[Warhammer Dark Omen Forum]

Warhammer Dark Omen Forum | The Remake Project | OMG WARTBED
What's being worked on at the moment?

[olly]

Hope you get over the cold soon and any new tools would be greatly appreciated, although I really don't mind using our existing individual Apps, as they are producing some really cool results. Top of my wishlist would be a Base.M3D to Base.M3X converter to improve stability as I'm simply just renaming my Base Terrain models from .m3d to .m3x and finding some crashes on other players' machines.

Height maps seem to extend into infinity, that works to our advantage as not being restricted to simple flat map extensions but now I can follow the contours into extended territory. My next step is dropping all this new Furniture that myself and my hired artists have been producing, (Church, Castles, Houses) and to use Rob's BTB to XML Tool, that will allow me to create my own Data Blocks for creating a Radius around new 3d models to block movement and missiles passing through them. In my Beta test i simply grab and enlarge an existing Tree's Radius and set it around a new House. Combined with your excellent Text Map Editor, i also set ex_walk and other Boundaries. Its really all coming together now and when the new Mod Map is completed it will provide a perfect place to start adding our own AI Scripts, thanks to all the latest OpCodes that have been discovered!

Back to WARTBED and tell us of the other project, if it not too Top Secret.


 

[Mikademus]

Oh, it is not secret at all It is an attempt to write a tactical wargame for casual gamers. Though the engine is actually really tactically rich the goal is to mask this and create an extremely easy-to-use interface so we can sell it perhaps even to soccer mums. And as I mentioned before, I try to make everything in such a way that all code written have direct relevance for WARTBED. F.i. I've just written a complex sprite module for multi-direction animations, which can be plugged almost directly into it.

About M3D to M3X: I think they must have used a tool to manage the conversion of those, because the divided version is really structured in how it is disassembled. Let's look at it together later!

[HanBatie]

    Since you are very slow, maybe you could team up with somebody talented who makes online games. I know that they are usually garbage, but games such as gemcraft  and Sonny were done by talented enough people. Maybe you could help make them their own games, in exchange for help.
    Also if you are thinking that you can't make money on Dark Omen, make you could read the "www.lostgarden.com/2009/07/flash-love-letter-2009-part-1.html" article. It's talking about making money on online games.
    In any case, please report us on your progress. I'm new to this forum.

[Mikademus]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

I agree that lately I have been very slow, and I apologise for that. I would happily team up with people that could help move the project along at a faster pace! It seems that to get people to join you you first need to hit a critical mass, and then things start to roll. See Spring and Glest for instance - it took them years before they achieved their momentum. I am afraid that I'd have to join other's projects rather than have them help with me, and that would simply siphon away even more time from Dark Omen-related stuff.

That development went on at a rapid pace previously was because I was actually unemployed and spend most of my time on developing the project. The last year I have however been employed full-time and have not had much spare time and I've had to portion the little I did had between family and projects.

That said, nothing is dead or still - every line of code I make is made with WARTBED in mind--no exaggeration!--and if things follow my plan things will start moving ahead.

I deeply appreciate your honest opinions and sincere suggestions!

[olly]

It will all naturally evolve and come together, as prophesied in the Ancient Stone Tablets.

I believe and Worship WARTBED!

[lordbraprus]

lets give time to the time

[Mikademus]

Ok, so to reboot some discussion here, this is what you will see in the next release:

* Full map loading of all DO maps with all visual effects and animations
* Terrain-colliding camera with RTS/Orbit/DO/FPS modes
* All DO sprites and animations renderable

These are done and only need to be plugged in together. The aspect I had most problems with before the hiatus (due to work, being alienated by the horrible support from the OGRE community, and being burned out) was the camera: it is a very tricky and technical aspect, and you can often see even full-price AAA titles with really dysfunctional or outright awful cameras.

Now what I want to know is what is on you guys' wishlists? What do YOU most want to see in the coming version of the engine? I'd really like to know!

[olly]

Sounds Great, I will investigate over the weekend and let you know.

Thanks

[HanBatie]

Thanks for letting us know.
I don't know if it was ever discussed, but I always wanted to be able to use buildings and castles in Dark Omen.
It would also greatly help, if we were able to save our deployment before starting the battle. It would great reduce the time needed, and reduce the frustration after a failure significantly.

[Mikademus]

I don't know if it was ever discussed, but I always wanted to be able to use buildings and castles in Dark Omen.

Added as http://wiki.dark-omen.org/do/Wartbed:Power_goals#Engine_bonus_capabilities"]bonus power goals[/url]

It would also greatly help, if we were able to save our deployment before starting the battle. It would great reduce the time needed, and reduce the frustration after a failure significantly.

Good suggestion! Please feel free to add it to the http://wiki.dark-omen.org/do/Wartbed:Brainstorming"]brainstorming page[/url]!

[Mikademus]

Time for some good news!

Lately I have taken time off my commercial projects and pulled some strings to invest in bringing WARTBED forward. This has paid off.

The two stumbling blocks that have kept WARTBED from moving on have been (a) that OGRE's own geometry intersection code didn't work and I had to fix it myself which took a long time and much frustration, and (2) that a versatile camera that intrinsically is capable of RTS, FPS and orbit/Dark Omen styles was very complicated to implement under Ogre.

Both these problems have now been solved. The camera took a guy with a doctorate in maths to fix but hey, now it works very sweetly indeed!

Therefore, expect a new map viewer any day, and work on the map editor will go on.

Further, on a personal note, I now have academic credits in Old English (AD 400--1130). O.o

[olly]

Fantastic News! It sounds like the most complicated problem i've ever known, to take that kinda Brain Power to solve.

Congrats on Qualifications as well.

I can't wait to test the new Map Viewer!

[alavet]

so any demonstration to show? like darkmancer's movie or something

[Mikademus]

Oh you sceptical people

You will not get a movie, you will get the executable itself.

Although making demo movies sounds like an interesting idea, I could perhaps make those and present on my youtube channel to show new features... Thanks for the idea!

[olly]

Works Brilliantly! I love the new Camera Restrictions, so it can't rotate freely above and below ground and the camera also checks for collision with the ground.







Nice Advanced Smoke Particles, can't wait to explore further!

Thanks