This is an attempt at realistic foliage placement. The FPS is ridiculously low (<30 FPS) but it is a basis to work with. The secret appears to be combining the landscape material with root meshes, and a limited number of rocks and grass meshes. It is also wise to add a little noise to the landscape terrain and smooth it afterwards, but not too much or the player will constantly move up, down, up down, up down and motion sickness will take its toll.
During the last month a lot of stuff has happened. I moved my equipment to a different floor, renovated another room in my house and bought an amazing piano for a ridiculously low amount. All the while I did my best to move the project forward. In the beginning I planned to use the trailer as a means to look for crew members. I made a profile on:
https://www.teamups.net/
and included a ton of info on each position, but to this day they haven't approved the team request, despite several emails to support. I didn't want to ask for crew members on facebook again, because I made some bad experiences in the past with crew members that are not close or at least somewhat close to my place of living. I want to meet my team face to face and not talk to them solely via Skype, hiding behind a screen. And I want to negotiate with them in person.
Unfortunately I hadn't heard from any developers at TUM either .... but in all fairness: I f*** up half of the presentation. I should have gone there earlier and check out all their equipment. When I was there, they couldn't even see half the stuff I showed them. The first group of students came late because of the weather and the traffic and therefore AFTER I showed the trailer, and the others couldn't see the presentation well because the room was too bright for the beamer to create a clear picture. All of these things could have been avoided, if I just had gotten there earlier. This is particular annoying because I had spent almost a month preparing for that presentation.
..... but so it goes ....
So after a lot of digging I came across this list:
http://www.games-bavaria.com/company/
This is an index of Bavarian developer companies. I need help. And I'm certain that the name of the crew that I'm going to work with is somewhere on this list. Some of these developers are amazing and have very high standards. So I was about ready to send them the trailer and then .... one day in a facebook post from one of the Unreal Engine developers he asked a question about foliage meshes in an infamous Unity demo. I didn't know it before, but it destroyed me...
It's even called f**** "Book of the Dead" .... a little bit on the nose, don't you think?!!
When you compare it to my trailer, you will know what I mean. To say it in the words of an editor who gave me devastating feedback years ago: "There is a delta".
All this work and I can't compete with this kind of quality. But I know that it's not impossible either. I know that there are certain limitations when it comes to VR, because you need to be certain that the FPS is stable and constantly at a very high level (90 FPS). Because of this, my game can't contain shadows .... and yes, things like that make it a lot harder to get a realistic look .... but I can't stop watching this demo.
Years back when I got the feedback from the editor, I teamed up with Tom Salta, one of the very best producers and composers I ever met. I learned a lot from him, but in order to beef up my skills, I had to work my ass off. He gave me percussion cues from Howard Shore and Hans Zimmer to translate into Midi. I had to listen to each cue and recreate every single instrument in MIDI, make a mockup and ensure that it sounds realistic. It was the toughest task I ever had, partly because I was given a maximum timeframe of 5-8 hours for each cue, but also because it forced me to buckle up and do the hard work.
So I figured, that's what I'm going to do here now too. I need to sit down and work my ass off on realistic foliage and study how these things come together. I can't sit on my ass and wait for an environment artist all my life and complain that I can't find one. I need to learn how to do that myself.
I'm working day and night on a presentation of the game in late January. For this purpose I'm preparing a special gameplay demo, that contains a full level and 5 different types of enemies including a maze, a village, a cathedral, a large forest area and the entrance to a dharmapala fortress.
Last night I was walking through a desert during daytime. A warm breeze carried a whispering voice towards my ears. It surrounded me and guided me towards a city beyond the horizon.
People in this world Can't see what they see, Can't hear what they hear. So keep your eyes open and your ears alert, And you will see things no man has ever seen, and hear things no man has ever heard.
These last couple of days I have been working like crazy on the game world and I have never been happier. When too much time goes by and I can't work on the project for various reasons, I grow more and more miserable.
I incorporated transition gates. These gates change the light level from outdoor landscape segment values to indoor segment values. This basically means that, when you enter a dark location you need the overall lighting level to be adapted to the new environment. But once this happens, the sudden change in lighting smashes game immersion. So I built gate structures, that change the lighting levels while the player explores them. This way there is no break in immersion and the change in lighting levels happens smoothly.
I'm also working on particles and elemental effects in relation to the dharmapala chants. I improved the overall look of all dharmapala chants and their effect on buildings, structures, items, enemies and the environment in general.
My goal is to create three different demos:
1.) A very small one, with basic functionality
2.) A second larger one, including enemies and death volumes
3.) An even larger, final, complex, releasable and pitchable demo, consisting of the very first game level and Mahakala's palace.
I want to use the final demo to recruit more crew members and pitch the project to various sources that can ensure financing. Higher quality means a larger chance for success. Needless to say, that I'm trying to make this thing shine.
I'm going through my diaries and early notes tonight and just found something interesting from long ago. While studying for the conservatory entrance exam, I had written down a prayer one night. I must have been around 20 years old, and during that time, I was living for the first time on my own. I don't remember why I did that, or where it came from. The last couple of lines said:
Dear God,
... Let me find strength, when all I feel is weakness, Let me be brave, when all I feel is fear. Let me be compassionate, when all I feel is rage, Let me feel freedom, when all I feel is confinement. Please let me be who I truly am and fight for what I truly believe in, And in return I promise to be myself forever.... Amen.
And suddenly a thought hit me: At what point, does this stop being true? If this is truly a bargain, what if one of these two parties, doesn't keep their promise? It's funny because I suppose everybody secretly makes this promise .... I think it can easily be mistaken with: "Hey, as long as things are looking up, I don't need to start any crazy stuff."
But I do believe that all consciousness carries a responsibility to cure itself and to return to what it truly is. I believe that this is the true meaning of the Bardo Thodol: Consciousness won't automatically turn darkness into light. It is a long process of soul searching and self reflection. But consciousness has a responsibility to do so, and to take up the long journey towards light. Or it will lose it's own identity and purpose. It will remain in darkness and change into a different form. This duality is a defining feature of all sentient beings. And it doesn't matter what, who, or where your conscious center is. You either move away from the darkness and towards the light or change form and move even deeper into the opposite direction. But the potential for change and the constant ever changing current of thoughts and feelings remains present all over the spectrum. The final goal is neither light nor dark, but a satisfaction of the underlying curiosity that consciousness carries inside. And since (at least to my own understanding) this curiosity is insatiable, eternal and endless there is no goal, just experience and a (more or less limited) free will.
