Most games, yes. Most recent games? Naw.Nuky wrote: Compared to most other games, trees are just an extruded triangle with a couple bitmaps on it, you know.
Additions to the Lugaru 2: Plants
Oh sick! Trees are grown in real time!? That's hella freaken cool, that's like holy crap monkey balls awesome, that's like, like... How the hell did you program that David, why the heck don't other games have this? Harvest Moon, which is pretty much entirely focused on plants can't even do this. This is the new standard for games (that's right, I'll say it again if I have to), this is amazing technology.
And in real-time? You can't tell me that that isn't so freaken awesome. Could you, theoretically, just plant a tree down, increase the game speed, and just watch it grow? That is so awesome, that's unbelievable! I can't wait for this blog update, there should be a video that quickly shows a tree growing from small to big, (I wish there was one for dynamic time) because that is just too cool. Why would I ever go back to Harvest Moon to grow my plants, they grow in realtime here (alot better than waking up, to see that all your plants have magically grown overnight and produced full vegatables to harvest)!
Even in Halo 2 or Farcry instincts there's no real depth for trees. They are just columns that have drawn in leafs ontop of them, jumping on their tops won't do anything, you just sink through them like they don't exist, they don't even have the cool leaf effects like in Lugaru 1, I mean c'mon this is so far ahead of the game, it's just sad. David, you are making complete fools of these companies.
And in real-time? You can't tell me that that isn't so freaken awesome. Could you, theoretically, just plant a tree down, increase the game speed, and just watch it grow? That is so awesome, that's unbelievable! I can't wait for this blog update, there should be a video that quickly shows a tree growing from small to big, (I wish there was one for dynamic time) because that is just too cool. Why would I ever go back to Harvest Moon to grow my plants, they grow in realtime here (alot better than waking up, to see that all your plants have magically grown overnight and produced full vegatables to harvest)!
But isn't this generally true? Pretty much in Grand Theft Auto (any of them) the trees are like this. They are wierd ass objects that you can't even interact with, you can hit them with your car, but the branches and leaves themselves aren't even programmed in, you can climb them, but it's so unbelievably broken, it's like your standing on a lame platform (and that's just in San Andreas).zip wrote:Most games, yes. Most recent games? Naw.Nuky wrote: Compared to most other games, trees are just an extruded triangle with a couple bitmaps on it, you know.
Even in Halo 2 or Farcry instincts there's no real depth for trees. They are just columns that have drawn in leafs ontop of them, jumping on their tops won't do anything, you just sink through them like they don't exist, they don't even have the cool leaf effects like in Lugaru 1, I mean c'mon this is so far ahead of the game, it's just sad. David, you are making complete fools of these companies.
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rudel_ic
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Assumptions:
The trees will most likely be very simple, and the growing of them won't be that sophisticated; seeing them grow in real time won't happen, at least not frame-wise, possibly second-wise though. The textures will probably be simple procedural ones. Leaves groups would look crappy if there are symmetrical twigs, so twigs will be left out and leaves are particle clouds with asymmetrically shaped particles around the ends of the branches.
Growth is probably realized with low-poly circles that are showing to the south (with a random bias). The branches then grow along the surface of those circles. That should look cool.
Just think about it: Making non-procedural textures bend individually on a high amount of surfaces, and that on a per-polygon and per-frame basis.. Not pre-modeled.. Wicked, but that won't happen.
David isn't the only one thinking about trees and stuff. The most successful system nowadays is SpeedTree. I'm not that much into that stuff to know whether real-time growing is implemented though.
The trees will most likely be very simple, and the growing of them won't be that sophisticated; seeing them grow in real time won't happen, at least not frame-wise, possibly second-wise though. The textures will probably be simple procedural ones. Leaves groups would look crappy if there are symmetrical twigs, so twigs will be left out and leaves are particle clouds with asymmetrically shaped particles around the ends of the branches.
Growth is probably realized with low-poly circles that are showing to the south (with a random bias). The branches then grow along the surface of those circles. That should look cool.
Just think about it: Making non-procedural textures bend individually on a high amount of surfaces, and that on a per-polygon and per-frame basis.. Not pre-modeled.. Wicked, but that won't happen.
David isn't the only one thinking about trees and stuff. The most successful system nowadays is SpeedTree. I'm not that much into that stuff to know whether real-time growing is implemented though.
It seems SpeedTree lets you place really good-looking trees wherever you want.
David is on a whole different plane of the automation process by letting said trees grow by themselves.
That difference will reach its full meaning if the game includes seasons (which seems likely for a time span that allows tree growth). Next: tides that follow moon phases, glaciers that melt with spring...
David is on a whole different plane of the automation process by letting said trees grow by themselves.
That difference will reach its full meaning if the game includes seasons (which seems likely for a time span that allows tree growth). Next: tides that follow moon phases, glaciers that melt with spring...
What are you basing that on? We really don't know anything at all about what this is really going to be like. Yes I'm sure it's going to be cool, but we don't really know anything. So until there's a blog post or something wouldn't it be best to refrain from proclaiming this the savior of ingame foliage?Zantalos wrote:I mean c'mon this is so far ahead of the game, it's just sad. David, you are making complete fools of these companies.
What? No, speedtree is that crap middleware The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has to use because they created such a huge playing field. All it is is a renderer, it doesn't grow trees at all it just takes out alot of the lag.
When you look around, all the trees are less detailed, they come out as 2-d dimensions, when you get close they all shift into 3-d, closer ones emit canopy shadows. And that's basically it, regardless of their amazing screenshots, they are just for large scale looks, when you actually explore those forests, you find that all those great looks are the same model over and over again, rotated alittle to provide some contrast. And again, there's no interaction with them, especially with stale animated movement, the only thing you'll get out of them is the fact that they'll chip off wood when you hit them. And they don't grow! They don't change! (there is a new look when season's change, it's like boom! No more leafs, oh look they turned brown!)
And duh, I'm basing all these facts on uh... looks like I really don't know what going on yet. But I do know, that trees will be grown, and will look different, and will be effected by soil and light, and will, will... be awesome. That in itself, is so much cooler than any other game has tried. And even then, they haven't even created proper character movement, heat haze, or neat refraction effects (I picked up so many glass objects in Oblivion, looked through them, nothing happens. Despite the fact that the alchemy set contains nice glass objects to use, none of them look like they should, even when held up to the sun, they look nothing like David's wicked awesome teapot.)
When you look around, all the trees are less detailed, they come out as 2-d dimensions, when you get close they all shift into 3-d, closer ones emit canopy shadows. And that's basically it, regardless of their amazing screenshots, they are just for large scale looks, when you actually explore those forests, you find that all those great looks are the same model over and over again, rotated alittle to provide some contrast. And again, there's no interaction with them, especially with stale animated movement, the only thing you'll get out of them is the fact that they'll chip off wood when you hit them. And they don't grow! They don't change! (there is a new look when season's change, it's like boom! No more leafs, oh look they turned brown!)
And duh, I'm basing all these facts on uh... looks like I really don't know what going on yet. But I do know, that trees will be grown, and will look different, and will be effected by soil and light, and will, will... be awesome.
That in itself, is so much cooler than any other game has tried. And even then, they haven't even created proper character movement, heat haze, or neat refraction effects (I picked up so many glass objects in Oblivion, looked through them, nothing happens. Despite the fact that the alchemy set contains nice glass objects to use, none of them look like they should, even when held up to the sun, they look nothing like David's wicked awesome teapot.)
Speedtree is a pretty amazing little program, the results, however, are entirely up to the team who utilizes it. Elderscrolls chose to use it almost out-of-the-box, and consists of polygonal trees with planal leaves that are always oriented towards the player. This looks amazing in single-frame shots, but can be eerie when moving along.
Speedtree allows almost infinite variation and control down to the smallest level, should you take the time to delve its murky depths, and does infact allow the seeding of an area and growht-over-time, though that is mostly used to generate a forest or field, not real-time interaction.
What David is doing is analogous, though intended from the ground up for per-frame interaction and dynamic growth. This is where he gets the drop on Speedtree.
I am very excited to see we'll be getting equal, or greater, results with our very own system instead of having to shill out the thousands for Speedtree, which I had actually suggested a time or two before learning of this.
If you don't want to read all that, here's the sumation:
Results of Speedtree entirely up to its utilization,
David's system = awesome.
Speedtree allows almost infinite variation and control down to the smallest level, should you take the time to delve its murky depths, and does infact allow the seeding of an area and growht-over-time, though that is mostly used to generate a forest or field, not real-time interaction.
What David is doing is analogous, though intended from the ground up for per-frame interaction and dynamic growth. This is where he gets the drop on Speedtree.
I am very excited to see we'll be getting equal, or greater, results with our very own system instead of having to shill out the thousands for Speedtree, which I had actually suggested a time or two before learning of this.
If you don't want to read all that, here's the sumation:
Results of Speedtree entirely up to its utilization,
David's system = awesome.
Speedtree is a tree creation tool for companies that don't have the time or resources to model trees by hand. Often the trees come out generic, but I have heard this is more a product of laziness on the part of the people using the software, and that very good looking trees can be created with it.
The L2 tree system will probably be much more tied into the engine, and so more interactive.
The L2 tree system will probably be much more tied into the engine, and so more interactive.
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rudel_ic
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It's a matter of money. If there's a whole library shipped with SpeedTree containing tons of trees, heck, why not take it? Otherwise, you have to build them by yourself (with very simple tools) which is time-consuming and thus expensive.Ninjas wrote:Speedtree is a tree creation tool for companies that don't have the time or resources to model trees by hand. Often the trees come out generic, but I have heard this is more a product of laziness on the part of the people using the software, and that very good looking trees can be created with it.
By the way, the LoD based on distance is scaleable under SpeedTree. So... Although it's just like Zantalos said in Oblivion, the trees are 2D at a great distance, this isn't necessarily the case. Anyway, it's common sense; everything else would be a waste of processor time. A 3px*10px tree shouldn't be a 3D model, planes are faster.
And about trees looking ugly in Oblivion when you get close to them: First of all, I don't agree and secondly, that depends on the tree models and the layer textures.
The really big difference is that trees don't grow in realtime under SpeedTree.
Don't want to advertise SpeedTree anyway, if David has something niftier, that's great - but I'm just like zip. Why this whole admiration when you haven't seen what's really going on yet?
Zantalos, you're just a crazy David fan, that's all
David, if someone's calling at night, it might be Zantalos asking for a poster of your tree 