Parallax/Normal mapping support added to static batches

Been working on upgrading static batch elements with some shaders currently to make the maze parts looking good. Started with a new column with diffuse / normal map textures by Zphr. He used blender to model a high polygon column and then with the help of blender's baking and normal map facilities he created the diffuse texture and the normal map texture, and made a low poly undetailed version of the column. (After that seeing that the shader needs a specular map, I've created a very simple one out of the normal map texture by making it black and white and adding a bit of contrast to it.) Basic versions of a normal and a parallax shader of jME has been tailored to integrate into jClassicRPG. Check the screenshot, how low polygon walls and column can be made look more like high poly models with GLSL shaders.

Working on EncounterLogic Turn Act Phase playback

We're continuing the accentuated work on turn act phase! Several new things designed to make it a working system. Just to mention a few: added multiple animation type definition for MovingModels, boosted the EncounterLogic with a real turn plan listing choices that units and player made ordered by the EvaluatorBase speed evaluator code. Success of a given skill use is now calculated by EvaluatorBase too. Another new thing is Impact and ImpactUnit that is calculated by EvaluatorBase - modifies actor's points and target's points (like health, stamina) on success.

Based on results different sounds and animations (etc. attack, pain) are played now when available for the model/skill. It's starting to round up well, although this part just needs tones of work as you can imagine. Ugh, not even mentioning the particle system and such that will be needed for spell effects. Lots of work ahead. But it's FUN! Watching the enemy attacking and struggling when hit by player's party members - a visual turn based game logic is (will be) just right before the nose of player. :D

Check the screenshot for a preview - also a faint glimpse at Zphr's brand new fantastically looking animated boarman thugs (modeled in Blender again) and the text box in the bottom shows combat messages of the previous round... Thanks Zphr for doing a great-great job with the boarmen! I will post more about the boarmen when it will be more complete.

All in SVN!

Animation goes live

Check SVN for the latest sources if you want to run the game with walking gorillas. :-) It was not an easy turn to make it work all together.

First Sirgazil@freegamer was so kind that he made a walking animation sequence to his gorilla model. Next I was trying to make it into jME scenario with the help of BlenderCollada exporter. But it turned out that the export is not so good to make it easily work with jME's collada loader, plus the development of the exporter is halted as far as I know. Then frustrated I visited jME forum and finally found the good way to go: the project md5reader2 for jME (after some changes in the animation reader's code and recompile) was almost perfectly working - except smooth normals were not displaying in the game. I had to re-UV map the gorilla model with a different wrapping and try again - yeah, it's working now! It seems that later animated models for the game that will be created in Blender should be wrapped for example with Smart UV mapping method (or some similar) to be sure that it will work well with jME.

Trees smoothed

DomoN has drawn my attention on the trees not smoothly shaded. Yes, they were not until now! :-) Exported to (non-rotated, exported normals) .obj instead of .3ds with normals set to smooth in blender. Looks much better...I had to spend some time figuring out that I've to modify the material files (.mtl) of the model and set Ka to 0.5 0.5 0.5 to have bright enough light on them.

New contribution to jcrpg!

Great news! Harek (also known as Shynko on ubuntuforums) has just submitted his first contribution to jcrpg! And thus jcrpg has got its first weapon ever, and Harek entered the Hall Of Fame of jcrpg!

Currently the 3D part is still being worked out, some minor issues must be addressed before going on...

Trees reborn

I've spent several hours with creating the new trees...they aren't as perfect as they could be, but for now they will server their purpose for a time. We have the acacia, the cherry tree and the pine reborn. Look at the screenshots. Created with ngplant plus uv mapped with blender. Some ground textures have been replaced too.

Bonus content

...from my garden's leaves a new transparent texture. See you next week!

Trees revisited - transparency

After several hours of hacking around with JME and the suggestions here and there that the trees are just not good enough, finally I cracked the nut of transparency! :-) Later this week and next I will shoot tree foliage with my camera, so that we'll have nice trees and bushes maybe. For now see this simple example tree with transparent texture generated with ngplant @ sf.net. UV mapping done with blender, and exported to 3ds. Perfectly working.

Notice that I will be away from tomorrow till next weekend, so expect no updates meanwhile. Until then, dream about classic rpgs and collect your ideas that you may share with the community of jcrpg framework, or check out the sources from SVN repo for enjoying the new tree in action too. ;)

Thank freegamer @ blogspot.com again for mentioning the progress of jcrpg.

Blender The Jungle

Trying to get some experience with blender, not an easy job for a noob like me! :) Here are the results. Some tropical climate specific trees and vegetation plus a desert cactus... That's all folks! I have finished flora and modeling for a while...now onto Engine and Time...

Thickening dark woods

Again, Blender revisited tonight... have to get some more experience, couldn't find really usable open source models yet. So I created some ugly to make the forest thick and more robust...

Into the woods - again

Little time and energy today for something definite, yet we have some new models for demonstrating the three levels of flora: ground (grass/ice...), middle (bushes), top (trees/?). Some basic blender models and the two new classes GreenBush and GreenPineTree, yeah, welcome them, that's what fit in today. :-) Enough to demonstrate how flora levels will look in the first iteration...

Climatic meeting

Some minutes of blendering, and adding sand to the grounds of tropical climate belt, a meeting between Continental and Tropical climate has became possible. Now we have two Climate belts on our demo world...expect to have more in the near future. Desert and arctic are to be, they are relatively easy to create.

Tree and skybox

I couldn't leave 3D modeling without creating an ugly tree. See for yourself. I've experimented with the skybox, looking for a nice more generic image. I've found one for now.

The Mysterious Village

Can you spot why this village is mysterious? Something is strange about it ( besides the ugliness of course :-) )... Okay, I will tell ya, the walls have no eyes! Yes, no window to look through yet.

Now I have made some thinking about what else the 3D core needs to be easily adopted to simple map designing I am willing to create later. So I need roofs and such objects on continuous wall segment without having to bother with it in map designing. The solution was to create 4 types of additional objects: continuous roof, left side corner roof, right side corner roof, non continuous (one cube) roof. I only have to look for the Side main type property which tells this is one kind of a wall which should generally belong to one continuous segment, so the roof can be put based on that information continuously or fragmented if the neighbor continuous side is not of that main type. On the other hand, the subtype of the Side in case of a wall will tell if the wall is with a window/door or just simple wall. The AreaTypeID -> 3DTypeId mapping will take care of it, and return the RenderedSide type which contains now all info: normal always rendered SimpleModels, nonContinuous-, oneSideContinuousNormal-, oneSideContinuousOpposite- and continuous SimpleModels. Check the code for further understanding...

Enter The Matrix - Which Door?

I feel I am getting familiar with some aspects of Blender. With one door in the game it occurred to me how a RenderedSide element of the RenderedCube must contain complex data about itself to be able to display derived contents from a simple abstract Side of the Cube. Tough thinking ahead yet...

Thick walls and cave entrances - weird compositions

Some minor happy success moments with blender and texture mapping with UV calculation. Now at least I proved for myself the usability of blender and JME together, so I can step further with the comfort. This feature let me to take these screenshots...

Blender tutorial and little java coding

I've run through some parts of the blender quickie tutorial, and feel much better related to this software. I could create a clumsy piece of textured wall.. :) Ugly, I won't post in-game pictures. After that I found out how to set MaxToJme 3ds reader's texture url, so now jcrpg happily reads up the textures for the models. Although it doesn't display it correctly it's a step ahead. I had no more time today, that's all, folks!

First steps in 3D - JME plus Blender

Tonight I had some free time to setup the very basics of a 3D development environment. Emerged Blender to my gentoo linux box and after a little copy that here and this there I could export to JME (JMonkeyEngine) accepted 3D model format.

Meanwhile the project got its first source files and a project hierarchy too (org.jcrpg.apps.Jcrpg is the first class!). JME libraries put into place I was ready to put together my first experiment with model loading under the engine. A simple cube, that's all for today, but lit and seen from all around thanks to JME's easy to start-out abstract classes. Now I highly hope I can handle the difficulties of getting used to the new engine. Still it's obvious, this is a bigger task with a lot of experimenting still ahead.

Just mentioning that I put together the very first view of total system architecture - level 0, version around -0.99, just to have a scheme to start debating myself...and possibly others if my thoughts are crystallized enough for that.