Visitors: First Contact multiplayer now available.

[Duion]

Its actually one of the least time consuming tasks on adjusting the looks of a scene like adjust lighting, postFX, clouds, ground textures, ground cover layers, all those things do not require manually placing objects into the level, I always start with those. A good level designer will pick a reference scene of the style he is going for and then he will adjust the looks until it matches, like adjust the lighting, clouds, sun, ground, grass etc. What you are doing is programmer art, it is functionally the same, but not aesthetically. Btw your cover art is really good, you could use that as reference how to make your scene look. You can make some badass looking scenes in Torque3D using just the level settings and postFX especially HDR. And here a funny meme image what programmer art looks like:

 

[LoLJester]

I don't know if it looks that bad. I've asked other people who have played the mission, and they don't think it's bad. Maybe the level is not well portrayed in the video; but, when you play the mission, I believe it looks better. For the final product, I will tinker with the scale of the textures and try some of T3D PostFX and see if it improves the look in any way. I'm mostly looking for a good performance and as bug free of a game as possible.

I'd like to hear some other people's opinion on here. Maybe it's that bad and I just don't have the eye. 

[Duion]

You cannot trust random people with their opinion, if the art is slightly off most people will not notice it consciously, but subconsciously and it feels weird then, but they cannot explain why. I did show my works to my friends and they often said looks good and then I had to tell them how it does not look good. Performance or not, crowded level or not, the rules still apply. I'm giving my advice because I think most people aim far too low with the quality of their visuals and they never improve because everyone does it that way, but you need competition to improve.

[LoLJester]

Ok. I will keep your suggestions in mind. Thanks.

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

I got a certain impression concerning the textures while watching the first video . be it some kinda high or exaggerated  angles in the normals , heavy ssao , or whatever was making the heavy light dark contrast , there are no displacement textures , right ?  but , I was seeing it on the roofs of the buildings in !THE MARINE! video . Then the same contrasty feel with the terrain in the vehicle video led me to notice a certain arcade instinct and Im glad you guys decided to debate . TY , have a nice day

btw , I thought the terrain textures were appealing .

[Azaezel]

Since you seem to mostly be looking for minimal time investment tweak suggestions, I'd say the main things that stick out as an art style discontinuity from the latest vid would be the vehicle projectiles and seat swap interface. Both seem much lower detailed (and by that I mean less variance per pixel when displayed) than the rest of the scene. One thing that might fit better with the projectiles end is either a ribbon particle emitter, or bolting on a ribbon object. Either will follow along and leave a multi-color trail. Minimal impact alts for the seat swap interface that might fit with your existing art would be either a wireframe-esque display or at minimum generating an outline around the gui element profiles of a slightly darker saturation level to give it some depth.

[LoLJester]

I'm now researching some tips and tricks on art to see what could be done to give the game more appeal. I still have to deal with T3D 1.2's limitations, so, minimal improvements, as Azaezel suggested, is what I'm looking to do; possibly more. With the memory and graphics limitations that I'm facing, I have to do this gradually, so that I don't break anything that's already working. Thanks guys for your feedback.

[Duion]

Actually people care far less abou a products quality as you see it as a developer, what they mostly care about is popularity, so efforts are best spend in marketing. I rushed to make my game in like 2 months and released it to still get on Steam while there was still visibility for indies because I knew with them allowing every game on it the visibility for everyone will drastically decrease and I was right, my early low effort versions of the game had far more players than my later better versions, but actually having players helped developing the most, because they find problems you may never have found etc.

[LoLJester]

Great insight. Thanks.

[LoLJester]

New WIP Multiplayer mission before and after added vegetation.

[LoLJester]

First building with interior of many to come in the new Multiplayer mission

[LoLJester]

SCIFI Generators guard tower for the new Multiplayer mission.

 

Edited November 24, 2023 by LoLJester

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

.., watching .

 

[Duion]

You could really ramp up the graphics, I mean we do not live in 2005 anymore.

[LoLJester]

@fLUnKnhaXYU Keep checking back. More cool stuff coming very soon! 

[LoLJester]

Military outpost for the new Multiplayer mission.

[Duion]

You should make the ground cover and terrain a similar color so they blend into each other better otherwise it becomes very obvious when it fades out in the distance looking very unnatural. I would make a forest floor texture and paint it under each tree and a lush grass texture and put it everywhere there is such an accumulation of the groundcover grass you will be amazed how much more aesthetic the whole scene will look when every plant has its own micro-biome.

[Kent Butler]

The buildings look pretty nice, what type of model are those?

It feels like with the terrain, there should be strong points on the ridges leading in to camp, especially along the road. Currently, enemies can advance to either/both ridges and establish high points shooting downwards at the towers without ever being in any defensive line of fire. I picture those guard towers positioned to give a view of anything advancing along the road(s) towards camp with tower approach/entrances shielded from advancing fire by the ridge. Like, peeking over.

Maybe make the forest thicker in places and bring it a bit closer to camp to give attacking foot soldiers a few infiltration routes that completely shut-down vehicles.

Fences are also a reasonably easy way to add some complexity to the battle-space. In reality, it feels like the military never goes anywhere without throwing up at least a couple fences. Adding some might help it feel more realistic.

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

looks nice , and I appreciate the input from the others , Id like to ask if you are utilizing any special engine mods , like some turret code , and , are you planning a force field between those generators ? , sure looks like it .

[LoLJester]

Thank you all for your feedback. I will take into your account all your suggestions and see if I can implement them without damaging performance.

My aim is to have the game playable on much older hardware as well. It is targeted towards casual gamers rather than professional modern gamers. As it stands, this mission is already eating up 2.6 GB of memory (with all the textures being compressed to DDS, models LOD'ed, and, interiors zoned.) It is the highest of all my missions so far, and FPS on older hardware is dropping the more I add.

I use an Nvidia GTX 1050 powered laptop to develop the game. The mission is running at 55 to 75 frames per second without any AI yet added. The reason I use a low end laptop is to monitor performance. The way I see it is that, if I can get the game to run at 60 FPS on this old laptop, then there should be no issues with the game running at smooth high frame rates on higher end rigs. Also, older laptop owners will be able to run the game as well.

@fLUnKnhaXYU 90% of the engine has been moded in on way or another, including bug fixes. I spent almost four years reprogramming or adding to the engine. I've added several resources as well as my own code. There is support for every kind of turrets, tanks, mechs, rideable animals, every kind of flying vehicle, melee of all kind, additional player features such as vaulting, rolling, grenade throw, C4 charges, climbing, down sights, multiple camera views, weapon inventory, and lots and lots more. Also, yes, the players will have to destroy generators to disable shields.

[Duion]

I also have an Nvidia 1050 GPU and my game runs on 60FPS max settings and I have way more graphical detail, your bottleneck is probably not the graphics but some unoptimized script or files.

Also my critique towards the visuals were mostly about aesthetics, not about adding more stuff, but arranging it differently so it looks more natural.

Regarding memory and space used no idea where it all comes from, my whole game is like 500MB and a lot of textures and models are not even used anywhere and regarding disk space you do not need to be so greedy, modern games use on average maybe 50GB now, some games even over a 100GB. Some games I used to play were recently updated and now they do not even run anymore with 8GB RAM installed, they need at least 16GB now.

Its pointless to aim for lower hardware, just look up the Steam survey what hardware is average now and use that as reference.

[LoLJester]

Artillery vehicles hangar for the new Multiplayer mission.

[LoLJester]

Playing as the Aliens in the game Visitors: First Contact:

 

Edited December 19, 2023 by LoLJester

[fLUnKnhaXYU]

[LoLJester]

Recycling plant  for the new Multiplayer mission.