Pixel Perfect

Sounds like a nice solution if you can avoid the hit on the fps ... look forward to a demo.

Yeah, the animations all run fine when it's not being frapped lol, with no foot skating! However, it does show a problem in my code as it's supposed to be able to cope with all that. That's something I do need to look at. But yes, as you say, I'm not too bothered about the fine detail just now, just trying to get all the key components in place first and I'll go through a major refinement process once that's done. I’ve picked up on a lot of things though putting this together … the list is getting quite long! That will inevitably keep me out of mischief for a while when I get round to fixing it all Good to hear about your RPG plans. Good luck with that Kevin

It reminds me of Lumooja's game a while back but a lot more refined. I too wish you luck with the competition!

Sounds great, I'm a great fan of The Longest Journey / Dreamfall and look forward to playing anything in that genre. With regard to beta testing I'd certainly be interested and would happily sign a Non Disclosure Agreement with either you or your publisher if that's what you require.

Thanks Richard. In answer to your question .. no it's not that sophisticated so you need to, as you suggest, model the parts externally. However to add them to my engine is simple, just a question of filling out a series of properties in an ini file associated with the main model file and the engine does the rest for you. You can assign how much force is needed to trigger the break or explosion and it supports any number of parts. You can even assign a burnt model to substitute for items which are marked as just flammable. I actually produced the broken parts for the items in the video using the original models and gmax and I know nothing of modeling! Making all the Newton physics files is a pain though!

Wow ... you've set yourself quite a benchmark there NA to liken it to Dreamfall which has to be one of the best produced adventure games ever made and a storyline widely accepted as second to none from the master storyteller Ragnar Tørnquist. If your game is even half as good you should have a big seller on your hands, I'm getting excited about seeing it! Is there an ETA on this yet? When are we likely to see a clip of any gameplay or a trailer ?

Yet again excellent work for the community Aggror ... many thanks

Updated the first post with the final video this morning showing the techniques applied to the whole test level. No commentary on this as it's more 'in game' focused. Copy of the link below (again best watched using the 480p option): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8sn5kA7eKs

Looks great Aggror! You've really captured that underwater look. Kept wanting to see a huge octopus rise up off the sea bed Nice opening menu too.

Decided to stick with Fraps as nothing else I've tried quite matches the video capture quality. Virtual Dub is a brilliant tool and allows me to resync the audio perfectly over any length of video by allowing me to view the audio and match audio markers to the video. One simple calculation later and I can resync the entire video perfectly .. cool!

Yes, people often get confused between the two different uses of IK. In the modelling app it is used as an aid to animating the model but the final export is normally just the model with its skeletal animation... you have done with the IK by then as its been translated into animation. Game engines and AI often use IK though to improve the animation of models in game, a typical example is foot placement. Game engines not using IK will exhibit the classic floating foot symptom when the animated character is walking down a steep incline whereas engines supporting IK will position the foot so it aligns to the slope giving a much more realistic look to the animation.

Thanks for the suggestion DaDonic... I'll give it a try

I wish it was just that, have tried it in many players including FLV but the audio is definitely out of sync. Once it's re-synced it plays perfectly in all players. Anyway ... its not a big issue now and as soon as I find another app whose video output is as good as Fraps then I'll drop Fraps like a hot potato because every other app I've tried manages to sync the audio fine!

Never did get the SB card to work so I've reverted back to my on-board sound that works perfectly with everything except Fraps it would appear! However, the Virual Dub re-syncing of the video and audio works a treat. So, concidering I rarely need to use Fraps, I'll just live with that solution for now. One day maybe the Fraps people will get round to fixing it so it syncs correctly like all the other video capture apps I've tried. Time to make that video

Nice to see someone else using the Win32 API too! I'll take a look at this, thanks for posting.

Looking forward to reading this

I'm not at all sure what it is you are trying to achieve here from your description. Do you own a copy of Leadwerks Engine? To answer your first question ... 3D World Studio does not support road building within the application. Virtually all functions of 3D World Studio are superseded by the Leadwerks Editor with the exception of the ability to model using CSG. So it would appear from your description that you would be better off using the Leadwerks Editor to create your terrains, do your roads, and import buildings you have made with 3D World Studio. The only reason I could see for not doing this is if you in fact want to create levels for exporting to some other format for example .dbo in which case you would need to use 3D World Studio as you suggest (but forget the roads unless you simply paint those on as a texture layer).

Getting my SB Live 5.1 card to run under Win 7 is proving a nightmare. Five drivers later and only partial success. I guess it's shell out for a new up to date card on the off chance Fraps may work or try the re-sync technique and see how practical that is, after all I don't use Fraps very often. The fact that the other two apps I've tried record perfectly well, so be it with lesser overall quality, and the fact that I'm only trying to capture 640X480 at 30fps makes me think that lack of available CPU power is not the factor here. There seems to be sufficient evidence on the net to suggest Fraps does suffer from hardware compatability issues. and there was me thinking putting this latest vid together would be a two hour affair ...

I think there is a lot of truth in this. As indie developers we probably owe it to ourselves to keep it a simple as possible. Simple can still be effective if well thought out.

Yeah ... looking well nice .. I like it!

There is no hardware acceleration setting in Windows 7 so I guess I'll have to try fitting a sound card. I can try the Sound Blaster Live from my older PC. Otherwise I might have to just try resyncing the audio using VirtualDub or some similar util. Are there no other comparable Video Capture apps out there?

Thanks Lumooja ... I'll give that a try!

I seem to remeber people posting problems in the past when using Quadro cards. I think they are primarily designed for CAD use but either way don't seem to fully support some of the features required by Leadwerks.

I can't get audio to sync properly using FRAPS, it progressively gets further out of sync the longer I record(the audio actually leads the video). I can see this is a common problem by looking on the net and have tried re-installing my sound drivers and ensuring the sound card is set to 16 bit 44.1Khz sampling rate which were the two suggestions that seems to have worked for some people, but not in my case! CamStudio syncs fine but is a little too slow for recording in game action. I downloaded and tried GunCam last night and that works ok but the video quality is no-where near the quality of Fraps. Does anyone else have any suggestions/experience of this or can anyone suggest a good alternative ... thanks!

I simply capture the Leadwerks window and make it a child of mine (as per MasterXilo's original method in the old forum) and am using the WIN32 API directly - no excess baggage lol. No-one had custom buffers working with C++ at the time I started my editor although I seem to recollect MasterXilo later posted example code of doing just that so be it there were a few small issues associated with it. Looking at that and the the c# wrapper would probably be your best way forward unless you decide to just use C#.