As someone who is involved with the production of the TEK graphics, I would welcome any feedback regarding the TEK screenshots. What do people think of them ? What don't they like and what do they like ? What do you think is missing ?

Regards,

Max

I like the genreal look of the buildings, they are a change from the buildings in RA2(westwood's finest moment ).

Things I don't like is sudden cut off in shading on the slopes and floor in the desert/snow scenes.
Is it just me or is that sand building in the desert shot not quite at the right angle?

The units don't appear to have any shadows, which looks strange because everything else has. Also with flying units without shadows won't it be hard to show where the unit is when flying?

If anything is missing it would be cliffs, as there are none of them in the screenshots. Also walls, and rivers

Oh god, I'm a fussy b******. I do appreciate how hard it is to create so many graphics in a huge project and its very unfair for me to compare this game to RA2 has they have teams of artists. But then again I'm just a moaning perfectionist.

The jungle landscape is also my favourite of the terrain sets. Propbably because it has a lot of variety in the three types of textures it uses.

Snow and ice is actually extremely difficult to do since you have so few shades to use. It was a nightmare, believe me, although the scenery will be helped by having plenty of trees (are you listening Jan ? ;-) ).

As for the sudden cut offs in the hills, I think its a combination of lighting (between two different rendering packages being used) and once again lack of shades (in a 256 colour palette).

There are a lot of other types of thing that I would like to attempt to do, graphics wise, but I have to live within the limits of my free time and the constraints of the game engine. Still, some of those you mention are on my list and are currently being prototyped - and looking quite nice ;-). Unfortunately, not all of what you ask about will be possible.

Finally, I'm doing my best, given the limitations of the hardware I have and most of all my free time - which is always in short supply.

Thanks for the comments and keep them coming.

Regards,

Max

more trees are no problem :-)

The choppers will probably get shadows, but that's not sure yet.

The hard borders on the slopes will vanish soon.

Cheers,
Jan Klose
Artex Software

The shadows don't look dark enough on some of the screenshots, but apart from that it's looking pretty damn good...

I just find the red bars confusing, units with full health would be better off in green, shading through yellow and orange to red, so you can see at a glance if a unit's damaged. But then I've played way too much Total Annihilation in my time

I second that, being one that usually selects large groups of units for attacks - it's a lot more useful if you see the damaged units in red others in green or yellow. I'm not sure shading is the best option but I haven't seen it in action so I don't really know.

The shadows don't look dark enough on some of the screenshots, but apart from that it's looking pretty damn good...

Thanks for that. It's nice to hear people comparing the graphics to PC strategy games like C&C. While TEK won't have the same quantity or variety of graphics as a PC game, I'm trying hard to keep those graphics that I do produce near the level of a PC game.

Regards,

Max

PS Keep the feedback coming ;-)

changing the red bars to green might be a good idea. :-)

Cheers,
Jan

The TEK buildings and those vehicles (that I have done) have all been designed in TopModel and then textured and rendered in Bryce on the PC. I don't actually do any modelling on the PC, other than use some of Bryce's landscape features.

The trees were created using a specialist package, as will the explosion and smoke effects, (when I get round to them).

I actually much prefer TopModel to those PC based modelling packages I've tried (Amapi and Carrara). Although, I would love to trade up to 3DStudioMax or Lightwave one day. Well, I can dream anyway. Until then, the search goes on ...

Regards,

Max

Regards,

Max

Also with flying units without shadows won't it be hard to show where the unit is when flying?

IMHO without the shadows, the flying units do appear to be stangely shaped-ground units. Shadows on these would be a good idea, if only to show that they are in the air (erk comparrison coming up) like nthe Orcas in C&C? Admittadly i have absolutly no idea how you're going about putting this game together (and it's looking veerrry cool) but when a chopper lands in the aforementioned PC game, the shadow sort ofglides across the terrain until it meets up with the landing chopper. Oh, hell, I'm not explaining this properly. I'm sure you know hwta I mean...:-)

Good luck! And if you are reading this you should be working

________
[Steve]
RiscPC SA & Duron 600@850
ICQ: 51028779

I think they look good, and are nearing C&C quality, which I suppose is what people will be comparing it with. I just hope the explosions look good, as if they look tacky and rushed all your good work with the units/landscape will be undone

Ah - explosions (an interesting point). I'll do my best but there are some 'issues' with doing really good explosions. I'll have to see how much I can work around them ...

Good luck! And if you are reading this you should be working

Thanks. I did a fair bit of work last night on some of the units I'm responsible for. They're now looking really nice and (IMHO) they're ready to go into final production. I'll have to see what Jan says though !

Regards,

Max

So what are these issues to do with explosions? Do you have to treat them as lots of particles modelled individually or what? Getting into the realms of stupidly complex physics equations are we

I don't think there's any software for creating realistic explosions under RISC OS. I don't know how it's done on other platforms although I've heard of particle systems. I imagine some are made from digital videos (FLI, MPEG2 etc).
I've made one from taking screenshots of an MPEG2 but it's quite a crude method!

Making the explosions in no problem - I have the technology (and it isn't a RISC OS thing). The main problem is that the TEK engine only supports a one bit mask - which makes smoke and semi-transparent flames a real headache to do.

Max

So what are these issues to do with explosions? Do you have to treat them as lots of particles modelled individually or what? Getting into the realms of stupidly complex physics equations are we

Nope - it's all trickery - but very realistic trickery at that. (And yes, we are talking particle systems here)

Max

As a designer though, Max, you don't need to worry about transparancies do you? This should be taken care of by the coders shouldn't it?

I thought it would be on another platform.

As a designer though, Max, you don't need to worry about transparancies do you? This should be taken care of by the coders shouldn't it?

Unfortunately, I have to change the output from the particle system which has graded transparency, and create a sprite mask. This often leads to halos round the images that look out of place on an alternate background.

Antialiasing is the bane of my life. Nice results - hideous problems when creating masks.

Regards,

Max

PS I hope that explanation is clear - it's far too late after a good evening out to be writing emails !

PPS Someone email Jan some nice 8-bit transparency plotting code please ;-)

PPS Someone email Jan some nice 8-bit transparency plotting code please ;-)

:-) Why not? That would solve Max' problems!

Cheers,
Jan Klose
Artex Software

Andrew

I don't fully understand what you mean by 'changing the output' but you seem to require two things - transparency code and blending code.
I assume the blending would be done around the periphery whereas the translucency would take effect on the body of the explosion.
For translucency a crude way is to add the colour components and divide by two with various exceptions for black or unset colour components in the two pixels being combimed.

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

What you say is about right. There are two issues - blending (which affect the raytraced graphics which are anti aliased) and transparency - which affects images like the explosions which are naturally transparent. In actual fact the blending issue isn't too bad. However, the transparency issue is a bit more frustrating.

I'll try to explain the situation ...

What I mean is that the graphics program I will use to create the explosions is able to export frames with proper alpha data (i.e. 8 bit alpha mask). What I usually do next is process the images in Compo, since it has pretty good masking utilities. The processing involves discarding the original mask (since the engine doesn't support 8-bit transparency) and creating a new 1-bit mask. The problem is that the original frames are rendered against a background colour (usually black), which obviously is more dominant in those areas that are highly transparent. This can be removed by increasing the area that the mask covers (i.e. attempting to mask out these areas). However, this can often cause a lot of the image to be hidden. The alternative is to keep more of the image - but this leads to an image that has a black halo around it, which looks unnatural, especially in the desert / ice regions.

Getting the balance right can be a real pain and sometimes the resulting image always looks wrong. The only avenue I can think of that might work well would be to take the 8-bit alpha data and try and change it to a dithered one-bit mask. This would enable the background image to show through in transparent areas - but might result in an image that is too fragmented.

Hope this is clearer.

At a guess there is probably no solution that is completely acceptable, given the constraints (see below). I guess I'm a bit of a perfectionist ... ;-)

Max

PS NB Although 8-bit alpha support would be a big bonus - it wouldn't elminate the halo completely. (Although I believe the package does support a special type of image export mode to get around this problem). It would result in more natural looking in-game effects. Mind you, there probably aren't enough colours in 256 colour modes to cope well with 8-bit alpha blending anyway. Oh well ...

PPS I wonder how much slower a plot routine that support transparency would be ? Probably pohibitively slower.

I'll try to explain the situation ...

What I mean is that the graphics program I will use to create the explosions is able to export frames with proper alpha data (i.e. 8 bit alpha mask). What I usually do next is process the images in Compo, since it has pretty good masking utilities. The processing involves discarding the original mask (since the engine doesn't support 8-bit transparency) and creating a new 1-bit mask. The problem is that the original frames are rendered against a background colour (usually black), which obviously is more dominant in those areas that are highly transparent. This can be removed by increasing the area that the mask covers (i.e. attempting to mask out these areas). However, this can often cause a lot of the image to be hidden. The alternative is to keep more of the image - but this leads to an image that has a black halo around it, which looks unnatural, especially in the desert / ice regions.

Getting the balance right can be a real pain and sometimes the resulting image always looks wrong. The only avenue I can think of that might work well would be to take the 8-bit alpha data and try and change it to a dithered one-bit mask. This would enable the background image to show through in transparent areas - but might result in an image that is too fragmented.

Hope this is clearer.

At a guess there is probably no solution that is completely acceptable, given the constraints (see below). I guess I'm a bit of a perfectionist ... ;-)

Max

Regards,

Andrew

Cheers,

Max

I'll give Charles' suggestion a try and see how I get on.

Cheers,

Max

Bingo ! ;-)

By pulling out all the stops I think she'll make it !