SVN Media Repository

[andrewbuck]

Now that we have the SVN set up for the media files it would be nice to get filled up with at least one instance of every model, sound, etc, that we currently have. That way it is all in one place, all backed up, and easily updatable by anyone who wants to work on some piece of the content. I am going to try to get the forge, and some of the other content I have worked on into the SVN repository. If everyone else could try to push at least the source files for what they have worked on that would be cool. Once we have all the source files up in their latest format, we should try to go through and get everything into the game. This way whenever we decide to package up a release of the game we can easily do that.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

Regarding the source for the sound effects. I have made them in Audacity and have all the project files around, but for the 4 sounds I have made the project files are 300 MiB in total, and as we will surely have at least 100 sound effects we will eventually end up having more than 8-10 GiB of data just for the sound effects. Do you think SourceForge will not like us uploading that much or do you not think they care, do they have a policy about that?

[andrewbuck]

I don't think we should have that big of a collection of files in the svn repo, the checkout is big enough already and will get bigger once all the other models are in. I went through all of the stuff I had in my models directory and found 3 things that were not on SVN which may be of use. I think for right now if we get the flac and ogg versions of the sounds that will be enough for the SVN repository. We will have to look into how we want to handle the audacity files later on.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

Ok I will upload the flac's then and some ogg versions. For the ogg version I think about using quality 6 any opinions about that? It should be equivalent in sound quality to a 192 kbit mp3.

[oln]

Yeah, q6 sound like a reasonable choice. (q6 should actually be slightly better than a 192kbit (VBR) mp3.)

[svenskmand]

I have uploaded the cutted version of my 4 sounds, in flac and q=6 vorbis.

[oln]

Would be nice if we could put up all the missing models, there is a lot of models that are used, but not in the prebuilt package at the moment.

[Skorpio]

I'll upload my new stuff soon, but need to clean up the files first. Should I replace older versions of the source models or just add the new ones to the specific folders? And should I upload the complete materials and models folders, too?

[svenskmand]

Replace the old ones, if we need them we can just get them from an earlier revision. Also upload materials and stuff, we want everything in there

How about my sounds, I have calculated that they are around 25 MiB a sound, that is all my material for the digging sound is around 25 MiB, likewise for the rocksfalling and sword. I have been searching SF and the web to see if there are any restrictions on how much space your are using, and as far as I can see there are not limits. And if we actually use the space for meaningful things I would not expect problems from SF, so I would recommend uploading the files. Opinions?

[andrewbuck]

I have looked in the past at their policies on storage space, etc. The official policy seems to be that they provide space for people to do open source work, so as long as that is what the space is being used for they seem to be fine with that. I think they realize that no matter what they set the limit to be there will be some projects who need more than that, so they just didn't set a limit.

Also, I think it is possible to check out just portions of the SVN tree so we could make some documentation which shows how to just check out specific things (for example, just the finished .mesh files for the 3d work) and then let people download the portions they need. If someone knows more about this (I know git but not SVN) please inform us.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

That is easy you just provide the path to the directory you want to check out, and then you only check that out. Git is a bit weird in comparison to svn. Say you want only to check out all the sounds that should go into the game, then you do

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

svn co https://opendungeons.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/opendungeons/media/master/Sounds/ ODSound


Then you get a directory called ODSound with only the sounds folder checked out.

Edit: Then I will upload the Audacity project files tonight.

[Skorpio]

And should I upload the complete materials and models folders, too?

Also upload materials and stuff, we want everything in there

That means we would have all the textures twice, in the source folders and in the materials folder. That wouldn't be very economical.

[svenskmand]

You did not say that before. I do not see a reason to copy stuff. I think you should keep the textures for models with the blend file, and not the mesh. Then it is easier for people to check out a model and work on it. And when we compile a new media package we just need to compensate for this, but we will be using a script for that in the future anyway, so it does not matter.

[andrewbuck]

Actually if the models and the textures are kept as separate files then the checkin/checkout of models will be more efficient. A .blend file with textures included can easily exceed 5 MB whereas one with just the mesh and links to other files for textures will only be 0.5 MB or so. Also, some people may want to work on the textures and they may want to do that in gimp/photoshop and not have to worry about blender.

With regards to the media and mediaSource directories, I would keep all the meshes, textures, etc as separate files in on folder or the other and then symbolic link them (a sym-link is like a shortcut).

-Buck

[svenskmand]

I do not think you can do sym-links in svn.

[Skorpio]

I'm uploading the new stuff now. Not sure if everything is correct. Tell me if you find missing textures, materials or models.

[andrewbuck]

I just did a couple commits on the svn repoitory which just moves the forge that riidom made to the "Forge" directory (this replaces the one I made). Riidom, feel free to just overwrite files in the svn repository if they are the same object but a newer version. The svn system lets us retrieve previous versions of the file anyway so it is no problem to overwrite stuff.

-Buck

[andrewbuck]

I am not sure what the state of the models in question is, but if they are at or nearing completion it would be nice to have the Dungeon temple, and portal properly uploaded and exported. Presently I am just loading dummy meshes and that works to get the code working, however I would like to get the actual meshes in game and try them out to make sure that there are no lingering issues in the code, and also just to see what they look like. Also, if someone could export the .mesh files for each of the three objects associated with the forge, I would appreciate it (they should be called ForgeForge.mesh, ForgeTable.mesh and ForgeAnvil.mesh).

-Buck

[riidom]

The forge is one object (at least in blender, not sure if ogre is able to deal with this). Also I wondered if the arrangement is okay, in what kind of tile-space should it fit, something square-like?
I am trying to find the exporter scripts right now, guess it isnt too hard to run them.
___
ok, the script produces a ***.mesh.xml, plus a scene.material. I left the exporter settings all on default. renamed to forge.***etc. and uploaded to media/development.

Would be great to know if
a)the forge can stay one part or needs to be splitted up, also if
b) any exporter settings need to be changed, and
c) found a "bone weight normaliser" script .. is that needed for rigged meshes? This one goes to skorpio probably.

[andrewbuck]

Ogre would handle the forge being a single mesh just fine but the way the code for the game is written the three individual parts of the forge are placed individually. That is why it needs to be three parts. You can fairly easily select stuff in blender and split it off as a single mesh, I forget what the exact sequence is but you do it from the vertex edit mode. The tiles on the game map are taken to be 1 m X 1 m at the base and 3 m tall. The floor is at z = 0 and the tiles also extend 0.25 m downward from there to allow for bumps in the floor, water, etc. We are treating 1 blender unit as one meter, so the Knight is around 2 units high. Also, for all these objects (forge parts, portals, etc), the little pink "center" dot for the object in blender is where it will be placed in game. For stuff like this it gets put at z=0, which means the center dot should be at the bottom of the object, where it would meet the floor. I think this is pretty much everything you need to export meshes. That will allow you to test your meshes in the game. Oh, you will also need to turn on the "TexFace" option in the materials tab in blender. Do that before you export and it should do the material file correctly as well (the export script will ask you for a name just call it MeshName.material, where MeshName is something like ForgeAnvil).

-Buck

[riidom]

There is probably a problem with the textures, I am using three times the same (complete) texture for every part of now, at least it seems that blender managed it that way. The exporter wanted to write the materials to the same file each time, I thought it is better to have a new name each time. If this causes trouble in any ways, I might redo the UV layout and the textures properly for each object. I have still the ".mesh.xml" ending, should I just strip the .xml, or how do i get just a ".mesh" ?

[andrewbuck]

In the exporter there should be a checkbox or something to run the OgreXMLConverter. You can also run that program manually but it is a lot easier to have blender do it during the original export process. Having the same texture used shouldn't be a problem.

-Buck

[riidom]

Ok it is done... the file sizes look strangely small to me, though..
About testing a model myself: I would greatly appreciate to do that, doing some "blind" exporting and not knowing if it is a mess or not doesnt give me a very good feeling. I thought I have read something about how to do that either here in the forums or on the OD wiki, but my searches stay kinda resultless.

Read now about the forge, and the single items are required as upgrades! Wasnt aware of that.. hope it doesnt disturb in that context, that the table is a tray actually

[andrewbuck]

It looks like I gave you the wrong names for the forge stuff. Each of the names I gave you should have had "Object" at the end, so ForgeAnvilObject.mesh is the correct name for that one. I downloaded your changes from svn and copied them into the media folder for the game. The objects are a bit too big and are also rotated improperly. I think the table should be about 1.5m x 0.75 m on top, the forge should be about 1.75 m wide and 3 m high, and the anvil should be about 0.5 m. Take a look at the other blend files like the GoldChest or one of the creatures to see which axis is "up", I think it is the z axis in blender but I am not sure.

Also, you can add/move many files in a single commit, rather than doing an individual commit for each file. It doesn't really hurt anything to do separate commits but it does clutter up the changelogs a bit (it also boosts our sourceforge ranking though, so that is cool ). Finally, you can put your .mesh files right in with the other ones at opendungeons/media/master/Models (the materials should go int media/master/materials). Even if you feel your meshes are in a development stage, the first version of the .mesh file you add should probably go to the directory on the master branch. That way there is at least a placeholder file for everything we are working on.

-Buck

[riidom]

Adjusted the size now, all items fit comfortable into a 4x4metre square, and nothing exceeds 3m height.
About the rotation, there is an option in exporter "Fix up axis to Y", will try to uncheck this.
About the single commits, I tried to select all items at once and moved them over, but tortoise told me "this will be all single commits, wanna continue?", so I am not sure about to make a "packaged commitment". I could do a folder, but as all meshes are in one big folder and all materials in another, this doesnt make much sense then. Will check the settings of tortoise, maybe there is something wrong.

edit: This message I mean, my look in options doesnt bring up anything, will do a item-by-item commitment then until I found a solution for that.