Isles of Ifrinn

[iamcheeseontoast]

So I think I have a winner here, what do ya think

[StarFire]

Yes much better, go with that for now

[iamcheeseontoast]

Finally got the first of the Jadestone Towers ingame. This will make up part of the Jade Temple where you will be initiated into the Brotherhood.

Not shown in the screen is the Jadestone at top of tower is rotating, can't believe how easy it was to add the action to it, nice one guys...
Just need to get it to glow next.

[StarFire]

Cool, good to hear it was easy to add the rotate action, a lot of time went into the action system

As for the glow we do have a glow effect but it need more work to be end user friendly.

[ucm]

LMAO!!

Sooo wrong

Hey actually I would like the second one with the stars as it looks great and easy to convert to a black/green military patch.

The third one is too much of the lines and seems a little overboard...

The first one would make a great giant flag for like buildings or ambasadors cars. and the second one with the stars would make a great all around general flag which could easily be converted to 2 or 3 colors for various vehicles like black/green/dark-green for army vehicles for instance.

You're doing great so far!

[iamcheeseontoast]

Sorry UCM but it my fictional game the enemy are very similar to the usa.

Its about time they were the baddies not the heros

[ucm]

lol! i'm not upset, i actually look forward to playing your game when it's ready

[iamcheeseontoast]

I think once I get the map blocked out with the various locations, placeholders etc, I'll release a copy for the guys here to look at.

[iamcheeseontoast]

Ok update here on my progress of level and gameplay etc
1 You begin in the deserted Harbour/village. The letter u received tells you to get home, so thats your first port of call.
At this point your only a normal person.

2 Once you get home you find out about yor father and your potential to follow in his footsteps and become a "jadestone Mage"
(working name till i can think of something better).

3a Temple. Once here your potential becomes realised and you become what u were destined to be.

3b You also received your first 2 abilities. 1 Offensive and 1 defensive.

4 Your next step is to get to area 2. Not so easy as once you become initiated the enemy know about it and send troops to stop you....

Standing Stones - During your journey you will come across "Standing Stones" these will give you more abilities and recharge your power level. Also any jadestone rocks found throught out Ifrinn can be used to recharge your power levels.

Game play
Weapons - you have 2 choices, use weapons captured from dead troops or use your offensive abilites.
Power Level - This drops as you use EITHER offensive or defensive ablities.
Offensive abilites cannot be used if you have a weapon selected, it must be holstered first.
Defensive abilites will incude, sheild, invisiblity, + others

Area 02 - As well as troops you will find enemy vehicles etc. You will have numerous missions like capturing bases and destroying Airship landing sites etc etc.

Area 03 - Here you will find troops and the commander. You have to beat him. He is the big baddy, (or is he, lol. Maybe he just leads the way to the next installment)



Missions and other ideas - Would love to here from you guys regarding missions and stuff

[SolarPortal]

Looks like your really moving forwards with your game ideas.

I really like the way the map has been made, looks pretty good.

Missions: Are you making a linear story with only the main quest, or are you making it more RPG with side quests and more NPC Interaction?

[iamcheeseontoast]

there will be a main storyline with I hope plenty of side quests. NCP interaction will have to wait and see how it goes.
Unlike an RPG there will not be a leveling up system. Instead as you gain experience with weapons / abilities etc you will become more accurate and reload faster but only with those you use. Also as you go through the game your ability to store the jadestones engery will increase but your health will start at 100% and never increase.
If you get shot the jadestone engery will act a bit like armour and absorb hits but you will still loose some health. Use up all your jade energy and ur in trouble.

[StarFire]

We are planning to add a quest development tool/editor for designing quests which will make the task easier

[iamcheeseontoast]

Cool. Look forward to it

[iamcheeseontoast]

Been a while in coming but heres my first character (commisioned, not built)

You can clearly see from the model on the right the difference the advanced material makes

Now all I need is someone to help me get these statics ingame, rigged with animations

[SolarPortal]

Cool, they look decent, especially with the advanced material on.

Is it rigged and animated?

[iamcheeseontoast]

currently no rigging or animations etc

As I've never worked with characters before as advice/help would be great. Maybe if you know of any tutorials for setting up for ogre export etc

[SolarPortal]

Exporting
Easy ogre exporter for 3dsmax is pretty simple to use and allows as many animations as needed to be exported. This is currently what we use as it has a higher success rate, until a skyline exporter can be made.

Easy Ogre Exporter: http://www.ogre3d.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=Easy+Ogre+Exporter

If you click on the binaries section and choose your 3dsmax version. Then copy the downloaded .dle into your 3dsmax plugins folder.
Once installed, you can set the animations by selecting the frame on the timeline and use the tags which can be located at the bottom of the 3dsmax window. The area to click says add time tag.

Once the character is set up in the modelling package, choose export "Ogre Scene (.scene)" from the exporter menu.
This will split the files out into .meshes. (Warning: any separate meshes inside 3dsmax will be split into multiple .mesh files).
You could try to use the modifier Skin Wrap to merge multiple skinned meshes into one.

The materials exported will need to be turned into basic materials before skyline can advance them.
The basic material looks like: http://www.chi-ad.com/DokuWiki/doku.php/ms_material_basic_advanced_deferred_material_setup#Basic%20Material


Animations:
if you are not wanting to animate manually, then you can use Mixamo:

Mixamo: http://www.mixamo.com/

They have an auto rigger which can be used for free with models that are less than 10k polys. It works really well.
They also have loads of animations which can be paid for, if you go with this option, use the free animations to start with and make sure you can get the character exported and in skyline before paying for animations.

They also have a tool which converts the rig from Ik bones to a 3dsmax biped rig inside 3dsMax, which is what i prefer to use.

Mixamo Workflows: http://www.mixamo.com/c/workflows

If you dont want to use mixamo, then i suggest to use the mixamo auto rigger to save yourself time, then hand animate the character or find .bip files on the internet and compose them in 3dsMax.

Hope this helps

[iamcheeseontoast]

Many thanks
I'll look into all that soon
Right now I'm finishing off a heavy machine gun, not a fan of building weapons so wanna get it done before the notion wears off, LOL

[iamcheeseontoast]

Easy ogre exporter
Is that a different one to the one I already have?.

[SolarPortal]

yes, OgreMax(the one you have), is limited to exporting only 5 animations with the free version, and from personal experience; it hasn't worked often well for me, but works really well with models.

[iamcheeseontoast]

I used mixamo to rig the characters and it worked well. Also went online anbd found a selection of bip files. Will play about more soon

[SolarPortal]

look forward to seeing the results

[iamcheeseontoast]

Think I got models exported but not oso sure I've done it right. LOL. As 4th March is round the corner I thought I'd wait till the 1st annual Skyline convention to speak to you guys about it. Will also have more toys for you to play with as well...

[SolarPortal]

lol cool

[StarFire]

Hey mate just thought about your railway. How about using a terrain road with a rail track gravel texture then place your track models on top of this. This way you can get around the splat texture limit!