Blenderville @ Blender Battles

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Hey Guys.

Blender Battles is getting a software upgrade, and a slight (tiny) makeover of the website.

i have remade the site from scratch using a new CMS (same people that did the current CMS, but a new version written from scratch)

some of the previous site bugs have been fixed in the new version)

Avatar uploads (the only one i know of that didn’t work before)

better stuff
the forum software is far more advanced, and blows even elysiun and blender3d.org out of the water with forum features
the downlaods section is much improved and easier to use. it will enable us and you to more easily add your texture files, and model files for us to moderate and post.
the whole software is a lot smoother in general

The new system will enable us to Automate the announcement of challenges. things such as the weekend SMC’s and the Weekly materials challenge will be put up on time without staff involvement over the year. (will make the site far more reiable currently it hasn’t been to crash hot on staff reliability sorry)

i am taking the oppertunity to also introduce my plans for Blenderville.
Blenderville is a city made up of winners of challenges at Blender battles, each challenge (even SMC’s with friends) will be assigned a set of points, and these can be used to purchase land at Blenderville.

with the land you buy, you will be given a plot .blend file and be allowed to build a house within the boundaries and to the scale we give (realistic scale is fairly important) you can build it in any style you like, you could make it a garbage dump, a space rocket launch pad… you purchase further height to your section. so the taller you want to build the more you need to pay :stuck_out_tongue:

you will be able to buy the rights to own a car, and get to add a car of your design to the city.

each month the files will be appended together and rendered to create the city render. and over time the city will grow and change. (there will bea record of the growth. with all the images being kept)

this is my plan. now come the tricky part.
we have these tasks that need to be done in order to get it up and running, and keep it running. all of these would be worth points towards it if you so desired.

1)Create a sectioned .blend file of the city containing roads, hills, streams, and the sub divided areas numbered. witha reserve for city owned buildings in the center (don’t need any buildings on it yet) (once off)

2)tally up the existing winners of competitions/challenges and give them points. (once off) (and ongoing)

3)collect .blend files and render the city monthly (ongoing)

  1. manage the points, i.e. deduct points and give people properties. (ongoing)

5)write a module for the cms in PHP to help with managing points. (i don’t know how easy or hard this would be, its not essential to have it running but it would make this a lot quicker for people admining) (once off)

what do people think about this?

i would really love some people to help put this together. i don’t have much time in my own life. a the city should start with about 20 properties of varying shapes, sizes, and hilliness.

if you want to help with any of those things then i would be glad to hear from you.

current website
http://battles.mudpuddle.co.nz/

new website with new software (don’t sign up you will just be wiped when i transfer databases, its a test site so far :P)
http://battles2.mudpuddle.co.nz/

any and all coments please.

Alltaken

2

Now THAT’s a good idea, it makes me want to take part in the battles now.

The only thing I’m not too fond of is the graphics/layout of the forums, it just looks bulky and, yeah… could be improved.

Anyway, the Blenderville idea is a big incentive, so I might just take part. :wink:

3

this is a really good idea :slight_smile:
If you need any help for graphics just ask !

4

Hm, and what about a city just for fun, without ratings and points, the creation of a building in the city being a challenge too?

Anyway, that’s a really good idea, it reminds me of that pixel-art project : http://www.deviantart.com/view/5348022/
(people choosed a “property” and build their own pixel-art building on it)

5

it is a great idea, and is currently used at places like gaia.com
gaia is a birllant site you should check it out for reference.
from the little bit i saw you get points for posts and posting, but points for battles won and battles participated in is much cooler.
at gaia with each points or coins you get you can shop for things for your characters clothes, hair, shoes, weapons. its really cool.
you should defiantly do it, it would make me want to participate.

also wondered if you were going to put up banner ads on your sites to generate some income? sitepoint.com is a good reference place for this, check under the forums section for help. these sites cant be very cheap to make, and extra income would help it out. and i see you dont have any ads up on the blender battle site, or at you image hosting site. this site has a banner ad (although its the same on everypage) and no one seems to mind it.

it would be a complicated start, but well worth it in the end.

6

Banner ads… well i would personally prefer to keep it ad free. i think i can afford it with current bandwidth useage.

and thanks everyone for the support.

yes i would run competitions to build things in the city. i.e. an office building, or a bridge. the winner getting probably just enough money to buy a property.

SMC’s would be worth a lot less so you would need to do more of them to gain points.

the jobs above are the ones i need. perhaps the first points competition is making the city landscape. :smiley:

Alltaken

7

That’s a great idea, but I doubt I can win a blender battle.

8

you can totally win a 30min SMC :stuck_out_tongue:

its all about short quick battles, none of this X-W vs Alltaken (AKA champ) 18 hours straight stuff

Alltaken

9

it would be great but you should give points for participation so everybody has a chance to get a house :slight_smile:

10

you can totally win a 30min SMC :P[/quote]

Is that a compliment, or are you saying anyone could do it? :slight_smile:

11

anyone can do it :stuck_out_tongue:

but nobody should underestimate themselves.

Alltaken

12

i think this is a great idea, and have been thinking of doing somthing like this for a forum for awhile, but didnt really have any ideas but this one is great.
i was also thinking about how flash could really come in handy with an idea like this.
and that is something i should be able to help with, if it is a once a month kind of update.
you could creat a large map and with the use of flash allow people to zoom in certian areas, and put the mouse over the home, and it would pop up a large picture of the home, and maybe some stats of the owner of the home.
also with flash you could add the use of some animation (while still being able to zoom in and out of the map). this way it would be like the game sim city, things would be moving around, and smoke effects cars, and all kinds of things (birds, planes, trains, cars)
a still map of the town i dont think would come off that great, but an animated map that can be zoomed in on, that has pop up info, and a little life with animation would really make this come alive.
i would be willing to try it out, and mabey some other pro flash users would help too, i’m just a begginer, but i think i could at least start off somthign like an interactive map, and then others could help and possibly take over (not sure how much time i could give?).
let me know what you think?

13

Since this has to do with Blender it’s considered on topic in news and chat.

14

lol no one have been crazy enough to do such a thing since we did :stuck_out_tongue: that was killer!

we’ll have to do it again this summer (well probably winter over your area)…anyway end of june

really good idea about the blenderville! wish you good luck, hope it works well! :smiley:

15

Mean while at the bottom of the earth it’s summer…

16

Wu’s Blenderville Mock up
Click Here To Veiw (dial up users please wait a few seconds for file to load after clicking the link)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nellim/blvititl.jpg

I thought it would be easier to show what i ment instead of trying to explain. Some things that I tired to include:
*large map that can be clicked on to zoom in on smaller sections
*each home or building can be clicked on to show its owner/price/info
*arrows in each smaller map to navigate to other areas
*main menu button to go back to larger map.

Nothing huge, but I thought it would really make the blenderville idea come to life if it were interactive. Also when you veiw imagain small animations going on in each area. Cars driving, sound effects.
This is a great idea, and I hope to help bring it to life.

What do you guys think?

17

Ok wow thats excellent Wu.

yeah somthing like that for the map would be increadible.

would flash be able to get the stats on the person from a MySQL database? i.e. from their profile information.

also if all the houses are rendered seperatly by the user and sent in. would flash be able to add them together to build the city. (shadows might not be 100% correct, but if the orginal files are set up correctly the flash file could be made to get the corect positions for images)

that would be increadible.

as for cars moving around i would say that was a low priority.

the map, a zoom level and a a pan option would be the best IMO, if the images used a progressive the loading time can be optimised. (have seen that on some other websites, as you zoom in more detailed images are loaded, and in the mean time you can see the lower res ones, not to important though)

but yeah somthing like that would be excellent.

love it.

Alltaken

18

hey thats great, glad to hear you like it

as far as i know i would have to get a list of stats by hand i dont think flash would be able to do it by hand. mainly because each pop up info block has to be made by hand and assigned a location. but again i’v only been using a early version of flash for about 3 months. i just wanted to get the ball rolling in this direction and was hoping someone with more experiance and a newer version of flash could help out too. then i may be possible for flash to get the numbers and create on its own.

their is a way for flash to take many renders of buildings and collage them all together. however this would take lots of time, and i dont think the measurements would be as accurate. i think for shadows, proper size and detail all models should be attached one file as origianlly planned, and rendered this way. this would also work for me or who ever creates the flash map. because i was hoping that if i did the map for you guys that someone could render the large map, and then each section, and then post it to me. then all i would have to do is edit them in flash. it would simpily be too much work to attach each render in flash and get it to look even remotly decent. i think that would be best done between two people. one rendering the entire city, and one editing the sections together in flash.

the panning is a good idea, but again i’m new to flash and i’m not sure how to do it. i was thinking sections like the one i have would work best because it allows you to render the best angle for each section. if you render one large picture you will cut off a lot of detail on some homes/buildings, and get better angles on others. with a section map you have a better chance of everyone getting the best shot on their home/model.

i know the little animations are less of a priority now, but that would be a great goal to shoot for in the future, would bring real life to the project!

so on a final note, i’m very happy to hear you like the idea. and my plan was to have someone render all the city, and render each close up section, and then send those renders to me along with the home/building info. and then i would edit it all together in flash, similar to what i did in the above post. also if i were to take on this responciblity i would feel much more comfortable knowing their was a back up guy or plan incase one month i simpily dont have the time to do the work. i dont want to screw this idea up, but would love to participate.

good luck, let me know you thoughts, and timeline when you should be up and running and would want somthing like this.

19

Hey alltaken, very good idea to mix the ville with blenderbattles :wink:
But i’m wondering how you had the final product in mind. As I read your post, you want a weekly/monthly still picture with all the buildings.

The flash thing can be useful, but I think we need complete automatic system. I’m thinking more of a php script, which shows the correct uploaded pictures at the right spot (always up-to-date). If every user submits for example 4 pictures from different views, then you could rotated around the map. But such a system would take a lot of bandwidth.

A real-time village would be cool, but to hard to make (much work, slow, huge size).

And how far are you planning to go, if you look at economics (in the ville).
Do you want to make it sort of “real” city (so you can buy other houses, have to pay tax, start a company, earn money), or just one simple picture?

anyway it’s a very good idea, and if I have the time (not much lately), I like to help.

ow and:

2)tally up the existing winners of competitions/challenges and give them points.

(does winning the BlenderWordCup make me rich? :P)

cya later, BackiZ

20

was there something on that flash that couldn’t be done in regular html?
I didn’t see any… but I just had a quick check on it.

.b