Britonia Normal Maps

Well it's been so long without a video update I thought I'd better post something, even if it is just another terrain video (I had hoped to post about a different dev area, but you'll just have to wait :).

All elements (trees, clouds, water) have been taken out for the sake of demonstrating the normal maps. Normal maps are 256x256 in size and generated on the GPU. They are applied in object space. The sizes can be easily changed and defined based on LOD.

Unfortuately the height map is extremely noisy at higher altitudes so I have tried to stay close to the ground. The effect is most noticable on the distance mountains.

The texturing is clearly a mess, and it still uses atlasing. I may try to create diffuse maps based on the same high-res texture that is used for generating the tangent normals.

For my dev journal and even a few tutorials now :) check out my website :
http://britonia-game.com/?option=com_smf&Itemid=41

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• XNA
• Procedural
• Britonia
• Terrain
• Normal maps

[barnabysmith]

Looks superb, so your plan is to release a space trading game on 360?

[lintfordpickle]

@barnabysmith sry for late reply.  Originally I was aiming at the PC, but I have been doing a little bit of profiling for the xbox so it is a possibility.

[petrocket]

I like it a lot! Reminds me of Yasanya's work on Infinity. I recommend doing some vertex and normal map blending to help with the popping at some point, but really some gameplay might be more important to keep your motivation going. Maybe just a simple spaceship and something to shoot at or resources to collect for fun?

Are you going to opensource this at some point? :)

[lintfordpickle]

Ysaneye's Infinity is just amazing, and a big inspiration.

You are right about the popping, it has been plaguing me since the beginning, but I really want to concentrate now on getting the basic game play put in.

I can always come back to the terrain later on.

[systat]

Is this project still active?

[Jeebaah]

The sheer scope of the game is pretty neat. Just make sure to not skimp on the design and gameplay.

[duckocide]

Spooky!... Well the offer is there...

If you have ever seen the disney film "Treasure Planet", it had some wonderful space art design where ships and ports had a tall ship feel to them. Whilst not medieval, you could hang on to a historic 18th Century feel (Mysterious trade, pirates, buccaneers, etc).

[lintfordpickle]

No way - I was just looking at the cobra mk III when the my mail alerted me to your youtube comment :)

Thanks for the offer of help - thankfully spaceships are easier than people to model - but the sheer amount of content can be overwhelming

[duckocide]

Sweet. I have fond memories of playing the first Elite as a teenager late in to the night and early morning! Get's my vote. If you need some help with models, happy to oblige! (Cobra MkIII ... a poly line classic)... LOL!

[lintfordpickle]

Hi, no not yet.

I literally updated my site/game yesterday and announced that Britonia will now be a space trading game like Elite, so I'll be dropping a lot of the ground based content (but not all) in favour of high-altitude content like spaceports etc.

So it looks like I will be adding volumetric clouds in the near future