myFunProject_01

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

Thanks for your art , Duion , and for clarifying a bit more what the halo issue is . And do you not feel that "for personal use" feels a little restrictive ? Ive had that program for a while and never installed it because of that being in the license aggreement . So , considering that they give the nice program away for free is more than generous , however that small stipulation sorta feels a little restrictive and as you're an artist Im sure you understand how that might affect the enjoyment of your work . .

[Duion]

Are you talking about Haloremover? I cannot see any license issue there, it is made for people to use it, it is freeware. That guy has a license section on his website that is for his art assets that he offers which are also freeware.

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

the installer requires that i to agree to "solely for personal use only" . thats pretty plain english ,

[Duion]

But you still seem to have no idea what it means legally. The software is freeware, you can use it for free on as many computers as you wish, you can even redistribute the program unaltered. I also don't know when personal use becomes commercial use, it is probably when you run a business with multiple employees. I also don't know the difference, but on Garagegames for example you could buy a indie version or a commercial version of some packages or tool, the difference was that with the commercial version you were allowed unlimited revenue and were allowed to transfer the license of the program while the indie version was limited to the use of you or one person and 250k revenue and these are just their definitions.

I wonder why you even bother, I mean when you at some day have a game development studio multiple people working for you and make millions of revenue, then it may be time to read license agreements more carefully and buy the appropriate licenses, but even then most likely nobody will even care. If that is really an OCD level problem for you, you can just ask the creator.

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

Duion , thank you for your advice concerning the legalities of an EULA ..

Im more concerned with the problem with the small dandelion plant that it flashes out when closer than .2 units above the terrain . I emphasied "small" as most such models are a bit larger and do not present the same problem . That and the cheetah wheels aren't working (rotating) when used for the tires for the buggy . The steering works though .. I wanted to make my selfie beside the buggy but ,you know , it didnt seem right with it not running right .

[Bloodknight]

Probably wouldn't take legal advice from duion, he tends to have his own twisted definition of words that fit his anti-establishment views better.

personally I would generally argue that personal use only is an anti-commercial option, otherwise, there's a huge set of 'personal use only' software I can personally use to make money I suspect is a poor defence in court, and i wouldn't rely very much on a 'but duion said' defence either.

https://www.quora.com/If-a-copyrighted-work-is-for-personal-use-only-could-it-be-used-for-business-purposes-as-long-as-the-work-is-not-distributed-to-others?share=1

linked this, but a simple scanning of any other page with a stipulation of 'personal use only' and not even the higher bar of 'strictly personal use only'...

If you are really concerned, and potentially you should be because legal terms are legal terms, a simple email to the developer might just solve the problem since much of his stuff is freely available and some of it explicitly allows commercial use iirc

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

thanks you Gentlemen for helping me to understand . It is quite considerate of you and I appreciate you .

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

more attemp at less halo using GIMP

i removed the alpha channel from the images and added a greenish background and set the alpha color to the greenish background .

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

in an earlier post I mentioned that the small dandelion model was flashing (severely) when place on the ground . I was using 64 and 48 such sizes for square size of the terrain and I believe it is the reason . smaller numbers have no adverse affect on that terrain level at least in closer proximity to the origin . I'm playing around with it . even the largest models like sectors buildings show a nasty Y axis terrain level line or whatever it might be called , at such high number as +10,ish . others at 2048 x 8 have looked pretty good so far .

[Duion]

This is not how you do it. You need to fill the alpha channel with the color you need, not remove the alpha channel. There is no function for it in Gimp, but you can make selection from alpha channel so it only selects your grass for example, then inveret the selection, fill it with green, then invert again and delete the green again. Whatever the color it was before it was deleted remains in the alpha channel, default is black.

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

Thank You Duion , Ill keep playing with this even though its for maybe just re-furbishing some old images , its still interesting .

Im not sure of purpose of a couple of GIMP functions but , in filters/colors theres a selection for decode alpha , which returns a background color . Also in layers/transparency is one called threshhold which when to 255 or its highest setting sets the all of the colors in the image to transparent . It might be nothing , in this matter with halo , but its interesting .

[Duion]

I know how it is done and this is how the halo remover tool does it, many artists do it manually with a blank color, the result is still good enough.

What you doing is wrong, the threshhold is for fine tuning the cutout lines and you should not use transparency for vegetation, only alpha thresshold.

In your new images the alpha color seems to be white now, if you load the texture in Blender, it will show the alpha color by default.

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

first , thank you Duion for your last bit of guidance , I consider it all as best I can . And now for the latest of what I consider to be some neato shots . Pieces from the sectors demo , an enormous terrain , a couple of neato particles , specular enhancements in the windows of the cityBuildingA asset , forest (with wind adjustments) , windEmitter (see the particles ?) . In the picture is a large zone with the taller buildings and several smaller zones with a single cityBuildingA . honestly the terrain takes 30 minutes to drive across in the cheetah . Any idea on how this might would perform in a multiplayer network ?

[Duion]

honestly the terrain takes 30 minutes to drive across in the cheetah . Any idea on how this might would perform in a multiplayer network ?

Regarding performance, it does not matter, but regarding gameplay you may never find the other player.

[Bloodknight]

The terrain is fully client based and is fully contained in memory which would be the only point of concern, I'm not sure which parts of the environment still use the square size as the basis for cells. Somebody was looking at some form of paging for multiple terrain blocks which might suit better if the aim is both better looking AND bigger.

In past experiments I've tried 4K height maps with some success, tho again with the caveat of memory usage, tho I will say this was done before the engine became 64bit engine. I also tried with 8k heightmaps, I don't recommend this unless you have an infinite amount of patience

[Duion]

I woud not reommend to use anything larger than 1K terrains, if you don't use a terrain generator and only use the ingame terrain brushes, you will find out why, if you try to sculpt it all for real by hand.

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

One of my more pleasant expreriences while trying for a largish terrain was with a 2K at 6x square size . It behaved very nicely where the squares' edges are drawn . Larger than that produced an edge which noticeably changed slightly its Y point , creating a line that varied up and down but , even at ridiculous scale of 64 ish the result was a line which would vary maybe 1/2 unit in appearance . If that completely proprietary terminology makes any sense to you . thx

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

this terrain is 2048 x64 square size and the line variance is less than 1/2 unit(meter) . I have seen the unsightly smoothing of which I think you are referring . Ghastly but , a few passes in gimps blurring function does ok , I think , seems I remember that it was quite blocky .. Check that in fact this terrain was hand painted in gimp and smooth a silk . But most certainly Ive encountered the blocky terrain cant remember the circumstances though . Of course you already know I appreciate it .

[Duion]

You cannot hand paint the terrain in Gimp, Gimp by default does 8 bit channel depth, but for a heightmap you need 16 bit otherwise you will encounter blocky terrain. So go use a proper Terrain generator or figure out how to make 16 bit greyscale images. Your ridiculous large square size will cover up a lot of the blocky terrain, but on regular terrain it will be very obvious.

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

Duion , Ive just upgraded to GIMP 2.10 which provides precision options one of which is 16 bit . And Yes , when i reduced the square size to 1 it was all blocky . I guess Ill take a big leap and install haloremover too . So as to not appear to take things for granted , Ive really wanted to use it

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

hey all , I managed to use a ray cast from the player eye and fire the turret weapon to the spot , but still nothing with the turrets jerky turning interpolation . I'm also interested in keeping the ground cover off of the decal road . I made the tank and little green man and terrain heightmap , and am using some of the free assets available in t3d demos mainly Konserian Highlands and I think thats Ubergame grass , but my new cool pics .

[Jason Campbell]

The only way I can think of to remove ground cover is to paint under the decal with another terrain material.

[Duion]

The only way I can think of to remove ground cover is to paint under the decal with another terrain material.

 

That is how I do it, usually some dirt texture, which adds additional detail and realism to the level, since roads are not build on grass, in reality they clear the area before they build roads on it. If you really want to keep it grass you can make a second terrain material with the same texture, but remove the ground cover from it, so you can control where the ground cover is.

Ohterwise I would advise not to use my assets from my old packs, but use them from the actual Uebergame repo, since they are often the improved versions and bad ones sorted out. The grass you are using is one of my first attempts, which I was not satisfied with.

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

thx and thx .

[Steve_Yorkshire]

*squints* Tries to ID the tank ...