Hello2all,

I've been experimenting with few things and was thinking of adopting two new visual additions: distorted shadowmaps & Shade-C HDR.
Here is an example of shadowmap with & without new effect:

Without..

With..

Unfortunately there are some inconsistencies in almost 50% of the cases because of the shadow UV mapping..

I can (probably) solve this in future levels but even in this percentage they seem to be effective & give the surroundings a nice additional quality (I think?). They will be present in following level reworks so that we can all see if this is something that should be implemented or not.

http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/shot_212.jpg
http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/shot_213.jpg

Also here are few screens of level with implemented HDR..





..the effect will be tweaked further but I think that, even in this stage, levels seem a bit more lively?

Hi!

I know I'm not part of the team any more, but I would like to say that you guys are doing great. It's very cool to follow this and see it come together piece by piece. Keep it up!

To your last post, ganderoleg, yes, the effect does look great. Keep it. However, it should be tweaked more. It's too bright. Also, I think the green and red lights are a little overdone. They look a little unnatural. Mabye just reduce the palette a little?
Here's a few screens from a platformer I liked very much, Trine:
http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/3419/1080702-trine2009_07_0221_05_47_11.jpg
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/4674/trine11.jpg

They use a lot of colors, but not so much complementaries and more subtle colors.

Keep it up!

Micha

@Germanunkol
Thanx for your nice comments Everything is still to be tweaked but I think we're slowly getting to the desired visual effects.

I checked the screens, Trine does seem to have a similar color concept but they managed to unify colors much, much better. The HDR in J,J&BUM made things a bit more complicated because it amplified the colors intensity/saturation. I may even have to use some of the other lightmap solutions I experimented with earlier (http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=341336#Post341336) that have a higher percentage of ambient occlusion.

...
I have uploaded a 'test' level for HDR, characters & shaders to SkyDrive as 'Ganderoleg C3 L2 V3.zip'.

In this level I have finally expended the gameplay with 'platform' enemies: dogs (they are going to be armored) that run around & can 'kill' player Dogs are going to be redesigned & their run animation is going to be fixed a bit (legs look too stiff in run animation)..



I was going to add enemies that should be jumped-over but the players seem to hit them no matter what height they are.

There are (so far) three different types of enemy texture-shader combinations in this level: first is toon shader & toon-like texture, second is toon shader & normal texture and third is simple material & normal texture. I must admit I give my vote to the first concept with toon shader & simplified texture..



There are also some expansions concerning the background characters, I added bats that fly around at the higher parts of the level & dragon that loops near the fortress wall. I attend to have even more different background characters throughout the levels to make things visually more dynamic..



HDR is still not tweaked & it's too bright but I will fix that soon.

added bats that fly around at the higher parts of the level & dragon that loops near the fortress wall

Really geeat idea
Details like that make the game lot more alive than standard games having only ennemies and player.

For the ennemy model, your pictire is too smal to really see the difference.
But i like the second version, i think realistic texture matches better with the textures of the level that are realistic also.
Juts my personnal opinion.

Keep up the hard and great work !

Happy New Year to everyone

@Ratchet
Thanx, your input was very much appreciated during the design of this chapter
I decided to go with simplified texture version for now but, since it's just a matter of different texture, I may go with a more realistic one if it turns out to be more likeable.

...
I have, let's say, completed for now my tweaking of chapter 3 level geometry & ppe effects. There are some design errors that George found that I will take care of but, after that, I will call level design & ppe for chapter 3 finished. Later on I will add more level props like different shields & flags, wooden props & I'm not so happy with how the bridges look but that will all wait until game is nearing it's end.

What I did in level one is: distorted lightmaps & lowered their saturation, lowered map ambiance, added HDR, desaturate & colorshift ppe, and also resized & enhanced wall & floor textures.

I still have to implement these modifications to all 9 levels but it's a simple process & it won't take more then 4h. I decided, however, not to upload these levels at this time to SkyDrive because things are already a bit crowded in my folder & I will have to upload them anyway when they became playable from programming side. As the gameplay gets coded &, one by one, levels became functional I will upload them to SkyDrive.

Now I will focus on finding, modifying & polishing models & trying to extend gameplay a bit with different, more platform-like, props & problems (dogs, turtles, fire-obstacles..). Also I will start with a thing I agreed with George some time ago, which concerns making a sort of sample levels (geometry & lightmaps) for few other chapters. This is a good idea because when we begin searching for people interested to join project as a level designers they will have not only global design directions but also real geometry to work with & expand as they seem fit.

Here's a link to the video of chapter 3, level 1 gameplay..
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyf84iP2pFk
//////////////////////

..and also few screens of the level..

While the level looks really good, I don't like the cartoon texture of the enemy. model. It just is a different style which imho does not fit to the level.

professionnal work level

The game runs incredibly smooth and good , very good thing.
The flying birds and moving fog on background add lot to the atmosphere!
Backgounrd castel and ennemies on them brings a lot also !
Really great, you've reached some really great level in
making some levels with lot of life and things going on it !

Another great point :
The lightening and lightmapps are really great now,
it's veru very far lot better from what was overdone in the beginning !
Now that only lights were needed without exegerated shadows :
great work !

I forgot , flying banner is great also

Personnal only taste :
-Make the birds fly with a random speed !
All birds seem to fly too fast like in a shoot them up
Make some fly around slowly and disappear or some go and come back to disappear !
Make them flying some little above and down variation also !

-Add simple blob shadows to ennemies and player, evene blob shadow is very afficient and like that characters won't seem
to fly on ground and won't seem to be detached from the level!

Such quality level could easily feet some Rreally great 2.5D Action RPG game easily (perhaps your next game )

i don't have seen snow level, but i hope you'll put life on it like snow falling down, animals on background or
people fishing, hunting or anyhting else (just use google to find pictures to be inspired) !


Well pro work like i said !

Keep up the great work !

@Firoball
Thanx for checking out Artists' Corner from time to time, I am always happy when there are some good or bad things to read about artwork for J,J & BUM
..and you're right, I kept cartoon shader but decided against simplified textures after some experimenting. It seems that a bit more realistic textures fit better after all.

@Ratchet
Thanx, but luckily smoothness of the game doesn’t have anything to do with me, it's all Superku's credit. As a matter of fact I believe that those few code solutions that I contributed to the project are probablly slowing down his movement code

So as you have probably concluded by now from upper text, the birds are result of my programming effort but I will try to enhance them a bit with random speeds & directions, they do seem a bit 'robotic' at the moment.

It's still early to really think about my next project, I have also Blade Of Power (http://pavlenikolic.weebly.com/blade-of-power.html)& Sorcerers (http://pavlenikolic.weebly.com/sorcerers.html) to consider, but what I would really like to do in the near future is full first-person horror game similar to the Clive Barker's Undying (http://www.jonhunt.com/undying2/index.html) or Call Of Cthulhu (http://www.callofcthulhu.com/home.html).

.................
Hello2All,

Finally, after long time, we have our first fully functional, fully playable level I almost gave up on this but here it is

Uploaded zip (Ganderoleg C3 L1 V5.zip) represents playable version of the J, J & BUM's first level of the Fortress Chapter.

I have made two necessary modifications to the code in order for this level to be fully playable:
1.Sister can use magic skills only when she picks up magic potions & she can only pick up Gravity Switch & Illusion potion.
2.Brother can use magic skills only when he picks up magic potions & he can only pick up Invisibility potion.

Apart from that, there are some new additions to the geometry, fade out when restarting the level & a small HUD tryout, little 'inventory' for potions & items in right & left corners of the screen...








I also replaced Goblin Warrior in this level with my new Crocodile Warrior (to make him 'lighter' there are only stand, walk, run & die animations)...




...this doesn't mean that I'm going to exclude Goblin Warrior but I will have to redesign it a bit in order for him to reach needed visual level.

**both my Goblin Warrior & Crocodile Warrior are modifications/redesigns of Dexsoft 'Fantasy Warrior' model & that information will be clearly stated in the final version of the game.

This ennemy croco is great !

For your next, game , indeed some original gamplay could
bring a lot.
Even more an FPS taking part in devil world with additional gameplay lik not only shooting ennemies, but resolving physic puzzles , some different gameplay phases would be great !

With your actual skill in lightmapping it would be great visually i think, without needing shaders on the level (or baked normal map on textures with lightmap on level) !

I hope the new collision system using Nvidia Physics will be here when you'll begin your new game.
Caus it will be lot better to manage without problem all collisions of the game.
Unity already uses the physic engine for all collisions !

Hello,

Finally, after a long (a LONG) time I'm uploading & posting some new things to SkyDrive & Artist's Corner:) The all-rounded-up and finalized Fortress chapter will be done by Monday but now I am posting chapter 4 level that represents the new chapter/level concept that George & me talked about. It's a first person drive-through level that breaks a platforming concept after every 9 levels. The J,J&BUM chapters should look a bit like this:

1.Tutorial (Txesmi's tutorial level)
2.Dungeon (regular 8+BossBattle)
3.Sewer (escape with steam-engine wooden boat from the dungeon region)
4.Fortress (regular 8+BossBattle)
5.Forest (escape with big steam-engine car from the fortress region)
6.Mansion (regular 8+BossBattle)
7.Mountains (chase BUM with mechanical-steam flying-helicopter to his castle)
8.BUM's Castle (regular 8+BossBattle)
9.Swamp (get to the Swamp Castle by riding on the giant turtle)
10.Swamp Castle (Big BossBattle level)

So, there are still 3 regular platfom-like chapters & 3 fps levels left to do. Unfortunately the game team is at this time a bit low on artists:( Thanks to Felix, Martin & George the main parts of the game code are almost done & Ivan is working very intensely on finishing needed music & audio effects, but, as for visual part, we are running very, very low on content:( I believe that the main problem is related to the nature of modeling/texturing/lighting of geometry which is incredibly time-consuming process.

So I guess, in a very (extremely:) near future, we will have to find at least one more member for the art team interested in making level geometry. When I talked to George about this issue we had an idea that I could make a sort of level-sample geometry for each chapter that the team member can use/modify or create similar geometry that is complementary to the given sample. That will save him much time & unify the levels visual approach.

.....
Uploaded work represents my level solution for J, J & BUM Forest Chapter (Chapter 4 Level 1). I have hoped that I will have 90% of this level/chapter (since this is the only level for this chapter) finalized & functional but unfortunately I came across some severe problems with lightmaps & few other things:(

Things that are missing from this level:

1.Gameplay:)
2.Tree & grass models/code solutions are still to be implemented.
3.Main car model is not done.
4.Level lighting is temporary.
5.Enemy routine & models are not done.

Concerning the music themes, Ivan composed two different songs that you can switch between by pressing M key. It would be nice if you can gives some feedback about which one you preferred:) As for audio effects, he was busy with the Fortress level but he managed to finish SFX for the engine & horn. Other effects are muted & will be replaced as soon as all required Fortress SFX are finished.

Screens of the 4th chapter so far...











http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/c4l1v116.jpg
http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/c4l1v117.jpg
http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/c4l1v118.jpg
http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/c4l1v120.jpg
http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/c4l1v119.jpg
http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/c4l1v121.jpg
http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/c4l1v122.jpg
http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/c4l1v123.jpg
http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/c4l1v125.jpg
http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/11/34/97/23/c4l1v124.jpg