Dark Crypt (Isometric Dungeon)

[Veleran]

The cupboard.No stencil shadows,because although they re nice,they consume the cpu power and there s nt much left for running many scripts at the same time.
The wood case and tables are bsp and the items are static entityproxy.

I ll try make some cobwebs textures next.
I m not thinink a trailer yet because it still looks too ugly to publish,if it gets better enough i ll draw some sketches on old scroll-like background as cut scene slideshow.

Nothing much-just several frames showing the adventurer sitting in an inn and listening to stories from near by tables about the dark crypt and then setting off to find the entrance and loot the dungeon himself.

[Veleran]

Did nt get much better with the cobwebs,but i wanted to add some webs anyway.

[Veleran]

I removed the webs because they did nt look like webs ,should be small and built somewhere high like they really do.
I ll find something else to put in instead web to fill it a little.

[Nighthawk_0973]

How do you import 3D models in to RF levels like that?

[paradoxnj]

You convert them to ACT files and use them as static meshes.

[Veleran]

You can do similar geometry in rfeditpro -example the pillars can be boxes that are tapered -the top to be smaller than bottom etc.

I used bsp exported from max 4.2 with a maxscript for exporting .map thats called GLb2.
There are also old quake 2 .map exporters for early max versions.
The script i used may be too mostly for quake -im not sure.
i made the brushes in max with snap to grid similar with rf like 2-4-8-16-32.

do not try static meshes shadows-they are horrible,
You can have the gradient lighting on staticmesh ,but not the shadows like bsp.

[Veleran]

My brother did nt answer at all when i sent a pic of all this a month ago and more,which means he did nt like it.
I send him pics of 3d models i make from time to time and whatever flaws might be he notice them.
I always know from before all the flaws but i want to make sure if they go noticed.

I guess he would tell me one more time that im wasting time with rf-all these hard bsp edges for example look awful.
Then,after all its not to late to quit and make something else that wont look that ugly.

[Veleran]

I made a quick mesh of the geometry like the previous one, chamfered the edges and added it as a staticmesh.
The floor as part of the static mesh was too dark so i replaced it with bsp.
Still the floor texture could be changed,maybe bones and stones on it would improve it a bit.
The thumbnails maybe remind me games of late 1990-early 2000,anyway something old.









I put back the standard lights,and removed most of the suns because the static mesh needed the standard ones

[Veleran]

The static mesh might raise the polygon count much and is nt worth without shadows.
So i again the bsp and changed the lightning a little,raised the camera angle so the player is nt hidden completely from walls,
I tought to give it another try in case i could to do it presentable using some temporary ready textures,
alas...still looks nothing much.

[Veleran]

I changed a detail,i replaced the dynamic light with a flame because you can turn bsp shadow maps off.
The light might go through walls sometimes depending the world geometry,if you attach the light to a pawn with only bones and no mesh ,it could also do collision detection.Stencil shadows would nt look so fixed this way though.

I dont know for sure if the lightmaps were there or not and i could nt see it while using a dynamic light because i used light color of around 2, just to light the actors normal mapping.
maybe i could test it later by putting many small bsp brushes with very small lightmap scale in a place to check for significant frame rate change.

The flame colors and blob shadows will be removed.

If you want to know what i did it was an easy way-no pawn scripting-which would be easy too for many.
I used is an attribute named torch ,128 texels tall,made of two bones.
I attached this attribute to the player root bone bby using entityname Player.

The i attached the light to the Torch at BONE02
Last,i placed an invisible face flagged trigger plaque model to the ground at the same place with playerstart and named it Start_Trigger.

I used this Start_Trigger name to the flame as triger to use.

[Veleran]

Still no custom player,hud and monsters,later.
The floor texture is mine.
the barrel triggers randomly a health potion or something else if you break it-i will post the script someday if someone wants it.

I work on a chest right now and it will use a similar script that triggers attributes or explosions (the explosion will have a delay so you have enough time to move away from the trap when you see the chest is empty.
or i could trap it anyway and spawn attributes later,i ll see.



The second pic has a crate that would open and small monsters 24 units tall drop out of it ,but i dont have them yet.
Im missing a tile with an arch and secret door niche on the north wall there.still got to make several steps and i ll add that.

[Veleran]

Got some Hud,nothing much but its mine,it was smaller but it did nt work because i had to resample it to powers of two and
then it got bigger.I hope you dont find it too huge or too ugly (the hud bars,the rest is still under construction).

Those glass capsules took me some hours to render correctly and finally that i had to decrease the brightness and add more contract to these hud bitmaps cause in rf it looked somewhat more bright than i expected.

Red is the health bar,Green is for Stamina (fighting) and Blue is for Mana -wizard player mostly although none yet-im stil with virgil.
The Fighter-first player i m working on may have some 20 spell points..just to use few scrolls or wands.

[Jay]

That's a nice hud. Actually your "isometric dungeon" thread gave me an idea for a sidescroller-isometric-pseudo2d level. So far it looks great... Imagine a side-scroller that is slightly 3d... will post a picture soon when the level has become more evolved.

[Veleran]

Side scrolling camera can be maybe fast if the far clip plane is nt too high and all outside screen get clipped-less noticeable frame dropping than when you look around in 3rd person.

That arch is a secret door that opens if you pass in front of it.
I have nt found a way yet to trigger doors or moving platforms only when you press some key as "search".
Maybe i should try write a script for that,yet i dont know which keyboard keys are already are used for other actions.

[Nighthawk_0973]

nice. I like the HUD but I'm also impressed by the detail on the wall you've got there. How some of the bricks pop out. If you could add more detail to the wall like that without pushing the engines limits if that's even possible. I'm exited for this game, it sounds like it just might make it through to it's finished version.