Construction Animations

[Reese]

Heyo,
First off, love the idea of a remake.

In K&M one of the most attractive features for me was how buildings were pieced together when being constructed. You could see crossbeams and sections going on as they were hammered into place. For its time that was very creative.

Question: Will KP possibly have that too? Or will building magically rise from the ground as the do in the alpha vids?

[Krom]

For that I need to find a way to make these animation. I haven't thought about it thoroughly yet. The problem seems complicated and likely will take a few months to solve. Maybe one of the next Alphas will be devoted to that.

[RandomLyrics]

Maybe some Smoke particle while building? Every hit of laborer creates smoke particle/sprite. I think that would be cool for now.
Also u could have some fun wih texture color while building. Maybe little less saturation during construction, higher point of house height more saturation.
Also u could have fun with 3dmodel vertexes, from begin of construction geometry posisition of vertex are distorted every next step closes geometry to final correct position.

[Krom]

Thanks for ideas!

1. Smoke is certainly good to cover up imperfections and lack of details.
2. I would like to keep the game realistic in this aspect, so that e.g. wood planks always look the same just as they do in real life. So dimming houses or desaturating colors - probably not.
3. Would look weird/bad I'm afraid, for similar reasons to previous item. Such anims would fit well into sci-fi virtual worlds )

[RandomLyrics]

2,3 yea could look wierd for 3, i was tinkhing about very small distortion, maybe 1, 2, 5% displacement.
But yea i think smoke would be enough for now

[Krom]

I'm thinking about making 2 models of a house - wooden frame with beams appearing one by one, and a full model sliced in height covered with some generic surface and moving that slice up. And a final model that we see when the house is done.

[RandomLyrics]

Yea that sounds great simple and would look cool