Cathedral i've been working on...

[SneaksieDave]

Yummy. I definitely think the warm colors (tan roof, brown of wood, brown stone) on the left make a more cohesive and attractive combo than the grey/blue stone on the right of the shot.

[Baddcog]

17 FPS? I thought you were getting 50

[AluminumHaste]

17 FPS? I thought you were getting 50

 

lol, you should know by now that when you hit F12 to take a screenshot, the game pauses for a split second and your FPS drops to like 1, and the file is created somewhere in between there, so I always show like 15 FPs in most of my screenshots. Unless it's like just a room that's empty, then it's at 60.

 

Also I was using the polished marble texture over the entire floor that uses a cube map, which seems to kill performance on such a large scale, not to mention that it looks like crap.

I was considering trying for a reflection on the ground marble, but even in hallways with hardly anything, real time reflections seem to be performance killers.

I've since switched to a non cubemapped marble texture and it's running much better now.

[LordSavage]

Just amazing!

[STiFU]

Well I don't exactly know how it's done in Doom 3, but in quake 3 the polys were double due to mirror's and I guess it's the same here... Especially mirror's on the floor are expensive.

[AluminumHaste]

MMMMM Can we say "Flying Buttress"?

 

[Melan]

There is something really beautiful about complex wireframe geometry. Must be recessive engineer genes (dad's an engineer, mum's an economist; I became an economist who builds computer game levels, my brother became an engineer who subscribes to The Economist). Thanks for posting these.

Edited November 3, 2009 by Melan

[Baddcog]

7 degrees of wireframe?

[Bikerdude]

This engine can handle a lot of polys Man I'm really tired so if any of this looks right, then I'll be pleased. Any suggestions are welcome. (In case you are wondering, the player starts at the ceiling through an open window)

Hey AH

 

I hope my cathedral inspired you... I only just spotted this..Im gonna tell you know though, your gonna have problems getting this to run on anything than very high end, unless you know some tricks I im not aware of...

 

I would like to open this up in DR/TDM and see where I sent wrong on my cathedral.. drop me a pm..?

Edited November 13, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Tels]

MMMMM Can we say "Flying Buttress"?

 

 

Btw, the screenshots show that the triangle densities are not even - e.g. you have areas with very very little triangles, and some with a very high count (the columns and the spiked cone tops). In these cases, using patches with a shader set to "smooth" (so they appear lighted round) will enable you to get rid of a lot of polygons. In case of the cones, you might also reduce the number they are divided vertically a lot without having them look any different.

 

Othwerwise, wow, looking forward to seeing this in game!

[LordSavage]

What happened to this masterpiece?

[AluminumHaste]

What happened to this masterpiece?

 

Well I'll tell you what happened, I made the outside of the cathedral also after which broke all visportalling so performance dropped from about 45 fps down to 10-2 fps. I worked really hard to put solid brushes between the inside and outside of the cathedral but it still broke the visportals. I kinda gave up. I did upload the latest version to the SVN database so other authors could play with it if they wanted.

 

EDIT: Or hell better yet I could just finish this mission and release it as my first lol.

[Bikerdude]

EDIT: Or hell better yet I could just finish this mission and release it as my first lol.

 

Let me have a go and VPing it (as I need something different to do for a few days) and then you can crack on with and get it out the door. Drop me a Pm, with the file etc.

[AluminumHaste]

Yeah let me play with it tonight I got the itch lol. I'll see what I can come up with. If not you can have it

[Bikerdude]

Cool.

[AluminumHaste]

I ripped out the exterior and redid the interior lights, so far I have like 54 lights and still getting 40 fps. I can't take a screenshot TDM 1.08 crashes which is already tracked. Gonna need a crypt and a tutorial on how to do the light beams and slowly falling fog by the windows

[Bikerdude]

Awesome, drop me a pm with a link as i reckon I can give you some help and or prointers (plus Im kinda curious to see what it looks like, heh)

[AluminumHaste]

EDIT: Okay so everything totally f'ed up lol. Gonna re-encode with proper settings and re-upload. I'll post link tomorrow morning bedtime for now.

[Bikerdude]

heh, ok.

[AluminumHaste]

Okay let's try this, but I'm going back to bed so if it doesn't work again then I hate computers lol

Uploading will take at least 40 minutes from this posting time.

 

[RPGista]

Damn, the scale... This takes "monumental" to a whole new level! I'm very intrigued, like everyone here, about this building, it's awesome when someone tries something really bold and pulls it off, even as an experiment. I see you even have a dome over the transept, which is a pretty nice touch.

 

St. Peters Basilica

 

The question still remains, how would such an immense space be used for gameplay purpouses, but if it's more like a space to set the mood of the game and to help create the TDM "mythology", then we dont even need to make that question. Still, I think such a building begs for its own materials and a LOT of attention to architectural details.

 

Like St Peters today, maybe your cathedral shouldnt be about ordinary sermon (with the preaching altar at the end and the public listening in the main nave) - the distances are too big for it to be practical - maybe it could be but a huge monument building housing a very important relic (like that altar in the photo) and smaller shrines/chapels around the big connecting space, then the scale would make more sense in terms of use (but only if you want to really question that).

Edited February 4, 2012 by RPGista

[Springheel]

Yeah, that scale is a little ridiculous, IMO. It looks like an entire city ward could fit in there. Guards on one side of the room wouldn't even be able to see or hear you if you were on the other side.

[Komag]

I like it generally, but I think it needs some large lighting somehow

[demagogue]

It could have some faux stainglass windows (just insets in the brushwork with a texture) with moonlight or sunlight parallel lights appearing to stream through.

 

As for gameplay, look at frobber's Keeper of the Prophecy campaign. That has gameplay in a large cathedral (can't remember the mission name, but IIRC it was reused in 2 or 3 missions anyway). A lot of the action was happening in the side halls & rooms like a normal building mission. But also sometimes you'd have to run through the open middle part (e.g., to get to a door on the other side) or grab something from a prominent place (like the OM Eavesdropping) and hope you weren't seen by patrolling guards. It's basically not far from a city street FM in the open area. The gameplay isn't from the distant AI but the potential for AI to walk nearby on their long patrols. One idea you might have is something like a noble dropped something in one of the pews with only a vague idea which row, so you have to search those rows of pews and watch out for guards walking by. Or some variations on that kind of idea. There's always potential for interesting gameplay if you have all the ingredients working, lights, shadows, architecture to run around, & patrolling AI.

 

Edit: Some other things I was thinking about... One thing I've always wanted to see in a church or cathedral mission was one where a Builder ceremony was actually going on, so some nobles & peasants are in the pews (just the front ones), and you see the procession coming up the aisle and a priest gets up and performs a Builder mass, and you have to do something while it's going on, like Life of the Party.

 

Also in terms of fiction, we might talk about where in the world this cathedral is, since it's obviously an important one. Is this the central cathedral for Bridgeport, for the Archbishop of Bridgeport? According to our fiction, the "holy city" of the Builders is another city, the capital of the empire (in my little fiction I named that city Sancta Civitas, to give it a Roman flavor), and might this even be the central basilica in S.C. for all of Builderdom, home cathedral to the Builder Patriarch?

 

And FWIW I wrote a campaign that has a mission for the 2nd of these. And at first I didn't want to ask to use this cathedral if I got to it (I had it in mind at the scale I wanted) just because it's someone else's. But then I thought if this ends up being "the" central cathedral for the whole religion, then it's like an important public site where multiple missions might take place. Also I couldn't imagine trying to build a *bigger* cathedral, lol, and it'd be a problem trying to sell my smaller cathedral as the biggest central one in Builderdom when this one is out there...

 

All of this is just to say: I nominate that this be anointed the central bascilica in the empire's capital, home cathedral to the Builder Patriarch. What do others think? (Or would we rather want this to be the Archbishop of Bridgeport's cathedral and keep it at "home"?) And would you mind if I used it for a mission as such? (After you release it as your own mission so it's clear to everyone where credit is due.)

[Bikerdude]

yeah that scale is almost comical, but we a bit a bit of creative texturing and maybe a scale reduction we could still have a huge cathedral. Like RPgista suggested we could have smalle chapels inside etc.