Death Row *WIP*

[Imchasinyou]

Here is something I have come up with. Just putting it out there for suggestions or criticism.(constructive). KEEP in mind I am not a scriptor nor can I create models. Im just a hobbiest tinkering around and entertaining myself!

 

The idea is that you will start off in a village that you can explore a bit and then drive to the prison where you will have to gain control and take out the prisoners.

You must enter the prison. You must gain control or you WILL die.

You start by entering the front doors, enter the weapons repository, Grab something that might be of use and begin your journey. Every cell can be opened and you just might find something in there. Will you be cornered? If you survive this much, you can make your way to the yard by passing the death chamber. Is some one there? Will you witness an execution? Im not too sure yet. In the yard you will encounter more adversaries that just want you to die! Will they get what they want?

 

Nothing serious for a release but it entertains me to produce maps and see what ideas come to me as I work on them. A lot of times, a whole new game will emerge. Lets see where we go from here.

 

Performance is low at the moment as I work on this but hopefully, Ill figure out how to get it running better. Ive already reduced the prison from 3 levels to 2, removed almost all shadows from everything and reduced the number od lights used and changed the viewing range of almost everything from far to medium.. Not a real big fan of this as sometimes the walls disappear as you move around but Ill continue to plug away on it.

[DudeAwesome]

I see nothing new that would be interesting in the video. I just see a weird car. Some weapons and some dumb navmesh enemies. Environment is too dark.

 

So it looks like a normal le game

[Imchasinyou]

Wow, thanks man. I think its awesome to be so critical of something that is a WIP and done by some one that cant script for **** or create his own models! The environment is supposed to be dark, Ive yet to add in my own enemies get really detailed. I guess i have to be like the rest of the community and just be rude here but l'll assume you failed to read any of the comments ive made above and put the whole thing in context that the "dumb navmesh enemies" are the crawler created by or for Leadwerks and would be placeholders for testing as they resemble nothing of a prisoner or human for that matter.

 

Im pretty proud of this given my skill set is non existant in this area of my hobbies. Thanks for the Constructive criticism.

[Thirsty Panther]

Nice work ICY.

[Haydenmango]

Looking good! The road to the prison was cool, I liked the bridge especially. The layout of the prison is coming together as well, it will look awesome once you replace the crawler enemies with prisoners! Keep up the good work.

 

@DudeAwesome There is a difference between constructive criticism and just being rude. It seems like you are just being rude. Try using better adjectives, "weird" and "dumb" are really vague and the developer can't take anything useful from that.

[nick.ace]

Please ignore DudeAwesome's comment. New gameplay updates and videos are always interesting to read or watch!

 

This looks very interesting! Nice work, the level has a nice flow to it, and I like all the interactions you are able to do! You seemed to make a lot of progress already!

 

You mentioned that you were having performance issues. From your signature, you have a pretty powerful rig imo. One thing that heavily impacts performance is if the map size is too large. How big is your map? From the video it looked very big, and I would be careful with using 4k maps or even 2k maps unless you absolutely need them.

[Imchasinyou]

I believe this is a 2048 map. Id hate to do it BUT I could try to rebuild it as I dont think I can just resize the map can i? I mean once you set it in the terrain settings at the beginning of the set up of the map, you cant resize it? One option I guess id have is to have the driving scene in a different map as there will be areas to stop at and explore (atleast thats the plan for now). So, then I could trigger a map change for the prison setting and then on from that point to a different map if I was to go that far.

[nick.ace]

Well, there are a few things you can do. You can export the map using the export terrain command and then edit the image it produces in a paint program, crop the image, and then reimport the map. I'm not sure what paint programs can import the exported file though, so that may be an issue.

 

Before you do that, I would save your current map as a new map and try a smaller terrain size just to see if there is a performance difference. There may not be a huge difference, but I would definitely try it.

[Imchasinyou]

Please ignore DudeAwesome's comment. New gameplay updates and videos are always interesting to read or watch!

 

I seen in his profile where he complains about josh removing his posts and after seeing that, i just knew the snot nose was just trolling again!

Before you do that, I would save your current map as a new map and try a smaller terrain size just to see if there is a performance difference. There may not be a huge difference, but I would definitely try it.

 

Ill definately give this a try and see what happens. Im thinkign since there are so many CSG boxes and so many different textures that it might be the problem. There are just sooooo mnay CSG's in that map.

 

Ill run my map in debug to get the metrics and post but its mostly when I am facing the prison and inside the prison. Id hate to bring the 2 levels down to only 1 because then Ill just end up makign it wider and longer lol. Its like crack, once you get going, its hard to get stopped!

[Josh]

Please behave, everyone.

[nick.ace]

Ill definately give this a try and see what happens. Im thinkign since there are so many CSG boxes and so many different textures that it might be the problem. There are just sooooo mnay CSG's in that map.

 

Ill run my map in debug to get the metrics and post but its mostly when I am facing the prison and inside the prison. Id hate to bring the 2 levels down to only 1 because then Ill just end up makign it wider and longer lol. Its like crack, once you get going, its hard to get stopped!

 

You shouldn't need to bring down the number of levels. I mean, a map for one of my games has hundreds of entities including dozens of unique meshes and textures, plus I have a bunch of post-process shaders attached to it as well, and I still get between 30 and 60 FPS depending on the area of the map, but my map is also 1k.

 

A couple of things that might help:

• Reducing draw distance of the trees and roads from the beginning of the level (and I guess anything else that doesn't need to be close in view such as the doors and items)
  
• For the part with the crawlers, the number crawlers can have an impact
  
• It's kind of hard to tell where the stutter is, so if you still have issues next video, you should put an fps counter on screen (App.lua shows you how to do it)
  
• I would avoid running in debug mode to test performance! From my understanding, it seems to be there more for exception handling, and it's slow.
  
• For the looks of it, it doesn't seem you have that much CSG comparatively. I mean you use models for the more complex stuff, so I wouldn't think that would be the problem.
  

[Imchasinyou]

Great info Nick. Thanks

[YouGroove]

@DudeAwesome :

I understand your point and i would say the same, but we can't expect people that are not level designer or 3D modelers to make some Far Cry 1 game for example that is made by skilled industry artists (We are in the indie field and beginner field many times ). I learned to just pass and not comment when i find some game with bad fundations as this is people that will have to learn many things throught hard work and experience.

 

 

@ImChasingYou :

I have few tips , you can just take and leave what you want

1) Seek picture over internet about anything in your game from road barriers to buildings etc ...before starting

2) There is many level design tutorials and docs over internet

3) draw on paper your level ideas, and keep coming back detailling more or adding ideas more each time

4) It's lot more easy to work with a team than alone making all ( try to find some people or helper ones)

 

Some quick critics :

- the road is too narrow, make it more larger, more easy to drive in for player

- we see lightening breaks on road portions

- grass texture is bad too scaled up, and it would need variation with multitexturing

- make things aorund barriers more alive, more diversity

http://www.arbus.co.uk/images/temporary_vehicle_barrier_2.jpg

http://www.bluescopesteel.com.au/images/SourceImage/Ingal-barriers-car-def.jpg

- all around is super empty : you'll need trees, vegetation , some building storage or electricity buidling ...

- rework the moutain : better textures (cgtextures.com) and paint variation on cliffs with roks and grass zones

- seek picture of good buildings architecture and interiors , the rooms are very empty, such a waste of space :

http://www.invdesgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Inventure_MidwaySecurity_002.jpg

- walls with stuff on them :

http://damrpavghey4a.cloudfront.net/system/images/W1siZiIsIjIwMTQvMDgvMTUvMjAvMjEvMDcvODUzLzIzMjJfRjIyX1NxdWFkT3BzXzgwc20uanBnIl1d/2322-F22_SquadOps-80sm.jpg

- furniture and 3D assets :

http://www.mspaceholdings.com/sites/default/files/case-study/Interior%20Ticket%20Booth%20Office.jpg

- Vary the textures inside buildings

-Too dark and flat like many indie games , bring up some moon lightening that will show a minimum and highlight specular on materials.

- Where are the lamps outside the buildings ? or it is abadonned buildings ?

- any functionnal lamps inside buildings ? or any open roofs or windows letting pass moon lightening ?

- Hire a programmer to have good AI with ennemies patroling, other walking randomly around position pivots

- Make ennemies running away or to some hidden places when the player fire them and they can't reach him.4- - - this is not car simulation game, add some auto centering camera behind player like Gta and other games

- car lightening spots and flares looks strange

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/DNS1cm8MdOE/maxresdefault.jpg

 

 

It will take lot of stages of polishing, if you manage to not loose motivation (this is something frequent).

People with bad critics are some times just honnest , that only shows you will have many things to improve if you don't just get offended and instead push your game forward

[Imchasinyou]

More awesome constructive tips. Its great that these things get brought up as it will hopefully help others

 

I did say its a WIP so Ill continue to plug away on it. To me as a hobbyist at least, will add in all the pretty pretty stuff later once I am ready for that. I understand that point though. For something I have no intentions of releasing to any one other than maybe here in the workshop, theres no point to hire any one but I understand that as well. I do get assistance here and there. The road does need work but its how it is and looks the same in every engine Ive put it into. I have a pretty nice script for the AI but since I haven't put any in yet, there wasnt any point to using it. The crawlers are place holders and were there for tinkering and testing.

 

In no way was I offended nor would I have been by some one comments. I was how ever caught off guard by the rudeness of the comment. I couldnt see any point in taking the time to be so rude when all some one had to do was press the back button on the browser. compared to other engine forums in this nature, these forums are dead and I just thought id post something that might help / inspire / or spark an idea aside from getting feed back from those that do frequent the forums. Im a very open person and Im always open to suggestions, feedback and comments until they become rude, obnoxious or just flat out demeaning to some one.

 

In these days of the internet warriors, you cant post anything with out some one having something negative to say. Ill take the info Ive gotten from here thus far and use it to the best of my ability fully and wholesomely.

[YouGroove]

For something I have no intentions of releasing to any one other than maybe here in the workshop, theres no point to hire any one

I seen that on WIP, so i thaught about serious project idea in the total beginnings, i didn't know it was just some testing and toying .

 

I just thought id post something that might help / inspire / or spark an idea aside from getting feed back from those that do frequent the forums

Its' not your work to motivate people, people really super motivated to make and finish a game, believe me they know what they need and want to do, and they are not trying to show to others , but instead making their game the best they can do and perhaps be successfull in the end

 

(You can only help on some domain when you are really good enought)

 

In these days of the internet warriors, you cant post anything with out some one having something negative to say

Like Youtube or any internet media, you have good critics and ****, you have just to ignore what you don't like, like many indies just do when they have people with too bad critics, they just say : "it's like that i want it. Have a good day"

 

Good luck on your demo game.

[gamecreator]

Helpful criticism YouGroove and nice of you to provide links to examples.

[Thirsty Panther]

On the back of what You Groove was saying, One the best sources of game design is the World of level design. http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/articles.php

 

Lots of articles and they will email you 2 free books on level design. Well worth the read.

 

It explains well the your level must not only look good but should look like its a functional enviroment. As YG showed with his pics the road is not simply a road but a road with lines, cones, potholes and trees along it. Your level needs to be believable.

 

 

[DudeAwesome]

Wow, thanks man. I think its awesome to be so critical of something that is a WIP and done by some one that cant script for **** or create his own models! The environment is supposed to be dark, Ive yet to add in my own enemies get really detailed. I guess i have to be like the rest of the community and just be rude here but l'll assume you failed to read any of the comments ive made above and put the whole thing in context that the "dumb navmesh enemies" are the crawler created by or for Leadwerks and would be placeholders for testing as they resemble nothing of a prisoner or human for that matter.

 

Im pretty proud of this given my skill set is non existant in this area of my hobbies. Thanks for the Constructive criticism.

 

Its maybe fine that you could create some kind of prototype but you posted your project here and I told you critical what is wrong with your WIP post. ok maybe some kind of cynical. I don't think that I´m the only one who cant` call your project "awesome", "fancy" or "fancy awesome" because its simple not. There are many WIP they are awesome because they addict you. they don't have to be finished but they looks interesting. sometimes its the graphic or the gameplay. sometimes other stuff that makes a WIP cool. In your case I can't see a WIP not even a prototype its just a "play around" and I told you why. You can't "sell" us a WIP with default scripts they are included in Leadwerks and hope that you earn the best critic here for your >awesome< work.

 

@DudeAwesome There is a difference between constructive criticism and just being rude. It seems like you are just being rude. Try using better adjectives, "weird" and "dumb" are really vague and the developer can't take anything useful from that.

 

I have to say that my post was not rude. the car is weird (not in a emotional way about the project) its weird because it haves a strange behavior.

 

I also said that the enemies are dumb so. its true. they just run to the player. technically its just a "dumb" navmesh "AI" they ask for player position and runs from A to player position. so i quote myself "and some dumb navmesh enemies". So the enemy behavior is "dumb".

 

 

Please ignore DudeAwesome's comment. New gameplay updates and videos are always interesting to read or watch!

&&

I seen in his profile where he complains about josh removing his posts and after seeing that, i just knew the snot nose was just trolling again!

 

m(&& m(

 

@DudeAwesome :

I understand your point and i would say the same, but we can't expect people that are not level designer or 3D modelers to make some Far Cry 1 game for example that is made by skilled industry artists (We are in the indie field and beginner field many times ). I learned to just pass and not comment when i find some game with bad fundations as this is people that will have to learn many things throught hard work and experience.

 

I don't expect that people are superpros here but if someone throws a "WIP" in here he have to live with it why some guys give negative critic.

[cassius]

Well this kind of criticism may be tough on the ego but it makes interesting reading for the rest of us, and maybe we can even learn from it.Constructive criticism helps and is worth having.