j0g32

Breaking Benjamin - Diary of Jane, one of my favourites

Locking buildings doesn't help, it even exacerbates the problem of low player count: if you cannot damage buildings, playing becomes meaningless (no goal) for the players, and they might have to wait forever until the critical limit is reached to "unlock" the buildings... Can't you just vote for a map change, or add bots?

What program where you using? Try gimp or paint.net

Textures need to have dimensions as power of 2, i.e. 128x128, 256x 256, 512x512, etc.

No, making the texture transparent (adding/changing its alpha channel) alonw will not give you a transparent material in UDK. If you want transparent / see through ice, you have to set your ice material to translucent (this is a setting of the material itself, which allows you to use the plugs for opacity). It might also be called lightnig model, where the default is something with Phong. You can then use a constant between 0-1, or masks to control the opacity. Such a mask could be taken from your texture's alpha channel. Check this out: https://docs.unrealengine.com/udk/Three/MaterialExamples.html#Translucency You might also want to add some distortion / light refraction: https://docs.unrealengine.com/udk/Three/MaterialExamples.html#Refraction Or even sub surface scattering. Generally, might be helpful to have a look at the documentation and examples

Have you tried looking into Flipbook Textures? https://docs.unrealengine.com/udk/Three/FlipbookTextures.html

Looking good! I am a bit confused how the interior is laid out, but that's probably a good thing Sorry, I guess this is still all WIP, but maybe you could replace the "generic 80s space-station pipe-cluttering" wall material with something more realistic like stone/bricks or concrete (or ecen metal sheets). After all its a temple Take a look at what type of materials are used on other RenX buildings. Good luck!

Hmm, as you could tell from my earlier posts, I thought that the dunes setting was an amazing idea, so it is a bit sad that it appears not to be your main focus anymore... I like the idea with the bunkers/outposts as points of interest though, but at the same time I thought it was a bit sad that the scene, you basically devoted the last episode to, is entirely blocked off and on top of this hill where players will only rarely see/appreciate it... I think it could be very exciting to play in a maze of intricate paths in the dunes, also with a lot of vertical combat, because of many steep ups and downs. Grass and small hills provide good cover for infantry - I feel the current scale of dunes is way to large. They are good as vehicle paths, but add some smaller dunes at the sides od the big ones And you could use tank blockers and fences to block of vehicles (btw. there are already wooden fences in the SDK - check the Barrier Deco package ) Infantry could attack tanks from the top. And the other idea to fit your theme and provide landmarks could be wind turbines. Hell, you could even make them capturable techbuildings which replace powerplants ? Just tossing some ideas / insiprations out there, cause it seemed to me like you were slowly losing your motivation over the later episodes, and it would be a shame to see you abandon such a promising project! Keep it up and good luck!

I knew it was familiar

That is not what I was trying to say. It seems like you have read my whole post, since you are only quoting my last paragraphs, so I am getting a bit confused here... Complaints are always a helpful feedback to identify where things go wrong. But the next step should be to figure out WHY/WHAT is actually going wrong. Is it something inherent to how the game(play) system/mechanics are set up? Because if it isn't - then what is there to fix and how? As I tried to explain in detail above, I don't think that the problem lies with the general ability to switch teams and communicate with your friends... (and the resulting t"eam stacking") Perhaps a "change team request" could help, where someone from the other team has to accept and swap places? Anyway the frustration does not result from fighting against better or more organized players as such, but from the fact that you might not see or have any option to counter them. And THIS is imho the only area where we could think of how to improve that. Hope this makes more sense now...

I think the main problem here is not getting killed by skilled players (multiple times) per se. Yes, I see that this is obviously demotivating, but only if you have run out of options to counter or circumvent such a very skilled player. Take this video with sniper footage on Under posted earlier in this thread for example: If you are one of those poor souls, who gets sniped in the GDI base or repairing a tank. What could you do? 0) just avoid the area where you got killed if possible, even a skilled player can only cover so much ground - find yourself another route/purpose If you cant avoid the area, e.g. because you are killed in the base - or because you are just in rage and want payback: 1) figure out where this sniper is 2) tell your team to look out and possibly attack the sniper, make it a priority! Use team polls? 3) try to flank the sniper; e.g. through the tunnels (and not from the front via GDI inf path) 4) you can use smoke grenades to cover your own advance towards the sniper as well as protect engineers repairing tanks for defence 5) gather more players to outnumber and simply rush the sniper's location 6) you can even try to coordinate distraction tactics, or attack from multiple angles. So, these are just some ideas of what I would do/try, if I would get frustrated on the field. Nobody is invincible... However, these options might not be available/viable, and I see 2 major factors why: 1) lack of player communication / coordination: others are not listening/reading chat, or dont want to follow instructions. Possible solutions: commander who sets visible priority targets, squad-system to team up with a few like minded (team-)players, voip? Here you could obviously add point/credit rewards for teamplay related actions, such as eliminating priority targets, spotting enemies, sticking close to your squad members etc. in order to incentivize even the lonest of wolfes to consider putting in some effort for the team.... 2) map design: "unflankable" sweetspot, especially coupled with bottleneck base entrances, should not exist... We might need more alternative routes/paths, which have to be sufficiently seperated, such that movements on one path cannot be observed/intervened directly from another path. Take the additonal vehicle path on C&C Field which is fairly seperated from the main field, or the tunnels on Islands. It should be more of a binary choice which path I take to attack (and which i am therefore giving up) and it is also the enemy's binary choice to defend only one of them and to not cover the other. Another good example are the high/low highway vehicle paths on C&C city - once you make that decision, you cannot simply switch between paths. Opposed to that it doesn't matter if I run 5m to the left or right of a rock across an otherwise fairly open field - it is still the same path from a gameplay point of view. A sniper looking at the rock would most likely hit me regardles of which side I choose. But there is a balance to be struck in terms of meaningful choices and player concentration. If there are too many options, no team can possibly hold them all (defence), or create enough pressure to break through (offence). Getting back to the above example: If the sniper was marked as a target by the commander, the tanks could redirect some of their shells to the sniper, who is forced to seek cover, giving infantry a possibility to counter attack. Alternatively, an additional path, e.g. connecting both bases back to back as in the TS reborn version of Under could allow the frustrated players to open up another front, circumventing the high skilled sniper... The "negative psychological"effects of skilled players on the "loosing" team are only a consequence of the available gameplay mechanics. In the first instance, getting your ass kicked should also make you rethink your strayegy, and try other options. If you keep doing the same thing, e.g. rushing the infantry path, why would you expect a different result everytime - #insanity ^^ Some suggested to "reduce the impact of high skill players" - I fully agree and I think this is only achievable by analysing (and improving) gameplay choices. Thanks if you succusfully made it through my wall of text Cheerio

I thought NavMesh was considered to replace the currwnt waypoint system, and AI mechanics ?

Just on a sidenote: seems like people are complaining about players or certain playstyles - I dont see how this going to help improve the game? I certainly agree (although without personal experience) that a handful of players shouldn't be able to decide every single match, and frustrate others. If there is a discrepancy between how RenX should be played (for you to be fun) and how it is played (at least by some) - why don't you try to ask yourself and then explain to us, where the gameplay mechanics get it wrong? Why can't you have fun, while others can? Rewarding teamplay/kills with points/stats is one thing. Providing means to coordinate a team another... And finally I think a lot of the problems might also arise from having few options to defend, attack, sneak, flank - improving map design/layouts... Another more general problem could also be that with a limited player base, there is only one server that is playable - and you dont have many options to switch, if you are not happy with the current server population... Edit: definitely bring back Commander Mod!

Thanks for all the feedback, guys! @Veyron My idea was that the tutorial should feature 2 parts: (1) controls, base operations - largely based on the orig. Renegade Tutorial. (2) skirmish-like C&C mode gameplay, enhaced with a few scripted events and objectives. This is were the asymmetric features of GDI/Nod could be explained, such as stealth and building layouts, as well as the associated strategies. @TK0104 Unfortunately, my laptop can barely handle UDK - that's why I focused on computationally less demanding tasks, such as the Prefab Kit, or Kismet scripting. Most of the materials are just place holders, as is the lighting. I would love to work on the looks of the map, but with an onboard graphics card this can get very frustrating ^^ Also, i think it's best to release the level for playtesting and bug fixing, before finetuning the visuals Believe me, it's sometimes very hard to restrain myelf from diving into materials (nodding at my random outbreak with the world aligned materials ) Also thanks for checking the scripts/subtitles, didn't notice that - will fix this asap. @StalinsThighs I thought, it could be good to familiarise the player with the "automatic" lock-on mechanics, that's why I purposely, didn't choose Gunner's rocket launcher. Thought that perhaps some of the lines for the ion cannon targeting could be recycled for that, but this might be too tedious - and I probably end up using the actual R-12

I quickly built a simple world-aligned set of rock and landscape materials, which line up both for rock meshes (along xy) and sand on meshes and landscape (along z). The great thing about world aligned textures is that you can stretch the underlying meshes without distorting the textures. On some bits the transition between landscape and mesh is virtually invisible. With a bit more colour variation, landscape layers and vertex painting, this could be an easy to use starting point to produce good looking terrains.

After several retakes, and trying a multitude of video recording tools ( @TK0104 the NVidia shadowplay does not work on my potato calculator ) , I can finally show you the current work in progress: Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough to restart the recording after 10mins, so we are missing out the bit where Gunner explains to use the mouse wheel to zoom in/out, and then to deactivate the scope - again with LMB. I hope you get a better idea, of what I imagine the tutorial to look and feel like. Let me know what you think. Cheers. p.s. since summer has finally arrived I won't be making lot of progress... :-P

Perhaps the sky box/sphere is too small, and/or the sky texture is not unwrapped properly for the mesh, and/or low resolution of the night ky texture.

Haha, I wouldn't even know how to do it ^^ I mean, I know the glass is breakable, but on non-fyling maps I wouldn't know how you can climb up there (without help of others/vehicles) Yes, I think there is a limit on how much we can dump on newcomers in a tutorial mission. I think the most important bit is to learn the basics, i.e. controls/communications, weapons, characters, vehicles, buildings, credits, etc. And taking it from there, you learn best by "discovering" certain things yourself. Yet, I would like to point them into the right direction by giving "tactical / strategical hints" throughout regular C&C gameplay in this tutorial mission. I am almost done with scripting Gunner's weapons training; I did not yet include grenades, because I would have to alter many soundfiles based on the grenade launcher - don't know if it is worth it... I had to script the weapon pickups slightly differently, because the Rx_Weapon Pickups de-spawn after a few seconds. Instead, I am simply showing/hiding the equipment, and when "switch weapon" is pressed, the new inventory item is given to the player. Luckily, this technique allows to arrange the items more convincingly on the table with some magazines. Once I have finished scriptingthe weapons training, I will show you another video, so stay tuned

Yes, good idea ! Basically, with UDK and a bit of scripting anything is possible... I wanted to give more general advices on the gamemode and how it should be played. Though, the situation you are describing is very specific, and getting a SBH spy crate rather unlikely. However, the concept of stealth as well as spies should definitively be explained / experienced. If you have a good idea how to incorporate these bits within a somewhat regular c&c game mode, I would be glad if you could share your thoughts on this! Current WIP: Weapons training 50% setup. I added a few filters to make gunners voice be transmitted via megaphone in the shooting range. Hopefully, I can show another video soon. Cheers!

I recently found this playlist about shaders/materials in UDK by Eat3D. Free DVD! UDK Shaders: Starts with the essential basics of shaders, and covers several interesting applications and techniques. Very informative and comprehensive! Thought it could be helpful for mappers of all experience levels. At the same I was thinking that perhaps we as a community could implement an easy to use set of high quality & procedural master materials for the most commonly used elements across levels: Landscape - Rocks - Foliage Which enable the mappers to easily switch out some textures and control parameters, without having to recreate (or copy paste) bits from other maps. And for example also align textures between rock meshes and landscape P.s. not sure if someone already mentioned this playlist, dont know where I stumbled across it. Please, delete if duplicate.

@Veyron Have a look at gimp - I think it's a good free alternative for photoshop: https://www.gimp.org/ You can edit color and alpha channels separately, as well as use masks for different layers. As for poly count, you may want to check other buildings in RenX of similar detail / smoothness, to get a rough idea of the polies. I cant give you any reasonable number right of the bat. Also note that usually, interior and exterior are seperate meshes. Btw. Looks great ! Keep it up!

If you want your stained glass to be (partly) transparent only through the glass parts - and opaque at the metal connections - you could use a black&white opacity mask, and plug this into the corresponding channel in the UDK material editor. This mask could be stored in your alpha channel of your glass texture. So in this sense, it is of course possible to generate the masks in PS

Well done, it already feels like a temple ! Dont worry about materials/textures too much, you can do that in UDK. But you might want to unwrap the surfaces in maya for this later Good luck!

Episode 6 is out Sry for spoilers ^^ Nice job with the foliage, looks great, but I am already looking forward to more "netherlandsy"