Okay, this is a half showcase / half photoshop thread. I'm building a level at work in my, erm, free time?

Took this shot and thought some of you might like to have a crack at photoshoping it (and perhaps giving me ideas for the level):


The JED level itself spans over 800^2 JKU's. It currently contains 3 sectors. Atmosphere, Water, and Underground. The island before you is a 24x24 JKU area. The island itself is basically hollow (it was artificially created). It houses a hidden base much like that seen in the move "The Incredibles." I have plans for several other islands and a fairly large facility for the main island (in fact, I've already started on the underwater entrance). The textures are mearly "stand-ins" at this point that I grabbed off the internet. The island is going to be lush with plant life and, um, I've ran out of things to say, except "HAVE FUN!"

Good design, but the textures leave much to be desired.

Can we see a little kyle walking around? I have an estimate on how big it is, but I'd like to see for sure.

I'm a huge fan of rediculously massive levels (no sarcasm, I mean it) so it looks great. A few suggestions for later on: increase mipmap and LOD distance values. I think mipmap is default to horribly low values like .3, .6, .9, 1.2. Something like 10, 15, 25, 35 would be much more appropriate (especially since you can see so far).

Definately use max size textures on the island. In your screenshot they appear to be not stretched which is probably for the best.

For the water go with a high quality texture that doesn't have much detail, it'll make the water surface appear much less tiled. Transparency helps here too, but if your ocean floor is bland, don't go with transparent.

When you start on the plant-life, keep in mind that 3do's with transparent edges (due to the textures having transparent parts) clip/screw up your view of other 3do's. They might look a little worse with hard, straight edges by modeling leaves/brances, but the clipping due to transparency looks worse.

QM

What's with the big spire-thing?

It'd look alot better if you had transition textures.

I am suddenly reminded of Koholint Island from "Link's Awakening"

I'll give you $5 to make the Wind Fish's egg!

It could also have been Spire Island from The Wind Waker. XD Have it play the Zelda theme and some of us will be much happy. XD

Hmmm... add some vehicles, a bunch of trees, some fixed machine gun emplacements, a few trigents...

but yes, the textures don't look that good yet. Maybe try using force remap with a large top-down view that you cut into 256*256 squares (or has someone patched JK to use 512*512?)

do anyone read? or just skip the pic?

looks nice, Can't wait to see more, got any shots of the complex inside?

Lighting and a way of filtering the textures is a must because of the pixelly effect.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that this is a JED preview shot because I can't get JK to install on my company computer.

There's a trick for handling the transparent edge "clipping" of trees. Basically, it involves changing the skybox sector texture to a generic green color. Then, replacing the skybox with a 3do skydome and NOT flagging it to 'blocks light' or giving it the 'archi' flag. This allows the skydome to be clipped, right to the green, making the green what shows up in that transparent area of the textures. This means I'll also have to make the water as a 3do. Which is great, because I've had an idea for making, at least, semi-realistic waves in JK.

I haven't started working on the facility. It's mearly conceptual right now. Once I have some more shots I'll put them up. Hopefully I can get this transfered to my home computer before to long and get some in-game shots (wife *****ing permitting).

Unfortunately I haven't been able to do any more work on them due to being busy at work. But here are some Dev Shots that illustrate the sizes involved in this level:

This first "Dev Mode" shot shows kyle in Red to compare in size to the island:


This second "Dev Mode" Shot shows the island in Red to compare in size to the entire level:


Feel free to comment and even modify the pictures so everyone can clearly see and understand what you're referring to in your post. I'd like as much active participation in the development of this level as possible! :em321:

If your going to have a "skybox" atleast use it.

Is the first shot looks like a 3d preview, if it is. Can we see in-game??

The textureing needs work. But I'm not really sure what else you could do. I'm not a huge fan of "3do levels". I dont think they are very stable.