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MINI-GOLF contest 'Q&A' thread

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polycounter lvl 19
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adam polycounter lvl 19
Have questions regarding the contest, its rules, or the Project Anarchy engine? Ask them here and we'll do our best to answer them.

Contest page is here.

This contest starts January 20th and ends February 16th @ 23:59 EST (-4 GMT), 2014.

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  • AzzaMat
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    AzzaMat polycounter lvl 9
    In the tech specs it says you are only allowed 1024x1024 total texture space. Does that include lightmaps generated in engine?
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    Azza,
    I am sorry we most have forgotten about that :). Lets do another 1024x1024 for the total lightmap texture space.
  • AzzaMat
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    AzzaMat polycounter lvl 9
    okay thank's Just one more question, While there are technical specs on the art side of the level. The actual level specs seem absent. I'm assuming you have to be able to complete the course you make (otherwise you wouldn't want to show it at GDC) but is there a recommended par? How many shots it should take to get you to complete it? How much does the level design get taken into account for final voting? or is it mainly judged on the art? That was more than one question, sorry :P
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    Azza,
    We can look at those specs too, yes you must be able to complete the level however the framework provided on github and videos guide you on how to set that up. There is no suggested par but in the spirit of mini golf I would keep it close to the 3-5 strokes.

    Level design does take some part in it, however it is more about the full package. You dont have to technically make anything crazy, and for time given for the contest it is not suggested. The framework includes two samples, one very simple one and then an advanced one. The advanced one would be a better example of what we are looking for.

    -Ryan
  • Obscura
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    Obscura grand marshal polycounter
    Hey, I also have a question :) What if I have an idea, I start a thread to it, and I get a "better" idea later. Can I make a new thread? Or we can have only one entry? I know we shouldn't ring the changes, but lets say that this happens.
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    I dont see why you couldnt create a new thread.
  • PHIllstead
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    PHIllstead polycounter lvl 8
    I'm excited about this contest but a small question: must all work be original? Or are we allowed to do more like the VGRemix Contest and make direct reference? Say for example, I wanted to do a Final Fantasy golf hole, or a God of War hole.
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    PHlll,
    I will have to ask about this since we are not making any profit from this I wouldnt see an issue, but you never know. My gut would be to just try to vary it enough it is not a direct rip of those IPs

    Update:
    After talking with people around the office they decided, We can not do any existing game ips for this. As mentioned this is for demos only, but they want to stay on the safe side.
  • brandoom
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    brandoom polycounter lvl 13
    Can the engine support textures with alphas?
  • Vailias
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    Vailias polycounter lvl 18
    Does the 35k poly limit apply to the combination of collision and render geometry or is it just 35k render, and collision geo is free?

    Also: Does the shader framework support vertex colors? I didn't find a clear answer in the anarchy forums during the time I've had to search so far.
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    The triangle limit applies to the render meshes. MP can chime in to confirm.
  • willy-wilson
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    willy-wilson polycounter lvl 8
    Does the 1024 limit include the skybox as well?
  • Shadownami92
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    Shadownami92 polycounter lvl 7
    I haven't tested it out yet myself, but for anybody that isn't using Max or Maya, here is the fbx importer that is swimming around the Project Anarchy forums.

    https://github.com/projectanarchy/fbximporter
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    Does the 1024 limit include the skybox as well?

    I believe the skybox has its own 1024x limit.
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    brandoom wrote: »
    Can the engine support textures with alphas?

    Yes, It will support .tgas and .pngs.. .tgas are preferred. If you bring it in as a 24bit the first time the texture/material may be flagged as 24 bit so you will have to change the flag in the material editor if that is the case.
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    Vailias wrote: »
    Does the 35k poly limit apply to the combination of collision and render geometry or is it just 35k render, and collision geo is free?

    Also: Does the shader framework support vertex colors? I didn't find a clear answer in the anarchy forums during the time I've had to search so far.

    35k is the render limit. Collision does not matter but if possible I would try to optimize the collision. The second video covers how to tag mesh in max and maya.

    You can setup for vertex colors. There is a vertex color node in the Visual shader editor that you can use.. If you need help on this I will be more then happy to help.

    -Ryan
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    Does the 1024 limit include the skybox as well?

    For sky box we are allowing a 512x512 per side. So that works out to a bit more then 1024x1024. The third video shows how to assign textures per skybox side.
  • Jeff Parrott
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    Jeff Parrott polycounter lvl 19
    Ryan what's the camera angle going to be in the final? Rotate around course then overhead? Also anything in the engine regarding some kismet type of scripting to create a day/night cycle or swapping textures?
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    Ryan what's the camera angle going to be in the final? Rotate around course then overhead? Also anything in the engine regarding some kismet type of scripting to create a day/night cycle or swapping textures?

    Jeff,

    If you get the framework on github you will see the current camera setup as it is scripted.. If you need a quick video on how to get the framework working on your block out you can refer to the third video (after downloading and extracting the zip, which the first video covers).

    For day/night cycles we provide a day/night setup you can select when creating a new scene, then in extras there is all the options for how the colors of that light work based off the time. Since we currently do not have a kismet type system I can work with you on how to swap the materials based off time of day through script. Feel free to PM me.

    Any scripts I do help out on will be made public for everyone to use.
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    not a fan of the brightcove videos - they keep downrezing on me so the text is unreadable and occasionally just disappearing so I have to reload the page. I'd really prefer Youtube, Vimeo or even a direct download link.
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    not a fan of the brightcove videos - they keep downrezing on me so the text is unreadable and occasionally just disappearing so I have to reload the page. I'd really prefer Youtube, Vimeo or even a direct download link.


    Justin,
    I will publish the videos on youtube tomorrow for you guys.
  • Fashoomp
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    Fashoomp polycounter lvl 10
    I'm having a hard time understanding how the collision meshes work in vForge. I see there's a separate collision mesh layer in the max file provided, but I don't see it placed anywhere into the vForge scene. Do we have to just name things identically and export as a collision mesh to get it in place?
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    Fash,
    The second video covers this through node tagging.. By default everything is set to default which means the mesh will be collision and render. You can also set to just render and just colmesh. When exporting the advance scene I have all the render and collision mesh for the hole together (minus the windmill assets). So there really is no "placing collision mesh" it is just in with your static mesh if that makes sense.

    -Ryan
  • Fashoomp
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    Fashoomp polycounter lvl 10
    Thank you MP! I was tinkering around with it earlier and couldn't figure it out, but this certainly helps.
  • Xyniph
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    Xyniph polycounter lvl 12
    I was going to post a question, but instead I get to post an answer. Yay!

    For anyone trying to follow the tutorial videos, but getting errors in pre-2013 Maya:
    http://polygonspixelsandpaint.tumblr.com/post/28629598569
    Or; just drag the Proxy_HoleSimple.ma into Notepad, Ctrl-F "-ch", and delete the two "-ch ###" flags you find.
  • Sharvo
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    Sharvo keyframe
    Hi, i had a look at the tutorials, thank you for those, they have really helped so far. But i have a question regarding the hole at the end of it. I notice you need to create a box to say that it is the end. What if you didnt want a hole but an area, would you just have the box cover that part of the course? I can create an image if this does not make sense :)
  • Tobbo
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    Tobbo polycounter lvl 11
    That's the way I understand it Sharvo. The box is just a trigger box. So it could be as big as you need it to be.
  • Sharvo
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    Sharvo keyframe
    I thought so, i havent got that far yet... to test it out and from the video tutorials it seems that i will be able to.
  • Jeff Parrott
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    Jeff Parrott polycounter lvl 19
    WAIT! There's no OsX tools?!!?!?! Just an SDK for exporting to iOS? NOOoooooo. I saw OsX download options and thought I'd be ok.

    Looks like I'll be sitting this one out then.

    Any chance of the tools on OsX?
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    Tobbo wrote: »
    That's the way I understand it Sharvo. The box is just a trigger box. So it could be as big as you need it to be.

    This is right it is a trigger box so you would just expand it to your ending area :)
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    WAIT! There's no OsX tools?!!?!?! Just an SDK for exporting to iOS? NOOoooooo. I saw OsX download options and thought I'd be ok.

    Looks like I'll be sitting this one out then.

    Any chance of the tools on OsX?

    Jeff,
    I am sorry to hear this, yes the tools are Windows only which is talked about on the download page and videos. Havok takes all feedback seriously and it has been posted in our ideas section. We look at our idea section to help drive our future roadmaps. When planning future releases we look at these, there have been some requests but find most people have dual boot as a work around. For right now we dont have OSx in future builds planned so we have no ETA when and if this will happen.


    -Ryan
  • Sharvo
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    Sharvo keyframe
    Cheers for the confirmation I have one more question for now and that is to do with the skybox in the tutorials they use three is this correct or can we use six (four for the sides) just wanted to know if we had options for this.
    Thanks
  • Sharvo
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    Sharvo keyframe
    Cheers for the confirmation I have one more question for now and that is to do with the skybox in the tutorials they use three is this correct or can we use six (four for the sides) just wanted to know if we had options for this.
    Thanks
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    Sharvo wrote: »
    Cheers for the confirmation I have one more question for now and that is to do with the skybox in the tutorials they use three is this correct or can we use six (four for the sides) just wanted to know if we had options for this.
    Thanks

    You can use six textures if needed. The sample only used three as the sides were all the same.
  • Jeff Parrott
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    Jeff Parrott polycounter lvl 19
    Thanks Ryan! Bummer. Was really excited about this one.
  • vtrmoura
    Hi, maybe it's not the right place to post but I'm having a little problem, I would like to participate but my user isn't able to create a new thread, when I try it a new page show a message saying "you do not have permission to access this page".
    Some help for a noob, pleace :)
  • AzzaMat
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    AzzaMat polycounter lvl 9
    Can you submit multiple entries? Or is it one per person.
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    I dont see why not, we may limit the prize to one per person need to catch up with Adam and drew about this?
  • Sean VanGorder
    As in previous contests, we will certainly allow participants to submit multiple entries. However, as Ryan stated, we would limit prizes to one per person.
  • EzMeow
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    EzMeow polycounter lvl 10
    What are the limitation within the engine in the scope of the contest?
    The tutorial video use the forward render with mobile shader.
    But as a random example can we use normal map with deferred render (as the engine is capable of) or is there any specific constraint we have to follow here?
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    Ez,
    For project anarchy the differed render is locked because project anarchy is meant for mobile only. The only options are forward and base render, in this case you will always want to use forward. The other option is for teams that want to write and setup their own rendering system within the engine. Deferred is locked as it wouldn't work on all mobile devices.
  • EzMeow
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    EzMeow polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the quick head up. What about the normal map? :p
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    Well I am not sure where we landed on these for this, the engine does support them if you use the mobileshaders and pick the diffuse normal option. I think we were trying to stay away from them as polycount wanted to keep the theme semi similar to the VGREmix rules and on our end we feared people may not use them properly for mobile which may make the level too slow for demos on a device.

    -Ryan
  • EzMeow
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    EzMeow polycounter lvl 10
  • Odow
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    Odow polycounter lvl 8
    This might be a stupid question since it's my first time here but you know what they said.. there's no stupid question only stupid answer !

    I'm still a student can i still try to enter even if my maya license is a student one or is it impossible (/or/ can participate but can't win since is a student license)
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    Odow,
    You can still compete and win the contest :). The content tools most likely will not work on the student edition as they lock some items out, but you can use the fbx importer instead.

    -Ryan
  • EzMeow
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    EzMeow polycounter lvl 10
    Another question : is it possible to do simple vertex deformation (sinus time) based on vertex color/alpha in the engine? (without having to script it... :D)
  • Mangled Poly
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    Mangled Poly polycounter lvl 18
    EzMeow,
    There is currently no way to do this in the engine, the Visual Shader Editor does not have any vertex operations in Project Anarchy.

    -ryan
  • EzMeow
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    EzMeow polycounter lvl 10
    Ok then I'll try to find something else to bring a bit of life in the environment. Thank you.
  • Bruno Afonseca
    Hey Ryan!
    It's just for individuals or can I do this with a buddy? (and fight over the prize a-la double dragon)
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