• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


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WIP Unnamed Uninhabited Island Survival Game

How many people would you have to work on this? Making even one good island model that doesn't look samey wherever you go seems like a lot of work.
 
http://www.terraincomposer.com/

Can't make money without spending money :treasure:


Basically I can use a tool that can use the height maps from real islands via Google Earth, and even populate the terrain with foliage, etc.

I would be the main person working on it, as far as actual programming and everything. Maybe this is 5 million times beyond what I can ever do but I guess I will find out when I start trying!
 
Sounds like a lot of work even for a team of people, let alone one person! :shock

For our Hearts of Oak project, for example, we've got one person doing coding at the moment and that doesn't seem to be going anywhere fast.
But at least there are still additional people here to assist with brainstorming and modeling and texturing and such.
To really do it on your own though, it sounds impossible to my ears. And I'd hate for you to put your money and time to waste. :facepalm
 
I mean, call me stupid or ignorant, maybe REALLY ignorant... but I think I can do this.

Honestly I think the hardest thing will be all the models and textures I need. I am not the best at that stuff... and will have to buy a lot of premade stuff.
 
mbowen89 said:
Honestly I think the hardest thing will be all the models and textures I need. I am not the best at that stuff... and will have to buy a lot of premade stuff.
Click to expand...
Perhaps by that time, some of our members here have made some usable objects as well. Would be no harm in sharing some assets, I think?
Provided that the people who made them approve of that. :shrug
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Perhaps by that time, some of our members here have made some usable objects as well. Would be no harm in sharing some assets, I think?
Provided that the people who made them approve of that. :shrug
Click to expand...
I'd be happy to lend my assets to this project, if it weren't for one small problem.
I use the free student version of Maya 2013, therefore any content I create with it cannot be used for "commercial or for-profit purposes", according to the license agreement. Which makes sense, of course.
Several of our other modellers are probably in the same situation. Only those who use paid versions could lend their models.

About the actual game concept: it sounds quite interesting. Definitely a different pace and style of gameplay to many other games out there.
I'm not too convinced by the idea of controlling the character's left and right hands separately, though. To me, that sounds more like something that would lend itself to, dare I say it... Xbox Kinect.
Seriously, if immersive first-person motion control is something you want to aim for, I'd say it's worth looking into Kinect functionality. Unity can publish on Xbox, can't it?
If console graphics are a concern, perhaps wait and see what Microsoft reveals about its next gen console. Something to think about, anyway.
 
Check out this little test area I made, trying to test out some of the basic Unity stuff. I put in some basic water (not really tweaked much other than color), and messed around with terrain texturing for some sand and put in this waterfall off a big rock in a little grove area. Turned on the realtime shadows etc... What do you think?

http://www.bowengames.com/wp/WP.html
 
I installed the Unity Web player and looked at it. Pretty. Can you get a ship to float on that water and react realistically?
 
Yep, works now. Doesn't look bad for a quick test. There's something VERY wrong with the coastline though; water floats ABOVE the land???
The trees also look better when you're close than from far away. On the whole, I'd say it looks OK, but not yet amazing.
How much better can you get it when putting more time and effort into the detail?
 
BTW, if you go look at it again and hit F5 (to refresh page) it should load in a higher resolution.

1. I purposely made the water floating in the air, otherwise it collides with the terrain beneath it. (basically the whole terrain is at "sea level" so I had to make a little hill to stand on and float the sea above land :wp

2. Why do you think the trees looked better up close? I set the billboarding pretty far out (where it switches the 3D model for an image). Because they look jagged and pixely? I think that it's because it's in such a small box (the webplayer) resolution. Actually looks like it needs some anti-aliasing badly as well.

3. What FPS does it give you? It is really unoptimized right now and I have realtime shadows etc.


Did you find the little waterfall area? Yeah, I can make it look a lot better if I spent some time on it. I was just throwing some stuff around to see what all I could do really quick :) I'm excited though.


How does a ship react to waves under it? There are multiple crests of a wave under a large ship at one time, see my confusion?
 
mbowen89 said:
1. I purposely made the water floating in the air, otherwise it collides with the terrain beneath it. (basically the whole terrain is at "sea level" so I had to make a little hill to stand on and float the sea above land :wp
Click to expand...
What is the problem with the water colliding with the terrain? That's something you've got to solve if ever you want to make an actual island.

mbowen89 said:
2. Why do you think the trees looked better up close? I set the billboarding pretty far out (where it switches the 3D model for an image). Because they look jagged and pixely? I think that it's because it's in such a small box (the webplayer) resolution. Actually looks like it needs some anti-aliasing badly as well.
Click to expand...
All the trees look the same; it's fairly obvious afar, but not up close.
Maybe indeed it is the resolution that isn't doing it any favours either. Too bad that when going to fullscreen on the web player, the resolution doesn't really improve. :(

mbowen89 said:
3. What FPS does it give you? It is really unoptimized right now and I have realtime shadows etc.
Click to expand...
Very steady 50 FPS.

mbowen89 said:
Did you find the little waterfall area?
Click to expand...
Yep, found that. The little grassy stuff around the water really add a lot.
 
For some areas, I purposely selected one type of tree and then had it make a big circle of just that tree type, so it's supposed to look like that.

This is a really quick test scene, I wasn't trying to make a realistic looking area. The waterfall/pond area is only place it should look somewhat natural.


Ok, about the water. You know how the terrain under water in real life is BELOW sea level? Well the terrain is already at Y=0 (so sea level). I would have had to made the terrain under water below zero and then set the rest of terrain to be higher than zero, and then set water level right at zero. Right now if I set it to zero it just sits at same level as terrain and is all mixed with it. Did that make sense? :p I raised it up so it wouldn't mess with terrain currently, and made a little hill to stand on so you can still see it.

Tonight I will redo this and make it look more realistic now that I have a feel for the tools better. Then you can really tell me what you think. :D
 
So all you'd have to do is raise the terrain and put the water at zero and it would be OK. Right?

Anyway, for a quick test it certainly looks interesting. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with on V2! :woot
 
YJ7BUkW.jpg


This kind of shows what I am meaning. So on the bottom part where its floating water, I just made a tiny little hill on the terrain so you can stand on it and see above water. If I made an actual island, the lowest terrain would be lower than 0, water at 0, and then the entire above ground island part would be > 0 obviously.
 
LOL! You didn't quite need to go to those lengths to explain it. :rofl
Anyway, thanks for the effort. :doff
 
http://www.bowengames.com/wp/WP2.html

Ok, check out my new "test island". Basically trying to see how it runs with tons of trees and some water around island. 1,200 trees on island of mixed type.

I bet you can't lose the "soap bubble" that follows you wherever you go!! Notice it will always find a way through jungle to get to you if its physically possible. There is no collision with trees for you however.

Check out the beachfront water view.. then turn around and look up at active volcano!! Go check it out if you want up close haha... but don't fall in ;)

If you want to change the games graphics/quality level use the buttons on upper left, or hit "O" to decrease and "P" to increase quality level. Notice what changes (shadows, anti aliasing, etc) as well as the FPS. I get about 30FPS on max settings looking at trees from starting location.
 
It looks good, but don't go for a swim. I sorta drowned........... I also could not climb to the top of the volcano.
Fps for me never dropped below 30 or went over 50 fps on "fantastic". It was in the 40s a lot as I wandered around. I also kept getting stuck on the trees and had to go around them.

To get an idea of how a ship reacts to waves perhaps you should go here and look at some of the videos.
Pirates of the Caribbean: New Horizons mod - Mod DB
 
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