Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Alpha Release pg 3)

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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by machf »

TheIdiot wrote: Are you talking about
Spoiler: show
the vine hanging down from the tree?
In that case, you can climb it, but it's a bit finnicky.
How?
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by TheIdiot »

machf wrote:
TheIdiot wrote: Are you talking about
Spoiler: show
the vine hanging down from the tree?
In that case, you can climb it, but it's a bit finnicky.
How?
I was able to go up to it and tap jump toward it until I reached the top, like with most ladders and the vines in JPDS.
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by machf »

I'll try again, I have a savegame just there. But as I said, I don't think I saw any invisible physics or anything...

EDIT: ah, I see, they're part of the base model, and you have to jump first to step on the first one...
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by Rebel »

Also, the level as it currently is is TOO dark (yes, I know it's called "Dark Jungle", but anyway), too stressful on the eyes... I had to change the settings a bit. Besides, a night under a full moon is brighter than that...
Again, only played this for a little while, but I actually didn't mind the dark settings, but machf is technically correct; night is fairly
bright during a full moon. Anyways, so far, I liked what I saw. As far as putting forth ideas for ya, I haven't gotten far enough into
it to get the feel for the level as a whole.
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by Rebel »

I just played this again for a while. I love the beginning of this; the entire shore scene is very cool, complete with the
ambient sounds and animated waves. Anyhoo, overall I do like the look of this level, but all I got so far was finding a
keycard and getting out past the gate, for some reason though I seem to be walking around in circles so I'm not sure
just where I need to go as of yet. But, I won't cheat by sneaking a peak, or reading any spoilers, but I'll figure it out
soon enough.

@Edit: Ok, figured it out. I think it's a pretty good level, but I'm unsure how you plan on ending it appropriately.
Spoiler: show
Before the end cutscene, I noticed what looked like an armed guard. I verified it afterwards by looking through the
level in TresEd (something I don't do until I finish playing a level btw). Anyways, if I was to throw out my own ideas
I'd consider finishing up the storyline something along the lines of . ..

Note, you already have a helicopter animation going on, so I'd suggest something on the order of several helicopters
taking off, multiple, distant gunfire, screams, dinosaur roars, etc as if these bio guards/personnel had there base over
run by dinosaurs and were forced into a frantic evac. You enter the base, dinosaurs running all over the place feasting
on those who didn't make it to evac before being killed. One helicopter is left, and that'd be Anne's ticket out of there.
Perhaps you can figure out a way to have the helicopter's rotors already spinning, the copter ready to go. Maybe you
could create a cutscene (or alter tres' original smk) with Anne's escaping in it, or somehow pull off a scripting miracle
and have Anne actually in the helicopter and it lifting off the ground.

That's my initial thought, T.G. I think the level is good, the scenery is good, so I hope you can wrap it up somehow.
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by TrespasserGuy »

Thank you all for trying out the level and giving me feedback!

I've heard your comments on the darkness of the level, so I've tried tweaking the GlobalClut values to make it look brighter.

BEFORE:
Click on Image
(Click on thumbnail for full size)
Image
AFTER:
Click on Image
(Click on thumbnail for full size)
Image
What do you think? Should it be a bit brighter, or just keep it the same?

machf wrote:I'll try again, I have a savegame just there. But as I said, I don't think I saw any invisible physics or anything...

EDIT: ah, I see, they're part of the base model, and you have to jump first to step on the first one...
Yeah, I realized that climbing the vine is difficult, and I thought about adding a trigger at that area in order to autosave the level in the event of the player falling off the vine and dying from fall damage.
TheIdiot wrote:Wow, okay, so...this is pretty damn cool. Even for a pre-alpha, I already really like the direction you're taking. Each area has something interesting to see, there's a bit of exploration here and there, and the overall level design just looks really great! And I like what you've done with the unfinished level areas from my original unfinished level you based this on, it was a nice surprise to see you left in the few little areas I made originally in ShadowedLands. :D I get a really great vibe from what I've seen so far, not to mention the remaining areas I checked out in TresEd (which are just...really, really incredible for a lot of reasons that I won't spoil). The whole level gives me serious RTJP vibes, it really reminds me of what I'd envisioned for some of the later levels, like RTJP~Camp. I'm glad to hear that you seem to have used at least some parts of the RTJP TPA files as well, plus a number of its models...I'd hoped those would be of use to someone one day.
And I think once Draco comes back around, he'll definitely like to see the later part of this level...

My only suggestion so far is to add maybe a couple more encounters, voice overs, or musical cues around the level for a release version. I did feel that in a couple of the "walking" parts, it could have benefitted from something to listen to, or perhaps an enemy to deal with...that narrow cliff road would be an interesting place for an triggered attack from both the front and behind.

I'll also note that, since this uses the ShadowedLands layout, the canyon you go down at the start of the level was meant to be a cave with ancient paintings of humans fighting dinosaurs on the walls. The big canyon you put the lake in that is overlooked by the Safari Lodge buildings was meant to be filled with some kind of aquatic enemy, and you'd have had to jump between rocks in the pond and solve a puzzle to escape. And finally, the place beyond the end level trigger was going to be a massive Mayan maze, filled with traps and enemies, where you'd have to find 3 keys to open the door to the exit. I figured I'd mention this since it might inspire you in some way, since you say you're a bit strapped for creativity at the moment. :)

I do hope to see this finished in the future as I think it could be your best level yet!
EDIT: well, I downloaded it, tried to play it, and it would crash in certain places. I could avoid crashing by looking in another direction. After trying a few things, I deleted the grass and it works fine now.
Hmm, surprisingly this time I didn't get any crashes whatsoever, or any instability. Don't know if it's the .ini settings at it again or what, since I did notice that TresGuy seemed to avoid having a lot of clipping grass objects which usually tends to be the case...perhaps it would be worth releasing a "low-detail" version of levels that use 3D grass without those meshes since they seem to be troublesome?
I anticipated other people running into performance problems based on the amount of grass in that area. In an earlier version, that entire area with the stego had grass placed all around, and all of them were more or less touching each other. I always had a dip in frames at the location so I decided to cut back on the amount of 3d grass in that section. Also, I've place a couple of occlusion objects in various spots around the level so you won't have to experience lag from loaded objects that are behind a cliff you can't see through :wink:
Rebel wrote:I just played this again for a while. I love the beginning of this; the entire shore scene is very cool, complete with the
ambient sounds and animated waves. Anyhoo, overall I do like the look of this level, but all I got so far was finding a
keycard and getting out past the gate, for some reason though I seem to be walking around in circles so I'm not sure
just where I need to go as of yet. But, I won't cheat by sneaking a peak, or reading any spoilers, but I'll figure it out
soon enough.

@Edit: Ok, figured it out. I think it's a pretty good level, but I'm unsure how you plan on ending it appropriately.
Spoiler: show
Before the end cutscene, I noticed what looked like an armed guard. I verified it afterwards by looking through the
level in TresEd (something I don't do until I finish playing a level btw). Anyways, if I was to throw out my own ideas
I'd consider finishing up the storyline something along the lines of . ..

Note, you already have a helicopter animation going on, so I'd suggest something on the order of several helicopters
taking off, multiple, distant gunfire, screams, dinosaur roars, etc as if these bio guards/personnel had there base over
run by dinosaurs and were forced into a frantic evac. You enter the base, dinosaurs running all over the place feasting
on those who didn't make it to evac before being killed. One helicopter is left, and that'd be Anne's ticket out of there.
Perhaps you can figure out a way to have the helicopter's rotors already spinning, the copter ready to go. Maybe you
could create a cutscene (or alter tres' original smk) with Anne's escaping in it, or somehow pull off a scripting miracle
and have Anne actually in the helicopter and it lifting off the ground.

That's my initial thought, T.G. I think the level is good, the scenery is good, so I hope you can wrap it up somehow.
Based on your guys' comments, I've found a direction I want to take my mod. I don't know if you noticed TI, but the terrain file has been tripled in size. I asked Teromen to do some fancy terrain editing in 3ds max and then Guiapp so now I don't have worry about running out of room to work with. I know that this may seem like a risky move considering as mods continue to get more ambitious, they tend to never see completion. But I've figured that if I ever get overwhelmed with the current trajectory of my level, there's a backup plan that puts the mod back into a smaller scope that I can still finish reasonably without worry. :mrgreen:
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by Draconisaurus »

Hello! Finally got around to playing this, as I mentioned in Discord. I forgot you confirmed that TI's terrain was used as a basis.

For the dark level of lighting in the level - I became aware through Klayton's youtube playthroughs of mods, and the comments on them, that many have screens (presumably either monitor or phone) which can't see typical dark Trespasser lighting settings such as K~OS, 4ushT, I suspect CursedArena. Tatu I recall is one of these. I can't say for sure but one idea I have is that some digital screen standards stop "trying" to be able to show finer levels of detail at the lower brightnesses.

I'm wondering what can be done? It's very crude to edit a level to change its brightness, considering the possible effects of re-saving without the author's guidance. And it doesn't seem too realistic for everyone to stop making mods so dark? So that at least some people can experience dark ambience. Are there standard computers settings we could refer other people to alter so that darker levels can be seen? Is there a CE setting which can be used? Funnily enough it might be possible to make a squirrel script to do it, if we knew how to make it.

I suppose future mods could also be released in dual-version if they have dark settings.

Very interested to see what lies beyond that gate! And thanks again for the RTJP soundscape.
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by Shadefyre »

I think I might be getting around to recording this level soon, however I wanted to ask if there were any specific settings I should crank down to get it running better. The reason I held off on it before was that even with tinkering around in the config, I seem to get big framedrops right at the start of the map, when looking at the cliffs. I tried halving a bunch of settings for rendering and cull distance, and was getting the same frames no matter what I lowered.
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by TrespasserGuy »

Shadefyre wrote:I think I might be getting around to recording this level soon, however I wanted to ask if there were any specific settings I should crank down to get it running better. The reason I held off on it before was that even with tinkering around in the config, I seem to get big framedrops right at the start of the map, when looking at the cliffs. I tried halving a bunch of settings for rendering and cull distance, and was getting the same frames no matter what I lowered.
Hey Shade, thanks for considering doing an LP of this level. I think the framerate issue has to do with the massive amounts of 3D grass I placed in one part of the level. It crash the game on machf's playthrough. I've since removed much of the grass from that part of the level. If you want, I can release the latest version of the level as I've since added some stuff.
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by Shadefyre »

TrespasserGuy wrote:
Shadefyre wrote:I think I might be getting around to recording this level soon, however I wanted to ask if there were any specific settings I should crank down to get it running better. The reason I held off on it before was that even with tinkering around in the config, I seem to get big framedrops right at the start of the map, when looking at the cliffs. I tried halving a bunch of settings for rendering and cull distance, and was getting the same frames no matter what I lowered.
Hey Shade, thanks for considering doing an LP of this level. I think the framerate issue has to do with the massive amounts of 3D grass I placed in one part of the level. It crash the game on machf's playthrough. I've since removed much of the grass from that part of the level. If you want, I can release the latest version of the level as I've since added some stuff.
Oh hey, if there is an updated version that wasn't available on the site, I'll happily take it. I just don't like to show off levels without figuring out how to get them looking their best on my end, because I feel like not doing that is sort of unfair to the modders that create them.
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by TrespasserGuy »

https://www.mediafire.com/file/xtv8byh4 ... a.rar/file



Welp, might as well release this publicly. Sadly this version isn't too different from the other Alpha that I released a year ago. I've since deleted or moved a lot of foliage to increase framerate. I've added a new little area, next to the bungalow areas, so make sure to check that out.

Mainly production of this level has stalled because of working on InGen Compound, and I've been stuck on whether or not of making this mod short, or expanding it to have a larger scope. For now you guys can see what I've accomplished so far.

Feel free to do a Let's Play of this Shadefyre! 8)
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Early Alpha Release p

Post by TheIdiot »

Bit of a shame this never got finished. I'm somewhat hesitant to download this version with less detail since it worked fine for me originally, but I do want to see the new area. I'm certainly not troubled that you had to stop this for InGen Compound however as that level looks very promising. :)
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Re: Dark Jungle: A new Trespasser mod (Alpha Release pg 3)

Post by machf »

Oooh, another version of this one? More things to try later...
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Tres WIP: updated T-Script Reference and File Formats documents
Sound name listings for the Demo (build 117), Retail (build 116), Beta 103, Beta 99, Beta 97, Beta 96, Build 55, PC Gamer Alpha (build 32) and E3 1998 Alpha (build 22) TPA files
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