[Role Playing Game] Memento Mori

[Deleted member 219079]

Either way, it just means I can make even better stuff now that the older is gone.

I would stop modding for at least half a year if I had a setback like this...

 

[bhusta]

The show must go on!

 

[Heinvers]

I'm very sorry to hear this Talavaj( I hope that you'll find that baggage! Sad news indeed

 

[neven1]

I'm regretfully announcing that my project has recently suffered a major setback.

While returning from my trip from Athens this Tuesday, I was crushed to find out that my baggage, which was simply "forgotten" to be checked for the connecting flight by the airline and had to arrive in a later flight that day, was broken into and my laptop together with its charger was gone without a trace.
Despite my effort to hold the airline liable for my damage and supplying the full required documentation for my legal claim report, they have successfully avoided any and all action to this point by simply claiming they are not responsible for any loss of "valuable" property contained within their checked baggage.
Guess it is my fault for being a naive doofus believing I would not be robbed that one time when my carry-on luggage exceeds the weight limit and has to be checked in.

It is a crushing loss for me, not only because both of my projects suffered a major setback due to most of the latest work (including pretty much the entire environmental pack of S&S and nearly 4 months of effort on Memento Mori) being gone but also because the laptop was pretty much my only means of communicating with my girlfriend and my only means of putting money in my pockets.

I'm not the richest person in the world, and my laptop has really been the only valuable thing I have purchased in the past two years.
I went to Athens to meet with this amazing girl that I have met online and have been seeing for over 3 years now.
It is that much more saddening because of my situation, and because of the audacity the crime was committed with.
Sometimes it just makes you think the most awful things really only happen to the common people, haha !

Despite these unfortunate events, the work on my projects is still gonna continue and hopefully we will see even greater results coming out of this loss !
I only ask for understanding, given that I won't be able to fund a new workplace anytime soon, though I will be moving my desktop so I can resume swiftly.

Shall my experience serve as a warning for any of you,your acquaintances or your family who consider flying with Air Serbia (or any other carrier really), or consider having their baggage handled at Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade; Serbia, where the theft most likely took place as it was not a work of an individual but a planned crime that requires more than just one person involved. (as my baggage was inexplicably left there without being connected for the next flight)
That it takes only a single valuable thing in your checked baggage for you to get definitely robbed.

Past Update

Actually I don't. I don't like the fog, it looks meh and washes out even the little bit of color/saturation/contrast that the game has left. If anything I'd rather use my own doodads.
Not to mention it does not seem to work with ENB properly, sometimes at all. I assume it overrides the default direct 3d shading the game has which also contains the fog and when it actually works it is ruined by ambient occlusion which shows through.


Nothing much until about 7th january unfortunately, it is when I'll be coming back from my vacation hopefully.
These two weeks (much of the december actually) have been too hectic to achieve any tangible progress really.
Apart from quitting my job I also had to take care of the trip arrangements myself, given how I laughed the travel agency out after they came up with nearly a €1k price point for my target destination (which I managed to get for nearly half of that price when booking crap on my own)
So yeah, I'm too distracted to fully focus on work right now lol.

Though, there was some progress on my further S&S pack and some other tiny lil project of my own (which we may see sometime in the future maybe) because they don't require such heavy commitment.

As such I apologize for the lack of updates this month. They will resume shortly !

Lol im so embaresed such thing to happen in my country omg well i guess i didnt knew any better i would say serbian people are DOUCHE BAGS! like me =D

 

[Deleted member 212788]

No, neven, not all of them are. It's like saying all bulgarians are gipsies just because they make up 1/3 of the people here. Some people are just assholes and others are nice.

 

[Talavaj]

Heh, most of them definitely aren't. From the experience of my friends I heard most Serbians are nice people, despite the bad press your country received in the past.

Something I have experienced myself, as the staff of the airline and the airport was generally pleasant, although English was a slight issue sometimes.
For all we know I may have been robbed anywhere on the path, be it at Athens or Vienna after arrival.

Indeed though, it was still Air Serbia that not only turned down my claim (as arguably expected due to the standard policy of airlines not being liable for virtually anything valuable) but what struck me the most was the complete lack of action from the side of the airline and its utter indifference towards the crime.
As I at least demanded a proper investigation to take place, I mean was my baggage not weighed on check in and arrivals ? Why I was never given explanation as to what circumstanced and was my baggage "forgotten" etc.

Oh well, either ways ! I will now know not to put anything worth of anything in my checked luggage. (or rather I am gonna be so paranoid to have nothing but my hand baggage at all times lol)

 

[SeedinAethyr]

This is so unfourtunate! Money problems, being unable to communicate with your girlfriend, and work on Memento Mori and Sword and Stone lost is such an infuriating thing to hear about!
I am incredibly sorry to hear this, although I admire your optimistic attitude!

 

[IamFootman061]

I can't wait for the realease!

 

[fr14nd1]

The graphic was epic!
I will wait for this map's relase!

 

[Strydhaizer]

Seems that you guys did'nt understand what the author posted few days ago.

I'm regretfully announcing that my project has recently suffered a major setback.

While returning from my trip from Athens this Tuesday, I was crushed to find out that my baggage, which was simply "forgotten" to be checked for the connecting flight by the airline and had to arrive in a later flight that day, was broken into and my laptop together with its charger was gone without a trace.
Despite my effort to hold the airline liable for my damage and supplying the full required documentation for my legal claim report, they have successfully avoided any and all action to this point by simply claiming they are not responsible for any loss of "valuable" property contained within their checked baggage.
Guess it is my fault for being a naive doofus believing I would not be robbed that one time when my carry-on luggage exceeds the weight limit and has to be checked in.

It is a crushing loss for me, not only because both of my projects suffered a major setback due to most of the latest work (including pretty much the entire environmental pack of S&S and nearly 4 months of effort on Memento Mori) being gone but also because the laptop was pretty much my only means of communicating with my girlfriend and my only means of putting money in my pockets.

I'm not the richest person in the world, and my laptop has really been the only valuable thing I have purchased in the past two years.
I went to Athens to meet with this amazing girl that I have met online and have been seeing for over 3 years now.
It is that much more saddening because of my situation, and because of the audacity the crime was committed with.
Sometimes it just makes you think the most awful things really only happen to the common people, haha !

Despite these unfortunate events, the work on my projects is still gonna continue and hopefully we will see even greater results coming out of this loss !
I only ask for understanding, given that I won't be able to fund a new workplace anytime soon, though I will be moving my desktop so I can resume swiftly.

Shall my experience serve as a warning for any of you,your acquaintances or your family who consider flying with Air Serbia (or any other carrier really), or consider having their baggage handled at Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade; Serbia, where the theft most likely took place as it was not a work of an individual but a planned crime that requires more than just one person involved. (as my baggage was inexplicably left there without being connected for the next flight)
That it takes only a single valuable thing in your checked baggage for you to get definitely robbed.

Well , thats really sad .

 

[fr14nd1]

Wew. Thats really sad.
Looks like we got to wait a pretty long time again

 

[Strydhaizer]

Well atleast his talent remains at him and will never be stolen.

 

[tobyfat50]

It is a thing to admire that his will to keep working is still alive after something like that. Hopefully with more determination can do something better. If the whole project would of been lost then even I would of quit for good fortunately it's just a setback and some lost work which is pretty discouraging in itself.

Talavaj, I am feeling sorry for your loss but I am also surprised that you actually let something like that happen when you know darn well that personal belongings aren't safe from thieves no matter where you are especially here in Europe! And we all know since we are all europeans. It's excusable, you might of been unlucky in the end or you were seriously in love, can happen even to a intelligent guy like you.
People should be more careful with their stuff! I know very well that in a dysfunctional and corrupt country such as mine "there is no nice guy you can trust" and yes, here, if your a few steps away from your luggage you can kiss it goodbye, seen it happen a lot of times, even happened to my mom and she is usually very careful.

I am feeling sorry for what happened to you you bastard,

I really am! And I know how it is to lose something that is still functional and important to you. I'm not a rich guy/girl myself also working at a turtle PC but it's the only one I got that works the best so losing it would mean death. I think you should relax some more and regenerate however you can, slowly but surely. People will always be interested in your stuff since you are Top Gun here. I will always follow your project no matter how much time has passed so don't worry, I am still waiting!

 

[Talavaj]

Lol, yep I was kind of a doofus. Thought it did not even occur to me that I would be robbed just that one time lol.
I will now know better though, and assume all airports are manned by criminals 24/7.

On another note, the loss of progress is not that great. It will however make me rethink whether I should take the design of the first chapter in a different direction.
Also a random tech question.

What is wrong with my particles here ? They are fine in the viewer but do not appear in-game or the editor at all.

 

[Deleted member 219079]

They're too fancy for warcraft jk I've no idea

 

[Systemfre1]

Does it have an animation sequence to play? or is just a model without no animations to play, not even 10 frames of nothing.

EDIT: meaning it might work if its not just unanimated.

 

[tobyfat50]

Hm... I am facing the same problem with particles. They seem to work in models editors but not in game. I was going to look in to this but I have no idea at the moment, it's probably best to ask a particle expert. Maybe Blinkboy knows something about this!? If you find the solution please post!
Edit: Sometimes, mine behave strangely, like they leave trails of vector like objects behind when normally they shouldn't. (It's not my video card!)

I also believe you'll make better stuff that the previous one.

 

[Talavaj]

Well that is swell, it just looks like horizontal quads don't work in-game at all. (they do display in magos just fine though)
How on earth is one supposed to make raindrop rings then lol ? Or is it magos just failing to save the parameter or something ?ň

I definitely saw horizontal quads before, I'll look into why mine do not work.
EDIT: ok, I guess you need to set at least some latitude and speed for them to work ?.

The idea is that, during rain all the uneven surfaces made using faux parallax will slowly fill in with water like in the test screenshot below. All the way until they rise above even the elevated surface and cover everything.

Or as demonstrated in this video. Obviously the transition is gonna be smoother, no ugly pop ups. The wet maps will appear gradually.
[YOUTUBE]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLdGz7auffU[/YOUTUBE]

 

[tobyfat50]

Wow, Gorgeous! This is Just splendid!

I'm still having problems, latitude and speed doesn't make a difference but maybe I'm still doing something wrong. Gave up so I used Blizzard particles for the UI MENU, guess this is pointless to you now -> Rain fx!

 

[Deleted member 212788]

That's mind-blowing really. I never thought I'd see the day when Warcraft 3 would be capable of such things. Well done!

 

[fr14nd1]

It was too awesome for a Warcraft III, really.
So.... in some points, we wil see a number of wet areas?

 

[Talavaj]

On most outdoor areas yeah, rain is a random occurrence. It comes stays a while, then the wetmaps eventually dissipate.
There is also wind which makes foliage play a more turbulent blowing animation and keeps lifting newspapers and leaves off the ground.

They are mostly visual representation of where you are subjected to the rain and wind debuffs. Even if you won't see puddles there will still be some rain effects in the area.
Rain debuff is cumulative, so you won't really see any effect immediately but you don't wanna hang around rain too long either because once it took effect it will take long time to wear off even after it stopped raining.

Deep water causes the same debuff as rain but much faster and it also has a unique debuff of its own. Deep water is not accumulated from rain however, it is on fixed spots where you see knee/waist deep water.
One of the sub maps is intended to be nearly entirely flooded, so you won't wanna stay there too long.

 

[Heinvers]

These effects will add a more dynamic atmosphere Gonna wait for this. And great job you've done:>

 

[Lockheart]

Nice descripition and well used eye-candy graphics!

Genre isn't my favored one but I can tell from reading your words
& looking at your artwork that you had to put a lot of effort into it.

Congratulations, you don't see maps like that often!
(I really love your Memento Mori teaser picture up there btw!)

 

[Talavaj]

Hello, thank you for your appreciation !
Not much this week, paperwork given the change in my occupation and such.

But I do present you another tiny extension of the cel trick, this time used to fake diffuse reflections. (as I have shown before but this one uses a pseudo cube map)
It will be used wherever applicable, creating diffuse reflections of the sky and static light sources and should also look really good on the water !
And also it will be generated completely real-time by dynamic lights (such as flash lights) thanks to the clever use of priority planes.

See it in action.

And not in action.

 

[tobyfat50]

Did you used a box for that and scripted the dynamics? Knowing you it might be a simple trick that it's hard to understand at first, I swear this things seem more like magic tricks. "The Artsy Magician" doesn't fail to impress as always, that thing could be useful for a stage scene. Is it applicable on other types of objects as well?

 

[Talavaj]

There is a box underneath yes. The top is a scribble cell (but set to blend not transparent) with an alpha mask for the highlights, underneath that layer is a copy of the texture but without an alpha mask which has different opacity in different animation states (for example allowing the diffuse reflection only show when the floor gets wet from rain or such while being completely non-reflective otherwise)
No need to scrip anything, given as you rotate the view the "cube map" is viewed from different angles giving an impression of the reflection moving accordingly.
In theory you can apply it anywhere even on vertical planes but you need a lot of space behind the mesh to put the "cube map" behind.
I actually tinkered with it when making a water reflection. I wanted to use the inverted geometry trick for reflection but the reflection looks too perfect for running/sea water and comes at an expense of making the actual water texture too transparent.
So instead I thought of making only bits of the texture show the "reflection" behind, with the texture distortion of my usual water it should look even more believable.
It won't be a crystal clear reflection but you will see the faint effect as the camera rotates.

In theory, you can apply it on some small objects as well. You will however have to create an inverted shell inside (so the model does not become see through, but it will show the reflection still because one face will always be backface culled) and place the reflection map or glow or w/e inside.

 

[Heinvers]

Clever trick man! By the way any possible release date for this mod of yours?

 

[tobyfat50]

Talavaj, How do you split seamless textures or 2048px ones on a large rock in to pieces? I want to know how and if you do it!

 

[Talavaj]

Clever trick man! By the way any possible release date for this mod of yours?

Uncertain unfortunately, most of the progress on prologue chapter was completely wiped and I don't feel like remaking the same stuff again (doing so is a bad practice in creative work anyway) so I decided to make the prologue significantly shorter and mostly in-doors.
That however means it will come a bit sooner than I expected.
Thankfully, most work on chapter 1 is intact so I may show a few bits and pieces of that before the prologue chapter goes live.
I may slightly reconsider the level design though, and make it more modular and reuse more assets.
Though I still do wish to keep the quality of the assets high, aiming for mesh quality comparable to that of modern games.

As for huge textures ? I kinda don't. I don't have anything that big that would require textures above 512p.
Huge objects just tile the texture, and although I could use textures above that size for light maps, I usually just bake it at the 512p anyway as most of the large objects are backdrops so it does not really matter.
Big light maps like the street are simply cut in pieces though.
Otherwise nothing is above 512p, the protagonist that Manoo made however uses a couple of 512 textures. And many separate textures for the rest of his apparel.

Lately I have been dissecting some wii/psp games on emulators (notably monster hunter) to see how they tackled faking effects but did not learn anything new.
To my disappointment lol, I found out MH tri on the wii actually uses a simple surface shader (that looks like animated normal map) for its water on top of regular textures while MH portable 3rd HD downgrades it by using poor quality animated texture.
Though I was more impressed by the backdrops which although really low res still give off a majestic impression.

 

[tobyfat50]

Ah never mind, I found the way, at long last! I Don't know why would you need large shadow maps to be honest, 512px is more than enough, or you can cut them like you said if you actually need more quality. I really am not satisfied with the texture limit in wc3, generally need texture larger than 1024 on mountains and cliff rocks so when I zoom in they should look better plus it's really close to impossible to slice texture on complex geometry and match the uv, till I discovered this. - Atlas - You can pay me a visit by clicking my advert and read about it, though it's just me bragging about it.

Lately I have been dissecting some wii/psp games on emulators (notably monster hunter) to see how they tackled faking effects but did not learn anything new.

Yeah, maybe you are too advanced!
There are a few things I'd like to look in to like how to fix the fog problem with shadow maps, or the alpha problem. I've been noticing some things in wc3 lately and after reading about shaders and techniques Some ideas come to mind, as of recently I think there might be a way to make image distortions like for glass materials by overlapping some layers with priority planes also out of all your parallax techniques I tried I noticed one particular arrangement that creates occlusion around the edges with the ENB like actual geometry. Wish I'd had time for those things but I don't recently. The ENB is definitely useful and sexy in its own way (recent revelation lol) can make really nice terrain secreshots, the bugs - fix with photoshop, only if it worked properly, it's not applicable for my cinematic. Wish wc3 had some really basic and simple but better shaders, it would make a huge difference!

As for huge textures ? I kinda don't.

Maybe you should! You could make some really nice texture variations with 1024 size texture, maybe on buildings or rocks?!

 

[Talavaj]

Don't know why would you need large shadow maps to be honest, 512px is more than enough, or you can cut them like you said if you actually need more quality.

Cause I'm lazy
I'd really just love to merge everything and bake the entire level on one big light map.

As for my buildings, the tops have low quality textures because they are usually very rarely seen and if then only like distant backdrops.
The bottoms yeah, I have been tackling the problem with trying to make more mesh details to cover it though.
More cracks, wiring, fuse boxes etc. Interiors have similar details, like torn wallpapers holes in the walls and such.
And in theory I do use bigger textures actually, very similar ones but different variants so the tiling is not apparent at all.

Rocks ironically, there are very few in MM and for the upcoming modular shire...
I had to squish the texture to 128p for it to reasonably large to be useable easily in multiplayer as well.
And instead I aim for mesh detail instead, although the texture quality may be somewhat bad here and there but those are mostly intended for top-down and gameplay use anyway.

Speaking of which, the sets should look somewhat like that when done. That is the concept look at the ancient glade stone set, I'm thinking of adding small patches of fluffy grass/moss to grow from the green patches on the rocks and maybe adding extra tiny details like leaves and tiny branches stuck in them to break up the monotone tile.

 

[tobyfat50]

Incredible, the skye is gorgeous, what is it renderd in, I can't tell? It feels like starcraft 2 editor.
Edit: yep, I aim for large texture detail instead of mesh. I'm am lazy to think of a balance between the tow since I mostly do terraining these days.

 

[Heinvers]

Incredible detail. The sky is great and looks natural i'd say. Soo the Modular Shire comes next, great news

 

[Talavaj]

It is just a regular 3ds max render and some photoshop post-processing.

Also I'm proud to present my final shaderless water shader !
It has support for Faux realtime refractions and uses my usual vertex paint deformation for the surface.
.. Unfortunately, this particular mesh seems to be past what wc3 can handle and the rendering will break when you attempt to place it in-game. Only about half of the mesh is rendered correctly.
(And I did crash my gpu driver while working on it, lol)
Hopefully, the implemented variant will be less volatile.

The "refraction" can still be seen in the partially working part. It is caused by everything that is within the water, or completely submerged in it.

 

[tobyfat50]

< Fall down the chair... > Amazing, how does that work? Does it distort the image because of multiple blend layers or is the reflection a parallax copy of the objects inverted somehow? It seems pretty hardcore, will it work for slow computers? Duplicating the parallax material layer once is enough to put whips on my graphics card it doesn't slow down much but it is noticeable. Your water seems like a doom contraption for graphics cards!

Mind If I call you the water god from now on?

 

[Talavaj]

Heh, it is a lot simpler than that.
The top is the base water material for the "reflection" (which I just make from the surroundings kind like a glassy-fied cubemap)
Underneath is a volumetric mesh of blend material with priority "1" which "paints" the top material in the "water" color.
The volumetric mesh gives a blue color to the water in this example. While the top one is some random brownish mish-mash.

Now, anything within the water will block the blue blend and will make the top layer display in its original color.
Obviously, it does not refract the image of the thing in the water but it kinda becomes a "cut out" in which the top water layer retains its original texture.
So, you should make the top layer in some generic coloration that can loosely fit the color of the objects in the water, or the color of the edges of your container or the color of the sky (so it will look like it reflects at the horizon) etc.

Second application of the "shader", is you can paint the top layer with similar color as is the shore and use the model as a replacement for default water without any problems.
With similar properties as the original wc3 water, except the water would be 100% opaque, the coloring would imitate shallow water but would never be really transparent.

Like in this example, the brown is the real color of the water, rather than it being see through at the edges.

 

[Systemfre1]

This is... one of the best things I've ever seen in warcraft 3...

You sir are a master... I truly cannot wait for what is to come

 

[Justicebringer]

You are a genius, do you plan to make a standalone game of this?

 

[nhs325]

I wonder how the modertators gonna rate this and Requiem. This project has gone out of wc3 limitation. Perhaps the Hive have to invite some game ciritics.

 

[Manoo]

I love that idea with diffuse reflection (I think it's called specular), it's true talent to make something beautiful with limited resources and u done it , gj . By the way, are u going to use this specular on tile or on model? Because with model u will have to create transperent tile, otherwise it will block your light cube.

 

[Heinvers]

That water is incredible I hope to see more from your water rendered models!

 

[Talavaj]

-

On models, indeed. I'm using the alpha tile on pretty much the entire map with walkable destructibles for terrain.
Thank you for your feedback !

I'd like to finally change the OP shortly, and also explain the current status on the main game there in more detail, same goes for Vanitas (the multiplayer spin-off) which has been in concept work only for the most time now.

I'm especially interested in your feedback for that one.
I'm planning for much bigger community involvement for Vanitas (as in much more open beta) and possibly invite extra people who would be interested in helping working on it while I focus on MM.

As for now, off to bed !

 

[Heinvers]

That sounds great. Btw how's the current progress of MM?

 

[Talavaj]

Not amazingly well, a big chunk of progress was lost and lately I put focus on Vanitas and S&S pack so I can put out what has been sitting on my hard drive for quite some time now.
It is likely you will see the multiplayer footage earlier than the main "game" or it may turn out to not be the case, we will see !

 

[Chen]

Just saw this one, looks great! Good Luck to you!

 

[Heinvers]

Then I'll wait for it. Good luck Talavaj!

 

[raphaelnato123]

This looks Epic! I love survival maps

 

[Mark Mocher]

Fantastic map, i wait for map aboute year, realy cool.

 

[fr14nd1]

Just to keep this thread running
Any new updates?