L3DT Forest Area Demo

Community Forums/Showcase/L3DT Forest Area Demo

jfk EO-11110(Posted 2016) [#1]
I was playing with L3DT terrain generator, and as so often, a simple "how did that command work again?" turned quickly into some substancial stuff.

The L3DT terrain is impressive by its own, but I went over the texture, then added a single surface particle system for a piece of forest at closer range to the camera, each tree adapting to the underlying terrain texel, if it's forest area.

After fiddling with vertexalpha to fade the forest in, I saw myself confronted with die hard alpha zfighting at its best, at which point I decided to use masked textures only, and absolutely no alpha transparency for the trees. No entityautofade, no alpha textures, no Vertexalpha... But how to fade in the seams of the forest without alpha? A true challenge. I'd like to know what you think of the method I use and if you have any better idea (don't say Alpha! ^^)

I've got a screenie and the demo on my free website, but I guess I couldn't hotlink them, so please have a look at:

http://anticrap.byethost3.com/

thank you.

edit: screenie from the Gallery, thanks! The shady side of a hill, maybe a bit dark on a bright page...



RustyKristi(Posted 2016) [#2]
nice demos jfk


Fielder(Posted 2016) [#3]
You have cerated a Video editor? the Swiss Knife?


RemiD(Posted 2016) [#4]
nice demo, i say don't worry about the trees suddenly appearing/disappearing, because when you add some gameplay, the player will be focused on what he has to do and probably not notice the trees.

However, to make this appearing/disappearing, less noticeable, maybe try to get the color of the grass on the terrain below the tree and use it to color the tree when you show it and progressively change its color from the grass color to the tree color.

Related to this : http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=102163 (#18)


BlitzSupport(Posted 2016) [#5]
Looks pretty good here. That terrain's massive!


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2016) [#6]
Thank you very much. It's 2*2 times a 1024px heightmap / Blitzterrain, that is wrapped / seamless tileable, so virtually 8 mio tris, but as you pass over eg. X= 512, you'll be positioned at x=-512, that looks precisely the same, so you don't notice and just fly over a seemingly endless terrain. The single surface forest is limited to 64k Vertices and by default it has 131*131 tris with unshared vertices.

RemiD, thanks, interesting suggestion (tho i already use that color, but only to some degree, otherwise the trees would remain almost invisible, also, firs often look almost black in real, but fading to that slightly darker tone is indeed a good idea, the dilemma is: i wanna see them, but don't want to see them appearing ^^), that may be at least a partial solution of that problem, how to fade in something without Alpha. The shifting horizons will remain, even with an Alpha solution. This "glitch" is amplified by the terrains own behaviour to shift slightly on approximation,which does not help of course.

Anyway, thanks for trying, good to see it worked at all. btw. how was the framerate, bearable? I got it running on a really old laptop with S3 onboard gfxcard, tho somewhere around 8fps ^^.

Fielder, yes the "swiss movie knife", handling full hd mpeg transport streams such as mts2, utilizing ffmpeg for import and export. It has rather nice greenscreening. I think my spaceprovider blocks the exe download, will upload it zipped the sooner or later.

btw. Little typo in the terrajn demo cfg file, but only in a remark: "130 ; terrain size" should be "130; forest size", of course.

edit2, BTW. fly only chopper speed, although you can accellerate to jetplane, I'll use it for helicopter missions.


Fielder(Posted 2016) [#7]
I've found and older version of your video editor but i can't start it on windows 10.. i will try your newest one.. it's hard to find an "Indie" video editor...


BlitzSupport(Posted 2016) [#8]
Perfectly smooth with forest = 146 here. I'm suprised that visually wrapping a terrain is as easy as simply moving the camera, I'd imagine you'd see a glitch, but I guess not!

I noticed that collisions work at the start but stop working later on... wonder if that's related to the re-positioning of the camera/terrain?


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2016) [#9]
Fielder, I upped a zipped version. On Win>=8 you may need to install into the programs folder and try various compatibility modes, and or individual DEP deactivation. The install may also need an admin account. And don't expect too much, importing mts2 on slow machines is just slow... Other than that, I personally enjoyed it.

James, thanks, yep, L3DT can do wrapped terrains and they wrap perfectly, but as we know, rendering a Blitzterrain isn't really a precise thing when it comes to theoreticly seamless seams. I had to overlap them by two units and stretch the edges way below ground, but even now once in a while you can see open seams in the distance. The near forest has also a positive effect in that it hides terrain-morphing artefacts (tesselation?). Other than that open seams thing, wrapping was painless. I intuitively did the same with the trees, which seems to work nicely. However, in a real game the mission would take place in a confined area and the pilot would be called back when he flies too far away. That old inca temple will be there in the middle somewhere anyway... ^^

Two things I miss in Blitzterrains: individual precision for seam rows and a horizontal clipping to allow for cubemaps, mirror etc. But a mesh wouldn't be an alternative. Too many Tris in view.

Anyway, funny stuff. BTW that Fir tree is a placeholder, I even think this is from a plastic christmas tree ^^

Cheers

PS I uploaded a screenie to the gallery 3 days ago, so I could embed it here, but nothing there yet.

PS2, collision, ground is currently checked only over one of four terrain quarters. Just something not implemented, so you can see it from below.


BlitzSupport(Posted 2016) [#10]
Just bumped the gallery, sorry, should be there now!

Interesting to read about the wrapping. I only discovered L3DT very recently, probably from a post here (by you?), does give good results, handy to know it does wrapping too...


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2016) [#11]
Yes, thanks, it's there now. It looked good on my win screen, but now seems a bit dark on this handheld display.

Yep, L3DT is good, even in the free version with a 2048 px heightmap limit. Although, What became a dark forest was originally just a greenish tainted blur. 2nd texture layer detail texture in blendmode 5 helps a bit. And the bumpiness of the particles.

Another great tool is TED, that is for free now. I have found links to both in this forum, by using search terms, "Heightmap" I think. I didn't use terrains in any bigger projects before.

People are a bit tired of terrain demos, they've seen just too many of them. Personally I find it rather inspiring to develop an test such a thing with a profound game idea in the back of my head.


Yue(Posted 2016) [#12]
very nice. :)




How can you create sky boxes like this?


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2016) [#13]
Thank you. The sweet skybox is from a package see the readme in the skybox2 folder. The tricky part is to combine a skybox and fog, without to see the mountains against the sky before they appear out of the fog. I wrote a code to color the original grey at the horizon in a slightly turqoise tone that fits in better, and is a bit brighter. doing so, the amount of colorization must gradiently be reduced when painting into the clouds... if that makes any sense. Additionally the original UVs were set to 0.0 and 1.0, resulting in visible edges, so I parse the Vertices and set the UVs to 0.002 and 0.998, which solved the issue. Feel free to use this skybox within the terms described in the mentioned readme file.


Fielder(Posted 2016) [#14]
sorry boring you again with the Knife video tool..
what language have you used to make this editor?


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2016) [#15]
Fielder, it's Blitz3D.

About the Terrain thingie, for those interested, I upped a new version with hopefully more subtile fading in of the forest.

Certain compromises had to be made, due to logical reasons. Anyhow, I like it now.

I have also re-released the Chess User vs AI game "deep Purple" and the Rubik's Cube simulation "BlitzCube"


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2016) [#16]
I have just uploaded version 03, featuring epic orchestra soundtrack, dragons roaming the sky and stalking the helicopter, and corelated 50bmg board mg with associated, probably slightly exaggerated fx, pretty bombastic soundfx, etc...

This demo reveals rather accurately the product characteristics I'm aiming for. Cinematic, epic, nerve wrecking, fast paced.

http://anticrap.byethost3.com/
just scroll to the terrain screenie, then dl the ...v03.zip

A bit of Gameplay. Seems like we're getting somewhere...


stayne(Posted 2016) [#17]
Haven't downloaded it yet but I'm already picturing Panzer Dragoon!


Yue(Posted 2016) [#18]
:) Nice!




Steve Elliott(Posted 2016) [#19]

but I'm already picturing Panzer Dragoon!



My thoughts too.

Coming along very nicely, but still a very small window, is there a key to go full-screen?


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2016) [#20]
Thanks, yes, edit the. cfg file in notepad. Keep automatic linebreaks off tho.


RemiD(Posted 2016) [#21]
It works well here.

Some critics/suggestions/questions :
->the cockpit looks inconsistent with the rest of the world, maybe try to prerender a mesh ?

->about the shooting with bullets, i would add blood impacts on the dragons, and when the dragon dies, maybe make him become a raggdoll and let him fall in the reliefs (could be fun to watch)
->maybe add missiles with smoke trails and when it reaches a dragon make the dragon explode in parts ?
->maybe add a camera shaking effect with an associated sound when a dragon is colliding with the helicopter ?
->who is driving the helicopter ? Van Zan ? (a dragons hunter)



Steve Elliott(Posted 2016) [#22]

Thanks, yes, edit the. cfg file in notepad. Keep automatic linebreaks off tho.



Ah, that's much better - although the cockpit is very pixelated compared to the sharp scenery.


Rick Nasher(Posted 2016) [#23]
BTW, thanks for releasing sources for VRV.

Did a very quick implementation of the earlier walkthrough demo to be used with V1.1, just to see how it's holding up.


Pretty smooth I'd say. And indeed the 2nd tree type needed fixing(there were no leaves on the upper part of the model) :-). Looking pretty rich on the veggies now, much better than some other attempts(as mentioned by RemiD http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=102163 ).




Nevertheless there are a few things off, e.g.: the sunflares come through the terrain/trees for they are not set as obscurers(easy fix) and the edges of the cubemapped water aren't blending in with the ocean(harder to fix I guess). (EDIT: these were of course the edges of the 'island' not the cubewater(which is pretty good).

I noticed you use B3D's for terrain, but I prefer to have a very huge deformable BlitzTerrain from a heightmap and using a 'greenmap' where each color is representing a different vegetation type(like trees, bush, grass and waterplants). But perhaps there's a performance hit when using that approach over this method?

I'm curious to see what it will look like with Fastextension's shadows and post rendering effects applied (among other things).


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2017) [#24]
Thanks RemiD and Steve, your expertease upon which I totally agree, is highly appreciated.

Yeah Van Zan is one cool ehrm... "Coffeeville!" ^^ I was actually inspired by "reign of fire" (a dragons hunter) and may use some references.

Definitely, a lot of work including your excellent suggestions are yet to be done. But the big picture is a new game idea and market niche of which the concept of a 3D action adventure ist just a part, almost just the wrapping. Hopefully, I can pull this off.

Cya


RemiD(Posted 2017) [#25]
@jfk>>about the dragons turns moves animations and behavior i suggest to take a look at the game "drakan order of the flame", it may give you some ideas...