Wellston - Human Dome Town [Warning: lots of images (concepts)]

[Zweitholou]

I had trouble with lighting using the 1.9 standalone walktest of wellston.  The only light was where you started, and everything else was in deep shadow, dark enough that I couldn't really see anything significant.

[Xoel]

So a few questions:

When did you download the wellston.zip file? It automatically updates, and the current version lights correctly for me (though no shadows are cast).

Does it have similar lighting issues on 1.4 if you did get it recently?

Also, do note that at the current time of posting, the only light sources in the map are the lamps, so it is a little dark. I have yet to sort out an animated day/night cycle from the sky.

[Zweitholou]

I redownloaded with the current version and lighting works in both 1.4 and 1.9 now.  There is some weird color to the lighting in 1.9.

[Xoel]

It's yellowish in 1.9 from the lamps. In 1.4 it is crazy rainbow colours, that's the rendermanager? I think. Hence I sorted an upgrade to 1.9.

Glad to see it works for you now, I'll keep working on geometry over the next few days/weeks, it's moving into summer here so I should (theoretically) have more time to work on this. Though I'll be moving into my own place and working alot more over summer... I won't have any university homework either...

[Xoel]

Update time I figured. After a short discussion in #tempest-in-the-aether IRC, a few ideas for extra shops were thrown around to fill the so-far empty area. Four suggestions were given, all of which proved a good idea. The following buildings are now underway:

Butcher (my idea)
Middle Class Bar/Tavern (Lilura's idea)
Tailor/Clothing (Lilura's idea)
Med Centre / Apothecary / Surgery (Pizik's idea)

I've also since decided to include an "Armory" sort of shop. Various stalls will also be set up around the middle class areas, for player merchants to hawk their wares and a few will be owned by NPC merchants (with lower grade goods?). So far none of these buildings have interiors, and the NPCs can stand outside until interiors are done. The exception to this will be the Middle Class Bar/Tavern. At this point it's higher class counterpart has no interior.

As of my writing of this none of these meshes are in the walktest... I'm still working on them I just figured I should update on progress.

Remember, if anyone wants to texture a building/item (so far all textures except one of the middle class houses and the streetlamps are needing to be done properly) just give me a yell and I'll flick you the blender file for the building. If you can, try to filter/CrazyBump a normal map out of your texture. If you can't do that, I can . I'm also not worried about overall skill in texturing, and I don't mind holding your hand a bit along the way and assisting you if you're inexperienced.

[Phoenix]

I guess the walktest only works for windows… am I right? If you're gonna be better than PS, start thinking about MAc users ;P

[Xoel]

Yes, the walktest zip I have provided will only work on Windows. That's all I have made available, however Crystal Space will compile on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX if you have the skills to self-compile. Once exported, the map files can be used by a Crystal Space installation, so the wellston.zip is 'global' in that sense, you just need Crystal Space to run it.

Tempest in the Aether intends to use the PlaneShift engine (or an engine derived from it and modified to suit our needs, if necessary). This means that the game will be available on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. One should not assume that just because I haven't found a Mac version of the walktest_static that the game or any of it's alphas or betas will not work on that Operating System.

Thank you for reading.

[XilliX]

This work is wonderful to see. I hope we can put together something some time soon that people can download and use as a glorified chatroom.

[Xoel]

We've been making steady progress on the town. One by one, buildings will be textured. The more people who assist with this, the faster Wellston will be ready to play in!



As per requests, I will be sketching out a map of the area around Wellston, to have a rubbish dump, the funnels, etc... so we can make the area in PnP and have our first heightmap-based map too.

[Xoel]

Ok, I've made a fair chunk of progress over the last 24 hours. I figured I'll post some screenshots.

I have successfully compiled Crystal Space 1.9, and must give a huge thanks to the CS developers who helped me.

This has now allowed me to make lightmaps in lighter2. At the moment they're just basic, but here's the effect:





The CS devs have instructed me to run lighter2 with directional lighting to bring normal maps back. I will work on that tomorrow, alongside getting higher quality screenshots. We only have a few more buildings to texture, and then we need to texture the set dressing components (fences, water towers, meat at the butcher, etc.) as well as finish the roading/sidewalks.

[XilliX]

I look forward to the dressing elements like the stalls the stairways the fountains.