Dungeon Hack

Interrupt · Post by **Interrupt** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 7:29 am

I've recently been able to find some more time to work on Dungeon Hack, our free roaming RPG inspired by the Elder Scrolls game Daggerfall.

I've been working on cleaning up and adding new features to our procedural terrain generation. I'm currently working on per texture foliage and vegetation as well as texture placement, and a reflective water plane.

And now, the real reason you visited this thread:

A tree overlooking a small lake.

Rolling hills on an overcast day.

A copse of trees on some rolling grasslands.

nikki · Post by **nikki** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 7:48 am

Looks really nice! But where are the dungeons?

madmarx · Post by **madmarx** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:33 am

One of the best landscape I've seen so far on Ogre.

Did you use some plugins (Hydrax, paged geometry?), or is it all managed by your own code?
Well done!

PolyVox · Post by **PolyVox** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 9:39 am

Yep, those are some really nice outdoor environments!

kcbanner · Post by **kcbanner** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 9:48 am

Looks good! I'd be interested in how you generate the terrain and what shaders you used for splatting

Captain_Deathbeard · Post by **Captain_Deathbeard** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 1:10 pm

Yeah looks really good, I'm also interested in what plugins you might be using.

What about the sky, it looks really nice, is that just a static skybox, or is it something clever?

Nauk · Post by **Nauk** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 2:02 pm

stunning beauty

nikki · Post by **nikki** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 2:16 pm

Captain_Deathbeard wrote:What about the sky, it looks really nice, is that just a static skybox, or is it something clever?

The sky looks Caelumish.

EDIT: Seems it aint Caeulum (sorry for the lack of apostrophes, Im on a computer on which the apostrophe key doesnt work).

Interrupt · Post by **Interrupt** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 5:57 pm

Everyone wants to know what plugins I'm using so I'll answer that first. The only plugin being used right now is Walaber's OgreNewt for physics.

The sky is composed of multiple layers of sky domes: the outer has the star texture, the middle layer has the sky color, and the inner layer is the cloud layer. The sky color layer uses a texture that it scrolls through based on the time of day. Caelum didn't exist when I started this project, are they doing something similar?

The terrain is made up of blocks of terrain meshes that are built by using perlin noise. There are nine blocks that are always loaded, with the player in the center block. When the player moves blocks it destroys old blocks and loads new blocks in front. The view distance isn't where I want it to be quite yet, but I think I can quickly generate some very low resolution blocks and skip generating foliage on them.

Terrain splatting is done using a material with multiple texture and alpha maps which means I can only have three different textures as of now, which isn't enough - and it seems slow. I would like to use a vertex texture splatting shader instead that would read the R,G,B,A values of a texture to bring me up to five different textures, including the base.

DanielSefton · Post by **DanielSefton** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 7:25 pm

It's... Beautiful.

There's something about the lighting that makes it look tasty.

Any post filters? HDR? Bloom?

Xavyiy · Post by **Xavyiy** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 8:33 pm

Wow! I like a lot the sky, it's really dynamic? If yes, I think that a little plugin like Caelum but with your grapihical implementation will be useful, I like a lot! (Or just add to Caelum these features).

Interrupt · Post by **Interrupt** » Sun Jul 27, 2008 11:17 pm

DanielSefton wrote:Any post filters? HDR? Bloom?

The first shot has a simple bloom filter enabled, although right now it's more of a high-pass filter than a bloom. It will be an actual bloom once the blur pass is in.

The sky is dynamic, the sun position changes as well as light and fog colors and the overall sky color. I still need a moon (or two) in, and then the ability to adjust the color values for different weather types.

lonewolff · Post by **lonewolff** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 8:11 am

Coming along great!

Eternic · Post by **Eternic** » Mon Jul 28, 2008 9:04 am

Great colouring of the sky in the second screenshot. It reminds me of Ultima IX at certain times of day except much higher res obviously.

U9 sky:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa25 ... ma_9_7.jpg
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/other/pc/u ... ima9-1.jpg

Ayrik · Post by **Ayrik** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 4:45 am

Wow that looks a lot better than the old demo I had on my computer. I thought you were using PLSM before though, did you change that? and why?

Anyway, nice progress!

Interrupt · Post by **Interrupt** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 3:04 pm

Ayrik wrote:Wow that looks a lot better than the old demo I had on my computer. I thought you were using PLSM before though, did you change that? and why?

I might have been looking into PLSM before, but never used it. The terrain system is the same as the one had been in your demo it's just prettier now

Kerion · Post by **Kerion** » Tue Jul 29, 2008 4:55 pm

Looks really great. I browsed on over to your site, and noticed your project is open source, woot woot. Really cool stuff.

crioto · Post by **crioto** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 8:50 am

The sky is composed of multiple layers of sky domes: the outer has the star texture, the middle layer has the sky color, and the inner layer is the cloud layer

How did you do that?

Interrupt · Post by **Interrupt** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:10 pm

crioto wrote:How did you do that?

Which part of the sky are you asking about? The sky color layer is the fanciest part, the skydomes uv map is squished so that the sky color texture is basically a gradient from the horizon to the top of the sky. By scrolling through the texture the colors and alpha values change throughout the day so that by night the color layer is completely transparent.

Post by **Kencho** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:06 pm

Interrupt wrote:The sky is composed of multiple layers of sky domes: the outer has the star texture, the middle layer has the sky color, and the inner layer is the cloud layer. The sky color layer uses a texture that it scrolls through based on the time of day. Caelum didn't exist when I started this project, are they doing something similar?

Yes. Caelum didn't exist, but I already wrote that paper by that time (there's only an updated version of the paper). I don't know if you read it, but definitely got an awesome sky anyways. The whole feel reminds me to WoW, but the sky is way better in Dungeon Hack

Kentamanos · Post by **Kentamanos** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 5:19 pm

Looking really nice

crioto · Post by **crioto** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 7:25 am

Interrupt wrote:
crioto wrote:How did you do that?
Which part of the sky are you asking about? The sky color layer is the fanciest part, the skydomes uv map is squished so that the sky color texture is basically a gradient from the horizon to the top of the sky. By scrolling through the texture the colors and alpha values change throughout the day so that by night the color layer is completely transparent.

Hmm. It's hard to understand for me =)
Maybe you show some part of this code? If it's possible, of course

Kerion · Post by **Kerion** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 3:57 pm

crioto wrote:
Interrupt wrote:
crioto wrote:How did you do that?
Which part of the sky are you asking about? The sky color layer is the fanciest part, the skydomes uv map is squished so that the sky color texture is basically a gradient from the horizon to the top of the sky. By scrolling through the texture the colors and alpha values change throughout the day so that by night the color layer is completely transparent.
Hmm. It's hard to understand for me =)
Maybe you show some part of this code? If it's possible, of course

The project is open source, you can just go to the Dungeon Hack website and grab the source and see for yourself how he did it.

Sslaxx · Post by **Sslaxx** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 10:59 am

Eternic wrote:Great colouring of the sky in the second screenshot. It reminds me of Ultima IX at certain times of day except much higher res obviously.

U9 sky:
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa25 ... ma_9_7.jpg
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/other/pc/u ... ima9-1.jpg

Ah, Ascension. It was OK, patched up and dialogue hack applied. The game world was beautiful for its time, too. And Forgotten World looks like it'll be enhancing this still more.

As for Dungeon Hack, the screenshots give me a "Oblivion"-esque vibe, which I quite like. I'd be interested to see the dungeons, too...

Interrupt · Post by **Interrupt** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 2:46 pm

Sslaxx wrote:Ah, Ascension. It was OK, patched up and dialogue hack applied. The game world was beautiful for its time, too. And Forgotten World looks like it'll be enhancing this still more.

As for Dungeon Hack, the screenshots give me a "Oblivion"-esque vibe, which I quite like. I'd be interested to see the dungeons, too...

I never did get to play Ultima Ascension when it was released and now I'd have to buy it off of EBay, I'll probably never get the chance to see for myself if it was as bad as people say.

I'll take a few screenshots of our dungeons next time I build, maybe I'll have the indoor water plane working in time for them.