Getting a game done in Geist

[TorakunSama]

Got it too  , I even added light (no texture though)
But now it's midnight here, and had a heavy day today, so I'll go sleep on the bed instead of droolling on the keyboard...
Next I'll try buildings with lights and other things...

[TorakunSama]

One can't have a deep hole (Abyss) on a planet!?
For example, the minimum altitude seems to be 0. If you remove the water node. you get an empty (ugly) hole on the crust. So there's no way to have 2 faces ocean and go underwater or have the geometry (Abyss) on planets. The only way I see is to increase general height, but then the textures will be influenced. I see the benefit of big oceans : Its a low tessellation geometry that makes sense and lightens up the weigh on the GPU.

So as for now, no underwater cities  .

[zachzab]

Actually underwater cities should be easy [no garentee this will work but I think it will]:

1: make a planet with a crater big enough to put a city and leave it with no water.
2: make a sphere of water and be smaller then the planet part.
3: put inside planet and add shaders to it.
4: now you have a underwater city, as for domes and buildings and stuff is up to you.

[Jochen Stier]

Underwater cities are now problem. Until recently the entire planet surface was being tesselated, even under water. I could easily enable that feature again.  I just wanted to wait until I could get around to generating proper underwater lighting effects.

[TorakunSama]

I could easily enable that feature again.  I just wanted to wait until I could get around to generating proper underwater lighting effects.

Hmm...  Yes! Underwater lighting effects, you'll get there eventually! For now seeing the geometry under the water, and the water surface from below (underwater) will do just fine.
Besides, most planets in the universe do not have any water, so oceans should be a rare find, in this case deserted, crater filled planets are more common. So, we need to get used to the mostly waterless, lifeless planets. We should be able to plant trees in terraformed planets [if terraforming is part of your plans of course (by dynamically adding trees in presence of water and atmospherical conditions)].

Actually underwater cities should be easy [no garentee this will work but I think it will]:

1: make a planet with a crater big enough to put a city and leave it with no water.
2: make a sphere of water and be smaller then the planet part.
3: put inside planet and add shaders to it.

From step 1 I've got the hole problem (no tessellation under the ocean's height.
Step 2 and 3 : just adding a sphere inside the planet, is troublesome. I have to scale it (i can't scale objects proportionally) and place it exactly in the center of a planet sized object (a planet!?). So it's quite impossible to have it well done at this stage.
This method I use in Blender, coze it doesn't have gigantic procedurally generated planets and has got the proper tools to do it.

BTW are we gonna have procedural waves on water? With foam on the highest point? (just asking  )

[zachzab]

Most planets in the universe do not have any water, so oceans should be a rare find, in this case deserted, crater filled planets are more common. So, we need to get used to the mostly waterless, lifeless planets.

Well, in the known universe that's true, but this is supposed to be a whole other universe by itself so this could be the same or very different depending on what we all agree on.

Step 2 and 3 : just adding a sphere inside the planet, is troublesome. I have to scale it (i can't scale objects proportionally) and place it exactly in the center of a planet sized object (a planet!?). So it's quite impossible to have it well done at this stage.

You aren't supposed to scale it exactly, each planet should be different and not being placed in the center is fine, the water on earth isn't the exact same height everywhere just like the land.

[TorakunSama]

You aren't supposed to scale it exactly, each planet should be different and not being placed in the center is fine, the water on earth isn't the exact same height everywhere just like the land.

The point was that it's almost impossible to scale a sphere to a planet size on the 3 axis or even 2. The result might even be less satisfying. But hey, you might be more proficient with the editor, try it out and tell me how it works, ok?

Well, in the known universe that's true, but this is supposed to be a whole other universe by itself so this could be the same or very different depending on what we all agree on.

Sure , I agree that there should be water in at least one main planet per livable stellar system.Besides, water is really that precious to make a object of trade in the game!

[zachzab]

Hey that reminds me: there was a game I used to play where bones and ashes were insanely expensive, it was crazy. 

[TorakunSama]

I spend the entire day trying to figure out how to add structures to the surface of planets.
First I created the buildings as an object apart.
Then in a new scene I added to the root World node, instead of the planet's. For some reason, the transformation bounding box gets very big once parented to the planet, and trimeshes always appear in the center of the world when parented to a transform node. Importing it on its own will place it right in from of the cam, but then you cant move it. I played a bit with the ocean shader (I'm no programmer...), and tryed to make cannions on planets. I finally understood the shuttle adding process, from the previous install. The latest does not bring the meshes with their textures, and since I couldn't add them yet...

Well here are a few screenies showing the results.
What I wanted to acheive here?

I wanted to know the proportions/world scale compared to Blender and Cinema 4D. I got 1/1 for Blender and 1/10 for Cinema 4D= 1 unit in Geist = 10 in C4D.
I also used Copy/ Paste to add more buildings ( for the non initiated Cntrl +C/Cntrl + V).
I studied Atmosphere settings, planet Offset, H and Gain. The other sliders seemed to be Max and Min values (for total noobs : you see these settings by clicking the planet node under World, when you add a planet).
Tryed to add avatar and teleports Failed completely!

Forgive my typos...

[TorakunSama]

I forgot to mention that I had to remodel all my buildings, since all structures have to be closed (backface polys are not rendered).
All my textures are experimental!
And more screenies.

[Tamarin]

Way to go! You are making good progress. I have an idea to make your building more interesting. Try reducing each floor in size and give it a few degree turn. Don't reduce the height on each floor, just the XY component.

Keep up the good work!

[Jochen Stier]

Holy Smokes, I am pretty impressed too! Your models look very cool and you’re moving ahead fast with the editor. I am going to spend a few days now on getting a new upgrade to you with a bunch of fixes. Try not to make any 3do model that you cannot stand to loose. Backwards compatibility was not important so far but I have built in the necessary infrastructure to port my own models. So, in the future we can port older models, but for now still be prepared to loose them in the upgrade.

The new editor will address some of your problems but it will also be based on deferred lighting and contain new atmospheric scattering shaders. This means there will be a performance hit, especially with the water. Your objects, i.e. houses and shuttles will also need different shaders. I will supply everything necessary and create a template model file that already contains the GUI necessary to control the LOD and switch on different effects such as bloom, hdr etc. The LOD slider can really improve the performance by controlling the level of tessellation of the planet and water. So, the idea is to start with the template file and then add your planets and objects from there.

I will set everything up, test it a bit and then post a new download. I will also make a planet with a deep canyon. I have done it before. You have to use those sliders that “seem to be Min Max values”. They are basically designed to remap regions of the noise function which are in the range from -2 to 2.

Have you tried to land you shuttle on top of one of the buildings yet ? Did the collision detection work out alright? Sorry about having to model the inside of the buildings, but I am pretty sure its pretty standard thing to have blackface culling turned on. Also you want some thickness to the walls, otherwise collision detection is could get all screwed up.

[TorakunSama]

Way to go! You are making good progress.

Thanks a lot, I'll do my best. Besides I'm trying to post any progress or difficulties here, to help others and myself as well as finding bugs.
I spent most of the day just trying to place the building on the surface. I don't know if it's a bug, but the trimesh should normally appear in front of the screen if I add a transform node first.
Well the transform node seemed to be in place, but it was gigantic and the building was somewhere on top of it. I can think of a few things I might have done wrong...

Try not to make any 3do model that you cannot stand to loose. Backwards compatibility was not important so far but I have built in the necessary infrastructure to port my own models. So, in the future we can port older models, but for now still be prepared to loose them in the upgrade.

Dont worry, I didn't use them although I created them. Besides, I put a halt in my models in order to adapt them to the game requirements (size, fullness, etc).

The new editor will address some of your problems but it will also be based on deferred lighting and contain new atmospheric scattering shaders. This means there will be a performance hit, especially with the water. Your objects, i.e. houses and shuttles will also need different shaders. I will supply everything necessary and create a template model file that already contains the GUI necessary to control the LOD and switch on different effects such as bloom, hdr etc. The LOD slider can really improve the performance by controlling the level of tessellation of the planet and water. So, the idea is to start with the template file and then add your planets and objects from there.

I will set everything up, test it a bit and then post a new download. I will also make a planet with a deep canyon. I have done it before. You have to use those sliders that “seem to be Min Max values”. They are basically designed to remap regions of the noise function which are in the range from -2 to 2.

Oh that's good news! But don't haste yourself so much I'm still learning how to create and place things, so eye candy is not really an issue yet. But hey, any new release is welcome! Thanks for all the hard work you've been doing.
I find that it's a pain to use the browser, it's really painfully slow, sometimes it crushes the editor. I don't know if it's my system or if it happens to everybody... that I'll appreciate if it's promptly fixed (it slows down the work flow) .
I could only do 5 copies of the buildings, so far I had 10X5 + 20 = 70 trimeshes, trying to copy anymore crashed the Editor.

Have you tried to land you shuttle on top of one of the buildings yet ? Did the collision detection work out alright? Sorry about having to model the inside of the buildings, but I am pretty sure its pretty standard thing to have blackface culling turned on. Also you want some thickness to the walls, otherwise collision detection is could get all screwed up.

Colision detection was nowhere to be seen. The shuttle goes through the buildings. Backface culling is standard procedure in game engines, only Blender (as far as I know) let's you turn it off. Besides, as you said, walls need soe thickness, otherwhise they wont look realistic. I like my models better like this, it's no trouble at all. The polycount doesn't seem to affect performance either.

I'll redo the all scene, and give a second report. Thanks for all your attention!

Torakunsama out!

[Jochen Stier]

I just tried to make a planet with canyons... here are some pics. If you continue to have problems with importing the model and collision detection, then post one of your 3ds files. I will try to import myself and fix the problem. That's how I have been working with dance and Tamarin.

[Tamarin]

Very nice terrain. When I'm finished school I'm going to focus on some vegetation.