Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Screens: page 3

Post by Captain_Deathbeard »

Boo: It uses adVantage terrain plugin, you can find it on the forums somewhere by falagard if I remember. I am thinking of switching to the new ogre terrain though, does it handle stupidly large terrains?

Dredogol:
You've got the right idea. I use the heightmap directly and generate a slope map. So for each pixel you compare the height differences of the 4 neighbouring pixels and record the highest difference in a slopemap image.
For my "grid" I use a quadtree because its fast but there are other ways. I generate the quadtree from the slopemap. Simplest way is to only generate nodes for walkable terrain. Then you optimise it. The leaf nodes are your pathfinding nodes. I downloaded some A* source called micropather. Its good, and saves you rewriting A*.
Entirely done on the fly, on the back thread. Data is stored for the backthread only, no mutexes so far.

Now buildings, I basically have a thread-safe function in my quadtree manager called addBuilding(...). This passes in the bounding box of the building. When the backthread is ready it scans a heightmap within this bounding box using standard PhysX traces (they are thread safe). If trace hits the building, its blocked. If trace hits terrain, its walkable. I actually de-optimise the quadtree here then re-optimise again, but you could just save the optimising till after all buildings are loaded.


Then my pathfinder class (with A* system) is also on the back thread, and is the only class with proper access to the quadtree data. Its got a thread safe function called solvePath(PathData*) that does your magic (adds the request data to a deque, processes it when ready). The PathData* is a threadsafe class (every character has one), and has a safe function bool isLoaded(). When you call solvePath then isLoaded is false and your character knows not to use the data yet. When the path is all finished the pathfinder sets isLoaded() to true and the charater can then follow the pathdata from it and safely access its functions.
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Screens: page 3

Post by Jabberwocky »

Are you using tri-planar texturing on your terrain? The texture on the steep slopes looks really great, not stretched at all (as happens with traditional terrain texturing methods). Also, I don't know how you'd accomplish those vertical "erosion lines" on the steep slopes without tri-planar texturing.

Also, the contours look really smooth. Is the terrain really high-poly? I'd love to see a wireframe screenshot next to a regular screenshot.
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Screens: page 3

Post by Captain_Deathbeard »

No, its ordinary texturing. On steep slopes I intentionally use streaky textures because they handle the stretching well.
I think its pretty high poly, my terrain file alone adds 600mb to the game download, and thats compressed.
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Screens: page 3

Post by Jabberwocky »

Well then, very nice job working within the constraints of regular terrain uv mapping!

Where I was confused is that if you used a "streaky" texture, it would look good with slopes aligned with the streaks (say north-south), but then the streaks would be sideways on an east-west aligned slope. But I suppose you could use a separate splat with a rotated texture to handle the east-west slopes.

600 MB - that's a lot of terrain! :shock: Although I guess most modern MMORPGs would give you a run for your money on that. But I'm impressed with how much of it you can draw at once (both distance and contour detail) - the old OgreTerrainSceneManager would bring your machine to a screeching halt with that much terrain (in my experience, anything about 512x512 is iffy). I'd be curious to know how the new Ogre terrain would handle drawing so much at once, performance wise.

There's also Grome from Quad Software, which recently released an Ogre3D port. It supports something called "vertical mapping" which I figure must be something like tri-planar texturing. I think it would have got a lot more attention if Sinbad hadn't just been finishing up Ogre's new built-in terrain system.

Anyway, maybe so I don't pollute your showcase thread, I'll strike up a thread about Grome to see if anyone's used it over in the "Using Ogre in Practice" section.
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Screens: page 3

Post by Captain_Deathbeard »

Jabberwocky wrote:Where I was confused is that if you used a "streaky" texture, it would look good with slopes aligned with the streaks (say north-south), but then the streaks would be sideways on an east-west aligned slope. But I suppose you could use a separate splat with a rotated texture to handle the east-west slopes.
I actually did that on one area
I'd be curious to know how the new Ogre terrain would handle drawing so much at once, performance wise.
So am I, I was thinking of switching to it. The Advantage terrain plugin runs fast, but seems a little jerky.
There's also Grome from Quad Software, which recently released an Ogre3D port.
Damn! I remember wanting to use grome but the price was too high back then, and the indie version was limited enough to be a trial version. If I hadn't done terrain yet, I would probably use that grome editor and terrain.
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Screens: page 3

Post by braza »

Really impressing work! I always wanted the game with in-battle body damage that affects your possibilities and other realistic features you mentioned. Possibly it`ll pretty hardcore but challenging as well. Waiting for the release!
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Screens: page 3

Post by Captain_Deathbeard »

Trailer!

[youtube]cXcuZV77UJY[/youtube]

The game is scheduled for its first unfinished release in october.
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by dark_sylinc »

It's been ages since I don't hear about your project. Good thing you kept going.

A bit of constructive criticism:
  • The music in the trailer contains lots of drums; take advantage to synchronize the camera changes (i.e. when the text in black backgrounds appears and then disappears) with the sound. Keeps the viewer more engaged and interested. Also use different kinds of fading between images (i.e. flash the screen when presenting the black backgrounds). You're just swapping different video footage.
  • Your GUI looks like it wastes lot of space. Read the Apple HI guidelines.
  • When I read "get stronger" for like the 3rd time, it became boring and the thought of my head was "is that all the game can do?". Grinding can be a lot of fun, but it has to be presented carefully or else people will think it's monotone or mediocre.
  • The theme and text font choice may not have been ideal considering the oriental feeling. Regardless, it has the potential of being an interesting blend between asian and cowboy mix.
  • The trailer makes no mention whatsoever on the key points that makes your game so interesting (realistic damage and recover.)
Sorry for the harsh comments, but I see a lot of potential after following your progress for years and the trailer isn't doing it justice.

Excellent mesh animations. How did you get those? Did you make them yourself? Paid an animator? IIRC a few must be proced. generated, but there are some animation bases like the run and walks which are really really smooth.
Regardless the rest of the game (landscape, graphics) I've already congrats you some time ago. The model's details (lighting, but mostly texturing) is starting to get behind compared to the rest of the game's graphics.

Cheers
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by Captain_Deathbeard »

thanks for the comments, I shall think on them. i thought the limping scenes showed enough of the damage system, i'm not sure how much more i can demonstrate it in a video.
My animations are all picked from stock motion capture libraries. I trawled through 1000s to get the good ones. Why do motion capture studios think we need so many dancing animations?
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by Mind Calamity »

If this game is completed it's going to be a masterpiece, you're on the right track here ;)

You really need to make the fighting more fast-paced, it looks kinda slow from my point of view :D

Anyway great job, keep it up :)
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by chaosavy »

Looks like a soon to be classic.
Visit http://www.VoidDestroyer.com to check out my space sim project - Void Destroyer
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by dark_sylinc »

Captain_Deathbeard wrote:thanks for the comments, I shall think on them. i thought the limping scenes showed enough of the damage system, i'm not sure how much more i can demonstrate it in a video.
It's not about showing it, it's about understanding. Take in mind most people will see it through the eyes of a regular beat'em up (Kingdom Hearts, Assassin's Creed, Batman Arkham Asylum, Prototype, Lord of The Rings, Bayonetta, MK: Shaolin Monks) and will compare with what they already know. For them, seeing the limping scenes looks like you've rearranged 30 seconds of video game footage into a 3 minute video; and somehow you managed to walk through an entire city and desert... walking like that. So, something must be wrong because it is badly designed since there are no health kits nearby, you can't carry enough med packs, or the healing spell just hasn't been added in the game. They will think it's something "that will get fixed".
A few or more may catch the real idea, but "a few" is not the same as "most people".

Instead of repeating the "get stronger" phrase, I suggest more explanatory sentences like "Receive realistic damage", "Submerge into a whole realistic fighting experience" "Survive near death..." "...in the middle of nowhere..." "...with no doctors or help around".

But beware of making it too obvious, it's all about the middle ground.

See this video. Pay attention to screen transitions. They use at least 3 different fades between images. Pay attention how the text is presented, faded in, faded out. How it syncs with the music; and how the music changes it's tempo when action scenes come up.
See this other video. Again, screen transitions. These guys do a lot of variations. Also look how each click that opens or closes a window is followed by a "drum". Note they use tricks: Since they have to wait for the exact time at which the sound makes a "drum", they zoom in to the cursor, and you're no longer seeing anything in motion. My guess they just freeze frame and zoomed in so you don't notice; and waited until the next drum to resume the frames. When they don't anything to show, they sometimes flash the screen when a "drum" sounds. Couldn't be more obvious. They did quite a good job in that video IMHO, as nothing is more boring than to watch a cursor go through a tool app. with a giant GUI; and they made it look fun!
Also note how they explain what they're doing with side text. The viewer knows exactly what the guys at UDK want him to know. A feature (i.e. in your case "Damage System") consisting in a few words pop ups on the upper left corner, and a longer explanation pop ups in the lower right corner (i.e. "Severe injures require advanced medical assistance")
Captain_Deathbeard wrote:My animations are all picked from stock motion capture libraries. I trawled through 1000s to get the good ones.
You sir, have more patience than I do. I just gave up long time ago and decided to learn animation myself.
Captain_Deathbeard wrote:Why do motion capture studios think we need so many dancing animations?
Really, really good question. We need jumps, run, walk, crawl, backflips, climb, lots of attacks. But dancing? Nah just one scene.

Cheers
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by Captain_Deathbeard »

Thanks, I'll see if I can improve on it next time. Maybe I will make a video just for the medical system at a later date, when I have a few new features in. I need to get character carrying done first though because the system doesn't really work without it, gameplay wise.
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by Klaim »

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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by Mind Calamity »

Klaim wrote:Oh Kenshi is on Steam Greenlight :D

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... earchtext=
Voting it up! BTW, you managed to hit the one year mark since the last post in this thread. ;)
(Just pointing out, not complaining of course)
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by drwbns »

Up vote from me too :) Great ideas and style, I like it so far. For those with a steam account, click http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... earchtext= , login to your account, and then click the upvote to put Kenshi one step closer to steam availability
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by Klaim »

Kenshi is part of the first games that will be published from Greenlight to Steam!!!

http://kotaku.com/5942350/black-mesa-ni ... socialflow


Congrats!!! One more Ogre-based game in Steam.
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by drwbns »

That was fast!
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by Mind Calamity »

Very fast. Congratulations, Captain. :) Let's hope other OGRE games follow soon. :)
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by areay »

Congratulations, now you just have to finish it :)
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by realaxis »

Congratulation on getting into first greenlit list. What more success an indie could ever imagine. One of the Ogre game going into that first list is really proud feeling for all Ogre users.

Oger's we rock!
best luck captain (salute)
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by drwbns »

Basically up on steam EarlyAccess - http://store.steampowered.com/app/233860/
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Re: Kenshi - A free roaming squad based RPG (Trailer!)

Post by pinaster »

drwbns wrote:Basically up on steam EarlyAccess - http://store.steampowered.com/app/233860/

congrats, the early access is really useful for games like keshi! I will buy it sooner o later
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