Hi all,



Here's this week's update from Simon on the Construction Kit. We have listened to feedback and are now trying to develop an easy mode for those segment lovers out there!



The visuals are still temporary and will improve massively once we get proper art and more model parts into the system.







Rick

Realy cool,imagine cutting a hole into a hill & building underground.Would this be posible in the future !.Loving the way this is developing,well done guys .



Dave

What I'd really like to see is construction kit segments that are destructible when hit by bullets in the final game.



If possible that would really take this to a new level - pre-fabs (even bits of wall) which look normal but then are able to fall apart. No idea how that would work though - if there was a lot in real time it may be taxing on the engine.



Thoughts on this?



One other thing that would be nice is if bullet holes appeared with minor debris animation - it really caught my eye in Max Payne 1 and 2, little falling dust animations from bullet holes - especially if there were a few random animations assigned to texture type.



Sorry, maybe I should make a different thread with that suggestion - I know in Classic there was a texture type system.



Keep up the good work!

This just keeps getting better and better, keep it up

Nice and i can already imagine how it will be creating buildings with it,

+1

I like it and I can imagine to even build buildings like in Skyrim.

Cutting a hole in the terrain to build underground would be nice and important for future game development.

This is looking great - keep up the good work Simon!

The scope is there for creating some really complex structures. I hope this gets released around the same time as the new Nature pack



Slainte!



SW

@Simon ?

Its brilliant and almost like using Radiant in 3D mode which begs the question..



In Radiant you could load a Mesh.. This could be a Sphere, Cube, Rectangle or flat curve and you could then grab the vertices to make almost anything and I wa

@Sparrowhawk I think that sounds like an awesome idea. Having a destruction would open up the gameplay to much more!

I don't know how viable destructable's are, but it adds just that little extra realism that would put it ahead of the game



Theres probably a ton of reasons why its hard to implement though.

I want to play with this so badly..... GIMME!

Apologies if this is mentioned somewhere, but will we easily be able to add custom textures to the kit, and have default normal and specular maps auto-generated by the program?



I really like the idea, but I also think it's important to avoid a 'typical construction kit' look...which I guess means including the possibility for curves, some non-standard sized/shaped tiles etc.

I'm ready for an update video to see what has been done with this!

Things are slow in Reloaded land at the moment, any more news on this?



Oh destruction of stuff may be possible in future. Lee was looking at something like it awhile back in his blog using bullet physics. Obviously, nothing set in stone, and it all depends on other development work I imagine. Once speed is at an acceptable level I imagine such toys may start to get looked into more fully, after more basic needs of course.

Hello all.



Im New since Today.

Is this Featzre already build in?



Greetings.

The 'CONKIT' is still work in progress, but we show early previews of the tech as part of our policy to share the development experience with you. Eventually this will be a built-in module of the engine enabling you to create your own buildings from the ground up

this looks fun and all, but not what i was expecting. sure with this there is less need for building models of houses and stuff. but a skyscraper or 4 would be a long task and i fear a drain if your accessing all floors and rooms inside them. and its still sort of an outside builder not really an inside builder. and we have yet to see how a door that's closed on the building open, would we have to load into a new map and duplicate the building?. or would it just open a door and let us walk into the building from the old map?.



can we see a skyscraper

a London underground/subway station

will elevators be a part of this at some point?



how far are tgc planning on going with this because i can see a lot of assets being needed to make this a fully usable functional part of reloaded. but keep it up it does look good so far tgc, cant wait for playing with it.

Well, I think it should be fine for indoor scenes. This just allows you to have an outside as well Much more useful in an indoor outdoor scenario. I don't think the extra polys for floors and walls etc will make a huge difference to the speed if it's implemented well (Busy indoor scenes with lots of objects may of course, but that would not be a fault of the basic building model). I agree though, some better art would be useful in a demo It's not bad, but could be better.



One niggle I have with many games is the fact the doors and stuff are just textures, and don't allow entry. It's getting less the case now, and obviously involves more work to do in the media department. This editor looks like it will do a good job of allowing that.



I imagine they will allow you to clone stuff to make multiple floors easier in your example of skyscrapers before it is released. Also, a sculpt mode is already being worked on, as you are probably aware, which would allow easy stretching of an object to get corridors and high buildings done easier. I also think it will allow you to save rooms as prefabs, so you can place down copies easily. I can't imagine these features not being implemented in some way.



I'm looking forward to it, as I always enjoy easy to use creation tools

i was just expecting something alittle more like skyrim or fallout 3 ish really, they have a building or cave entrance that you load into the building or cave, talking of caves will this constructor be upto the task of making good looking caves I wonder?. but yeah just different from what I was expecting room blobs to be like when introduced lol. still good though and cant wait for it to make its way into the releases sometime down the road.

Well, remember once we can have more than 1 level, loading into another scene should be easily possible from different points on the map. At least that is what I am expecting That would cover going into caves or such.

yeah true I guess, I forget we only get 1 lvl to play with right now lol. linking to other maps will be an interesting feature when added, wonder if there will be a linking wizard to walk me through it lol...

I can't find this CONKIT in the downloads on my product page or in the latest beta, I think the Reloaded is going to be a great product,

conkit is in dev mode right now so you wont be able to find it till its released

Probably as easy as adding a story/sound zone. Just a zone with a value or name for the level to load up. Probably be possible to script more specific requirements as well I imagine.

It would be awesome you can erect a mountain with the editor, then tunnel into or through it, build a cavern and tunnel system. I would also like to see an ability to say, yes, this is a completed building and Id like to add it to my assets. Thoughts?

I would imagine you can save designs as basic prefabs so you can easily place several room types together to make a large building. Of course I am only guessing, but if this isn't an option somewhere I would be disappointed.

likewise dvader m8, I would also just out of time saving overall.



also I pm you on forums dvader m8

Cheers for the reminder, I never notice em! Sent you a reply.

I was asked at my GDC booth whether one could tunnel through hills and mountains, my answer was skillfully evasive For scenes like caves, the traditional method is to carve out a valley, then line it with rock walls, rock floor and rock ceiling, then rock extrusions and rock plinths and finally rock stalag blobs and pebbles. I think I saw something like that in the Reloaded Gallery already True caving maker will come when we decide to use CSG, Terrain Exclusion or Voxel Space conversion (all of which are far enough down the line to avoid conflicting with our work on performance, memory, stability, AI and scripting).



Some of our earliest discussions where about creating 20 storey skyscrapers with the Construction Kit and our plans to optimize the geometry welding into a smart visibility system for interior spaces should allow for fast indoor scenes and efficient outdoor rendering of the building shells.

As far as water is considered, Ive seen a post in another place asking about he method of placing water. In my opinion, I think it would be better suited to allow water to be either brought up closer to grade or placed as a object and painted (?)Im just not real fond of lowering a massive area to create small ponds and swampy areas but I guess I can live with it if I had to. I have a ton of ideas but am patiently waiting (not really) on the next update so that I am on par with the older members and have more time to fine tune my new hobby. Id also ask that a single EXE file be created when I save game to standalone as I send my stuff to a buddy to test for me and get feedback from him as he is building on Unity. I just dont understand Unity. . . .

Will the construction kit be available in the coming beta version?

that would be awesome, I hope so lol...





im still wondering on a sky scrapper being built with it would love to know how that works out but I guess I can wait .





i do have a question for tgc though, will there be construction asset packs or something similar for the conkit when it is done?, so many styles of building pieces would be wanted, Victorian, modern, sci fi and all that to name a few..

Good question, I am hoping for the same thing with the construction kit. At least in the long run.

Hi,



We have decided to freeze work on the Construction Kit and bring Simon into the work on the core engine. It was felt that we are best getting the core right and supporting Lee with extra hands for now. Don't worry, we're not abandoning it, we're just sorting the most immediate issues out first.



Rick

This is kinda annoying as this is a core function, I can't test or create content till the conkit is released, which rather annoys me, having to wait another X months for it, not terribly happy about this, but whatever do your thing.



Just going to drop reloaded like a ball till it's practically done, sorry has to be said, tough love and all, wasted enough time and bandwidth, on some thing that does nothing.



Thanks see you guys in a few months down the line.

Damn....:/...thats definately not good news. I was expecting conkit in the next beta, and again there will be nothing new to play with...maybe i'll do the same thing as you wizard.. while waiting i'll make some objects for fpsc r.

Hi,



The core is the main engine that does all the rendering, physics, input and output etc. You'll still be able to add objects in from the store while we crack on with the construction kit.



We will talk about this next week in our monthly meeting.



Our main aim is to ensure we're delivering decent builds to you.



Rick

Well then I suggest you download one of the media packs I made and try layering them as entities, in fact try and layer different sized entities and see how much fun that is,There is only so much you can do with entities point, period.



Perhaps the above is abrasive, however no single person is able to create content for the conkit as no one knows how it works ect ect.Which means your only able to create media for reloaded after conkit is released, that means delay conkit another 2 months or whenever means release delay plus the additional time it takes to develop the content which could be as much as 3 months for a decent sized pack, see what I am getting at.



No disrespect Rick delaying and further delaying some thing that is just as critical as any other performance or graphical tweak you code, and considering you have reached out to a much wider audience with steam now, means frustrated people all around to the point of losing complete interest.You guys have a much finer line to walk.



Like I said whatever do your thing.

This is the wrong decision in my opinion, since they offer no segment support all we can do right now is place entities and that as people have said can only do so much.



At this point if people have to wait months more to essentially be able to create well.. Anything. Then people are going to pull out of backing, trust me people will find ways to do it.



I've been a long time FPSC fan, I was going to take out the Gold Pledge but not anymore, I think even bronze now, they were asking far too much from us. Maybe one day they will get things on track but I think this decision will loose all their audience they have gathered.



The way the engine is as of now, the gameplay, physics and such are fine for developers, if we had even a basic form of the creation kit then we'd be happy for another few months. Then you could take all the time in the world to work on physics or whatever you think is broken somehow.

Bottom line.....there is no point in creating media to drop into an engine that runs like treacle and running out of available memory so you cant put much of that media in there anyway.



As a media creator, I work with what I have, I might get frustrated but I never walk away from it.



I will be straight with you Wiz, if you thought to develop within means at this point you would find that those segments your so good at making for Classic would be far easier to develop for Reloaded even as it is now. You could bundle your textures into a larger Atlas and import as a single mesh, the grid is still there so you can snap them together, been doing this myself, only thing different is the ability to 'paint' a line of segments and a level height for stairs and floors.

I know you are perfectly capable of thinking it through and changing your method, in fact finding it easier to create and as an added bonus you wont have to worry about those collision issues you have with Classic.



For anyone who isn't creating media, most of the user base in fact, there will be a new vegetation pack to use, your soon to have the legacy media pack and a further pack or two to come down the line.

I also have no doubt the conkit will arrive soon enough after the next Beta and I don't remember it being promised for this one anyhow, even if Simon wasn't taken off to help with performance it still doesn't mean it would be ready for release at this point.

BTW good work on the veg performance and that specular level is an excellent idea.



I would rather have a good quality engine that performs well than a new model pack or a means of creating scenery that might look good and be 'fun' but isn't telling me this engine will be a useable one in future.



I want to be sure any media I sell to users of this product isn't going to be useless to them down the line as that would make me feel I ripped them off, it's far better to be certain the real core is as it should be than hoping it will all work out eventually.



Just a thought for you but some of the work taking them away from creating the much desired conkit you want is to implement encryption protection for your media. This all is just my opinion on priorities you may think differently but I reckon they have it right.

I dont remember anywhere saying conkit was due for release this beta coming. so why so much disappointment over something not scheduled for use yet..

it gets here when its ready and we have been told conkit is on hold for more fundamentally important area's of development. without these area's being top class working order whats the point of anything else?. just my opinion though, I am however wanting to play with conkit myself aswell but sticking it to tgc with unhappy posts and threats of not backing the product don't help either party...

Simon was pulled from his project, again, before that it was the grass shader and before that whatever, before long he will be pulled again as his services are needed, small team understandable.The reason he was pulled to get a beta out sooner.



Already thought of single mesh with a big map, inherently there in lies the problem, I will spend more time uvmapping then any thing else, latest pack has a single 32 mesh segment.Thought it would be a bad idea to export as a single mesh, the option would have been to export as a merged group that way each mesh still have independent vertex coordinates, far, far easier to uvmap, considering I am not using the model editor for mapping, but rather lithunwrap, the work space is easier to work with and unused uvmaps can be moved to the side and allow working on the uvmap you want.



Though grouped meshes is a work around to the problem, it solves the problem in the interim, it still leaves meshes that are used to add variations, you could of course, make separate sets of grouped meshes.



Gist of the matter is grouped meshes is good and well, however you still want to leave the end user some level of customization, otherwise every second user is going to have the same level design.



I don't know if you have seen the new sewer segments, they have 3 different level heights soon an additional 2, it's impractical, to use grouped meshes for that, you would have to literally export every possible combination which would be a lot. :p



The only other method I can think of to do it quicker is to export each mesh as I normally do and map it on the main texture and import it again and just "merge" the meshes as needed, with each mesh keeping it's specific texture coordinate, that is still a bucket load of unnecessary work.It would add least a month of additional work to do :p



I have no problem with the performance issues being addressed, made peace with that.



So yes it is completely irrational frustration :p , even if there is other possibilities, it's just impractical, this would however be perfectly fine for developer using it for his game alone, for a lot of users extra time a side not so much.So it is not about walking away it's more about it being impractical without the tools.





Any ways good to be rolling in the mud with me again

I feel your main problem is your still creating for Classic and want to move these into Reloaded, I am sure when you start a new specific Reloaded project you will think more in that particular 'box' and have an easier time of it

I was well aware it possibly wouldn't make the beta, so that isn't what is bothering me, it's the annoyance of the person getting pulled from the project often enough for long enough periods to delay the eventual release.That it was frozen altogether means simon will be doing other stuff beyond the next beta.



That is the annoyance, the delay, delays me, pretty selfish, eh as rolfy said content creators just have to wait they out numbered 10 to 1 :p



Any ways I have a FPSC classic project to finish still a bucket load of stuff to do and think of.The truth is reloaded doesn't in the current state suit my needs.

I decided not to migrate..have a reloaded Project in mind :p Can't do any thing till I see the mesh requirements for Model importer or conkit, you don't want to create 156.8995 wide mesh and find out it needs to be 155 units or you have this or that problem, need to find out if certain mesh shapes will crash the editor.



There is many aspects I need to look at first, before doing any thing.

Hi guys,



The temporary freeze on the ConKit development wasn't an easy decsion, but the extra coding resources that it has made available has seen great strides in Reloaded development. Something that I'm sure you will all appreciate come the next beta (which you can all expect soon.).



I can report that a vast number of the areas of concern have been fixed, and the internal Alphas are running well, with development still ongoing.



I'm confident that you'll all be pleased with the results.



SC

Better wait a long time and get a Very well working result, as short and fast and become crap.

To be honest imagine dropping in the construction kit with the performance issues we were having... its best to get things working first before we all start building massive elaborate structures with it and face problems.



I understand the need for it as I too need it just the same. But I'd rather work with it when the core engine is ready for it. Which by the way, I do hope is somewhat soon too :p

Hi,



The results of the team working together this past week have seen great performance results all round. We'll come back to Con Kit when the time is right. I want to use it as much as you guys!



Rick

Let's hope that the next update is universally faster for all, memory limits expanded and runs fairly bug free. Then the con kit may get a bit more priority!