Casters of Fate

[zammbi]

Currently I'm working on a 3d online medieval RPG browser(light download) game called Casters of Fate built by the wonderful Jpct 
This is my current blog on what I have done, for those who wish to know about the project.
I haven't been working on this long, only learnt project darkside last week, and then built the current server and client this week, so not much to show off atm.
Here's the sshot:

[fireside]

The little guy looks pretty cool.  How are you going to do the server for a free game like that?

[zammbi]

I'm with a company called Kyrocorp. So I'm currently fine for a server when I need one. The game will have paying membership to pay for itself, but something I sort latter of course.

[JavaMan]

Looks cool! What are going to use to make the textures for your terrain with? I was using Blender but although it is great for building the mesh of a terrain I can't figure out how to get a good terrain texture.

[zammbi]

I'm going to use the procedural texture editor I listed on the blog thread, though still waiting for it to complete, that's why I might need programmers to finish it off. I'm using this so I can send textures on the fly then create them on the client.

[fireside]

I was using Blender but although it is great for building the mesh of a terrain I can't figure out how to get a good terrain texture.

Most people use an art program like gimp or photoshop for the textures.  I use gimp when I want something realistic or inkscape when I want something cartoony.  Gimp has a make seamless effect in the mapping category of the filters menu.  I use that and the clone tool on a grass photo or something I created myself.  I never tried Blender for that.  Might be interesting actually.

[zammbi]

Yea I know, my first few demos most likely will use plain images. I'll leave that to the modelers to use there own stuff for now.
A nice texture editor is : http://www.werkkzeug.com/
I wish there export plugin was in Java and free heh. Though its still a good program if you want seamless texture images.

[fireside]

Interesting.  I liked the demos.  I'm thinking about combining textures and vertex coloring to get as much variation as possible with the smallest file sizes in a future project.  I might look into procedural if a finished project is done for java. 

[zammbi]

Well the Java one I'm using (jnlp) is usable and can create some ok textures, but currently there's no site for it so no one has shared any good textures out of it. But its open source so I might try get some help to finish it, if no work gets done on it.

[fireside]

Hmm.  It looks like it's just getting started.  I saw a couple windows and buttons with no docs.  Generating textures on the fly is an interesting idea, though.  Jpegs don't take up too much file size if you keep them at 128.  It's enough for an applet, so I'll probably stick with the old fashioned way for now. 

[JavaMan]

Thanks for the suggestions. I was reading a game programming book once, in a store, while I was waiting for someone and it talked about Gimp. I'll check it out.

Blender can create mathematically defined textures. I suppose they can look good if you have the time to learn how to do it! I think they would look good on small objects, but on a large terrain the textures just didn't appear normal.

[fireside]

You can also do renders of scenes at 128X128 or whatever and use it for a texture.  You gave me the idea, actually.  I'm sure a lot of people do it.  This is a quick test I did of some grass using static particles in Blender and doing a render at 128 and then repeating it over a landscape.

[JavaMan]

How do you render at 128*128? When I press F12 it just pops up this frame, and then , very slowly, renders out the camera view. I'm not sure if the rendered area is 128*128.

Also what are static particles? I'm a noob at blender.

[fireside]

Static particles are just a way to make things like grass, hair, and other things in a modeling program.  I can't go into much depth because I don't know much, actually, but if you do a search for blender grass tutorial you should find something useful.  To change the render size when you press f12, press f10 and there will be a menu on the right hand side for x and y along with alot of other options.

[JavaMan]

Ok, thanks!