Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Discuss maps & map creation - from concept to execution to the ever elusive release.

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PicassoCT
Journeywar Developer & Mapper
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Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by PicassoCT »

You want them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45XJwlweRNQ
https://youtu.be/66Yte03B3Lo?t=53s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROtV_CtLcGw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHhlt8hdE80

Not as a game element- just as decoration that fits allmost all maps.. with air.

Howto:
1. Add Particles at the Start and end..
2. Add some volumetric fog.
3. Make a rotating column, have it warped with a shader in diameter and direction
4. Fade it towards the sky and near the ground
5. Tornado!
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Floris
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by Floris »

would fit here perfectly:

Image
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smoth
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by smoth »

I used to bother with crap like this on my maps

no one wants it. They want flat crap or porcy crap or just bad crap like DSD, there is nothing to make for spring as the players ignore the bevy of maps and just play DSD.

*edits* seriously, go play gunmetal.

explosive fuel containers... check
smoke towers... check

Not like any of you have a turtle's cloaca but the GRTS maps even had stuff like areas where there was active jamming particles...

So much loathing back to my drawing board.
gajop
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by gajop »

This stuff, as well as any other simple weather effect such as rain, snow or wind would rock for Ludum Dare though.
It's cheap to add and is a nice way to mask lack of detail.
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PicassoCT
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by PicassoCT »

smoth wrote: *edits* seriously, go play gunmetal.
Actually i played on it.
Actually i played GundamRTS on it.
Actually i played GundamRTS on it - against you.
Actually i played GundamRTS on it - against you and you hated my guts for porcing it out on errected areas with then op-turrets.

Also the features where tailored towards Gundams style.
They were reused by forb and some others.
Also they need to be placed by hand.
This dust, snow, water, fire devils could be spawned by algo - without any balancing concerns.

@gajop- Can the shorewave shader be hacked to accomplish something like travelling sands?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OVxWoKGmRE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKkRF2sdXb8
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smoth
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by smoth »

The features are tailor generic. There was no gundam related IP or specific stuff in them. I don't recall that. I made several versions to change many issues the community at large had with it. People still play 90% dsd.


Algos? So some magic computer thing is going to determine where smoke should emit based off of what? What about fire? all things burning the same. No, you have to tailor make features with hooks for said algos. Even then we have the issue of ultimately make it a unit, which again needs hooks.
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PicassoCT
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by PicassoCT »

Fine, yeah, the dsd-ness sucked motivation off.

Still disagree on making everything always a unit though.Its a sfx thing, without effecting the game.
A unsynced shadder doing it, using the available data to find suitable terrain should be enough.
Its for the looks, not for the play, so at least noone will raise a hand and vote against it because it tips some balance.
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smoth
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by smoth »

so douche trying to play spring on a toaster will complain about how it is the 1 thing making spring unplayable on his machine because he cannot make poptarts while playing on your map.
gajop
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by gajop »

Can anyone provide some more constructive ideas how to implement this? Is there any existing code we could use? Anarchid's volumetric fog + LUPS?
I'd like to see more effects in Spring, and the content devs can then decide how/when to use it =)
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smoth
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by smoth »

If you could roll back the clock about 6 years I would be more optimistic but consider the fact that I offered to PAY to get clouds implemented on the ground/models..
8611z
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by 8611z »

I was going to make a Lua lobby post my willy-willy but I see the thread is about complaining about nobody playing your maps. :regret:
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Floris
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by Floris »

dust storms in another game:

https://youtu.be/cCsSIi4l6Fg?t=4846
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PicassoCT
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by PicassoCT »

anarchids shadder can do better allready :D
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Floris
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by Floris »

PicassoCT wrote:anarchids shadder can do better allready :D
yeah that one of that other game isnt very pretty.
gajop wrote:I'd like to see more effects in Spring, and the content devs can then decide how/when to use it =)
Or gamedevs... like the way BA has the snow widget that adds snow effect to most snow maps.
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PicassoCT
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by PicassoCT »

My goal is simply to provide something to the picture arms-race - something that is just out of this world, a exotic place to go on holiday too.
A planet with beaches where metallic statues have formed from coralls.
A map with giant trees, where planes have to navigate around.
This is what draws people in. Not the game, they dont know the game from screens, and the nostalgics where allready here.
I want to help those that make maps, to paint the dream landscape they all have.
https://www.google.de/search?q=alien+pl ... a=X&ved=0C

For that to be possible, i try to push what is generic about planets and highly visible.
Weather systems.
Image
Dynamic Skyboxes.
Image
Extreme Features.
To a lesser extent
Plants & Alienlife

This doesnt save a map from sucking. But a good lucking map can draw a crowd. Just with screens.
Smoths harbour map, might not got played big, but if you correlate spring download numbers, i think there is a measurable effect, similar to the tree map.

Das Auge isst nicht mit, das Auge isst zuerst.
https://springrts.com/media.php

Image
Deatailed map, high quality trees, actually playable. Screenshot doesent highlight scale.

Image
What map?, columsn with bark , never played it. Screenshot does highlight scale, still comes up with google search. Brought at least one player per month.
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smoth
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by smoth »

treemap was neat but I don't even have it any more. Neither do I have lathan's swamp map(thanks for reminding me)

the issue is that even when presented with a somewhat believable map... we never saw another gunmetal. It didn't start anything. it was a lot of work to show that we could and then no one bothered with it again.

That is a problem IMO.

Because of the time that goes into these things to make something really pretty, we don't see people doing maps any more. Pretty much the question is why spend the months creating this beautiful thing that no one looks at. It is forgotten. After years of this any mapper worth his salt stops. Forb is still around making maps for his game project but what about arturri? he is gone. We have seen a mass exodus of mappers. It isn't that tool chain is too hard, it isn't that it is too much effort to produce something "good." It is that they know the maps are not played. I remember when we had maps coming out constantly, all these new exciting battlefields to play on. After a while though, people choose the most vanilla of options and continue to play on map with little lake in the middle, map with craters drawn on etc.

So why bother, what is the point of making such an effort? I cannot see it. Say for example your picture. 2015 and we still only have 1 bit transparency support? what about how features blink in and out still? such a huge feature with subtle translucency is impossible in spring. Lathan's swamp map could have benefited from it. I feel like we have tried every angle in a 360 degree circle and pretty maps just don't get played.
gajop
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by gajop »

Floris wrote:Or gamedevs...
game devs ⊂ content devs imo
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Anarchid
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by Anarchid »

I feel like we have tried every angle in a 360 degree circle and pretty maps just don't get played.
Angles is a geometry term. What is "pretty"?

I know of a few maps which are played and use the dualfog shader; i know of a few who attempted to use the volfog shader despite its massive cost. I know of a few maps which look cool while not requiring uberfeatures, and then there's that DNTS thing that's bound to make things cooler.

Features being problematic for use as map elements due to absurd zoom visibility "rules" is a valid point, but that sounds like something hardly insurmountable.
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PicassoCT
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by PicassoCT »

Destilled Answer:
Maps are iterative by nature, good ones are hard to make, nice graphics in good maps are even rarer.

Solution:
1.Editors like Gajops as solution for a first draft. With creation ressources included in the map.
2. Time passes, general visual effects (dustdevils, weather systems, planetary skboxxes) improve the map.
3. Map succeeds, and gets refined to visual perfection.
4. Not many maps, but many excellent maps.
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1v0ry_k1ng
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Re: Dust,Snow, Water and Fire Devils

Post by 1v0ry_k1ng »

he issue is that even when presented with a somewhat believable map... we never saw another gunmetal. It didn't start anything. it was a lot of work to show that we could and then no one bothered with it again.
My 2c, while Gunmetal harbour was attractive it was in no way suitable for games in any of the mods I played (XTA and *A) on account of its shape, land surface area, water surface area and metal map. It made for great screenshots, but not great gameplay in XTA and *A so our group didn't play it more than a couple of times.

If you'd wanted it to be popular with *A and XTA (and I would not have guessed that you did from what I recall of your posts around that time), you'd have needed to begin by gathering requirements with these mods in mind - minimal chokepoints, big open flat spaces, minimal sea and minimal features - because these two mods are absolutely not well balanced or fun in enviroments breaking these conventions.

My understanding was it was a Gundam map you made for Gundam, and then reverse engineered to function with other mods - eg. you added a metal map. That is fine and good, but it seems wrong to expect visuals to compensate for lack of design tailoring to these games. It might not be your mentality, but mappers are vendors and players are customers - if you do not meet the requirements of a particular demographic, they will not use your product. It seems illogical to expect differently, and so not sensible to rage that the spring communtiy of the time (which was 95% *A and XTA) did not take great notice of Gunmetal Harbour.

Also worth noting here that the ZK community plays on a large and varied map pool that contains most of the greats from all mappers as well as the newer 'tech demo' esque maps, and other mods normally have rotating pools too - it is specifically the BA community that has a very small popular map pool.
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