2551 replies to this topic

[axe360]

Now there ya go!!! The last pic is the one...

[Kablammo11]

There's always the next picture, axe. This next one comes from imgur, so let's see if it can be big...

 

 

Nothing to do with the riparian situation, this one. Just trotting out a monochromatic version of Golferella, last years swing meter video girl. Poor dear spent 12 months in the back of a cupboard, needed some air...

 

Aaah, and now it's just a click away from being big... try it!

[shimonko]

Sorry axe, now K11's images are too big for you.     Well you've still got Ctrl-Minus.

 

I like the altered terrain better--it'll allow you to get away with less vegetation in areas where you don't want so much reedwork.

[axe360]

All good my friend..

[Kablammo11]

Oh, it will be epic:

• Strategic stones
• Uneven terrain
• Bushes and non-reed grass types
• Generous population of drawing distance-conforming reeds along the ponds
• reeds hotspots on 9, 10, 17, 18
• possible other reeds hotspots on several inland holes just for visual variety (6, 8, the vale between 12 and 13 in bottom left part of Golferella image, also the depressions between 11 and 14 , 14 and 15)
• matching terrain texture with "marshland" look (based on standard grass texture, darker colorization) for better reeds integration
• And I'm still trying to find good images for a floating water lily carpet or two. Like so (that a single leaf shape exponentially copy-pasted, btw):

 

 

Welcome to the exciting world of course design. I'll report back tomorrow.

[Jimbo63]

Looks great K11.

[Dazmaniac]

Oh, it will be epic:

• Strategic stones
• Uneven terrain
• Bushes and non-reed grass types
• Generous population of drawing distance-conforming reeds along the ponds
• reeds hotspots on 9, 10, 17, 18
• possible other reeds hotspots on several inland holes just for visual variety (6, 8, the vale between 12 and 13 in bottom left part of Golferella image, also the depressions between 11 and 14 , 14 and 15)
• matching terrain texture with "marshland" look (based on standard grass texture, darker colorization) for better reeds integration
• And I'm still trying to find good images for a floating water lily carpet or two. Like so (that a single leaf shape exponentially copy-pasted, btw):

 

 

Welcome to the exciting world of course design. I'll report back tomorrow.

 

Looks like a Pac-Man convention, lol.

 

[Kablammo11]

And yesterday's tomorrow has become today, so here is the denouement of my travails regarding the riparian situation.

 

There will be 16 images over 2 posts to look at for you soon, click on them to get a big, full screen view of them.

 

But first, let me explain why I'm doing this at all. It's not that I enjoy hogging this Forum with my questionable outpourings. Well, actually, I do... but there are two more reasons for this:

1. Firstly, I'm doing this becaus if I didn't, MJ and AJ would gang up on me, drag me into the nearest back alley and beat me up real good, calling me names and telling me not to be such a slacker and to go post more content on the double, because they sure did not want to bother with doing that themselves. (I really don't have to place a wink-smiley or type "lol" here, do I?)
2. The second reason is to show all those of you who might want to do some similar course design work all that they might need to know about CF/Unity. I'm blazing a trail for them, not in a dashing fashion but slowly and insecurely, in the hope that they might learn a thing or two.

 

So, with that settled, where were we? Ah, yes... the Pac-Man convention. Good one!  More about that later. But let's start at the beginning, early this morning. I came prepared, I had a plan, and it was time to put it into action. Phase 1 was a rigorous terrain tool attack and a serious round of shoreline shimonkorrugation:

 

 

What's that? Well, ever since our very good friend shimonko named his wonderful CF thread "Shimonkourse", I must punish him for that by shimonkombining every word that shimonkommences with the syllable "co" with the prefix "shimon". Of shimonkourse this is shimonkompletely shimonkomical.

More to the point, as you can see above, he correctly suggested to corrugate the straight shoreline to break up the straightness of its line. So I did just that with a pointy, small terrain brush.

Phase 2: Smooth it back with a very light smooth brush. I show you the Unity GUI in the images so you can see what settings I use. In this case, a very light opacity value of 5 to gently, very gently, very repeatedly, slowly get rid of the sharp edges in the shimonkorrugated shore line.

 

 

That done, time for phase 3: Texturing. First by adding my new "marshland" texture a clone of my grassland texture, only darker and with brownish patches. Note the darker area around the shoreline: This will be the base for my reed planting.

 

 

See the text at the bottom left of my screen cap, where the yellow warning triangle is? That's the problem currently holding back CF - it means that the free version of Unity cannot export the project properly.

Phase 3b: Introduction and application of a new texture: "Wet rock", to be added to the slightly steeper parts of the shoreline:

 

 

Small detail, to break up or hide the tiling of the wet rock texture, I added just a dab of my dry rock texture over critical spots at 60% opacity. Take note: Very good strategy to get rid of tiling - combine with a 2nd texture.

But since we're on rocky ground, time for phase 4: Dupicate a few older rock presets and airlift them in to break up the shoreline even more:

 

 

Phase 5: With the landscaping done, now I can plant the reeds. I use 4 different types of them.

 

 

And finally, the Pac-Man Con. For that, I first created a "Plane" game object, then added the texture shown in my previous post to it and used it as a Prefab. By duplicating the original plane several times, I was able to add clouds of waterlily leaves to the surface of the water.

Don't ask, I'll tell you now: No, they do not undulate or gently sway along with the water surface. They are just a stupid 2D cutout hovering 4 cm above it.

 

 

And that's how I fought the riparian wars. But what is the outcome? The result is in the next post, due to Forum limitations on images per post. Scroll down for more.

[Kablammo11]

As the dust settles over the Heath, time to patrol the premises to evaluate the aftermath. These are the money shots, so lets crank up the project quality to fantastic, switch on the fog, lower the angle of our directional light and rotate it to put things into nicer contrast.

 

 

Let's start our little tour at the 9th green. Pond 0109 shows us a nice combo of all the measures described above working together:

 

 

A short hike past the front of Salixia Palace brings us to the 10th hole, the one most exposed to riparian turmoils, now considerably less of an eyesore than previously:

 

 

I might yet create and add a bump map for the Pac-Mans, they do look a bit flat right now. Moving on: Another view of the 10th, but this time as seen from the lay-up area of the par 5 17th. 

 

 

Looking back up the 17th, this time. If your landing camera replay shows you this, you've hit a poor shot.

 

 

And we end at the 18th, the short par 3. Green in front, tees at the right.

 

 

Frog paradise, out here, by the looks of it. Don't squish the tadpoles...

 

 

You may have noticed some strange vertical orange lines in the reeds. That's an Unity bug that keeps jumping from one grass type to the next as you add new ones. It was in my heather grass earlier. It's quite annoying in Unity, but will vanish in the game. I have no idea how to deal with this display error...

 

 

Oh well, what a day! Thanks for watching.

[AndyJumbo]

Uh Oh awesome job K11 !

Honestly i wanna play in there now !

HUH !

[highfade]

Wow! like a well-aimed kick in the nuts, these images can bring tears to a glass eye.  Gather the horses, we attack at dawn.

 

Great work K11!

[shimonko]

Wow, what a difference:

 

From:

 

 

To:

 

 

I especially like the second image in post 589.

[axe360]

Well you guy's know I am always going to point out things that don't work yet in PP with things that do work in the old TW's 08 PC game in the interest of having a gr8 game and moving lily pads are just one of them.. Old technology... PP needs to be as good or better than that.....

 

In TW's those pads I believe would come with a cls system (course life system) that would include ducks in a pond, butterflies and such, now you say oh Axe, don't be so trivial but I know that details matter and if it could be done with old technology one would think it wouldn't be a problem with new technology.. So let's get it in their PP...

 

Not knocking your efforts K11, you have done a wonderful job with what you have so far...

[Kablammo11]

I knew it! So you're Riley Nigglington, axe?   

Relax. In theory, it should be quite easy to animate the lily pads and make them simulate a rocking motion while looping them around a bit. Instead of using a standard plane as a base and going for a cloth, I might even impart some waviness onto them.

And, once more, veeeery slowly.... that's not a PP or CF issue, that would be an Unity function over which the gents at PP have no control whatsoever. It's technically possible to achieve the desired effect. It would also be possible - possible, not at all realistc, but possible - to add a few animated frogs jumping around and a few dragonflies buzzing over the reeds.

All possible, there's no limit - except PC performance in-game. But right now, this is as far as I'm willing to take it.

 

Thanks all for the kind comments. 589-2 is my fav as well. Golfers will never see this view, unless they select the walk mode and stroll well to the side into the woods.

[axe360]

LOL... Shouldn't be a problem with in-game performance, the cls folder which includes all the life and movement around the course never became an issue for any system that played the TW's game, it had no noticeable affect on game performance and I would know as I started out with a basic gfx card and moved up later on... However, wind was not part of the cls folder, that was handled differently...

 

Of course, I know things are handled differently then TW's, where we had libraries and cls folders etc. but I would need to see the basic stuff working correctly now rather than later. Since it's so easy to do...

[Kablammo11]

...go do it yourself  

[shimonko]

There is really nothing Unity/CF can not do Axe--it all gets down to where you allocate your power. One could have Kermit on the rock singing "The Rainbow Connection" and the lily pads joining together and rising into a slimey water devil, Terminator style.

 

But I'd rather put power into higher tree models and grasses than animals.

[axe360]

...go do it yourself  

 

Unfortunately K11, you digress... Hard to stay civil for you isn't it?  To funny...

[axe360]

There is really nothing Unity/CF can not do Axe--it all gets down to where you allocate your power. One could have Kermit on the rock singing "The Rainbow Connection" and the lily pads joining together and rising into a slimey water devil, Terminator style.

 

But I'd rather put power into higher tree models and grasses than animals.

 

Remember Shimonko, I am from the TW's PC era and those things were Not a drag on any performance to that game..

So please don't fault me for things that may be different in this system.. I do not have CF and am not interested in designing anything until and if the actual game comes out..

 

I like what you've done with what you have so far.   Having a game would be a big plus for you as then you would be able to see if what you have done so far will even get off the ground performance wise and until then, it's mostly a guessing game in that department...

 

I do have some experience in some of these matters and hope I can be a positive influence on things to come and hope folks would take my comments in the spirit that they were meant...

 

Peace

[shimonko]

And they probably won't have much drag on this game either--we just don't know yet. PP would. Some of the PP courses have waterfalls and fountains in them which would use the same mechanism as butterflies.

 

TGC's poor performance does concern me but optimization is everything in games and major improvements in performance happen over years. 

 

Can you recommend a (free) TW08 course that showcases it. I'll have a play to get a relative feel.