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421

Art & Art Pipeline / Re: Flashing Textures

« on: Jan 28, 12, 10:22:02 AM »

I do have some time lateron this evening, so I could check your screen out for any problems that may arise from your usage of MAX, if you like to?

Feel free to add me to Skype: d.gijzen

422

Art & Art Pipeline / Re: Flashing Textures

« on: Jan 28, 12, 08:58:09 AM »

I am a kind person, whoopiej!

uvsets -> Did you save a .uv or something along those lines in 3DS MAX and are using those?

423

Developer Hero Projects / Re: Gameplay ideas for a mmo RPG

« on: Jan 22, 12, 04:07:33 AM »

I've read through your blog.

What I liked about it:
 - You really think about simple matters, and doing them not only different, but also better in my perspective.

 - You seem to care about environmental effects, and want to have it "as real as possible".

 - The nametags: I hate them, therefore, they are removed in Pirates' Nest (Our MMORPG) -> Distinguishing a Pirate from a Marine is easy, but thus not if Pirates are fighting eachother; you could be attacking your own crew if you don't know how they look

 - Climate and geography: Environment MUST have an effect on armour, abilities, health, diseases (You CAN get a cold in PN, making you somewhat weaker).


What I did not like:
 - Strong players having spells to resurrect. I believe waking up in a nearby monestary or dark cave would suffice. (Besides, a player would never expect that he has to die to visit that place to receive a new ability , so it becomes coincidence )
 - Monsters killing players and therefore become stronger: "mwah". It isn't hard to let monsters grow when not attacked, but also have a look at it from a optimization perspective: you would have to place checks on every monster! Having roughly 10.000 monsters flying/jumping/humping/sleeping/drinking around could get really messy!


How I would change, to some extent, your ideas:
 - You can place check to how many players there are in a zone, and make the enemy stronger with 5-10% for every player in that zone. ==> This promotes collaboration, as a player could not be strong enough alone if the mob was twice as strong (10 players in a zone). In addition to that: increasing the drops of the mobs when there are more players around increases teamplay as well.

 - Classes/Races/Professions: In Pirates' Nest (link below) there is only 1 playable race: Humans. This is purely for the sake of reality. Classes? A classless system in which a player can learn what he likes to learn -> It's like in real world, I can learn what I want to learn, but because I learn something else too, it becomes harder to learn it all! Professions: a player can choose his own professions; again, as much as he wants to.

Have a look at our thread, perhaps I could have interested you:
Recruitment thread:
http://community.heroengine.com/forums/index.php/topic,1255.0.html

Project thread:
http://community.heroengine.com/forums/index.php/topic,1109.0.html

Team website:
www.sc-entertainment.com

Would love to see a Private Message of you soon

424

Art & Art Pipeline / Re: Can not get MAX to export properly

« on: Jan 18, 12, 02:18:24 AM »

For anyone else having trouble with this, one of my artists got a model to export and load into the game. Here is what he said:

The simple houses were easy as I just ran them through milkshape and regrouped the meshes into 1 mesh. HE doesnt like multiple meshes unless they are grouped together.

    Note: When exporting multiple objects at once, be sure to group them together before exporting so that they'll be interpreted as a single mesh in the HeroEngine. Multiple separate meshes contained in a single file will result in errors.

So in max you would select all the meshes and then go up to group and select group. When you go to export it will warn you about draw calls. As each mesh requires a draw call.

Now for scaling if you scale the model down in max you may get a message when exporting asking you to reset x form or something. Where it has the max scripts there is a reset xform button click that and while you have all the meshes effected click reset. Then you should be able to export again.

Thank you to those of you who offered feedback and helpful suggestions.

-Sparkling

In addition to this post: Grouping is fine, but it is not recommended, since it will result in multiple drawcalls. I always use the "Attach", which then results into only 1 drawcall. (Or Attach List and just attach all to the base model).

425

Developer Job Board / Re: BleachMMORPG

« on: Jan 08, 12, 04:23:03 AM »

It doesn't matter if it's profitable or not. It still doesn't change the fact that it's copyright infringement and it still won't save him from a potential lawsuit.

SWCombine.com is an online browser-based RPG that operates in the Star Wars universe without LucasArts permission. They've been going for 13 years but haven't been challenged because they're not-for-profit and completely free to play.

Subsection 12 of the disclaimer includes "ITS LICENSORS". So they "could" have a license from the copyright holder. Interesting...

426

Developer Hero Projects / Re: BleachMMORPG

« on: Jan 06, 12, 05:38:21 PM »

I don't want to crush dreams or anything but uhm... Think about how old you are right now, and what a team you have behind you, with a succesful release. What are the chances that they will give you the rights?

Besides, HeroEngine does check your game out before it is released. If it contains copyright-infringement (of course they don't know everything..), I don't think they will host your game. As game-hosts, you are also responsible.

427

General Discussion / Re: Using HeroEngine Account Validation for External Forums

« on: Jan 03, 12, 11:03:08 AM »

You will need an in game prototype demonstrating your game and art in some fashion. Otherwise I'll have 3000 12 year olds asking us to build them publically accessible beta functionality.

As for API for things like building an armory, that functionality exists, and is tied to the live server environments.

You could always ask a small compensation for it?

428

General Discussion / Re: Web-Devs are killing me..

« on: Jan 03, 12, 02:55:27 AM »

On a somewhat unrelated note, what about access to data about characters, etc., if we wanted to create a repository of data about the game itself?  Are there APIs to allow this?

That would have been my second question: character information. Exporting is not the problem, though the server-costs are if we update it every minute for a bigger playerbase.

429

General Discussion / [Resolved] Using HeroEngine Account Validation for External Forums

« on: Dec 30, 11, 09:10:27 AM »

Dear reader/community/Cooper/Herb/Chris,

"My" webdevs are on the edge of killing me. They are currently working on our own forum system from scratch, to perfectly fit with the game that we are creating, though there is a problem:

HeroEngine uses Oracle, that's great, but to the extent of my knowledge, access to this db is only available upon going live/beta/alpha with an actualy play-server. How would my webdevs get access to this database right now in order to work further on the website? This is a matter of life and death.

I read the thread created by NightShadow (http://community.heroengine.com/forums/index.php/topic,1220.0.html) in which he explains that in HSL, you can export the data to xml, and transfer that to be loaded dynamically through php. This is quite cumbersome and for accounts created on the website (only way), this is a great pain on capacity (sending xml back, etc..).

In short: Can we get access to the db? My life depends on it.

430

General Discussion / Re: Dynamic lighting

« on: Dec 27, 11, 05:16:58 AM »

I'm not 100% sure of what you are asking, the Russian video was too long.. Although:

Dynamic lighting is possible (Day/Nighty cycle), as well as dynamic shadows and all those fancy things. Just code it in, there is virtually no limit for you.

431

Game Dev and Gaming / Re: Can I use CG textures for my game?

« on: Dec 17, 11, 12:26:46 PM »

My legal counselor (family for the win, right?):

The link to their domain "allcgtextures" resembles "cgtextures" greatly, and it *could* be that the creators of the former downloaded and placed the textures from the latter on their/his/her own website.


Extreme example:
I created a GDD, and I gave it to a person. That person now decides to put my GDD on a public domain, free of charge and thus freely downloadable. Safe to assume that you are allowed to use it? No. As a lawyer, you should know that the original source must be known.

EDIT:
I have found a texture that looks a lot the same on both websites already.
EDIT2:
Most of the textures look self-made, and I can't find any others that look the same. There is more proof that the website is thus actually good to use. I'm going to contact the owner, or at least try to.

432

Game Dev and Gaming / Re: Can I use CG textures for my game?

« on: Dec 17, 11, 11:48:48 AM »

Use www.cgtextures.com to be really sure, as they state:

CONDITIONS OF USE

Use of the Textures is only allowed under the following conditions:
- Private or commercial use
- Use in 2D or 3D computer graphics, movies and printed media
- Incorporation in computer games, 3D models
- Selling 3D models bundled with modified versions of the textures, when the texture is customized for the 3D model

And the website you pointed out didn't say where they got the textures, nor do they have any legal page. I would stay clear from there, but that is just me

433

Developer Job Board / Re: Need help to finish your game?

« on: Dec 14, 11, 02:12:44 PM »

he paid you off just to say that didn't he??

I wouldn't even want to get paid for this.

I am an assistant marketing and sales director myself since I was 18, and am now leading this indie-company to make the game that I have been working on for years already. Just saying that I know how difficult is for beginners to manage even 2 people. For an MMO, you're really close to having 30+ people; you would require a lot of experience if you want to guide 30+ people.

If this person has it, he deserves the credit already.

434

Developer Job Board / Re: Need help to finish your game?

« on: Dec 14, 11, 12:28:50 PM »

I would advice all teams without a proper manager who knows what he/she is doing to get someone of this caliber (somewhat under it is also fine).

Having a team just of artists and programmers with no clue how to manage teams will fail. It's as Cooper said a while back on these forums: in the Indie industry, there are more people with ideas than there are people who have the skills to make it all happen.

There aren't enough people on these forums with real management skills, so I hope that ddougher's inbox is already full with PM's.

435

Game Dev and Gaming / Re: How do you make interiors in models?

« on: Dec 14, 11, 12:04:51 PM »

You mean a building where you can walk into? There are a number of ways to make interior buildings; I will give a few examples:

Create a big nice cube of say (x,y,z)=(10,10,10). Now create a new cube with (x,y,z)=(8,10,8) and place it INSIDE the 10x10x10 cube so that on each side, there is 1 meter left (in 3DS MAX, you can use the toggle function for exact placing), except for the height (which should be equal). Select the biggest cube and go to compound objects and use proboolean or boolean (I won't go into details about their difference here). Click on "Pick operand B" and make sure it's on substract.

Select the smaller cube in one of the views and voilą, you created 4 walls of the building. You can do the same for the doors and windows by creating new objects and substracting those from the walls you created.

For a more "round" house, use the same strategy as above, but then with a cylinder or a cone

Other method: for each wall, you could create a new cube. This is annoying, cumbersome, and not done by intermediate artists upwards (at least to my extent).