User:Velvetclaw/Blog/GODOT

From Time of War
Jump to: navigation, search

[24.30/4]

What do we want to do first?

  • STart off by preparing mines, quarries.
  • Then build a village or croft, preferably a Chinese one?

[24.1/21]

Unfortunately we've hit an impasse.

Trying to deal with a new map is taxing. I have so many things to worry about. And I thought that adding fire particles was a problem.Watching a video of Lamplighter's League has not helped solve the issue.

  • Height : ought it confer advantages and disadvantages for units?
  • Camera - is our camera height appropruiate? How high or low ought it be to allow our heroes to have their graphic details appear to players?

I need to do the following:

  • Recheck textures. Azangara's. Some way of dampening the glossiness of terrain is desired.
  • CAmera. We need to import oene of our Bronze Age figures, to test for unit sizes.
  • Terrain. How much or how little elevation do we need to make a decent map?

These things need to be dealt with, otherwise we've no maps and certainly no money for Dhanishtha.

[23.1/12]

More escalation, and not in a good way.

Apparently, it is unwise to add materials to items destined for GODOT, because GODOT then replicates the materials for every object, one at a time and actually ADDS new image files. No wonder my computer is so bloated. AT least I ate a rather heavy breakfast today but there's no knowing if I can pull apart EVERY last file I have, just to have the items I need to get this project running.

I will still have Dhanishtha continue with her old workflow, though. If items must be dismantled and added to this game and its prelim scenes, I will be the one to handle the donkeywork.

[23.30/11]

Another snag - child objects in GLB objects can't be separated. This throws a spanner in the works - we will have to construct items in Blender and then export them. There's NO OTHER WAY.

I am so tired of this. So tired of living. The lack of a proper, non-judgmental social circle who can give me the psychological and psychic comfort I so crave is nonexistent, and Dhanistha is just too far away and too distracted to be useful. Gods, what am I to do? I suppose I can go back to bed, forget this day ever happened.....

....or I can sit down, engage my thoughts, and then build the things I want. And then re-export as GLBs back into GODOT.

One thing ise certain, I need money. Money to pay Dhanishtha to handle the graphics part of things. Or should I? many of my textures lack proper materials, because I've been so hasty. I guess Friday and Saturday are going to be spent, all over again, rebuilding all my graphical assets FROM SCRATCH. Arrrgh.

On a brighter note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woDE5j4lNh0 We will have to download Godot 4.2 and install it, ASAP.

[23.26/11]

After an excruciating half week of agonising, then failing, we finally have a working camera for GODOT.

Tried brute forcing my way by downloading scripts, but unfortunately GODOT balked back saying, "this was made in GODOT 3, I cannot handle it." The same thing happened when I tried to absorb knowledge from youTube wholesale. Only by breaking it down into tiny pieces and writing copious amounts of margin notes could I get through. It only works on WASD but at least I have what I need, I think.

The result sare as shows:

GODOT camcontro.png

Unforrtunately, our last tussle before getting a working camera showed some ugly truths about GODOT: spacing is tantamount. Spaces are necessary around " = " and declarations of conditions ( "pass" , "if" , the outcome that follows "if" and so forth ). This is not as permissive as the XML or JSON markup we have been using to mod Starbound, Wildermyth or Rise of Nations. I will be uploading two copies - one to Steam Workshop, another to my private cloud, as I go along testing Nanotech Gamedev's work which seems centred around making RTS games.

On a brighter note we now have a sun spotlight in GODOT. Still not sure how to make it appear in the river from above, but bigger things first! that camera needs to be written in before we can mess around with materials and textures.

[23.22/11]

PREFABS.

We finally know how to build prefabs. These are done by creating a new scene, adding the ingredients to it, then setting the manifold items - materials, models, etc - to "recursive". The item is then saved as a .tres file.

We are placing a folder for these prefabs, titled tres_SeiHek , to handle these items as they are built over this week, once we finish watching youTube for the information we need.

Current objectives:

Primary

  • Set up skyboxes and sun.
  • Maybe fire abnd smoke particles and so forth - make fire for braziers, torches, campfires, and oil lamps - big fires for braziers, medium for torches, small flames for oil lamps. And a much larger one, for areas on fire!
    • Torches and campifres should be toggleable.
    • Oil lamps are required for this project - let us make two. DONE.
    • Need paper lanterns too.
  • Create and finish any and all prefabs.
    • Don't forget to add collision boxes.
  • Wait for VFM to finish working on her stuff, then add them to the maps.

Ideally our campaign begins on deviantArt and itch.io once 8 maps are finished. Ha ha, very Chinese of us.

Secondary

  • Check and assess all maps of places we want to build, then begin. Prioritise building simple scenes for Sei-Hek before we attack WTCQ (need trees from VFM). Since we are letting Dhanistha mourn it might not be possible to ship until the end of this month.
  • Transfer old water system (still water) over to WTCQ. Replace the flat water in Sei-Hek with something else.

ISSUES - how do we repurpose cave parts to form large boulders and landscape?

[23.20/11]

Very favourable results this morning:

Despite difficulties at first (not knowing how to re-link terrain nodes back to a data .hterrain file) we have managed to create a passable map for use in Sei-Hek. No furniture has been added, there have been problems with some of the elements here. Rather, we will be concentrating on adding the following items over the next couple of days:

- Bounded camera. - Fire and smoke particles.

Once this is done we will be well on our way to starting work. If all goes well December will be when we can start selling these new terrain packs on itch.io to others, while we can then concentrate on working on building other items for other projects - project Basil and WTCQ are on the cards.

Unfortunately not all discoveries have been sanguine. Tinkering with Zylann's HeightMapTerrain tool suggests that a map cannot carry more than four textures at a time. We will have to be very, very careful how we build our cities from now on.

Possible solutions:

  • Tinkering with terrain detail layers.
  • Compound textures, eg, combining Azangara's textures with our own to create new textures.
  • New layers, eg scorch marks, changed textures to indicate areas in WTCQ that have burned down. ESPECIALLY important since Sei-Hek's Afghan maps will use almost the exact same elements!

On a brighter note, Stephanie has pledged completion of all lowpoly items we requested from her last week. These will most certainly come in handy in developing more encounters.

[23.14/11]

Unfortunately things went sideways on Day 1. Attempting to import 3d objects - FBX - has not gone well. Even though we have the tool from https://godotengine.org/fbx-import/ it has not worked for GODOT. This does not bode well for the project. Terrain is still an issue and we have not figured out how to do it even when it's so important.

The only boon that we discovered is that GODOT prefers .glb so it's a strong point for Verrix. Equally,

  • Materials by VFM exported well into Godot through GLB.
  • We have figured out how to open up multi-child GLB objects.

Terrain is still a big concern for me. How this can be solved, nobody knows. We did manage to install the HeightMap Terrain plugin, and after some brute forcing, managed to have it install and work, but it will take a long, long time just to master this tool.

Unfortuantely, GODOT isn't as convenient as we had thought -in addition to conversion of FBX/DAE to GLB, we also need to convert any and all TGAs to PNG/JPG.

BNew objectives:

  • Check and assess all maps of places we want to build, then begin. Prioritise building simple scenes for Sei-Hek before we attack WTCQ (need trees from VFM). Since we are letting Dhanistha mourn it might not be possible to ship until the end of this month.
  • Set up water (still water)
  • Set up skyboxes and sun.
  • Maybe fire abnd smoke particles and so forth.

[23.12/11]

STarting a new blog, to handle the issues of learning GODOT.

GODOT is such a new and strange problem for me (as it must be for Stephanie) that I need to start a new blog to record my experiences using it. It's just crazy.

Some things I want on my wish list, before this Sunday is over.

  • Working camera system
  • Working mouse system
  • Particles, day and night cycles.
  • Terrain build

Other things to consider:

  • Replicating WTCQ and the interface systems from Mike's Egypt series.
  • Actually finishing something - Basil, WTCQ, Sei-Hek.
  • Turn-based battle AI.