The Savage Empire Remake: Trees!
Over at the Exult forums, Scythifuge has posted another image showing off more of the excellent artwork he has created for his Exult-based remake of Savage Empire. This time, he has a new technique for making trees to show off:
[singlepic id=1164 w=543 h=408 float=center]
The forest AND the trees.
He also mentions that he is busy “experimenting” with more foliage, and creating new plants and tree trunks. He’s also trying to implement a system whereby the boughs and leaves of the trees disappear when the player walks beneath them, emulating a fairly common visual trick in modern RPGs that makes navigation somewhat easier.
Update: I incorrectly labelled the above trees as being bamboo; these are the bamboo trees he has been working on:
[singlepic id=1183 w=403 h=175 float=center]
See? Bamboo.
Thank you, WTF, for posting this! The screenshot is of the new foliage techniques that I have been working on. The bamboo, from the project’s early days until the recent rendition, along with some other objects can be seen at this link: http://exult.sourceforge.net/forum/read.php?f=1&i=352384&t=352384, and at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Ultima-The-Savage-Empire-Remake/147506811954890
Work continues on various objects. A tentative version of Fritz has been done as well as some other stuff related to foliage. I have also contemplated making chunks with Exult Studio. My stance was not to use chinks at all, but rather build Eodon almost Lego style with tiles in multiples of 8x8x4 pixels. I have to rethink things for simplicity and current Z-value limitations (until they are addressed, all space must be utilized as best as possible!)
Coders and other volunteers are needed. Otherwise, at best the project will produce a complete map of Eodon with NPCs and “monsters”, yet no dialogue, quests, or properly functioning animated interactive objects. I can see how the game can function; know that it is possible, yet cannot implement the vision due to a lack of knowledge at the moment. I am reading up on things, though I am more of an artist and designer than I will ever be a programmer.
Looking good. I especially like the use of lighting on the canopy and trunk.
One trick that might work would be to create two layers of leaves, both shaded as you did. Make one layer darker and place it underneath the lighter layer. It might look like you can see darker leaves “inside” the canopy with the outer leaves being brighter, but both being shaded by a light source.
Or it might look like crap, just an idea though.
Thanks! I try to pay very close attention to shading and lighting. I use three shades of leaves for that particular leaf design, though it may be hard to see in the screenshot. I do like the effect and I am experimenting with it for the other design WIPs.
There will be variations of each leaf/trunk style to keep things unique.
Nice. Trees are a pain in the ass, no? Even with me photographing them rather than drawing them they still drive me crazy. Here’s an example of what I was talking about, although I did it pretty quick so it looks bad.
http://www.eightvirtues.com/misc/treetest.png
Working in 256 colors will keep things interesting. I actually miss those days when you could color cycle the palette to do water effects and such. So much simpler back then.
Here it is in 16 colors with dithering and alpha. Way better than I expected it would be.
http://www.eightvirtues.com/misc/treetest16.png
I like the leaves on your trees! I wish I could go with such detail, though I am stuck at 320×200.
I find that the trunks are more difficult right now, mostly because of the tedium. With the leaf technique that I discovered, I can make tree tops rather quickly. Some of these trees are going to be very tall in some spots to depict an emergent layer above the canopy. They’ll probably be level with the highest Z coordinates that the player can walk.
Thanks, it’s a GIMP brush. It does look surprising good for being just a brush. Probably writing a custom brush with a bigger variety of leaf designs (possibly using real leaf scans?) would look awesome. I have a lot of real leaf scans actually, from my U5TES3 mod way back in the day.
320×200 is a blessing in disguise considering how crappy frame rates can get over that. I wish I could run mine full screen at that res sometimes with the limited hardware acceleration I’m using.
I remember from high school when using QuickBASIC 4.5 that I’d create all my assets high color, then reduce the palette with all the objects in one image to find the perfect 256-color palette. Do you have a palette that you’re going to stick with yet? If so, can you send it to me? I need a 256-color image with all 256 palette colors in it. Could be one pixel per color or an actual screenshot or sprite set.
I want to do some tests from arbitrary high color images to your specific 256-color palette to see how far it can be pushed. We might be surprised (hopefully pleasantly, haha).
The leaves on my trees are custom GIMP brushes that I drew & then imported. I am utterly glad that I decided to explore GIMP and start using more of the features.
While I wish that I could draw things with greater detail, the 320×200 limit keeps things simple, classic, & old-school Ultima-style.
The palette that I am using is the Ultima VII palette. I will send you a .png file with all of the colors in it. I am amazed that such a colorful game as The Savage Empire is possible with Ultima VII’s neutral-heavy color palette!
Between work, Sancti and trying to keep my life in one piece I am strapped for time (as we all are), but I’d like to help. Definitely send me that palette. I will give some smaller stuff a try like individual leaf variations rather than whole-image conversions. Cool that we’re both using GIMP too. 🙂 I used to be really good at per-pixel artwork, getting the most out of subtle combinations to create the illusion of a higher-res image. That hearkens back to my older days doing graphics. 640×200 with a standard EGA 16-color palette used to be my forte, having two side-by-side pixels blend to form a new color. Deluxe Paint II, where are you?
I’d say this somewhere else, but I’m super excited about it, so I can’t stop myself. I just got light sources working. It was a real “holy shit” moment for me, which is pretty rare.
I hear you Kevin. I could generate a lot more material if I didn’t have to balance things between family, job, music, & graphics. There is simply not enough time in a day. If I had the means, I would do well in a director’s role. I am actually trying to do that by drawing frame 16 of U7 style npc’s and trying to get people to draw the rest of the frames, basing them on that particular frame. Hopefully someday it will happen, though I fear that there are too few old schoolers & too many instant ultra-new-graphics-no-actual-gameplay-types these days.
I appreciate any help and offer to you or any other independent Ultima developer aid as I can give it! I am excited about the EA Ultima stuff & Garriott’s new venture, though I firmly believe that it is up to the fan community to keep the old school alive.
I look forward to your project, man. I keep an eye & ear out for it! I sent an email with an attachment containing the palette. Let me know if there are any issues or anything else that I can do!
Thank you, WTF, for the correction!
Normally I wouldn’t spam, but I posted this in the “not-so-nightly have-at-thee” thread which you probably aren’t subscribed to, so enjoy (hopefully):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Aczu6MUhQ
What you’re talking about, with regard to directing, sounds like what Bill Gates used to do way back. I read a biography called “Hard Drive” about him and allegedly he would look over all the source code and send email to people with corrections and suggestions. He wasn’t just some exec, he was overseeing what they were actually doing, making sure it was correct and to his standards. And I hate Bill Gates, so I wouldn’t occasionally say something good about him if I didn’t believe it.
Leading the orchestra would be awesome. I’d still have to get dirty though, probably to the point of near micro-management. They’d at least have control of a single procedure at a time, with my comments only coming when they asked me if it was good or if I saw things becoming less consistent with the other procedures.
I still haven’t gotten the palette via email. Send it to username kevinfishburne with domain eightvirtues.com as an attachment. If that fails then same username but domain gmail.com.
And let me know what you think of the video. I shit bricks when the code ran tonight without any weird graphical artifacts. I just smoothed out the initial syntax errors from renaming a few variables and making a few new ones and had no serious logic errors. I got lucky and kicked ass at the same time, a rare combination.
Great video! It also gives me ideas for destructible environments which I believe can be pulled off in Exult. Is that Castlevania music that I hear? I look forward to seeing more stuff!
I don’t understand any code yet, but I would probably want to test something that someone coded, and then communicate with them if any changes needed to be made. I wish that I could just learn how to code though.
I’ll see what is going on with the email.
Thanks. The music is by Yuzo Koshiro and is from Act Raiser for SNES. Love that guy. The second song does sound a lot like Castlevania.
I’ve always used and am still using BASIC. I have a book on C and C++, but it’s like three inches think and is pretty hard core. I probably should learn it someday, but BASIC is so much easier. I’d play around using something like GAMBAS if you want to learn some basics, though it’s only for Linux and OSX now.
Got the email, I’ll play with some stuff and send it your way if it turns out good.
I am straight up salivating for this game to come out. This is very impressive!
Actraiser music FTW and so much that was in the Castlevania series is great. I’ve used alot of it for D&D campaings I’ve run.