Sticks & Twigs - Not just for Breakfast Anymore

#1 VERY nice, I WILL be buying this when it's released.

Thanks man!

#2 Love your packs man, this one looks particularly great. Now if we can just get a TGEA port of TGEForest we'll really be in business.

#3 If the performance is up to snuff, then all I can say is, "Wow!" Proper foresting/foilage has been a huge shortcoming for Torque, and I had assumed engine performance was the culprit. Looks great.

Will the pack include shape replicator/greenery generator code? I understand most people will want to write their own, but it would be nice to offer a resource with the pack to can give customers a good start.

#4 Awesome work as always alan, i hope these are tgea ready ? bumpmaps e.t.c ?

#5 Thats some great work Alan. I had always wondered why nobody had done a bunch of trees. But then I realised trees can be a complete PITA to get right.

Those look really good and I'm sure you'll get a bunch of sales.

#6 Wow... very very nice...
RRGTS??? :-/

#7 This looks very good, some TGEA ready content would be very handy :-D

#8 You have my purchase

#9 This is just what I have been looking for, I'm all over it!

#10 As always, appreciate the comments!

Generally speaking all of the models will have 2-4 levels of detail, and like the final versions of the 'city packs" there will be TGE and TGEA versions.

The TGEA versions will include normal, specular and ambient occlusion texture maps along with a materials.cs script (thanks to Erik Madison) that automates the base script. It won't automatically define the normals or speculars, but with the entire list of textures with a basic definition, a quick line or two addition per the textures you want to use and you are good to go.

There isn't anything special at all in the replication code, this pack will be based *competely* on stock replicators and will be 100% drag and drop into a clean TGE or TGEA build. All of the screens above (and below) came from a clean install and the pack dropped in place.

Below is a "baseline" Stronghold screen with the player facing a generally open area with a few trees and a rock or two. My computer is fairly lower end average for todays standards (thank you Vista!). I'm running a P4 3.2, 1GB DDR and a Nvidia 7300 w/256MB and as you notice in the Stronghold screen I was bouncing around 50 to 60 frames per second. The missions in the pack run at about 35 to 55 frames per second on the same machine, so for comparision if you run 75 fps in that particular area of the Stronghold mission (about a 36% performance increase over my system) then on one of the missions at, for example 38 fps on mine would run approximately 52 fps on yours.

Also you may note that I've "loaded up" these missions -- some running as much as 700 - 1000 shape replicated trees and a hundred thousand foliage replications in several of the levels. It's all about the culling, fog distance, view distance and not bunching anything up to much in one place.

Oh, and James L. - RRGTS = Really Really Good Things Studio. =)

www.reallyreallygoodthings.com

#11 OMG. Alan and Kyle, very nice work.

I was about to ask if someone could share a good FxfoliageReplicator example to cover the complete surface of the TGE terrain. I did some tests but I'm not happy with so far.

This pack will be a great addition to Darkwind: War on Wheels. :)

#12 Awesome trees! I must have now! :D Great Stuff Alan

#13 Wow... fantastic!!

#14 Very, very nice work!

#15 Beautiful stuff. Any chance of releasing it in other formats like FBX? I use several game engines for different purposes. I'd buy a pack in a heartbeat but I mostly use another engine for 3D, I use TGB for Torque.

#16 Amazing. I WILL be buying this.

#17 Beautiful.

#18

Quote:Oh, and James L. - RRGTS = Really Really Good Things Studio. =)

Doooh...

I was looking for something like RRGTS = Realistic Realtime Great Tree Spawner :-)

#19 Hey, again thanks everyone!

@Cary H.
It's possible at some point, and all of the art content does include the source files, particularly Milkshape3d since it's price structure is so Indie friendly, so there is probably a way back to FBX, I just haven't looked too hard at this point. The main reason I've not jumped into different file types is that I've seen what happens with content makers who aren't intimately familar with the engine their work is going to be used in...and it's not good. Enough said.

What particular engine do you use for 3D? The reason I ask is that if I begin to see a strong enough pattern in another engine, I'll break down and start to get familiar with it. I own licenses to C4, Beyond Virtual, have demo versions of Blade3D and NeoAxis Installed, and I've tried to work with Ogre and a few of the other open source engines (but oh, please don't let it be Ogre...I've never been able to get it to compile!). Just let me know and we'll take another look at it.

@James L. =P
That sounds a whole lot more exciting than "Really Really Good Things Studio"!

Oh, and just as a general note to everyone. Don't try to respond to posts too early in the morning, or you might hit the wrong button and rate your own resource...not that I'd do that or anything...

.

#20 ... and you gave yourself just a three Alan, yikes!

LOL

BTW the pack looks great. Are there any screenshots of the TGEA version with the Normal Maps applied?