What is MekArcade?

[cdxbow]

Looking good. Got those polys down. How is the bone count?
Did you use of the palm tree tops, if so which?

[John_III]

There are no bones in the tree as of yet, but I will plan to have three in the trunk and one for each frond.

For the frond skin, I obtained the texture from a photograph and placed it on a transparent background.

[John_III]

Here's a rigged and roughly animated palm tree. The model is 870 tris.

For the animation the tree snaps at the base, falls, and the fronds wiggle a bit.

There are four bones along the trunk and one for each branch.

It is not ultra-realistic (the tip of the upper trunk actually passes through the lower half in the collapse animation).

smd.zip

(51.3 KiB) Downloaded 343 times

[cdxbow]

That's great. Imported fine to max, saved as max, exported to milkshape and then opened in Misfit Cubed and just about to try an md5 export. Well done. I'll put them in a map if the md5 work to have a look at. Looking at it animate in the modellers it probably needs a bit of bounce when it hits the ground, palm leaves are springy things.

[John_III]

The trunk bends when it contacts the ground now. I also adjusted the frond wiggle timing a bit so that they are less synchronized.

[cdxbow]

In game as an md5. There is a defect in the mesh at the base which I will check and see if has happened during the conversion.

Will try to link up to a trigger later today.

[raiden]

Sadly I can't probably help you for modeling, but I may have something for you: map dry
I did it for mek arcade, but don't know if this would fit your game and additional work will still be needed. However maybe you can take a look and tell me then what you think, cdxbow.

[John_III]

It looks like the normals were inverted. I'll make sure that they are all facing out in the original .blend.

[cdxbow]

Raiden: Thank you, that is a lovely map. Here is a picture of the big pig about to clobber me.

I am interested you describe this as a small medium map, it seems more large. How does it play?

It probably doesn't need the fiddly bits such as the bones, the crystals are real cool. Industrial or mining scifi models, alien desert plants or something themed off the crystals. Jewel spiders perhaps. What are your thoughts? I will see what we have that would suit. Thanks again.

John_III: It could be the exporters. This one wouldn't export from Max as a milkshape file but would from max as an md5. Not sure why. Sometimes 'non geometry' stuff like camrera and helpers get turned into geometry and buggers things up. I will haave another go tomorrow. I will also try to load the smd as they are.

[John_III]

This should fix it. The normals on the lower portion of the trunk were facing the wrong direction.

smd_invert.zip

(53.84 KiB) Downloaded 337 times

Here's a bump map as well. This is based on the original texture that came with the .max.

[raiden]

Raiden: Thank you, that is a lovely map. Here is a picture of the big pig about to clobber me.

the_big_pig_on_dry.jpg

I am interested you describe this as a small medium map, it seems more large. How does it play?

It probably doesn't need the fiddly bits such as the bones, the crystals are real cool. Industrial or mining scifi models, alien desert plants or something themed off the crystals. Jewel spiders perhaps. What are your thoughts? I will see what we have that would suit. Thanks again. ...

Yeah, I described it this way, because I didn' know how huge the distance is for a medium mech . I was also unsure how big or small this feels with mechs.
The bones can be left off here, no problem. Your idea of an exploited planet by mining robots or such sounds very good to me.My idea wents into a similar direction. I imagine a mixture of the rocks and a technological complex, of which both are growing into each other. Just how I started with the pipes already.
When you have mapmodel-buildings (with animated destruction?), I can make place for them to integrate them maybe into the rocks. Otherwise I could made some of them directly in the map.

Aehm and your "big pig" seems to bleed. What's this ? But this question doesn't needs an explanation, I think I can imagine .

[cdxbow]

John_III: Palm looks good. Normals fixed. Glad it wasn't the exporter. I'll hook it up to some triggers later today and experiment.

[raiden]

I think I missunderstood you a bit ? You meant more a change to an alien theme and landscape, didn't you? This could also be an option, for me yes. ...

[Sniper-Goth]

Since the Red Eclipse/MekArcade codes now are merged, then when Mekarcade gets incorporated with Tesseract, does this mean that it will happen to Red Eclipse too, or then they will split up again?

[cdxbow]

Sniper-Goth: Tesserect is stiill on the drawing board and Quin is waiting for the inspiration, he has a lot on his plate at the moment, so we have to be patient and give him time to work it out. I don't think RE players need fear being left with an unplayable game on lower end boxes. In fact, these are the very words from a few days ago, I don't think Quin will mind me sharing them with you:

"Currently, I am thinking of doing it purely at an engine level, build a different binary for each renderer, ifdef some code-paths. Would be the best way of integrating the renderer without compromising the ability of those with lower-end PC's to play. Ideally, I'd have it as some variable you could switch on and off, but I think the technology differs too significantly to be able to change things on-the-fly. I'll figure it out."

raiden: All the settings will be alien planets, about the 34th century. None are on Terra, because the Gaia AI took over and removed the infestation of humans in 3033 during the AI wars. I have a rough timeline here http://mekarcade.com/site/node/43, there is not much else at the site except a bit of back ground tech stuff. The concept of Ai ascending is used extensively in the Orions Arm project, but I have a different feeling to them, the Galaxy ain't big enough for humans and super evolved god like AIs.

if you are thinking about sentient aliens, I am not planning on having them at the start, thats something which will come out later in the story and be revealed to the gamer.

[raiden]

Thank you cdxbow, I didn't visit the page since a longer time. It's good to be remembered. I could read some interesting references like the "Hyperion" books by Dan Simmons, right ?
I will try to polish the RE version of the map and try some ideas out at first. Than I'll come back to mek arcade to make the map more interesting. I stay tuned .

[cdxbow]

Hyperion, one of the best, and certainly his best. I have great images still in my head, the shrike and the tree of pain; the tree spaceships. Whoops, what have I lifted so obviously from Hyperion?

[raiden]

Hehe, nothing, except one ship called Hyperion and maybe a bit of the ai wars. I like this stuff too and couldn't stop reading it.
Also great: houses for rich people, the kitchen on a planet, the dining room on another, linked with portals - not bad.

[John_III]

Apparently Hawken is now in open beta.

http://www.playhawken.com/download/

I'll probably give it a try to get more of a feel for mech combat.

[TristamK]

Apparently Hawken is now in open beta.

http://www.playhawken.com/download/

I'll probably give it a try to get more of a feel for mech combat.

Iam played on it today. Game need optimization. I have not bad video card in notebook (geforce 550m) and i get 20 fps max on it with low settings. But this game looks interesting. Also at this moment i can't buy somethings. It's need a real money. But i get spend my XP for upgrading.
Anyway. Game look very interesting at this moment. For default player (who isn't big fun of mech) this game just for 2-3 weeks of playing. Then player can be bored of this game.

[cdxbow]

I haven't played Hawken. I am interested to hear what it's like. Mechwarrior Online was OK, if you like a slower, Mechwarrior sort of game, MekArcade will be faster.

[TristamK]

I haven't played Hawken. I am interested to hear what it's like. Mechwarrior Online was OK, if you like a slower, Mechwarrior sort of game, MekArcade will be faster.

Hawken it's like ...mmmm....World of Tanks + mechs from game Lost Planet. For me it's like. Here you can use tactic's like in WoT (all mechs have + and -) and faster movement from LP. You can use jumps and dashes. And you die here very fast.

[John_III]

I added some additional faces to the underside of the branch structure so that the texture is aligned with the leaves. I welded all the new UV shells together and manually aligned them with the leaf UVs, so hopefully they look okay.


Adding "mdlcullface 0" to the model cfg should fix the issue with the one-sided texture.

[cdxbow]

Great. I'll load them and hook them up to the tree triggers I already have. Probably do it over the weekend, Mayan prophecy willing. Another dud end of the world. Thats about 6 in my lifetime.

(suddenly the sky grows dark, the air screams...........)

[Sniper-Goth]

If there will be some sort of onslaught mode in MekArcade, it will be lookin like uh... this? (screenshot below.)