Cityscape

Post screenshots, binaries and projectfiles of the projects you have made with ZGE that you want to share!

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jph_wacheski
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Post by jph_wacheski »

Wow diki, that is very cool! now with the dynamic collisions,. It is great fun to jump from building top to building top,. trying to get on the tallest one. this is shapeing up nicely. I can see some great game ideas here,..
The saving and loading is also impressive,. one thing I have been planing to do is build a game with a proper level editor built in,. one of the shortcomings of ZGE is the lack of 3d level editing,. building this into the game engine has seemed the best idea to me,. but saving loading the data is bit of a project,. glad to see you have it working here. (I was always thinking of Model based levels,. moving data gets dicey)

Kjell - why would you NOT recommend dynamic building generation? now with the ability to generate single meshs from many small parts it should be quite effecient,. no? That Building Generator is a great one, and shows what can be done. Something along those lines, perhaps a but simpler,. should work a charm here. . ,
iterationGAMES.com
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Kjell
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Post by Kjell »

Hi jph,
Why would you NOT recommend dynamic building generation?
Mainly because I believe good level design doesn't come with the click of a button. And depending on the complexity of your generator, the loading time for a "level" will go up significantly.

Concerning game editing ( regardless whether you make the editor available to the end-user ). Basic object placement through the viewport like in 3D applications ( 3ds Max / Softimage etc. ) and other game creation software ( Unity / Virtools etc. ) would be nice yes. However, building a editor tailored towards a specific game / genre always pays off ( and quite easy to do in ZGE ). There's just too much space between the ideal editor for Panzer Dragoon, Super Mario World and Street Fighter 4.

K
Last edited by Kjell on Thu Oct 22, 2009 3:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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jph_wacheski
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Post by jph_wacheski »

Noone said good level deing comes at the push of a button,. however if you spend time building a smart generation algorhythm, then perhaps you can look at it that way,. however the work is still done, only differently,. building a system to generate it..,
Buildings are just props anyway, not gameplay. highly detailed models can be generted and the simple collision boxes can encapsilate them,. placing building and other objects is level design. With the 3d level editing one can generate a level,. then go into it and place important gameplay objects by hand (or anther algorhythm can),. then save the results. Procedurally assited design perhaps? I guess it just depends what the designer is going for and what methods they find interesting to work,. . also load times are long for giant meshs and textures anyway,. once again this is just a mater of personal tast. Wait for a load or wait for a generation cycle,. but with generation the number of 'levels' can be ~endless. :P
iterationGAMES.com
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Kjell
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Post by Kjell »

Well,

It does depend on the type of product yes. When you're for example designing a pinball table ( or game ) .. it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to build a generator that's capable of spitting out a endless number of decent ( and less-decent ) tables versus taking that time to design a small number of great tables. Quality over quantity :wink: But you're right, it's all about finding the balance between what to generate and what to design.

In Mirror's Edge buildings are the playfield, in the Gundam games they are mostly props .. guess it all depends where Diki wants to go :) But .. load time of a static mesh / texture is always shorter then a generated version with equal number of polygons / pixels.

Sorry for the hijack Diki :roll:

K
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diki
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Post by diki »

hi,
thanks for the comments - nevermind the hijack! :) the generator links are really inspiring!
the problem of generation time is already apparent - i was a bit surprised to find that loading the pregenerated city was so much faster ... regarding design choices: i'll have to take some more time to brainstorm about the general direction. learning by doing always has this immanent danger of being led astray by technicalities :P
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