Hi Justin…Great job in these characters and nature assets…trees are gorgeous…i like them a lot…I watching regularly dev of this game.
Thank you, knowing people are interested keeps me motivated...lately I have mostly been working on assets and animation :)
I would like to show a video but most of the things, like animation, are not complete and I have not actually linked any of the assets into the game world…hopefully soon I can upload a new video…I know it has been a long time since I updated anything ‘tangible’, but work is being done
Still at it…lots of animations going in for Fergus and all the npc’s…for now my slimes are on hold I can get to that later…
For now... does anyone know a good workflow for animating bows along with the character...I want it to be a separate object...I have ways I can do it...simply animate the player and bow at the same time, but I thought someone here might have some good insight..
Not trying to bait people here, I have nothing new to show…but I feel I should continue to reassure people that this is still under development…I had received 5 e-mails this week asking me about it…so while that was gratifying to know people were still interested(I know I am ) I also feel a little bad that I have not updated…so here is where I am at…
this time of year is just hard to get things done…lots of overtime 9 hour days + saturdays…yay but I have been trying to get at least one animation out per day…sometimes less(so, none) sometimes more…
ferguss-
death
2H 3 attacks + block + run/walk + straffing etc…
you get the point…for every weapon type I need to do completely new animations…I could just animate the upper and lower body separate, but I’ve found that it can look un-natural…
bow animations
*removed staves and animations…will treat magic somewhat like the elder scrolls with each hand assuming an individual role(separate spells or both the same spell)
currently working on dual wield animations…so again that entails all the sub animations like walk run etc…
NPC’s-
these are split up between male and female with generic animations of the following for both sexes.
chopping wood
walk
3 talking states
idle
sweeping
hoe-ing and raking(like gardening or raking leaves leaves)
smithing(anvil)
aside from all of this I have discovered a bug in the way I coded the world music, and everytime an NPC sound is triggered it restarts the theme from the beginning…or starts it if it was not even playing…so I need to work that out…
-anyway, I hope this clarifies some things why I have been less active…and I hope people keep it in mind that this is coming along, slower until after christmas I’m guessing and since I had done most of the code already I am working mostly on assets and so it may be a while before a ‘real’ update, but it’s coming…I assure you
nice update keep working… I’d love to see were this is going also not a big deal on that bug you mentioned.
Awesome stuff bro !!!
Keep at it i know its hard same this side too !!!
Fred/K.S
So, I have been fiddling around quite a bit at refining the way the world is drawn, and have come to a few conclusions…
the bad
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BGE hates > 2000 objects in a scene…or somewhere around that number…can anyone confirm this? or give me an estimate of the magic number?
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LOD’s are slow on a large number of objects…and only useful if you have relatively dense meshes
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occlusion culling is slow as well…at least in an open world environment…could be related to the number of occluders, or the geometry of the occluders
the good
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camera occlusion is fast and functional
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instead of instancing with alt+d using copy ctrl+d allows you to join several objects together(say 10 trees for 2-5K triangles) this has been much faster in drawing
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atlas atlas atlas…using one atlas, and thus one material for all my rocks, trees etc allows me to join them and still only have one draw call…
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in the scene tab under physics steps you can get higher frame rates simply by changing it from 60 FPS to 70…by doing this oddly enough I went from 45 FPS to 60 FPS…not certain why but hey…it works.
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instead of using the batching, culling and LOD’s it has proven faster for me to build a list of detail objects(trees, bushes, fences and rocks etc) and loop through them toggling their visibility based on camera distance…this has allowed me to pick and chooses what objects, and at what distances they are visible…from farthest to nearest cliffs, trees, rocks, and grass/flowers…
the things stated above may not work well for everyone, but in Myrlea they are the cats meow and are working amazingly well…this is something I have had endless battles with. As I am getting more and more of the world setup(placing characters and placing environmental objects) this has been a near showstopper as I saw no clear way that I could have a large singular world with all the objects…not a major update post, but something I thought I would share.
EDIT:
here is a screen, nothing new…you can see on the left FPS is in the high 50’s, this is because of entering a new area, but FPS drops do occur when coming to a highly dense area, but this is not often and lasts < 1 second and cannot happen very often. I am ensuring placement of enemies etc to coincide with this.
i can confirm lots of objects are problematic. but it seems to be much better when all your objects are added after game start. TIP: spawn your asset, then end the spawner to save objects!
DID YOU KNOW: you can create an object, delete all verts and use that as your farthest LOD?
DO NOT USE PYTHON FOR LODS! the builtin methods use compiled code which is much, much, faster then python. i think UPBGE lets you grab the current LOD number, use that instead.
CONSIDER: split your world into separate blends, using natural land barriers or cave or doors to split up your levels. i have been very successful in creating seamless transition between areas. however, careful data management is required.
I have used all those methods the built in LOD’s are plain slow when you are switching 2500 trees lod levels…and I used an empty object(no verts) for my furthest lod :)…oddly it is only when I switched to using python that I got a major speed improvement…as I stated above…
Now I know everything I stated above goes against everything we 'think' we know...but I can only say that on this particular project...the way I am doing it is clearly(in my tests) faster....my largest frame dips before were at 30 FPS, now my largest frame drop is over 50 FPS...I consider that worth taking a look at...I also understand you are not a noobie at this, and I take that into consideration :)...I have tried using another scene altogether with another camera for distance loading...I have tried a single plane parented to the camera with a whole in the center for occlusion...and many many other tricks...in the end...this is working best for me on 'this project'...I just want to inform others that there is always 'another way'...and these are my findings....
the instance of joining several objects together is also not new(batching)...but batching also has an expense...albeit small...any way...I am still working on a lot of stuff...and would like to one day actually get some builds up :) so...back to it :)
Since I had the recent FPS boost I got a little greedy and started adding more to the world…it’s always changing, but thought I might share some random images from the first two areas that people are bound to encounter…you can see that the FPS is getting closer to 60 FPS…so as I add more ‘story driven’ items it may change to counter whatever FPS they may eat up…I’m still working on animations for NPC’s and Fergus(just lacking casting for him) and I have been working on the tools for the NPC’s today in between visits from friends and family…in any case here are the shots…I lowered the shadow distance to about 600 instead of 1km…it just eats useless frames when the shadows themselves get obscured by other assets.
well, I fixed the weights from the previous image, bunch of smaller additions of all the animations I said I would get around to doing for the NPC’s and Fergus…and a video, finally!
This is amazing:D
Thank you, getting comments here, keeps me motivated. It really is a battle creating an open wold in the BGE/UPBGE and I do not get to work on it as often as I’d like…but I just keep on it, sometimes small changes or big updates and always bug fixing and optimizing.
Dude this is great work and how are the NPC’s going?
Dude i like your effort you’ve put in your game its really starting to shine !!!
I can immagine how awesome this open world game will be when it will be done !! Please keep up all the amazing hard work
Fred/K.S
way too early, but I thought I would start playing with the splash screen…it’s pretty raw, but I had fun messing with it.
Very impressive game. Huge world and nice cartoon styled characters and environment. Love it.
AWESOME splash screen bro nice !!!
It really makes the game stand out and look Guud.
Fred/K.S
looks great i just don‘t think that this green fits well with the other colors.
It is a bit neon and I do not care for the placement(maybe lower and a bit to the right), but it was just for fun…that being said any suggestions?
…if I do use this it will purely be for launching, loading or options.