11 Dias a Ixtlan: Dia 4

In the game universe of TolTech, Pyramids play a signifigant role as a recurring archetypal theme as well as a strategic asset, much as they were to my Nahuatl ancestors. To this end, I've had to spend much of Day Four setting some of them up for game-specific roles. I had most of the strategic elements placed in Day Three. I added a cheetah car to the level and began driving around with the framerate counter running. Turns out one of the ball bases I was using had some geometry that was killing my framerate. In addition, one of the pyramid shapes had some strange texture rendering issues after being exported from 3DS Max. I also realized I'd placed my team spawn areas too close to a 'control point' in the level that could upset the balance of gameplay.

First the errant pyramid was re-rendered without the texture issues and two versions were exported, one without the temple at the top to use as a team base, and the other setup with a number of additional nodes, mainly for AFX-powered effects I plan to attach to it. Think of the AFX 'Fire in the Sky' with a real AI brain controlling it. I'd forgotten to poly-reduce the ball base stucture I was using, fixing the framerate loss.

Here's the modded Ball Temple with two characters for scale. "Let me introduce you to my little friend...":




Here's the Vehicle Temple:




And the Sky Temple:




A view of the Green base, showing it's team Temples:




Now the level geometry is pretty much all done, including the functional pieces I need for the 'Ultilama' game mode. Initial framerate tests using FRAPS average 80-97 fps, about the same as the 'Empty Terrain' level, despite the complex rock geometry I've added. Tomorrow we begin to loose the orange 'metro' grid and start texturing...

Edit: For Kory, here's a vid of the pyramid in use - I'm too busy to add the afx effectrons and extra greebles, but you get the idea...




Day 3

Day 5 & 6