Multiplayer Updates

I have been working on improving sections of the multiplayer code to get ready for the big push of putting my network framework into the Manor Test Project. 

Above is a screenshot from my un-announced project which has been used to build the network framework. So far I have client and server talking to each other and have tested it with 4 people online via the net.

Today I added the huge name tags. I'll work on getting them to scale and not block out so much of the view. Not really needed in this project but will be handy for the Manor multiplayer chat room.

Updates

My main project is getting very close to completion and I might be able to announce something very soon.

Also I have been pushing on with my game. Actual work in the engine has paused for now as I go on to develop some new assets. I shouldn't be spending so much time on assets so early into its production but I do enjoy creating models and textureing the.

My rat is near completion and here is a sneak peak of its progress to the right. I am rigging and setting up some animations at the moment then I plan to release a demo on youtube of it in motion.

Also I have been toying with the idea of skyboxs again. I do not like static boxes. This is those seen in most FPS games. I have revisited what I was doing in Leadwerks and improving it to make a fully dynamic skybox that doesn't require any fancy graphics hardware.

What you can see in this picture is the new cloud layer and atmospheric scattering in action. The clouds float across the sky but I am free to adjust the colours of both the sky and clouds. The system is also tied into the position of the sun and with a few more tweaks should look quite nice.

Drawcalls which is how long it takes to draw a object is only 4 for the entire skybox unlike the last version I had which added much more to the scene.

I am working on getting the clouds to cast shadows into the world and also having sunshafts poking out from behind the clouds.

Lastly I have started working on the Gnoll 2.0 model based of the designs Tyranni has provided. Once they are done I can start going back to gameplay.

Unity 3.4.0

I prepped my code yesterday then upgraded to the latest version of Unity. I had been holding off this upgrade as it made some changes to Unityscript which caused some people problems.

The upgrade went very smoothly but I think this was due to the work done fixing my code. The only issues I had was 3rd party code which was written poorly.

The new project which is written in C# upgraded with no issue which is another reason why I will be switching to only using C# from now on.

Performance wise, 3.4.0 is fantastic.  I got 50% more FPS in all my games. Also the shadows are much better. There is a ton of other new stuff which I am slowly starting to add.

I'll will be updating all the prototype code with this build soon. As well as a version of the Manor RPG which is Multiplayer using the C# framework I created.

Multiplayer tests go well

The last few days I have been rewriting my network framework first into C# then fixing all the bugs and adding client prediction.

Last night I successfully got it all working and are quite pleased with the results.

I recently bit the bullet and moved completely to C# and while there is more typing, I haven't ran into any major problems and learned a few new tricks along the way.

Next I am working on optimization, I have gotten my new game up to 60fps from 20 but I want more.

What I have been doing Part 3

For the record, this isn't the commissioned job. This is just something I have been doing when I have a spare moment and need a break.

I licenced 3D coat tonight and so this has allowed me testing getting the model back into Blender then into Unity.

The process was quite painless and the results are good inside of Unity.

I didn't do any work on creating a Normal map for the model and for the project it will be used in a normal will be a bit of a waste.



The Ears about the only part which has a normal map. The rest of the texture is flat and the model itself is back in its low resolution.

Next I am going to try creating some in-organic objects out of voxels and see how they import in after being converted back to polygons.

What I have been doing Part 2

Well 3D Coat has turned out to be much more awesome than awesome.

Building UV's, textures etc has been one of the hardest things so far with modeling but 3D coat takes the frustration away and just lets you get down to the process of painting the model.

When I last tired 3D Coat I really didn't know what I was doing so never really achieved anything with it.

I still had the trial installed and fired it up and much to my surprise it still allowed me to test in a more limited mode. ( No exporting etc ).

I have been tinkering with ways to paint fur over the weekend when I had a spare hour or two and I think I have finally nailed it.

Its safe to say that 3D Coat is now on my tool shopping list and I have a feeling I'll be buying a licence by the end of the week.

I also finally got around to making a decent logo for my game company.  Of cause I had to put the Clan of the Moon paw in there somewhere.

What I have been up too.

I am still flat out and in crunch time for my current project which I hope to have complete this week and then released.

Then maybe I can post what I have been doing.

I still find time to keep building content for The Manor.

Here is a little rat dude I started tonight. I hope to turn this one into a full body, single skinned mesh ready for the game.

I have also been looking at getting 3D Coat to do texture painting.

Updated Menu

This is one of the earlist maps I made in Unity and its used for the basic menu and scene selection in the test builds.

Its gone though many changes and I thought I would start documenting those changes with screenshots.

This is the latest version. It still has my windmill model. That was one fo the first projects I did with Blender and I have been thinking about revisiting it. The main changes is I removed the ugly Manor Test Logo and replaced it with the new logo with drop shadow. Also I altered the sky and moved the sun position.

New unity update

Update to Unity was released today. Some how I knew it would be this week.

I am about 2/3 the way though my commissioned project so I am holding off updating until the project is complete.

While Unity upgrades better than other engines I have tried there is still a chance it completely breaks something and at the moment I don't really have the time to go into debugging mode.

If I grind it out this weekend I should be able to get my project done and then I'll look into upgrading. The new version mainly optimizes the lighting effects and removes the shadow flicker which appears when light sources are moving.

Ultimately I would like to have my project finished before I start my new job next week. This update gives me another incentive to do just that.

Multiplayer Success

Two ships, controlled over the internet.

Huzzar, the first multiplayer build worked.

That is once I got my firewall working with it. The end result was Tyranni and I were able to connect and control our own ships. It was rough and has some issues with smooth updates but I am very happy with the first results.

My next version will be a multiplayer version of the Manor. This has animation to deal with as well which will be interesting.

On a side note, I have re-written the controls for ATSB to return to the original vision of a top down game. I now have everything working how I want with the controls. The camera movement is now what I want with the camera tracking ahead depending on speed. So the faster you go the more you can see ahead of you.

The full 3D version was interesting but I think its too complex for what I am trying to do. I want easy controls so you can concentrate on the more tactical side of the game anyway, back to my other secert project.

Multiplayer testing starts soon.

I am going to start playing around with networking code soon as I have this little crazy idea for ATSB.

Thats all. 

Normal Terrain

One thing missing from Unity that Leadwerks had was normal mapped Terrain. Thanks to a shader from 000000xNothing I now have it in Unity3D:

This is a normal moon texture.

And this is a Normal Mapped Moon texture.

I am preping the shader for roll out in The Manor, i'll post some screens once I have built the normal maps.

Manor Video

Been meaning to do this for a while now but here is a little demo of where I am at with The Manor:
With my new project taking up my time for the next few weeks I am going to be busy on that instead of the Manor. So I thought I should get the demo video out sooner.

Something ..........

Something big which I can't really give any details on yet has gone down but it potentially means my first real commercial project.

So development work on the Manor has stopped as I focus on this brand new project.

I have started work on the project and once its finalised and released, I can give away some more details.

So watch this space.

Prototype Ship

Today, I got to thinking about how I love to have a game where you can walk around a ship in flight. A few games have done this ( Star Wars Galaxies ) but I wondered how hard it would be to do in Unity. Turns out it wasn't very hard.

New Textures

I finally found my login to CGTextures and I am in the process of updating the textures with much higher res versions:

Ministry of silly walks - Adventures with IK

Bugs are great, they make you cry and they can make you laugh.

I always love it when it goes horriably wrong.

I have been playing around with a locomotion system to do IK on walking animtions. That is the feet touch the ground instead of hovering. Games like Crysis and Aion use this as well as newer unreal games.

Anyway I have basicly wedged my gnoll into this system and while it works, it has created some weird animtions. Like so:

Anyway, back to blender to adjust the bone postions and see if I can get it to improve.

Manor Ingame

Just some ingame shots of the Manor outer areas ingame:

Manor Exterior

I have started to block out a rough shape for the Manor.

This will be the first time its ever been seen how I have visualised it. This is a untextured block of of the main shape.

There is a few key areas which I wanted to get to scale first before going back and redoing the detail. First the main area / main hall. This is where the entrance is and where most of the rooms that the player visits are.

Next is the main court yard and gateway. In NWN you were surrounded by the default castle tileset which was limiting so this area was quite small and enclosed. Those restrictions are now removed and I can make a proper walled courtyard. The Manor was in a lengthy siege against the Necroscourge ( working name ). Thanks to twilight I refuse to have anything called a vampire in my game and Necroscourge have changed into something all together different and more interesting. Due to this I need to design in some defenses. The location where the manor was built makes it hard to attack, but I am thinking of placing a tower somewhere near the gate.

This is the inner court yard surrounded by the multistory buildings. At the moment most of these won't be accessible in game but they are used for archives and barracks for the armed forces that take up residence at the Manor.

Lastly here is a wireframe shot. You can see the interor rooms that are already build. I want the Manor to be seamless but this all depends if I can get a LOD system running to keep the frame rate up. I am building the manor complete inside blender but importing it as chunks into Unity. Which then all snap together much like lego does.

Once I have the basic size and shape done I'll start working on detail and textureing. I have plans for some stone gargoyles as well as giving the whole thing a gothic look.

New grass

I was playing around with the grass setttings, mixing diffrent types and altering the colours and variation to make it look more random. I quite liked the end results:

Deferred vs Forward Lighting

I have been on a bit of a optimization kick, trying to make my game run smoother on older hardware.

As it stands, I am getting 25fps at 1680x1050 with everything turned up on full. This is quite slow for what is on screen but its mostly to do with the lighting system I am using.

If I switch to the Forward render I get over 100fps but loose real time shadows. So I started experimenting with beast light mapper built into unity. This allows for pre-rendered shadows on static lights.

Here are the results:

Deferred rendering Above

Pre-rendered Lightmaps

This is the first time I have really used beast and it has a lot of options but I like the results so far. I love shadows and would like to have them real time but I also want my game to run on older computers. I hope to have a feature which allows you to select which rendering path to use. This is the ultimate goal but I am not sure if Unity allows for this.

ATSB playable prototype

My first and new defunct project ATSB is linked up on the new site as a test of the Unity Webplayer + Blogger. You can get to it by clicking on the ATSB Prototype in the tab menu above.

Its come a long way since this:

I may return to it some time in the future but I am fully focused now on my RPG system.

The Manor Map

Over the last few weeks I have been learning how to build and texture interior maps for my game.

The first area I have built is a re-creation of the Manor. This is about the 4th time I have done this using different engines over the years ( Oblivion / Morrowind / Neverwinter 1 / 2 etc ).

This would have to be the ultimate version with everything in a single world space





I am planing on doing a video soon showing off some of the new features in real time. I just need to finish off a few things first.

Test Post of blog

To see if this will be a suitable replacement.