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Original post by Jiia Here are a couple small-progress images to make the post seem less useless:

Just a tiny suggestion/nitpick... right now the front walls appear to be cut off at some random level, quite a bit higher than the room floor. It's probably just me, but the overall feel is... weird ^^; Just wondering if it wouldn't look better if the cutoff point was on the foor level, or maybe at the level where the band of dark wood ends on the interior walls...

(very impressive pictures other than that ;s

I would als sugest showing the backface of the wall.

Jiia, you are a bit too hard on yourself. Your stuff doesn't look bad, nor do your doors. They seem to fit right in.. unless you're going for a completly different feel.

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Original post by tolaris Just a tiny suggestion/nitpick

Do you really think the height is the problem? Or is it the texture? I was concerned that making the texture look like the inside of the wall might not work. And I agree that something doesn't feel right.

I know this is the design forum (and I'm asking about visual appearance of things), but I feel this is a really big design issue. I need to find a decent way of building these places, then I'll stick with it through the rest of the game world.

Anyway, here is an example of what your suggestion would look like:


The player will never see the inside-view. It's just there to show how it's put together since it's so difficult to grasp with a 2D shot. It still needs something? Maybe make the inside-textures look less like chopped walls?

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Jiia, you are a bit too hard on yourself.

I spend way too much time working on tiny details. Notice how the inside of the short walls have correct textures even though the user will never see them? It's one of my really bad traits.

edit: Oops, I forgot to put clothes on the bastard. Hope no one is scarred for life :P

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Original post by Jiia Do you really think the height is the problem? Or is it the texture? I was concerned that making the texture look like the inside of the wall might not work. And I agree that something doesn't feel right.

I think it's mainly height... when i saw the screenies which reused the texture for top of walls, first reaction was "something is broken with perspective" because there was sudden jump in how the lines of wall and the floor come together (if that makes sense, it's hard to describe) The effect was much better with different texture, but the odd feel was still there to some degree.

These latest screens feel far more natural. ^^ but that's obviously personal preference... about the only extra thing i'd maybe try is, to draw the texture on these part of corner beams which face the player... other than that it all seems fine.

Okay, this will be my last update on this unless someone has more suggestions. I really like the look of it so far, but once you stare at something long enough, you start to lose your way :P

Here's the final result:



I appreciate all of the help and suggestions.

very nice :)

One small sugestion. On view angels that are close to topdown view (like the third from left) I think it would look nicer if you draw the complete wall.

A couple of suggestions. First, in my opinion, what makes the room not "feel" right is that the walls and the door frame are just too thick. If you're in your room, have a look at yours, and then look at the screenies. They're a bit out of proportion. Of course if you weren't going for such a realistic feel in your game, you could get away with it like most games do :)

Another thing, I think that your idea of a stencil buffer would look really cool. Like this: if an object is obscured by the wall, you draw the object instead, and a bit of whatever is around it (floor mostly). If a portion of the wall is not over anything, just draw it as usual. To look good it would have to be kinda anti-aliased. Without it, using a stencil buffer, it would be pretty easy, but with anti-aliasing I'm not so sure.

I think the last update is exactly what you need. IMO, the reason the screens look a little weird are:

1) The door and windows have the exact same height as the ceiling. That doesn't happen in real houses, does it?
2) You haven't added any lighting/shadowing yet. Without those, it's always harder to exactly "grasp" the position of objects in space. Once you add those it will seem a lot better.

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Original post by nefthy One small sugestion. On view angels that are close to topdown view (like the third from left) I think it would look nicer if you draw the complete wall.

I just can't afford it. It would take too much time to design the swapping feature, just to react to the camera when it's tilted up in that way. If I did program such a feature, I would completely remove the limitations of the camera and let it all happen automatically. But like we discussed, that just makes it more annoying to the player, who is forced to look around all of the time so they don't miss an important object hanging on a wall or such.

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Original post by Jotaf A couple of suggestions. First, in my opinion, what makes the room not "feel" right is that the walls and the door frame are just too thick.

They're 16 inches thick. The people in this area experience heavy winters, and do not have good material for insulation. I've seen real walls with an 11 inch cavity for insulation. I'm trying to get a very crude feeling for the look of this area.

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They're a bit out of proportion. Of course if you weren't going for such a realistic feel in your game, you could get away with it like most games do :)

You would probably think differently if you lived in an area where monstrous animals tried to ravage your village every few days ;)

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Original post by mikeman 1) The door and windows have the exact same height as the ceiling. That doesn't happen in real houses, does it?

The door is 80 inches in height, where the walls are 96. That's 16 inches difference, where my own house has less than 10 inches between the two. The windows are just big. There's no electricity! :P

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2) You haven't added any lighting/shadowing yet. Without those, it's always harder to exactly "grasp" the position of objects in space. Once you add those it will seem a lot better.

What you see is what you get. There may be small effects added in later like shadows for characters and objects. The lighting is going to be faked as you see it now. With this project, my main goal is to drive like mad in a straight line through the most important aspects of the game until it's finished. Then I can go back and add detail to certain things later. What details I'll add are unknown to me as of yet.

Thank you all for the opinions. I'll take them all into much more consideration when I start on the next village ;)