[227J] Terra Mining Region

[Kajgue]

As the mineral and resource harvesting efforts of the Skaarj occupation on Na Pali expands, so do their prospects. The Terra Mining Region, once a partitioned network of Nali folk homes, villages, communities and burial sites has become a landscape under progressively vigorous, encroaching Skaarj infrastructural development to facilitate an ever starving desire for constant 'bulk' material excavation and asphyxiated by the toxic fumes of looming industrial exhaust chimneys.

Stranded humans who are scrambling to survive the surrounding territory and the adjacent terrain, and lucky (enough) to survive or avoid the nearby Skaarj game grounds may find themselves here, whether for better or for worse. Maybe salvation here is far fetched, but with all factors considered, is it even worth letting fate decide?

Meanwhile, appointed Skaarj overlord of the region, Loszos'Jajir becomes increasingly suspicious of areas they are restricted from in their own territory. Are their masters hiding something from them? Previously, this project was intended to run on a fork of Project Gryphon, instead that has changed to using it's own in house gametype built from the ground up. The in-house gametype has alot of similarities to Project Gryphon pertaining to player movement behaviour and the focus on tactical gameplay, but in this case the tactical aspect for TMR's gametype would be more 'surgical'.
Render of a new Skaarj mesh, showing the 'Skaarj Soldier' rank 'Assault Skaarj Soldier' Rank (Some things in the images above will be subject to improvement as time goes on)

Terra Mining Region is an open world collection of maps which can technically play out forever, as the Skaarj and their subsidiary minions can enter (and exit) the region to fulfill tasks, jobs or orders based on the whims of their commanding classes.

Players can choose to help the Nali communities, or choose to take what little they have left for themselves, possibly determining the diplomatic stances between other players, depending on how they treat the Nali (and of course, how they treat other players too)!

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Credits/People involved:

Core developers:

Myself : Mapping/modelling/texturing/skinning

Bleeder91 : Coding

AlternativeProjects : Music

Andr0meda/G4lactic : Additional music and being kind enough to allow me to use their computing power to bake textures.

>K·§·A<Ðèáth~Påx : Coding + feedback

Past developers:

Tera/Sunar : For coincidently having a very similar name and also for some design suggestions and creating a Nali alphabet

Contributors:

Sly. : Concept art and alot of feedback

>K·§·A<Hybz: Alot of solid feedback

Smirftsch and the 227 team : 227, which this map can't work without

TLX : 2d insignia contributions

Rikia : Some good suggestions.

Krull0r : Various technical advice + helping me learn how to use Kismet scripting.

.:..: : Author of the Kismet scripting trigger tool

Terra was originally loosely based on DMTerra by:

Nivlek : For the original portion of the map.

(If i've forgotten somebody, please let me know! )

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More detailed synopsis about the project:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/terra-mining ... n-synopsis

I was somewhat conflicted about making a thread about this project on this subforum or if Multiplayer Matters were going to be more eligible, as the map is very much focused for open world co-op (or maybe even open world conflict, as treating the Nali improperly may result in a bounty being put on your head which other players can claim!). There's alot not shown in the screenshots above, the open world environment is already huge despite being incomplete, but I'd rather some things being more fleshed out before sharing screenshots of said areas!

[ividyon]

I think overall it fits the UnrealSP mission as it is designed as an atmospheric, authentic Na Pali place and to feature classic exploratory Unreal gameplay, while the "Multiplayer Matters" forum is more for your typical DM, MonsterHunt etc. arcade experiences that aren't really what the site is about.

As written on Discord, this looks swell! Interesting to know it's based on a DM map. I wonder how that happened. The changes must be extreme by now. I don't actually recall such a map at all...

[Kajgue]

I think overall it fits the UnrealSP mission as it is designed as an atmospheric, authentic Na Pali place and to feature classic exploratory Unreal gameplay, while the "Multiplayer Matters" forum is more for your typical DM, MonsterHunt etc. arcade experiences that aren't really what the site is about.

Ah alright that's good, glad that it can end up fitting here. Indeed, it very much capitalizes on the exploration aspect.

As written on Discord, this looks swell! Interesting to know it's based on a DM map. I wonder how that happened. The changes must be extreme by now. I don't actually recall such a map at all...

Cheers!

DMTerra was a smallish outdoors map with a lower and higher section. That area still exists in Terra Mining Region but is heavily expanded upon.

[Kajgue]

Updated the thread post with 2 new images. I haven't shared much for this in a while but i've still been working on it, it just takes a while to get areas in a 'presentable' state given the scale.

[Kajgue]

Didn't bump the thread while linking this the other day though now i'm thinking it's worth it to do so.

But I appended the ModDB page to the thread starter, including a project synopsis and some new images. I should probably share the synopsis in this thread somewhere as well at some point, for now it's there on ModDB

Also, I already mentioned this on USP discord, but for anyone not there:



The mod was able to get featured on the front page reel for a short time I don't know what the criteria is for a mod reaching that area but it was really really neat to see that get shown on the front page!

Feel free to check it out! https://www.moddb.com/mods/terra-mining-region

[Kajgue]

Haven't shared many new things on this project thread here for a while, takes quite a while to show something slightly more 'concrete', and will hold off before appending new screenshots to the starting post until I have something more along those lines to share. But here's a newer animation timeline of one of the re-animated playermodels.



Sticking with Skeletal meshes which animate in this project. The backpack is an attachable which can be equipped and un-equipped, and is weighted to the same armature as the model itself. Armour, helmets, field dressings and other items will also work the same way.

Also here are some very early shots of an abandoned estate house.








Still missing the attic, basement, furniture and the surrounding area is still rather desolate, adding more to it over time but was quite pleased with how the building itself looks in Unreal.

And finally here's some unoptimized foliage.

[Kajgue]

Same area as one of the woodland shots above but updated.

[Kajgue]

It appears that the displaying of alot of images and .gifs in this thread have broken, so going to try and fix that today if possible. There are also quite alot of screenshots of areas here that have been subject to alot of changes, so i'll have to update those too with new ones.

[Kajgue]

Managed to fix up a bunch of images in the starting post and updated a few bits of information.

Also thought i might share a WIP mockup of the inventory layout. It's very loosely inspired to the STALKER: Anomaly inventory screen.
Layout Mockup:
Have already started making the 2d elements for this but none of the inventory code is there yet.
Going to also have a medical tab as part of this screen aswel in which players can monitor and treat their wounds.

[Sat42]

As always, looking great Kajgue!

Some of the screenies above really look like they come from some more modern engine than UE1 and this led me to wonder about a new thing: the woodland shot is great (and it's rather original in our scene, you never see a forest in Unreal) but do you know how you'll deal with the trees and occlusion? I'm mostly thinking in terms of the AI sight - you'd like to think you can hide behind a (reasonably thick) tree, for example. Or will this area be mainly peaceful?

[Kajgue]

As always, looking great Kajgue!

Some of the screenies above really look like they come from some more modern engine than UE1 and this led me to wonder about a new thing: the woodland shot is great (and it's rather original in our scene, you never see a forest in Unreal) but do you know how you'll deal with the trees and occlusion? I'm mostly thinking in terms of the AI sight - you'd like to think you can hide behind a (reasonably thick) tree, for example. Or will this area be mainly peaceful?

Thanks Sat!

The trees are static meshes which occlude ai sight. As for performance, there's a few things planned to improve those parts, among with a veriety of other methods, such as :

2) Trees and other foliage swap to lower poly and simpler versions at a certain distance.

2) in the pursuit of tackling another problem, the same solution would allow unloading of stuff futher away out of view to improve performance.

3) Something else that i don't want to promise just yet untill it gets implemented.

Also the solution used for number 2 also would be the same solution for seamless transitions to other sublevels, which TMR makes heavy use of. Combat, sound, sight all should be able to take place of what one could normally consider a level border. Will share a diagram on the way this unimplemented method works tomorrow.

Also last note, the end goal with the AI in this project is to make the skaarj forces be unpredictable within rules, to the point even if you've worked on this project you will still not be able to predict where you may encounter the enemy because of how they will move around the open world. If you've played STALKER or know of it's A-LIFE ai subsystem, that would be a good comparison. Over time new AI would repopulate the region, and should be reactive to the threat or input of players, and perhaps also a bit proactive to iron out security flaws.

[Sat42]

Awesome! It all sounds like a total conversion almost

Looking forward to that diagram too! seamless transitions to other sublevels reminds of... Dungeon Siege, actually

[Kajgue]

Alrighty, so this is how the level transitions would function. In this case, the diagram should indicate that the crossover point between MAP A and MAP B would need to be out of view if you are outside of the Overlap buffer.

The red 'zone' would in this case also be considered MAP C, as soon as you enter the overlap field you would be silently teleported into the MAP C overlap buffer, however your 'puppet' would still appear in MAP A if you also on the side of MAP A. The puppet would share your model, skin, movements and stance (and any attachables you have on your character like your backpack or weapon), and if the puppet takes damage, the player or NPC would also take damage. The 'Puppet' in this case is just a technical term to describe how this system works.

Sublevels in 227 don't have a 'LOADING' interruption screen, all the player might feel is a brief stutter.

If you are inside the Overlap Buffer map, and you are looking outside of this area let's say, back to MAP A - you would still see the puppets of players, Pawns, projectiles, anything that moves etc.

As for the geometry which is further out, that is already handled with the parallax skybox.

This same method could also have other uses when it comes to loading in and loading out areas which won't be seen at different points aswel, meaning this could help performance.

I also technically don't know how Dungeon Siege works with that, if it loads different sections of the world in when you get closer to them then that could be a good comparison :O I'm sure this way is handled slightly differently though

[Sat42]

Very cool! (I didn't know 227 had a sublevel system, or did you mean it exists just for this project which is 227-exclusive of course? )

It's clearly going in the direction of an open world system - I have yet to play the STALKER games (will do in due time, I have the first 3 games in the series on GOG), but I think I get the idea! Do you know how many players could participate simultaneously?

I am sure the implementation for loading sections of the world in and out dynamically is different in Dungeon Siege (it is driven by a mesh tile system), but yeah, this reminds me of that!

[Kajgue]

Yeah 227 has the sublevel system Some people like Bleeder have even sublevelled the entire unreal campaign on their modded servers and such.

A max number of players is a good question, ideally it need the capability to host for as many as possible. 227 facilitates the ability to increase net channels which would solve some of the issue, I guess that's something which will need stress testing eventually, because if we're talking about more than 8 players present in each sublevel simultaneously - I'd really be curious what sort of snags or limitations might become evident when there are a decent number of players on the server spread out.

Yeah it sounds like the Dungeon Siege system would be different. The sections(?) of the world being loaded in or out in TMR would be more bespoke to the environment (controlled by the mapper for example). While sublevels are always loaded simultaneously i think, atleast maybe some stuff can be put into hibernation until you wander close to it, which would help performance alot.