Rathmor preview Aug 2010 (Updated 19/8/10)

[Verdite]

I need preferences on which bone texture to use. I like them both, so i thought i'd ask you guys.
I've left the size fairly high so you can see the texture better.
This is a very basic bone helm.
Bone 1:


Or

Bone 2:

[Holy_Diver]

It depends on what the rest of the game looks like, but as is #1 looks more like a bone helm. #2 looks like egg/stone helm, which hell, might be a good palette swap item in and of themselves. I would not mind #2 in Todd's installer pack/collection/whatever. It might look good as a golem helm alongside Som's assets. I like the simplicity of the design.

[dmpdesign]

They both are good textures though I agree #1 hits the nail on the head for a bone helm.

When you and Joe are done with your games i will work with you two to compile a much better asset resource on SOM.com with whatever you guys have made and will make available as download packs.

[Holy_Diver]

Verdite asked me if his grass was acceptable or not ‎ 

So anyway, I thought I should finally prepare a screenshot to show you why at least one of the popular grass objects is purely evil.

Exhibit A)

First thing you'll notice is there's a whole lot of black polygon there that could stand to be trimmed off. It may even be the highest reaching polygons are not even part of the actual grass cluster, though it's hard to tell in pure black. As my memory serves anyway there are lot more polygons on the ground that reach about halfway up.

From this distance it's wasteful but not absolutely crippling, compared to a column or buttress of some kind. However if we take a closer look.... ..... ..... ..... ..... oh shit, run away!! That's your game grinding to a halt because your fillrate just went thru the roof because your display adapter was bombarded by an assload of pixels trying to crowd into your onscreen real-estate. If your resolution is low you may not notice. If it's HD or so, you're talking millions of pixels (1920*1080=2073600*all the fullscreen polygons you're throwing at the player)

[Verdite]

Thanks for that Diver. Strangely i didnt have that issue when i tested it. Anyway ill include a few tests before the final prologue release that you may like to review.

In regards to the helm, its the base design for a few elaborate helms. There will be a good amount of bone helms...
Looking back on a few older helm designs, i may scrap them, because the newer ones look alot better. Though they may be included as basic items.

I've been busy with designing armour. I completed a set of heavy armour, and made the body for a lighter one. Its looking pretty nice, very primal, and its my personal fave.

I'm a bit concerned about the size of my game, because that body armour alone is 368kb, though some of my items are as little as 12kb. I'm trying my best to keep every item as lowpoly as i can, but for the more intricate designs, i require more poly. Poly reduction after shaping often doesnt turn out. Having textures outputting at 192kb doesnt help either. ‎ 

[dmpdesign]

I think youll be fine on the size...the only thing that took up ungodly space in mine was music/video. ‎  The rest of the game could easily fit in under 50mb.

Verdite, I haven't forgotten you need the glove .mqo and I have been looking all over my house for the power plug for my laptop that has SOM on it so I can find you what you need.

[Verdite]

Thanks alot dmp, i appreciate it.

Well, i was looking in your tools.zip and found a glove set there, but it didnt work first time so i adjusted it. I dont know if it will work properly with the spear.

[dmpdesign]

was it a crappy purple and black glove? ‎  if so, thats the only one i have and it 'should' be lined up ok for your glove items.

[Holy_Diver]

Thanks for that Diver. Strangely i didnt have that issue when i tested it. Anyway ill include a few tests before the final prologue release that you may like to review.

It's not something you'll necessarily notice. This grass is all over Diadem of Maunstraut. If you get face into it you'll probably notice a hit, but every extremely wasteful object in your game like this adds up. And of course if with a better grass object you could have 10 times as much grass in your scene.

Of course this is assuming you're playing on a fast modern PC. If you're on a more economical machine stuff like this makes your game infeasible. I think there is virtue in your game being playable on lower spec computers, especially because we're not pushing the limits of hardware, that's a niche you get to exploit.

[dmpdesign]

I have had issues on relatively beefy machines in some areas of DD....(which im going to fix soon). ‎  Some objects just dont fit the coding of SOM very well and regardless of how good your computer is, it can bog it down. ‎  I agree the grass is one of those types of objects, and I have some ivy I made that also will make it chug.