76

(25 replies, posted in Steambaths)

Ahnion : A little diversion is a good thing. Getting the creativity flowing, is something you can benefit from in other aspects of your work wink

Come one - sphere it up

Cheers

Right now : Terrorizer - Doomed forever - fantastic track....

Cheers

78

(25 replies, posted in Steambaths)

Well - whaddayaknow.....

Ze PanzerKugel mark zwei - UBER secret waffen of ze imaginary wars....

http://www.hatetank.dk/temp/PanzerKugel_Mk2_02.jpg

Cheers

79

(25 replies, posted in Steambaths)

As you wish Oluf :

http://www.hatetank.dk/temp/GentleSphere_02.jpg

I'll keep going as long as there is time and ideas smile

Cheers

80

(25 replies, posted in Steambaths)

Well - Janet is called Janet for the exact same reason you're grinning.
Its the essence of the greatest, and most talked about moment in recent american tv-history. The Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake tit-incident at the superbowl, boiled down to a sphere big_smile

Cheers

81

(25 replies, posted in Steambaths)

And another one, with a slightly more game-related twist :

http://www.hatetank.dk/temp/Cacodemon_02.jpg

- feel free to comment. Don't be shy smile

Cheers

82

(25 replies, posted in Steambaths)

- it's a fantastic time killer. Both as participant, and as voyeur big_smile
The rules are fairly simple. Download a sample scene. Do not modify camera. Grid plane must be present and preferably not modified. Main object must represent a sphere(oid) shape. And thats pretty much it.

*note : Due to amazing interrest in the first week since launch, the servers will have to move sometime these days, so lag and downtimes may occur. Bookmark it for later then...
Here are my entries :


RetroBooster
http://www.hatetank.dk/temp/RetroBooster_01.jpg

Janet
http://www.hatetank.dk/temp/Janet_01.jpg

Ball Lamp
http://www.hatetank.dk/temp/BallLamp_01.jpg

Baby Panthella
http://www.hatetank.dk/temp/Baby-Pantella_02.jpg

Booboid - the chew toy for the big boy
http://www.hatetank.dk/temp/Booboid_02.jpg

Piece of Time
http://www.hatetank.dk/temp/PieceOfTime_02.jpg

fun fun fun smile

Cheers

Just bought the special edition of Rammstein : Völkerball
- so obviously now i'll be listening to the tracks, and scrutinizing the photo book it came with smile

Cheers

84

(26 replies, posted in Steambaths)

Oh - an Aussie. I love Australia. I'm gonna spend my retirement in Airlie Beach, or similar location.
I wish I could go there every year, at the same cost as a one week charter to Ibiza...... *sigh*
It's just so damn expensive to get there.....

Cheers

Ministry - Rio Grande blood

- Al Jürgensen is VERY angry on this album..... again big_smile

Cheers

86

(7 replies, posted in Steambaths)

I rarely read anything but news, comics and VW magazines.

So the last thing was Ultra VW (latest issue)
Then comics like Yoko Tsuno, Morbus Gravis (Druuna), of course The Valerian, stuff by Moebius and similar.

Last actual books i read, that wasn't computermanuals/books was :
Stig Tøfting's "No regrets" (danish controversial soccer player's biography - I wen't to school with him (couple of classes under) so it was quite interresting read) - 3 months ago

Troels Kløvedal "Øerne under vinden" (the islands under the wind) - famous danish globetrotter's last book - a year ago

Bill Bryson's "Down under" - 6 years ago

- like i said. I don't read books that much.....

Cheers

87

(9 replies, posted in Floatbed Dreams)

Gameplay needs to be redefined and possibly reinvented. Too many games follow the same classical approach (for their genre), simply because the creators know it works, and instead of risking their money they play it safe, and use alot of the budget on building a snazzy engine rather than a captivating story. These games lack both gameplay innovation and good stories. And they have very little replay value. But they DO sell 3D engine licenses.
I'm just sick of paying for some game developers "buy-our-new-next-gen-engine"-advertising campaign.

I am personally looking forward to Valve's Portal. Looks like a cracking puzzle/action game, and i haven't seen anything like this ever.

Cheers

88

(5 replies, posted in Floatbed Dreams)

Beats me actually. I just hink they picked the most common. Most common by scandinavian standards obviously.....

Cheers

89

(5 replies, posted in Floatbed Dreams)

We had some technical issues with the eye color setup, i believe due to some alpha sorting problems with the eye textures.
They were intended to be customizeable.

Cheers

90

(9 replies, posted in Floatbed Dreams)

Interview from The Escapist with Lars Kroll.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/70/18

Cheers

91

(26 replies, posted in Steambaths)

Århus, Denmark.

Cheers

92

(5 replies, posted in Data Fragments)

Ok, dig this :

Originally the Labspace location did not have any elevators. In a time when there could not be put man (read coder) hours on the task of coding the elements for a working elevator, we were forced to come up with something else.
And so the winding stairs were born....... all 16 turns leading to the pit.......

However - after having had the location in testing for about a month or so, even the coders went nuts, with the 16 turns vs. the point-and-click navigation. So they started to cheat - and would instead spawn themselves in the pit, to save them the long walk.
- after that, it became much, much easier to talk Kroll into dedicating the manpower to an elevator or two.......

The remains of the winding stairs (wich also ran between Ringlab Alpha and Beta) are now only used between Loading bays and Ringlabs - and they're only two full turns or so.....

Cheers

Bolt Thrower : The IVth crusade.....

Cheers

94

(21 replies, posted in Floatbed Dreams)

I think votes were resolved once every week - but thats pretty much all i can contribute. I usually had my nose so deep in the graphics, that i missed out on other vitals wink

/Cheers

95

(10 replies, posted in Data Fragments)

No worries, Esme. I'll get into detail a bit about the images....

1. This is the outer path of Machine Sphere A (which is the largest of three similar areas) It shows how the giant protection rings (the, on the inside, glowy rings) are hooked up to the magnetic gliders.

2. This shows the protection rings up close, as well as a view of the scaffold connected to the Hardpoint Amplification Spike. You can also see where the tall hallways connect to the Machine Sphere

3. Hardpoint Amplification Spike (and scaffold). Containing up to 9 hardpoints, this machine delivers additional power to the hardpoints, compared to a regular hardpoint in say canyon or labspace. The clover-shaped platform at the bottom of the scaffold, is actuall 4 seperate platforms. You'd fit them to the HPAS if you need a few more hardpoints.

4. Access to the Machine Sphere (and HPAS scaffold) from the tall hallway.... untextured obviously.

5. another view of the outer path of the machine sphere

6-8. (Completely untextured, yet dummy vertex painted) Service Tunnels. These would outline the Machine Sphere's, and you'd access them from a hatch in the tall hallways. In the Service Tunnel, you'd have some additional control over ressource distribution to the HPAS. You'd have several completely new damage types and looks.

9. The HPAS in all their glory. In Machine Sphere A there was three. In the other two there would only be one in each.
You could even control stuff INSIDE the HPAS, by entering a small control room at the same level as the clover-shaped platforms. The gameplay was not yet designed though. But something about energy/ressource flow/control/distribution probably.

10. Another view of a HPAS, which reveals a lot more machinery below the platforms. If a HPAS is not fitted with the platforms, you'd have a good clean view of the exhaust thingies at the bottom.

11. The tall hallway. And one of the "hatches" on the sides, would lead to a service tunnel

12. Hovering over a HPAS you can see a Magnetic Field Generator (i think they were called). This would either boost energy or offer additional shielding. Can't remember. And obviously they were not meant to be floating in mid-air. There was some minor finalizing of the design, as well as set-dressing missing still (apart from all the obvious missing and dummy textures).

So - if anyone still roleplays Seed in one form or another, here's a little info to play with.
I do believe, that TechSpace would've been connected to the Canyon as well. Not entirely sure where though.

Cheers

It has been requested by some, that we reveal how we achieved the comic book look of Seed. Though it has been discussed quite a bit on the old Seed forum, I'll just give a quick run down. If you're not a 3D geek, you might want to skip this part wink

Right. The black outlines, yes?
Well - since neither the Cube engine and close to any other engine support some kind of realtime or post processing cell shading effect, we used what is probably the oldest hack in the book : the normal-inverted, black-painted, pushed, mesh clone.

1. Take original geometry you wish to apply the outline to
2. Clone it
3. Add pure black material or texture
4. Push geometry a bit outwards (Push modifier in 3dsmax)
5. Flip normals (FlipNormal modifier in 3dsmax)
6. Attach cloned, black mesh to original mesh, and there it is.

In addition to the black outline, which we primarily used on stuff like characters, handheld items, rails and some lights, all of Seed's textures were hand painted (in Photoshop). All of them. Although Cube engine supports specularity, specular masks and transparency maps, the most advanced we ever used, was transparancy maps, for stuff like smoke, electrical storms/charges, windows, liquids, foilage etc. Other than that every little highlight and shadow was painted into the texture, and then "enhanced" by some nice vertex colouring, where we'd typically add a bit to the shadows and highlights og the model, depending on it's position in the game world.
Additionally we would do an occlusion pass on a flatshaded version of the object, and add this to the texture in photoshop, to get some nice shadow details in the creases and crevices.
Biggest problem was keeping an even look and size to the textures, as well as the eternal alpha channel sorting issue.

For the light on characters (which would eventually have been added to the handheld items as well) we actually tried a number og solutions. Now lights in realtime 3D are limited, unless you have some ultra-next-gen engine. Cube would only allow 8 lights pr. mesh, with a square/cubic falloff, and no shadow casting. This means that no mesh would be able to receive more than 8 light sources at the same time. Which is why something like flashlights were ruled out at a very early stage. It also made it very tricky to design the lighting of a location properly.
Instead we ended up using advanced material lighting override (3dsmax) to get certain materials to act as lightsources - these were then used to calculate a radiosity solution for the zone, and this solution was then baked into the meshes as vertex paint modifiers. Fine tuning by hand painting was then added, to get the best look.

Eventually we ditched all hardware lighting, and relied on the pathfinder light-on-characters instead.
How did this work? The pathfinder is a mesh that determines where the character can walk in the game world. You cannot walk outside. So it was already there for one purpose. We then used vertex paint, to colorize the pathfinder according to the light and shadow in the locations. The characters would then pick up their ambient color from this pathfinder vertex paint, and change smoothly from dark to light, white to green and whatever we choose. I believe this is common in many games. It does however give a rather flat look, since you loose your highlights. You won't have a nice highlighted face and a shadowed back when standing in front of a light source. It was just too troublesome to set up and control. But you can see the difference, by looking at a character at the character creator screen versus how they look ingame (since May 2006).

In recspace (steambath not included) the sound of footsteps was actually adjusted using the same technique - vertex paint but in another channel. And you'd then paint the pathfinder e.g. red, where you wanted footsteps in grass, blue where you wanted footsteps on metal, and green where you wanted footsteps on metal with a strong echo etc. It would eventually have been used to zone ambience as well.

Smoke, steam, electrical storms etc. was created using Cube's particle system which was susprisingly good. Even it did occasionally suffer from alpha sorting issues. Hand painted opacity maps were used for textures.


Hope this answers some of the questions people have been asking over the times.
If you want to know anything more specific, don't hesitate to ask.

Cheers

97

(1 replies, posted in DVI-Net)

Hehehe - that's pretty sweet big_smile

Cheers

98

(10 replies, posted in Data Fragments)

Needless to say (but i will anyways) - most of TechSpace is not textures - if it looks good, it is final textures, if it looks like crap or like something you've seen before, then that is dummy textures (for testing the strain on the server), and if it looks flat with no textures - then that just what it is smile

It would have been really nice to see this location through, indeed. It would even have been bigger than Canyon - how about that...

- we're just glad you like it... smile

Cheers