Screenshots

[wattro]

but what if someone trips on that rock?

[TruthfulLiar]

that's a bonus called game design.

[Theftbot]

Oddity of the scene is the lowres flag texture.

[cityy]

but what if someone trips on that rock?

It is gonna be nonsolid.

[fKd]

Oddity of the scene is the lowres flag texture.

true....

[corsair]

It is gonna be nonsolid.

Blood?

[wattro]

but what if someone trips on that rock?

It is gonna be nonsolid.

is no one concerned aboot realism in games these days???

[cityy]

I'm only concerned about competetive play.

[Eraser]

Got another one of those little work-in-progress corridors

[EmeraldTiger]

Looks nice, though the tunnel does seem a bit too dark. I'd think those torches would emit some more light around them on the actual walls or w/e, but it seems to be projected only onto the ceiling.

[dONKEY]

This one I like, dig the broken steps and dig the edges of the floor. Is that water dripping? In freeze frame looks a little odd, maybe looks better animated.

[Eraser]

Yeah that's water dropping down. It looks better in motion. Still looking for a good way to create a puddle of water on the floor.

[EmeraldTiger]

Yeah that's water dropping down. It looks better in motion. Still looking for a good way to create a puddle of water on the floor.

To create a smooth-looking liquid puddle, you'll need two textures of the liquid you want to create. You'll need a version of the texture with a white background, and then a version of the texture with a transparent background. (which will show up as a checkerboard or w/e) CGTextures offers some "splatter" textures which can be useful, although they appear to be blood at first they can be manually edited to appear to be something else - or you can design your own, it's up to you. To separate the textures, I like to tag them with letters. So you can call the white-background texture "puddle1" and the transparent one "puddle1a".

In the shader, you'll need to set "nolightmap", "nonsolid", and "trans" as the surfaceparms.

As the first step in the shader, set the map for the transparent version of the texture, then apply "alphaFunc GE128". You'll get a transparent texture, but it won't look very "smooth" for right now.

Next, create step 2 of the shader, then find a "reflective" texture, such as the ones in "effects", or you can use textures like "proto_gruel2.tga" from the "liquids" folder. Now here you have a chocie to make. You can either set a tcMod for turbulence with the values 0, 0.05, 0, and 0.1, which will make the reflective surface warp giving an impression of fluidity. Alternatively, you can opt for a simple environment map (tcGen environment). Either of these can give a pretty good effect, it depends on what you're looking for. The reason you can't use both is because the engine can't seem to draw a turbulent texture with environment mapping, so you'll get a crazy "zebra" effect. Now apply "depthFunc equal", this will make the texture get "cut" to fit the transparent texture from the previous step.

Finally, to give the texture a seamless transition to the surrounding environment, create the third step in the shader and apply the white background version of the texture as the map. Then use "blendFunc filter" to get rid of the white. It'll also make the texture itself a bit transparent, so you still see the reflective effect from earlier.

Here is a sample of a blood shader I made to use for reference:

Code: Select all

textures/aqua/blood1
{
	surfaceparm nolightmap
	surfaceparm nonsolid
	surfaceparm trans
	{
		map textures/aquatic/bloodstain1a.tga
		alphaFunc GE128
	}
	{
		map textures/liquids/proto_grueldark2.tga
		tcMod turb 0 0.05 0 0.1
		depthFunc equal
	}
	{
		map textures/aquatic/bloodstain1.tga
		blendfunc filter
	}
}

Hope that helps.

[Eraser]

Whole bunch of screenshots of the entire map so far:

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0000.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0001.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0002.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0003.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0004.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0005.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0006.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0007.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0008.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0009.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0010.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0011.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0012.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18687963/map/shot0013.jpg[/lvlshot]

[obsidian]

Looking fantastic, but it could be improved on the smaller architectural details to look more realistic.

[sock]

Whole bunch of screenshots of the entire map so far

It feels like a collection of bad Kung fu moves strung together!

Ok let me rephrase that, it feels like you are building realistic environments without any reference and no overall layout or plan of what is going where.

I highly recommend you build a realistic environment first. Take a picture of your favourite building and create it using a single concrete texture. Look at all the small details, size of doors and windows, thickness of support beams, how the trims accenting edges, understand the weight and shape of the structure. It is the same principle that an artist does when drawing humans, you have to understand the scale and proportions of the body before you can create cool looking poses, otherwise your stuff will look odd and incomplete.

If you are going for the whole castle/courtyard theme, research the idea, watch period films, surf concept sites and I highly recommend you watch "The name of the rose". It has the whole church, monastery, courtyard vibe and of course it stars Sean Connery, can't go wrong with the real 007!

Concept ref site for ideas: http://www.conceptroot.com/Concept-Art/ ... m-vlaskin/ (root site is good as well)
Film reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS0Z932WVgc

[Despair]

Hey ppl. Haven't posted here in quite a while. Figured i'd share some screenshots of my beta for the MSG comp. Hope you like.

[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23119429/shot01.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23119429/shot02.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23119429/shot03.jpg[/lvlshot]

[mrd]

Hey now that's looking pretty spiffy!

[Eraser]

Looking fantastic, but it could be improved on the smaller architectural details to look more realistic.

Wow, thanks a lot! I'm going to look into it.

Whole bunch of screenshots of the entire map so far

It feels like a collection of bad Kung fu moves strung together!

Ok let me rephrase that, it feels like you are building realistic environments without any reference and no overall layout or plan of what is going where.

You're probably right about all that. I will study the links (the concept art you linked to is impressive) and see if I can do anything to improve it all. Not sure if I can shake the whole bad kung fu moves vibe without starting all over again from scratch though. I guess it's a learning process.

[obsidian]

Hey ppl. Haven't posted here in quite a while. Figured i'd share some screenshots of my beta for the MSG comp. Hope you like.

Beautiful work there. The only suggestion is that the texture for the waterfall looks a bit off, it doesn't look like water. I believe you used an additive blend function, it makes the water look like it's glowing and making the background brighter. I think perhaps you'll get better results with an alpha channel and maybe alphaMod. The result should be that the frothy water should occlude what's behind it.

For example:
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs17/i/2007/ ... _Stock.jpg

And if you are going for a dreamy/surreal type of map, you can view the water as if with a long exposure:
http://surfgraph.info/wp-content/upload ... erfall.jpg

[Despair]

Thanks Obsidian. It's funny you mention the waterfall. I had actually planned to replace the shader and texture, but had completely forgotten to. It's the same one i used on Overgrowth like 2 years ago. I wanted to do what you described back then, but couldn't figure it out. After some messing around though, looks like I've got it now. I think the texture may need a bit more color yet, but the effect is there. Also, not sure if i should keep alphashadow on or not.
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23119429/newfalls.jpg[/lvlshot]

[GONNAFISTYA]

Got another one of those little work-in-progress corridors

A hint: You have a very high contrast in lighting between in interior and the exterior. Use several point lights within the interior tunnel at low light levels to fake radiosity and fade it out as it goes deeper into the interior.

[obsidian]

Thanks Obsidian. It's funny you mention the waterfall....

Nice. Now all you need is a few misty particles at the bottom of the waterfall.

[obsidian]

I'm experimenting with some new texture creation techniques. Significant use of vectors, overlaid with tiling bitmaps converted to smart images, masks, adjustment layers and other goodies. It means I can create details (like those bolts) and scale them to any size I like for use on other textures without getting a pixellated mess. Very WIP and not nearly done.


(Click to enlarge)

[phantazm11]

Great idea Obsidian. Vectors are a great way to add high resolution detail to these kind of textures.