Huge Amazing Unity Terrain Tutorial

"Shastia, Zdorovia"
 me

DOWNLOAD UNITY 3D ASSETS

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/106482752/Dvornik-400-sq-km-Alpine-Terrain.unitypackage

mirror:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxgYUKP-c4dJLUR5aEZkU1B0S2M/edit?usp=sharing

DOWNLOAD GEOCONTOL 2 ASSETS

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/106482752/Dvornik-Alpine-Terra.gts

Beceuse I'am lazy oop c# coder in fact you need to read previous tutorials:

base( http://kostiantyn-dvornik.blogspot.com/2013/01/unity-4-cool-sweet-terrain-tutorial.html );

base( http://kostiantyn-dvornik.blogspot.com/2013/11/awesome-unity-texturing-terrain-tutorial.html );

Terrains described above is not big enough. 5km x 5km = 25 sq. km. is not enough for cool alpine view. Thats why I have desiced to discover seamless terrain generation option in Geocontrol. Simply check it.

Click Generate and in couple of minutes depending on power of your CPU you will get awesome fractal picture that was tiled at my first look:

I will never get it but in GeoControl terrains is always looks cooler than in any 3D soft that use it. Maybe sweet home.

Anyway we need a color map for texturing please read how to make it in texturing tutorial above.

Important:

ROTATE COLORMAP picture by 90 degree COUNTER CLOCKWISE

NOW the most tricky part of tutorial:
Create 3 additional raw copies of heighmap and colormap. Rotate them clockwise, counterclockwise, and twice counterclockwise to get this

We did this copies bacause Unity doesn't support rotation of terrains. Otherwise tutorial can be much shorter :) But anyway I think it for good optimisation of rendering:

now create 4 DIFFERENT terrains in Unity and apply texturing with my script that available in Unity menu. Also you can read about it more in texturing tutorial. Dont create copies of terrain because they share same terrain asset and when you change somethin in one all 4 will be affected. Now you can combine that 4 terrain in tile and make as big terrain as you want. I did 400 sq km then my PC getting run slowly so I stopped.

konstantin dvornik

We need an animator for our project!

Hello my kind fellows!
Our project desperately need good animator with frame by frame animation experience, you know this kind of stuff that actually called an animation and not this drag and drop <bad word here>, the oldschool one that really please your eye.

So lower below, or here, awesome link, you can see a tech demo of a project, we have already an illustrator for backgrounds and props, but we really lacking a good animation (secret here: we dont have it at all!).

So If you feel hunger for an adventures to try something new, and by awesome adventures I mean working with random dudes on this project :)

Game Idea: KYIV

3rd person role playing game of Skyrim, Gothic, Witcher setting with open world about ancient time of Kievan  Rys.

1. Time of actions 998 year.
2. Gather Kievan Rys lands.
3. Revolutions.
4. Paganism magic system based of Gods and runas of that time: Perun, Yarilo etc.
5. Network based non-liner quest system.
6. Automatic network quest system generation.
7. Weapon of Kievan Rys.
8. Level and characters design based on historical documents and facts.
9. Wars support. ( crowd AI  ~ 500 character per war scene )
10. Native Ukrainian vegetation like Podorojnik ( + HP )
11. No GUI in game
12. Book writer as quest writer.
13. Middle graphics. ( more focused on story ).
14. Christianity and paganism opposition at that period.
15. Charismatic non customizable protagonist.

Just some Sci-fi story 3

So, our hero are moving through the desert fighting mutants and animals with his squad but, he finds out that the radio signal from scientist was a trap, a tribe of raiders find this radio and use it to lure survivers that will pick up a signal (its not a voice recorded signal, just some bips and bops) after all this disappointment and fighting with raiders and so, our squad are moving to the place where this radio was found (they recive an information about it from the raiders leader, after some, mmmm... conversation:) ) and there they meet in a long distance a high tech squad that appear from nowhere and disappear faster then they was able to move closer to them, they find the crush site, but only by little ground markings on the ground, ther was no spaceship or wreckage of it well and from this start the story is open for player or for writer to fill it with some interesting fillers like always, and abswers for all questions and further story development: the nuke war was started by the mars goverment via some agents on earth, this will find out our main character durning his traveling around the globe on his infantry transport unit (I didnt say it before, they have some transport, cause in other way its stupid :) and it also based on this crystal technology) also main character will find out that this squad with high tech weapon that ther spot near the crush site is rests of an Earth government military force, and that the field around the earth is their work to hide that their civilization is still alive, main character finds a big underground citys that was build durning the long term cold war between mars and earth and that they have advanced technologys and a lot of people and force and ready to strike back and destroy the currupted mars goverment and restore their rule, main character take their side and figths on mars to make a new revolutiion and take down the mars goverment.

So here it is, a little story plot with twists and turns and with empty spaces in between to fill it with interesting little side quests :)

Andrey "Ater" Goncharuk

Electro check

Everytime when I buy something i get a check. But this paper was madden from lot of trees. Seriously if I pay by the card why should I get this paper. It can be much simplier when every commerce transaction is logged by electronic pay system, so in fact you dont need any check as proof and you can save planet by this simple operation.

New cool sci-fi story

We have an secret school with kids that are trained from the little to be a soldier an elite soldier to be sure that you understand the point, boys are going to military training course from birth till 18 and girls that going to the tactical historical technical and all supportive like training, what the point is, the kids are taken not randomly, scientist take perfectly complementar kids so they will be sure they can trick them with love staus, how it works one time of trainig they make a meeting boy with girl and scientis also use drugs in food and all this biological and psycological stuff to make them love from first site, for a boy who never saw a girl this will be the best that he can imagine with girls same story from their side, all this stuff are going durning all studying process meetings each X time and teachers and trainers can use it like an control for both of them, for example, bad results, no meeting. But this is only the begining! After the traingin is over they(scientist or military whatever) connect pair with a neuro chip so they can communicate with each ither very fast and boys are going to the battlefield (not the battlefield 4 like ) on a planet and girls are goes to the orbital station that floats around the planet just above the battleground and girls became an angels-saviours for soldiers on field, tehy track their health, mental and phisical, help with intel and tactical information and so, and boys are have a strong motivation to finish the objective, cause then they can meet their angels, and after war they can go and live together a perfect live, awesome! nya ^_^ BUT if soldier decide to flee from battlefield, angel will be tourtured automaticly and all that will hear, see, and maybe fell soldier, well cruel but efficent. And here can go two plot twists in the first line all ended great main character win the ar meet the angel and they live happy and long life (booooooriiiing) OR all that meeting stuff was a play with one actrss and there is no REAL angels in skyes its all recorded voices and main character goes all crazy about it and goes to revange scientists and so OR there is a girls, BUT the are in chambers closet in some kind stasis and they are cant be taken out of there, so yeah main character goes crazy again and goes to avange system )



Andrey "Ater" Goncharuk

Keyboard with Oculus rift

So we now have this ):

But, there is a problem with keyboard, you now, its hard to spot it in virtual life, so I had an idea how we can solve it, not ideal but cheap and fast:
We need a keyboard and a trackerline like this, not very precise (precise are not so cheap :) ):

Awesome design! I know I know its gorgeous. So it mas be not very precise cheap and able to being setup to any keyboard (its important), I think you already have an idea of what is going on, but if you dont follow the rabbit. Now we need a program that will render a virtual keyboard on screen and track position of hand or hands, only wrist just to show where hand is hovered around and second point is, any key that beign pressed change his color, something like this:

So on picture we see where our jands are not prcise but its enough for our brain to navigate further and find what letter do we need, and also its recomended to be able for blind typing, this keyboard must be able to be invoked on hotkey that we must be able to set up (on mouse or key on keyboard, or even a voice command) position of keyboard and apperiance of keyboard and hands must be changable for comfort usage and also we need to be able to control transparency level of keyboard and hands icons and invoke situation, hotkey, or any key is pressed, or for example make it disappear if key was pressed and now holding on, like W for going forward and so on.

So what we have in result: cheap solution to know is our hands are over keyboard, what key was pressed and where our hands are, and again its cheap and working with any system and with any keyboard, the obly problem I think will be overlay for games, it can lower performance a little bit, but hey! You now have a virtual keyboard just like in a cyberpunk movies! Cheers :)

Andrey "Ater" Goncharuk

Just some Sci-fi story 2

So in previous part we found out that there is some kind of a problem, and all spacecrafts that was sent to Earth are not working so they decide to send there a spacecraft with some scientists and equipment on a higher orbit where signal is still can be sent. After the first spacecraft reach the nosignal - zone they started to research this anomaly and they found out that there is some kind of a jammer that just disables all signals from earth, so they decide to land on surface to research the source of a signal, but after a short period of time, they gone, so mars goverment decides to send an military squad to rescue this scientists and find out the source of a signal and here when the Real story that are being presented to reader/player or so we have an main hero from mars that going just for simple rescue mission, to find out whats happened, find scientists and source of a signal, that simple, but there is but like always, its all complicated, o the ground main character finds out that there is a wastelend on earth now, mutants and dangerous animals are crawling around all over the planet (most of the regions that was damaged not so strong) and most of the planet is desert, high temperature desert with high level of radiation, nuclear bombs you know, you cant jike with that kind of stuff, durning the travel he finds out that ON the surface signal is working and he picks up a signal from scientits, they are asking for help, so hero moves there to find them. to be continued...

Andrey "Ater" Goncharuk

Boots with heating

Every cold winter same problem - feet freezing. Seriously it is doesn't matter hows cool your boots you've got the same. What if place powerful battery inside sole and connect it to  a heating element around your feet. Next we can make charging of this battery from kinetic power of walking or sun energy.

Game balance and stuff

It's rare to see, a good and interesting balance in a game its sad but true. The problem is that rock paper scissors its not a good example of a good balace, dont get me wrong, its perfectly balanced, but its naive and boring, you know each outcome and you can predict the result very easy to make an example we can go to the MMORPG games well almost each and one of them are have this issue, allways the same story tank healer damgedealer blah blah blah you can say, "But Ater, what should we do? Who can help us to make an interesting balance?". Well my young friend there is only one answer, your imagination, combination and random!

To make it more appliable for any kind of field where balance is needed we will find out the objects of interest, what fields of an object can participate in balancing? Here some examples:

  outcome (what pluses item,object,story,event can give to player and minuses)
  accessability (how easy player can get it)
  timed usage (we can balance it with timed usage like, for example some bonuses can be recived only for 15 minutes in hour)
  usage (how easy, or hard to use this object)
  random (how random this object, is it more predictable or it can give awesome results but its fairly based on random)

And this is just an example, you can add any field that you want, but goal is to make object more better in one field then we need to balance it from another field or mabe fields, or give a good range results for several fields and make one field really really bad, this is and example of interesting balance!

I will give an example:

In a MMORPG game, we can make an really OVERpowered class with higher damage and tank abilities than other classes on a field, and to defeat this guy you need the same class or several guys of another class, someone can say, HEY its not fare, why there can be one class that so overpowered so I cant take it with my perfect archer!?!? Well, the point is, first, Deal with it, the real life outside is NOT fare and this is why its so interesting, some people get results really easy and someone put a lot of hardworking to get the same reults and other examples, SO say to me, why should we make games different from our lifes? But its not the one point, to balance this guy we can make his leveling process really hard, put some problems with quests, like some NPC wont give him quests cause of his class, like you know random NPC: "Oh you! <class name> I hate you! I dont need help from your kind go away!" but only this, to make his life even more complicated we can make him to use only really rare weapon that can be found in shops or crafted, only taken from monsters with reare chance, so after that, this class is not so overpowered huh? Yeees, but still, there is a lot of nolifers that will go to doing all this to get this overpowered class, and he will ruin the balance of us, normal lifers, well, you know what can I say to it? If this guy can pull of all this why should we dont revard him with this benefits of beign so powerfull? If he can do more and better and put more himself in game, why for the gods sake he must be on the same ladder then you? My dear normal player? If you want to deal with this guy, get some friends from you life, cause you knowm you have your life, you have friend, and he dont, so its even more balanced that you think!

So think about it, if you are involved in game creation process in some kind, say to your fellow  game-designer: "Hey, lets make it more interesting, shall we?" and if he will answer, screw you, I will go with a safe way, than, I have a secret for you, here it is, read it in whisper: "he is, not a real game designer, he is an alien, imposter, agent, Sam Fisher, 47, or anyone else. It seems to be like this guy killed a real game designer or taked him somewhere far far away and taked his place, you need to help him! Rescue him! Faster while we still have time!"




Andrey "Ater" Goncharuk

Just some Sci-fi story

Story begins when first mars colony find the crystal, rare glowing mineral with really complex structure, after some research scientists find out that if you put that crystal in a specific magnetic field with special parameters, you know science stuff and so, and if you put around a copper wire its become a perfect block for dynamo engine, it works for some time, depends on magnetic field the stronger field less time and more power and in other way less power more time. And all this story starts from this mineral, after years of development mars become more and more efficient and start to become less controllable from Earth goverment and blah blah long story short, on the highest level of cold war between mars and earth, on earth starts apocalyptic scenario all nuclear missiles that was controled by new super duper mega smart AI shot right into the sky and wipe out entire earth, on mars in the main time it all shows up like a civil war on earth and some malfunction that cause this disaster, so mars send some expeditions and help to earth but soon when they have reach the planet mars lose signal from them, with no reason. After some tests mars decide to research this phenomena they send automatic zonds, but anything that you send to earth stop working. to be continued...




Andrey "Ater" Goncharuk

Game Prototype: Aqualung

Good day to everyone,  we're a great team from Ukraine working on this awesome Unity game for iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS

Here we are:
http://anoxemia.net/

Here is a work in progress build so there will be what speak about:

 

  Mouse control ( on the tablet  touch control ) pull movement foward , click on the hero pause, the protagonist is subject to gravity, text side debug info: all time, time from last death , oxygen level, and the time when oxygen will end, the game itself is conceived absence of any text or any kind of interface (except main menu) everything important will be shown on hero itself and by sound.

Write to us your angry comments :)

See you.

Also check this out, early sketches:

Dear developers

Dear developers of net based games (MOBA, MMORPG, Shooters and so).

Every time when on forum some players start to make a wave of hate like, change this or change this! This is stupid, make it like this, and their argument will be like, "I paid for this game and this is what I get? Change it!" well in this situation, just imagine on the place of a game another product, like book or picture, anyone who bought a book cant ask author to rewrite some story cause it look stupid from the point of this guy, or so, cause they bought a book, they paid for it already, and there is a lot of people who bough this book and they have NO problem with this part of story, why should author rewrite something? He shouldn't, or imagine an picture in a museum and after buying a ticket one dude decides to find an author of an exhibition and say to him something like: "Dude, I saw a picture that you draw, and this tree behind house on the right, see, its sucks, can you change it? I got a ticket, so I think I have right to ask for it" sounds a little bit stupid isn't it? Well, but why it must be different with games? Always with this kind of stuff look how many people agreed with patch or changes and how many is angry and have an issues, if in a game of 100 000 people playing 1000 asking to change something Cause they pay for the game, well, screw them, lets start to put a disclaimers like, you bought a game for your own risks don't complain :)

P.S. Of course Im talking about some changes patches and rebalances, not about bugs glitches and so that kind of stuff Must be fixed.

Andrey "Ater" Goncharuk

Procedure generation

 I was wondering why there is not so much procedure generated games, I mean not like Diablo when they just mix some level parts and items parameters or like borderlands when they just make bazzilions of guns, Im talking about when you involve so much procedure generation when game can be played for example you can generate persons and items of interest for quest, you can even mix situation and places, for example you can have a template of a quest with several variations of problem solutions main characters and level based parameters, and starting from this you can make bazzilion quests, but wait there is more, just have some random spots for NPCs and other locations plus random level locations plus random item generation plus quests generation plus main story and you have different game have problems with using this methodology by several reasons for like, hard balancing, hard testing, more each time you run it, it will increase playtime and replay rates. I know for modern developers they work to do when player will get only part of it in a first play, but for balance, you can balance the generation process just take 1-2 programmers just for making procedure generated parts so they will try to make it balanced from the beginning, for testing, you can just make a public beta tests with online automatic data collection process, as for the  problem with amount of work to do to fill the generator well, its depends on what you want to do, good game, or just game that will sell itself.


Andrey "Ater" Goncharuk

Sci-fi future gun

Idea is to have a smart gun that will have an mechanism to prevent a recoil and spread by moving and changing the angle of shooting part of a gun, and almost all shots are going to the middle of a crosshair ( I mean, its future dude! we have flying space cars and shuttles for each family but we not advanced enough to make a precise gun :(


Andrey "Ater" Goncharuk