TRACKVERSE Alpha v0.1 @ Steam Greenlight! Come Vote! :D

Azgur · Post by **Azgur** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:14 pm

Seriously, stop now or you'll run out of buzz words to add!
Once again a very nice improvement. It really improved the visual quality again.

Whenever someone doubts Ogre, I slap em into the direction of this thread.

xadhoom · Post by **xadhoom** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:31 pm

Very impressive. The buildings look good.
IÂ´m not sure about the reasons for all this destroyed buildings, but regarding to
the large destruction which looks like the result of many explosions I miss some black
walls after the fire if you know what I mean...

yapdakilla · Post by **yapdakilla** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:31 pm

Thanks guys for the feedback. hrmm might be adding some burnt marks on the buildings as suggested. Anyways heres a prntscrn from the level editor with buildings with baked AO and distance fog to add a bit of atmosphere.

xadhoom · Post by **xadhoom** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 9:31 pm

Hi!

I can hardly see any distance fog on your picture. Is this because of the small amount you choose?

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 9:36 pm

It just gets better and better with time. Once again, amazing shots, and amazing work. But yeah, burnt marks would probably make it a little bit more believeable. And also on the topic of the look, but just caviling, the guardrails seemed to have suspiciously survived the nuclear blast.

Either way, still a great job, I'm not trying to take anything away from it.

yapdakilla · Post by **yapdakilla** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:02 am

Thanks for the comments.

xadhoom: yeah you're right we just used a small amount at the moment but can be tweaked.

Halifax: Technically the background story for our racing game is sorta like-major earthquakes has struck cities around the planet and parts of the city which has not been affected that badly has been turned into a racing ground. Hence the guardrails were built around the tracks.

But keep those comments coming, your feedback is important to us to help us improve on the game.

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 8:56 pm

Ah, alright, that makes sense now. That's actually a pretty believeable background story. Once again, keep up the great work.

Post by **sinbad** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:09 pm

Very nice, I'm just catching up with this thread. The AO makes all the difference!

You may have already addressed this, but I would suggest making the interference on the video billboards based on a per-Renderable random offset (custom parameter), to avoid them shimmering together. I'd also reduce the frequency of the flickering a little.

Also, I think a small amount of specular would help, since most of it is diffuse at the moment. Not too much, but just spots here and there, perhaps using a specular/gloss map to keep it targetted, I think it would make a difference.

Lastly, HDR of course, if you have the spare cycles for it.

Nauk · Post by **Nauk** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:19 pm

I really dig the last 2 screenshots, looking forward to play that one, great endtime / sci-fi atmosphere. I loved playing podracer networked on 2 beamers back then (still playing it once in a while), looks like this will be similar fun

lf3thn4d · Post by **lf3thn4d** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 3:42 am

Hey guys. Thanks for the encouraging critics and comments.

Sinbad: Yes the flickering thing is using the same random texture right now. I haven't got around tweaking it but per-Renderable random offset makes sense.

I'll get into that later.

As a matter of fact, I'm working hard to get HDR in right now. lol.

yapdakilla · Post by **yapdakilla** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 7:02 pm

Hi guys,

Hi Sinbad heres a shot with bloom and HDR enabled. no reflections on the building's windows yet though.

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 8:39 pm

Wow, you guys are killing it. Amazing modeling, amazing graphics programming.

I really can't wait until this project is released. I might just have to update my computer to play it. It's already looking AAA.

By the way, what's a ballpark figure of how long you guys have spent on this project?

Azgur · Post by **Azgur** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 8:43 pm

Once again awesome. You really are pushing the limits

It's very inspiring to see. It's a level of polish many triple A titles don't even have.

nikki · Post by **nikki** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:27 pm

Nice. I guess I'll have to buy a better graphics card just to play this game.

You guys are using Blender for all the modelling?

yapdakilla · Post by **yapdakilla** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 3:22 am

Thanks guys,

Halifax: Well we've started working fulltime on this project from February until now so its about 8 months now which includes learning Blender for the first time during the first 3 months of production (i swear it has the most non standard interface on the planet! makes it very difficult to migrate from commercial packages such as 3ds max which we are used to using).

The first attempt created in Blender in the first 3 months had to be redone as it was difficult to manage art assets for the entire level(not to mention testing) and the quality wasn't really good.

So everything was rebuilt again in May along with a barely functional level editor which just had enough features for us to continue building the level in pieces.

Azgur: Thanks

The goal is to reach minimum commercial quality, since our lives depended on it !

nikki: Yup used Blender for all the modelling as the exporters and tools built are specifically made for Blender<->Ogre workflow. It's not a perfect package nor does many of its features which can match commercial packages such as 3ds max or Maya but as with everything else, its just a matter of getting used to its pros and cons and it has great community support and its improving all the time.

Check out Blender's pixar quality animation short Big Buck Bunny. Amazing work.

http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/media-gallery/

bharling · Post by **bharling** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:21 am

Looks truly amazing - that latest shot especially.

Only small thing I'd say is that the trees dont look quite right. Firstly - it seems that there shouldn't really be any trees in that environment, it doesn't look like a place where plants would grow easily !

Secondly, perhaps you should consider using billboards for the leaves, Speedtree would be the ideal solution but its extremely expensive of course. However its not too difficult to get billboard leaves as static geometry using a shader.

Finally, I'm sure you're already planning this, but it would be great to see sparks / dust flying up as the 'craft' zoom round the track.

Other than that it looks absolutely stunning, really oppressive and atmospheric. Can't wait for a demo.

yapdakilla · Post by **yapdakilla** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:53 am

Hi bharling thanks alot for the crits and comments. Always welcomed.

About the trees you mentioned something like fallout 3's trees?

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/20 ... een003.jpg

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/20 ... een003.jpg

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/20 ... een002.jpg

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/20 ... een003.jpg

Although our background stories are abit different from fallout 3(as in its a post apocalptic game after a nuclear war) as ours is based on devastation after a major earthquake.

But I guess thats not as important as the mood and feel of the game. We'll take a look into those trees and maybe change them

We wont be able to use Speedtree (and yeah its pretty pricey for couple of indie guys like ourselves) as the trees in the games besides the racing tracks are not just static geometry. Players will be able to use them along with other environmental props and obstacles to hinder other opponents progress and trigger traps as well.

And yes there wuold be sparks..dust and splashes depending on the terrain the craft is travelling on...and maybe some heatwaves particles coming out from the craft engines.

We're not entirely sure when the demo will be out but will update this post when it is !

yapdakilla · Post by **yapdakilla** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 10:24 pm

Hi guys,

Heres a sample of some of the traps set along the tracks which players can activate and turn other opponents into swiss cheese!:twisted:

Brainshack · Post by **Brainshack** » Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:38 am

IMHO the laser beams are to thick to be laser beams.
And i personally would make them red instead of orange, red = danger.

But nice idea though.

jimanjr · Post by **jimanjr** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 2:49 pm

Hi!

I've been watching this project's progress for a while now without posting, but it's just so awesome, I cannot resist anymore.

I love the detail and polishing (it's almost exactly the way I would do it).

Your project is AWESOME!

However, I have a few small suggestions

Try enabling AA in screenshots, makes them look even better
Make those lasers a bit thinner and a bit more transparent. Right now they're probably more efficient at blocking your sight of the road than turning you into swiss cheese

jjp · Post by **jjp** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 2:54 pm

Brainshack wrote:IMHO the laser beams are to thick to be laser beams.

Such a thing is a matter of playability I guess. Maybe a trap shouldn't be too hard to spot

xadhoom · Post by **xadhoom** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:04 pm

Wow, fantastic trap

Just one thing: I recognised your effort to let some texture look a bit burned,
but the area in the whole still looks a bit too clean especially for a complete
destructed area with a race track digged into the trash.
E.g. there should be some small pieces of trash and paper stuff (maybe baked
into the street texture or added as decals) around. The trees look like it is
autumn (or they are just dried), so there could be mounds of leafs around there etc.

keep up the good work!

EDIT: A sceond thing: There could be some cracks (texture based or better polygon based) in the street and around to emphasize the strong shock.

Brainshack · Post by **Brainshack** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:08 pm

One question: Where do you get all your great textures from? Are they all selfmade?

yapdakilla · Post by **yapdakilla** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 6:10 pm

Hi guys,

Thanks for the feedback.

Brainshack: We can change the laser beam thickness and hopefully it will still be visible from a medium distance to give players a visual warning before turning on their boosters. And as for the textures we got most of base textures from past photographs taken from journeys as well as cgtextures.com. Some textures are derived from custom modelled high poly models for normal mapping purposes.

jimanjr: Will keep em AA enabled for future screenshots and try to adjust those lasers accordingly and as jjp mentioned they should be easy to spot when turned on as the lasers are originally turned off until another player turns it on.

xadhoom: We can try putting some decals or smaller detail mesh like pebbles and stuff. And also some cracked roads. Speaking of cracked roads players will be racing along broken bridges and narrow monorail tracks.

Anyways keep em crits and comments coming. Helps us to improve on the game.

jimanjr · Post by **jimanjr** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:40 pm

Well, if you want to make stuff better, here's some more suggestions:

1. Dust clouds. Take CoD4 for example... there are some places where you can almost taste the dust, that's pretty cool.
2. A bit of fog. The environment would look a lot better with the air a bit more toxic

3. Depth of field. If you have a cubemap that extends the environment (more wrecked buildings and so on baked into the cubemap) then DoF makes all your environment blend nicely with the cubemap and makes it look a bit more realistic as well (I think you can see this in UT3 screenshots)

Some other ideas might spring into my mind, but I am already stepping in the "enthusiast" range of visual effects

This all comes at a performance cost, but it's good to have those options there for the crazy guys (like me) who like to have everything set to max, AA x24 and so on.

Keep checking this thread, I might get some more ideas.