I plan to use Blender for that 
Can I ask what specifically you mean by a normal map? That bit always confused me!
@Nevey - Sure 
A normal map is a texture ( image ) that contains information on the ādirectionā of a mesh its surface at a higher resolution then the actual 3D model ( the polygons ). Normal maps are generated from a high(er)-poly version ( sculpt ) of a mesh then what is actually used in-game.
Wikipedia is your friend 
A low poly model goes in game.
A high poly counterpart that the PC couldnāt normally handle is created.
Out of that high poly model you create a texture layer.
That texture layer is placed on the low poly model that is in the game.
The low poly model now looks pretty close to the high poly model since the engine understands the geometry information found in the normal map and lights up or shades all the right places to make the extra detail appear to be 3D even though itās flat.
Kind of.
It doesnāt only work on characters. For example a flat wall could look like itās comprised of individual bricks with the right texture and normal map. Of course, you were always able to add extra detail in textures, but the main difference with normal (or bump or parallax) maps is that light affects how it looks, so in motion, from different angles, etc, it looks properly 3D instead of flat as normal textures show. Itās still not as good as having the actual high poly elements in the game visually (model outlines will still be angular and show they lack the actual 3D detail for example), but itās a much smaller performance hit.
Edit: What he said >_>
I donāt really know if people should expect that kind of detail and quality that rivals official Epic art from a fan game but if people around here have that kind of skill, then all the better. I guess that would fit in more with the levels which will be created more with existing high quality material but stiill, it might be asking too much. If people here donāt have that kind of skill (or time!), then perhaps it would be better to go with low poly only stuff (hey, more people will be able to play) and use all custom content, no Epic art, so that it all matches in quality and offers a coherent visual style for all the game.
I donāt really know if people should expect that kind of detail and quality that rivals official Epic art from a fan game but if people around here have that kind of skill, then all the better. I guess that would fit in more with the levels which will be created more with existing high quality material but stiill, it might be asking too much. If people here donāt have that kind of skill (or time!), then perhaps it would be better to go with low poly only stuff (hey, more people will be able to play) and use all custom content, no Epic art, so that it all matches in quality and offers a coherent visual style for all the game.<<
I was thinking that too- that a really art style would be sort of a up-rez Saturn looking version (like you odd shaped pixels, but not in a digital, but hand crafted way). This is pretty easy to do with filters in photoshop- ācut-outā and āwatercolorā with tweaking can sorta give that hand crafted texture look they had.
BUT ā¦ I imagine we will more likely use more existing assets (assuming the are there- still donāt know what is in UDK) than new ones. If there is only a handful fo people that can make assests, they we will more have to use what they have.
As a side, it is much easier to just make normal med-polygon models, and just do the normal maps in Crazy Bump (free 30 day trial) . Epic actually uses Crazy Bump for all their stuff- it is super braindead simple- just put a black and white image in it and it gives you all these knobs on how to bump it out. Most game devs use this for the majority of art assets- Z Brush + Mudbox just takes way too much time to do it to all the assets.
it has much better results than thenvidia normal photoshop filter.
I installed UDK to see if I could wrap my head around its terrain editing at least (sorry, itās no go, first time I try UnrealED and itās more complex than anything Iāve seen before, I couldnāt figure out how to even make flat ground lol) and I saw it has a handful of example levels. One of them is a desert area with the arabian-like buildings you had screens of, which I guess fits the theme. But otherwise not much variety. I donāt know if it has assets beyond the levels though. But probably not many, the download was 0.5GB.
ha- Iāve been doing this so long, I forget how cold the pool is when you first jump in.
Once we get a handle on what we can exactly do, actually people designing maps, coming up with text to discover, mission ideas, etc will all help.
before starting with anything like level editing we should first make a design pool and a design doc. make three folders (excavation site, desrt, meccania town) and let7s use google image search, throw in as much images as we can and vote for the pictures that get closest to what we feel hit7s the mood. then we can see in which direction most of us tend. then we can make a design doc and nail down what scope (time and level of detail) we want and devide roles. then I guess itās time for concept art.
if someone wantās to learn UED in the meantime thatās a good idea, but from my experience nothing good comes from making a game with a technology thatās new to you. itās better to design traditionally, set a goal and try to achieve that with that technology learning new skills on the go. what do you think lagi?
Al3x - thanks so much for the explanation, I can imagine how difficult it is to explain, as difficult as it was to understand I should think. Finally I know what a normal map is! Yes UDK looks complicated as hell but the documentation is very good - 3dbuzz.com have done an excellent series of video tutorials on pretty much everything it has to offer. I even found a site that teaches you the script.
The forum has tutorials for everything, like making an HUD and all the details needed to make an FPS. Maybe weāre not quite as screwed as we thought we were.
lagi - lol if we were aiming low maybe we should have gone for unity after all? In any case, as a general question to everyone and forgetting about whether or not we can do it, could we do a hi-res pc game in terms of what can be processed on peopleās PCs?
Great call on the crazy bump thing by the way if itās actually as simple as you say since normal mapping sounds like my worst nightmare.
Also Iāve managed to make a simple desert environment on UDK - the tutorials Iāve found are so good that Iāve managed to make a sky globe, a textured desert and a lake, on my first try. Anyone who wants to look at it will have to PM me with their Dropbox address AND download UDKā¦ otherwise Iāll show you a few screenshots in a bit.
LC - Made the three folders under ālevel reference imagesā like you suggested, Iām so glad to see this project gaining structure! Did you mean for everyone in the thread to link a bunch of images so we could download them and put them on Dropbox?
Iām gonna see how far I can get with UDK.
LC: I agree the documenting and references are useful and definitely speed up the process. I think a overall design could be great, and we could scale it back on what we can, canāt do. I encourage everyone to dive into this. ( It might be a neat story that new drone is found. The drone could be disabled, but everyone is still trying to claim it or something.)
The one thing Iād personally like to do first is ādefine the boxā - know what we can and canāt do. Iām actually downloading UDK right now. It sounds like all the maps I was expecting to be there are, as well as vehicles - I agree we donāt need to have the dragon be part of the story (esp since we all seem more excited about a āside storyā ) but it we actually could do a dragoon, and we certainly could do a vehicle like the one in panzer saga tower.
Assuming the vehicles have bots driving them (which they shoudl have examples of), I should be able to make an Airship enemy for a boss or something.
Nevey- re: Unity- I donāt know Unity at all, so it would take me quite a while to get it going. My limited experience with trying to get unity working was that it did need some scripting to make an actual game- it wasnāt as set up to make a straight 3rd person or fps.
Also Iāve managed to make a simple desert environment on UDK ā¦ Iāve managed to make a sky globe, a textured desert and a lake, on my first try<<
awesome!!!
Is there any easy way to share screenshots btw? Iād like to be able to post stuff easily, without setting up crazy accounts or anything ā¦ does dropbox allow us to direct link to it (in the forum?)
solo I should dig up the panzer artsite just so we can point to stuff as reference!
actually itās a really simple, itās a baumpmap that not only stores the depth of bumps but also the direction in which a bump is āopenā. if you understand bumpmapping, normal mapping is the same thing, only n^3 more powerful =) no need to be scared.
yeah Iāve seen the foldersā¦ the thing is, Iām actually changing jobs really soon (probably by the end of this month) and everything is decided in the next 5 days or so. so if I donāt log in, donāt assume Iām dead, I just have my mind on other things right now. in a fortninght everything should be clearer. plz wish me luck!
Okay looking at it:
We can do 3rd person, but unfortunately it is a fast running robotic animations w/ gun. There is no walk, or anything with your gun down (like you are always in battle mode) . We could bring the camera closer to the characters shoulders (which will hide the legs) and then slow him down- not sure how that will look, but it might be acceptable.
Granted we could make our own animations, but it is pretty hard to:
- create decent looking human animations
- mess around w/ the character states (add the various walk states and transitions)
It isnāt something we have to decide now, just throwing it out there. It is beyond my expertise to fix this ā¦ although maybe somebody else in UDK community will share something more usable.
It looks like there are very simple āidlesā that could maybe be used for people to who just stand there and say dialog. Iām not sure how this is set up, but I should have an example map of this somewhere.
What is nice is the player can swim. You could do temple you have to swim out of (sorta referencing Panzer Saga Into)
Vehicles:
I have never done them before, but it looks like we can do vehicles (even a dragon, but that would probably take a lot of tweaking). Coolest thing here would be is if we could do an airship and those fighters from PDZ Ep2- the small fighters already sorta act like that.
World Assets:
Most of the assets I was hoping are there- yeah!
there is a:
- metal set
- desert set
- various odd temple parts (some are just ātoo Unreal Universeā but parts are nice- easy to change textures)
- there was supposed to be a foliage / jungle set, but I see that is gone.
Need to figure out:
-
How easy it is to change AI. I used a custom AI system in my last game that used Unreal- I need to look at their stuff and see if we can make some no-shooting enemies that move less human (for creatures). It might be that AI is scripting and it could be difficult to change. That wonāt mean we canāt do creatures, jut that they may all need fire a projectile
-
Sending a game message to the screen (to fake dialog, to give information on something you are looking at) . I know how to do this in a ādebugā sorta way, but want to figure out in a more gameplay sorta way. This seems critical to giving the world some interaction.
-
Need to figure out ālock + keyā. I should have an example of this somewhere- hit this trigger (talk to old man, says he gave you a key) and new trigger opens up door. It isnāt an inventory system, but feels like one. I did this before, just have to relook how to do it again.
-
need to figure out weapons. We had a custom data driven weapon system in my old UE3 game- here it might be scripting.
good luck LC!!!
this is for UT but imho UE3 should have a similar aproach
blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archiv ā¦ 19502.aspx
my programming skills are limited, but I had programming classes and nw how to do things from scratch. it should be possible to make enemies that ram into you, or try to slice you up or smash you or whatever.
Good luck with the job, LC.
[quote=ālagi_webmasterā]Is there any easy way to share screenshots btw? Iād like to be able to post stuff easily, without setting up crazy accounts or anything ā¦ does dropbox allow us to direct link to it (in the forum?)
solo I should dig up the panzer artsite just so we can point to stuff as reference![/quote]
Iāve put a few images into the Dropbox. Itās surprisingly easy to set up an account, and from there itās just drag and drop. dropbox.com
I think youād make quite a few people happy if you uploaded The Art of Panzer Dragoon (thereās been people on Facebook and Twitter asking for it, as well as on these forums). No reason why we canāt link to images from this topic, if thatās easier. Also, thereās a good selection on The Panzer Place:
place.thewilloftheancients.com/pd/gallery.html
place.thewilloftheancients.com/pdz/gallery.html
place.thewilloftheancients.com/pds/gallery.html
and a few on TWOTA:
Good luck LC youāll do great! Iāll have a look at bump mapping and see if I can understand that.
Lagi, I can actually make swimmable water already, thereās a tutorial on youtube. I love how many resources there are! Wouldnāt it be great to make that PD intro thing.
I did read all of the suggestions you put so Iām not ignoring them - Iām just not sure I can comment before I do a few tests in Blender etc to see what level of modelling I can do. And also to see how difficult it is to change things on UDK. The forums and everything are surprisingly resourceful. Iām thinking of using Photobucket for hosting screenshots.
Next postā¦ screenshots!
Still waitin for that gameā¦!
looks at watch
Hey Nevey- glad to see you are getting the hang of the editor.
As a side, it looks like putting up text dialog for characters or objects is very easy.
FONT:
Does anyone have a font similar to the dialog / text one in Panzer Saga (or anything else that would make sense?)
ART:
The biggest stuff weāll need help with right now is characters + creatures + ships.
Characters:
It would be great to have a desert tribe, or hunters or something to give out missions or say dialog.
The best starting point is usually a existing asset someplace. Turbosquid has some āArabā characters that would be a good starting point, but unfortunately they cost money. turbosquid.com/Search/Index. ā¦ a_typeid=2
The best thing would be is if there were UT3 assets that looked appropriate. I canāt find any though.
The next best thing owuld be another game- HL2/ Counter Strike / etc- most of those assets you can convert back to Max. If anyone finds any asstets that could be used let me know.
Creatures- If anyone wants to take a stab at low res creatures it would be a big help (like the sand crabs, etc). I can try to get them in the engine, I just need them started.
Ships- Same thing. If anyone wants to try to make a low res ship, I can try to get it in.
DESIGN-
Still need a design! If somebody wants to draw up loose maps, come up with character bios, come up with the goal, areas of interest, etc- building stuff will be a lot quicker if there is a design and end goal.
Map- generally weāll have a desert like area, and an metal like assets for an excavation,and we can put a downed ship or other ruins hidden about. so any map designed with those assets will work- like what points of interests, etc.
Characters- just think of the minimal amount of character needed to tell a story, and weāll see if we can create them ā¦
Creatures- what creatures will make sense in context ā¦
What about characters from free Unreal Tournament 3 modifications? Surely the all-custom assets of those donāt have licences attached (if theyāre made from scratch without using official Epic art)? Though I imagine we should ask the creators before using or modifying them, if there are any appropriate. There should also be plenty of character models available for use for UT3, the MSUContest itself had a special category for models alone.
RE Characters UT Mods- Yeah that is what I was saying- if you can find something from a UT modification it might work. Chances are, the only thing we can change are textures as we wonāt have model source.
Problem is, I havenāt see anything that feels āpanzerishā . Most characters are very āheroā while we need more town folk kinda guys.
Again- characters could come from anywhere- counter strike, quake, etc.
As aisde, there are ārippedā characters from games all the time showing up online- where do you find those? Iāve seen finla fantasy guys as well as other games- there might be something there.
here were some meshes I saw- the naked girl would could make into a drone, although that seems a bit heavy for a small side story.
skincity.beyondunreal.com/?secti ā¦ s&gameid=5
this girl wouldnāt be a bad for a lead character, you could turn down the metal to look more like worn leather gear or something
skincity.beyondunreal.com/sectio ā¦ php?id=715
I saw this guy online (although I doubt he is giving him away)- with some tweaks would be good for an old hunter.
[quote=ālagi_webmasterā]FONT:
Does anyone have a font similar to the dialog / text one in Panzer Saga (or anything else that would make sense?)[/quote]
You could possibly use the Hoffmann font: thewilloftheancients.com/accessories