Feature Upgrade - Environment Idea - New Rock texture

[Rasmus]

I have finally finished up some of the more urgent bugs like the crash when selecting trading routes, the glowing textures and the crashes on startup.
I can't say to 100% that they are solved because I only have so many computers to bug test the game on. These bugs were supposed to be fixed a lot sooner, but first the Christmas and the New Year preparations came in the way, then after that I had that vacation in Israel where I meet Ben.
Tomorrow I will release the next version which will mostly be a bug fix version, and today before I go to bed (it is really late here in Sweden right now...) I will see if I have the energy to solve some other bugs that has been reported.

BurningPet has also contributed with a new Rock texture, what do you think?

[IMG]replace_photbucket_link/NewRock2.jpg[/IMG]


And the launcher has gotten a new option where the user can choose what screen he wants to use when going fullscreen and not being only confined to the primary screen.

[IMG]replace_photbucket_link/LauncherOutput.jpg[/IMG]

I also tried to solve the issue with not being able to go fullscreen on a secondary graphic card. This was a really annoying issue and I had to turn to a gamedev community for advice: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/664696-unab...reen-mode/

The conclusion was that it isn't the game itself that gives the user the power to do this, it is in the GPU's own control panel. In my case I had to open up NVIDIA control panel in windows and choose Dwelvers.exe and add the NVIDIA card as primary card before I got this option. This can be a little annoying because there may be others out there complaining and saying that it is the code fault that it isn't working when it actually is windows fault. Well, we will see how it goes, if there are complaints about this in the future I will have to look into it some further, there are most probably a workaround.

Another thing that have been annoying me is that if the game closes expectantly with an error message it isn't always the case that the user have time too see this error message, especially when the game is running in fullscreen and the message gets behind the screen. I solved this dilemma by adding a message box when the game started the next time repeating the error.

[IMG]replace_photbucket_link/ErrorLog.jpg[/IMG]

So in this case with low memory it should be obvious enough to see why the game crashed the last time and what to do about it.

[Davgoblin]

Rock texture looks good, Seems to make the terrain feel a little more organic. Is it just me, or has the shaping of the terrain gotten better as well? I see much more curved, and warped surfaces there in the modeling of the terrian itself.

Happy Trading is back, but now that shields and alike seem to be craft-able, I didn't miss it as much as I thought I would. Still, I think everyone can get excited about less bugs and crashes. Woot woot, Sir. Woot, woot.

[Mello Tonin]

Good job on that new rock texture Ben! It makes the underground environment really pop. I can't wait to see it on my screen.

Glad you found a solution Rasmus with the dual card issue. That one affects my laptop that I play on. I like what you did with the loader specifically the option to choose which monitor to play on. Since 2 of the 3 PCs I test this on has dual monitors, I know I'm gonna use that feature a good bit. Now if we could only get the game to continue to run while it is not the active window. I have a trick that gets around that to a certain extent where I have the game in Windowed Mode then I can sometimes work in other Windows while the game continues. It' doesn't always catch my clicks unless it is on a desktop item or the mouse goes back over the game window.

Being able to select the card is cool too because I wasn't sure on my laptop it was using the Radeon chip because that memory issue popped up. That one ranks a 6.7 in Windows and it should have been able to run graphics on high instead of medium, but you explained in another thread why that was happening. As far as the nVidia as a secondary, did what they commented in that posting at GameDev not work?

extern "C" {
_declspec(dllexport) DWORD NvOptimusEnablement = 0x00000001;
}

Or, was it just better being able to choose what card the game would use from the loader? I wonder too if the Radeon chips have a similar function as the nVidia's Optimus tech.

[Sebt]

The shape and brownish color of walls reminds me Dung... oh never mind, I think any change that even simulates detailed objects is better.

[UfoL]

Good to see something changed with this almost blank texture, but i think it still need some improvement.
There are few things that i don't really like about it.
- seams along each tile. It looks like texture is cut and moved along with "dungeon twistednes" leaving blank space, where only brown color persists.
- repetetivness. Texture is all the same in every single tile, a bit deformed, but still same pattern repeats. Would be nic to see a set of different tiles distributed randomly, as it is with walls.
- a bit too rough... just my personal prefference, as it's present appearance reminds me look of a creased paper.

I wonder if some additional detail at the edges of the block would be a good idea. Just as it is with wall on top level. I think it could make nice look to see some more detal on earth blocks too. I think that's possible to do only using textures. Some cracks, pickaxe marks, holes after loose Stones etc.

And keep up with good work.

PS.
Can't wait for lava - perfect for trapdoors

[UfoL]

I'm not sure if it's the right place or should i make separate topic, bu the point is quite the same.
The rock texture seem to look even beter with recent updates. I'd like some more diversity throughout the dungeon, so it don't look the same everywhere, but it's generally good.

On the other hand however, the Solid Rock texture seem completely out of place. I doesn't look solid at all, and rock eaither. I looks more like some pebbles put into black goo. Maybe i am the only one, byt i think solid rock can do much better than now.
Solid should remind something generally hard, not fragmented and hard to dismantle, while now ton of small stones you could pluck out with your hand is rather opposite of that impression.
Most of these results should come in handy as referals: tiling rock texture
Here's what i have in mind when i hear "solid rock":

[Mello Tonin]

Yeah, I agree on the solid rock texture. I'm not that fond of it either. It looked better the way it was before in my opinion, but some of the rock textures UfoL linked to look nice too.

[Rasmus]

Hmm, I can make some modifications to it. Not sure if it will be better, but it can always be modified again

@UfoL: If you would like to test some of the textures out you can replace the color texture in media/xml/buildings/solidrock/color.png and see how those textures look. Personally I believe we need a somewhat smooth texture with very little detail to make this look good.

[UfoL]

Oh cool, didn't know i could do that! Definitely will try it when at home. Any normal/bump/specular maps there are replaceable aswell, or not available atm?