Guinea pigs needed.. bit of testing plz ;)
If you get chance could you -*test*-('") this?: http://www.nigecstudios.co.uk/games/hawk/ I'm looking for: A: is it to dark B: the first "room" as a alpha effect to darken the edges.. is it cr*p? C: controls ok? would you consider the verb disc (needed on the door handle and objects that need inventory) out of place? D: is there enough detail in general, is the scale ok? E: should i just get a life and take up train spotting and wear a purple anorak F: any useful criticism :) I guess you'd need the alarm code lol tough! nah its: 36215 It'll go to room5 when you've used the key and opened the door (room5=garage) also theres some stray hotspots i know about them, i moved stuff around :oops: At the moment its a compromise with rendering times/file sizes, the main views take about 5 mins each to render but if i add grass, nicer shadows etc it leap frogs to over an hour to render a single frame.. all the turn images are preview rendered

Wow, Nige... that's cool. That's an even nicer implementation of your previous MYST-esque concept. In RE: A) I like the dark, but yes... this is kinda dark in the wrong way. It looks like a set of daytime scenes with a black screen applied to them, which just removes detail. To effectively do a dark concept, you really need to render with full lighting using a different color pallet. Lots of blues and purples imply darkness while still rendering the scene with full lighting detail. B) I'm not following what you're asking about... C) The controls are great! Really nice navigation for looking around the room. I like the hand within the scene pointing to new places to go. I think it's stronger than the red arrow over by the garage, which was a little out of place. I think the main cursor should NOT resemble a system cursor... that was a little counter intuitive when it turned green to indicate an interaction. But as for the verb disc, yes, I think it works well. D) In the perfect world, everyone would wear a purple anorak. Keep up the good work!

In Bryce it looked ok.. but with having to skimp on file sizes the pictures go a tad blurry and darker :(.. the intention was soft shadows but you then end up with mentally long render times which is ok for single images but gets a tad tedious if you have muliple directions lol Yes i see what you mean about the system style arrow and the stupid big red one, i'll look into better options, I'd rather do a back button than just have back navigation along the bottom edge as it can cause havoc with the inventory lol I learnt that lesson with HW So you own a purple anorak already? Thanks for the input Greg oh questionB i did a layer with a overlay that had a dark edges to give a slight tunnel effect.. all it does is make it look even darker lol

That Door "room"... Wow theres just something about that foreboding darkness. That has got to be one of the best visual experiences I've seen in Lassie! But as Bigmac/Greg/TechGuyWithAllTheAwnsers said... allot of the time it just seemed like a normal daytime scene with the darkness setting on the monitor to low. And that alpha blend turned out nice! (Err... and what is an Anorak?)

Shofixti thanks.. The Anorak wearing train spotters are far far farrrrr removed from the film Trainspotting lol They are more likely to get their kicks from buffet car on the train with tea and scones lol but they all wear anoraks and carry a little note book and camera, taking pictures of trains and logging the trains registration number I would of thought it would of been a great pastime 40 or 50 years ago when we still had steam and the trains had character.. but now they all look the same to me :s Great film tho Trainspotting.. The guy who played "Spud" actually played Renton in the theatre play

Nige, Have not had time to check this out until today. Really nice work. It is too dark on both my home and work computers. The keypad room looks so dark that i really didnt know what i was doing. I don't know what your door handles look like :) I don't mind the system cursor but when you mix the hand cursor, the system cursor changing colors, and the red arrow it seems just a bit too mixed. Just my opinion though. I really like the direction you are heading with this one.

Hey mbuck, good to see you around! Are both your home and work systems PC's? There is a distinct gamma difference between the PC and Mac (PCs tend to be darker), so I may even be seeing the full extent of the "darkness" that everyone is mentioning.

I guess the ulimate difference was with Handyman wanted.. when i was building it it looked fine to me, but a vast amount of people had problems. I use a LCD monitor now so things tend to be a lot brighter which will only add to my problem.. In the game Scratches the illusion of darkness was done by changing light locations and shadows but infact the general scene is the same level of light as the regular daylight Theres also a lot of quality loss which also makes the pictures dark and blurry, I can improve quaility, but render times become mental and a big difference in file size.. I actually tried a full daylight -*test*-('") in the SCream engine and it looks sweet :) but i don't know a single thing about coding with LUA and theres no docs to tell you how to use the engine beyond the demo

Hiya Both of my computers are PC's. My work monitor is an LCD and my home monitor is a CRT. I have an older Mac that is not hooked up currently. I tried changing my basic monitor settings a bit but it did not help much. The room with the keypad is not just dark for me. It is just different shades of black but i can see the keypad. The others screens are very dark but i can make out what is there. My starter project is made along the same lines as you are using Nige but we are using different programs. You were correct when you warned me a while ago about problems with lighting and shadows. My two biggest problems are lighting/shadows and the scale of different objects with my characters. I wish i had my scaling down as good as you do. So far my outdoor scenes are during the day so i have not had the darkness issue that you are having yet. I like the overall atmosphere of your game so far though. I am looking forward to seeing more. I dont know if this helps but here is a screenshot of what i am seeing. http://home.wi.rr.com/markb555/pad_room.jpg

TBH the door isn't that much brighter for me :oops: Yeah getting the scale right is tricky, i use a poser model as a ruler lol, i've tried doing stuff by measurements and it just doesn't work .. if you try and do 3D panoramics all the rules go out of the window totally I use a camera with a wide FOV.. typically 90 degrees in most 3D software, Bryce its 112.75 Lights and shadows are a nightmare if you have a character wondering about, you've got to account for it if items are animated, also opening a door will change the lights in the room I'm turning more to seeing how people handle lights in other 3D games, in MI4 it has really soft shadows and relies more on textures for the effect as does Syberia, Scratches has no ground shadows at all outside

All issues have been addressed already - it's really very dark. :) But that said ... NIGE this is very good atmosphere! Really ... you get a feeling of coldness standing there, turning around ... I really wonder how the corner of the eye spooks might be ... they could be QUITE scary if you actually turn around. Really good.

I'm just on -*test*-('")ing the corner of the eye stuff :) I'm going to pull back the camera from the door and make the decking area bigger.. even in normal light the camera is to close Theres two vesions now, well actually 3 lol, as i render an area.. i normally save that scene and then make a copy and move the camera.. so i've been rendering the 6 images for a true cubic panorama and -*test*-('")ing them in SCream and Pipmak.. the quality is amazing but theres a big learning curve involved with LUA Neither engine could do a full game yet, Pipmak has no dialog system, SCream is rather twitchy.. its just a nice distraction