UniqueOne

As an extension of the old steep map system, Warzone now also does tri-planar blending and splat mapping. Previously you could add (<texturename>_steep) high angles texture, and (<texturename>_steep2) water edge textures and have the game do the blending for you. I have now extended the system so that you can also add up to 3 (at the moment) splat textures (<texturename>_splat1, <texturename>_splat2,<texturename>_splat3). If you would like to, then you can also add a (<texturename>_splat) image to control where on the map to blend each texture. If the _splat image is not added, it will use a default splat control map to select the positions that should work fine with any map anyway. The Tri-Planar blending and splat mapping systems make sure textures vary across your maps instead of seeing obvious repetition of the same texture... and it is as simple as adding a few extra textures to the same directory as the original. This is a map I put together in about 15 minutes to test the system. The ground surfaces on this map use a single default shader (in this case "textures/yavin/ground"). All the other textures and blending between them are done by the new system using the following automatically based on the default splat control image. "textures/yavin/ground_steep" (cliffs - rock) "textures/yavin/ground_steep2" (water edges - sand) "textures/yavin/ground_splat1" (first random blend texture) "textures/yavin/ground_splat2" (second random blend texture) "textures/yavin/ground_splat3" (third random blend texture) The grasses were added to the map automatically by the warzone foliage system. The trees were added to the map automatically by the warzone tree system after taking 20 seconds to run a command "/genfoliage" in-game to add trees). Complete AI support was added to the map by taking about 2 minutes to auto-generate map waypoints using /awp (auto waypoint) and /awc (auto waypoint cleaner) commands. Spawnpoints were automatically generated for each faction when loading the map after running the /awp command (only runs if you do not manually add enough spawnpoints). Hopefully that explains it all, here are some screenshots.

Just a quick screenie of the new water system I have been working on.

Looks like a really nice program, but the personal version seems to be crippled and the license doesn't allow distribution of stuff made by it... and I sure can't afford to buy it. If only. I do have software that can make reasonable trees, but the JKA model formats have limitations and rend2 bogs down really fast with anything more complex then the most basic tree models.

The current method uses distance for the number of splits on a triangle.

This is the PN triangles method of tessellation. I plan to add heightmap based tessellation for models later, if any modelers want it.

Look along the top of the back of the seats in the 2 pictures and flick up/down between them.

It could be used for stuff like that, but adding extra triangles to grass would be a pretty bad FPS hit (due to there being so many instances on screen).

Yep

Just added 3 new dynamic light options to add (original low/medium/high settings with) volumetric light on all map glow surfaces. The new options hit FPS a bit, but they do look quite nice.

8/16/32 at the moment.

Just added texture splatting blending to steep map beach blend. Also added support for alpha channel textures for extra customization. There is info on what it is here: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndreyMishkinis/20130716/196339/Advanced_Terrain_Texture_Splatting.php Here is how it looks with just the built in warzone heightmap generation for textures and no alpha channels on the textures. The looks and blend can be adjusted using an alpha channel in the <texturename>_steep2 texture. And here is another scene because... why not

Hmm at the moment no, its just the basics, but that is something I plan to add soon. EDIT: See below.

I'm hoping it should speed things up a lot for mappers.

Today I extended the steep map blending system I added a while back. The system is used to easily blend between different textures for terrains (or other stuff) without needing to screw around with quake 3 shaders. Using steep maps is as simple as adding an extra <texturename>_steep texture file for a high slope texture, and/or a <texturename>_steep2 texture file for water edges and below water. Here is a screenshot to show how this works. ... and here is a few more screenshots of how it looks without the red writing covering up the picture ... You can also specify steepmap and steepmap2 in shaders if you require. In the future I will probably add randomization to the blend to the beach textures.

Today I added tessellation. Tessellation takes the triangles of a model and converts that triangle into multiple smaller triangles and applies a rounding effect to make models and maps more detailed. Example of what tessellation does. Here are some screenshots of it working in Warzone. Tessellation OFF Tessellation ON (exagerated a bit to make it obvious)

The grasses are textures added to random locations on a surface by a geometry shader. They are drawn and animated completely on the GPU. The trees (and the large plants/flowers, currently) are models drawn from cgame (which also contains old code to do grass for others to use is they wish in their own mods).

Yeah making them sway like that would most likely require drawing a lot more triangles to look right (which is not really an option if we want playable game speeds), but I will see what I can do.

They are all at random heights and random positions. The system currently only uses one texture though - something I plan to change soon. Easy to do, but i'm just one person Expect lots more changes before any final version hehe.

Long time no see. Great to see you back again man.

New updates to the grass system. Now runs faster and looks better. Here's some screenshots of some of the climate options with their new grasses. Here's a short video of the new wind gust effects on grasses.

Depends a lot on the quality level you select in the setup menu. The highest quality setting hits fps a bit while the low quality setting barely hits fps at all. There are 3 levels available.

The easiest way is using the web IRC client provided by arlona.net. Here is how to do that. 1. Go to http://www.arloria.net/ 2. Click the "Flash Client" link. 3. Enter a nickname and click connect. 4. Once it finishes connecting, type "/join #warzone"

Since we have changed a lot of stuff like lighting, etc recently, here are some more up to date screenshots.

When enabled, Warzone will add up to 16 volumetric lights to the scene. These can be the sun, or dynamic lights.

Up to 16 dynamic lights are now added to the scene using blinn phong lighting. They are drawn during the normal rendering pass, so there is little or no FPS hit. I might raise or lower this 16 limit in the future. This lighting is independent of the volumetric lighting options and can be used at the same time.