Project Red: official announcement

[John.d.h]

There are actually a couple reasons why I don't want to give naval units to Magic.  First, that's more units than I want to get into.  If I make a unit for every niche for every faction, that's a lot of units, and I'm trying to avoid scope creep.  Second, if every faction has units that do the same things, then they all play kinda the same.  I like for each faction to have different capabilities and styles of play.

[Omega]

There are actually a couple reasons why I don't want to give naval units to Magic.  First, that's more units than I want to get into.  If I make a unit for every niche for every faction, that's a lot of units, and I'm trying to avoid scope creep.  Second, if every faction has units that do the same things, then they all play kinda the same.  I like for each faction to have different capabilities and styles of play.

I was actually leaning towards water units until I read this, now I must agree, it would be a good idea to try and balance out the factions and make them more unique by controlling the fields too. There's no reason that a Kraken or sea serpent can't be recycled to another faction too.

How will teleporting work, though? Will it be restricted to unit's sights (I recall that is going to be implemented soon in GAE) or what, bearing in mind that balance is important.

I may also be able to help make some models, XMLs, and with wiki pages from time to time too.

[Zoythrus]

restricting it to LOS would give the Dragon another role - spotter. do we really want to make it do everything?

[John.d.h]

Teleportation is currently restricted to explored areas only.  You don't need to have a unit stationed there; you just need to have seen the area before.  Of course, Dragons would still be necessary for exploring across the water, which might mean that Magic has a serious delay compared to other factions, which should be building boats long before Magic gets Dragons.  I would consider giving Magic an earlier flying unit if that becomes necessary.

[Omega]

Teleportation is currently restricted to explored areas only.

Currently, that's the best GAE can do, but when they implement it so you can only teleport within your unit's sights, I think that would be better, otherwise, you just need a single scout to the opponent's base for easy access thereafter.

Of course, Dragons would still be necessary for exploring across the water, which might mean that Magic has a serious delay compared to other factions, which should be building boats long before Magic gets Dragons.  I would consider giving Magic an earlier flying unit if that becomes necessary.

I would imagine that water units would be a fairly powerful medium-late game unit though.

[ultifd]

And yeah, apparently most people get pretty good internet. Is this true?
http://digg.com/story/r/Average_broadband_speed_by_country_graph
Man, where's my share? And interesting to note that canada is well above USA (and well behind Japan).

Well it's just the megapack...Honestly, most people I met haven't complained about it much. With a decent internet speed, 2 to 3 MB I guess, it's fine.

I don't really think the megapack is bloated. Maybe later, but not for now. I guess we can compare later...

[John.d.h]

I would imagine that water units would be a fairly powerful medium-late game unit though.

It depends.  For the Dwarves, naval units are fairly late but devastating, whereas Tech can build a Dock and a Sailboat right from the start, and a Transport Ship after they build a Blacksmith.  This is all subject to change as time goes by, though.

[will]

I made a very simple script to make some HTML pages so its easy to visualise the models in the mod; the output is here:

http://williame.github.com/Project-Red/project_red.html
http://williame.github.com/Project-Red/project_red_extras.html (WARNING really heavy page to load!)

You get the idea:


You can pull it back John if you like.

I hope its really obvious how you can edit the script to do prettier output and so on.  It would be trivial to parse the xml and show various stats too if you wanted.  Or maybe just extract decent pose information for each model so they at least face the camera

[Ishmaru]

How does this script work?

[will]

How does this script work?

Fresh instructions here: https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=7057.msg72225#msg72225

[Psychedelic_hands]

About Gameboy's Elves, he has been showing off some of his work in the 0.AD forums....  And man, does it look sexy in that engine...



Here's a link to his thread: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14570&st=0

I'm unsure if this means he won't dev it for Glest anymore or what, but he did say it had a whole heap of polys.... So I'm unsure even if Glest COULD handle it...

[Omega]

I'm unsure if this means he won't dev it for Glest anymore or what, but he did say it had a whole heap of polys.... So I'm unsure even if Glest COULD handle it...

Glest can handle high polycount perfectly fine. In fact, textures use a lot more memory because Glest loads ALL the textures at the start of the game for all used factions. The only dividing line is that a higher polycount can filter out low end systems, though it's a mod, so low end systems could simply choose not to play it (they aren't really meant to handle games anyway).

Gotta admit though, the lighting in that picture is gorgeous. I hope that we'll see something similar in Glest eventually too. And their water, etc, but that's a discussion for another day.

[John.d.h]

Well, I don't have any plans for the Elves for quite a while, so I'm not going to worry about it yet.

[Psychedelic_hands]

I'm unsure if this means he won't dev it for Glest anymore or what, but he did say it had a whole heap of polys.... So I'm unsure even if Glest COULD handle it...

Glest can handle high polycount perfectly fine. In fact, textures use a lot more memory because Glest loads ALL the textures at the start of the game for all used factions. The only dividing line is that a higher polycount can filter out low end systems, though it's a mod, so low end systems could simply choose not to play it (they aren't really meant to handle games anyway).

But he said one building had 65,000 tris! I'm not even sure if my blender could render that many  
Off-topic:

(click to show/hide)

So you say small poly count isn't really benficial to performance at all? If so, why aren't we putting some mega models into glest?
Right now, I'm working on some really low poly stuff, like under 300 poly units. Should I not be doing that?

Gotta admit though, the lighting in that picture is gorgeous. I hope that we'll see something similar in Glest eventually too. And their water, etc, but that's a discussion for another day.

And yeah, that game looks really, really great. Hopefully one-day (soonish?) glest will catch up  

[ElimiNator]

But he said one building had 65,000 tris! I'm not even sure if my blender could render that many 

Um, yah, it can. People make movies with blender.

[Psychedelic_hands]

Yeah, but my laptop is really crappy. 

[ElimiNator]

Laptop usually are.

[Omega]

Laptop usually are.

Don't stereotype 'em. Only the low end ones are. Mine is rip roaring fast.

But he said one building had 65,000 tris! I'm not even sure if my blender could render that many 

You sure he said that? Got a quote? Seems a bit high for a building, even in 0AD, you can't zoom enough for that to be useful.

[John.d.h]

But he said one building had 65,000 tris! I'm not even sure if my blender could render that many  
Off-topic:

(click to show/hide)

So you say small poly count isn't really benficial to performance at all? If so, why aren't we putting some mega models into glest?
Right now, I'm working on some really low poly stuff, like under 300 poly units. Should I not be doing that?

Later in the thread, it was established it was actually only a few thousand, but anyway, we can get away with fairly high-poly models (just look at the Dwarves), but the increased detail isn't really that noticeable at Glest's zoom level, especially if the units are going to be moving around.  If you can make a 300-poly model that looks as good in-game as a 600 or 1000 polygon model, go for it, but you probably shouldn't go out of your way to make them that low-poly.  As Omega said, it's the textures that are the real performance burden, which is why I've greatly reduced the texture size for my version of the Dwarves.  Most units had a 1024x1024 texture, and most have been reduced to 256x256, and the loss of detail is only barely noticeable if you zoom in all the way.  Of course, I still have the *.xcf files at full resolution.

[Mr War]

Wow I checked out your page with all the ani Gifs and the models are amazing, great factions.

I made a very simple script to make some HTML pages so its easy to visualise the models in the mod; the output is here:

http://williame.github.com/Project-Red/project_red.html
http://williame.github.com/Project-Red/project_red_extras.html (WARNING really heavy page to load!)

You get the idea:


You can pull it back John if you like.

I hope its really obvious how you can edit the script to do prettier output and so on.  It would be trivial to parse the xml and show various stats too if you wanted.  Or maybe just extract decent pose information for each model so they at least face the camera

[ultifd]

As I've said on IRC, looks good and useful.

Laptop usually are.

Don't stereotype 'em. Only the low end ones are. Mine is rip roaring fast.

I'm against being biased and most stereotypes, but this is one of the few that is kinda true and OK. Unless you want to pay a hefty price towards 1000 bucks, laptops usually come with integrated cards...All the other specs are usually good though. 4 gigs of RAM + i3 + 500 HD I think
So what changes will you first make to magic, John?

[John.d.h]

So what changes will you first make to magic, John?

For Magic, so far I've done a fair bit of xml work but not much art.  The capable Psychedelic Hands has agreed to do some work with me, and he's already made a pretty great healer model.  It's currently rigged, but it's waiting until he finishes the texture and I finish some animations before I show it off

Zoythrus made a nice particle effect for the Energy Source, which can now generate extra energy for a fee, rather than having to build more Energy Sources (same price but slower).

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[URL=http://img847.imageshack.us/i/screen17.jpg/][IMG]http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/7628/screen17.th.jpg[/img][/URL][URL=http://img651.imageshack.us/i/screen14d.jpg/][IMG]http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/5623/screen14d.th.jpg[/img][/URL]
The xml work for the Silver Mage is also done, but no art yet except for a few sound effects, attack particles, and a few Frankensteined icons.

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[URL=http://img807.imageshack.us/i/screen18.jpg/][IMG]http://img807.imageshack.us/img807/7982/screen18.th.jpg[/img][/URL]
I also have a Shadow Mage lined up (yes, I took all these unit ideas from Wesnoth) along with a Portal, which serves as a pocket dimension to hide your weak/wounded units (hopefully it will be more useful later).

I also ported over some of MG's particle effects, and I'm looking for ways to make the Tower of Souls useful (like allowing it to target surface units).

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[URL=http://img163.imageshack.us/i/screen20w.jpg/][IMG]http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/1646/screen20w.th.jpg[/img][/URL]
While I'm posting screens, how about a sneak peek of something Dwarven?

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[URL=http://img842.imageshack.us/i/screen15u.jpg/][IMG]http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/4105/screen15u.th.jpg[/img][/URL]

[Omega]

I'm looking for ways to make the Tower of Souls useful (like allowing it to target surface units).

What about an upgrade that will allow that ability, though weaker than the anti-air (or slower?).

[ultifd]

Looks and sounds cool. Keep up the nice work.

Zoythrus made a nice particle effect for the Energy Source, which can now generate extra energy for a fee, rather than having to build more Energy Sources (same price but slower).

Awesome. I'd probably would just keep on building more energy sources, though. Think about it, your opponent(s) destroys just one energy source that you had maybe a lot of...energy? stored there. ____, you lost the game. They destroy several of your energy sources, even faster...you'll lose.

[Omega]

Think about it, your opponent(s) destroys just one energy source that you had maybe a lot of...energy? stored there. ____, you lost the game. They destroy several of your energy sources, even faster...you'll lose.

You sure about that? I thought dynamically created energy would never be lost?