World background

[aiaf]

Come up with an idea of game world.
 

 

 

[aiaf]

Im thinking several islands in the sky linked with portals.

Each island is a terrain, and we split world in maps, so several people can work independently.

In this way we can create a single world formed by several maps.

 

Something with wizards maybe

[Rick]

I agree with sky islands (probably themed). I think that makes things more module and expandable for development purposes. The question now is what do we do on these sky islands? I would assume each one has a main goal to "beat" it while fighting enemies and solving puzzles?

[aiaf]

Maybe start with no knowledge about the world player dont know why is there.So we keep things mysterious no obvious explanations.

By exploring give hints about the world , give player explanations lore, why some thing are like that, find why portals exists.

And kick some monster in the process.

[Rick]

I don't know if I'd want to get all that lore heavy with a community project.

Being a sky island these things shouldn't be all that big so as to convey that it's a sky island visually. Plus for dev reasons we'd probably want them to be fairly small so we don't have to fill it with a ton of stuff so exploration would be minimized if that was the case. If we have a big terrain the player will never feel like it's floating in the sky I don't think.

I've never played the new Zelda game but I did watch videos on it. They have these tombs you go into and each one has it's own kind of puzzle. Perhaps each sky island can have a puzzle and a couple easy enemies (think zoombas in mario). Solving the puzzles opens up the exit. The character can have some "powers" or something that they get in each island that is used for it's puzzle. We have enough people that I think we can come up with some puzzles and the early levels will be easy ones. If we went this route I don't know if all islands even need enemies. Some puzzles can involve enemies maybe if needed. Like one could be some major stationary bad guy that's spitting out bad guys constantly and you have to fight them so you don't get overwhelmed but there is a puzzle on how to beat the main bad guy itself.

[Slastraf]

I think we should not make any restrictions. What I mean is that we could use some islands in the sky and bridges etc between them to unlock new portals that each put the player in a new situation. Like that we could have any type of level we want to do  ( I wanted to do a cave and also a post apocalyptic mini city and so on )

 

EDIT

That way I would already have a small lore in mind.. An hero like main character can use heavenly portals to save the earth or something.

[aiaf]

Would like to have some kind of theme to the game and some unusual mechanics.

For example one master monster that follows you on all islands , that appear from time to time, cant be killed.

And maybe the master quest is to find why it follows you and a way to kill it , or a way to pacify it.

 

[gamecreator]

Agreed that we should at least have at theme/setting, something uniting the game and giving us some focus.  Are we in a medieval fantasy world, modern, future (perhaps with aliens)?  Abstract is fine too but that should be made clear up front.  Some shots for inspiration.

[Rick]

That screenshot is exactly what I was thinking of. Very simplistic but looks really great!

[aiaf]

Look nice,  but want some darker levels also, with Diablo feel.

We going to use leadwerks terrain? 

Or create island from models also? 

[Rick]

With that kind of low poly style I don't think LE's terrain can duplicate that look well enough. Is there some terrain module in some art software that makes it easy to make random low poly terrains? It's probably better to start with a random kind of terrain and edit vs making 100% from scratch.

[gamecreator]

I could probably create something in Max but I'm good with compromising and using normal Leadwerks terrain with either a single-color grass texture or a stylized/cartoon grass texture.

[Rick]

Not that I know blender or if anyone on our team is using blender but found this which seems to be pretty easy. I would imagine other modeling software has something similar? https://devforum.roblox.com/t/how-to-make-a-generate-a-low-poly-terrain-in-blender-in-less-than-10-seconds/87161

Seems like it doesn't get much easier than something like this. I suppose paths and roads is where it would get harder but I assume modeling software has that covered as well?

[mdgunn]

At a guess I'd imagine you could do a low-poly terrain in Blender by taking any higher poly mesh (e.g. LW output, Worldmachine etc.), getting a lower poly subdivided triangulated plain and using a shrinkwrap modifier against the higher poly terrain to pull the low poly to the high poly shape.    That would be my guess

I'd guess that WorldMachine might give you good control out of the specifics out output resolution as well.

 

[gamecreator]

What would we export/import?  The heightmap or the model?  Because then we also need to think about vegetation.  If we export a heightmap, we can use Leadwerks vegetation (and paint roads/paths).  Otherwise it gets tricky.

[Rick]

Given each map is relatively small and it's a low poly look I wouldn't think vegetation would be any sort of bottleneck for the game. Paths would then be the question. LE built in doesn't do anything like that does it? I think Aggror had a workaround for it but that can't be better than some built in tool for that in a modelling package since LE doesn't really allow much support for that kind of add-on.

[gamecreator]

For small maps (not exploration) I'm sure it won't be an issue.  If we're doing level creation entirely in a modeling program, paths also shouldn't be a problem.  Pretty sure Max and Blender allow snapping of geometry onto other geometry (kind of how I snapped a road to terrain via code here).

[Rick]

I think we need to decide on the exploration idea.

Are we really wanting vast terrains so exploring is a thing? It's hard to feel like you're exploring within a small terrain. When I think floating islands I think smaller terrains not larger ones which is what I was going from. Larger terrains require populating which will be a roadblock for a small community project. We also don't want it to be a walking simulator. How long are we expecting each map to take a player to complete? Are we thinking many quick short maps or fewer longer maps.

I generally go for smaller maps that users don't spend a ton of time in as we can more easily complete a smaller area and it makes it easier/quicker to extend the game in the future by making more maps. Since LE doens't allow 2 people to edit maps at the same time it's also just 1 person making a map. The smaller those maps are the easier that'll be to manage from a development perspective. Smaller maps that can be made in a shorter amount of time and put in front of the gamers vs a longer dev cycle with larger maps due to having to populate them.

[mdgunn]

1 hour ago, Rick said:

Not that I know blender or if anyone on our team is using blender but found this which seems to be pretty easy. I would imagine other modeling software has something similar? https://devforum.roblox.com/t/how-to-make-a-generate-a-low-poly-terrain-in-blender-in-less-than-10-seconds/87161

Seems like it doesn't get much easier than something like this. I suppose paths and roads is where it would get harder but I assume modeling software has that covered as well?

I know Blender a bit.  Decimate may lead to some less pleasing triangles  as it's just brute force trying to reduce triangles.   Shrinkwrap probably better option as I just did here as a quick test.....

The low subdivision terrain on the right is deformed by shrinkwrapping to the higher division sculpted one on the left.  You get more pleasing 'strips' of triangles.   Depends which look you like.

 

[Slastraf]

1 hour ago, Rick said:

Not that I know blender or if anyone on our team is using blender but found this which seems to be pretty easy. I would imagine other modeling software has something similar? https://devforum.roblox.com/t/how-to-make-a-generate-a-low-poly-terrain-in-blender-in-less-than-10-seconds/87161

Seems like it doesn't get much easier than something like this. I suppose paths and roads is where it would get harder but I assume modeling software has that covered as well?

I am the blender guy of our project if it comes to stuff like this  I have extensively practiced 3D hard surface modeling.

A low poly terrain could easily be done even in a few minutes , depending on the size and so .

But I am again stressing that there should be a mayor map the player goes back to to travel between levels.

____________________________________

As for the terrains or map size I also think we should keep them relatively small, and not bigger than one or two km^2 . But many different maps each map designer can put his / her ideas into and one big level that serves as hub for visiting different areas of the game. I agree that maps should be made by one person usually.

 

[Slastraf]

If I think about it we could go more abstract and extensively use brushes and less terrain. That would create its own art style. It was originally my Idea from the what type of game thread but I haven't made a map yet, just finalizing the third person controller script.

[mdgunn]

I've been been playing around with brushes recently redoing q2dm1 map from Quake2.  I find brushes the limitations of brushes interesting.  Leadwerks doesn't have many tools but you kind still get something done  You can always export them anyway as long as you haven't spent ages texturing them all.  You could do better than what I have below they are just me messing around. 

 

[Slastraf]

NICE ! That was actually kind of what I was thinking about. As you can see its hard to explain. I would put some less realistic and more abstract textures on it and just experiment with what looks best. Also in combination with Low poly rocks or stuff that flies around. And colorful lightning because we have a world where magic exists.

[gamecreator]

Since there are several people who want to design maps and we don't know how fast we'll get things done, it does make sense to make them individual, smaller scenes.

We could technically go from level to level.  Slastraf, is there a particular reason you want an extra hub world?  Seems like that effort could be put toward creating another playable level.

[mdgunn]

45 minutes ago, Rick said:

I think we need to decide on the exploration idea.

Are we really wanting vast terrains so exploring is a thing? It's hard to feel like you're exploring within a small terrain.

Think that even in a small terrain you can get a decent level of exploring done. Big maps sound like the wrong place to start.   Start as small as possible and when things don't fit get bigger, glue them together etc.   Need to be mostly modular so there are a number of small bits rather than large map, I would think.

The Witness is another reference point I find interesting. The terrain is relatively small but is very different and each different bit is really VERY VERY tiny......and it  took them something like 4 years to complete.    

It has a nice low poly-ish art style though.