mdgunn

Added openable locker. Had some REALLY odd things going on trying to this simple thing to work (physics failing odd object scaling issues). Seems to work OK for now. Added a few more small props.

I'm thinking this is probably too dark now. I have some monitors that have quite high gamma I think so these looked much lighter before. I think I will add in some more lights or up an ambient level some more.

Is it just that you need to adjust for size of your image because image is placed according to top left corner so minus half the height and width of image to position?

Have checked in some more improvements. Door is not meant to be final but playing with idea of multi-stage door and some placeholder particle effects. 001 etc. Panels done. Locker not yet openable. Lightprobes in place and lighting adjusted (light prefab missed from last check-in so this room probably rather dark before). Simple pallete texture (used on pretty much everything I do) given some shininess so that it works better with light probes - which in general work quite well in a sci-fi environment.

I did the VR video Josh mentioned. I got a lenovo explorer. They were available for 110 pounds in the UK (roughly 150 dollars) on Black Friday, though I missed that deal by minutes and had to pay 150 (with a bit of cashback on top to ease the pain). https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/lenovo-explorer-windows-mixed-reality-vr-headset-and-wireless-motion-controllers-14999-lenovo-uk-3116076 At that sort of price I'd say it was worth it. For 350 UK pounds (if you were paying at staples in CAD 599) then I'm not so sure. The head set is fine and REALLY handy that you can tilt up the visor but I found the controller tracking to be a bit iffy at times though maybe there are ways to improve it. I think it may be better to wait and see what the Oculus Quest is like. I believe the Quest will become the standard Rift and the previous will be phased out. I think the Quest uses similar approach to Mixed Reality with an inside out system where the headset tracks the controllers and so you don't need base stations. I think it is really made by Lenovo and sounds like is using some lessons learned from Mixed Reality implementations. I'm not an expert in the area so I could have some facts wrong there. I've tried PS VR as well. I think that worked fine with Leadwerks too though to get the Move controllers working requires some effort so if you already have PSVR or know someone that does (which may be more common that other VR) then maybe borrow that just to get a feel for things though you need to by Trinus VR which is not free but I think it runs as a time limited trial. Here is the Leadwerks VR test. Rather wonky (seemed fine in the display!). For comparison the same room currently looks like this, though it is still a work in progress.

I Will wire up door so it can be opened yes. I had some opening doors in place but need to hook up these new models again. I will also do a second door in the (inactive) enemy filled room. Maybe the cave will be a different level load so second door may be just level load trigger zone and not need to open. I will put labels for 001, 002, 003, 004 on the cryo tubes and above them and on associated lockers I think yes.

Texturing is just about complete and some further minor improvements have been made to some models. Lighting has not really had much focus yet. It is possible that some things might have got broken as part of this. I'm not sure it's practical to keep a good hold on this when many model updates are happening.

I've checked this in as level02b which is a copy of level02 with this bit on it. Later I may move the bits back into level02 when when I am nearer the finished thing.

For what it's worth. We have begun some further work on Forth Project (in game projects). We found some oddities with physics where platforms were floating up that previously were stationary. It isn't code I wrote, haven't looked closely at it, and I'm focusing on some modelling at the minute so I don't have any info on what the cause is. I am sticking with 4.5 for this project. I am just reporting it to inform that there do seem to be some differences physics between 4.5 and 4.6. If I get to investigating that I'll update or if there are changes in 4.6 we can probably check against our know problem area in Forth as an extra test bed.

OK. may be able to review it and and see how what it looks like in combination with what I got done. Initially though I think I will focus on following first:- Final textures on models cryo room models. Simple second room opening door between room (which currently means redoing rear wall mesh as it isn't an opening door If anyone would like me to focus on anything else I'll reconsider so just let me know.

Ah sorry about breaking attached texts. I think I remember seeing those now. Not sure exactly what caused that but it could be when I did the collapse operation on the meshes in the editor. This was because otherwise the root object that of the mesh on import seems to be a sort of empty object which messes with selecting it in the object as it has no polygons itself as if it is a pivot or null object. If I further mess with objects it is possible that things will get broke again so I will try to get the objects to a final textured stage soon (hopefully by end of weekend) so we can call them done. They were only supposed to be a trial for the basic look which I considered I might redo to more archaic in nature (think more glowing blocky temple-like composition and less traditional sci-fi). I guess I will go with this first attempt. About the exit to cave. If we exit through the rear door I think that might be weird. You'd expect it to be another room or at least the engines rather than straight outside wouldn't you? I was originally going to do a roof exit with a lift pad thing to take you up and out so that I didn't need to do a second room but now I'm thinking I could probably get a second room together fairly easily based of a 180 flip of the first with assets moved round so it should not take too long. I'll look into that. I think I saw some cave like levels. Is there enough there do be useful at this stage? I know I was working on some weapon system stuff which I think I never quite got finished though it was getting there. Are the spell things you mentioned a weapon and are they hooked in to enemy damage at this time?

Does anyone want to do a simple set of 'find necessary' items quests in the cryo room? Or were there other plans? Seems this would be a simple way of having some reason to use the cryo room and for the user to experience the room. If people want to go ahead with compressing a story to absolute minimum then I suggest that the purpose of the quests should be to ultimately escape the cryo-room via a roof tube/lift and that the user needs to get the ship systems under control and force this escape route to open. This is not what was in design docs but the reason for change is that if I understand correctly we want to put something more complete together so we must join up what room we have in as short a path as possible. If someone wants to do some 'quests' in the cryo room then don't worry about models you might want or mechanisms you might want (e.g. lift descending from ceiling). I can handle models and mechanisms if someone wants to concentrate on the mechanism or finding item x picking up, moving to location y etc. Then you can just tell me what objects /mechanics you want. Don't want to take this opportunity from someone else as I'm not sure what I missed when I was away and some work was ongoing. If people want to focus on something else than I can probably pick this bit up and do the story, mechanisms and models myself.

I've updated the physics on the cryo level objects though I intend to go back in and apply some basic textures using the shared pallette.

I will continue to look at the existing levels and try a few things out adding small extras to try to lift the levels a bit without modifying the way they work. I think I may even just add the modified levels as new copies so others can confirm they want a certain version. I think sometimes you need to have a wander around it rather than just see a screenshot or video.

Allows us to put a few items in as part of a simple task in the cryo room if we want to use it. Added to repo in Addons/Object_Movement . Somewhat strange name but that's where it is currently. Added to level 02 also.

Playing with the idea of having some tumbling objects from the cryo chamber as a super simple to add some visual detail to the level (the idea being it they are memories of aspects of the ship in the dream). Also I thought that level 1 had some slow down but this is only in debug mode and I think in normal play it may be OK (though I've only tested so far on a fairly fast card). Testing the cube in the teleport level with grayscale off.

OK. I guess we need to stick with 4.5 and avoid letting 4.6 modify any files. If I move to 4.6 I will check Forth against it but so far have been avoiding it. Thanks for the update on some present issues to look out for.

I don't think I have seen this in action. Not sure what to load to see that if it is linked in.

Autosave based on time can be dangerous. Could be easy to get into situation where auto-save saves just before death and you get caught in unescapable death cycle. Not sure the amount of time it might take to get a nice model highlight would be time well spent if you are interested in release very soon. For me I think this would fall more in the category of 'nice to have' but not something that would stop release. For our limited environments I think the current hand is acceptable and would personally probably choose to spend the saved time elsewhere. Having said that a simple highlight is probably possible by tweaking a channel on the material of an object and make it more white or red etc.. Doing some sort of actual outline probably requires a shader and it might be that this requires all assets to be resaved to the new non-standard shader. Would need investigation as I don't have a go to solution for that and this investigation would probably require time to do, then possible resaving of assets. This is why I think it might not be worth time spent when functionally we have a basic but working solution. I will have a think about it though. Maybe something quick will come to mind.

Some of the levels have checkpoints in already. Wouldn't they just save a little more data out and on level load it puts you to checkpoint. If that's what you mean?

ok I think I see. I think I have not fully comprehended all that is going on in this room. I think to get to higher complexity you really are best with the user taking very small steps to understand by DOING rather than understand by READING (I mean in general, not necessarily for this example). As far a single room versus map changes... if it's best this is a single room that changes then that fine too. Maybe things just show and hide to help manage the complexity of puzzle steps, if there are steps. If we just want something complete without having to change much beyond making the room a bir more varied then we can just leave as is the puzzle though I think I did not understand the full scope of how the room works.

Added an image to image section showing what broken up block level might be like will play a bit more. As I didn't do the mechanics I'm avoiding tweaking those but the level layout I think could do with some variety while still allowing the main mechanism to not be broken up and hopefully to add some interest on the way to completing the puzzle. I will try to do what I can to move forward some of the concepts I mentioned above, not necessarily to get them complete but to show what I mean first too.

The teleport level is currently very square and all on a single 100% flat square area. The attached image is still square and roughly on the same level but is experimenting with a broken up level to add the simplest form of visual variation and level change into the level as a test of something which may change to less square, on a more broadly varied level and with less blocks to produce a wholly non-square design.

The text above is probably hard to follow so don't worry if you don't fully get it. If you have different ideas or things you'd prefer to add remove I'm not precious about anything said above. Also, in the above there is not really a notion of a flying island. If possible I might try to make it clear that there is a buried ship in the landscape with a distant circling camera shot as the meteor descends or something. It would be later on that the ship emerges and effectively becomes a flying island. If we went further later then we probably would be outside and moving around on the island/ship surface fighting AI but those things although partially developed still need work and due to numerous things interacting player, enemies, environment, health systems, weapons, navigation etc there is a lot that needs to be done to a good standard to be interesting and not feel a bit broken.