BradleyMAdams, Will get in touch in case we need anything. Thank you. Adelphia, Thanks man.
So I've done tons of work tonight. Worked more on the grass shader, created meshes for our farms and flowers using Megascans, painted a lot of farms, tweaked lighting and post process settings, tweaked our trees (even though they're temporary as the idea is to replace everything with Megascans), and more. Let me just post the screens instead of writing.
Are you using splines to distribute that crops along? Something custom made or stuff from marketplace? it is pleasant to watch. Only thing is you should add some random offsets to that lines ( in case they are instanced meshes) to get more natural look
Adelphia, You're welcome. Justin Wagner, Thanks. cupsster, I have a material with light function domain applied to the directional light. A black and white mask in there will act as cloud shadows.
The trees look great! Are you using temporal AA or FXAA? If the former: have you had any problems with foliage getting smudgy due to temporal AA?
I'm using TAA. It does make things look a little weird if the wind is strong. But it's acceptable for the wind amount I have atm. I wish Epic could improve their TAA or at least add more AA options. But... it's fine.
The trees look great! Are you using temporal AA or FXAA? If the former: have you had any problems with foliage getting smudgy due to temporal AA?
I'm using TAA. It does make things look a little weird if the wind is strong. But it's acceptable for the wind amount I have atm. I wish Epic could improve their TAA or at least add more AA options. But... it's fine.
Okay, it's just that I've been having loads of trouble dealing with TAA killing all the negative space in my branch/leaf textures.
Xendance, I'm not quite sure what you mean by negative space in your textures but if you mean blurring the opacity mask then increasing the mask clipping value will greatly help you.
Here's a couple 4K shots. There are a lot of tweaks to do, but since our game world is so massive I'd rather not put a lot of time on details atm.
Are you guys going for historical accuracy in this one?
The farms, roads, and beaches are about 99.9% accurate at this point. What's left is detailing everything, creating additional props and foliage and filling the world out. Our modular houses and churches are beginning to be constructed and we're starting to prep to get our game launched on Steam Greenlight in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
Bomb_Bear, I think it should be fixed already. I'm 24/7 busy with game environment myself and haven't been following on our 3D artists for a while. I will ask around see what happened with that. Thanks for bringing that up!
We've hired a concept artist to help us develop framing for the screenshots we want to run when we launch the game on Steam Greenlight. The plan is to launch on Steam Greenlight in the next few weeks. The last of the screenshots looks like it's going to be done today and then it's a matter of taking our assets, framing them, and then submitting the whole thing to Valve and leaving it up to the community to decide if they will to vote for Our Ghosts of War.
The whole Early Access thing is weighing down on us, however. There's been a slew of games that have failed to follow through with their promises in the past and it's given the whole Early Access thing a very bad rap with users becoming wearier than ever. To resolve those concerns, we've decided to develop an in-game (also viewable on our soon to be live website) Road Map for how sales of Our Ghosts of War will translate into content additions for the game itself.
Here is an example using the DOTA 2 UI as a mock-up and random art pieces picked up from the net. Please assume that NONE of these assets are from our project and this is ONLY a mock-up designed to showcase how this functionality will be implemented. The idea is to attach copies sold directly to the content that will be created for the game. This way the community will know at any given time how purchases of the game will reflect the further development of the game itself, giving them an intimate look at how their money is being spent asset by asset. If anyone has any insight as to the potential pratfalls of this approach we'd be grateful if you could share your thoughts with us. Thank you.
Did tons more work. It's actually mostly tedious work atm since the world size is so huuuuuge and I got only 2 hands. Here are some more screens, including small sights from the beach. Enjoy. (The water kinda needs much more work though)
I find personal irony in the fact that I too worked for chump change freelancing for a client who wanted this exact thing haha (not you guys, but still funny).
Either way dude this is looking crazy good and you're only a half year in? Yeah I'm excited to play this man
Our VFX artist has turned in this particle and I'm keep tweaking the settings yet to make it more suitable for the art direction I'm taking on the game. Might be too bright. What do you think?
This is all coming along very nicely. I'm also super happy to hear about the webpage you guys are creating where users can see what kind of impact sales have made on what kind of content will be available in-game. Makes you guys (devs) much more overt in the amount of care you guys have for your game
This is all coming along very nicely. I'm also super happy to hear about the webpage you guys are creating where users can see what kind of impact sales have made on what kind of content will be available in-game. Makes you guys (devs) much more overt in the amount of care you guys have for your game
We're of the mind that presenting a proper roadmap establishes how a project still in development is moving forward with the money earned from Early Access release.
This transparency allows customers to feel comfortable with how their money is being spent and more importantly have a voice in what is funded. If the community prefers that we work more on uniforms instead of emojis, we can shift funding towards additional uniforms instead. Our goal is to be as inclusive and transparent as reasonably possible and build trust with those consumers who will have taken a chance in helping us fund our game and have made our dream project come true.
Spent most of the day trying to make the transition natural from grass meshes to soil. Made dozens of tests. Since it's procedural distribution and not manually painted it was a big challenge. Not sure if I'm happy yet...
There will be a campaign like in other multiplayer games like Borderlands or Destiny but that is not our primary focus at this point.
Update on development:
The original plan was to launch Our Ghosts of War at a retail price of $39.99 in Early Access and deliver enough content (including a campaign) to warrant an eventual $59.99 AAA retail asking price as we came out of Early Access. However, the quote we received for a 1m DEM data is out of our budget. Rather than have Maximum-Dev work with the 90m DEM data and have to redo all of his work after Early Access when we have the financial means to purchase the 1m data, we weighed our options on how we could best proceed.
We've been working on an unannounced game mode currently called "TvT" that was intended to be unlocked once players reached level 25. Broadly speaking, TvT is a team oriented survival mode with unique gameplay features separate from the survival mode on the Normandy map (sharing about 90% of the same gameplay systems). That's about as much as I can say right now.
The team has decided that since we want to put our best foot forward, and because it makes no sense that Maximum-Dev works on a terrain that will be replaced, we will launch our game with TvT for a $19.99 price point. After we raise enough funds to purchase the 1m Normandy DEM data, we'll raise the price of "Our Ghosts of War" to $39.99 to reflect our original intent.
The goal is to get networking working on the TvT prototype systems we have going now. Maximum-Dev has already 75% finished the "La Foret" map with a few tweaks remaining to the roads and riverfront areas. Once he is done I'll upload a 4k video of the map so the community can get a good idea of the layout and offer their thoughts. We're hopeful that we can get a playable prototype rolling shortly for testing.
An alternative might be to showcase the TvT prototype to launch a crowdfunding campaign. We'd technically get to keep more of our money for development (Kickstarter takes 5% - Valve takes 30%) but we'll come back to this once we have something more to show.
Makkon, I'm still working on it, not finished. Once my results are acceptable to me I'll post detailed breakdown. Thanks. Tomiajayi, Thank you. cptSwing, I'm not sure what unreal-y methods are.. my setup is pretty simple only using grass tool and types and offsets.
Creating roads. I think I should increase DFAO amount.
cptSwing, It's not possible to do it for the roads since the whole road surface is already very close to the ground. It only works for meshes where a big part of it sticks above the landscape surface.
Wow, it really DOES look like Normandie. You guys must have done a great deal of research to hit so close to home. I'm not from there but pretty close and it definitely has the vibe you get walking in the countryside on a rainy day. Outstanding job!
Just one thing about the road, and I know you'll get there - countryside roads in France are terrible in 2017 - cracks and potholes and cow shit and mud - so in 1944 I'm guessing it must have been horrible. You probably want to go super heavy on damage/grunge pass of you're aiming at something realistic.
Replies
Adelphia, Thanks man.
So I've done tons of work tonight.
Worked more on the grass shader, created meshes for our farms and flowers using Megascans, painted a lot of farms, tweaked lighting and post process settings, tweaked our trees (even though they're temporary as the idea is to replace everything with Megascans), and more. Let me just post the screens instead of writing.
PD: Nice job guys, look awesome
ZombieDEV, Dynamic skylight and directional light. Thank you.
Had a very short talk with 80.lv on this.
https://80.lv/articles/achieving-realism-in-open-world-environments/
Joopson, Thank you. Very appreciated.
Justin Wagner, Thanks.
cupsster, I have a material with light function domain applied to the directional light. A black and white mask in there will act as cloud shadows.
Here's a couple 4K shots. There are a lot of tweaks to do, but since our game world is so massive I'd rather not put a lot of time on details atm.
Ingsoc75, If you mean in regards to the environment, yes. As much as we can.
Jakub, Merci!
JamieMc, It's great to hear from you Jamie. I'm a big fan of your work! I hope the upcoming updates will be worthy to look at.
We've hired a concept artist to help us develop framing for the screenshots we want to run when we launch the game on Steam Greenlight. The plan is to launch on Steam Greenlight in the next few weeks. The last of the screenshots looks like it's going to be done today and then it's a matter of taking our assets, framing them, and then submitting the whole thing to Valve and leaving it up to the community to decide if they will to vote for Our Ghosts of War.
The whole Early Access thing is weighing down on us, however. There's been a slew of games that have failed to follow through with their promises in the past and it's given the whole Early Access thing a very bad rap with users becoming wearier than ever. To resolve those concerns, we've decided to develop an in-game (also viewable on our soon to be live website) Road Map for how sales of Our Ghosts of War will translate into content additions for the game itself.
Here is an example using the DOTA 2 UI as a mock-up and random art pieces picked up from the net. Please assume that NONE of these assets are from our project and this is ONLY a mock-up designed to showcase how this functionality will be implemented. The idea is to attach copies sold directly to the content that will be created for the game. This way the community will know at any given time how purchases of the game will reflect the further development of the game itself, giving them an intimate look at how their money is being spent asset by asset. If anyone has any insight as to the potential pratfalls of this approach we'd be grateful if you could share your thoughts with us. Thank you.
Did tons more work. It's actually mostly tedious work atm since the world size is so huuuuuge and I got only 2 hands. Here are some more screens, including small sights from the beach. Enjoy. (The water kinda needs much more work though)
Either way dude this is looking crazy good and you're only a half year in? Yeah I'm excited to play this man
Getting our VFX into the game!
Not the same tank but general idea is there.
This transparency allows customers to feel comfortable with how their money is being spent and more importantly have a voice in what is funded. If the community prefers that we work more on uniforms instead of emojis, we can shift funding towards additional uniforms instead. Our goal is to be as inclusive and transparent as reasonably possible and build trust with those consumers who will have taken a chance in helping us fund our game and have made our dream project come true.
Thank you for your feedback, gfelton.
Update on development:
The original plan was to launch Our Ghosts of War at a retail price of $39.99 in Early Access and deliver enough content (including a campaign) to warrant an eventual $59.99 AAA retail asking price as we came out of Early Access. However, the quote we received for a 1m DEM data is out of our budget. Rather than have Maximum-Dev work with the 90m DEM data and have to redo all of his work after Early Access when we have the financial means to purchase the 1m data, we weighed our options on how we could best proceed.
We've been working on an unannounced game mode currently called "TvT" that was intended to be unlocked once players reached level 25. Broadly speaking, TvT is a team oriented survival mode with unique gameplay features separate from the survival mode on the Normandy map (sharing about 90% of the same gameplay systems). That's about as much as I can say right now.
The team has decided that since we want to put our best foot forward, and because it makes no sense that Maximum-Dev works on a terrain that will be replaced, we will launch our game with TvT for a $19.99 price point. After we raise enough funds to purchase the 1m Normandy DEM data, we'll raise the price of "Our Ghosts of War" to $39.99 to reflect our original intent.
The goal is to get networking working on the TvT prototype systems we have going now. Maximum-Dev has already 75% finished the "La Foret" map with a few tweaks remaining to the roads and riverfront areas. Once he is done I'll upload a 4k video of the map so the community can get a good idea of the layout and offer their thoughts. We're hopeful that we can get a playable prototype rolling shortly for testing.
An alternative might be to showcase the TvT prototype to launch a crowdfunding campaign. We'd technically get to keep more of our money for development (Kickstarter takes 5% - Valve takes 30%) but we'll come back to this once we have something more to show.
Tomiajayi, Thank you.
cptSwing, I'm not sure what unreal-y methods are.. my setup is pretty simple only using grass tool and types and offsets.
Creating roads.
I think I should increase DFAO amount.
cptSwing, It's not possible to do it for the roads since the whole road surface is already very close to the ground. It only works for meshes where a big part of it sticks above the landscape surface.
ConnorDuke3DArt. Danke!
Just one thing about the road, and I know you'll get there - countryside roads in France are terrible in 2017 - cracks and potholes and cow shit and mud - so in 1944 I'm guessing it must have been horrible. You probably want to go super heavy on damage/grunge pass of you're aiming at something realistic.