Saturday 13 December 2014

So Much For Far Cry

I had planned to spend my day chopping up a tree on the beach with a chainsaw, setting up a Mini-Mac with the new AGK 2 Player Service and playing a few solid hours of Far Cry (for research you understand).  My day did not really go to plan. The tree had been washed back into the sea from the previous nights wind and wave storm and my Far Cry evening turned into 'fixing the lightmapper some more' evening. I did however configure the Mini-Mac as required, so we should hopefully be able to offer the AGK Player to all AGK2 users who have an iOS device but don't have a Mac. More news on this from the regular AGK channels as I get told off when I talk about non-Reloaded stuff on a Reloaded blog :)


Could not help playing with static lights again too, so here is a shot I made using a green and red light, plus a white light in front of the building and some subtle sun based lighting.  I think the visual sliders are pretty close to offering a variety of lighting conditions now which should be good for a first release.  Truly running out of ideas for new visual values to add to the ever increasing bag of sliders. As a coder who prefers one good button over a page of them, I am now looking at the slider panel as a possible target for optimization and new layout paradigm (but not for now).

My lightmapping work this Saturday has been focused on a new technique I coded late on Friday which segments the whole world into grids, and lightmaps each section in turn. This way the overall load on the system memory remains low and the more sub-processes keep the progress bar busy and informative. Today was about tightening the scope of work for these sub-passes and ensuring no object was touched that was not absolutely needed. The result is pretty good and even the ESCAPE level does not exceed the 750MB system memory target I had in mind.  The true goal was to make it possible to lightmap LARGE levels such as confined spaces with lots of trees and geometry, covering the entire world, and I have yet to perform these tests as it's now gone 1AM (and it is my weekend off after all).  I can confirm the GTTR and ESCAPE levels lightmap without incident and I have also added a new lightmapping mode which skips the use of transparent textures during the collision object process which means F1 is now an even faster way to lightmap the scene before a more detailed process when you want to see the gaps in fences and holes in nets, e.t.c.

Anyhoo, back to my midnight session. I think a nice plate of beans and an episode of Time Team is in order.  Too late to drink or play games, but I think I can relax into the process of digging up bits of Britain's ancient secrets :)

6 comments:

  1. Great work again Lee,now you need to chill out i think.

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  2. I like your thinking on the lighting. I've just bought my slightly early Christmas present and I was struck wandering around Assassin's Creed Unity's Paris just how prettily lit it is:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/vwxix8tcqz5kjhd/Assassin%27s%20Creed%C2%AE%20Unity_20141214134049.jpg?dl=0

    Something to aim for then.

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  3. Please keep the sliders as they are very useful. maybe down the line add the debug info like was in classic FPSC. It was a real life save having all that info to debug stuff.

    How many lightmapping mod are there going to be. F1 a faster one? Will they rely on the amount of transparent objects in the map?

    Any way great looking screen shots, and cant wait to try it out. Looks like it will be a great step forward for Reloaded.

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  4. To get a shots like this you need more then light mapping technique you also need a very good artist to do the model and texture this may have required hours of work just to get the models and texture correct and more money than most people have I don’t say the some of the artist that are in the store can’t do this but not that many.

    This is the type of thing that may end up in the future release but I want 1.009 before the end of this year if possible

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  5. Can we shoot through the gaps yet? Example: the chain-link fences.

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  6. Nice specular and normal maps! :D

    You'll be really careful with that chainsaw, won't you? They're incredibly dangerous machines. And I'm sure you know this, but I'll say it anyway: Never, ever, EVER drop-start a chainsaw! Your foot should be through the handle, firmly planting the chainsaw flat on the ground.

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