I got a message in my inbox this morning warning me away from the time-sucking activity of solving the mystery of the missing buildings and focus on something new and exciting; the FPS 3D Editing Mode. It sounded like fun, and it WAS Friday, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and set about making my player fly, create terrain and paint the world WHILST in test game. Sound good?
Well I created the feature in quick order and I can confirm, it IS cool. Spent far too much time dynamically creating floor under my feet and laying out my paths as I walked along. Freaky cool fun!
A New Feature, Coming To ALPHA CASCADE 1.0045 On The 17th
As you can see, it really adds a new dimension to the editing experience, and starts to blur the line between testing the game and continuing the edit experience. Expect to see more toys attached to this feature in the future!
I also got to see the first drafting of the new Object Importer module, which is looking pretty sweet. It already imports X files and textures, scales and assigns attributes, and saves out a fully working FPE entity file ready for use in Reloaded. It's not integrated yet, but the prototype is looking very nice indeed. I would show you a screenshot but I've been warned about showing 'very early' art, so you will just have to imagine what it looks like :)
Play
Went out for a meal today (very rare for me when not on business expenses) but it was a good 'congratulations for surviving the flood meal' and you guessed it, I had another of those Welsh Black Beef Fillets! Did not walk the dog today which was naughty of me, so will be driving to a local walking spot on Saturday and doing at least 20,000 steps to make up for it.
Free Holiday
Earlier I got a cool email offering me a bus-man's holiday to talk code in Germany or Italy, all expenses paid. Excellent I thought, code, cold beer and new friends! For some crazy reason however, Rick felt my 7 remaining work days in Feb was not enough time to do anything with Reloaded ;) It also clashed with a launch so the fates were against me this time. Pity though, I do like Bavarian beer!
I'm Finished
It's now 3 AM. I had planned to clock off at 7 PM, watch Time Team, grab an early night and enjoy a fresh start on Saturday. What with integrating the new 3D Edit Mode into the main engine, building an interim version, testing it and creating a blog video I have had to clock another eight hours to get it all done. Technically, I have now done all my man hours for Monday so I'll see you all Tuesday ;)
Awesome Lee!! I've had an idea as well for a first-person 3D editor in the back of my mind for quite some time. I actually started implementing it about 2 weeks ago, although I've taken most of that time off since for personal reasons - getting ready to resume it I think. And it's so neat to see you doing they same thing!! They say that a new idea expresses itself through several people at a time - in synchronicity. I have a clear idea for what the user interface will be for mine - although I'm not focusing on terrain, I'm focusing on interiors. It's gonna be awesome! Just making it for my own use for now. I think it'll be much more intuitive than the usual top-down or axes viewpoint paradigms - and you get a feel for your interior (or landscape) as you go - as you're editing, which the 2D top-level design systems don't facilitate.
ReplyDeleteI thought your video turned out really well, and it's awesome you had fun doing it! :) That's what I'm talking about! And the result looked great! I thought the trees' animation could have been reduced in amplitude and frequency, plus they appeared to be synchronized, but as an idea they looked very nice! And I thought the water effect was terrific! And the whole thing when you panned out turned out very nice! You did a nice job at making the islands look like they were emerging from the water or that the water was flooding the land. Nothing like using your own experience, right? :)
Good luck with your first-person 3D editing mode evolutions!!
Great work Lee,i can see a lot of people out there are going to be very happy.
ReplyDeleteAlso it would be cool if we could have a ramp too like the one used here.
DeleteTuturial1
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGJ_edwBMtg
That looks amazing Lee! I was already looking forward to the 17th but now it can't come soon enough! Well done sir :)
ReplyDeleteI am drooling at the thought of 3d editing while immersed in the Rift.... oh man!
ReplyDeleteThe RAMP tool is pretty cool. So that's BLEND, SHAPE STAMP and now RAMP modes for terrain editing. Keep the ideas flowing...we want to have the best all round terrain editing system by the time we are through.
ReplyDeleteThis is what i like about this blog it puts us in touch with you,and we no you are looking at what we think.Even if you cant implement everything,we no you are taking it in.
ReplyDeletelooks good lee m8, but I didn't see you add a single tree ingame mode, only edit mode so my question to you is can it be done yet or is it just shaping terrain that's possible?. would be nice to see you add entities while in test map mode m8, placing objects inside or round the back of buildings and such at moment with only top down view makes it difficult at present. but excellent work so far, just needs some random shape brushes and rotate able brushes at that ;). also a waypoint mapping road system might be the way to go for some roadways? with auto paint textures to follow the mapped waypoint road system perhaps?.
ReplyDeleteAll good ideas, and all shall eventually make it into the product I think. Right now this mode was added to try out the idea, and also create a base for some third party module work (effectively creating two Lees). My ultimate goal is that this will become the 'preferred' method of game creation, and everything from buying assets to placing a single blade of grass will be done through this 'jetpack' editing mode. I was tempted to add sound 'act of god' sound effects to this mode, but immediately dismissed the thought as flight of fancy (maybe one day when we gamify the editing experience).
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of being able to get different angles while in the editing process. The overview is quite difficult to work with sometimes and it's hard to tell where an object will end up. For instance the lights, those are difficult to tell just how high it is while in the editor, I have to constantly switch between editing and test modes. However, it would be really nice to fix the Story zones. I want to be able to insert my animated scenes into my game. Also, I would suggest trying to find a way so that the video doesn't have to be just OGG and avi formats. OGG is almost never used by any video editing software, so you end up having to go through a ton of side converters just to get it to work. MP4 and WMV are some of the most used formats for video editing software's, but they are never accepted in any game maker so far including RPG Maker VX. It would be a really nice feature thats for sure. Also, maybe an in game computer console system. Like a PC that the player can use to unlock other doors and what not like in Penumbra Black Plague. That would be an incredibly awesome feature!
ReplyDeleteI personally dont mind OGG format for sound/music. Its a nice compression without the loss of quality.
DeleteI cannot promise all those features, but I can usually do one thing at a time ;) The story zone is also on my radar as well as starting Monday I am coding up V1 of the script system and ideally having all the trigger zones working would be a plus for the software.
ReplyDeleteWow just bumped into that awesome video of S2Engine which shows the ramp tool. But i was more impressed with the inner circle of the cursor which allows for the falloff range for creating smoother or rougher terrain edits.
ReplyDeleteI decided to watch all the videos in that series and there was one called road map tool or something of the soft. Kinda looks like how you would make waypoints but it would automatically draw a road in between the points. This was used also for creating rivers. Very cool stuff you should check it out for inspiration all videos in the series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGJ_edwBMtg
Halo 3/4 Forge comes to mind when I see this... now if we could somehow implement this into the game engine...
ReplyDeleteVery good work here!
I think it would be good to take the water from that video. The way that it foams at the edges was really nice,
ReplyDelete