Shadowcat on 14/11/2023 at 07:11
My memory says that fast diagonals is correct for SFC-issue PBAs :) I'm pretty sure I always used that to get places faster...
vurt on 14/11/2023 at 10:57
Really cool. So now i can do that texture mod i guess (some people suggested this game in the "which game to retexture" thread i made).
The game has almost no nostalgic value to me personally, i remember trying it, that's all. But it could be fun to do a texture mod anyways. the ground texture doesn't look like its tiling though, so it will just look like garbage if i make a 1024 texture of it.
joerg on 14/11/2023 at 19:59
Quote Posted by Shadowcat
My memory says that fast diagonals is correct for SFC-issue PBAs :) I'm pretty sure I always used that to get places faster...
Yes, Shadowcat is right. Just checked it with the original and movement speed forward is not affected by moving sidewards simultaneously :-)
joerg on 14/11/2023 at 20:07
henke, thanks again for your comments and thoughts! By looking on your itch.io-page (by the way: cool stuff :cool:) I understand how important physics are to you. I did a quick update on the jump jets (version 1.01 of UNIVTN is up). The parameters are not perfect yet, but I hope it is better now. Adding smoke is a good idea too, but that will take a few days until I'll have time to work on the project again.
joerg on 14/11/2023 at 20:19
vurt, about retexturing Terra Nova, there are two issues: the first you described as "ground texture doesn't look like its tiling" and that's because Terra Nova uses small patches for each terrain tile (of 3m x 3m) and each patch can be oriented in four directions. This allows to have the same texture patch on adjacenting patches and if they have different orientations it does not look like the texture is repeating. This method also allows to have rather convincing transitions between different ground types while only using small amounts of texture space. The second issue is how UNIVTN is implemented: A single texture atlas is build containing all terrain patches (of the current planet) and similar another texture atlas for all 3d buildings, one for the trees (including shading), etc. This implementation is not suited to have different texture resolutions than what the original game used. However changing the textures itself while keeping the resolution works.
vurt on 14/11/2023 at 20:26
Quote Posted by joerg
vurt, about retexturing Terra Nova, there are two issues: the first you described as "ground texture doesn't look like its tiling" and that's because Terra Nova uses small patches for each terrain tile (of 3m x 3m) and each patch can be oriented in four directions. This allows to have the same texture patch on adjacenting patches and if they have different orientations it does not look like the texture is repeating. This method also allows to have rather convincing transitions between different ground types while only using small amounts of texture space. The second issue is how UNIVTN is implemented: A single texture atlas is build containing all terrain patches (of the current planet) and similar another texture atlas for all 3d buildings, one for the trees (including shading), etc. This implementation is not suited to have different texture resolutions than what the original game used. However changing the textures itself while keeping the resolution works.
I see, what's the px size of those texture atlases right now? it's not a big issue if it can handle e.g 8192x8192 or something :P
joerg on 15/11/2023 at 10:38
vurt, I have some ideas, but I need to check them. Could take a couple of days though.
joerg on 17/11/2023 at 10:14
vurt, unfortunatly your retexturing project won't work with UNIVTN. I investigated several alternatives but simply put for all kinds of textures (terrain, trees, enemies, special effects,...) I use texture atlas' that make use of the fact that textures are not larger than in the original game. UNIVTN was designed to reimplement exactly the features of the original engine just with higher display resolution and alternative input methods. However changing the textures while keeping their size will be fine.
vurt on 17/11/2023 at 20:58
No worries! Thanks for looking into it :)
joerg on 20/11/2023 at 21:50
Just uploaded version 1.02 of UNIVTN that includes jump jets that should feel more like the original game and they also do emit a trail of smoke. I also addressed the issue with the movement speed. However since diagonal movement is faster than running straight in the original game, I changed the "Cheat Player Speed" to allow for the following settings: "original", "real" (diagonal movement does not give extra speed), and several "faster" settings that increase the movement speed while keeping it "real". For those who are curious, if you enable the Frames Per Second display also the speed (measured only horizontally) is shown.