Is their any way we can split up the development of the 3D constructs of major Harnic sites?

How would we keep consistity between developers?

Can a Unity base program import a Harnic site that was developed by another developer?

What would be the common format for the sites that the different developers would use?

Frank G. Haymes

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Frank G Haymes

Knowned as George Frank Mac Kenize in the SCA

Quite some questions.



Sure, Currently I am doing Falkath.
I would want to do Jedes, Trobridge Inn and Tashal.
Perhaps an Earthmaster site would also be nice.
I think those will keep me bussy, lets say, for the next 20 years?
So anything else is for others open to grab (If it is 'allowed' to reserve those at all).



So, this has to be split in two parts:

artistic consistency:
I think this is probably not possible to achieve.
In real game development this is normally done by creating a design bible with "extensive" pictures collections and definitions,
that show
- typical people (off all social levels and gender in each kingdom),
- buildings (also dependent on kingdom, purpose, and social standing)
- color scemes for each kingdome (an artistic trick to dhave the kingdoms/regions visualy different)
- also schemas for sound and music
- ...
I think you got the idea. But of course that is something that is not achievable.
Nevertheless I would die to have such a set of resources at my disposal.
Currently I try to orient myself on the drawings of our beloved master artist, the Great Richard and common medieval sources.
I have a big library

technical consistency:
Also here some common design specs would help. Examples of this are:
- A common human skeleton defining the bones to share motions,
- all chaarcter must have around 5000 polys and must have a diffuse+specular+normal map,
- a normal house up to 4000 polys ...

Other technical requirements I will address with your next two questions.




Ahh, thats an easy one.
Unity has a concept of 'packages'. You could create a package in which all scripts, models, maps and textures for a certain scenario.
You can then export it and someone else can easily import it. A lot of people share scripts or assets in this way (see the Unity forum or the asset store).
I myself have organised my Falkath scenario in (at least) two packages/folders already.
One is for all the reusable generic stuff (a harn common package)
The other contains all the stuff that is specific for Falkath (e.g. the cave)




If all developers would use Unity, then the package-format would be the easiest.
But to be more open to other developers it is sad that there are no official standards in the 3D community.
I would suggest FBX for models, FBX/BVH for motion, PNG or Photoshop files for textures and wav/mp3 for audio.
Those are the formats understood by nearly all DCC programs.

So what are you up to, if I may ask? Now that you have raised my curiosity

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Proud to be born in the one single terran city mentioned in official Harn: Nuernberg the city of Casp of Hauser!

We can work out what we want to work on.



Who is the Great Richard (I have only been on the forum for a short time)?

What Medieval time frame would Harn be in?

Where would Harn be in Europe?

I am a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). It is a Medieval re-creation group in the US. I can get information from the local members.



We will need to set common design specs.



Can I import the packages into a Unity app or will I need to recompile the Unity app with the packages?

We can work the other details as needed.



I would like to make a 3D Table Top program. Each player would see only what his/her character could see.

You would be able to add new Harnic content as they are developed. The development of new Harnic content would be open-ended.

Right now I am working through Will Goldstone's book "Unity Game Development Essentials". It looks like Unity will do everything that I want to do.

I work in the aircraft simulation software industry.

Frank G. Haymes

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Frank G Haymes

Knowned as George Frank Mac Kenize in the SCA

His name is Richard Luschek and he is the creator of all those beautyfull pencil drawings in the newer Columbia products.
He also helps in many fan articles. I like his work because his drawings are in a realistic stile,
in contrast to Eric Hotz's work in the older products which are stylised, in a woodcut way.
Of course this is a matter of taste and just my opinion.




This is difficult to answer, as a lot of discussions about this topic in this forum can testify.
HARN uses parts of different centuries. For me I would say AD 1100 +/- 200.



Again this is up to a lot of discussions. But some are more obvious:

Orbaal : Viking culture
Jarin : has Celtic parts in it
Kaldor, Kanday: typical feudal, medieval kingdoms (i.e. Normans, Franks, Saxon, ...)
Thardic Republic: Has some ideas of a roman society but in medieval visual appearance
Rethem: My Rethem folder seems to be still on it's way.
Barbarians: Different 'uncivilized' folks

With Rethem and Melderyn I have my own world view to bring a little bit more 'exotics' into Harn:

Melderyn: In my personal Harn I like to give it a very small 'oriental' touch.
Rethem: I orient myself a little bit in an Byzantinian way.




Uhhh. Here I do not have any experiance myself.
From what I have read it seems that it is possible to extend the game at runtime.
This seems to be the way the webviewer works anyway.
But at least it is possible to link different locations/scenarios.




Seems to be quite similar to what I have in mind.
So to have players game with visual support but the game master still the ruler of the world.
But Falkath I plan to be a more traditional computer RPG for solo play.

Goldstone's book was also my first introduction to Unity.
It is a good introduction but is based on the old 2.6 version and it only scratches on the surface.
What I like is the video tutorial for an InDoor scene by i3D:

http://www.i3dtutorials.com/view/Tutorials/Unity-3D

It is for a modern warehouse but I learned a lot of tricks and I got many ideas from it.

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Proud to be born in the one single terran city mentioned in official Harn: Nuernberg the city of Casp of Hauser!

Where can I see Richard Luschek's art work?



That is the time frame that I though that Harn was set in (11th through the 13 centuary).



Your placement of the kingdoms will work for me.

I will need to looking into updating the different locations/scenarios at runtime.

It looks like we have the same vision for the Harn app.

I am using Goldstone's book for a simple introduction/overview of Unity. I do understand that it is not written for the current version of Unity.

I did a quick look at i3dtutorials's Tutorials for Unity-3D. I will need to look at it more.

Frank G Haymes

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Frank G Haymes

Knowned as George Frank Mac Kenize in the SCA

Go to RPGNow and do a search on "Luschek". He's done the art on most of the Columbia Games publications there.

Thanks for the link to Richard Luschek's art work.

I will need to check out my Harn items to see more of his artwork.

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Frank G Haymes

Knowned as George Frank Mac Kenize in the SCA

This time I can present some more views of the landscape. I have added some vegetation. But I am not very satisfied with it. The trees are OK, but could be better (is not in the video but they move unrealistic when wind is applied). The bushes are not correctly lit and the corn fields are also not ideal. Still a lot to do. Of course all the buildings, items, people and animals are missing anyway.

Also new are my first steps with the day/night cycle. I use Unisky here but there are some problems that are either bugs or results of my bad implementation (grey sky and black clouds during night seems to be a bug, but I am not so sure about the difference between shadow direction and sun position) also I should play some more with the color settings, but the sunsets are quite nice.

The third new thing is the waterfall. This also needs more work and it seems I need to model the rock behind the waterfall manually. At least there should be something of a hole where the water comes out.
And another addition is: sound. But also here are still some problems as a bug in Unity does not loop the sounds correctly. You will hear the puse quite obviously at the waterfall.

But despite all those problems, it is another step towards a living and breathing village of Falkath.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwghqItOyUI

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Proud to be born in the one single terran city mentioned in official Harn: Nuernberg the city of Casp of Hauser!

Very nice work. I've enjoyed the progress you've made with this system and look forward to seeing more. If I knew how to program I'd offer to help, about all I could offer would be 3D models created in Max.

Otherwise, keep up the solid progress.

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"Honor is earned through the balance of peace and harmony, yet to the Master all eyes are open to possibilities".

Silverleaf 1981

Nice work! As the writer of Falkath it really neat to watch the village come alive on screen. Can't wait for the next youtube.

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Visit the Nelafayn Hundred Project
http://www.lythia.com/nelafayn/

Thanks for the nice comments!

@Silverleaf
Seems the 3D artists are creeping out of their holes
Perhaps we should really start a pool of HARN modells that everyone can use in his projects.

@Dan Bell
Wow! To hear that from the author is really encouraging!
If you plan to watch my progress anyway, please don't hold back if I display something in a way that does not fit your picture of Harn! When you detail a village on that level, one raises a lot of questions/problems. So when you stumble about errors please do not hesitate to inform me!

Thanks. Seems I have finally found a way to pay something back to the community.

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Proud to be born in the one single terran city mentioned in official Harn: Nuernberg the city of Casp of Hauser!

I just returned after several years of Hârnic dormancy and must say that I am impressed by your developement so far.

I will take a deep look into unity - luckily it supports my current favourite language, Python, for scripting. I am not into 3d objects but as part of my HarnManor generator I do plan to integrate an automatic map (2d, for starters). Once I am there, and if there is a chance to create a format that might transform into a 3d-model, I will come back to haunt you for more infos

You can also check Richard's blog site...http://www.richardluschek.com/

He's one of those combination gamer (he's consistently played in a Harn campagin for oh...heck, ever), artist, and all around nice guy. His work has come to establish a standard for Harn that is really appreciated.

It's building time:

I can present you my first take at the manor. It's still missing the armory/privy and all the items of daily life that should make it look "in use". Also the lightmapping is not active and the textures are to "clean". In the background you can also see some placeholders for the village buildings.

I suggest to watch it in 720p.
Enjoy :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8X4KMhMSwA

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Proud to be born in the one single terran city mentioned in official Harn: Nuernberg the city of Casp of Hauser!

Looks great already! Any news on this?

Yes there are new things to show, but I have lost my password and was to lazy to inform our beloved admin about it.
Thanks for forcing me finally to get into action here.

Also I got some kind of sidetracked as I bought an Android tablet and wanted to get the HARN program running on it.
It works now, but the lower performance specs forced some design changes.

I will try to upload something on the next weekend (it's a long weekend til tuesday because of a hollyday in Germany). So you can expect some hints about the UI and may be about the Vlasta I am currently modelling.

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Proud to be born in the one single terran city mentioned in official Harn: Nuernberg the city of Casp of Hauser!

OK, it was more than a week , but here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ruOmW5Z9I8

And the quality of the video is also very bad (bad compression and strange colors)

The last weeks I have spent writing the core of my AI.
The system (a mix of behaviour trees, POSH, ABL and my own ideas) is far enough to start integrating it into Unity.

I think the first entity with some artificial behaviour will be a sheep
A sheep only walks around, eats, sleeps and tries to flee when a danger is near.
Sounds simple enough?

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Proud to be born in the one single terran city mentioned in official Harn: Nuernberg the city of Casp of Hauser!

And breeds. Got to remember and breeds