HorribleGoat 1464 Posted August 18, 2016 Did a trial with the 8192x8192 heightmap again today as to see if there was any chance of increasing our current map size (20480 x 20480 meters with 4096x4096 heightmap and 5 meter resolution) since in the current 20x20km the city has taken over so much of it. Now im not complaining.. :D Just saying maybe there could be more of the surrounding area shown and played too.The 4k heightmap could be used for bigger map with simply stretching the cell resolution but the city design would neet to be altered a lot since it relies on the 5m cell size. Now the best/only way to do this would be to increase the heigtmap size and the next size is the 8k which is known to be buggy.Buggy or not I did however manage to compile and run an empty 40x40km 8k heightmap 5m cell map and it was glorious!With this successful test test Im again torn to try to push the map into the 40x40 km (madness right) but I try to resist the temptation and finish the 20x20 to a playable condition and maybe then increase the size. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted August 24, 2016 Just a tiny little upgrade on the walker design. This time slight adjustments to fit in full interior components and the works. Basically this means that Im modeling all the inner pieces that make the walker dance and adjust the overall design when something does not fit. Like with the ammo feed I needed to do little resizing with the shoulders and arms to fit it in and still have enough armor on them so they don't just fall off. This really is how we want our design process to be in general, so that the vehicles and machines we make can actually fit in the parts/weapons/gadgets they are built from. This also allows us to make cool props for our map. Like a Walker factory with partially completed vehicles dusting away and such. Also This makes good base for damage/hitbox design since we actually have all the stuff in there and can then place hitboxes and armor accordingly. The interior modeling is going to take some more time so Im going to piece together a working unit from the adjusted exterior mesh so that WK-209 does not miss the next release. :D 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted September 4, 2016 I've had so much fun doing this video and had to share the draft version of it for you guys! Making the internal structure and making sure there is room for all the components and parts that make the machine tick is really interesting and inspiring work. Theres still ton of details missing, and modeling like this is obviously a lot slower than just making the exterior model. But this will have so much benefits in the long run! Best part in my opinion is that I've managed to fix all kinds of minor flaws in the design with this process and I'm confident that I can avoid the same issues much better in the future now. 8 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted September 11, 2016 Couple of new WK-209 shots. Here is the internal structure: Up armored concept: 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted September 15, 2016 Greetings! I've been refining the firegroup control system and it is rather close to testable condition! However I've seem to have finally ran into a engine obstacle that there is no way around! The firegroup system is supposed to become configurable, so you can select which weapons you fire from what button. That's all just scripting, but the issue arises if you would like to use MOUSE buttons for firing your groups!!I was hoping to have a simple left / right guns division for starters and fire them with left and right mouse button. Would be quite intuitive right? But this unfortunately does not seem to be possible as mouse button actions can not be blocked and re binded as keyboard keys can. With a really hacky-hack way introduced by Commy2 I was able to disable the left mouse and us it to trigger the firegroup script, but right mouse is out of my reach. Only way it could be used was if all other actions were unbound from it from options (scope, zoom, etc) which is not really an option. Now I've got a workaround solution for 2+ seated machines where gunner and pilot/driver are separate. The gunner can use Q,W,E,S,A,D for example for the special fire modes since those are not needed for him and with this we can progress for now. This however might cause problems binding intuitive firegroup triggers on single seated vehicles as mouse would be quite essential in easy handling. We will continue on finding a solution, but in the mean time we will have to do what Arma allows us to do. Hopefully I can post up some gameplay footage soon! :D 7 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted September 21, 2016 Map 3D concepting process continues! Updated the heightmap with the concept ideas and regenerated the textures. After doing this, got a wild idea of bringing the map mesh from L3DT to Blender and alas there were export tools for just that! Map concepting is pretty much limited only by how much juice my rig has.. Its getting old I tell you. :9 Gotta start planning for an upgrade. Anyhow, changes to the concept include more defined crater shape around the city and the surrounding mountains. I am thinkinh of raising the north side (water is to south) even higher to make the crater shape even more distinguished. It might be tad too even right now and I don't want to sink the city any further as I already have. The wall tops are almost at the ground level now and the "walls" are not supposed to be obstacles. Their main purpose is being the base for the city infrastructure. 10 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted September 22, 2016 Little more mapping stuff to show!Got the dome wall dummy objects set and waiting for coordinate export. The dome still need the broken end pieces on each wall strip and then the dome is done for now! Im definitely going to raise the northern mountains to emphasize the crater form more. 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
haleks 8206 Posted September 22, 2016 Im definitely going to raise the northern mountains to emphasize the crater form more. It will also make a nice natural barrier to hide the limits of the terrain. ;) 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted September 22, 2016 It will also make a nice natural barrier to hide the limits of the terrain. ;) That too. But I am hoping to be able double the terrain size by taking the heightmap from 4096x4096 to 8192x8192, which would essentially counter all such problems. I have successfully experimented with it so there is a chance it will work. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lordfrith 401 Posted September 22, 2016 holy crap-sticks that terrain looks so cool! i've been loving this for a while :wub: , some next-level modding, inspiring stuff! 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted September 22, 2016 holy crap-sticks that terrain looks so cool! i've been loving this for a while :wub: , some next-level modding, inspiring stuff! Thank you sir! We do try to push the engine "limits". 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CyclonicTuna 87 Posted September 24, 2016 Wow! You guys are really making terrific progress! Amazing, keep it up! :D Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted October 1, 2016 Wow! You guys are really making terrific progress! Amazing, keep it up! :D Thanks man! Much appreciated. I did hit a little ditch with inspiration as I had a grand idea to turn Blender into super mapping tool for exact object placement but it backfired on the Terrain Builder import. Basically I bashed together a script that read and wrote all object positions and rotations to a file with appropriate class names for each object type with coordinate offset to fit the map and everything went fine until I imported them to TB. Apparently TB handles object pitch and and roll rotations in map centric axis and I exported the said rotations in object centric values. This of course makes the values useless and my math skills aren't nearly good enough to calculate transformation matrix (or whatever it is called) for that. Or to figure out if I could export the rotations from Blender as such as I am not much of a coder and Python is so much different from what I've fiddled with before. Long story short, my plan to use smaller generic pieces to combine larger structures backfired badly as to use them would require the pitch and roll rotations. I took a few days do some other stuff and to work out the disappointment and figure out how to proceed. Today I picked up the hammer again and started plan B which is to use more unique objects. The 8 smaller pieces that I wanted to use have now turned to 79 larger, unique compilations that fill the same purpose. They are quite simple objects and compiling them from the small pieces would have been great, but it is as it is. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted October 2, 2016 Something from the drawingboard! Concept for "B-1" designated single seated humanoid walker. I've actually drawn the torso, arm and leg separately but shopped them together to show what it could look like as a whole. The legs and arms don't have armor drawn to them as I've been thinking on all the joint mechanics they would need. Have to do the torso as armorless internal version too to figure out what kind of skeleton I want it to have and how much mobility it could allow. (and how much torso mobility would it actually need) 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
in005 241 Posted October 2, 2016 Looks awesome. Is it designed to be a slow walking heavily armed personal walker or did you thought about making it a fast and lightarmed sprinter? For the fast sprinter i would recommend to watch the nature: (wikipedia) These are the legs of dinosaurs and their today living descendants crocos and birds. They enable fast running and converted into a robot design the look so much better than humanoid legs. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bars91 956 Posted October 2, 2016 So much true Sci-Fi love recently! Makes me use CSAT more often... something I literally didn't expect from ArmA 3! This mod looks to be an outstanding quality addition to other thematic mods! 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted October 2, 2016 Looks awesome. Is it designed to be a slow walking heavily armed personal walker or did you thought about making it a fast and lightarmed sprinter? For the fast sprinter i would recommend to watch the nature: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/PSM_V10_D233_Bird_dinosaur_crocodile_leg_bone_structures.jpg (wikipedia) These are the legs of dinosaurs and their today living descendants crocos and birds. They enable fast running and converted into a robot design the look so much better than humanoid legs. Thanks for the tip! So far the design is on early concept stage, but I would think it would be required to be able to sprint. I drew the current leg just to get a feel of the overall shape so I'll heed your advice when I consider the final mechanics! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Macser 776 Posted October 3, 2016 That's a great concept sketch on the previous page. Looking forward to seeing where it goes. :) 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted October 5, 2016 Overview on the dome ruin object placement progress. I've managed to write up a script in Blender that can export object locations and their directional rotation with appropriate classnames in Terrain Builder importable format. This way I can build up large precise object compilations like the dome ruins here and bring them easily into the map. It is still a lot of work, but Blender offers far easier tools to place the objects where I want them than Terrain builder has. Some details of the dome ruin object set. (also on the image) Current total of dome ruins objects : 9007 total of 132 individual objects : 24 dome interior side pieces with 1 degree angle difference 29 dome exterior side pieces with 1 degree angle difference 24 damaged stripping off interior pieces with 5 degree difference 25 dome interior damaged end pieces 30 dome exterior damaged end pieces The grey outer and interior shell pieces are laid by forming a full dome wall of appropriate height by simply duplicating and rotating a full wall segments and removing then the excess pieces. The darker damaged and off stripping end pieces are placed manually to form the decaying details on the ruins. Current count of manually placed objects : 1210 which is about half way done. 8 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted October 8, 2016 After lots and lots of concept refinement the map is now on its eighth version. Just got the ruined dome pieces up and on the map. They still lack textures and some details and whatnot, but since there is nearly 10k of them I call this a victory! 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted October 22, 2016 Finally processed the dome ruin pieces into game and they seem to work quite well. Need optimization for sure and the models will get better textures and details at some point. But for now its enough they are there! The textures are quite temporary and seems that the material has some problems too. Gotta look into that. ModDB 7 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
morthon 152 Posted October 22, 2016 Ohhh myyy, this is so cool O_o 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted December 5, 2016 Testing out first draft of day and night cycle. Maybe some more red in the morning light and maybe little bit more light during the night. All in all shaping up nicely though. 9 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Valken 621 Posted December 6, 2016 Your cycle looks nice.Those flowers totally rock! Maybe you can use some of Alias Cartoon's scripts to make the world more alive with different weathers such as dust storms, thunderstorms, volcanoes, and meteor showers. It would be cool to see some of those events since we assume it is an alien planet. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
HorribleGoat 1464 Posted December 13, 2016 Trying out some changes on the day cycle. The sunrise/sunset may be "tad" too intense right now.. But I think if it is little more subtle it will fit right in. 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
