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Re: Noah's Adventures release 3.3
[Re: Dan Silverman]
#26692
05/07/04 05:54
05/07/04 05:54
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 3,682 Coppell, Texas
Ran Man
OP
Expert
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OP
Expert
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 3,682
Coppell, Texas
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I'm not wanting to blame the engine, but what I see is the frame rate on a 800 MHz dropping badly when looking at the length of the Ark. Nardulus seen this also, and suggested I place a partition wall or walls blocking the length view of the Ark. That idea would have worked. Looking at the side hull the frame rate booms upwards, but looking down the length of the Ark, then the frame rate drops to 20 or less. Are the curved levels you make are they the size length-wise of this Ark??? I'm very interested and curious if so. Take a walk length wise in the Ark and see if your curved surface levels are of this size? Hey, you changed your avitar again! What happened to that old classic pirate guy avitar you used to have? lol
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Re: Noah's Adventures release 3.3
[Re: Ran Man]
#26693
05/07/04 06:14
05/07/04 06:14
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Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,835 Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Nardulus
Serious User
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Serious User
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,835
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
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Hi Ran,
I would be really interested in seeing a teachers guide developed for the game. I would like to give it to the Sunday School at my church.
Heres a marketing plan for you. Offer a free CD and teachers guide to Sunday Schools and Christian Schools, Noah is OT so it will be of interest for the Jewish religon, time to go visit some temples to. Eventually it will get exposed to a classroomn full of kids and then you will start to get some marketing momentuem.
Talk to your local newspaper maybe they could write an article about you gifting the Churchs your game. You could then sell it to families that want it at home. A little self promotion will go a long way.
I agree with Dan about getting more out of 3DGS frame rate wise. The problem is it takes hard work, some extra tech / art knowlege, and TIME to try different things. This is part of the balance an indie developer has to contend with. Should I tweak my game play or should I tweak the level so I can get more frames per second. When you have a team working on the project there are hands enough to cover both, as an indie you have to pick which is most important to you. Or double your development time.
Part of what would be valuable to 3DGS users in the future would be ways inside of the engine that speed up things that do not take special knowlege. JCL and team are working on improving the performace along with adding features, maybe they could brainstrom a few ways to offer even more performace automatically.
Ran put some of that great engery into promoting your game to audiences that would welcome it. Cold calling or Dialing for Dollars as I call it needs to be something your get started on.
Last thing, your game looks a heck of a lot better than Deer Hunter and look at how many Deer Hunter games have been sold. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, now you have to convince the public to part with 14 bucks to buy the game. Promoting the game will be just as hard as making the game, but I am sure you are up to the task.
Ken
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Re: Noah's Adventures release 3.3
[Re: Ran Man]
#26694
05/07/04 06:23
05/07/04 06:23
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 11,321 Virginia, USA
Dan Silverman
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 11,321
Virginia, USA
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Quote:
Are the curved levels you make are they the size length-wise of this Ark??? I'm very interested and curious if so. Take a walk length wise in the Ark and see if your curved surface levels are of this size?
Nope. The levels are not the SIZE of the arc, but they are a lot more detailed then the arc (more geometry, more models and more textures). I will give you a clue as to how we did it (and are doing it). This is not the only way, but it does work.
We create sections of the long area (a long, detailed hall, for example) and break it into pieces. Then we build the pieces as map entities. We create LODs for each of these sections. There will be three LOD versions for each section. The first LOD section is the most detailed in level geometry and textures. The second is sort of medium and the third is the highest level. The further away the section is from the player, the lowest detailed LOD map entity is loaded. With proper LOD planning the transitions are almost seamless. Using a technique like this can allow you to create very long and very detailed areas.
Secondly, just because the arc was huge (long) does not mean Noah did not make many compartments within it. It would only make sense structurally (as far as Noah building it) to do so and it would make sense from a gaming standpoint as well.
I hope this helps.
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Re: Noah's Adventures release 3.3
[Re: Nardulus]
#26696
05/07/04 09:39
05/07/04 09:39
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Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 5,181 Austria
Blattsalat
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 5,181
Austria
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yeah, the lod stuff works like a charm as long as you dont see the different stages (buildings, maps with hallways and areas)...its very useless when creating outdoor areas at all. Starting from gaps in the terrain or ground files up to texture seams and hard edges on geometry. I fully agree that indoor levels and small outdorr areas can be handled with that very good. But no chance using it for outdoor stuff. I am using LOD for everything like a moron and its great for keeping the framerate as high as possible...but still the engine suffers from good levelgeometry lod. As long as every triangle of a hmp is diplayed no matter how far away you are, the a6 cant compare to commercial quality huge outdoor games. But if you just use different texture sizes for your lod and dont change your levelgeometry you will still have insane framerate add-ons. So, yeah it helps but still huge good looking outdoor areas are not createable with A6 yet, without covering everything in thik fog just my 2€ back to topic : I agree with nardalus about marketing and the others about "first having to establish a customer interest". The school idea is quite good.... i would try it btw.: the quiz section of your game.....not easy...not easy at all !!!
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Re: Noah's Adventures release 3.3
[Re: Blattsalat]
#26697
05/07/04 10:22
05/07/04 10:22
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 3,682 Coppell, Texas
Ran Man
OP
Expert
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OP
Expert
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 3,682
Coppell, Texas
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Dan is right. LOD would improve the Ark level frame rates, but it would also increase the over-all file size. This is due to the extra .wmb files that would be needed. Since it is already an 18 meg download, then unfortunately cannot be used in the shareware demo.
A publisher is interested in this and improving the graphics, so we'll see what happens with that.
@ David
Hey buddy! I remember that "Saul of Tarsus" game! I remember seeing it listed with my old "Sunday School Colors" game. Nice meeting you here!!!
@ Nardulus
Yeah, I should go visit Jewish synagogues here. I'll just wear my "Star of David" and tell them I'm Judeo-christian. lol Maybe they can convert me.
Hey guys! Check out these web hits and all the countries after 6 days into the month...
Top 30 of 84 countries accessing Noahsadventures.com
8 gig of traffic after 6 days
# Hits Country
1 3912 Network
2 2977 Unresolved/Unknown
3 1927 US Commercial
4 1063 Canada
5 372 Netherlands
6 320 Romania
7 300 Germany
8 202 Italy
9 198 US Educational
10 194 Czech Republic
11 159 Australia
12 158 United Kingdom
13 127 Belgium
14 110 France
15 92 Austria
16 88 Sweden
17 77 Switzerland
18 69 Poland
19 68 Russian Federation
20 64 Slovak Republic
21 61 Spain
22 57 New Zealand (Aotearoa)
23 56 Brazil
24 52 Greece
25 50 Thailand
26 46 Israel
27 44 Saudi Arabia
28 40 Taiwan
29 39 Denmark
30 35 Estonia
Agghh!!! Success!!! ALL THE WORLD IS TOUCHED BY THIS GAME!
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Re: Noah's Adventures release 3.3
[Re: Ran Man]
#26699
05/07/04 22:20
05/07/04 22:20
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Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,398 North from here...
BlindLeader
Senior Developer
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Senior Developer
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,398
North from here...
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Last edited by BlindLeader; 05/07/04 22:22.
"klar wird es unter dem einem oder anderem
problem zu zusammenbrüchen kommen, aber solange
die sonne keine 2 schaufeln rosinen bekommt, kann
man alle lösen, augen zu machen, oder sich
warmzittern"
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Re: Noah's Adventures release 3.3
[Re: BlindLeader]
#26700
05/07/04 22:59
05/07/04 22:59
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177 Netherlands
PHeMoX
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
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I donno, but you can actually do something about the graphics, do you still have the game frozen on 640x480 ? I don't know but for like 800Mhz pc's, 800x600 is probably depending a bit on you graphics accelerator, already the standard resolution for games. With the lod thing you can improve things a lot, also from all the blocks you use, all the sides that aren't visible; give them the 'none' flag. A lot of people tend to forget this, but it really helps. Well these are some things you can do, without raising the minimum specifications for the game..
Good luck!
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