DaveLee

Make sure that you run the GMF process tool to collapse your models, and make sure each model has a base LUA file so that you can set an appropriate view distance.

This actually worked great! But, I was having issues with my rotating light model, so it may not make it into the final project. Great work though, thanks!

That's definitely true for well-trafficked urban areas like Moscow, but rural areas usually got statues that were much more simple. I based my hammer and sickle off of this image: http://s209.photobucket.com/albums/bb134/EvilViking13/Leadwerks/The%20Zone/?action=view&current=hamerandsickle.jpg ...with some creative license too of course.

Thanks everyone! It's been a long road, but I'm very happy with how it's all coming together. @Mumbles: I really do like this lighting much more than the overcast lighting. For an accurate overcast scene, I really needed to get rid of most of the main direction light in the map (which would have gotten rid of most of the shadows as well), but that would have looked rather flat and boring. I think the new light setup is much more visually interesting. I fixed the blog title too. That's what I get for relying on copy & paste! @Josh: It's actually a slightly modified skybox texture from CGTextures. I just spent some time aligning the lights to an interesting angle, and setting up a good color mix between the directional and ambient lights. After that, it just needed some work with the Environment object to get some good fog that fit in and a nice balance of brightness, contrast and saturation. I have this scene at 0.8 saturation at the moment.

Please excuse the rather horrifying pun in the title, but today’s update will highlight quite a few new assets and more level design, focusing in on the new grave sites and Zone signs specifically. Let’s dive in! First up, here are the new overview images. I’ve been working on the level design quite a lot, so you’ll notice lots of changes, along with a new skybox and afternoon lighting. I’ll be showing more detailed images of some of these areas later. The new skybox: Overview images: I have created 8 different grave sites for this project, primarily to populate a small hillside graveyard at the edge of the map and playable area. This graveyard began as a community graveyard for this remote area of the Chernobyl region (especially seeing that there was no local church). After the Chernobyl disaster it became a grave site for the military defenders and explorers of this area of the Exclusion Zone, as many met untimely ends here. Next up, I have new Zone signs. These will help add interest to parts of the playable areas as well as help add borders to the map, especially where there may be invisible walls (such as out in the river). To close out this blog update, I have new images of the swamp and military base. I’ve completed a “B” version of the military barracks where it seems that unknown forces once barricaded themselves in against some horror of the Zone. Many of the windows are boarded, and there are barricades over some doors and scattered around the inside of building. What happened to those who defended this building is unknown… I have also added a few additional debris props like tires and concrete slabs, some of which you can see here: And finally, a few more screenshots of the rest of the military base. You may notice a new structure in the side of the mountain at the back of the base. This underground entrance is where the player will begin, but that's all I'm telling for now. Enjoy! I still have much more to show (including the last full building), so expect another blog post in the near future as the project reaches completion.

I think alpha test evaluates the alpha map pixel by pixel as either 100% transparent or 100% opaque, with no middle ground. I can confirm that removing the shader information and using the material settings that Michael posted above produces the correct decal effect. Awesome! This issue had been bothering me for a while now.

I would lean towards the lower 300 watts for that PSU.

If it's a GTX 480 we're talking about, then 750 watts is definitely the minimum that you want to go. Don't forget name brand!

A power supply should be the one element in your computer that you should never go cheap on. Get a least a 500 watt, name brand PSU like Corsair or Thermaltake. This will allow you room to grow or for fluctuating power needs, and getting a name brand with solid components ensures that your PSU can supply the needed power at all times, and cleanly.

Sorry for the late reply! It looks like you figured it out. Alpha blend behavior seemed to change for some reason in 3.32, but I'll have to try out your material code and see if that works. I had actually gone back to a straight alpha test until I had time to look at it.

Hey everyone! I've been experimenting with creating a rotating emergency light (similar to those seen in STALKER). My initial plan was to create a spinning light case and put a point light inside of that. It worked, but there were a few shadow artifacts that I could never completelu get rid of due to how close the point light and spinning model were. My next idea was to remove the animation from the model, and attach two spot lights to it via LUA scripts like this: >o< ...and then I would rotate the entire model+lights setup via LUA. The problem is, I'm not a programmer by any means. B) I was able to get one spotlight attached to the model, but I'm at a loss about how to rotate it. Does anyone have any suggestions? Here's my code so far (the light is facing down the wrong axis atm): require("scripts/class") local class=CreateClass(...) beginframe1 = 0 endframe1 = 81 class.sound_ambient=LoadSound('abstract::ambient_lighthum.ogg') function class:InitDialog(grid) self.super:InitDialog(grid) group=grid:FindGroup( "Appearance" ) group:AddProperty("castshadows",PROPERTY_CHOICE,"Disabled,Dynamic,Static,Dynamic + Static,Dynamic + Static + Buffered","Cast shadows") group=grid:AddGroup("Light") group:AddProperty("shadowresolution",PROPERTY_CHOICE,"256,512,1024,2048","Shadow resolution") group:AddProperty("linearoffset",PROPERTY_FLOAT,"0,1,2","Linear offset") group:AddProperty("Range",PROPERTY_FLOAT,"1,100,0") group:AddProperty("coneangles",PROPERTY_VEC2,"0,180","Cone angles") group:Expand(1) end function class:CreateObject(model) local object=self.super:CreateObject(model) object.light=CreateSpotLight(10,model) object.light:SetShadowMode(1+2+4) object.light:SetRotationf( 1,1,1, 1 ) function object:SetKey(key,value) if key=="shadowresolution" then if value=="0" then self.light:SetShadowmapSize(256) elseif value=="1" then self.light:SetShadowmapSize(512) elseif value=="2" then self.light:SetShadowmapSize(1024) elseif value=="3" then self.light:SetShadowmapSize(2048) end elseif key=="castshadows" then local mode=tonumber(value) if mode==0 then self.light:SetShadowMode(0) elseif mode==1 then self.light:SetShadowMode(1) elseif mode==2 then self.light:SetShadowMode(2) elseif mode==3 then self.light:SetShadowMode(3) elseif mode==4 then self.light:SetShadowMode(7) end elseif key=="coneangles" then local angles=StringToVec2(value) self.light:SetConeAngles( angles.x, angles.y ) elseif key=="range" then self.light:SetRange(value) elseif key=="castshadows" then -- local mode=tonumber(value)--+4 -- self.model:SetShadowMode(mode,1) elseif key=="multoffset" then self.light:SetShadowOffset(self.light:GetShadowOffset(0,0),value,0) elseif key=="linearoffset" then self.light:SetShadowOffset(value,self.light:GetShadowOffset(1,0),0) else return self.super:SetKey(key,value) end return 1 end function object:GetKey(key,value) if key=="linearoffset" then return self.light:GetShadowOffset(0,0) elseif key=="castshadows" then local mode=self.light:GetShadowMode() if mode==0 then return 0 elseif mode==1 then return 1 elseif mode==2 then return 3 elseif mode==3 then return 3 elseif mode==7 then return 4 end elseif key=="multoffset" then return self.light:GetShadowOffset(1,0) elseif key=="coneangles" then return self.light.innerconeangle..","..self.light.outerconeangle elseif key=="shadowresolution" then resolution=self.light:GetShadowmapSize() if resolution==256 then return 0 elseif resolution==512 then return 1 elseif resolution==1024 then return 2 elseif resolution==2048 then return 3 else return -1 end elseif key=="range" then return self.light:GetRange() else return self.super:GetKey(key,value) end return value end end

Today’s blog update on the Zone project will be quite lengthy, as over the last few weeks I have been finishing up the remaining assets and now I’m beginning to focus on the level design side of things. My new Intel i7 system is up and running once again (and no longer on fire), so today I have a good number of screenshots to share with you. It’s been a while since I shared some overview images with you all, so I’ll start off with those: In these you can see where I’ve begun to detail and work over more areas of the map. I’ve also begun setting up the LUA scripts for the main buildings and assets, and correctly setting their view distance and physics settings. LODs models are also being created to help with performance. Today will be focusing on the railroad station area, but other areas you see here will be covered in future blog posts. You may notice some obvious tiling in the ground textures. While they usually won’t be seen from this altitude, I’ve already re-processed all of them to reduce the tiling effect. The largest model of the project, weighing in at over 22,000 polygons at the maximum LOD, is Bober Station. The name, as well as the inspiration for this building comes from the real railroad station in Bober, a small community near Chernobyl that was actually evacuated a few months after the disaster had happened when officials decided that Bober was also too contaminated. To go along with the station, I carefully modeled an old bench (and several damaged versions) based off of a real life source that I was able to photograph and study: To wrap things up, I have a good selection of screenshots of Bober Station and the surrounding area. The prop detailing is close to complete, but I will probably be filling in more props before calling it complete. Enjoy!

I can definitely attest to asset/feature creep in projects, but some of it is just the reality of making games.

I opened the Zone project files on another PC, and it seems that my terrain is missing: It looks like the Editor can't load my terrain files, and wants me to create new terrain. I copied the entire Leadwerks Engine directory to this computer. This computer does use a nVidia Quadro FX 3700 workstation card, and I'm wondering if that could be part of the problem. I have gotten previous versions of the map to open on this computer, and I've also tried updating my drivers. Any thoughts?

Cool, do you have the link Pixel Perfect?

@omid3098 - Good eye! I think I'll redo the base metal texture. As for the motherboard brand, if you look carefully (or not so carefully) the brand name is visible in that image. It's strange, because it's a very good brand. I've been buying their graphics cards for quite a while. They do have excellent 24/7 tech support, thankfully.

Haha, I was wondering about that.

Some of you may have noticed via my status updates last week that I was in the process of my 2-year PC upgrade cycle, and that I was working on building an Intel Core i7 based system. The good news is that the upgrade went well despite having to reinstall Windows (nothing was lost), and the system was stable and powerful within 24 hours of the parts arriving. The bad news? Saturday, during a heavy CPU load, a capacitor on the motherboard exploded, sparking a small fire on the board. Yes, I’m serious: As far as I can tell, the motherboard did not take any components with it when it died a catastrophic death, but I won’t be able to fully test everything until the replacement motherboard arrives. In the mean time, I’m going to change the topic of The Zone Blog Post #8 from what I had planned, and make do with what images I already had available. Ah, game development. Always an adventure! Instead of the Bober Railroad station, today’s update will feature a selection of new debris and background props that I have created to populate The Zone. First off, I have created two versions of a Soviet style hammer and sickle statue; one is aged but stable, and one has been vandalized. Next up is another Zone sign. These signs warn travelers of the dangers of eating the wild plants in The Zone. It says: “Picking mushrooms and berries prohibited!” The rest of the images speak for themselves, so enjoy!

Hey omid3098, try this material code:

This is greatly needed for interior lighting! +1 from me.

This is too cool! I remember back in 2005 how terrible Battlefield 2's ragdolls were, and here we are just 5 years later and you have a ragdoll that looks 100x times better.

Hello again, programmers, artists, and game designers! Today's blog update will be a smaller one, with a much larger update on the way soon. Today I'm going to talk briefly about one way to utilize vertex color when texturing an asset, in this case a building, and then share some images of the Zone beta milestone from the end of May. Those of you that downloaded the R5 version of Leadwerks 3.32 are already familiar with my derelict garage model. For this model, I initially used a single main texture for the concrete floors and the base of the building. It tiled well, and had some nice detail in the diffuse and normal maps. The problem I faced was that because it tiled so well, when viewed across the building it appeared very flat and boring, even with ambient occlusion. To help add some visual interest to this base texture, which covers much of the building and the player's viewing area, I decide to utilize vertex colors and a second texture. My plan was the create two versions of the concrete base texture, one clean and one dirty. They would share the same normal map, saving some texture memory. Here is a look at the textures: And here is how I laid out the vertex colors: And finally, here is how it looks in game after adding the vertex colors: If you've taken a look at the garage in game for yourself, that means you've probably explored the beta version of The Zone a bit as well. Here are some screenshots of that beta version that feature a bit more detailing work: With only a few assets remaining, this project is rapidly coming to an end now. If you look around at some of the Leadwerks banner images, you may see some glimpses of my next blog post, which has a lot of new material that I'm very excited to share!

Very cool! I've always been a big fan of the CH-47.

Keep in mind that this is still a beta version, and I haven't optimized anything yet. Quite a few assets have large textures that will be downsized slightly in the end, and about there are almost no LODs created for my assets yet. All of these will be present in the final version.

You pretty much nailed it Flexman. I'm using a 2 color vertex color modifier in 3ds Max with black and white. White is the stucco, and black is the brick. I actually have a dummy "checkered" texture applied to the blended parts of my model named "barracksblend" in Max, and my barracksblend.mat file (posted in the blog) then defines which textures the vertex colors apply to the model in the engine.