Sanctimonia Update: Primitive Object Rendering
In a recent comment, Kevin Fishburne provided the latest updated on his work-in-progress Ultima-inspired online game, Sanctimonia. He added support for scenery objects to the engine a while back, and has been working on improving both his method of creating graphical assets and his method for displaying them in-game.
If youíve seen the recent videos of object implementation you may have noticed it falls short of the proposed ì16 different directionsî technique. This actually has been implemented and is working, though itís not easily apparent from the videos. The starfish use all 16 bitmaps, which were photographed and cropped using version 2 of the photography rig and a real starfish. I have some other bitmaps (rocks, a model tree) which were also photographed using v2 of the rig, but I consider them unfit for release.
After upgrading the rig to v3 by using a larger platform for the objects and moving the three light sources to equidistant positions I did some experiments, but am holding off until I better understand chroma key compositing/bluescreening.
Iím getting some reflected light from the platform background onto the objects being photographed. Iím in the process of modifying dowel rods and such to raise small and large objects above the platform while keeping them centered. Iím also planning to replace the paper backgrounds with minimally-reflective cloths, and adjust the aperture to focus the field of view on the object and blur the background.
Iím considering photographing objects from 32 directions rather than the current 16. This would be especially effective for larger objects such as boulders and trees, which suffer the most from having only 16 images.
The networking code is solid object-wise and the client only keeps track of the objects it needs to. Sorting objects so they graphically overlap properly in the client still has not been implemented. I also added loading object images as needed so they donít need to be loaded at startup; a primitive form of memory management.
He has also provided a video showing where things are at today:
Tastes in music may vary.
One final note: the project’s composer, Absynth, recently moved to North Carolina, but is still working on the project.
Fixed bug with objects not being counted correctly by the client. Started modifications allowing particles to use z coordinate for physics. Hopefully soon the particles will be flying around with gravity properly, even when the player rotates. Next is day/night cycles and light sources. Eventually I’ll fix the water so it doesn’t look like total crapola.