TresCom Forums

More sporadic work, today focusing on fixing a bit of wonky scripting and improving texture or two...here are the results:

(Click on thumbnail for full size)

Tried to get the whole animation sequence, but I made it play too fast to actually get pictures! It's a literal case of "blink and you'll miss it". I gave the Raptors that extra eyelid that many animals have since it's there in the movie.

The raptor has animated texture? The pupil does look a bit blurry/pixelated, but maybe that is on purpose?

tatu wrote:The raptor has animated texture? The pupil does look a bit blurry/pixelated, but maybe that is on purpose?

I gave them five-frame animated eye blinks every now and then. Their eyes also close upon death. The blur is from the nictating membrane ("third eyelid") and only looks that way for a second during the animation before the eye closes. The Raptors in the movie have a nictating membrane, so I figured I'd include it here. See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nictitating_membrane

(Click on thumbnail for full size)

The pixellation around the eye is just from the textures being 512x512, not much I can do about that. It's not noticable unless you're really close up.

TheIdiot wrote: I gave them five-frame animated eye blinks every now and then. Their eyes also close upon death.

I did that for The Pens... but I don't think it's noticeable. Animals which were asleep would open their eyes as they woke up...

TI, this looks great... The explorer reskin is taken as inspiration from JP///? And, the eye animation is a bit genius. These sorts of details I wish I'd focused more on before having to quit modding for a bit.

Draconisaurus wrote:TI, this looks great... The explorer reskin is taken as inspiration from JP///? And, the eye animation is a bit genius. These sorts of details I wish I'd focused more on before having to quit modding for a bit.

Thanks, Drac. The Explorer is from one of hppav's old test levels, I just gave it rusty textures and normalmaps. But yes, I believe it is meant to be the one from JP3, thought it worked really well as a generic InGen vehicle since I don't want to use the old low-poly Tres vehicles and was too lazy to make a Jeep skin.
I still feel like the potential of animated textures is still largely unrealised, so I'm trying to use them a fair bit in this level. RTJP~Prologue had a bit of what I've conceptualized in the past with the opening titles sequence, so I hope to use them more in that style in the future.

Cool. I'm glad you can look so far ahead in the technical possibilities with the known Trespasser functions. Keeping mods small seems a good way to make more of those happen. Hopefully DarkJungle gets that in, too..

(Click on thumbnail for full size)

Summer is always a quiet time for Tres, so to liven the place up a bit here's a quick screenie I got while testing something unrelated.

Hey niiice...... Is it just me or has that raptor's head been altered to better fit JP1 accuracy?

Draconisaurus wrote:Hey niiice...... Is it just me or has that raptor's head been altered to better fit JP1 accuracy?

Yep! Did that back in the RTJP days.

The thumbnail makes it look like the raptors are mating, which honestly would be a both a funny and cool thing to see happen in Tres

TrespasserGuy wrote:The thumbnail makes it look like the raptors are mating, which honestly would be a both a funny and cool thing to see happen in Tres

If I remember correctly, the developers did at one point have mating triceratops as an idea for an easter egg. Don't know how you'd make it work without some heavy scripting.

Been while and did a bit of sporadic work on the level tonight, so here's another random screenie of the "Stairway to Heaven", which in this level will function more as a Highway to Hell :

(Click on thumbnail for full size)

Additionally, I've finally done a little bit of dino scripting with the intent to see how interesting and cinematic I can make dinosaur encounters. I wanted to bring back the concept I had for RTJP where dinosaurs, especially Raptors, would put in a little bit more effort to act like proper ambush predators - you won't be encountering lone Raptors that you can snipe from a kilometer away in this level, and you'll definitely want to watch your back for the other Raptors you didn't even know where there... It'll be made all the more interesting due to the lack of firearms that I'm envisioning for much of this level - you'll have to work for your guns, and each bullet will be precious.

That is a pretty nice staircase.
AI scripting attention is something I have found TresCom mods need badly, as well as more sticks for melee. I hadn't thought of the ambush potential, which sounds like both AI and outside triggers. I managed three or more really cool AI scenes in JPDS~streams but I don't think I ever really got back to it after. Good luck!

Draconisaurus wrote: AI scripting attention is something I have found TresCom mods need badly, as well as more sticks for melee. I hadn't thought of the ambush potential, which sounds like both AI and outside triggers. I managed three or more really cool AI scenes in JPDS~streams but I don't think I ever really got back to it after. Good luck!

Yeah, I have looked at your scenes in JPDS, in particular the Raptor mating duel, as inspiration here. I want to go with a bit more of a "less is more" approach, where there aren't too many dinosaur encounters, but the ones that you do run into will be relatively harrowing. Once you reach the facility, I plan on getting a little bit more of a horror-esque atmosphere going, maybe have some dinosaurs burst out of doors as you pass them or drop down from the celing to scare the player. You'll have only precious seconds to escape before the dinosaurs come after you, and I'm thinking of trying to come up with a way to get the dinosaurs to pathfind properly inside of buildings...I have ideas but they might be overcomplicated.
One thing I've always wanted to recreate is that scene on the Jurassic Park Ride in Hollywood where the velociraptor chewing on electrical wirse drops down from above. I'll have to build some of these idea into my building models as I work on them now that I have a better idea of what I want the actual so-called "Cloning Facility" (which is no longer the official name of the actual facility within the level) to look like now...I'm thinking roughly something between the classic Jurassic Park-esque interiors filled with pipes and metal walkways and the more lab-oriented Embryonics Administration compound. And expect total darkness inside as well, until maybe you get the emergency lighting turned on, or maybe even a revisit of the old RTJP flashlight/nightvision idea.