[Official] Behind the scenes

[StormMagi]

Maybe more like flying Teladi Eggs?

[Lwerewolf]

So rendering the big indoor environments with windows makes it so that the shadow maps eventually clip through or something?

Also, Blender!!!
What's the team's take on it

Jep, the shadow calculation is not working correctly in interiors, also the same issues with the environmentmap, you would see the universe in the reflections, even when you are in an airvent.
Just the whole light in open interiors would look broken.

I love Blender, the rest is using 3dsMax

Do you use a single global envmap (like in the x3 engine), or are they region/polygon group/objecy-specific, and perhaps updated dynamically (every racing game ever, just for the few cars because it's quite the performance cost to render them each frame I guess)?

[Tamina]

I guess those ships are some kind of reaction to the community when some complained "Spaceships have to be vertical [because of some obviously fundamental science reasons]!"?

[MegaJohnny]

It would be pretty ironic if the Teladi now have the most practical and advanced ships, looking at the Argon and going "You guys still put wings and pointy slopy bits on?"

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

The Argon could just say they're designed for Radiant Haven sector and that a pointy front defects shots better

[agal59]

This is very very interesting to me. Thank you for taking the time to explain how you do this.

[ezra-r]

Show us a pirate facility Something what produces illegal stuff

oh yes, where to get pirate CV to build a narcotics lab! (well hidden so authorities do not attack it). It would be like a factory of golden eggs!

[Aken_Bosch]

Another quick question (just in case all the previous weren't enough ): when you setup a model for use in game, placing weapons, turrets and such, can you also change their values and parameters (like damage, speed, visual effects, etc), or do you just link them through a database and these are hard-coded elsewhere?

I ask this because an Italian user asked if it was possible to change the Sucellus IHC to behave more like a proper rail-gun (that is, an almost insta-hit bolt with some fancy trail left behind )...since I see reports from 3.0b of the K having its weapons heavily pimped up, I don't know if it's possible to do this, or half the game code needs to be rewritten

[StormMagi]

Another quick question (just in case all the previous weren't enough ): when you setup a model for use in game, placing weapons, turrets and such, can you also change their values and parameters (like damage, speed, visual effects, etc), or do you just link them through a database and these are hard-coded elsewhere?

I ask this because an Italian user asked if it was possible to change the Sucellus IHC to behave more like a proper rail-gun (that is, an almost insta-hit bolt with some fancy trail left behind )...since I see reports from 3.0b of the K having its weapons heavily pimped up, I don't know if it's possible to do this, or half the game code needs to be rewritten

Interested as well, if we can turn the Sucellus into a railgun ship.....

[lordpazuzu]

Another quick question (just in case all the previous weren't enough ): when you setup a model for use in game, placing weapons, turrets and such, can you also change their values and parameters (like damage, speed, visual effects, etc), or do you just link them through a database and these are hard-coded elsewhere?

I ask this because an Italian user asked if it was possible to change the Sucellus IHC to behave more like a proper rail-gun (that is, an almost insta-hit bolt with some fancy trail left behind )...since I see reports from 3.0b of the K having its weapons heavily pimped up, I don't know if it's possible to do this, or half the game code needs to be rewritten

Interested as well, if we can turn the Sucellus into a railgun ship.....

+1

[linolafett]

Do you use a single global envmap (like in the x3 engine), or are they region/polygon group/objecy-specific, and perhaps updated dynamically (every racing game ever, just for the few cars because it's quite the performance cost to render them each frame I guess)?

Single environmentmap for a scene. Thats why open interiors wont work well.

Another quick question (just in case all the previous weren't enough ): when you setup a model for use in game, placing weapons, turrets and such, can you also change their values and parameters (like damage, speed, visual effects, etc), or do you just link them through a database and these are hard-coded elsewhere?

Damage values can be changes in the database, very simple stuff. Changing the effects not so much Nothing really hardcoded, just no tools for you to change it afaik.

We have some insta laser beam weapons, why not use those?

[Sandalpocalypse]

its super easy to change bullet speed/damage, IMO the hard part is just extracting out the archives and gaining a basic understanding of the diff format

[Aken_Bosch]

Well, if changing bullet speed is relatively easy, I suppose that a Targon projectile sped up of something like 5x or more, could work quite well for the IHC...anyway, I don't want to derail this into a script&modding thread, what about some juicy news lino?

[linolafett]

I am currently just hiding more crates and new hackingpanels in ineriors. Worth it to write something about that?

[Aken_Bosch]

Yesyesyes I want to know: are the crates 6-sided? Do they have metal hinges or a removable cover? After I stole the terran wine from inside, can I use them to store my pillow and night clothes?



Also, thank you for probably the fastest response ever

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

I am currently just hiding more crates and new hackingpanels in ineriors. Worth it to write something about that?

YES, and include as many pictures as possible, from some new interiors.

[wwdragon]

I am currently just hiding more crates and new hackingpanels in ineriors. Worth it to write something about that?

YES, and include as many pictures as possible, from some new interiors.

*makes grabbing motions with hands*

[ezra-r]

I am currently just hiding more crates and new hackingpanels in ineriors. Worth it to write something about that?

The question offends! Go for it!

[linolafett]

I wont show the teladi interior!

So ill use the OL interiors as an example

The interiors consist out of modular pieces. They usually follow the rule of being in a grid of a multiple of 2.5m (2.5m/5m/7.5m/10m). In addition to that, they have small snap points outside of the player visible geometry, to be able to smap them together without using a grid.

[ external image ]

Here is a silgle part, its a t-section of the omicron lyrae interior.
After such a part is modeled, it will be exported and a dummy "containerfile" will be created. We will use this dummy later on.

[ external image ]

Here is a screenshot of our document, where all Assets are saved, for a quick search and an easy display for us in the office.
As you can see you need quite a lot pieces to create an interior. Straight corridors, t-sections, crossings, stairs, narrow corridors, corners and variations of them.

[ external image ]

To set up the interiors, i create a new 3dsMax file. I then merge the earlier created Containerfiles via the Macro-browser into the scene. The containerfiles are without any materials, just placeholders for me to see, how the level will look like later on.

[ external image ]

This is how a station Macro then looks like in 3dsMax. Grey are corridors, all detailobjects are orange for a better overview and the bluish things are the animated doors. Green cubes are connections, where either crates or characters will be dynamically placed on. The red blobs are the Decocharacters, which can not be interacted with (soldiers for example).

[ external image ]

This stationmacro then will be exported into our Database. I define if its an open platform and which kind of environmentmap it shall use.
Export the Macro from the Db into the game to see if everything works.
This interior then will be connected to a exterior plattform, otherwise there would be no way to reach it in the game.

[ external image ]

This is our test world with every plattform we have avaliable. So there i can very quickly test all interiors, if they work as expected.
This is the very rough platform workflow we have here. Hope this answers some questions, if you have any, ask away, as usual

[lordpazuzu]

Great Info Lino!!

How many people do this kind of work with you? Because you model, texture, prep, export, test, !!!!