["The Zone" Blog 03: Working on the Railroad]

Actually Michael, I haven't figured out how to get the curves perfectly modular either. For now, they require aligning by hand. I'm hoping to figure out a good method for making them modular soon.

 

Thanks for the comments, everyone! The bridge textures and finalization are coming along nicely along with quite a bit of work on the level in the Editor itself.

[Improvements for 2.32]

Now these are some terrific back end improvements. I look forward to trying them out. Nice work Josh!

["The Zone" Blog 02: Setting up the terrain and importing initial props]

Great point Annika! If there's one thing I've learned from my fellow artists it's that the details matter. You could have tons of props, but if they look cloned or uninspiring it can instantly destroy the illusion that you tried to create.

 

To enablerbr, yes, there is actually a way to remove the obvious tiling. If you have a game (such as an FPS with aircraft like the Battlefield series) where you will be above the terrain enough to see the tiling you can open the DDS texture files in Photoshop with MIP maps turned on and edit the smaller MIP maps manually to remove the tiling:

 

http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb134/EvilViking13/Leadwerks/The%20Zone/Blog02/mipmaps.jpg

[GEForce 470 and 480 specs released]

The official TDP of the GTX 480 is 250w under full load. More concerning for me is that the card runs at 95*C (!) when running full tilt. That's a bit hot for my liking.

 

I think I'm going to wait for the 512 SP version (GTX 485?), due out sometime later this year. I've heard it should also run a bit cooler and hopefully cost less.

["The Zone" Blog 02: Setting up the terrain and importing initial props]

Thanks for the feedback and comments, everyone! Michael Betke and BrokenPillar brought up some excellent points about the normal maps as well. When I have time, I'll look at tweaking them again.

[Fresh Blood]

Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone! I've been watching Leadwerks progress for quite a while now and I'm very excited to be a part of promoting the engine.

 

As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. I have a unique vision in mind for a very detailed and realistic scene set inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone that should really show off the capability of Leadwerks! Expect a blog post from me in the near future detailing what I have planned out.