Wurm Online

[Markus_Persson]

That's ok fps for that system. =)
Try all lowest settings. You should get around 60 fps or so, i think.

And good catch with the refresh rate.. I should add a "max refresh rate" dropdown in the options.

[EgonOlsen]

What's still annoying me, is that "hick-up" i get everytime it changes the LOD in the distance...don't know how to describe it better. If you are moving forward and new trees are popping in, i always get a short but noticeable pause...so it feels like a stop-and-go movement somehow.
However, it's impressive as it is...

[Markus_Persson]

I know about the hickup. It's because the dynamic terrain textures are updated when you move into a new tile... and that's also when all the trees and surrounding tile decorations get recalculated.

It really bothers me.. it makes moving around feel "tainted" for some reason.
I'll probably end up tweaking it a bit to make it less obvious somehow later on, but I'll leave it in now as it keeps the code reasonably clean to do it this way.

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[gregorypierce]

MP if you need help testing the OSX version drop me a line. I'll be done with JInput for OSX this weekend (looks like anyways). JOAL should be at most a recompile and a couple of tweaks (looks like anways) so I should have lots of time to work with you on getting the jnlp and WebStart running and OSX happy. You'll impress even more of my commercial friends if you get that puppy running on OSX - trust that OSX is a SKU that many publishers don't really want to ignore anymore.

[Markus_Persson]

wilco. =)


By the way, does anyone know where to start when looking for artists? We're getting fairly desperate. All our "friend-of-a-friend" leads are failing.

I think the fact that there's no money in it at all until release scares artists away more than it does programmers.

[bmyers]

Good artists are harder to find than good Java programmers, for sure.  I think because programmers can usually make decent money at their day job, and have the time and inclination to work on games in their spare time.  Whereas artists have a hard enough time making ends meet as it is, much less donating their spare time for free...

We have tried a combination of using (paid) interns, and downloadable artwork from art sites, and part-time graphic artists who are working for sweat equity.  None of them are 100% satisfactory, not like it would be to have an experienced game artist at your beck-and-call.

You could try advertising on various sites, but if you can't pay people something (at least food) then it'll be pretty hard to find them.

I'd recommend trying to find art school students who would work for the job experience, or for as close to free as you can get them.  You should definitely review their portfolios and filter on style before picking one, because the only thing harder than finding a good artist is trying to convert one to your "style"...

BTW -- your screenshots look very nice!  I haven't tried the demo yet because my machine at work has to be "corporate standard" and doesn't have the right JVM...  

[gregorypierce]

Good artwork, especially 3D artwork, is VERY difficult to get. You can find people who will work on a contract basis generating a certain number of pieces of art for a certain price on elance (my folk have been doing that to get their art stuff out of the way).

[Markus_Persson]

Ah, crud. That's what I thought. =/

I really hope we don't have to abandon Wurm because we don't find any artists..

The graphics we're using now are just placeholders found via google image searches.. we don't have the rights for any of them, but they're all "free" for non-profit purposes.
Unfortunately, that doesn't include the final version of Wurm.

[Mojomonkey]

You know, I remember seeing on gamedev cds for sale loaded with textures and stuff for use in commercial games. As well as CDs with sound effects. That may be a better route then hiring someone to generate custom graphics.

[gregorypierce]

You can also get some free stuff from idevgames.com. Some of the artists there are just interested in seeing more games come out for the Mac and their license just says that you must release a Mac version if you use any of those assets. Since we're all cross platform here, that should be a non-issue. Once I can take off my development hat and put back on my business development hat I'll drop them a note and see if they want to play ball with us as a group.

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[DavidYazel]

Tell me about it... modellers + texture artists... hard to find.  We have 3 and thats over 4 years of looking for volunteers.

One thing I have used to great success is TurboSquid.  You pay a very moderate amount per model ($20-$100) and you get with it a license to use in your commerical product.

[Markus_Persson]

Thanks, all. We will look into those.  

[Breakfast]

I'm playing around with models at the moment - I'm no great artist, but I don't completely suck either- if I get anything good together I'll be more than happy to share.

I don't know if anyone else has done much of this, but the easiet way I've found to create a beast if you're thinking of doing your own, is to create the model in 3D - as in actually in real 3D using Plasticine to get the overall shape, then photograph it from different elevations and line them up in the modelling program (this may be quite tied to Milkshape, which is the one I use because it is cheap, simple and intuitive) to match points and vertices. A bit laborious, but easier than working from sketches and requires less imagination as to what the finished thing will look like.

The other thing to investigate for natural features is using fractals to generate them automatically - iirc realistic (and unique, if you're pushing it)  trees and plants can be generated from simple (and in this case appropriately named) seed values.

[Markus_Persson]

Small update:

New screenshot, and the client is kinda-updated. I'll add particles before upping the client version, though.

There's a new map, btw.

[Philly]

Its looking good, although it seems that your animations speeded up quite a bit.  It seems pretty crazy to barely run up a hill in a day  

But besides that it is looking good, I also see that you got some new trees, nice touch

[Markus_Persson]

Thanks. =)

And the speed increase in gametime is so people don't have to wait too long for a sunset.

[Philly]

Hey, just went and looked at Wurm again (using parts of the visuals as examples I can build into my app), the leaf effect is very cool.

[gregorypierce]

Aw man. Wurm 'splodes on my Dell Windows laptop because it only supports OpenGL 1.2.

[Markus_Persson]

Philly: Thanks. That's the beginning of the implementation of the particle system. Trees will occationally emit leaf particles. Not quite as often as they're produced now.
I'll probably add butterfly and small fish "particles" later on to make the world seem more alive.


gregorypierce: You COULD try unchecking the opengl version check in the options, but I wouldn't count on it actually working as I'm using a few 1.4 features.

[gregorypierce]

No biggie - its a crappy Dell laptop. I just wanted to show it off to some people at work ( a few may be purchasing Alien Flux when the Mac version is released ). At home I have much more competent hardware Note, that if you're using OpenGL 1.4 - I don't believe OSX has made it there yet. Last I checked they were still on OpenGL 1.3. I'll inquire about their roadmap though.

[gregorypierce]

Take that back. They do, but not all of their graphics cards do.

[erikd]

wow, it's really starting to look extremely good!  

[Markus_Persson]

0.0.16a is officially up. It's basically the same as what was there just now, except I backed up the code in a new directory, and made the leaves come from the trees.



gregorypierce: The commercial release isn't expected for a while yet, so I'll just stick with 1.4 for the time being.

erikd: Thanks!

[Markus_Persson]

I added butterflies. =D

[gregorypierce]

I added butterflies. =D

Show off

[Markus_Persson]

I have no idea what you're talking about.

They share 90% of the leaf code, btw. I just had too google for a butterfly image, get rid of the gravity and make them go forwards.

[edit:] Oh, and flap their wings. Leaves don't flap.

[gregorypierce]

FYI, I'm heading to Maryland in mid september to meet with some of my friends in the industry so if anyone wants to send me demos and the like I will burn them to a CD/DVD and drop them off when I do my rounds.

[AndersDahlberg]

"the man(tm)" has probably found a solution to my linux + wurm troubles

When I run the game in *depth* 16 instead of 24 (where 24 is max on XFree86 systems) the game works (butterflies are looking great - but not when run in depth 24. My guess is that either java or jogl are confused by that *depth* 24 on linux can actually be implemented by either a 24 bpp or 32 bpp framebuffer (unless the docs are missleading me...)!

So, I'm not sure how to fix the general problem, but the Wurm game will probably run on more machines (read: my computer  if it included a "bpp"(depth) selection along with the screen size selection (if os == linux
 

[Markus_Persson]

Ah, excellent!! =D I'll add that tomorrow.

Thank you. =)

[Philly]

Cool butterflies, although butterflies shoudn't be able to fly under water, should they?