[Joust3D] Dark Castle

ndcv

Hey y'all,

This is a level I've been working on for the Joust3D game. I'm mostly done with modeling, except I will be taking out some details near the bottom (since we want to focus attention at the top) and adding a few more details to spruce things up. I'm maybe halfway done with texturing.






Joust3D uses a "bloom" feature (similar to Prince of Persia) so we should be able to recreate at least some of the glowiness

This thing is on a pretty massive scale - I haven't got any characters in there for perspective right now, but the whole structure is a bit over half a kilometer tall. This might be tweaked once the gameplay is more finalized, in case the players can't make it back and forth between the platforms

Oh, and the polycount so far is something like 175,000 but I'm using LOD's on all of the teeth, which puts the polycount down around 95,000 at most.

I'm open to any crits or suggestions!

-Choirboy

SjetvsKerrigan

95k? What if the player flies way out and looks at the whole level?

Steakhouse

They die.

KDR_11k

What's the problem with 95k?

What worries me more is the size, seems like it'll either require lots of players or will be too focussed on sniping which would clash with the name Joust.

ndcv

Steakhouse is pretty much right The players won't be able to get far enough away to see the whole thing, and at this point it looks like we won't let them touch the ground.

KDR - aside from some powerups, the player won't have any distance weapons so sniping will be limited but yeah, it all depends on how it feels once the gameplay is finalized and we can see what it's like. I guess it's just a matter of balancing the feeling of sheer awesome size vs. the boredom of waiting 5 minutes for the other players to reach you

Josh_Singh

looks great man, IT LOOKS GREAT!

RazorBladder

Is it me or do you have reflective surfaces nailed down there? The bloom looks pretty awesome.
Lava around the ground looks rather dodgey but I don't imagine that's any great concern for u guys rite now
Very nice work on the map

cep

I think all the texture could use work.
The brick thick black lines, the floor looks like the side of a rock, and and! where's the bloom effect on the lava?!?!?!

good work.

KDR_11k

As far as I understood it this is a render from your modeling program but you're hoping to get a similar look ingame, right?

JBoskma

The skybox/ground is really boring compared to the castle. The lava looks like it's way too big on scale, mainly because it's really blurry and monotone. I would love to see some detail in the lower parts of the castle and in the evironment. Watch the battle of midas tirith from Return of the King. Maybe it will inspire you.
The reflections on the towers look neat, but

Showster

I like the idea is it possible with the level editor to do bump mapping / blend maps on the textures because at the moment the walls seem quite plain, and look far too clean for a lava castle forte.

Nice work tho

ndcv

Thanks for the feedback - I should make clear, like KDR is saying, these are Maya renders and I haven't seen it in game yet or worked out how to best replicate some of these effects in the engine. This is basically what I'm HOPING to get in game, the reflections are just rendered reflections

Jboskma - I might liven up the environment a bit, but I'm actually going to take out some detail at the bottom of the walls, because the players won't ever get down there. But I could see doing some more background details on the rock island and the lava... thx

Showster - are blend maps like height mapping where the engine blends between several textures? It's already got bump mapping going on - it used to be a lot stronger and looked cool from far away but if you got up close to it it looked horrible.

Showster

blend mapping would be where you can have to textures and use a mask to overlay one texture on top of another using alphachannels or some form of vertex painting.... always nice to stack up materials if your program allows you 2

Daedalus

no giant eye in flame ???? how come !!
no tech crit for me... nice job