Okay a screenshot for a quick review for those who haven't seen the project already:



And now for a Shot of the Interior:

the Island looks nice, but thespire still looks odd.

The comples looks neat as well.

is the island a 3do and the complex or what?

Yes, the island is 3do. There's actually a cave entrance on the island (actually looks more like a mine entrance, the reason for this is because, this is the only way to get resources to the facility by foot). Once you enter the cave you'll pass through a large doorway, this is where the facility begins. You'll go down a little bit of a ramp and then you'll get to a small teleportation pad. When you activate that, you'll be transported down to the base interior.

Originally, I was going to have an elevator service the all 3do interior but lighting problems prevented me from being able to do this. So it's now going to be a combination of jk archi. and 3do.

I'm hoping to get a small version of the level up on a server in the next couple months. However, there is still the special code stuff to handle and seeing as how I don't know cog...you get the picture.

Btw, all of the shots are obviously WIP. The hallways actually have a grate flooring on top of the existing flooring. However, none of the flicker cogs I have seem to work properly...

Additionally, I would have the island more populated by now if it wasn't for a number of different issues, mainly the lack of a LOD generator to handle the different LOD's (to keep the frame rate high). Someone was working on one, but I don't know what happend on that end. I think I'm at the point to where I'm going to try and condense the 3do's down and just continue to use the RVTCS.

Those trees look HUGE...

Their actually only 2JKU tall. A mere 10x taller then Kyle...

You need more trees/plant life. Having just a few trees clustered together looks weird.

See above post. There (were) LOD issues. I think I have resolved the problem, at least for now. I've already started populating the island with some more trees. I'll post some more screenshots tomorrow (maybe this afternoon).

That's very good, reminds me of farcry except without the neon plants, which is good. Too bad there are no texture filtering algorithms or else it would be worthy of being called high quality.. [RUNS] ... j/k
I really like the inside shot. Maybe remip-map the textures, they are kinda grainy at that distance.

Actually, a number of those textures are JK textures, so they're going to be a bit "grainy." There' so many new textures I'm going to be adding anyway, I wanted to use as many of JK textures as I could in order to keep the file size down (because it's going to be huge).

More shots to come soon...

And some updated shots...

Added some more trees (these trees I forced to second level of detail because of the computer I'm running on at work):


This is the cavern entrance:


And a little deeper into the cavern:


Obviously, here again, I'm still working on these areas as well. The last chamber is going to have to be modified I think. I still need to add the large door (even though it'll probably never be closed, unless needed for gameplay reasons) and finish the "blasted-out" area (w/ broken cross beam, burn marks, debre, ect).

Man its got a spooktastic atmosphere, even in broad daylight. I'd walk around that island and fear mutant animals attacking me.

Yeah, when I changed my CMP to Barron06, it borked the sky...but I kind of like it.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, probably a good 80% or so of the base and other object are destroyable. In fact, you'll have to harvest the trees (by destroying them in a special way) to add to your resource supply. The trees will then "grow back" over time. The objects in the base (walls, conduits, ect) can be repaired (and must be repaired in some cases). My thoughts on the code (to ensure that even non-essential things get repaired) was that if the base was completely repaired, you recieved a "smuggler" shipment of resources on a regular basis.

Anyhow, it was just some ideas I was toying around with.

that's awesome. [edit] ok nevermind i read.. haha[/edit]

you should like.. email me a beta.. cause im good at that and this looks awesome.. tonystockert@gmail.com

Is there a way to get a better skybox but still keep the nice tone?

You need a more washed out looking water texture to complete that badass theme you have goin on in the last shots.

I agree, the sky is green(or gray) and the water is blue..

anyway I really like this, and that last shot sorta reminds me of the goldeneye control center

Increase your sky distance, and change the texture of the spire. It looks...weird.

The sky and water are only temporary. This level is (will be) designed for atmospheric flight AND underwater travel.

I have a test level where (on a micro scale) I created a planet, atmosphere, and clouds. The transition from space to land and vice versa is pretty smooth. I simply haven't implimented it into this level yet. I will say, however, that the distance to that sky texture is ~400jku in these shots.

Additionally, I have an idea for waves and such, just haven't had the time to impliment it yet...

This seems to own ;)!

Okay, a couple more shots.

Created the 2nd LOD tree model (paper model) and populated the island a little more. Can you tell the difference?:


Just wanted to remind everyone that this level includes undwater stuff to (though it's not very populated right now):

I know I say this every time you post these shots, but GOD I hate that ugly brown phallus sticking outta the middle of the island!! Sorry, I do.... I mean, you're doing such a great job on every other aspect of the island... it's just a shame you have that monstrosity there to distract you from the rest of the level's beauty.

Look, I know you think that looks like a volcano, but it doesn't.... I am sorry if I sounded brash... I just thought you should know.

It's only supposed to semi look like a volcano. It does serve a practicle purpose. However, if you want to give suggestions on changing it, feel free to modify one of the shots in MSPaint to give me a general idea of what you're expecting. Changing it wouldn't be a problem IF it's really all that important.

[edit] or even a semi descriptive written suggestion would be good. Right now, all that I've gathered is that few people seem to like the texture (which I was planning on changing at some point, anyhow). Is it the size? Shape? If I removed it completly, what should go in it's place (I can re-route the exaust to somewhere else). Again, I don't mind changing it, I just need more constructive ideas of what to do with it. [/edit]

Shortening it, widening it, and (most of all) retexturing it to look like it blends in with the rest of the island should be enough.

:banned:

But if you really want an MSPaint representation.... well yer outta luck.... but here's a PSP representation:

I don't like the trees at all from a distance. And this isn't because of their LOD, it's because they all look identical, they're shaped like mushrooms, and they have no branches. In fact, I think a conifer looking tree would be a much better choice on this map, and not a bushtop tree.

Okay, basically, you just want me to delete the spire? It looks a bit odd considering the size of the trees. Reason why I said MSPaint, is becuase it'd been easy to quickly draw an outline of something in it's place.

I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll research some different possibilites and when I get around to it, I'll change it. Personally, I'm still partial to the spire. It really helps make it identifiable from 200+ JKU away...



The "Bushtop" trees seen here were in my reference pictures of actual coastlines and islands. They do have branches, they're mearly closer to the top. AND, these trees are more or less positional stand-ins. I'm going to replace many of them with different variations.

Well when you do that, I shall be happy. :p

Yeah, other than the trees I like it a lot

Keep the top, just texture it the same as the rest of the island.

looks awesome, but ditto on that spike mostrosity.

Okay, I need some opinions on the grass...

[edit: Blended the grass colors and used JKpaint to convert the texture so less of it would be clipped off.]

It's not bad. Though it does look like sea weed. I would also go darker on the color.

Yeah, I thought it looked like seaweed as well. Straighten it out. Grass has just a gentle cure which should be generally the same for all blades.

I think that grass looks really good, just fix the larger, lighter curved blade that gives away the repetition.

I thaught it was a real picture until I saw the old JK Water lol, great work!

You should probably design a texture that makes the transition between grass and sand less glaring.

Im really looking forward to playing the finished version. I like the grass, and I understand how diffucult it is to make things perfect in JK, but hey if you want to redo the grass more power to you! This looks like a good CTF/Infiltration level. I really like custom/16 bit mats.

A new water texture would look great

also is there any effect on the FPS from the grass?

Best grass ever... even better than real grass.

Same here. :O

And as for the transition between sand and grass, you might want to do something like this:



(courtesy of Mada @ http://www.thelimelite.net/html/textures1.shtml )