Gallephant

Posted by omicron1 on July 14, 2007, 8:41 p.m.

Not really. Just a galley and an elephant. (and hawk)

Image 1: The War Elephant.

The War Elephant is the second "superunit" of DoC. It can carry two soldiers; boosts their range; deals trample damage on its own; and has a powerful anti-unit / anti-building attack. The downside is that it's expensive and slow, and can be pushed into a frenzy by loss of morale. (This causes it to attack allied and enemy troops indiscriminately.

Blender's exporting functions sort of choked on the smoothing of the model. When I'm finished, the whole elephant should have the smooth appearance that its back legs currently have. By the way, I'm in the market for a product to correct this, if anyone knows of one… (either an SMD editor or a md5 editor)

Also in this image are my new Swordsman models. They no longer use props, which should result in a speed boost. (Of course, this means I have to create each soldier model individually…)

The little black line in the sky is a bird - yet another way to add some life to the game.

Image 2: The War Galley.

The first of three main types of ships, the War Galley can carry (ten?) soldiers on board to boost its combat effectiveness. It is realistically scaled - no tiny transport ships in this game.

Also note the full-scene reflections - probably the best reflections ever rendered by Game Maker. (And with a pair of GeForce 8800 GTX cards, you could probably watch it in real-time!)

I've been updating the natural scenery as well - there are plenty of new tree models and new rock models ingame - which makes the game look prettier. The only real obstacle now is speed - my goal is to have the game run at 30fps constant throughout an entire game on my system. Unfortunately, there's still a ways to go…

Comments

Nathan 17 years, 5 months ago

That game looks really good!

Kenon 17 years, 5 months ago

This game is starting to show limitations in it's graphics. But that's all GM's fault.

WaleedAmer 17 years, 5 months ago

Well done, looks like a PS1 game. No, that's not sarcasm or an insult. If only your 3D games didn't lag for me…

>_>

Grand-High Gamer 17 years, 5 months ago

seconded

omicron1 17 years, 5 months ago

Ah'm workin' on the speed…

I just performed a "stress test" of sorts - one hundred War Galleys at once - at 30 frames per second. As the base speed is ~45fps, that's less than a 15 fps drop from 100 units. Which is good. With additional optimization, I hope to bring the base speed up above 100 fps - thus allowing the game to run perfectly throughout.

By the way, I'm considering not implementing a hard cap on unit counts. Instead, the city-building "style" of the game will implement a "soft cap" of sorts - you can build more units, but first you'll have to make more houses, supply their needs, build farms for food, etc. - an expensive prospect.

chicklet 17 years, 5 months ago

when i read gallephant i though it was gonna be a picture of a fat chick^_^

Grand-High Gamer 17 years, 5 months ago

Someone should write a program to smooth the normals of a .obj/3ds/etc. file.

melee-master 17 years, 5 months ago

I could have sworn there was a program that did that. I think FredFredrickson talks about it in his pinned 3D tutorial at the GMC.

omicron1 17 years, 5 months ago

It won't help with SMD files, though.

Rob 17 years, 5 months ago

Damn the sky looks good in those! (but the ship/elephant/people look like shit..) trees look pretty good too, same with the water.