Messages

1

Offtopic / Re: "Free Games" Article - Quite a slap in the face!

« on: February 02, 2010, 02:43:29 am »

What can i say, im hoping that the somebody putting together that article just doesnt know what Open Source is! (Which would be quite preposterous in it's own right). I can admit that a lot of open source games lack any special appeal, being just the Open Source equivalent to commercial games or clones of them (usually inferior ones). But it should also be mentioned that there are games around, Open Source non the less, that should be more than just worth mentioning. (UFO: Alien Invasion for instance  ).

But seriously, that was probably an example of bad, ugh, "newsmanship".

2

Bugs prior to release 2.3 / Re: Texture issues and fixing in game graphic card settings is there a how to?

« on: February 02, 2010, 02:34:18 am »

I got the same problem in the first mission, not sure about later since i just tried out if the build works. I used Mutons latest upload.

Game: ufoai-2.3-dev-28338-Debug-pentium3-O1-sse-7z-small-win32.exe
Rev: 28338
Computer:
Geforce GTS 640MB Ram (Official Drivers 196.21)
Windows XP SP3 32-bit

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Artwork / Re: Attempt at Alternative/Placeholder Intro Animation

« on: February 01, 2010, 09:45:00 pm »

About the licensing, would attaching this too all my stuff do fine? http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt
Im not too experienced with licensing, so i'd rather ask. And about those textures, i'll certainly take a look at them if i get to texturing. If i need to create some of my own i'll attach them with the license ofcourse.

About that webspace, in that case i'll send you the *.blend file and all the necessary textures once it's ready. I just want to make sure that everybody who might take an interest in using some of those is able to easily acquire them without waiting for me send them over.

BTW: Thx for the script, it should help out with the animation.

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Artwork / Re: Attempt at Alternative/Placeholder Intro Animation

« on: February 01, 2010, 09:08:04 pm »

Yesterday i was making some attempts at creating something along the lines of a skyscraper for use in later City Scenes. In general i would prefer not to show too much city terrain (a lot of modelling and rendering), but yeah, i tried anyway. Now, i went a little overboard and the model is too high poly to use in game, and is a bit** to render. But maybe somebody could use a high quality render once its finished, for a loading screen or ufopedia perhaps? Well, tell me what you think.

I attached the actual picture of the building from mumbai that i used as reference and some renders.

Edit: Its still untextured, and not everything has been optimized for performance yet. Oh, and it isn't even finished yet, its still missing the basement section and some additions in the middle.

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Artwork / Re: Attempt at Alternative/Placeholder Intro Animation

« on: January 31, 2010, 04:11:23 pm »

OK, After watching, these are my thoughts right off the top of my head:

2) Text is OK in video clips - as a final end-result in an overlay only.  What I mean by that is that this game is offered in over a dozen languages, and the video files should not actually contain text, just places where text will go when the game overlays them on top of the video the player will see, so that the video clips don't have to contain text in all the possible languages and we don't end up have many versions of every video for every language.  While designing the video it makes sense to temporarily have text in there so we know where the game will end up putting it, but the final product shouldn't have it.  (I hope that makes sense.)

Makes very much sense, in fact i just made the text in the video to see how it could look. I predicted that a game project with so many translations would need some other solution. But it helps to slap some lines onto the video while designing it, so i can see how much "time" i need in the intro to display the text.

3) As for resolution, don't worry about it for now, just render them in high-quality to start with, and when the final product comes it will be converted to RoQ or OGM anyways, and at that point it can be scaled down from just about any other format.

I was more interested in the Aspect Ratio i should use. Since it would be wise to decide early on how to set the camera aspect ratio in Blender. if i set it to widescreen it will catch more footage on the sides, and less on top of the screen, and that would be good to know so i can plan the actual scenes better.
    Also, depending on what Aspect Ratio i use, the video will display differently for users in the game later. If i make the video in 4:3 normal resolution, it will display ok on native resolution, but will have black borders on the sides with a 16:9/10 screen. Now if i make the Video in 16:9 to begin with, users of 4:3 will just have some borders on top of the screen, which i personally think are much better than the ones on the sides, or worst case, a deformed picture if it transforms it to fit fullscreen. (See Attachement) Im ofcourse assuming the video will be scaled up in-game to fullscreen later.

for UFO:Alien Invasion, please use this font http://ufoai.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ufoai/ufoai/trunk/contrib/7th.zip

and for the text in the intro... as destructavator said already, not baked into the clip please. we should use the sequences (see wiki/scripting) for this and place the intro into the background. (not yet implemented but should not be that hard)

Thx for the Font, it'll come in handy later. About the text, as i explained above, its there for testing purposes. I also hope somebody will be able to answer some of the more Designish questions. About scale and engine exhausts. Ah, and also one thing, i didnt find a good engine sound for the Video in the Trunk, so i took one from here http://www.freesound.org/ for testing purposes. Im not so good with the licensing, but would be nice if somebody more experience in that area could tell me if we could use some of the sounds by the artists there. Here's the legal page on there http://www.freesound.org/legal.php

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Artwork / Attempt at Alternative/Placeholder Intro Animation

« on: January 31, 2010, 01:14:32 am »

Long story shorter: (in other words, the stuff you don't need to read if your in a hurry)
A week ago or so i decided to move my lazy butt and broaden my horizons by finally learning some 3d. So i got myself a copy of Blender and went on to learn something new about it every day. Some two days ago i finally got to the point where i wanted to learn the basics of Animation in Blender. And since i wanted to avoid making those standard animations with cubes flying around, i figured, "hey, why not use some Alien Invasion models?". Some rendering hours later, here i am, writing about it.

First, here's the link to the video file. I propose downloading while reading, since i had to put it on my private FTP that my ISP is giving me (the file size was too big to attach it, 25,4 MB). So i cannot guarantee good download speeds. (Especially for people on the other side of the big pond).

http://soulrip.neostrada.pl/IntroRender02PP.7z
Also, a Megaupload link.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZVO3HD4V

To the point: (in other words, the stuff you wanna read)
Basically i was attempting something from which i could learn Animation, and also something that you might be able to use.
I got my inspiration form the intro animation lying around in the SVN Trunk, it was made by Destructivator if i remember correctly. Anyway, do keep in mind that its very much work in progress, comments are much appreciated. I used the model of the UFO Bomber by sitters, hope that's alright (my favorite UFO model btw). Im not sure how much time i can spend on expanding this animation (time issues), but the general idea is to suggest that whats shown on the video is the attack on Mumbai.

Now, while making this short clip i stumbled upon some general issues which would be very usefull to resolve for future Developers/Animatiors/Artists in general.

First off all:
1- What size are the spaceships and jets in relation to each other? (I do remember seeing a size comparison by Destructivator somewhere on the forum, but cannot find it anymore somehow).
2- What propulsion do the Aliens use? I read up they use Antimatter engines, but what does that mean from a design standpoint of view? I'm especially interested how the engine "residue" should look. I'm not too happy with the particle effect i used in this animation, but on the other hand, don't know what i should be aiming for.
3- Those "green elements" on the UFO's, i read up that they are supposedely some kind of heat expulsion mechanism, but how are they supposed to look? Should they emit some kind of green light? Or maybe particles?
4- Also, engines on the Bomber and for instance Scout look quite different. Should the effect applied to them look different?
5- Fromt what i read on the wiki, 6 ships landed in Mumbai, what class where those ships?
6- Should Animations be made in PAL/NTSC or HD resolutions? Im talking about the aspect ratio here. HD resolutions are probably more future proof.

Some of my personal remarks:

1- I dont really like the Planet, i downloaded it from some Blender resource site. It was licensed on some kind of free license, but i would like to create my own Earth anyway. Since the texture used in that file didnt allow me to scale the mudball up, i had to use camrea tricks to make it seem big.

2- The end of the clip is the epitomy of "Work in Progress", i didnt want to heat up my 2d editing program just yet. Btw, do you have a special font for the UFO: Alien Invasion logo? The one in the Top-Left corner of the website, or on the wallpapers.

3- Somewhere around frame 970, i can see some strange anomaly at the right corner of the screen, i have no idea yet what might cause those little green particles to be displayed, but i'll have to fix it.

4- The next step in the Animation is to show a group of smaller craft being on route to Earth after the UFO Bomber passes by.

5- I would like to try and avoid ground scenes as long as i can since im still a newbie to Blender.

6- I guess i overdid it with the "dark ambience", since i assume not many people are even able to distinguish stars in the background. (My monitor settings are pretty bright)

Puh, i guess that was it. Sorry for the long post. Hope somebody reads this!

7

Artwork / Re: GUI - 2.2.3 dev gui revamp

« on: October 27, 2008, 05:15:53 pm »

This weekend i'll probably have some time to spare, so i will try to look what i can use and what not from the other people who did some work on the gui too. But overall, it's bad to mix up different styles. It would be best if i did some tutorials, or at least made some source files for people to modify, so all the graphics in the game (or at least some of them) can be kept coherent.

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Artwork / Re: GUI - 2.2.3 dev gui revamp

« on: October 24, 2008, 02:52:27 am »

Well, the way i create it is really fast and easy to use. So size doesn't matter, it can be as big as you need it to be. Also modyfing an existing star background to make it bigger is a piece of cake, so just say the word and it'll be done.

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Artwork / Re: GUI - 2.2.3 dev gui revamp

« on: October 24, 2008, 02:12:40 am »

Well, basically a window like that could be constructed the following way (see attachment). The process would be very similar to constructing a webpage. But in order for it to be convenient in use for the menu scripter, somebody would have to implement some function which would put together a menu like that after inputting the right parameters, or at least a script generator which would generate the necessary Code.

Either way, should i go and try to recreate at least the geoscape screen of the proposed new UI http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Proposals/New_UI using my modified style? Or should i put together some source files with which people could recreate my design themselves?
Because from what i understand, your stuck with the old GUI because the original creator of the new one dissapeared into the great void of the internets.

Now, regarding another matter. I almost forgot, but when i started playing around with with the GUI, the first things that i changed were the geoscape background and the map_sun.tga. If you like them i'd be happy to send them to you. (see second attachment)

[attachment deleted by admin]

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Artwork / Re: GUI - 2.2.3 dev gui revamp

« on: October 23, 2008, 03:47:13 am »

I'll see what i can do Winter, if i get the time.

btw: I hope it's alright if i don't make a 100% copy of it, but instead apply some of my own touch. Ofcourse i'll try to keep it similar to the original.

btw2: Are these windows supposed to be scalable or not? Would be good to know now i suppose.

edit: Hmmm, i came up with something like this on the spur of the moment. Would something along those lines be acceptable, or is this overkill? As long as windows are not supposed to be scalable it would be a piece of cake to make this work, with scalable windows it would require a bit of tweaking though.

[attachment deleted by admin]

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Artwork / Re: GUI - 2.2.3 dev gui revamp

« on: October 21, 2008, 04:12:06 pm »

The UI proposals in  http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Proposals/New_UI  look nice as well as more manageable than those of the 2.2.1 version. Just two little comments about them here.

1."Basescape" UI. Could you also display the remaining free room for new recruits in the upper-left corner? Maybe including the total figure of current recruits just beside the "PERSONNEL" header, while adding a text line named "BASE CAPACITY" or something similar to display the current total room of the base (being placed in the "base name" box, in the "personnel" box or as a different boxt located between both of them). Or maybe an alternative way...

2. "Research" UI. Would it be possible to indicate the total laboratory room in each base? Perhaps including a new icon (for example, a microscope) to identify this figure, at the same height than the names of the bases, and at the right of the two already existing icons with figures?

From what i've seen it shoudn't be that hard pielroja, actually i already thought about that. And if i ever make it to the base and research UI's then i'll probably put that stuff on the screen. It's just a matter of knowing the right variables and displaying them.

I agree with Drag D. It also more easy to implement it with resisable window.

I think resizable windows is gonna be hard to do no matter how the GUI looks, unless they are boxes filled with one color. So i don't know if it woudn't be a better idea to use the limited coding manpower for more important tasks like fixing bugs or adding new content to UFO:AI.

While SoulRipper's effort is a solid one i think that the proposal from here : http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Proposals/New_UI looks more stylish  .

Yeah, i know what you mean, i like them too. Although thats exactly why i picked a different approach. In my opinion stylish glossy menu's and stuff like that look good on webpages, but for me, a game GUI, especially a Sci-Fi one should be heavy. And i also noticed that lot's of professional game productions stick with that attitude too. When designing i was keeping in mind GUI's like in these games:
Dawn of War, Sins of a Solar Empire, Gallactic Civilizations and a couple more.
Look up em' screenshots on google from those games if you like.


On another note, from what i've read, for now everything is mostly just propositions. Is there some wiki page or other place where somebody wrote down some guidelines for designing those UI's? I mean something like:

"1. In the future menu's are intented to be resizable, keep that in mind when designing
 2. Window's and pop-ups are intented to be draggable in the future.
 3. [Ideas about the general preffered style]"

I know beggars can't be choosers, but writing up some preferences really helps the artists. I don't know who, but somebody already wrote that somewhere on the forum.

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Artwork / Re: GUI - 2.2.3 dev gui revamp

« on: October 18, 2008, 02:43:10 pm »

Well, for now i'll just try to finish the first geoscape screen. Later we'll see if there is need to redo the rest of the screens in the game too.

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Artwork / GUI - 2.2.3 dev gui revamp

« on: October 17, 2008, 10:12:46 pm »

As i've read your open for suggestions regarding some new design for the bit dusty GUI graphics, so here comes one of them. I tried to spice it up a bit, also, i didn't exactly like the 2.2.3 development version UI which was aligned to the right side of the screen, so i changed it to resemble the 2.2 design.

Anyway, those issues are not a problem right now, i'm rather curious what you think about the graphical style in general. Here are two screenshots ilustrating my design on the geoscape menu. For now this is the only screen that i changed, and not all elements are done yet, also, please bear with the mess of old buttons i left there  .

The first screenshot "screencap1.png" was taken in-game, in the left bottom corner of the screen is the Description element of the menu (it didn't have enough space with the default 2.2.3 dev menu) which already works fine. In the top right corner is the info screen with credits, time, date, and the timelapse buttons (those already work too). Beneath that are three buttons intended for (from left to right) Eventlog, borders and radar range (not in working condition yet).

Also, i noticed that the more finer elements of my graphics get distorted when i put them in-game (i suspect because of resizing), that's why i attached the second screenshot "project1.png" with the original graphic showing how it's supposed to look.

Anyway, it's just a proposition for now, so... what do you people think about it? Constructive criticism is welcome ofcourse.

Here are the files


[attachment deleted by admin]