P.U.R.E. 0.55 - Page 63

P.U.R.E. 0.55

WolfeGames and projects headed by Argh.

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Guessmyname
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Guessmyname »

Alternatively, use overlays of actual rubber.

There's a load of them here (it's an immensely useful site too, by the way)
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Argh
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Argh »

Image
Image
The Resistance Hammerhead strategic bomber. Model by Guessmyname, with very minor editing by me, paint by me.
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Hoi
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Hoi »

Wait, wait is that thing it lands on/ is being build on the hover from last page?
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Zpock
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Zpock »

I think it would look way better if the engines were grayish metal and perhaps had some more engine style greebling on it to break up the model... it feels like too much flat green.
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Gota
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Gota »

I think your very stingy on ploygons.
The building on which the plane hovers over..It looks very flat.
All the decorations done with textures look like decoratiosn done with textures and not real 3d objects.
Why do people fear the polygons so much?
Its nice to see a unit looks great upclose even though you generally play from afar.
Most people have great gpus and imagine the pc gamer's avarage gpu in 6 months/year from now?u can probably tripple all poly amounts on all your models and it wont matter ingame.

Is it because spring deals with detail reduction in some clumsy way?
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Wolf-In-Exile
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Wolf-In-Exile »

Gota, there has already been alot of debate and explanations about polycounts already, I suggest you do a forum search for the answer to your question. If you still feel the urge to discuss it further, make a new thread in Art and Modelling.
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AF
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by AF »

If I were in that plane and it were not flat I would be very worried
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panzeriv2
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by panzeriv2 »

I like that bomber, only it seems to large compared to the Overmind's ?
That afterburner flame looks unrealistic. And I don't like that yellow tinted window.

And Gota, my CPU specs is terrible. My battles are already very VERY laggy (versus AI, on multiplayer...takes 2 seconds to process my command). That model is already pretty nifty.
Warlord Zsinj
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Warlord Zsinj »

The yellow on the window is most likely just the map light glinting.
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Argh
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Argh »

The giant hovercraft is the new Resistance Air Base. The Advance Base no longer builds aircraft. Had to be done, as it was one of the last major balance issues found- no more quickie air rush for the Resistance, other than building Heavy Troopers, which can be countered fairly cost-effectively.

Should be able to send out the second Release Candidate fairly soonish... then it's time to work on the documentation for World Builder, the website, etc., while Spring 0.77 gets fixed up.

@panzeriv2: you're just seeing reflections on the "glass", lol.

@Zpock: I tried using more gray on the top (the bottom is all gray)... it just didn't work very well, didn't feel uniform with the fighter, which is all-green, either. I suppose I could break it up with some exposed mechanical details, but everybody whined about that with the fighter, so, meh, it's one of those things where I can't please everybody all the time.

Would look waaaaay cooler, if I could use a normalmap to boost the bumps, just like most of this stuff.
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Guessmyname
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Guessmyname »

Argh wrote:T I tried using more gray on the top (the bottom is all gray)... it just didn't work very well, didn't feel uniform with the fighter, which is all-green, either. I suppose I could break it up with some exposed mechanical details, but everybody whined about that with the fighter, so, meh, it's one of those things where I can't please everybody all the time.
That's because the fighter looks streamlined. It looks aerodynamic. Exposed bits and plating would cut down on this. With the Hammerhead however... well, look. It's big. It's bulky. It's clearly only being held aloft by it's uber-gigantic engine power alone.

Because of this, not only are the engines given more importance, you can also toss all rules of aerodynamics out of the window (more or less). You can get away with exposed wires and venting and such with this: it's heavy, it's big. It's not sleek in any meaning of the word.

The fighter is light, aerodynamic and sleek. It's held up by it's design, not just it's engines. With the Hammerhead, it's raw engine power, and the texture and model needs to reflect this. Trust me: greebles will work with this unit.
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panzeriv2
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by panzeriv2 »

Oh, yeah, the windows really are reflections....first time i saw those.
smokingwreckage
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by smokingwreckage »

That looks awesome. Other critiques may have merit, I dunno. I think it's pretty damn hot.
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Erom
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Erom »

I can see, based on how the winglets flip over when parked (which is cool) how you sort of did a bottom-grey, top-green thing, but honestly, since you'll mostly just be seeing the top, I'd swap that up a bit. The engines would look nice grey, IMO, and the big grey blocks would be a nice visual clue when zoomed out. Also, the fighter engine IS grey to my eye, it's just small and mostly hidden.

Of course, it def. looks like there is a more substancial shell around the hammerhead engine, while the fighter engine is more "bare" - doesn't look like there is much covering for the "afterburner"-esque section of the engine, so you could play it off that the hammerhead has a green shroud while the fighter doesn't, to keep weight down.

So it works either way.
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Argh
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Argh »

Release is Imminent

For Release Candidate 2, I have decided to finally release P.U.R.E. and World Builder to everybody who wants to try it. No more private betas, it's finally going to be public, for people willing to brave SVN releases. Keep in mind, you absolutely must use a SVN build to run it at this time.

Before I actually get to the release announcement, I have a few things to say.

1. What's the status of the game?

This game is not currently "complete", in the commercial sense. I would say that it's maybe 80% done. I wanted to get a campaign built, but IRL issues have finally made it impossible to commit that much time to this.

There are always things that you just run out of time for, and in this case, there are quite a few, but they're not things most players will ever know about (other than the lack of a campaign).

That said... there will definitely be errors, omissions, goofs and balance issues that have eluded the beta-testers. I dunno where the crazy idea came about that initial releases had to be perfectly balanced on release, but... if you're one of those people who will only try something once, then wait a couple of weeks, I'm sure there are major problems, and they will need to get fixed.

I have polished things as well as I have been able, considering the time pressures I've been under, and so far as I know, the major balance issues in 0.55 were all addressed. The robots are all relevant, the new resource system works, Resistance vs. Overmind works pretty well.

That said... if you find problems, tell me what they are, I am just going to listen... and fix them.

That said... please don't confuse features with balance problems. It will just be a waste of time, even posting about it- I won't be able to address that stuff.

For example, the weapon ranges are still longer than any OTA game. That's a feature, not a balance problem. I thought, very seriously, about changing it, and have decided not to, because it would require a major rebalance and I don't have time for that, frankly. That's just how it is.

Same thing applies with the features of the UI, etc., it's just going to have to be what it is, whether or not that's perfect. Don't whine about it unless you're a coder who's finished some source that I can just plug in, basically. I don't want to hear about people's theories, or what-if scenarios... the reality is that I don't have time, period.

So, if it's a DPS issue, something's OP/UP for cost, a minor bork in a script, etc... I'm listening. The rest of it I'll just have to ignore, frankly, so please don't fill my release with pages of controversial stuff about things I won't have time for.

No blogs, AF, KDR, rattle et al- if you want to bitch about things I can't change, do it via PM.

So... why release now?

Simply put... I can't wait any longer. IRL issues prevent me from waiting indefinitely for the release of 0.77, which has been delayed and delayed and delayed... first due to a raft of graphical problems, now due to serious errors in MP when 3 or more people play... and rather than post RC2 to a small bunch of testers, when I might not be able to do more than 2 more weeks of fixing and testing, I've decided to go for broke and just get as much feedback as I can, and make it the best game that's possible before I have to largely ignore this stuff for awhile, maybe forever.

It's no mystery, why I've been on a crazy, breakneck pace, folks. It's been a race against time. At first, I thought I was just racing 0.77... in fact, the constant delays on release have made it moot. I've run out of time regardless.

I've decided, very reluctantly, to release the RC now and hope to get everything dealt with over the next 2 weeks, with the widest audience possible. This is the second time I've had to release this game due to stuff that's not entirely under my control, but I think that everybody will find that things aren't nearly as... incomplete. It's much more like the game I originally intended to make, basically. All I really need is enough feedback to get it working well enough that it's credible when 0.77 goes live.

2. License Stuff

If people have questions about using the Lua, the answer is, "sure, go right ahead". It's all (C) to me, and I am not relinquishing copyright, but that's it. If you're one of the people who ardently wants all Lua to be GPL... we had that argument, and if new arguments come to light that make your case more solid, I have no problem with accepting a GPL status based on the engine code interactions, because that's not exactly a threat to me. The Lua's not that cool anyhow, tbh, as you will soon find out.

Either way, I would like people to be able to use the code, no matter if they're working on *A games or not, and I will not be looking for violations, so long as there aren't any commercial projects... period.

So, no baaawing, please. Probably an impossible request around here, but I'm making it anyhow, and I will be asking the moderators to direct such posts to my PM box, instead of letting people attempt to trash my release thread with stupid trolling.

As for the content- meshes, sounds, bitmaps, CEG files, etc., the answer is "no, you can't use that, unless you ask me first".

Last Notes

Anyhow... that's it, until I can get the RC packaged up and put on the Web for people, which will be a few hours- I probably won't put up the formal release notice until Sunday afternoon, because I'll need to test a bunch of things first.

I didn't want things to have to reach this point so abruptly, but there are things that are more important than this project, and I need to attend to them. With enough feedback, I will get the worst of the rough edges dealt with, and perhaps there will be enough interest that I can get a few Lua coders to build a campaign at some point in the future.

World Builder will be included in this, and so are the demo maps, but it is not currently well-documented. I'm working on that. Depending on how much else I have to deal with, it will get documented and ready for everybody else to use.

It is GPL... entirely, content included. Any project that wants to modify it may do so, provided that we're all clear about that- it's my gift to everybody, but that's the license, and it's not changing, and no, it won't "infect" your game, it's a separate distribution.

I would like to see it grow and improve with time, as a real community project. I failed, with the appeal to the OTA modelers, and the object collection never materialized, so this was the approach I took, to make the building-blocks of a real community effort to make objects that everybody can use, and much cooler maps that are living places.

If people are interested after seeing the demo maps with P.U.R.E., great, contribute to it and help make it better. I wish I'd had more time to make more demo maps, but I don't, and probably won't ever be able to do that.





That's about it, in terms of serious notes, for now. The rest is just philosophical reflection, tl:dnr folks.

To anybody who's disappointed that I have to go this way, instead of being stuck in a perpetual-motion machine where I'd just polish forever, and the game would never be released... well, I thought I'd have a working game with a working game engine by now. I thought I'd be trying to get some press for this by now.

I thought a lot of things that didn't happen the way I assumed they would. That's how it goes.

I have a lot of people here, on the RL end, who have entirely quit listening to me, when I say that it's right around the corner. After seeing the disappointing end of the website mess, where my Welcome shots still aren't up, I doubt if I'll even see significant players from Spring's base audience, let alone a wider one... and I just don't have the ability to launch a wider promotional campaign, beyond what I've already done. AF's bullshit theories aside, it's simply not possible for one guy, no matter how superhuman, to launch a promo campaign and do everything else, and I've simply not had the time.

I'm going to try and fix the website up, maybe hit a few forums, but that's all, and it won't be enough.

Nobody believes me on the RL end, though. My credibility is shot. I'm normally a guy who, if he says he's doing something, it's getting done... so this is a major problem for me.

When you're working on a project this large at this pace, on top of everything else... it costs a lot, in terms of your relationships with everybody. I've become a social hermit for the last year, pretty much. A month ago, I think I might have still had a bit of optimism, but now it's just too much, nobody will even look me in the eye, if I mention this, my struggles to get this done, and the huge amount of controversy involved, just doesn't matter to the people who know how miserable I've been.

Yes, miserable! I love making games, don't get me wrong... but this has been an entirely different thing. Committing to making a commercial-quality game, unpaid, in your "spare time"... is basically like signing your life away, and if you're not being paid for it, and can't "come home" from it, because you're already home and you've already worked to keep the lights on, eventually it eats you alive. I've done this kind of thing on a more minor scale for years- this has been something else again, because the gulf between something like this and something on the "modding" end is really, really huge.

I can't destroy what's left of my life over this, and I'm out of good options. I wish it was as simple as a griping girlfriend / wife or whatever that I could fix with a few flowers and a month away from things, but it's not- nobody I know IRL really believes in this thing any more, and no amount of posting from people on Forums is going to change that. Nobody wants to even listen to me talk about it. Nothing short of a massive success would change things, and I don't see how that's realistic, when this "community" can't get its act together and get serious about promoting the engine. At least the website no longer sucks... but that won't be nearly enough.

It's haunting me, frankly. And nobody who has never done this, sacrificed this much, is really going to understand how frustrating it is, to know that you're almost there... almost there...

I was really hoping I'd get this to the point where we could consider going commercial, frankly... then it might have been worth this huge personal sacrifice. But I don't think that's anything like realistic, considering that I can't commit the time to run a bigger show and enlarge the team. Just doing what I have was incredibly hard work, frankly, and the kind of people I'd need... are the very same people who are directing other projects, I simply could not get some amateurs and hope for the best.

I think I've done what was best, by concentrating on doing, instead of trying to direct people. Go on, second-guess me if you wanna, but if you've never been in these shoes, you're just not going to understand.

Given the incredible pace of this project, I think people will be amazed at what's gotten done in a year. I really hope everybody enjoys it. I hope everybody understands why I have to rake in my chips, though- I simply wasn't ready for months and months of delay and serious bugs, waiting for the engine to get fixed, and with no time-horizon for release... I'm basically in a position where I have to choose RL over this, and RL has to win.
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Hoi
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Hoi »

You can't make a game in half a year, and if you try to your rl dies, just take it easy, you don't have to do all stuff that fast, now that frustration of yours is simply becaus alot of people here do the above, that's why the release gets delayed, just take your time to finish it up a bit, by that time there will be a new version, and pure will work on it, you'll have your banners(why would you need them when pure isnt released yet?), and you can make a noobguide and post it on some forums and stuff to explain how you install and play pure, I'm sure alot of people will play it and then we're all happy.
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smoth
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by smoth »

Argh, I would be remiss if I didn't say that you disregard others like myself who are committed to working on our projects. Yes, there are times I sacrifice my personal life to do work on gundam. I have worked on it for years now and will still be for several years more. Spending money left and right for this and that to ensure that it good and accurate. People can tell you that when I was in college I would be up all night testing even if I had an exam the next day.

I am OCD, it isn't something I keep a big secret but it does consume me from time to time and there are weekends where I will be going from friday evening to saturday night working on gundam. Hell my hands randomly start spastic shaking and I sometimes have to wait 10-20 minutes for it to stop. However, I do still make it a point to remember to stop and kiss panda or eat something from time to time. Sometimes I forget to eat and man, that sucks but I still work hard even with these random things. So don't give me that alone, nobody understands me and my sacrifices are too great crap. Did you know I watch gundam 08th, 0083 and either zeta, first or 0080 weekly? Yeah not exactly fun after you have seen the entire series of 08th the nth time and you start to wonder if dvds can be worn down.

To be truthful, you got competitive over the wrong thing. The "mods" scene here is just that It is a casual thing and you spent too much time making it serious business rather than rl where competition is important. One of my teachers in life was an artist and she told me never let your passion become your job. She was right, I did it once and I felt cheapened and worthless for it. If you really like game development then let go of all this pretentious crap and just do it for fun. Get out of your parent's house get a good well paying job and let your game stuff become a hobby.

Some people play golf, others play lots of games or workout. Let your game become your hobby and stop trying to be a professional in your spare time.
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Guessmyname
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Guessmyname »

What smoth just said (sans the OCD and gundam stuff). I do this for this for fun: I absolutely love coming up with utterly crazy but believable unit designs, and just plain enjoy creating things in general, be it drawing, writing or whatever - right now I'm working on a texture pack for the JB:Source team whilst writing a gritty deconstruction novel and modelling a gigantic mecha to the music of ALI Project. That's my life for you.
Still, I have a social life. Maybe that's because it's forced on me 9 hours a 5-day week but it's still there. I look after myself and sleep pretty well. Just calm down, take things slow and examine your problems at a distance. Don't let them gang up on you at once. If it comes to it I can pick up some of the slack on PURE: it's about time I really got into the texturing biz and whilst I am a complete babe when it comes to LUA, it's not like I've never made a mod. You're not alone in the world.
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Hoi
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by Hoi »

And I'm just someone who is too smart for school and doesnt put alot of time in it becaus I'll get a something like an 8 anyway, and when I learn about the same, so I have alot of time, I'm at school at 8:30, home at 14:30, homework done at 15:00 and then I have like 9 hours of time to mod, and have a rl.
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AF
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Re: P.U.R.E. 0.55

Post by AF »

Argh you never understood my theories anyway which was evident when you criticized them by making points against my points which dodly enough where points I had never made.

But simply, you don't have to do it in a year and you can take a hiatus from things.

I was like this but much worse when I was building NTai. I got terrible A level grades because of NTai but I learnt so much and it got me so much too. I had unconditional offers for all the courses at universities I had applied for a week before I got any of my A level results. There were things I was being told in my degree that I had grasped 4 or 5 years earlier building NTai it was a huge head start.

Go get a PC games magazine. It'll have reviews of big games then towards the end therell be multiple reviews per page, look at those. They're likely to be 2-3 man teams, in fact the entire Space Empires series of games from malfador machinations was built by a single person.

In the meantime, when did KDR and rattle start blogs?! LINKS!!!
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