Who's interested in a community project?

Discussion of other water gun websites.
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C-A_99
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Re: Who's interested in a community project?

Post by C-A_99 » Mon Feb 07, 2011 2:42 am

Interesting ideas.

No progress yet; I still haven't had the time to research how to handle LoD properly. I'll post when something happens.

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martianshark
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Re: Who's interested in a community project?

Post by martianshark » Mon Feb 07, 2011 3:13 am

I actually had an idea of a story about an ET robot invasion, but I guess that might work for this game. I don't know anything about programming, and I'm not very good at art, but maybe I could help with ideas.

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TheTyphoon
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Re: Who's interested in a community project?

Post by TheTyphoon » Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:04 pm

I'd really like the idea of the RP-based story. We could just work on a section of it, considering how complex the RP is. Say, the first half of Volume 1.
My Current Soaker Loadout: CPS 2500, SC 500, 1 x Water Balloon

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C-A_99
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Re: Who's interested in a community project?

Post by C-A_99 » Sun Feb 20, 2011 3:54 am

@Shark: I hardly know anything about programming too, which is why I'll need a friend to help. However, nowadays, a good portion of the budget going to game development is for graphics and game art, which is a huge part of game development these days. Also, by using the UDK, a huge ton of work can be saved than by building a game engine from scratch, which I don't know anyone who remotely has the ability and time to do so.

I guess we can split potential story ideas into 2 areas:
- Monster/Robot/Zombie Invasion (Zombies can't swim after all.)
- Any campaign focused on CWW, including the RP

Campaign levels will have to be derived from this. The CWW idea will be odd to do.

That said, I still have yet to make progress on improving LOD modeling. Perhaps I should do what Bungie calls a "mass-out", putting the general, basic geometry in. I could shape up the terrain and import just the models needed to get things started. Either way, I will need some level of organization if I ever hope to finish just the first multiplayer map. Once my friend is on break, I could probably enlist his help on looking into getting the basics of gameplay sorted through. (i.e. working with player meshes and actors, guns, basic stream behavior and physics, etc.)

Of course, once there's progress I'll post about it.

Edit: Actually, Bungie used a self-generating LoD system in Halo Reach! You model everything at the highest detail and it takes care of the low detail for you! Of course, I would say that this very well explains why some low detail objects in Reach look downright awful, but it sure saves a lot of work!

I wonder how difficult it would be to implement this into the UDK. Maybe too difficult as there are intricacies to making low detail models still look correct that no shader or program or whatever can figure out.




Edit Again: I probably took LoD's too seriously. Most of the time, lower level LoD's are done fast to save time, or even more often not at all.

Anyways, I'm slowly making progress on ASS-HQ (Aquatic Soaking Squad base) of our map. The basic mesh of the roof is mostly done, though quite sloppily. I'll be able to get to doors and windows soon. Then I got to worry about more details, materials, UV maps, etc. before finishing just that house.

There are four other houses that I have to model in high detail. The rest will be considerably easier as a ton of detail can be omitted from the houses that fall outside of the map boundaries.

I won't post screenshots yet as I hardly even have anything worth mentioning, but this is what I'm going for:
http://hbww.fateback.com/briefing/map.html

The end result map will be as close as I can get to the actual map, and the boundaries will be similar. I'm hoping to have a combination of hard and soft boundaries. Fences and thick foliage will be hard boundaries, while soft boundaries will be those that give the player a warning before the game soaks the player manually. There will be hard kill(soak)-bounds outside to ensure no one ever sees missing details and faces on objects at the edge of the playing area.

I'll update when I have more progress. Probably once I'm done with the windows/doors and get a rough, low-detail mesh of the house finished. I will probably do low-detail houses of everything first and get the most important geometry of the map setup before doing the pretty graphics and details. This ensures everything is to scale, and most map developers work this way. (They often don't even seen to reuse assets used to create the rough map, or the block/mass-out as its called.)

Here's an example of block/mass-out maps; pictures Bungie posted when developing the Noble Map pack for Halo Reach. I will be happy if I can make my map(s) look as good as the block/mass-outs shown here. =) http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx ... &cid=29828

An iconic element of our playing area is a garden bobblehead owl we got to scare some birds off the roof. We always blast at its head with water guns and hoses and it's hilarious every time. The map for the game will not be complete without featuring this owl, complete with ballistic bobbling head animations when shot at! (And when blasted at very close range with very powerful water guns, its head will fly off... hopefully... once I learn how to do all that stuff. And the head should respawn after 30 seconds or something.)
Last edited by C-A_99 on Wed Mar 02, 2011 7:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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C-A_99
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Re: Who's interested in a community project?

Post by C-A_99 » Fri Mar 04, 2011 2:57 am

As I mentioned in the edits to the posts above, I'm making some slow progress on the mesh of my house and learning more on the UDK. That said, while fumbling through old photos to find good references, an idea occured to me for others to help out.

PHOTOS, PHOTOS, PHOTOS! Get pictures of your real water wars! In particular, I am looking for messes created in the environment due to the water war. From just two of my own photos (2 of 4 which can be found here, I have built up a list of static and interactive objects I will need. Having an excellent level of interaction with the environment (i.e. being able to pick up containers and use them as buckets, or being able to pick up folding chairs and use them as shields) will take lots of time to do, but will very well be worth it as it will give a great level of interaction that contributes to the game.

Of course, most people already have uploaded the photos they have been able to get, and those photos are all up around the community, but often people will have stuff that isn't uploaded but can still be helpful.

Anyone who wants a place re-created into the game may have a chance to do so in the future as well. I can't make promises of course, as this whole project barely has the slightest shred of progress on it (and will remain that way for a long time, plus I have more... farfetched map ideas on the previous page), but of course, it's always possible to contemplate into the future. However, I will eventually, I will need more than one map, and if I can make a map that means something to someone, that will be at least as good as just throwing randomly made-up maps around. Doing this however, will require a LOT of reference photos (including photos to directly create textures off of); I need to take a lot more reference photos myself to get to a somewhat decent level of detail for my map. Google and Bing satellite and aerial maps, respectively, are a must as well. Google gives a lower resolution image that's almost perfectly top-view and excellent as a large-scale reference on where objects need to be. Bing's aerial photos however, are taken at an angle which are also quite useful as well.

If I can reach any important milestones in this project, which I'm slightly more confident than before that I can, it will be a lot of fun. However, a one-or two-man development team (who are unskilled) means slow progress and the possibility of the project being dropped due to unforeseeable circumstances in the future. Without the UDK or some kind of tool that can do the same thing, this project wouldn't even be remotely possible.
Last edited by C-A_99 on Fri Mar 04, 2011 7:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Who's interested in a community project?

Post by C-A_99 » Sat Jun 04, 2011 1:13 am

I've resumed work on the project, and while there's still not a whole lot going on, I'm going to post a screenshot anyways so you guys can get an idea of how I'm going to get the ball rolling.

http://imageshack.us/f/546/projectsoakingtridenthu.jpg/

Obviously, the mesh shown in the screenshot is very unfinished, and the textures were roughly thrown on as placeholders. Those textures aren't even mine and I won't be using them. The Google satellite map will be used to line things up, roughly.

This will be codenamed Project Soaking Trident for now. I just gathered a ton of pictures today and am learning what kinds of pictures are most helpful. If anyone wants to contribute to this, all you got to do is pick up a digital camera.

> General modeling reference:
Just about any picture that shows an object normally is welcome. These pictures are simply used for eye-to-eye rough comparison.

> Accurate modeling reference:
Preferably taken with as much zoom as possible while still showing the entire object. This will work to ensure placement of object details are as accurate as possible. Pictures should be as "flat" and orthographic as possible, affected little or none by perspective.

> Texture reference:
Pictures that are to be directly turned into textures. I've got most of this covered pretty well, but if someone wants to contribute to this, they are welcome to. Basically, you want to snap a close up picture of a surface with as much zoom as possible. Avoid features that will throw off tiling, such as shadows, parts of a surface that stand out, etc. though those can often be edited out.


Is anyone else interested in the progression of this? Work is extremely slow with long stretches of time where nothing gets done, and I'm learning pretty much everything as I go, but if there's some map or feature or object you want to see in here, grab a camera and start taking them in.

Once I get more in place, I will post this on iSoaker.

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zeda.beta
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Re: Who's interested in a community project?

Post by zeda.beta » Sat Jun 04, 2011 3:31 am

Ok, do you want me to start modeling this in 3d max? I can start work on the map in exactly a week, as then finals are over.
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C-A_99
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Re: Who's interested in a community project?

Post by C-A_99 » Sat Jun 04, 2011 4:59 am

The screenshot from 3DS Max I posted is just to demonstrate that I've barely gotten started, though if there's something you'd like to work on, go ahead with it. If you need help with something, online resources are great for that, as I've learned quite a bit on texture tiling today and am working to expand the texture library for this map. Will also need to start looking into normal, specular, and other maps. Textures are 1024x1024 and vary depending on needs, and the UDK will support up to 4096x4096 if you, for whatever reason, ever need to use such a resolution. Anyway, once I know how others model and create, I'll be able to see how to get it in the game. Regardless of how good or bad it looks, or how fit or unfit it is to be put into the game, I'll have a look and see.

And as always, will update as progress is made. Might want to divert to a new thread as the first two pages of this is discussion and speculation but I'll decide on that later.

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