Rickious - Redoran Arena

[Rickious]

I know i am supposed to be doing allsorts on here but need to start this as its potentially easier for me to finish. Hopefully with help texturing, collision etc, help meaning someone will do it for me. This probably depends on the quality of the models i can come up with and so something spectacular like a Redoran Arena could be a good test. If its good enough im sure someone will be happy to take it for completion. I may be fine texturing it, i will have to put something on it to build it as those grey walls wont show what the model looks like properly in development.

SO...

Im thinking how empty the Imperial Arena looks and how that leaves me thinking in two ways..

1st thought = HUGE
So large that the crowd can be animations instead of real people and the player would never get close enough to tell any difference. This would undoubtably work and look amazing BUT where do all the people come from and where do they go when it closes? Big issues when it comes to realism.

Current plan = FIGHT PIT
The opposite end of the spectrum is a nice looking building from the outside, quite large but inside have several areas with different fight pits. This allows something large but gives good excuses for small crowds, maybe have water pits, animal fights, all held in different internal cells which is also great for game performance and allows for more detail in each area. Other internal areas could include a bar, training area, weaponry shop etc, all these accesed externally like the souvenier shops around a football ground. Possibly a private area inside too with a membership scheme which requires the completion of challenges/quest/large entry fee, this area could have 'private fights' which would include vampires, undead, very unfairly matched fights. MAybe rig this so the player can choose fights and the winnings are based on what opponants they choose BUT a fight fee must be paid prior to the match which is non-refundable if you exit the match?

So the Redoran Fight Pits. I will begin visuals NOW! :goodjob:

[DMKW]

The coolest arena I've ever seen was in Summoner 2.
You could bet on one on one battles, 2x2 and 3x3. You could also watch competitors recreate old historical battles and ever participate in all these things if you wanted too. but the coolest feature was that you could purchase a creature from a list of creatures in the game and fight it against other creatures and combatants ..your creature would level up as it won matches allowing you to take on harder opponents for ever more money! now thats an arena I'd visit more then once ...like i did in the vanilla game.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

If you're planning on using different arenas then I'd love to see a proper boxing arena. I believe there is something like this available already but then I lost it and couldn't find the download. You would have to restrict the use of magic or weapons though.

Likewise, perhaps a few games from the TV show 'Gladiator', could be implemented. I'm particularly thinking of one that they used to have which involved having to take down targets with a ranged weapon whilst you were being shot at with a tennis ball gun.

You could do this with a bow and arrow for some nice practise and introduce rules such as a certain number of targets in various hard to reach places whilst difficulty could be defined by the sort of projectile that the person in the 'tower' is raining down on you. I think some ranged magic attacks appear to be quicker (and certainly more devastating) than others.

Taking the whole idea to a new (and probably way too imaginative) level, you could play a sort of 'tag-team' version of 'capture the flag' where you only had a certain number of 'lives' defined by the number of 'hits' you took. Of course, this would require some very complex scripting for 'taking people out' without killing them. According to Oblivion fight conventions, an enemy would just keep hitting you .

The last two, of course, would have to be restricted to the sole use of ranged weapons.

If none of these proves practical, then at least it would be worth thinking of other 'arena games' that are do-able.

[Rickious]

Love all these ideas you two! Will reply properly later but boxing, archery, buying competetors, all this particularly buying and training competetors would add a huge element to the game. :yes:

[Rickious]

Right, proper reply!

I think this place could prove to be very worth while, more or less a small city, does that work with the lore etc?

If not then it needs to be all underground, so that its not open knowlege etc. A basic arena then the rest in in lower levels getting dirtier and grimier as you go down. BUT if an arena-city is fine then the majority can be open access and 'clean' fun.

• Fist fighting only
  
• Archary with targets
  
• Magic with targets
  
• Animal fights where you purchace an animal (possibly)
  
• Unfair fights where the earning potential is high. The problem with this would be the 'save anytime you like' cheat where people would hang around making money.
  
• I like the idea of capture the flag OR a defending/attacking game where you capture a tower. The dialogue could be fun too to make it sound like its some sort of magical World Of Warcraft type game, all played in a magical illusion realm where you enter a body not yours. Would scripting make it possible to temporarily be a scamp or goblin or something? Goblin wars would be good. When you die its the goblin which dies, money is deducted from you (or taken before the match)?
  
• Dungeon mazes
  
• Sneaking games where your unarmed and couldnt possibly risk being spotted, maybe armed with a knife strong enough to kill the enemies ONLY with the sneak bonus so you sneak around like in 'Thief: Deadly Shadows'
  

Really atre many many options and this would all be hours and hours of gameplay.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Originally posted by Rickious
* Animal fights where you purchace an animal (possibly)

Do you mean fighting alongside it? Or with it? Of course, it always amazed me that Bethesda didn't do more with the centrepiece of the Imperial arena. The metal circular thing looks perfect as a place to raise up some sort of platform or open up a ramp/staircase and release a wild animal.

Originally posted by Rickious
* I like the idea of capture the flag OR a defending/attacking game where you capture a tower. The dialogue could be fun too to make it sound like its some sort of magical World Of Warcraft type game, all played in a magical illusion realm where you enter a body not yours. Would scripting make it possible to temporarily be a scamp or goblin or something? Goblin wars would be good. When you die its the goblin which dies, money is deducted from you (or taken before the match)?

I like the idea of Goblin wars using bodily possession, although it does have implications attached to it i.e. why haven't we heard of 'possession' spells for? Could they not fit with lore? Are they exceptionally difficult to script?

Originally posted by Rickious
* Dungeon mazes

Often unpopular with players. I, for one, hate mazes but that may be just me.

Originally posted by Rickious
* Sneaking games where your unarmed and couldn't possibly risk being spotted, maybe armed with a knife strong enough to kill the enemies ONLY with the sneak bonus so you sneak around like in 'Thief: Deadly Shadows'

Again, a difficult option. As someone who was only attracted back to gaming through the Thief series, having played basic Spectrum games in my youth (God, how old am I?), I know that many have tried to reproduce that experience in other games and all have failed to match the same thrill. Nonetheless, the 'Thieves Arsenal' mod improves the possibility of such events. I would tend to think that an event specifically with the arrow variations in mind could do something special i.e. extremely powerful enemies that must be either sneaked around by using a water arrow to douse a torch or slipped up through the use of a Grease Arrow. However, this mod requires OBSE so it's a no-no as far as ST is concerned.

[Razorwing]

I appreciate your enthusiasm but no one is going to uvw map your models for you. Together with creating collision it's an integral part of modelling for Oblivion, so why do you feel someone else should do it for you? It's one thing if you don't know how, because I'd be happy to spend hours sharing what I know with you and would also be happy to offer more hands-on help - sending max scenes with examples, writing tutorials and so on. But thinking that someone else should do it for you is just wrong.

The main reason no-one will map your models for you is that uvw mapping and mesh creation go hand in hand. It's much harder to map a finished model than it is to map it during the process, and the mesh also has to be made in a way that makes it straightforward to uvw map. A modeller that lacks experience in mapping models is not likely to be able to make a mesh straightforward to map, and it's not a subject that's easy to explain either. Skill in that area comes with time, and with trial-and-error. It's also more fun and creatively rewarding to work on one's own models than it is to work on someone else's, because the latter will really feel like your own which the former can't, even though one might have spent twice as much work on mapping it than the person who made the mesh did.

I worked once with a modeller who couldn't uvw map or do collision because I had a strong vested interest in using the meshes he made, and he was quite good at it too. It was a major task in which I had to do all sorts of fixes to his meshes to make them "mappable", apart from the work of setting up the uvw map and collision - but I had a strong interest in using them, so I didn't really mind. If I was faced with a similar situation today I just wouldn't do it because I'd know I'd save myself work by recreating the mesh myself first.

So to sum up I assume you want to become a profficient modeller and move beyond monochrome renders. If I can assist in that by sharing what I know or giving hands-on help - great, I'd be happy to. But apart from all the other reasons I listed, if I or someone else were to do the work for you that would just serve to hold back your development as a modeller.

[Rickious]

Hi Razorwing, for some reason I have only just seen this reply.

The short answer is I would love to and do intend to learn to UV map. Out of the game modelling area I now model for CNC milling, rapid prototyping and product design. In the area od gaming I am currently just homing nad tuning my modelling skills and am currently providing 3D rendered backgrounds for 2D games. (see below)





The problem is, for these HD rendered backgrounds, poly count etc doesnt doesnt come into it so the textures are basic and the detail comes from actual real details as well as 'bump maps' and 'displacement maps'.

So, as of yet I have been able to avoid UV mapping, partly because Rhino3D doesnt really help at all.

But the time will come and maybe its already here and im avoiding it. I will find some good unwrapping software to use hand-in-hand with Rhino3D and see where that leads. This would then mean I can delve into the realms of charecter creation etc as thats a place where tileable textures doesnt really fly especially on poly-limited game-ready models!

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by Rickious
Hi Razorwing, for some reason I have only just seen this reply.

The short answer is I would love to and do intend to learn to UV map. Out of the game modelling area I now model for CNC milling, rapid prototyping and product design. In the area od gaming I am currently just homing nad tuning my modelling skills and am currently providing 3D rendered backgrounds for 2D games. (see below)
[...]
The problem is, for these HD rendered backgrounds, poly count etc doesnt doesnt come into it so the textures are basic and the detail comes from actual real details as well as 'bump maps' and 'displacement maps'.

So, as of yet I have been able to avoid UV mapping, partly because Rhino3D doesnt really help at all.

But the time will come and maybe its already here and I'm avoiding it. I will find some good unwrapping software to use hand-in-hand with Rhino3D and see where that leads. This would then mean I can delve into the realms of charecter creation etc as thats a place where tileable textures doesnt really fly especially on poly-limited game-ready models!

I'm glad to hear from you again! I hope you've been well

The renders do look impressive, and it's clear you've evolved by leaps and bounds as a modeller since last year. The kind of modelling you say you've done however is a very different beast than game modelling and I've known mainstream modellers whom have been extremely good at what they do but they can't really get the hang of how lowpoly modelling and uvw mapping works. I especially remember one person who was here for awhile back in -05 who created an exquisite, übercool sword for us. He sent me the max scene, and lo and behold it was 200 000 faces and used a procedural material (making it doubly unusable). I'm not saying there's many similarities between you and him, just that the fields of mainstream- and game modelling is so very different from one another. Personally I would feel like a newbie if I tried the kind of hipoly modelling you've been doing

I would recommend getting 3D Studio Max, which has excellent tools for uvw mapping objects, especially if you install the TurboUnwrap scripts. It took me awhile to understand how TurboUnwrap works, but now that I've been using it for awhile I'm going to use it for 90% of my mapping needs from here on out - it's really superb. You could still create the mesh in Rhino3D if you like, and only use 3D Studio Max to set up the mapping and collision and export it to nif format.

[Rickious]

Razorwing, I'm certainly going to give it a go! Really want to get this going.

Will reinstall 3DSMax now! And get those TurboUnwrap scripts too, thanks for that! I'm sure you will be hearing from me soon asking for help!

Could you point me to some really good tutorials for 3DSMax, last time I used it I used the ones included with the program and wasn't impressed.