FreeOrion

This is definatly not finished. I could do with some suggestions.
Its a terren medium sized colony. Deliberatly very earthy and not over the top scifi. Life is good here, familys go camping, fishing etc. 4x4s are popular. City life is very modern and up with empirial fads and fashions but there are still great areas of wild and farmland inbetween. A colony aspiring for greatness with the majority of its natural beauty still intact.
(Maybe I could be like a travel salesman)

There are no vehicle, flying or ground in there yet. Theyll go in last. Also not worrying about any pollution effects for v0.2.



2004-05-23 Finished anough to post. Actual in game colony picts are going to have ta be much simpler. Woud be better as a splash screen.

Terran Type Medium Colony - Early Intesteller Era

im off for zzz's ,who can find me?
/Obiwan

wow, most impressive !!

I was going to mention that the farmland seemed too close to the city's skyscraper centre, but in retrospect, it's probaly appropriate for a newer colony.

Edit addition: It would be neat to put a space port at the end of the road at the top of picture at the horizon(not that it needs it, just would be neat).

Is that another city on the horizon? Nice touch.

It would be cool if we could figure out a way to have different layers (each with it's own alpha) that combine to form the finished picture. The two front layers would represent the focus of the colony, the middle layer would be the city (the sprite used based on infrastructure and maybe race), and near the horizon any monument type buildings could appear. The background would of course be the terrian.

Best case would probably be to render at least the buildings real-time over a pre-rendered background--so long as the scene is always viewed from the same angle. With real time rendering, it would be easier to have some animation--ships flying about, little people dots meandering, etc.

I can see it working in my head, though I know in reality it would be complicated to pull off successfully.

edit: it might look cool/futuristic if the farms where like biodomed gardens. Also, that way same farm geometry might be reusable in different enviroments. I'm imagining vines and other green things creeping up the sides of the dome.

Spaceport, nice idea Sandlapper, I'll do that.

Drek I think there just trees in the haze, but it would be a neat way of adding to the next size colony up.

The differnt layer effect is something ive thought about alot, and I must admit Im rather intimidated by the complexity and amount of control needed.
Moo2 suceeded because the graphics were not rendered. There was no light source or shadows to speak of. Also sense of perspective was very vague and unaccurate. But all that was fine cause it was consistant within itself.

To stay consistant within FO lighting and types of structures will be need to be different for each environ. eg-

Barran - Domed buildings, harsh light
Inferno - Armoured , Maybe on stilts like oil rig, red diffuse light.
Ocean - Undersea with floating or pontoon structures above. Murky and clear lighting.
etc.
I should add that what im doing now I consider to be a 'generic human' bunch of picts. Other ones coud be added with spiky or curved architecture in later versions.

So the approach Im taking is a prettier more representational one I guess.
Lots of pict but each one complete and therfore easier to control.

an example of another approach is this from Fatal Universe

http://www.fatal-univers.de/HTMFiles/SC ... dings.html

Ok. but see what i mean about lighting.

How do people left the city? I can't see any bridge or road.

Looks very nice.

nice. perhaps the wtaer could be made better, it doesent look very real

noelte wrote:How do people left the city? I can't see any bridge or road.

Looks very nice.

As you can see, they use submarines at rush hour, the level of the water surface may rise up to 1 meter...

@ obiwan looks great as always, how do you produce your stuff that fast? it´s a miracle to me are you professionally doing this? are the buildings presets or all done yourself?

as for suggestions: the tower in the front looks a bit out of place, it looks "put on top", if you know what i mean. the building left to it fits way better. would be nice if the shadows were a bit more blurred if that is possible to do.

edit: now that i looked at it again: the reason why tower looks out of place is maybe because it is placed on low-res ground, while the building is placed on high-res. not sure, tho.

Sorry about that , they're roads , with a stupid shade of blue. Ill fix that and sharpen up the edges to resemble curbing.
Having a river meandering though with bridges is a top idea but. That'll come in handy later.
The foreground thing with the tower is true. a field of wheet maybe and better textures. softer sunlight.

Im just an enthusiast, not professional. What i do for work doesnt involve computers at all (which has its +'s and -'s)
With the colony picts I knew Id be behind the eight ball with out help so im using many buildings from web. Dystopia by Moebious87 (a top Lightwave modeler)
The building I make myself are very gothic and spiky or very alien and curvy. I just dont have anough to do the initual series.

Hey, I saw them as roads myself; I guess you could tweak them some, as you suggested.

Glad you llike the spaceport idea.

ummm.... people in 4x4s? - and yet there will be 9000 ton ships flying around? - or are they slow and havent caught up with the rest of the empire...


besides that, that looks genius and gorgeous, i would recommend a more futuristic look though, this is a space strategy.... i hope

obi, nice work so far... i will go for a much more large scale town and more futuristic look in my renderings... maybe like seen in star wars, where the entire planet is covered by buildings ;)

Nice!!!

I guess the road/river is one to wonder about. Being a farm type colony would it be better for those roads to be a river or for that river to be roads. Cause I liked it alot when I thought the roads were a river.

Obiwan wrote:Sorry about that , they're roads , with a stupid shade of blue.

lol, i really thought they were supposed to artifically created rivers... but i liked it, too, it made the colony look utopian, like a real nice place to live in. made me think of venice, i just love that city

LOL Kostik666 , you apparently don't know the joy of taking a 4x4 over challenging terrain.

You never know, in our FO futuristic universe, this may be the sport du jour.

*Very* nicely done.

Constructive criticism:
The fields look a little pasted on at the moment, try to blend them into the underlying terrain somehow (I suppose they are bitmaps? Maybe reduce alpha...)
Also make the mountain/hill thingies a little less strong - right now the terrain looks almost flat and then suddenly a rocky hill pokes out. It hardly ever looks like that (at least on this planet it doesn't).