GDC & Forest Pack Tech Preview
by Kyle Carter · 02/16/2006 (12:32 am) · 59 comments
Forest Pack Tech Preview 1Over the past few months, with the help of coworker and awesome dude Adam deGrandis, the Forest Pack for TGE has been coming along in the background... and before I disappear for the next two months (see next section), I wanted to toss something out to the community. It is... the Forest Pack Tech Preview. Just a standalone binary that flies through a little test forest with a little bit of art. The code isn't quite final, nor is the art, but it's finally at the point where I really need more info than I can get on my own computer.
Thus, the preview. Give the preview a try, and if you can spare a few moments, toss us feedback at forestpack@gmail.com. FPS (go to console and type metrics(fps);), if it runs OK (no crashes!), any rendering glitches, what hardware (CPU and video card) you're running on... :)
If it tests well, then you might see a full release sometime after GDC. If not, then it's back to the mines for a while longer to tweak it back up to spec.
And that e-mail address once again - any questions, comments, feedback, problems, screenshots send to forestpack@gmail.com.
Thanks guys! I'm sure you'll give it a good pounding!
(Caveats: This build is partially based on Torque 1.3, so some older Torque issues might resurface; there are also some performance hits due to that. The final pack will of course run on latest Torque. The art is a tiny subset of what will come with the pack, and isn't necessarily representative of final art, either. A real demo of some sort will come later on. :)
Game Developer Conference: Where's Ben?
I'll be at the GDC this year. Because of this, I'll also be pretty much disappearing for the next five weeks. A lot of stuff has to get done between now and then, so I'm having to cut back on everything that's not directly related to making kick-ass stuff happen. :)
If you're working directly on a project with me, I'll still be staying in touch, but otherwise, don't expect to see much from me. :) The other GG guys will be pinging me about important forum threads & so forth, so I can participate if needed...
But GDC should rock. Lots of good stuff will be coming, I think. Maybe even a new Atlas code drop. ;)
Torque Developer Network
Done some work on this, too. Logins much improved, and auto-login was added, too, so now it'll remember if you were logged in before. (Don't worry, if you log out of the GG page it'll ask you for a password instead. :)
A bunch of Safari issues have been fixed, too, so the site should be much more usable for those of you on OS X. :)
You can read about these improvements in the TDN forums.
We also have some other cool TDN-related stuff that we'll be announcing in the near future. But more on that later... :)
#2
Good luck Ben. Can't wait to see what you guys are working on.
02/16/2006 (1:00 am)
*Drools on himself over tree pack*Good luck Ben. Can't wait to see what you guys are working on.
#3
Just curious but there are some things in the zip I would like to use for my own game development, such as the camera path, terrain textures etc... May I co-opt some of it for this purpose?
02/16/2006 (1:51 am)
Wow, I just tried that demo out on a computer that tends to choke up on just stronghold and it runs like a champ!Just curious but there are some things in the zip I would like to use for my own game development, such as the camera path, terrain textures etc... May I co-opt some of it for this purpose?
#4
I am gonna try my best to get to GDC this year.
02/16/2006 (1:54 am)
You'll be in the hatch in Lost? :)I am gonna try my best to get to GDC this year.
#5
Edit: just noticed something.. when you do a top down view and move left or right, the trees seem to move?
02/16/2006 (3:24 am)
Runs and looks great... I got about 70fps.Edit: just noticed something.. when you do a top down view and move left or right, the trees seem to move?
#6
Drop me a mail or ping me in IRC if youre interested.
Good luck at GDC bud! hope to see loads of cool new techy stuff coming up soon after!
No GDC for me this year though, faaaar to busy.
Phil.
02/16/2006 (3:35 am)
Ben, I've got some suggestions for atlas if youre up for a bit of user feedback?Drop me a mail or ping me in IRC if youre interested.
Good luck at GDC bud! hope to see loads of cool new techy stuff coming up soon after!
No GDC for me this year though, faaaar to busy.
Phil.
#8
02/16/2006 (4:21 am)
Mmmm, that demo was sexy... trees add so much to a scene.
#10
Nick
02/16/2006 (4:38 am)
Ben, nice work! My FPS vary from around 20 to 80. If there was a way to save the FPS at regular intervals to a file, it would probably be more useful.Nick
#11
It looked good from what I could see though! ;)
02/16/2006 (6:46 am)
I got around 60-70 FPS. BTW, is that demo supposed to be running so fast? I couldn't get a good look at the trees the camera was zooming by so quickly. I think each iteration took only 3 or 4 seconds.It looked good from what I could see though! ;)
#12
FYI: The first time I ran the demo the bushes showed up with black where the alpha should be. I can't repro this though as it seems to be running fine now... *shrug*.
The only thing I did was go into the options panel (ctrl-o) and try to change the video options but the only video mode is OpenGL so I didn't change anything.
My video card is a Geforce4 Ti 4600.
-Unk
02/16/2006 (7:25 am)
The world totally comes to life! Great job.FYI: The first time I ran the demo the bushes showed up with black where the alpha should be. I can't repro this though as it seems to be running fine now... *shrug*.
The only thing I did was go into the options panel (ctrl-o) and try to change the video options but the only video mode is OpenGL so I didn't change anything.
My video card is a Geforce4 Ti 4600.
-Unk
#13
I was running the preview with an ATI 9800 getting early FPS of 42 (soaring over water), mid FPS 48 (gliding through the trees) and end FPS of 34 (flying above the treetops) on average.
02/16/2006 (8:04 am)
What exactly is this? Is it simply a tree pack or is there some code being added to quickly cover the terrain with trees? I'm hoping for the latter. Are the trees like some kind of fxshapereplicator? Do they have collision?I was running the preview with an ATI 9800 getting early FPS of 42 (soaring over water), mid FPS 48 (gliding through the trees) and end FPS of 34 (flying above the treetops) on average.
#14
02/16/2006 (8:08 am)
@ Robert, press Ctr+C for free look. :)
#15
Ben, it looks great. I can't wait for this content pack to come out!
02/16/2006 (8:32 am)
Joseph, thanks for the tip! I should have that of that myself. ;)Ben, it looks great. I can't wait for this content pack to come out!
#16
SWEET!! Very Nice. Absolutely beautiful trees!!!
I got about 21 FPS on average....bit my pc is old and sucks.
Thoughts and feed back ...Hmm....I am sure you know all of this, but I don't like to assume, so I'll toss it out here just in case.
The LODs pops a bit, if that can be improved to create a more seamless transition, that would be a big plus.
The dead leaf ground texture needs to be broken up a bit with dirt, grass, rocks, fallen logs, or all of the above. This and some vegetation would also be really good along the water edge.
The water need an overhaul.
I understand the gray gloomy winter sky, but I think you are failing to take advantage of a big part of you digital canvas if you leave it that flat. It could still be gray and gloomy, but I would work some more contrast into it. (An area I should have spent more time on in my environment pack)
One of the Age of Empire 3 team (don't remember who) was presenting the game at GDC, or one of the conventions, and said some thing that stuck with me. "what occupies the most screen real estate?" "Spend you art resources on what the player is going to see the most". Or something to that effect.
In keeping with my own rule, "don't show case what you do poorly" ...I mean that in the generic sense, not referring to you specifically :O)
Another way of putting it would be "no part of the environment should be so lacking as to detract form the rest".
That sky is a pretty big part, so I would definitely give it an overhaul as well.
02/16/2006 (9:57 am)
Ben,SWEET!! Very Nice. Absolutely beautiful trees!!!
I got about 21 FPS on average....bit my pc is old and sucks.
Thoughts and feed back ...Hmm....I am sure you know all of this, but I don't like to assume, so I'll toss it out here just in case.
The LODs pops a bit, if that can be improved to create a more seamless transition, that would be a big plus.
The dead leaf ground texture needs to be broken up a bit with dirt, grass, rocks, fallen logs, or all of the above. This and some vegetation would also be really good along the water edge.
The water need an overhaul.
I understand the gray gloomy winter sky, but I think you are failing to take advantage of a big part of you digital canvas if you leave it that flat. It could still be gray and gloomy, but I would work some more contrast into it. (An area I should have spent more time on in my environment pack)
One of the Age of Empire 3 team (don't remember who) was presenting the game at GDC, or one of the conventions, and said some thing that stuck with me. "what occupies the most screen real estate?" "Spend you art resources on what the player is going to see the most". Or something to that effect.
In keeping with my own rule, "don't show case what you do poorly" ...I mean that in the generic sense, not referring to you specifically :O)
Another way of putting it would be "no part of the environment should be so lacking as to detract form the rest".
That sky is a pretty big part, so I would definitely give it an overhaul as well.
#18
There are area markers for where trees are NOT to appear it seems. As well as no texture (that I could find) for the alpha portions of the trees. To top that off the alpha parts of the trees do not seem to be displaying the issue torque has with transparencies, especially on trees (or multi transparent objects). Even the small bushes that seem to be made in the standard way, with multiple intersecting planes don
02/16/2006 (10:13 am)
There is definitely something going on here. There are area markers for where trees are NOT to appear it seems. As well as no texture (that I could find) for the alpha portions of the trees. To top that off the alpha parts of the trees do not seem to be displaying the issue torque has with transparencies, especially on trees (or multi transparent objects). Even the small bushes that seem to be made in the standard way, with multiple intersecting planes don
#19
@All: feedback really should be sent to the email address if at all possible.
@Todd McCullough: Think of this pack as a two-part concept: art assets, and code. Specifically, the code is essentially a re-write of the fxXXXReplicator concept in a very major way. Yes, the trees have collision, and they are not manually placed--in fact, they aren't even individual objects in your game! Think about that for a minute--in a normal mission, each of those trees would be a networked object. With the forest pack, they are all one networked object, with custom rendering and collision, as well as placement. We're talking the ability to have literally thousands of trees that make up a forest (hence the name of the pack!) in the same performance (cpu, network, rendering) band as "stock" Torque (of course, you'll have varying milage depending on how it's used, and any enhancement does have an associated cost, but the cost has been optimized extremely well).
@Dreamer: No, the textures, as well as the trees are part of the pack. Use of them will require purchase of the pack when it becomes available.
02/16/2006 (10:15 am)
I don't want to try to speak for Ben, but I know a bit about the pack, and I know he won't get much chance to post here!@All: feedback really should be sent to the email address if at all possible.
@Todd McCullough: Think of this pack as a two-part concept: art assets, and code. Specifically, the code is essentially a re-write of the fxXXXReplicator concept in a very major way. Yes, the trees have collision, and they are not manually placed--in fact, they aren't even individual objects in your game! Think about that for a minute--in a normal mission, each of those trees would be a networked object. With the forest pack, they are all one networked object, with custom rendering and collision, as well as placement. We're talking the ability to have literally thousands of trees that make up a forest (hence the name of the pack!) in the same performance (cpu, network, rendering) band as "stock" Torque (of course, you'll have varying milage depending on how it's used, and any enhancement does have an associated cost, but the cost has been optimized extremely well).
@Dreamer: No, the textures, as well as the trees are part of the pack. Use of them will require purchase of the pack when it becomes available.
#20
02/16/2006 (10:22 am)
...Woops, sorry about that Stephen, I was so excited, I completely overlooked the email address. Will do. 
Torque Owner Jeremy Alessi
BTW, this preview looks and runs nicely. It really adds a lot to have many detailed trees to the scene ... must have taken quite a bit to get that LOD.