Messages

1

Feedback and Suggestions / Some sort of feedback

« on: February 10, 2016, 10:47:55 pm »

I didn't know how to title this thread.
This i something recently happened to me that made me think.

Till now I bought several copies of GoIO for friends because I was (and still am) amazed by the game in probably every possible (good) way. I was kinda "turned down" when just a bunch of them continued to play it (more or less frequently) while the vast majority left after the first "test run" match.
Of course I asked them why and almost everyone said: it's nice but it's quite confusing, and stuff like that. I myself usually respect opinions different than mine so I just said them I was sorry they didn't like the game.

This until a few weeks ago when 3 of them, in a short period of time, upgraded their gaming rig and decided to give the game another try and everyone said: it's freakin' amazing, look at this, look at that, bla, bla...

So in the end it turns out they didn't want to "admit" their rig was worse than mine and the game run very badly on their old rig (unplayable fps, etc). The fact is that their rig weren't "that" bad at the time: back in early 2015 one had a 3 year medium-level machine and another had a 5 year high-end machine (don't know about the last one, but I guess it was around there too).

So, up to the point, I think many players don't get to play the game because of performance issues. Is there any way to tune further down the graphics (thinking about LOD for example) to reach a broader audience (without affecting people with good machines ofc)?

2

Steam Workshop / Re: Mask (WIP)

« on: March 07, 2015, 07:33:25 pm »

really nice!
Looking forward to it.

3

Gameplay / Re: Minotaur Heavy Cannon

« on: March 06, 2015, 05:29:33 pm »

Just reporting what happened on a 3v3 match just now (won't express opinions, just saying the facts):
I was the gunner on a mino sniping spire with an average-to-good captain. We were against 3 close range ships (goldfish, junker, pyramidion) all with average leveled captains (~lv.20). On our side one captain didn't play at all (running in circles, drunk people you know).

With only greased loaded I missed (hit nothing) just 4 shots (I'm a bad gunner, just saying).
I could manage to put on idle (at quite far range, with greased ammo) 2-3 ships just hitting them once and skipping to the next one. rinse and repeat, while my crewmates were sniping them down.

A sniping spire could completely disable and snipe to death at least 2v1 without getting hit once, with a bad gunner such I am.

-EDIT-
On a 4v4 my gun were disabled twice and that stopped abruptly the perma-control thing. Just because minotaur cannot turn spires, gallions on the other end were are complete joke xD.

4

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Minotaur is unbalanced!

« on: March 02, 2015, 11:09:17 am »

Galleons and spires have little-to-no trouble with the minotaur as you said, on the other hand goldfishes, pyramidions, junkers and squids can be completely perma-disabled because of the amount of push/turn they receive, especially at long range (can't say anything about mobulas, didn't have a chance to see that).

Also, if I'm not wrong the minotaur gun outranges the artemis and even if they work on the same range, the target of the minotaur gunner is a ship, while the target of the artemis gunner is a single gun. Still thanks a lot for the tactical advice on the gun disabling effectiveness of the artemis, much appreciated.

So, again, maybe it can be countered in multiple ways, but any counter may be extremely hard to set-up (as non-spire or non-galleon), that's why, as you said, it's not balanced yet, I just hope the devs will receive our feedback and adjust things a little bit.

5

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Minotaur is unbalanced!

« on: March 02, 2015, 08:49:30 am »

Moonshine is not the only counter...
It is the only pilot tool to counter the gun, good counters are disable weapons, keep the gun disabled it'll not shoot you.
Mercury, Artemis, Hwacha...

Yes and no, your ship is continuously turned around (high ROF / reload time) and you will probably have just one gun pointing at the enemy ship (mercury is useless because you get out of firing window too easily, hwacha is probably the reason you got turned in the first place, meaning you cannot fire with that). One gun can help damaging weapons, but won't keep them disabled, not to mention that the enemy ship may have more guns than the minotaur alone pointed on you.

6

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Minotaur is unbalanced!

« on: March 02, 2015, 06:13:13 am »

I'd say I agree with most of the ideas seen in this topic.
I think minotaur would be more balanced having:
- less but more powerful shots
- either its range reduced or its firing angle reduced (I'd really like to see this gun as mid range)
- more recharge time (can be balanced with even more powerful shots)

As someone pointed out before atm it can ONLY be countered with moonshine tapping (on mid/short range, on long range you're pretty much just fu) and designing a pilot tool to counter a specific weapon with no other use (actually it would be a "crippler" tool) as someone suggested is just not right...

7

Steam Workshop / Re: Sky Queen hat/hair WIP

« on: February 07, 2015, 04:34:41 pm »

It is actually inspired by an Egyptian headdress more than the typical crown, so I would like to stay try to the original form.

If it's inspired by something, I totally understand your choice to try to stay as close as possible to the original idea, I actually support those kind of things.

The high poly normalmap has not been made yet, so most of the geomerty is just using smoothing. The hard-looking edges actually do come from the normal map.

I don't get it, baking the high-poly normal map onto the low-poly model takes just one click (at least in blender), I think you should test your models with proper normals set up. I'm telling you this because I had to re-model a few parts of my first work after I've seen how proper normals behave.

To get the nomalmap as it is now, I applied the color texture to the higher poly model and assigned it as a bump map as well as color. This carried it over to the baked normalmap on the lower res mesh as extra geometry. It is a low-cost trick for getting extra detail that matches the colors perfectly. I then used the color texture in combination with the RBG channels in the normalmap to replace the alpha channel in GIMP (using the decomposing tool found in Color/components).

I think I can help you a lot on this one with 3 huge hints.

• Go downloading this GIMP plugin http://code.google.com/p/gimp-normalmap/
  it's an accurate texture > normal map creator with 3d preview and a lot of different options
• There are a lot of websites with free shared high-definition seamless material textures, this includes color, normal, specular. This is an example: http://texturise.blogspot.it/ but again there are a lot of them
• If you're not able to find a proper mapped seamless texture for the material you want to get, you can create your own normal and specular material maps from simple pictures of the material directly with GIMP (with really good results):
  
  • If the texture is not seamless go Filter > Map > Make Seamless
  • If you need it to be of a different color from the original image, go Colors > Desaturate... and pick Lightness, then apply as overlay over your color (you may need to tune the color value up/down to match the plain one)
  • From the desaturated texture map go Filter > Map > Normalmap... (the plugin I wrote about earlier) play a bith with the settings and generate your normal map
  • From the desaturated texture map go Colors > Levels... and move both indicators toward the center (no need to touch the balance though) until you get most of the light points almost white and the darker points almost black

You then just need to add normal and specular maps to your model's materials (you can further tune them inside blender too) and it will be exported while baking the normal map (not the specular though, and I don't know why, probably I'm missing something, I had to manually export specular maps).
I have to say the result is quite impressive, take a look at these (from my workshop item, if image links don't work just search for "Guild's Maestro"):

• back_view.jpg (grainy black plastic on the frame, loosely threaded fabric on the "panel" and really bad thing that's supposed to be gold  )
• side_view.jpg (black, aged leather on the headband, colored brushed metal on the back and really bad thing that's supposed to be gold  )

This way, after you've set up all the materials in blender (if you're using blender ofc) you can create your high-poly normal & alpha channeled specular map onto the low-poly UV with normals, specular color, specular intensity and textures (without color, and with specular maps applied as color) map baking.

Btw, I'm taking seriously that "guide" thing, there's a lot of stuff that's definitely not that intuitive on the exporting process...

8

Steam Workshop / Re: Sky Queen hat/hair WIP

« on: February 07, 2015, 08:18:39 am »

I would like to give some really personal feedback on this (it's just me, don't take this as ultimate truth)

• I think the "crown" should behave like a crown, so I don't like the "extension" that goes behind the ear, you can just have it hang on the hair like some chignon decoration would.
• For more or less the same reason above the front part feels odd (still can't really say exactly why). I like the headgear more without the front part.
• The "woody" thing below gems on the back part of the crown make them look like matches (and I think this was not your original plan, if it was gj).
• Most geometry looks too crude, try to smoothen surfaces/edges and add some geometry detail on straight edges.
• Queens don't use ponytails, historically you have more or less decorated chignons, bottom-long unconstrained hair or braid decorations.

Now, for something technical, as developers suggested, try to avoid hard edges on the low-poly model, use normals to define them, in the game engine you will get your hard edges automatically anti-aliased like that (otherwise most things will look like a bunch of pixels when far away or on low-res).

Again, these are just my personal impressions, you should mostly follow your own tastes.

Finally, would you help me getting that same gold material effect you managed to obtain? That is really realistic and I couldn't get mine like that.

PS: You can use the little square below the dye map to test dyes, no need to re-paint your color texture.

9

Steam Workshop / Re: 3d modeling for the workshop

« on: February 04, 2015, 05:34:50 am »

Ok, nevermind, I forgot to tick the option "export normals" ...
As I said I'm a total noob on 3d modelling and more than everything on mesh exporting.

Now my models look awesome, so awesome I have to actually tune them "down"... I feel so dumb right now, I lost like hours to workaround this shading "issue".

PS: Sorry for the double posting but for some reason I couldn't modify my previous post.

10

Steam Workshop / Re: 3d modeling for the workshop

« on: February 04, 2015, 04:53:51 am »

After your reply I searched around some info about blender and unity3d export and it seems that blender does not export vertices with multiple normals and needs the edge-split modifier to get that sorted out (it's actually the same max an maya do, but more like "compatibility version").
So I exported my mesh with the edge-split mod but the result was exactly the same, either with 30° or 180° angle smoothing. Anyway since that looks like to be my problem I'll search more thoroughly.
Thank you at least for pointing me to the right (seems) direction.

About the voting system that was more or less what I figured out myself too. I mean, the downvote is more or less "that's ugly (or off-theme) and I don't wanna see it on the game" but as you said people may take it for "not going to use it".

11

Steam Workshop / 3d modeling for the workshop

« on: February 03, 2015, 04:26:44 am »

Hi,

I submitted my first work on the workshop a few days ago and I'm currently working on another one (both inspired from Last Exile anime):


I encountered a nasty problem with my models and I couldn't get it fixed, there were hard-cut shadows all over. Since I'm a total noob in 3d modeling (the Guild's "Maestro" headdress was my first ever 3d model) I'll tell you what I did (on both items):
 - modelled the highpoly mesh
 - coated (best I could) with the lowpoly mesh
 - assigned materials (blender renderer)
 - baked normals
 - removed colors, put specular maps as color and baked textures
 - baked actual textures
 - baked ambient occlusion
 - removed colors (kept normal and specular info) and baked full render (for point light)
 - obtained cavity map from normal map
 - merged everything in color or normal/specular maps

programs used: blender 2.73a, GIMP 2.8.14
please tell me if I skipped something I really need to understand why shadows on my model are sharp even with normal info up; you can see an example of this on the preview image of my new work (the gold plate).

Also, I've got far more "I don't want to see this item on GoIO" votes for my Guild's "Maestro" headdress than I expected (12 out of 107) and so I would really ask you what is not good enough on that work that makes people downvote it (sadly user's complete feedback is not really encouraged on steam workshop).

Thank you for your time.