Chameleo and the Grappling Hook!!!

lord_kungai · Post by **lord_kungai** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 10:47 am

DM - HouseInTheMiddleOfAnInfiniteGreenField

Hmm...

Nice

Chameleo · Post by **Chameleo** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 8:37 pm

That's exactly some of the lighting issues I'm looking at. Thanks for the BSP info, I'll take a look at that. I've also started looking at using terrain for the base/ground of our level. At first I felt that a BSP would be fine for the groung since we aren't going 'into' it just along it. But the dynamic ability to create some variety in the background terrain might be well worth it. Any 'terrain' lighting suggestions?

Cheers,

Dave

oh, by the way... I took that evil test and I'm good... I hope we can still be forum buddies!!! I'll take it again after I finish making this E for everyone game... I think it's tainting my evilness!

lord_kungai · Post by **lord_kungai** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:31 pm

Chameleo wrote:oh, by the way... I took that evil test and I'm good... I hope we can still be forum buddies!!! I'll take it again after I finish making this E for everyone game... I think it's tainting my evilness!

THE DARK SIDE IS MORE POWERFUL!!!

COME TO THE EVILNESS!!!

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

L'architecte · Post by **L'architecte** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:47 pm

Chameleo wrote:Any 'terrain' lighting suggestions?

mmh not for the moment sorry

Romulus777 · Post by **Romulus777** » Mon Dec 11, 2006 6:55 pm

lord_kungai wrote: THE DARK SIDE IS MORE POWERFUL!!!

COME TO THE EVILNESS!!!

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

lord_kungai, could you go take a sanity test for me? after reading that I'm questioning your sanity more than usual.

lord_kungai · Post by **lord_kungai** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 10:36 am

Romulus777 wrote:lord_kungai, could you go take a sanity test for me? after reading that I'm questioning your sanity more than usual.

I took it. In France. While going on a boat ride.

It told me that I was in Seine...

Romulus777 · Post by **Romulus777** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 3:37 pm

I hijacked this thread huh? I'll just PM you now.

Kaboodles · Post by **Kaboodles** » Tue Dec 12, 2006 11:35 pm

lord_kungai wrote:
Romulus777 wrote:lord_kungai, could you go take a sanity test for me? after reading that I'm questioning your sanity more than usual.
I took it. In France. While going on a boat ride.

It told me that I was in Seine...

GB · Post by GB » Sun Dec 17, 2006 1:53 pm

hello! ive finally caught up again with this post!

a) jb, do not worry about forgetting me, im hardly here!

b) l'arch, - setting the BSP lightmap to under 4 is unneccessary. All this does is increase the map file size, and you honestly cannot tell the difference between anything under 4. Id set it to 4 at the lowest.

For terrain:

To get great shadows on terrain, have the editor calculate a lightmap using a sunlight actor. Then, locate the "terraininforaytrace" texture in the myLevel texture package.
This will be a black and grey lightmap texture (in a strange format like P8 i think). You can edit this in photoshop to your liking, as its often a bit rubbish in the editor as is.

Im pretty sure you can then re-apply this texture as the shadow and light for your terrain, albeit a more touched up version. This is the setting in the terrain actor of "terrain info>vertexlightmap". Its a similar technique to adding a lightmap texture to a static mesh, but on the terrain. Forgive me if this is a little vague, i havent done it for a good six months...

An advantage of this is, that if you dont want the sunlight actor aftereards, you can delete it and still have the shadows on the terrain (obviosuly the static meshes etc will be not be lit anymore).

This gives a very realistic and tailor made set of shadows and highlights for your terrain. You can make it cartoony quite easily, as its done in photoshop. You can even manually draw in shadows that arent created in the editor. I did this on one of the maps i didnt release, to create nice, rounded and detailed shadows.
There is another way where you generate the terrain in maya or 3dmax, and then use them to generate a lightmap, but its rather more complicated, and youd really need someone else with more experience than i to help with that.

If you are wanting to create "zones" of lighting, i'd suggest simply using numerous light actors. Using ambient lighting is rather hit and miss; it can often do really odd things to static meshes...and balancing different bands of light would be difficult if not impossible. By using light actors, you can create 3 lines of lights, so the background can easily be made to be darker, and less defined, with a mid zone and finally a nice bright front zone. You can then bung in a bunch of cool effects like lens flare or whatever you might want to add later (and these dont neccessarily need to even emit any brightness).

Hopefully i havent mis-understood what you were after in terms of lighting - id imagine you would want it to be nice and bright at the front of a 2d map (i.e, the bit closest to your monitor as such)?

Ive uploaded a small example map where i have done this. I havent edited the inforaytrace, but i have illustrated how it appears without a sunlight actor. check out the terrain info actor to see what ive done if you dont understand. Forgive me if you know how to do all this and it sounds patronising - i dont mean to!

http://www.chaoticdreams.org/ce/venalan ... ameleo.ut2

jb · Post by jb » Mon Dec 18, 2006 3:33 pm

Joe, are you working on a bendy grapple now or for the
future???

Well not the best picture of one, but its in and working:
http://www.chaoticdreams.org/ce/jb/Shot00004.jpg

That green circle high lights the cable bending around the rock and ground. Still needs some work but it is IN the game, it does work and even works in Network games. Sooo its a good start. Will try to give this and 1st person veiw melee test code to our testers before the holidays.... and of course can share this code with others... hint hint

Kaboodles · Post by **Kaboodles** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 10:17 pm

1st person melee! \o/

Could you also look into adjusting the 3rd person melee camera so that the view isn't centered on the player's lower torso? Perhaps position it over the player's head or something? It would make grappling with melee weapons much easier.

Romulus777 · Post by **Romulus777** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 4:33 am

there's a thought. or maybe just leave it 3rd person. what ever's easier

jb · Post by jb » Wed Dec 20, 2006 6:28 am

Kaboodles_The_Assassin wrote:1st person melee! \o/

Could you also look into adjusting the 3rd person melee camera so that the view isn't centered on the player's lower torso? Perhaps position it over the player's head or something? It would make grappling with melee weapons much easier.

Hmmm how close is it to the normal default 3rd person view. We had to slighly change it for some reason (can not remember why) But thought it was close.....

Chameleo · Post by **Chameleo** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 5:58 pm

Thanks venalanatomica, those terrain tips should help alot. Especially the sunlight map that is generated. Our artist can edit it to his liking. One question, how would you set up light 'actors' or are you just referring to a group of lights in a row and then duplicating them and setting each group's preferences individually?

Joe, thanks for the look at the bendy grapple! Looks like it works well, can you actually control the direction of the bend? Right now we are just letting the tongue clip through meshes and such as it doesn't seem to take away from the game.

We are also interested in getting our 'game' hosted somewhere that the unreal community can get at it. We will have a webpage and such but are just wondering if there is anything we can do to be proactive?

Would any of you be interested in doing some Beta tests for us around the middle of January?

If I don't post again this year, thanks for all the help so far on our project and have a great holiday season and best of luck in the new year!

Cheers,

Dave

jb · Post by jb » Thu Dec 21, 2006 6:15 am

Chameleo wrote:Joe, thanks for the look at the bendy grapple! Looks like it works well, can you actually control the direction of the bend? Right now we are just letting the tongue clip through meshes and such as it doesn't seem to take away from the game.

Not really the shape/dir of the bend is based on a straigt line approx to the grapple target and his owner. So if the owner moves then the direction of the bend will move with him.

Chameleo wrote:We are also interested in getting our 'game' hosted somewhere that the unreal community can get at it. We will have a webpage and such but are just wondering if there is anything we can do to be proactive?

Hmm see if BeyondUnreal can host it?

Chameleo wrote:Would any of you be interested in doing some Beta tests for us around the middle of January?

Oh I am sure a lot here would love to help

Chameleo wrote:If I don't post again this year, thanks for all the help so far on our project and have a great holiday season and best of luck in the new year!

Your more than welcome and let us know what else we can do to help!