margant Posted December 4, 2002 Report Share Posted December 4, 2002 Hi I was browsing last hope forum and realized how much work is done there. Very nice! I am still having troubles understanding how the heck we are going to write the engine for all that cool stuff, but thats not the point. XP3D dude has showed a pic of his UFO but when I went and got a broken link look what I have found :http://www.xp3d.de/downloads/ check out Erde***.jpg files - awsome earth pics. I am thinking if there is a way the geoscape earth could use some of those textures or maybe even model it in 3D... Anyhow - just food for thought and candy for your eyes. :alientalk: :alientalk: :alientalk: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted December 5, 2002 Report Share Posted December 5, 2002 check out Erde***.jpg files - awsome earth pics. I am thinking if there is a way the geoscape earth could use some of those textures or maybe even model it in 3D... Anyhow - just food for thought and candy for your eyes.More candy for the eyes that what we can afford (in realtime)... if i'm not mistaken (i do not know german ) they were done with Cinema 4D (an animation package). Is the earth texture available??? if anyone there can find a good texture (better than the one is in the demo) just tell me and will download to give it a try... GrettingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jim diGriz Posted December 5, 2002 Report Share Posted December 5, 2002 There are some really massive earth maps (20MB+) on the NASA site. I think they're free for non-commercial use, though I'm not sure. Blue Marble It's also got night time pics which you may be able to do something with, like when it gets dark blend the two textures together during dawn/dusk. Don't know how difficult that would be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stewart Posted December 5, 2002 Report Share Posted December 5, 2002 Determining terrain-type for battlescape maybe tricky in this case. On the other hand we can have as many as we want rather than what "real" xcom uses. Rather than say "Desert" we can have a variety of Deserts varying in degree of Desertnesslynessness. Or . . . not. Whatever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
margant Posted December 5, 2002 Author Report Share Posted December 5, 2002 I say lets finish geoscape and worry about the battlescape later. With the working model it is easier to see where and what has to be done. In case of areas of the battlescape it would be "cool" to have variables for different zones and build them to an extent of -high - low forests, high-low desert lands and etc. but how much work would that take?In any case it all depends on the engine and this is what has to be clearly defined. :alienmad: :alienmad: :alienmad: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jim diGriz Posted December 5, 2002 Report Share Posted December 5, 2002 The NASA site also has data about landcover classification herewith this useful key image:http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Observatory/Images/landcover.umd.palette.gif Which could be used as the starting point for determining the battlescape environment. Only has "bare" not "ice", "tundra" and "desert", but that can mostly be estimated from the latitude. The site also has stuff like population density and temperature which might be useful as well, if you can get the data in a usable form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted December 6, 2002 Report Share Posted December 6, 2002 There are some really massive earth maps (20MB+) on the NASA site. I think they're free for non-commercial use, though I'm not sure. Blue Marble It's also got night time pics which you may be able to do something with, like when it gets dark blend the two textures together during dawn/dusk. Don't know how difficult that would be.Hey they are prefect, if ya had downloaded the demo you could see that the geoscape texture is lighter in the ecuator, that cause a real problem when i had to illuminate, i think the nasa ones are great (more than great, perfect)... I definitly give it a try... Do you know if there is Height Data on that server coded in grey scale??? GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jim diGriz Posted December 6, 2002 Report Share Posted December 6, 2002 I spent a bit of time looking for height data, it's not that easy to find global data sets rather than just countries or states...... plus when I found it, it turned out to be about 270MB compressed and is in 16 separate files. It is free though. Some useful links:GLOBE ProjectThe height map (Digital Elevation Model it's called I think) dataset, in a much higher resolution than you'll possibly want or need. It's in 16 greyscale, though I'm not sure what the number actually represents. Landcover ClassificationA better landcover classification map/dataset than NASA's, could be usable as a base for mission zone classification. Apolyton Thread (Feb 2001)Forum thread on the Apolyton Civilisation site by "OmniGod" who massaged the GLOBE elevation data into a reasonable form. You may be better off trying to get some maps off him. I think it's similar to what you'd need and he also made a landcover classification map which could be useful. Earth 3D ViewerA closed source (I think) Earth viewer. Note the height isn't bump mapped, instead it's a high resolution polygon sphere with the vertices moved. Could be very cool for the geoscape since the sphere will be the only major 3D object on screen, so you could use lots of polys for it. Imagine what it would look like with a semi-transparent ocean sphere at sea level, so you could see into the depths beneath the glittering sea (shame my 3D programming ability pretty much stalled at the "display a box" level.) TerrainMapTerrain mapping site, lots of info on various mapping techniques, where to get data and how to manipulate it into a useful form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stewart Posted December 6, 2002 Report Share Posted December 6, 2002 I say lets finish geoscape and worry about the battlescape later. With the working model it is easier to see where and what has to be done. In case of areas of the battlescape it would be "cool" to have variables for different zones and build them to an extent of -high - low forests, high-low desert lands and etc. but how much work would that take?In any case it all depends on the engine and this is what has to be clearly defined. :alienmad: :alienmad: :alienmad:'Fraid we can't ignor this one. Terrain type is determined by geoscape and sent to battlescape. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted December 9, 2002 Report Share Posted December 9, 2002 Some useful links:GLOBE ProjectThe height map (Digital Elevation Model it's called I think) dataset, in a much higher resolution than you'll possibly want or need. It's in 16 greyscale, though I'm not sure what the number actually represents.Hey i had downloaded the land texture from the globe project and it really looks very cool (much better than the last texture), i still have to tweak some illumination constants and find a better height map (the actual create some disgusting artifacts)... but the result is promising... GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted December 9, 2002 Report Share Posted December 9, 2002 even with more zooming.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted December 9, 2002 Report Share Posted December 9, 2002 Europe with a lot of zooming... Micah dont kill me..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devatar Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 Hey guys, can anyone please tell me the name of a good program for making 3D models? Either downloadable or buyable is fine. I plan to grab one before the week ends, and I plaster myself permanently to my chair. I saw some kind of program that the site above used, although it's german and I can't make heads or tails of it, I'm thinking of a program similar to that one, only in Ingles. If it's easy to use then I can probably help with the 3D modeling. (maybe give up my job as complainee and all-around critic.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 Hey guys, can anyone please tell me the name of a good program for making 3D models? Either downloadable or buyable is fine. I plan to grab one before the week ends, and I plaster myself permanently to my chair. I saw some kind of program that the site above used, although it's german and I can't make heads or tails of it, I'm thinking of a program similar to that one, only in Ingles. If it's easy to use then I can probably help with the 3D modeling. (maybe give up my job as complainee and all-around critic.) Hi margant, as far as i know the most used 3d modelling programs used in the game industry are 3D Studio Max and Maya... but you should take a look to Blender, it is Open Source and i had read a lot of very good comments on it... (we should give it a try, and if you want to learn i think that should be the first place to look at)... we are Open Source too... http://www.blender3d.org/ GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest stewart Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 Just looking at the pictures I had a thought; do we really have to use the exact same time passage settings as the REAL XCOM. I mean does anyone use both 1/2 hour and hour for example (I use hour but never 1/2 hour). What do y'all think about this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr-Gravity Posted December 18, 2002 Report Share Posted December 18, 2002 I think the "5 min" setting is useless. You could leave out either the "1 min" or the "5 min" setting I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devatar Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 Thanks Red Knight. I'm downloading it now, but I'm not sure WHERE it is, so I'm just downloading everything I see. (ooh, smileys...) And it's me! Devatar! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devatar Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 Okay, there, finished downloading.............Umm... I don't really know how to do 3D modelling, but it looks easy enough. (Making a HAMMER, anyway. I think making a real live alien is going to be murder.) Oh well, I'll try to get more acquainted with the program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red knight Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 Okay, there, finished downloading.............Umm... I don't really know how to do 3D modelling, but it looks easy enough. (Making a HAMMER, anyway. I think making a real live alien is going to be murder.) Oh well, I'll try to get more acquainted with the program. Sorry Devatar, that was a very stupid mistake... After testing it, tell us what do you think... take it as your homework, evaluate a Modelling Product to use as the default.... Good luck with the hammer and the live alien GreetingsRed Knight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devatar Posted December 19, 2002 Report Share Posted December 19, 2002 Buttons... LOTS OF BUTTONS... Hmm. I've tried the tutorials of the program out, and so far it's been fun fun fun! I almost immediately deleted the program the first time I opened it, though, because of the sheer number of buttons. I advice anyone who's planning to use it to get a tutorial, quick! I already finished my hammer, and I'll post it when it becomes relevant. This program is SO cool. (of course that's not speaking relatively, since I don't have a point of comparison.) Pretty much anything can be done with it, as I've seen in the forums at elysiun.com, and it's not really that difficult to learn, as far as hammer-making is concerned. I dunno about programming, though, so I'm not sure if it's gonna be compatible with what you guys are using. But it's definately worth considering. ( is this a taliban smiley?) ...beep. beep. INPUT INSTRUCTIONS. beep. beep... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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