Dungeon Blabber

[daz]

Hours to render a single frame? Either your computer is sub-par or you've got the quality settings jacked to heaven.

Also in the latest demo some of it looks unfinished (untextured and more polygonal than smooth). Not really a problem being a demo I guess. Interested to see how this ends up playing.

[time-killer-games]

@daz: It's not technically a render, it's a preview render which at it's current settings is less quality than a standard render (not to mention high quality). My PC is relatively new, actually. I'm using the lowest quality ani-aliasing. So I really have no idea what to think.

[daz]

Do you have a decent GPU? Most 3d programs will make extensive use of it. Other than that I have no idea.

[Goombert]

I've seen his hardware specs, they aren't glamorous but they are good, bout the same as mine. It really shouldn't be taking that long TKG.

and perhaps some videos (In Bryce videos are exported as AVI and I'll have to convert it all to multi frame sprites).

If you use DirectShow I can write you an example that will thread video playback.

When I render I can't do anything else on my PC but wait for the renders to finnish because Bryce hogs up all my resources and anything running other than Bryce could slow the render down and/or cause an aborting error message which are really annoying because I have to start over.

What is Bryce? :\

The screenshot you have looks neat, Robert, are those gravestones/fences 2D sprites or 3D models? I can't tell because they look like sprites a glance but they seem to have correct 3D perspective so IDK.

Actually, sort of, they are 3D sprites, by that I mean they are a 3D bitmap, like you see in MRI scanners, the technique is called voxel rasterization. It died when ever Direct3D came out and vector graphics for 3D became more popular.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel#Rasterization

[time-killer-games]

untextured...

Thank you for noticing. The next thing on my to-do list is to add a more visible texture to the coffins.

...and more polygonal than smooth

And for this it would be a royal pain in the butt to fix, as all models this applies to I would have to re-model from the ground up all over again, at least if I add a more detailed texture and material should help mask that imperfection. I don't plan on fixing this as I'm not going for realism - I'm going for a Myst-style game and if you ever look at the original Myst game it is far from realism (it too has polygonal meshes).

Okay because I'm a lazy butthole I wanted to add another cave scene and re-used a cave model from a project I canceled a while back. But I did change a few things about it.

When I render I can't do anything else on my PC but wait for the renders to finnish because Bryce hogs up all my resources and anything running other than Bryce could slow the render down and/or cause an aborting error message which are really annoying because I have to start over.

What is Bryce? :\

It is 3D modeling/rendering software, much like Blender, while infinitely easier and quicker to work with while not nearly as powerful.

[Darkstar2]

Why no playable demo? Your water looks nice, btw, all of your renders remind me of this old school voxel engine.



I don't mean that in a bad way, I am a huge fan of voxel graphics!

His kind of game would be perfect candidate for dynamic external resource handling especially when dealing with big files.
Personally if I made this type of game I would be using external resources and making good use of threading.

[Darkstar2]

Thanks. =) unfortunately I won't be able to produce a demo for a while, 4 weeks minimum. Because every time I render 1 single 2048x2048 panorama or 1024x768 frame it takes hours/days+ to render depending how complex my scene is and how many light sources are being used. The demo will have

Wow, I haven't touched Bryce in ages.  If you don't mind me asking, do you use some pre made resources or all designed from scratch ? Those look custom.  I've purchased a few add-on packs a while back for Bryce, never really gotten to using Bryce as my computer was too slow back then.
That sure is a long time to render, what's your setup ?

about 50 renders at least, and perhaps some videos (In Bryce videos are exported as AVI and I'll have to convert it all to multi frame sprites).

Why would you do that ? That will be a memory resource killer.  Do you mean videos as cut scenes ? Why not have them streamed by the built in video commands ? Personally I use TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works for all my video conversion needs, multi-core and latest CUDA ready, it's blazing fast and high quality.

The music is and will be completely home made by me - an original sound

Original music, very cool.  Will you use voice overs what would be a myst like game without voices

[Darkstar2]

I've seen his hardware specs, they aren't glamorous but they are good, bout the same as mine. It really shouldn't be taking that long TKG.

Isn't Bryce slow by nature ? I never really liked the interface that much, never gotten used to it or had much time to use it. Spent money + purchasing add-ons I ended up never using.  I'd like to make these type of games, maybe I should dig back my Bryce.

What version are you using TKG ? Any add-on packs ?

[time-killer-games]

Wow, I haven't touched Bryce in ages.  If you don't mind me asking, do you use some pre made resources or all designed from scratch ? Those look custom.

Right now I am using only 3 premade materials but I modified them like crazy so you won't easily be able to tell they were a part of the Bryce distribution. They might be replaced because I want everything to be made by me, but I'm not sure if I want to do that yet. However if I do use pre-made materials by the time I release the official playable demo, I intend to use pre-made things as little as possible and when I do use them they will be greatly modified. The 3D models are all 100% by me from scratch and I do not at all intend to use a single pre-made model in this project.

Why would you do that ? That will be a memory resource killer.  Do you mean videos as cut scenes ? Why not have them streamed by the built in video commands ? Personally I use TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works for all my video conversion needs, multi-core and latest CUDA ready, it's blazing fast and high quality.

Because though I am making this project in ENIGMA for the desktop platforms AND I'd like to keep things GMS compatible because I'm going to use the same project file for exporting to mobile with GMS which doesn't support video playback. I would much rather use a video than a large PNG sprite but I have no choice due to Studio's lack in video support. It really sucks because the file size is going to be so much bigger because of this it's not even funny.

I've purchased a few add-on packs a while back for Bryce, never really gotten to using Bryce as my computer was too slow back then.

I never used add-ons for Bryce before, and could care less about investing in them, they're not worth it (except for maybe the spherical panorama one that I've had my eye on). I use Bryce 7.

[Darkstar2]

Personally have nothing against using pre-made models/textures,content, most games now use licensed content / pre-made engines.  You can have all the pre-made stuff but what it comes down to is the programming / building of the game and how good the game is, as long as there is some original aspect to the game, I'm sure people won't judge based on whether the content is made from scratch or not.

Have you ever used DAZ3D Animation Studio Pro ? they offer it FREE now  (limited time), or POSER, be good for adding live characters.  Personally I am a complete novice with all the 3D stuff !

As far as PNG,I really would love to see how you pull that off, I don't think big multi frame sprites handles well.  Read a few posts about this on GMC and people claim the same thing, even read a post here, about GM:S and handling of large sprites / large files.  I tried it myself just for the fun of it, and confirmed what people claim, it did not work .  Also PNG is image only, you would have to then play the video/audio in sync.

If you pull this game off with GM:S without issues I will be amazed.

I think from what I am reading here and on GMC and the general feeling is that Game Maker is not optimized for making big games.  I don't know if it is because of their IDE itself - perhaps the compiler itself can handle things, but getting the stuff into the IDE perhaps is what most people complain about.  Keeping in mind it's still a 32bit app and can only access 2gb at once, so you would be surprised at how much RAM those big projects can gobble up once run.

[time-killer-games]

I have made multiple large projects with many HD multi frame sprites but I quit those projects due to motivation. I don't know what you are reading on the GMC but I have never had any problem with this. And I doubt I ever will. I've had no problems on PC, Mac, and Android, which is all I'm targeting btw.

I could care less about RAM. This is going to be a big game, just like people play Skyrim and not care about RAM neither should anyone care when playing my game (my game won't be near as complex obviously but I hope you catch my drift) as I intend to publish hard copies via Multimedia Fusion,  file size / RAM won't even remotely be an issue. =P

As for mobile versions they will be shipped on the same hard copy too with an installer doc of how to get it on your android device.

[Darkstar2]

I know what you mean about motivation, all so well. 

As far as the GMC, over the years I was reading about people not being able to import large files into the IDE, and here as well, I'm sure I could pull those posts if I searched for them.  I use a program that converts video to GIF/PNG etc, and i recall experimenting a little by rendering a 3D animated logo and using this as intro.  After reading how it failed with some members I tried to emulate that, and it failed for me too.  When using import and picking the file, the IDE would crash, if not crash it would slow to a crawl.  Keep in mind I have an P8Z77-V Pro + Intel core i5-3570k OCed to 4.2, 16GB of RAM + EVGA GTX660Ti+SuperCLocked 2GB, handles all latest games just fine, so CPU/GPU/RAM is not an issue, besides GameMaker is still and probably will always remain a 32bit program   So the problem is the software itself, not the rig.  If I wanted to make a large game I too would not care about resources, but the program would have to let me make full use of my gear. 

I tried this a while back and yes it was with GM Studio, there have been several updates since, maybe I should go try it again, perhaps things were changed ?
Can you give me an example / spec of a PNG file you use so I can try it, what resolution, what's the frame rate, etc.

So are you using those MF PNGs as full screen cut scenes ?

Besides, isn't the PNG file stored uncompressed in RAM ? as opposed to a video file that is compressed and gets streamed from disk and not stored in RAM and as you know, uncompressed raw video frames @ a decent frame rate takes some serious disk space.  You would really have to compromise on the quality of the video (bit depth, frame rate and resolution).

Many have requested video functions in GM:S but they absolutely don't want nothing to do with that function they made it clear.  Kinda makes you wonder why ?  Why is it a function that is available in other programs and not in game maker..... If you search the bug mantis and forums you will find mention about importing or handling large files and asking yoyogames to implement some video playback function......You might find some of my posts in the mantis as well......and on the forums. These requests date back years and some are recent, all met with a categorical "NO!", they basically are telling people if they want added functionality to make it themselves.

How nice of them to say that to people who have spent hundreds of $ over the years supporting their software.

[time-killer-games]

If you use DirectShow I can write you an example that will thread video playback.

If you'd do that it'd be amazing. I tried playing videos a while back but they only played when in full screen AND looping. Which is nearly useless. Was that a bug or was I not doing something right?

[time-killer-games]

Also I've come to realize this scene looks like total crap:



The screenshot doesn't look that bad but if you see it from a different angle/perspective the bridge/stairs platform looks very rushed, sloppy, ugly, and unrealistic. This is going to change. It needs propperly aligned nails/bolts and/or rope holding it together, instead of those weird spheres holding it together. Some of the stone steps I discovered are floating, have no wood supports. So that's ugly. And the models appear to intersect rather than to be properly connected in a way that makes sense.  I'm also thinking about whether to change the texture of the cave, it looks nice in a colorful artistic sense but it's very unrealistic. It's supposed to be a "magical" cave that holds ancient secrets but IDK the vibrant colors for something dark and colorless like a cave even in a fantasy sense just isn't doing it for me. Plus the texture is a modified version of something shipped with Bryce so yeah I have a lot to change. More detail to add. Imperfections to fix. The water looks really good but not for cave water. If that water was ocean water in the Caribbean or Hawaii that'd be a different story. It's just not appropriate for the setting.

[Goombert]

Hah that don't look half as bad as Super Mario LSD.

lol it was the buggy version of Project Mario before it was fully fixed up.