The shed in the initial screeshots up top was a free download.  Otherwise yeah the modeling and coding is just me.  I started the level editor today using FengGUI.  I've only integrated the samples so far - and I spent most of my time struggling with mapping the keyboard and mouse events between LWJGL and FengGUI.  Basically, I have my own handlers for camera events and I need to filter those before allowing FengGUI to process events.  Same thing with mouse events.  To place objects the a level editor you need to do the 2D/3D projection so FengGUI can't eat all the mouse events.

I've got that part sorted out.  People say the GUI is heavy weight but for what I'm doing I think it is just great.  Only when I get a ton of objects on the screen do I see a hit on FRAPS.  Such as:



Why am I bothering with a level editor?  Because merged 3DS files have drawbacks, as I found out trying to make that tree canopy.  You lose opportunity to set culling and transparency.  Also, I don't want to hardcode interactive objects or guess placement.  I want to be able to dynamically load and place objects and assign attributes such as culling / transparency and save as XML.   Also, it is really hard to place compound 3DS objects because once you translate the mesh all the child objects lose orientation and its a huge hassle reorienting them.  The Level Editor will help persist coordinate offsets etc.  It won't take very long to get something useful working. 

Here is another test with some texture tiling refinement and the first real tree.



I've settled on the look I'm trying for - which is a pretty much Rose Online.  If you havent heard of Rose its an Americanized Korean RPG.  You could call it a WoW ripoff but it is far more anime oriented than that.  Anyway - I like the look and its very uplifting especially for children.  Here is a decent Rose cap .  When the first walking jelly bean tells you "I may never be a real Jelly bean but at least I won't be eaten alive" you know its pretty out there.  Its a wierd game.  Anyway - enough about Rose Online. 

I'm really starting to love Paint.NET.  developing that tree canopy texture was a breeze.  I started with photo of a real vine wall and simply applied some blurr and "oil painting" effect.  I think it looks pretty decent.  The bark started out as real limestone, and the paths 2 different real dirt photos.  The grass started out as a FRAPS screen cap from PacMan World 2 but then modified with hue adjustment and oil painting effects and blurring.  the only weakness of Paint.NET is the lack of an airbrush and the bizzarre attitude of the developers refusing to add one.  I don't get that.  I have to resort to the dreaded GIMP for airbrushing.  I havent needed it here though yet.  The memory footprint for Paint.NET is pretty bad too (~200MG).

That screen was taken with both 3DMax and Paint.NET up - the real FPS is about 190.
 
 

Yeah I think I want to end up with two meshes - the tree (1) and the leaves as a collective canopy (2).  Technically the canopy parts don't have to even touch to be in the same mesh.  That will make the JPCT rotation easier and I can manage the culling and transparency seperate from the trunk.

Yeah I love laptops.  I'm thinking of getting one of those Vigor Atlantis 20'1 LCD SLI laptops.  This IBM T60 15'4" screen is killing me.  It has a great resolution (1920x1200) but its just too freakin small.  The Vigor has a lower resolution (1680x1050) but resolution isnt everything.  Plus once you render its a moot issue really. 

Bigger is better.

Exactly.  Stay far away from the Material editor and use a UVW Map (different than a UVW Unwrap).  One you add the modifier, you just select the gizmo and you can rotate the gizmo which rotates the texture.  Rotation there is just like when you are modeling so its actually better than what the Material Editor has.  Then you modify the UV coordinates again in the rollout for the Modifier, not the Material Editor.  That takes care of the tiling stretch after you have adjusted the rotation.

Really its the same thing but its cleaner using the Modifier and more importantly it actually works.  Finally, you need to collapse the stack before moving on to the next polygon face that needs adjustment or the modifier will unwind itself.  I found that annoying but its not a big deal.  Collapsing the stack is not a true commitment like when you are modeling because you can always go back and add a new UVW Map modifier again.  I did that to correct one path segment that was slightly off.

Hope that is clear.  Try it on a test like I did - its painless.

Thanks.  Just so everyone knows, I'm actually am aware the level design is extremely crude.

It is just an early test to push the poly limit before reigning everything in for actual design and texturing.  Despite the simplistic look those hills are have some serious polys because of the highly segmented planes I used.  4 planes at 40x40 plus a procedural texture and and about ~20 structures.  I'd like the game to run on weaker hardware so I plan to load zones and swap them in and out of the world.  It seems pretty strait forward to detect a transition area and with precaching the transition should be painless.  I also think I'm going to swap out the water texture for 2 opposing moving planes.  I've been studying my son's Pac Man World 2 and they have some interesting tricks that look very convincing (in a cartoonish sense that is). 

I'll be laying out the landscape over the next few weeks and post screens and whatnot.  Once I get over that texture tiling problem I'm having things should go quickly.  I would like to get back to my wannabie ToEE RPG soon!  I'm glad I'm doing this though since most of these hurdles are better tackled on a simpler project such as this.





   

Maybe I wasnt clear in the question.  I'm in the Unwrap already, moving stuff around.  But I finally realized the answer.  If two unwrap faces are the same size and are supposed to share the same texture you just move them on top of each other so they have the same coordinates.  It seems so obvious now jeesh.