[1stKirbyever]

Anyone mind helping explain why I keep having Collision Creation give me this warning "Shape shrinking not supported for mesh shapes. 'Extra Radius' will be 0. Performance may be affected."

Now it doesn't seem to be a problem but well... Collision is about 17000% bigger than the stage itself.



(That's a small rock in the stage. Don't mind the image resolution either, I play in forced window mode whenever I'm testing my stages.)

I tried convex hull but that seemed to make it worse.

This post has been edited by 1stKirbyever: 06 June 2012 - 06:14 AM

[Lobotomy]

Falk, on 05 June 2012 - 04:34 PM, said:

While Felik is just being Felik as usual, his comment does underline an issue with fangaming coming into the 3D age though. I mean, you have everything from concept artists to asset creators to the actual level designers to lighting engineers in the actual industry pipeline. The more complex the game, the harder it is for individuals or small groups to wear all the hats and come close to commercial products, and to a large extent it shows. I'm not saying it's a bad thing - no one expects a small group of people in their free time to create something like what's in the game currently from scratch (as opposed to, say, working off Sweet Mountain) but the fact remains that as talented as some people in the community are, there really are a limited of man hours anyone can throw at stuff like this.

This is only partially true. It all depends on how much effort someone wants to put into a project, their skill level and their general willingness to make it look pretty. I've spent the past 48 hours alone just touching up existing geometry and making collision in Sweet Mountain and Radical Train. No offense to Damizean (although, I'm sure he wouldn't take offense, since he didn't create this fanbase), but lumping Blitzsonic "level designers" with what we're doing is fucking retarded. (Referring to Felik.) Any number of us could produce a better level than 99% of Blitzsonic's userbase.

Also do note that layout comes first, pretty lights and geometry come last. Always. Melpontro and Hinchy know this.

This post has been edited by Lobotomy: 06 June 2012 - 06:50 AM

[Falk]

Lobotomy, on 06 June 2012 - 06:43 AM, said:

I've spent the past 48 hours alone just touching up existing geometry and making collision in Sweet Mountain and Radical Train.

Not to discredit your work so far (screenshots pretty much have my jaw on my lap) but that's working off assets that are already there. To a certain extent that's always the way hacks have been done (tileset editing, extension, spritesheet touchup, simple palette swaps, etc) but my point was, the amount of effort it takes to create an entire landscape in a 3D environment out of nothing but a concept far exceeds the amount of effort it takes to create tiles/sprites/backdrop/etc out of nothing but a concept.

You're absolutely right that dedication and persistence go a long way regardless. How many of us actually have that luxury though.

[Lobotomy]

Falk, on 06 June 2012 - 07:56 AM, said:

Lobotomy, on 06 June 2012 - 06:43 AM, said:

I've spent the past 48 hours alone just touching up existing geometry and making collision in Sweet Mountain and Radical Train.

Not to discredit your work so far (screenshots pretty much have my jaw on my lap) but that's working off assets that are already there. To a certain extent that's always the way hacks have been done (tileset editing, extension, spritesheet touchup, simple palette swaps, etc) but my point was, the amount of effort it takes to create an entire landscape in a 3D environment out of nothing but a concept far exceeds the amount of effort it takes to create tiles/sprites/backdrop/etc out of nothing but a concept.

You're absolutely right that dedication and persistence go a long way regardless. How many of us actually have that luxury though.

Yeah, what I meant by saying that was, I'm using existing geometry and it took me two full days to get where I am now (screenshots I've shown so far were only a day in), just think of how long it would take for me if I made my own.

This post has been edited by Lobotomy: 06 June 2012 - 08:04 AM

[Candescence]

Falk, on 06 June 2012 - 06:01 AM, said:

A potential issue that crops up from that is you don't want the world to look blocky. In fact, the less perpendicular things are, the more 'natural' or 'modern' it looks. (Barring obviously expected things like walls being 90' from flooring herp)

Back in the Quake/Worldcraft days (which essentially was the first truly 3D modding scenario/community) the concept of prefabs was a really big step forward in workflow - and in fact is the foundation for level creation in almost any number of modern 3D games (see: Call of Duty, Skyrim, etc) where essentially assets like houses, trees, bins, etc were created by people other than the one who actually puts the level together. You could say it's similar to tilesets, but not limited to being of any set size, and not being required to fit like a jigsaw just due to the more organic nature of a 3D environment. Most level designers are capable of putting the basic 'playable area' geometry together in a sane amount of man hours. It's all the little details, be it within the playable area itself (street lamps, benches, breakable objects, bridges, buildings, etc) or dotting the background to break up the simplicity of a horizon ('facade' in industry jargon) that would be insane for any single person to attempt to tackle alone.

Well, that's actually mostly what I meant, honestly. More quality open-source assets would go a long, long way to helping prospective level designers to actually realize their visions.

[Aerosol]

More assets means more copy and paste, which undermines the point of more assets.

[Knucklez]

AerosolSP, on 06 June 2012 - 08:09 AM, said:

More assets means more copy and paste, which undermines the point of more assets.

How would more assets mean more copy and paste? I'd figure it would give you more options and possibilities.

Or does it entirely depend on the level designers' vision?

[Candescence]

Copy and paste is the basis of a great deal of 3D level design. The trick is to obscure that fact from the player in various ways. If your level LOOKS like a whole bunch of copypasta, you're not doing it right.

Edit: Also, this guy makes some absolutely fantastic open source 3D models and textures. The models are mostly plants, barrels, boxes, bombs, and some sweet pillars, but they're quality stuff.

This post has been edited by Candescence: 06 June 2012 - 08:25 AM

[Aerosol]

If there's a set of assets out there, made for fans to use to get cracking on custom levels, then we're going to get a bunch of levels that look the same, because they're ALL going to use those assets.

I have nothing against the creation of these assets, but it's not going to help diversify and increase the overall quality of custom stages. I mean, if all the assets look good then the stages will, of course. But they'll all look the same...undermining the point of making those assets in the first place. The people that have the vision, determination, and skill to make a completely custom stage will do so without much use of pre-made content, and the rest of us will snap these assets together like lego blocks and have fun with it.

Candescence, on 06 June 2012 - 08:21 AM, said:

Copy and paste is the basis of a great deal of 3D level design. The trick is to obscure that fact from the player in various ways. If your level LOOKS like a whole bunch of copypasta, you're not doing it right.

Absolutely. But what I'm saying is that most people don't have the skill to "do it right". So there'll be that one diamond in the rough that makes great use of these assets, and a million straws of hay that just cobble things together because they want to make a custom stage for Generations. Let me reiterate, I have no problem with this happening whatsoever. Unlike other assholes, I don't turn up my nose at "BlitzSonic stages". It's not like I'm paying for them. I'm just expressing my concern that the result of such an endeavor will undermine the endeavor itself.

This post has been edited by AerosolSP: 06 June 2012 - 08:31 AM

[Candescence]

Well said. Still, I wish it was as easy to build shit like it is in Minecraft.

This post has been edited by Candescence: 06 June 2012 - 08:39 AM

[Sky The Destroyer]

1stKirbyever, on 06 June 2012 - 06:13 AM, said:

Anyone mind helping explain why I keep having Collision Creation give me this warning "Shape shrinking not supported for mesh shapes. 'Extra Radius' will be 0. Performance may be affected."

Now it doesn't seem to be a problem but well... Collision is about 17000% bigger than the stage itself.



(That's a small rock in the stage. Don't mind the image resolution either, I play in forced window mode whenever I'm testing my stages.)

I tried convex hull but that seemed to make it worse.

Don't mind the error message, it doesn't affect anything. The reason why the level is ridiculously huge is because you probably did not set the units to meters. This is a problem I had recently. Go into Customize > Units Setup... then make sure to set the display unit scale to meters and then click that bar that says System Unit Setup and set it to meters too.

I think you need to re-import the stage after applying the units, but I'm not sure if you need to. I started from scratch after setting the units to meters. Oh, and you can put it back to the mesh shape after this because that's the most accurate collision apparently.

Does anyone know how to make grind rails and such? (I heard it uses splines...what are those?)

[Knucklez]

Candescence, on 06 June 2012 - 08:27 AM, said:

Well said. Still, I wish it was as easy to build shit like it is in Minecraft.

I wish it was that easy with any game, but instead we get stuck with coding so much shit.

[Candescence]

Knucklez, on 06 June 2012 - 08:34 AM, said:

Candescence, on 06 June 2012 - 08:27 AM, said:

Well said. Still, I wish it was as easy to build shit like it is in Minecraft.

I wish it was that easy with any game, but instead we get stuck with coding so much shit.

Agreed. Seeing FyreUK's timelapse videos demonstrates to me the kind of unbelievable things one can create even with limited tools and "building blocks", because the process of creation is easy and intuitive for pretty much anyone with a bit of creativity.

Also, I kinda get the feeling with modern level design tools that there really isn't an opportunity for true collaboration. FyreUK's videos feature large groups of people working together to create locations and structures in mere hours that would take weeks or months for professional teams to create in an AAA game. The capability for level designers and modellers to work on game worlds simultaneously in collaboration, to pool ideas together in tandem over a LAN or over the internet would be a massive boon alone for game development in general, which is something I really don't see in modern game development tools.

With the rising costs of game development, you'd think there'd be people out there trying to develop ideas on how to vastly improve or revolutionize game development tools to help make it easier to create a game.

This post has been edited by Candescence: 06 June 2012 - 08:52 AM

[Aerosol]

Maybe a suggestion for our old Mobius Engine? That forum sure has been quiet lately

[Candescence]

... TO THE MOBIUS ENGINE FORUM! Why the hell did I not bring this up before there, I have no idea.