F.L.A.R.E. Revived
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More than happy to lend a hand if needed.
New tiles would be awesome!
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Can you give us a number (%) how many of the tile skins are done?
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This is fantastic news! Thanks Gio for handing this over to the community, it’s because of this kind of selflessness that BMS is what it is.
And to Demo and team, give it horns boys! We’re 100% rooting for you! -
So??? You on it???
Dave
If I had the source files…. Then again, it’s better to gen the Ntiles once the whole terrain is complete.
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Very nice! Keep up the good work guys!
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Can you give us a number (%) how many of the tile skins are done?
More than 50% done
BB
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@Bad:
More than 50% done
BB
50% of 3-4 weeks is 1-2 weeks !!! :shock:
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I’d say the tiles are 80-85% done. Most of the work involves coastline, bases, and mountains.
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More than 50% done
One piece of advice if I may….
While enthusiasm and support is still fresh, I would tackle first ABs (airbases). Some of them are finished as video shows , but I do not think that they are all finished. They should be coordinated with 3D models and they are few of them in Korea theater. To make them to look and match FLARE high quality, it would be rather demanding task. Obviously there are other objectives, which equally require some 2D/3D coordination work (like ports, NPs and main industrial plants), but they could be too much for the first run and therefore tackle the most important first.
50% of tiles sounds like a quite a big number of tiles to work on, from the video it did not look that way.
BTW the video is nice (and music is very cool too) and the general effect of FLARE from the high elevation is good which was the objective of the main concept of it to fade out any of the easy to spot graphical elements. Just remember that this WAS the main goal of FLARE project and that too may add to some challenge when you now continue work on it.
If you need and care to share any question, call for help or advice, please do not hestitate to ask.
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One piece of advice if I may….
While enthusiasm and support is still fresh, I would tackle first ABs (airbases). Some of them are finished as video shows , but I do not think that they are all finished. They should be coordinated with 3D models and they are few of them in Korea theater. To make them to look and match FLARE high quality, it would be rather demanding task. Obviously there are other objectives, which equally require some 2D/3D coordination work (like ports, NPs and main industrial plants), but they could be too much for the first run and therefore tackle the most important first.
50% of tiles sounds like a quite a big number of tiles to work on, from the video it did not look that way.
BTW the video is nice (and music is very cool too) and the general effect of FLARE from the high elevation is good which was the objective of the main concept of it to fade out any of the easy to spot graphical elements. Just remember that this WAS the main goal of FLARE project and that too may add to some challenge when you now continue work on it.
If you need and care to share any question, call for help or advice, please do not hestitate to ask.
Good advice. We are taking on some of the more difficult tiles first. I’m talking the bases that aren’t finished first. Jammer has the coastlines that aren’t finished, and Fulcrum is doing the cities. Gio was very organized and he has the tiles and PSDs organized into sets… For example, there is a folder called HCITY-Cities and in that folder we have folders Original Day, Original Night, and PSDs. Any tiles in the Original Day/Night folders haven’t been completed. Whenever we complete a file we remove the original from that folder. Once the folders are empty (for example lakes) we know that tile set is completed. So we’re approaching it by folders or tile sets. Jammer is right about the % complete though. It’s more than I thought it would be completed. I’ll try to take a pic of Terrain Editor to give an idea.
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…I’ll try to take a pic of Terrain Editor to give an idea.
Not needed … do not waste time in explanations!!! … work on it work on it, finish it! LOL
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Not needed … do not waste time in explanations!!! … work on it work on it, finish it! LOL
Well someone is an eager beaver
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I cant imagine why…
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http://1stfightergroup.com/Public/FLARE_water.jpg
Sorry if the map is covered by that same texture you lost me. If you talking 5-10% maybe.
Am I the only one with reservations.
Regards
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Shadow, do I understand you correctly as questioning that such large areas are covered by one type of tile? Or what looks like one type?
In a way, I can see that is a potential issue, but unavoidably perhaps, a result of doing away with the tile borders and repeating effect. It would be great if a way could be found to introduce more variety of terrain and textures, to better reflect real life. But I don’t know enough about the process to comment really.
That’s one reason why I wondered earlier in the post, how this process (or parts of it) and the other advances in tiling made by the Balkans team guys, would be of use to each other in improving both projects.
Demo, are you at liberty to explain how the process works and the basic principles behind it?
Cheers, Mark
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What you see in the pics and that video are what Gio did. That’s all tiles that were completed before we got the files.
We’re are in the process of adding more variety (where we can) and incorporating more satellite imagery. However, our main priority is to just finish it. If we try to do too much the likelihood it gets finished decreases dramatically. So we’re in the process of balancing the two goals. Once it’s done it can always be improved upon, but at least all the time consuming grunt work will be completed.
I will say though that there is a trade off when you do a lot of satellite imagery. At lower altitudes it looks wrong, and if there are 3D objects, it looks wrong if they don’t line up or the scaling is off. We were already doing tiles in Korea before we got these files from Gio. I posted a pic in the screenshots thread of KOTAR that Fulcrum did with the actual satellite image of the KOTAR range. It looked amazing above 10,000ft or looking straight down at it but when you did a straffing run or dive bomb and got close to it at lower altitudes it just looked strange because the POV is obviously off. Whereas with the FLARE tiles they look great at low altitude. But for example, we’re adding more satellite imagery to the mountains to give them more definition and we are adding some more variations throughout the generic tiles (ie Bog, farmlands, etc…). Since the majority of tiles are done, we’re able to go back in fill in certain spots with new tiles.
Like I said in my first post, the ITO/BFS/Balkans tiles have raised the bar and we hope to incorporate some of their good ideas in with FLARE. I’ve already reached out to Fighting Falcon but he said he’s on holiday for the next two weeks and will get back to me then. If you like the FLARE tiles when we’re finished, awesome. If you don’t, no worries. Either way options are nice to have :).
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sounds great! I am sure there is a trade off between too detailed and not detailed enough.
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What you see in the pics and that video are what Gio did. That’s all tiles that were completed before we got the files.
We’re are in the process of adding more variety (where we can) and incorporating more satellite imagery. However, our main priority is to just finish it. If we try to do too much the likelihood it gets finished decreases dramatically. So we’re in the process of balancing the two goals. Once it’s done it can always be improved upon, but at least all the time consuming grunt work will be completed.
I will say though that there is a trade off when you do a lot of satellite imagery. At lower altitudes it looks wrong, and if there are 3D objects, it looks wrong if they don’t line up or the scaling is off. We were already doing tiles in Korea before we got these files from Gio. I posted a pic in the screenshots thread of KOTAR that Fulcrum did with the actual satellite image of the KOTAR range. It looked amazing above 10,000ft or looking straight down at it but when you did a straffing run or dive bomb and got close to it at lower altitudes it just looked strange because the POV is obviously off. Whereas with the FLARE tiles they look great at low altitude. But for example, we’re adding more satellite imagery to the mountains to give them more definition and we are adding some more variations throughout the generic tiles (ie Bog, farmlands, etc…). Since the majority of tiles are done, we’re able to go back in fill in certain spots with new tiles.
PLEASE, no more satelite shit , please. We don’t need fake buildings (flat citys ) or fake farms. It just makes ground targets disapear in mess of pixels … Some times less is more.
They should serve purpose, not try to be eye candy…
Thanks.
-haukka81
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PLEASE, no more satelite shit , please.
WOah, cool your afterburner there, Turbo…
lol, just kidding (i’m quoting someone from the FF forum here, don’t remember who but it was hilarious )Everything needs balance, but don’t you think current city tiles are a mess of pixels too? Back then, those tiles were trying to be “photorealistic”.
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Sorry if the map is covered by that same texture you lost me. If you talking 5-10% maybe.
Am I the only one with reservations.
Regards
No you’re not. The released pictures and movie clips show a kind of uniform dark green landscape without much detail. It doesn’t appear to be very immersive to me. But I won’t judge it before release: maybe the end-product is much better than what is shown here.