The Red Button Story - Game Thread/Dev blog

[Spyrewolf]

I know that the Gennises engien h8s big spaces! Even with the fog turned off it wont show things very far away! So i think im gonna have to get very clever with the level desigh. eg make things really small so they look far away and make walls that droop and meet to make as if a passage goes on forever!

this is a general misconception, that many still beleive and i have shattered that belief myself!

you can have very large expansive open area's like deserts, no problems at all, however you will need to think a little bit about how you decide to attempt this though, here's how,

1. Use scale! it's your best friend for large open area's, you can scale the player down a really small size making everything seem huge, change the speed the player moves at you have a really large! believable area, i have scaled the player down to at least 0.05 ...you really don't wanna go lower than that this start's to cause problems...
i will need a whole other post for.

i have had maps where i started walking, from one side and hit the other side 15-mins(real time) later, this was constant running in one direction, .....that is a huge map!

2. level design if you have hills, or cavers which can block off the view from the player you can sneakily load in another area *see image below level design.jpg* giving the illusion that your area is even bigger yet, imagine 2 expansive area's that take 15-mins(real-time) each to cross.

3. Use L.O.D.... the level of detail is a really big advantage, this can add in low poly's equivilants of stuff in the distance greatly improving frame rates.



in the making of the "shadow of the colossus" Ueda said that his team relied heavily on L.O.D for terrains, ....now im not saying we can make shadow of the colossus with RF but the principles are the same none the less, he stated that they L.O.D got less and less poly's until you get to the furtherest point out untill you see what is called a super-low, which ultimatly is a flat image........we too have this power built into RF!

[4.]fogging, depending on your idea, fogging will help with you maps, try to have fog that matches the colour of your sky, behind the fogging make sure you include a far clip plane this culls everything behind the fog and is not rendered at all greatly improving frames.

[jonas]

Wow you put a lot of time into that post. Thanks that stuff is good to know! This post should most certainly go in the faq. Even though its probably already there

[Spyrewolf]

Thanks Jonas, i really like to help people out with idea's i love RF it's just got so many ways of doing things, it is really an incredible engine capable of soo much,

just need to add to Teh_psYco's first question:

what I want is the illusion that the corridor goes off into the distance till the walls meet, ill do this with the level construction, but if the player runs far enough, the illusion will be revealed. SO i want to make it so if you runn too far in one direction you get spawned on the other side again, ie - so youll run continuosly past the same warehouses and door over and over again until the player gets board and decides to co-operate. Is this possible?

so you want to create the Hannah Barbara effect, this got its name from the way the backgrounds are repeated in the Flintstones cartoons

yes this too is really easy you need to look at the teleport entity in RFDocs basically it will teleport the player back to the set location ...

again clever level design is needed here duplicate the starting point and the end point (where player hits then teleports back) and it should be a seamless transistion and the player won't know the difference, this technique was used in GTA:San Andrea's for the expansive area's out to sea.

[allen5924]

I want to have the payer jump out of a window of a warehouse where he is being held in a cutscene then hit the ground and the game starts. Now I want there to be an endless field of ware houses to either side, and I want the player to progress across the courtyard to the door on the other side. But ounce the player reaches half way an alarm is triggerd etc... but what im worried about is the ''clever'' player who goes sideways, soooo what I want is the illusion that the corridor goes off into the distance till the walls meet, ill do this with the level construction, but if the player runs far enough, the illusion will be revealed. SO i want to make it so if you runn too far in one direction you get spawned on the other side again, ie - so youll run continuosly past the same warehouses and door over and over again until the player gets board and decides to co-operate. Is this possible?

well dude,, i think the best way is to kill the player after he reaches a specified distance.. remember in SOTD how i did the invisible layer above the spikes in the Hazmat levels... ya like that.. and force it'll force the player to restart.... the level..

[psYco]

WOW!!!! Thanks for the response WOLF!!!! I really really really apprietiate it!!!

When i saw that SoC screen i thawt that was your game in RF and I almost did summink i cant say on the forum... BUT wow thanks for the time you took to give that gr8 advice!!!! I promise ill put it to good use!!

[EDIT QuestOfDreams: ]

[Juutis]

Yeah, for that "endless row of warehouses" the teleport entity is really useful, just like Spyrewolf said. There's only one problem... I can't explain it with words so I drew a picture:


Now, it would work perfectly if the player went from point A to point B, and then teleport back to A. But if he goes further away from the warehouses (to point C) he will notice the teleporting because he'll move closer to the warehouses.

Of course, you could fix this by adding dozens of small teleports, each one teleporting the player to different distances from the warehouses. Though it would cause an awful lot of work.

Another way to solve this is to use a script (once again, I prefer scripting to entity usage ). You could check if the player is at the edge of the area that he is allowed to move in, and if so, move him back to the place where he started but keeping the distance to the warehouses. In the picture if the player went to point C, he would be teleported directly to the left.

I hope that makes sense to you... I'm not the best one to explain things.

[psYco]

No i get you completely! Well im gonna try make loads of teleporters wiht corrisponding ones on the other side it might make more work but Im not too adept with scripting yet (I am learning though!) Im just amazed at how perfectly you understood what im tryin to do! Just from that pic you showed It even helped me get a clearer idea of what im planning! Thanks!

[QuestOfDreams]

Now, it would work perfectly if the player went from point A to point B, and then teleport back to A. But if he goes further away from the warehouses (to point C) he will notice the teleporting because he'll move closer to the warehouses.

Of course, you could fix this by adding dozens of small teleports, each one teleporting the player to different distances from the warehouses. Though it would cause an awful lot of work.

The TeleportTarget entity has an option for exactly this case. If you set UseOffset to true the player's offset from the origin of the Teleport Target will be the same as the offset from the origin of the Teleporter entity.

[psYco]

So then you get this???




Wicked!!1!!11!!!!!

this is what you mean rite??

[QuestOfDreams]

yep, that's how it should work

[Juutis]

Ah, I was wrong... as usual.

I haven't used the teleport entity much but it sure is useful to know that offset thing. Thank you.

[psYco]

Juutis! If you hadent bought up the teleport entity then QoD wouldent have elaborated on correct use of them! Sooooooo, by being a little off you got the thing working!!!! And i cant actually remember last time you were wrong.

Thanks loads EVERYONE!

[psYco]

Concept art time again! Well this is not concept but a pic i wanna turn into a vid! (i plan to edit it in photo shop and then layer it and then have the camera scroll over it while the story is being told to the player with voice and with subtitles mabey I got this idea from another indie game and I was wondering if anyone knew how to do it) any way let me know if you like the pic!



A good friend of my dad is an artist and so i got him to do it, i think it is beautiful and is perfect for the mood! There will be a Sangoma (witchdoctor or african traditional healer) who will tell the story while speaking both Zulu and English, (i speak both) but I was also wondering if any one knows if there is a good program out there or any tutes on how to edit voices well?? Cause im quite dramatic but i dont sound that african any more and so I wanted to edit the sound.

[psYco]

@ allen : sorry I didnt tell you about the pic i just wanted it to be a surprise!

any way here is the edited version!

[jonas]

wow! That's really cool! To change voices you can just change the pitch, and speed with almost any sound program. I have I really good program, I'll have to find the link to and post it.