Prototype content creation.
Well hello guys.
I am a new member here, and i should be visiting here more often again.I am mostly on international websites, I have previously worked with unity, epic and other games engine, however my first love is still FPSCreator, it's easy and simple and takes little effort to get things done. I haven't made a game in awhile actually decided to hone my development and 3d modeling skills first.So I mostly spend time creating content from my beloved engine, and making some money in my spare time from it.
I think I reached a point where I can now concentrate on creating a fully fledged game for a change.FPSCreator works with a painting system for the base level design as such makes it really hard to get any thing out of it other than 4 x4 block room, which lacks total imagination.
The other problem I had to overcome was the lack of directional and point light sources, it also lacks per pixel little mapping which means and high detailed meshes end up being blocky, which can totally destroy a high detail level, So I had to find a work around to these problems, either texture bake or stick to low polygon modeling and still make things look modern, I can tell you now it's not easy. The hardest item has been curved shapes which totally impossible in this engine without killing scene.
As to why I am here, I am always looking to improve, I am hoping to get some feedback, peer review is important as you never know if your are doing some thing wrong.Ultimate objective is then to move over to epic, and use FPSCreator to prototype with as it's easy, and can quickly test out new meshes.
Current Project is called Tunnels 9( have decided on the name yet). This will be a content pack for FPSCreator users to use in their games.It's currently still in development, so the floors for example are still place holders, and remember the engine is rather basic.
thanks guys, feedback is always appreciated, good or bad, it will help to get thing even better.
PS will upload a youtube video in the course of the day :P
I am a new member here, and i should be visiting here more often again.I am mostly on international websites, I have previously worked with unity, epic and other games engine, however my first love is still FPSCreator, it's easy and simple and takes little effort to get things done. I haven't made a game in awhile actually decided to hone my development and 3d modeling skills first.So I mostly spend time creating content from my beloved engine, and making some money in my spare time from it.
I think I reached a point where I can now concentrate on creating a fully fledged game for a change.FPSCreator works with a painting system for the base level design as such makes it really hard to get any thing out of it other than 4 x4 block room, which lacks total imagination.
The other problem I had to overcome was the lack of directional and point light sources, it also lacks per pixel little mapping which means and high detailed meshes end up being blocky, which can totally destroy a high detail level, So I had to find a work around to these problems, either texture bake or stick to low polygon modeling and still make things look modern, I can tell you now it's not easy. The hardest item has been curved shapes which totally impossible in this engine without killing scene.
As to why I am here, I am always looking to improve, I am hoping to get some feedback, peer review is important as you never know if your are doing some thing wrong.Ultimate objective is then to move over to epic, and use FPSCreator to prototype with as it's easy, and can quickly test out new meshes.
Current Project is called Tunnels 9( have decided on the name yet). This will be a content pack for FPSCreator users to use in their games.It's currently still in development, so the floors for example are still place holders, and remember the engine is rather basic.
thanks guys, feedback is always appreciated, good or bad, it will help to get thing even better.
PS will upload a youtube video in the course of the day :P
Thanked by 1duncanbellsa
Comments
Remeber on big budget games the levels usually look something like this when they start out:
To that end it sounds like you could make your life easier by not worrying about visual fidelity so much in FPSCreator and instead concentrating on level design, and then polishing it in Unreal. But I'm totally not going to discourage you from making 3D assets if that's what you're having fun with right now. The important thing is that you're always making stuff.
Edit: Reading properly I see you're making it as content pack for other users on FPSCreator. Well in that case keep on truckin. But remember the objectives of content assets are going to be different from:
Yes creating content for other users is much harder, as you have to consider several aspects, of how they would use it.Plus it needs to easy to use, and still have some level of customization for the user.
I have done this specific to learn content creation of at least rapid content creation, been spending the better part of three weeks creating the media.
Creating content for other users, designs are a little more "one dimensional ". When I tackle my own game I don't have to worry about usability outside of my game.I took the time to check out unreal level designs and all of them use several mesh parts to make up the level design and have taken that little nifty trick and applied it to my own work, as so far it has been paying off handsomely.
I have been using FPSC since 2005, so it's been a long road up to now, I primarily concentrated on content creation for the past 8 odd years.
Unlike unreal and unity, FPSC doesn't have the option of creating meshes with in the editor, so all of the designs has to done with in a model editor, textured uv mapped, and imported into the editor and be painted with a grid base system, which means meshes that you create has to fit into that grid space blocks, or else two meshes will not correctly align.
Which means you are slightly limited on what can be created, the old style quake BSP style mesh creation, works quite well with in FPSC, and I have stuck with this old school design, it is limiting but rewarding.
This for example the first attempt at multi mesh level design.It's not bad, but I am hoping to improve even more.
As for visual aspect, I am doing it for the fun of it also to showcase the media to users as well, and build up some hype.The good news is however is unreal users, often come to our website as there is a plenty free media, and they have taken quite a likening to it. There are characters and weapons galore, and importing is a breeze.
They are however not my intended market as the media is still what polygon restrained, I don't feel I am ready for that market any ways just yet, this is only me second media pack that fully relies on multi mesh design, want to chug a couple more of these pack before doing that.
But the good news is I found you guys and at that local peeps, because I often find my self confronted with arrogant wanna be American's, we don't see eye to eye, so it's good to have a local outlet for people with similar back grounds, one being south African.
So thanks for the awesome site, I have seen some awesome projects here already :p
I don't really know anything about FPSC, and I don't know what its constraints are, nor what the constraints are in the asset pack you're making. I especially don't know what its capabilities are in terms of lighting, so what I'm saying might well be irrelevant because of that. :P
In your first batch of screenshots especially, it's a bit noisy in that it's not really clear where a player should focus her attention. If you're still adding props, you could use a bunch of lines that are parallel to where your player might want to move to reinforce the flow of the room. (Right now, you've actually got a bunch of really strong lines that are perpendicular, which I feel breaks that flow.) Otherwise, you can highlight important doorways or directions with lighting, whether it's higher contrast lighting, or coloured lights, or dimming the light in areas that aren't important or aren't interesting.
Also, giving the appearance of having bounced lights works wonders at making a scene look good, whether you're doing that with lightmaps, or whether you're using a deferred renderer that allows you to spam a bunch of small point lights to fake the effect.
Again, these may well be things you can't do because of limitations of the engine, or limitations in how fine your grid pieces are, in which case, oh well! :D
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You said you're on a bunch of international sites. If you're into making game levels, and you haven't been to mapcore, take a look! :)
I have added "dead end" sections which breaks up the players view, also allows the ability to back track to get to the other side either via doors, or vent system in the floor, it adds additional dimension, the floor are actually dual layer, with a grate texture on top of it which allows to break the follow.
Additionally there are raised sections which raises the sections by a 100 units. It's long corridors, which are bad, however right now for testing each section best to have them like this in a straight.The main problem there is no way around is for content creation for other users it has to align with all the other meshes, I know its difficult to visualize , should probably show the editor in action to better understand, the "paint by numbers meshes"
But thanks for the feedback, much appreciated, totally get what you are saying :D
This is basically the editor, with the grid system. you can basically rotate the segment 90 degrees steps, nothing smaller, unfortunately, that "segment" as you see there dissected so you can get a better view of the grid, it is a complete section you do not do any additional painting, it's all assembled, the next "segment" you add has to line with that segment, and the next and the next, only option because of the limitation of grid system, you have do it like so, you can use entities to build up the levels, but that causes too much issues with collision, and not worth the effort.
I hope that better explains it :P
Did you mean some thing like this, breaking the flow with another mesh type, improves or ruins the flow ?
I felt it was maybe a little too symmetrical. It's great to have peer review as you don't always see issues ;)
When I'm putting a level together, there are two broad categories of things I think of:
What do I want my player to do?
Depending on your game, I might need to prototype what I even want players to do, in which case using a bunch of cubes and other simple primitives is perfect (what @TheFuntastic linked above). Otherwise, I might already know what my players are supposed to do, whether they should be heading toward a platform, or a door, or some giant hallway, or whatever. So, with that in mind, if something's really important, then it should be lit as if it's important. It should be given higher contrast to highlight its importance. It should be more detailed if it's important. Even later on, when I'm decorating things more, and introducing props, I place them to be facing in such a way that the vectors that they create support these objectives.
Conversely, if something's unimportant (like the ceiling in a shooter, perhaps), then it should be treated that way by, for example, using dimmer lighting, lower contrast colours, or less detail.
So with both this first one and this latest one the ceiling is a really prominent shape (e.g. block of lighter colour surrounded by black shadows, or relatively high amount of detail), but is perpendicular to the direction of the passageway. The second one's a bit better in that there are side passageways, so having these things breaking the main direction of the passageway isn't necessarily bad. I wish I had a better example at hand, but maybe check this paintover out as a quick comparison. I hope that makes sense!
What do I want my player to feel?
This is everything else, including how I decorate stuff, what kind of narrative I want to tell with my textures, with my props, with my lighting. I find that at this point it's important to keep taking a step back and looking at how everything works together, and make sure you're not getting so noisy with making things "pretty" that things become overwhelming, confusing or frustrating. With environment art, I feel it's important to look at it as a whole, and not get lost in details. (Actually, I try to do this with all art, but it's much more important in environment art because of how getting lost in details is THAT MUCH more expensive time-wise.)
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Now, having said all that, I get that you're making this to be modular, and to be used in a pack, in which case you likely have much less control over how it'll actually be used. So I get how a lot of this isn't necessarily relevant. :P But I think for presentation, and for your own portfolio, it'd be cool to keep this stuff in mind. :)
I think defno once the whole pack is done, build a proper level out of it.But I get exactly what you are saying, thanks for the advise.
The good news however I did a presentation to the owners of Thegamecreators, then are keen on taking this on as one of their official "model packs" their only concern was, they want another bucket load of "segments" to go with this.
It's not so much a problem, as is the time related to each new room type, average 6 hours, concept, first draft, import, rework detail, test,test,test and more testing...I am worried that I will burn out before running out of creative juices. :p
Will take a break tomorrow I think, and create a proper level, upload a video for scrutiny :p The honest feedback is awesome :D
That said, I really like the lighting on the floors, so maybe add in windows on the ceiling to help explain why they're so dark?
So I am not at all concerned about the light mapping, I am critical about the media however, shaders uvmaps, flow ect, I have to show the media, so light mapping is just there to give the potential user some visual reference, how he light maps and adds additional entities is entirely up to him.
I am specifically adding light sources to inspect shaders employed on the media and tweak as necessary.....So don't worry too much about the lights and light sources :p
have a bit of a writers block, so I am going to go googling the next few days to get some ideas.Hoping to set another goal for my self, and further improve on the previous pack and add some more cool stuff.
I sort of decided on the next project.Did a sewer pack many many moons ago some thing I want to revisit
I want some thing like this, going to push to the next level, even if it means 6 months.
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=210164&b=24