ragtag
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Posts posted by ragtag
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Make that in-depth knowledge of programming and either OpenGL or DirectX (or both).
On the bright side there are a number of open-source game engines available for us mortals to use.
Ragnar
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I should probably add a couple here.
BlitzMax is a 2D game programing language that just came out for the Mac. www.blitzbasic.com and the Windows and Linux version are just around the corner. Supposedly it lets you use one code base to compile on all three, though you do need to actually have a Mac and a Win/Linux box to compile on each. Of course, it does requier coding, but it's much easier than digging around in C++ hell.
They also make Blitz3D, which I own, for making 3D and 2D Windows games. It's easy to use, very stable, fast and reasonably powerful. Though it's getting slightly dated. I've also managed to get animated models from AM working with it (through the Obsidian plugin AMxTex and Ultimate Unwrap).
Since the original poster asked about an RPG maker it might be worth it taking a look at http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/coldstone/ Mac only (for a change), but is supposedly able to make both Mac and Win games.
Ragnar
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There are only two exceptions. If you're making a 2D game, you can render out the sprites in AM using all the features in AM, including Materials, Hair, Particles etc. etc.
The other is if you have a time machine that can take you into the future.
Ragnar
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Just download Blender and play around with it, the last version I tried included some sample games. It's free after all.
My experience with it is that it's very hard to learn because the interface is just weird. Also, the animation tools in it are severly lacking. I didn't spend too much time at it, as I figured it simply wasn't worth it. There are other free 3D apps around, like Anim8or and Wings3D that you might want to check out.
Ragnar
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Both Java and Director can create games that can be played in web browsers, and there are other options too. But those two are most widespread (i.e. people allready have the plugin requiered installed). Java is free, and Director costs 1430 euros (probably less in the stats
). Director is more of a drag and drop application, and requiers less coding, while Java is a fully fledged object oriented programming language.I made a game in Director when I was at school (ages ago) that can be played here. It was made to run on a MacPlus, even though it was made long after the MacPlus had become more of a souvenir than a usefull computer.
Ragnar
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You should be able to get them out of AM with textures and animation using.
AMXtex and Ultimate Unwrap combined. AMXtex will convert an AM model with textures to .x format, and Ultimate Unwrap can be used to convert it to Unreal format at least. I'm sure there are some game specific converters you can use to get it into those other games too. It's possible you can find something that can convert a DirectX8 .X file, directly to one of those game formats.
AMXtex has the option to either include the original images used, or to build a new one. I think it's preferable to include the original one, but then you need to use a singel texture on the whole model. You can apply the same image with multiple stamps onto the model, after flattening it and displaying only the part of it you want the texture applied to. It may also be a good idea, if you're going for 1 patch=1 poly, to set all the points to sharp (select all and hit P) before applying the texture. Also, avoid hooks and 5 point patches, as hooks tend to turn out as glitches in the poly model, and 5 point patches get subdivided into to many polys. On the other hand 3 point patches work fine, so you can use those instead. This, of course, means that models that export fine to games, will generallly not render fine in AM without some modifictions. You may also need something like DXTbmp to convert your texture to DirectX format, depending on what format the game you want to mod uses.
I've tested this method for getting models into Blitz3D, a game programing language, and it worked fine. I haven't tried it to MOD any games
Cheers,
Ragnar
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Since we are on to usefull links for Game Development, here are a few more:
AMXtex - AM plug-in for converting models and animation to DirectX .X format for use with various game engines.
Ultimate Unwrap 3D - A UV mapping tool, that is also good for converting between different 3D formats. It can take .X files output from AM with AMXtex and convert them to a number of formats for different game engines and games.
BlitzBasic - A rather cool and easy to use game programing language.
Game Maker - A cool little tool for creating 2D games without coding.
DarkBasic - Another game programing language, has lots of features...but I've heard it's buggy and problematic.
Garage Games - Makers of the Torque game engine. A relatively easy to use and inexpensive engine written in C++. They just came out with a RTS extension too.
PTK - 2D game engine that uses OpenGL for drawing. I believe it's freeware and written in C++.
Indiegamer Forums - Discussion forum for independent game developers. Lots of people there running their own successfull shareware game development companies.
Inidie Wiki - A wiki for independent game developers, lots of usefull info.
Anyone care to add more...
Ragnar
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www.blitzcoder.com - Forum for BlitzBasic programers, mostly hobbyists, but always need talented people to do art for them.
www.indiegamer.com/forums/ - More serious group of independent game developers, some of them making a good living of making shareware games.
On both places they'll probably want to see some sample artwork before they consider collaborating with you. Often folks show up there and say things like "I have this great idea for an MMORPG/FPS/RTS/etc, who wants to help me out with it." without nothing to show for what they have done or can do.
Ragnar
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Good luck with C++, it's a pain to learn...which is why I never got very far with it.
The Obsidian Game plug-in works fine, and combined with Ultimate Unwrap 3D, you can convert the .x files to lots of different formats.
I'm surprised that everything you've read urges you towards D3D. For one thing, it's Windows only...which severly limits cross platform development. And frequent updates is not always a good thing. It means that you will constantly need to update your engine and code to work with the latest installment of D3D, and people using your game/software will need to download the latest DirectX version. It may have the most fancy features, but there is actually a lot you can do with DirectX 7 or 8 for instance, not to mention OpenGL.
Ragnar
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Yesterday I found a simple way to add automatic backup to my Subversion system.
First I made a .bat file containing the following:
svn commit -m "Automatic commit."
Then I used MS Scheduled Task (in Control panel on windows), to run the .bat file from my project folder every 15min. I'm sure some similair tool exists on OS X.
That's it.
That way I get automatic incremental backup of any changes I do. The main down sides is that I don't get a comment telling me what I did with each version, though I can still do manual commit of files with comments if I want to. And that a command line window pops up on the screen every 15min, for anywhere from a fraction of a second to a couple of seconds.
Works fine so far,
Ragnar
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Bill - Just make sure it supports binary files too if you want to include textures. I used CVS before for some coding stuff, and it didn't support binaries.
Ragnar
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I've been testing an interesting approach to backup. I'm using a repository/version control system, most commonly used by programmers. I'm using Subversion with Tortoise, both are open-source and free.
I have my working copy of the project on one disk and the repository on another, and I burn backups about once a month (my comp is not connected to the internet, which does wonders for stability
).A repository is basically a storage from which you check files in and out. It only stores the changes or differences between old and new versions, so it doesn't eat too much disk space. The nice thing about it is that each time you check in a file you can add a comment to that version, so that if you later want to go back, you know what you've done with each version. It also means that I'm not storing multiple copies/versions of the same file in my working copy, so the file structure there remains very clean. All the versions are stored in the repository.
It's a bit of extra manual work, as I need to check in files I've changed and comment them, but I think it can be worth it in the long run. If you have multiple people working on the same project, Subversion would be a great way to organize the files.
Ragnar
p.s. Subversion is a command line tool and cross platform, while Tortoise is a graphic interface that I believe is only available on Windows. If you're not freaked out by a command line interface, Subversion works fine without Tortoise too.
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This should probably be added to feature requests. Lots of other apps. support having different materials on either side of a poly/patch/NURBS, without having a double surface. It's a "simple" matter of telling the renderer to use material A if the normals are facing towards the camera, and material B if they are facing away.
Ragnar
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Avoid Celeron boxes. I've seen a test of them somewhere that showed they were about half as fast as P4 at the same clock speed. AMD is probably the way to go for price/performance.
If you're combining many different types of processors and boxes in your renderfarm, you might want to check that they will actually render all the images the same. With some renderers (might not apply to AM), there is a slight difference in floating point accuracy/calculations which might cause different machines to render the frame with slightly different (colors, shadows, lights etc.). This might cause flickering if a P4 rendered the even frames and an AMD the odd ones for instance.
Oh, and go with VNC. I've used it lots and have had no problems with it so far.
Ragnar
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Very cool. Try playing it backwards, that breaks the illussion quite easily. Hmm...would be cool to make some of these out of paper.
There was a Japanese software (which I can't remember what was called) specifically for taking 3D models and turning them into cut-and-glue models. You made a low poly textured model, and it flattened it so you could print it out. It was called P... something, if I remember correctly.
Anyone?Ragnar
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filipmun: You can break them in an action! Hmmm....wonder if that works in my 10.5 (testing....nope, no good).
Though, it doesn't matter, I'll be upgrading this Xmass.I think (which means I don't know
) that flattens works by kind of splattering the model on to a sphere or cylinder, and then flattening that. It would be like blowing up a balloon in the model around the pivot, till the model was round, and then cutting open the balloon and making it flat. Something like that. It does work fine.I've used flatten, though it's a good idea to use it selectively. You can easily combine flattening with manual flattening. Use it on parts of you character/object that are concave like the face (though you'll most likely need to fix the nose by hand), torso etc.
Ragnar
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Thanks for the replies. I got it working eventually in a rather similair way to what Paul explains. If I understand your approach correctly you're using a seperate image for each pose. For some inane reason (
) I'm using a single image.What I did was, once I had all the poses flattened on the texture was hit Shift-Z in the UV editor. This zoomed in so that the top and bottom of the view were correct, it looked like there were 2-4 pixels border round the image. All I had to do then was to crop it in Gimp to match the view. Worked almost perfectly, only had to nudge the image 1 pixel up afterwards (my cropping must have been a tiny bit wrong).
As for the Gimp. Check out www.gimp.org. It's a free image editing software like Photoshop or PaintShop Pro. I use it a lot for this kind of stuff, though I actually do the texture painting in openCanvas, it works better with my wacom.
I did scale the image up to 1024x1024, to match the old. Though it seemed to work fine either way. Once I had it aligned I scaled it up to 2048x2048, and it still worked fine in AM. Was considering going for 4000x4000, but I will probably need a new machine for that.
Now if only my texture painting skills were better.
Cheers,
Ragnar
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I'm working on decaling a model and have a problem I'm sure there is a better way to solve. Firstly, I'm still in 10.5 so the UV editor is somewhat limited.
1. I have a model of a naked character. I've made a group for the front, back, top of arms, under arms and inside mouth.
2. I've then taken each one and flattened them in an action.
3. I have a light gray checkerboard texture I've stamped on each flattened part. I'm using different parts of the same image, so I only have a single texture.
4. I open up the UV editor (Edit on stamp), where I have each part of the body layed out nicely next to each other. So far so good.
5. (Here comes the part I hope there is another way to do). I do a screen grab of the UV editor. Crop the screen grab in GIMP to cover only the image. Import that into AM, and swap out the checkerboard texture with it. So now the model is textured with a checkerboard with a wireframe on top. Except, that I never get the wireframe to match perfectly. It usually seems to have the wrong scale. A lot of tweaking the texture scale and position, reloading, rendering and checking will get it there in the end, but there must be some easier way.
so....
Is there any other way to output the image I have in the UV editor with the wireframes on it so it matches perfectly. I plan to use this image as a reference to paint the textures on.
Cheers,
Ragnar
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Check the files in Program Files\Hash Inc\V10.5\Libraries or v11. There should be a .lbr file there. This is a straight text file you can open in any text editor, simply check if the paths are pointing to the right directories, and fix them if not.
Ragnar
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What higginsdj said.
or
You can do negative frame numbers in AM (right?). Start the shot/chor at -15 and the cycle. That way it will be at the right leg on frame 0-1.
Ragnar
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There is one advantage with multipe forums. It will be easier to find threads on specific topics if you need them later. All game related threads will be in the game forum and so on. You can use the View New Posts link to read the forum all in one, and the only extra hassle will be posting as you need to find the right category to post in.
Ragnar
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Check out Second Life. It's a shared universe with built in editors you can create your own stuff with. Everything is streamed over the net as you go, which means you need a fast connection and good computer. I did an AM to SL tutorial for using AM to create animation for Second Life a while back. It needs updating, as BVH export works in later versions of AM, you just need to have some geometry attached to the bones to get the animation to export.
Of course, you can also upload your own images made with AM to Second Life. So there is nothing stopping you from opening your own AM gallery there.
Ragnar
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When flattening a model to make it ready for decals, do I understand it correctly that it's a good idea to flatten the next row of splines too, so that the splines on the edge patches are not stretched or bent weirdly?
And if so, how do you flatten a four sided cylinder? I have a character where the fingers and toes are four sided cylinders. So far I've flattened the top of the arm and hand as one, and the underneath and palm as one. It seems to work, but I'm not sure if I will get some stretching on the fingers.
Ragnar
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If you're ever in Brusselles, check out the Comic musem there. Nearby it you can find a 2-3m large statue of Gaston, it's very cool.
Nice model. Just one question, does Gaston have 4 fingers and a thumb? I somehow remember him as only having three.
Ragnar
Render to texture
in Game Development
Posted
I don't have a workaround in AM, but as you will most likely be exporting your models to polygons you might want to consider using a different tool for the lighting such as http://www.frecle.net/giles/ specifically made for baking lighting into a texture map.
Ragnar
p.s. Quick disclaimer. I've never used giles, so don't know if it's any good, but the pictures look nice.