Spring RTS Engine

PicassoCT wrote:oh, thats fine, dont mind me sitting here, drooling on my keyboard- i can wait..

http://springfiles.com/spring/spring-ma ... s-v3-alpha

for you picassoct.

Still lots to do. annoying little things and lots of them. please give feedback.

I'm gonna divide my feedback into a pros and cons list

PROS:
-heightmap is good (perhaps use lowpass for better pathing?)
-great looking greenland and mountains... be sure to detailtex them
-metal patches are nice and visible, having their own detailtex would make them look good up close too
-farm fields actually look better ingame then on the minimap with the wheat-like long grass and farmhouses. unfortunate that spring grass looks bad at a distance but this isn't map configurable

CONS:
-the feature count is quite literally, OVER 9000!!!!!! this is WAY too high, with a medium to high draw distance set the map has an unplayabley low FPS. I noticed around 5000 of these are grass tufts that are invisible unless zoomed in very close, these could all be removed.
-metal patches are worth 4.91, they should be reduced to around 2.0
-the brown spots don't line up with the trees
-beaches really need a texture, right now they are just plain white
-ferns have reclaimable metal value
-no SSMF yet (I assume that's still todo)

I think that's it... keep up the good work

Awesome thanks for the feedback

The Yak wrote:I'm gonna divide my feedback into a pros and cons list

PROS:
-heightmap is good (perhaps use lowpass for better pathing?)

If there are specific areas that require work I can blur them manually. the land texture is primarily procedurally generated so any change to the height map will make a difference to the diffuse map. so i want to avoid a filter like low pass because it removes detail.

The Yak wrote:-great looking greenland and mountains... be sure to detailtex them

Yep

The Yak wrote:-metal patches are nice and visible, having their own detailtex would make them look good up close too

Funnily enough i dont have enough detail textures left for that. ive already used all four slots. perhaps the rock one will be OK for it. or rock mixed with dirt. dunno yet will require testing.

The Yak wrote:-farm fields actually look better ingame then on the minimap with the wheat-like long grass and farmhouses. unfortunate that spring grass looks bad at a distance but this isn't map configurable

haha awesome, i was hoping that would be the case. i also tweaked the size of the dirt halo making it smaller i'm also going to post process it to blend it together a little better. i'll make a note about the grass below

The Yak wrote:CONS:
-the feature count is quite literally, OVER 9000!!!!!! this is WAY too high, with a medium to high draw distance set the map has an unplayabley low FPS. I noticed around 5000 of these are grass tufts that are invisible unless zoomed in very close, these could all be removed.

I'm thinking of swapping the farm grass with features and vice versa. i dont really like springs grass anyway. it would make the farms look even better, and reduce the feature count.

Is it the polycount of the feature? or the sheer number of them?

Also can I make LOD versions? if so how? because i think billboarding at a distance + varying LOD will make it less intensive if its polycount that causes the problem.

The Yak wrote:-metal patches are worth 4.91, they should be reduced to around 2.0

Noted

The Yak wrote:-the brown spots don't line up with the trees

yeah that's really annoying. this time around i will manually fix it by shifting the texture. but I want to fix my blender particle exporter to export the correct locations. on my todo list.

The Yak wrote:-beaches really need a texture, right now they are just plain white

Going to sort that out with detail maps.

The Yak wrote:-ferns have reclaimable metal value

Those ferns are from springfeatures so unless I repack them myself that's not going to change. it can be done, but is it worth it?

The Yak wrote:-no SSMF yet (I assume that's still todo)

yeah, i dont have a computer at my use that can do the shading.. so i'm stuck on that. i would be happy to have someone else do it for me and i can provide any source images they need to work on it. anyone?

The Yak wrote:I think that's it... keep up the good work

Thanks heaps.. the feedback is very very welcome!!

Ethernu, you can use the specular map to show metal stuffs.

Both polycount and # of features affect framerate, but your features appear to be low-poly enough. just keep removing features and testing ingame until you get a more typical framerate (like what you would get with another 16x16 map with features). At least half of what you have now, probably more.

LOD is user-configurable and not done mapside.

I highly advise giving the beach more then just a detail tex, they can't be coloured and the beach sand really needs more then just a plain white base. Something like this? https://www.dropbox.com/s/tc69ghzun5q0d2v/sandwaves.png

What do you mean your computer can't do SSMF? You only need GIMP or something to do specmaps, and it sounds like your already working on detail texes. Or do you mean you can't run /advmapshading ingame?

GroupFeatures.. just take the palmtrees into upspring, bake them together into groups- voila.. one Feature

ok so, if someone can test removing all ferns and grass from the feature set.lua and see how their frame rate is. because i'm leaning towards that as a solution to the over use of features.

It puts the feature count at about 2800 instead of 9000+ so yeah apparently I had 6000+ little grass tufts and ferns in the hills which are barely going to be seen.

also i have devised a way to test the splat detail maps without actually having a video card that can do it. i will emulate it in blender materials and test it in blender.. hopefully the ingame result will be similar.

Heres what i think the splatting will look like ingame.. there isnt any lighting on this so the normal map will give it a bit more punch.





and this is what it looks like for poor people like me with no ssmf capable video card

The brown transition between cliff and grass looks very nice.

sorry to keep spamming the forums with images, but it thought this was amusing.

part of my workflow is placing features in blender. then exporting locations to the set.lua. really really simple to setup..

theres still some tweaking to do to get the exporter accuracy correct. but it will be some simple offset.

also wish it was realtime. that would be super cool. some sort of bridge between blender and spring.. possible?
http://i.imgur.com/TVWlXbd.jpg

That looks really nice, esp. with the fence. I almost see those little settler dudes farming :)

Smoths featureplacer?

Also french peasant cottage in a indochina map.. the irony is not lost

PicassoCT wrote:Smoths featureplacer?

Whatever is included in the blueprint

I'm sure hes refering to using feature placements other half to be able to place in game in realtime.

Funkencool wrote:I'm sure hes refering to using feature placements other half to be able to place in game in realtime.

Because i'm making a lot of the features myself, i like to double check scale and things.. Plus i can distribute features with a particle system. Bulk rotate randomly and every other tool blender has at its disposal

write blender exporter for the feature list GG you can sleep better now.

issue with making features in blender: spring requires features to take up square/rectangle ground plates broken into footprint units.

smoth wrote:write blender exporter for the feature list GG you can sleep better now.

issue with making features in blender: spring requires features to take up square/rectangle ground plates broken into footprint units.

Cant make sense of the tone of the comments. I'll put it on my list of things to double check

tone? Indifference with helpful intent.

I am not volunteering to write such a script just telling you A solution.

smoth wrote:tone? Indifference with helpful intent.

I am not volunteering to write such a script just telling you A solution.

ahh excellent. it was the "GG you can sleep better now." that confused me.

So far i have a perfectly functional feature exporter which takes care of the ground plates, collision and occlusion volumes, with presets that auto calculate feature attributes. Feature placement importer, and exporter.

I just have to make it cleaner and easier to use.

I would eventually like to make much more robust tools, and make all art assets from within blender. units, animations, ceg's, maps, etc. but I don't work with any of that stuff yet. I like slow evolution.

The only suggestion I have left is writing a small script to expand feature placers spawning. Some sort of UI/command to destroy all present features before respawning the features with an updated script. Not perfect but It would allow you to run blender, export feature list, then respawn features to see changes without restarting spring.