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3D dragon-flight sim demo

Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:53 pm
by Shelim
Because recently I had few spare days, I decided to work a bit with C4 engine I am licensee of. The engine is written purely in C++ and is very powerful in terms of graphics and technologies (it has port to Playstation 3 ;) )

To learn more about its architecture, I created small demo in which you are flying... Arokh :) I've added normal maps to dragon's textures (so the scales are *really* 3D) and my friend Rastaban made animations. I've also created small level, but it is without collision tests.

It is very simple simulation, however it took only about 3 or 4 days to complete including intensive problems with local/global coordinate system (Sometimes I hate maths).

Download link: http://www.sendspace.com/file/sjof15 (15 mb)

No screens this time, sorry

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 3:38 am
by AXE
I am excited to run this, is a great thing you have done! But cannot get it to run, """C4.exe - Unable to locate component""" """This application has failed to start because XINPUT1_3.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem."""

I kinda gather we need the C4 program installed before we can load this.

Is there an optimum pc we should run this on, so it will work?

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 7:49 pm
by Arokhs Twin
Works OK on my system. The terrain textures look very smooth though; what resolution are they? Arokh looks more 3D but the texturing is very smoothed out. The engine looks like it would probably cope well with a dragon game; does it cope well with massive environments with a large viewing distance?

Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 8:28 pm
by Shelim
@Axe
You have outdated directX. The newest version is 9.0c released on November 2008. You can find it on MSDN or in couple other places in internet (in example Googles ;) )

@Arokhs Twin
Terrain textures are 4096 x 4096. If someone has crappy hardware (some ATI cards has problems with so large textures), then they automatically get reduced to 2048 x 2048.
I've added normal maps to Arokh's textures (and this made huge difference), unfortunately I lost alpha channel on wings.
I will do some tests on large maps on weekend to test how good results it get. But code looks very promising :-)

Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 10:25 am
by Riftweaver
Wow, good job Shelim, I can almost see what Drakan 3 might look like :)

Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 12:22 pm
by AXE
ah ha! Got it to work, and its awesome! yep directx problem, I had 9c, but needed the validation copy for nov 2008 online download. The optional download for install later did not work, neede the online ver.

But excellent game engine for Arokh!

Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 1:29 pm
by Shelim
Today I created sqare map which has more than 1.5 kilometers on each edge (it is more than 9x larger than in previous demo) and scaled down Arokh to test how it behave in so large environment. Despite apparent problem that crosspassing entire map takes more than minute of flying at maximum speed it does not slowed down fps even a bit (and there were no impact on fps even after I added fire effects and lens flare as sun, as well as some other models as trees).
So it looks promising. Give me good game scenario (design doc) and some 3D artists and we can rule the world ;-)

Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 7:33 pm
by Arokhs Twin
Hmm, seems my video card can't handle it very well as it seems to be oversmoothing the textures and I'm getting some flickering textures. I have a geforce 7600GT with the latest drivers. Frame rate is excellent and it looks promising as a game engine for a dragon game though.
Wish I could help with the 3D art and scenario but I'm hopeless at those things.

Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 7:24 am
by Outlaw Wyvern
If anyone can screencap vids, throw something up on YouTube.
I can't play it because I've got a Mac, but I wanna see it!

Easily understood if noone wants to go to the trouble, but I sure am curious.

Stills, even!

Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2009 1:03 pm
by Shelim
@Outlaw Wyvern - good news for you: C4 has port for Macs and if I only find Apple computer to compile my demo on it (and there is fair good chance that I will), next release will be for both PC and Macs (doesn't matter PowerPC or Intel). I am now working with my friends on our own 3D dragon model (and perhaps some enemies), to create little 3D shooter :-)

Our Dragon Model (Untextured and unrigged. Human skeleton only for size reference):

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/1894/dragon1.jpg
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/9645/dragon2.jpg

Any help on art and level designing will be much appreciated.

Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 12:33 pm
by Outlaw Wyvern
Thank you for that info! I'll check that out.

Did I understand you to say that this program will run on a PS3?
Just curious...

Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:09 pm
by Shelim
No, not exactly...
To run this on PS3 I need a couple of things: first, dev tools for this console, as this require to pay fee to Sony. And second, more expensive version of C4 licence (but I can buy it for the different in cost). For now I simple don't need it...

Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 6:34 pm
by Outlaw Wyvern
Understood.
Frankly, I was just casting about for a quicker way to get my hands on something cool!
Thanks for even PLANNING to enable Mac users to play this.
You, of course, rule.