KidX and the Fiction Machine

Community Forums/Showcase/KidX and the Fiction Machine

Ross C(Posted 2008) [#1]
This bad boy is Tiler's/Scribbla's idea for a game. He designed the character and his animations. We both worked on the story for this. Here is some screenshots of an underground cavern section. Still on the level design phase idea and testing ground for AI/pathfinding.

Lightmapping/level editing done with Gile[s]. Unwrapping and some level editing done by Ultimate Unwrap. Invaluable tool to have!

The water uses fastlib add on for blitz for some displacement type bump mapping. Uses some bump mapping on the walls. The character has light reflected from his surroundings, via an updated cubemap, so he should be accurately lit. A little too shiney, but i think he suits it ;o)

Particle provided by particle candy. Another great lib!

Every entity has custom properties embedded in the entity name, so special blend modes can be set etc using the fast libs, and events can be rigged up, such as the moving textures for the waterfall and the river.

Small walkabout demo coming shortly. Hope you can give me some good crits about it :o)












andy_mc(Posted 2008) [#2]
Looks really good, any chance of a video?

It could do with a blob shadow under his feet, otherwise it's hard to guage height over the ground, especially when jumping over objects like in the last screenshot.

Love the fire effects


Beaker(Posted 2008) [#3]
Looks good so far. If I had any concerns, they are these:

There seems to be a mixture of visual styles. The character looks quite toon like (and not just cos he is shiny), whereas the environment looks quite 'natural': highly detailed textures, realistic looking flames etc.

My other concern is that there looks to be a lot of texture repetition on the rock walls. Might be remedied by adding more small stones, stalagtites and crap around generally.

At first I thought you had stolen the character from Psychonauts:


Does look very promising tho.


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#4]
I'll try and get a playable walkabout for tommorow. And the shadow is a def :o)

Yeah tell me about the wall texture... Tried overlaying another less repeating texture over it, but produced some un-inspiring results...

I'm going to try and add some more details in.

About the styles, i originally had the level designed around another game i was making, but it fitted in perfectly with the level.

Might try a toony texture on the walls and see what it looks like. Other than that, try my best and make it fit :o)


mtnhome3d(Posted 2008) [#5]
this looks really good although in the second screenshot he looks metalic.:)


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#6]
The main problem i have with the cubemap reflections is trying to blur out the light. It is expensive to perform :o) Even with render to texture.


Stevie G(Posted 2008) [#7]
Looks not bad but agree with Beaker that the main character looks out of place in the environment due to the inconsistent style. I'm sure it looks better in motion though.

Out of curiosity - how fast is the rendertotexture function compared to a normal copyrect?


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#8]
I've not fully tested it on it's own yet. I will do so when i get home.

I'm also rendering the 6 sides of the cubemap every frame, so i can make substantial FPS improvements.

It's so much easier i feel, to things look real, than cartoony :o) Demo coming when i get back from work.

Thanks for the comments thus far guys.


scribbla(Posted 2008) [#9]
i think you need to kick the ass of the artist as i dont think hes pulling his weight, he gets half way thru a character then leaves you to it....what a bast### ;)

the dark gloomy look works well for underground


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#10]
It's a bit brighter in the game. The screenshots turned out darker causes i was messing with the gamma commands in full screen :o)

It would be nice if you could toon up my cavern sir! And i'm switching to vertex lighting for the character. He's too shiney. What you think?


JustLuke(Posted 2008) [#11]
I agree that the character is too shiny. Perhaps he'd look better cel-shaded?

I also agree with others that there is a stylistic clash between the character and the "realism" of the environment. In addition, I think that the environment sees rather bland in terms of the lighting and the textures. I think that you should take some time to work on your stylistic approach - decide whether you want your game to be cartoony or realistic and apply your approach equally to the characters and environments. Yeah, I know I'm not saying anything new.

Beaker made reference to Psychonauts. If you do decide to go for a cartoony style then I recommend that you pay attention to the ways in which the artists approached the environments in this game. You might also want to take a look at the Sam 'n' Max episodic games by Telltale for texturing inspiration. Also, for ideas about more interesting and vivid (but east to impleent) environmental lighting techniques, you may also find it useful to take a look at the original Everquest - it's amazing how much interesting lighting can transform otherwise simple environments into something special.


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#12]
Thanks man. I'll check it out. Realistic seems easier for me to do :o) But the main character is cartoony. Maybe i'll use this level for the game it was planned for...


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#13]
Ok, i'm trying to compile a demo based on render to texture, but it seems like you can't render to texture on a cubemap texture, which makes the render to texture function, for me personally, rather pointless. It only ever renders one face, the rest is garbled.


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#14]
Righto, here's a video clip of it in action. FPS is crap and it's a little dark, at least on my monitor.

4.2 MB ish

http://www.rosscrooks.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/kidx.wmv


ImaginaryHuman(Posted 2008) [#15]
Looks cool, tho a bit dark?


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#16]
I've reworked the textures on the level. Will post more later :o) Thanks for having a look.


Mr. Sandman(Posted 2008) [#17]
impressive look! continue the work man