get away with 512×512 pixel textures (the last pic). Much better looking.
What do you mean by line of sight? Partially the problem is the iPod. The terrain works to occlude (so it only processes things that are in line of sight and not blocked by terrain). Models don’t occlude on those devices sadly. That means, if I made a big flat area, and then we added a bunch of trees and buildings so that you couldn’t see more than 10feet, it would play like a slideshow. So I designed the area to have lots of canyons and hills and things to avoid such slowdowns.
ah ok ok.
can you put in objects that block sight, but you can move through? i.e. a huge bush that people could hide in to shoot out of or something?
Yep. Actually in the version I’m using to build the zone, you can walk through all the objects. Trees, stones, etc.
But yeah, we’ll have bushes, ferns, very small rocks.