Gencheff's TGC Store Products

Gencheff lists his location pretty plainly as 'the land of the roses'.  For those without google, that's Bulgaria - which apparently produces a metric ton of roses.  He's produced a significant amount of free models, all of which are of excellent quality.  I'll admit, Gencheff's modelling is among my favorite.  He's got excellent taste in color, a real knack for shaders, and the artistic style is similar to my preference (I.e. on the thinner, grittier modern day side of things).

Gencheff's TGC Store:  http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=131681

There are only a few downsides to Gencheff's store products - firstly, it's slightly higher poly than the engine likes right now.  Until the performance of the engine comes down, it's hard to throw polys around so one must take great care in placing high-poly assets.  It's the price you pay if you want good looking models, in most cases.  Second, his art style lends towards a STALKER-style game.  It might not be up your alley in terms of setting.  Third, and most importantly - there's not enough of it! With only 13 models on the store as of current (admittedly not counting his freely included alternate skins), I find myself wanting more!

What one item can I not live without: Gencheff has a number of great items and his railway pack is not to be overlooked:

Make sure to check it out on the store!

At 6 dollars, USD, it represents a very fair value.  You get a significant variety of railway objects that are of distinctly high quality; the items ARE of high utility though one will probably use them sparingly to avoid killing the currently under-tuned Reloaded game engine.

If you want a SINGLE item suggestion, I recommend this:

Two for one :)

The 'rusty car with interior (2 variants)'.  This car, while likely based on an Eastern European design, is generic enough to be used in any environment.  It's well detailed and comes with two skins.  And point blank it beats the pants off pretty much any other vehicle you'll find in this price range (including TGC's City pack cars, which are acceptable but don't hold a candle to this one).

The bottom line: You'd be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't give Gencheff's offerings a serious look, especially if you're using any kind of modern or post apocalyptic setting.  More offerings from him will help round out his catalog so check his store often for updates!

BSP put another weapon kit out.

A mere few days after writing my piece, BSP's put out a second set of weapons.

There are pistols and what not in there, which make rounding out a full 'custom set' much easier and detracts a lot from my previous negatives of saying that it wouldn't mesh with stock weapons.  They still won't mesh with stock weapons but now you can replace them outright, which makes it less of an issue.

Wow, that's pretty sick that you can remove the silencer on the MK23.  BSP's work is really improving a lot :)

AND IT'S ON SALE.
GRAB IT WHILE IT'S HOT.

Errant AI's TGC Store Products

I already had a review written up for Errant AI, which I had to scrap.  So I'm writing a new one from scratch to better convey my feelings here.  This is on the heels of the latest newsletter, which featured screenshots of his new products.

Errant AI's store: http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=77474

I must confess a secret love for all things vending machine.  It's.. kind of weird.  If I could have a downstairs room dedicated to vending machines, arcade machines, and pinball... I'd probably never leave it.  It's weird enough that to the point when I would make houses in the old GameCube game "animal crossing" filled to the brim with vending machines.

I'm literally that weird.

So I kind of have a ton of 'free' vending machines.  Some are good (Gencheff's for example), some are mediocre, some are bad.  Some are excellent (cosmic prophet's diner is a must have freebie collection).  

But nothing.. and I mean nothing - compared to Errant AI's (at the time) lone offering on the store:

Mouth status: AGAPE

Impressively low poly count? Check.

High Def textures? Check.

LOD enabled? Double check.

Oh man.  This guy needs more offerings, I thought to myself.  I was simply unprepared for what he was to unleash next.  So with that, I'm cutting right to the chase here.

What one item can I not live without:  The snack attack pack.  Huge savings (50%), massively diverse inventory and of course... sweet, delicious vending machines.

One should play - o_fortuna.mp3 while looking at this bevy of screenshots:

Eventually found a good shot of the whole pack!

Not just one vending machine (snacks, in this case!)

Not two!

BUT THREE. THREE MORE INCREDIBLY WELL TEXTURED VENDING MACHINES!

And that's not all; he also added a ton of products from the vending machines themselves. All of them are perfect - no stolen brand names.  Completely legit texturing from a copyright standpoint, all equally high quality as the vending machines just waiting for your custom collection/inventory scripting.  

There's even more after this, if you can believe it. 21 snack items in all!

Simply the best soda can in the market.

If I had to choose a non-pack item I would pick... a vending machine.  But only at gunpoint.  I mean seriously, the snack attack pack is such a well priced deal you'd be a fool to buy these items individually.  I understand circumstances vary but given the outright quality of these items there's almost no compelling reason I can think of that will stop me from spending 12 dollars to buy the whole kit and caboodle, as it were.

The bottom line: Beg, borrow, or plead - but find a way to purchase this kit.  I eagerly await future offerings from Errant; his art style, use of color, texturing, poly counts... everything are pretty much as top shelf as it gets.  

Technique Evaluation - Ground Clutter and Vegetation #1

In this series, I will be evaluating Gallery photos (freely available on tgc's website) which are highly rated.  These photos will be specifically selected for the purposes of learning or extracting a technique which I feel they exemplify.

This amateur art evaluation is as much for my own learning as it is for yours.  And while many of these photos will specifically exhibit multiple characteristics that are useful, I will typically focus on one element of it.   I plan on doing these evaluation posts once or twice a week, so far less frequently than store evaluations, at least for the time being.  In a sense, it's the best I can do at trying to give back to what I feel is already a very giving community.

Today's study is in Ground Clutter, it's uses as a means to improve a scene's depth.

When I first started making levels, I noticed that I had a significant problem in that my levels just felt cheap and amateurish.  These levels, I had hoped, would have a good feel and playthrough.  But even after throwing what I felt was a significant amount of clutter about (trash bags, rocks, debris, and other small scenery items) I was very frustrated to find that it didn't have the level of depth I was looking for.

Now take a look at this beautiful photo.

Author: Kajocat.  Skill level? Over 9000.

Compared to my tripe, this was the work of an old master vs a four year old's crayon drawing on a cardboard box.   Mine was on the cardboard, if that wasn't clear enough.  So let's evaluate this picture in depth for a moment here.   The trail leads you to the center of the screen, as a proper focal point should.  In terms of ground clutter items, there are approximately 15-20 bushes of four different types that I can discern.

These are skillfully placed around other objects, to add TO to those other objects.  Example: The house on the left.  It's got several bushes near it to help it from looking naked in the wild.  The trees also have small scrub bushes, as is often found in nature.   Indeed in my native home here in Pennsylvania, this is a very common sight - medium or large scale trees with small brambles or scrub bushes near the base.  The two pair together very well.  Finishing off the scene is some fairly expert use of vegetation.

The vegetation system in and of itself is possibly the best component of the new FPSC engine.  While the terrain system has a lot of flexibility, it clearly needs a bit of work to be up to snuff.  The vegetation system though is impressive in a lot of respects.  The sprites are animated, easily sizeable and colorable and there's a whole host of options for those who own the vegetation pack (Gold backers, for example).  I've found the stock settings are generally insufficient if you want to give your game depth.  One of the biggest 'uglies' in my work vs this picture was how objects would just touch the ground, leaving a discernable binary look to the graphic.  Like "This is the house" and "this is the ground".  There was no visual blending of any sort.  Then I realized... I could use the vegetation to blur that line.

Bare scene

Scene plus clutter

As you can clearly see, there's a marked difference on these scenes.  One is a simple 'town objects, nothing else.  The other is 'town plus desert terrain plus some clutter objects' scene.  The other is the exact same scene, and about 3 different types of plants, rocks, and scrub bushes

.This time, with plantlife.

The above here is simply the same scene with me spraying wildly with some stock vegetation settings plus a vegetation I felt looked good in the terrain.  While it helps and gives it an arid appearance, it seems very blocky and inconsistent.  It also makes clutter objects actually stand OUT more.  It's not bad though, and definitely an improvement.  It's not, however, quite what I'm looking for.


Now check out the difference when I plug these numbers to the maximum (Which is actually my preference, at this point).  Note, the final picture includes minor graphic tweaking to show you what a 'final' version would look like - example, higher bloom settings, adjusted ambient, etc.

The only thing different here is the size of the vegetation and the aforementioned graphical tweaks.  The vegetation values have gone from quantity/width/height of 50 to quantity/width/height of 100.   It's not perfect, but for what basically amounted to ten minutes of work I've created a rather convincing desert scene with significantly more depth.


The shearing of textures as they collide is much less noticeable and you get a much more professional flair with the addition of the vegetation.  On top of that the vegetation looks REALLY impressive with it's size at maximum.  It's flowing movement is much more noticeable in game.

Bearing in mind that this is merely an example; the proper value would probably lie in the middle between half and full settings for vegetation but these are things you have to experiment with to get the best results.  My goal here was to simply show you a process for improving your own scenes as best as possible.    If this was of utility to you, please let me know; I'd love to see some before/afters of your own.

Gtox's TGC Store Products

Gtox, from South Africa, really likes the 'sterile sci-fi' look.  And if you're looking for that too - you're in luck!  He's got a well priced, MASSIVE set of modular components for levelbuilding.

This particular item set was of keen interest to me, specifically because of one of my four current projects (which are on hold, while I learn not to make levels that look like amateur trash) involves a sci-fi setting in space.

Now unfortunately, there's very little info for Gtox.  If he reads this, I'd highly recommend filling out a bit more author info on the store, the forums, etc.  All I know is he's from South Africa and (evidently) like sci-fi.

Gtox's Store link: http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=206327

What one item can I not live without:  I'm always limited by specialized offerings because I tend to look for items that have a broader application in multiple projects.  So I typically have to hunt within a project to locate an item which meshes well with many uses.  The exception is if there's something really amazing that stands out beyond the shadow of a doubt.  In this case, everything here is sci-fi oriented.  There's lots of glass, metal, and white walls.  They're all clearly sci-fi.  So I've boiled it down to his pack being an excellent value.

Tiny Thumbnail courtesy of en.tgcstore.net :)

Ringing in just under 10 USD, you get a whopping 76 piece constructor set.  Also, the files stark color means if you're competent at editing DDS files you can customize them easily for your own projects.

As far as individual items go, this is the best one for multiple projects.  The 'glass handrail'.

Perfect for your office, mall, or space station.

This well priced item allows for a great deal of utility in a number of environments.  City, urban, office, sci-fi, etc.  And usually my hangup graphically is when something is too shiny; or if there's an off color to the metal.  None of this is a problem when it's a bright aluminum pole with shiny glass. So as a result, this works out nearly perfect.  I worry a little about the shadow being cast by the object, but if you played with the settings  and worked around it in the level editor, it shouldn't be a big issue.

The bottom line:  Looking on the forums, there are a lot of sci-fi oriented packs coming.  All of them represent their own unique look and flair.  Gtox's harken back to the golden era of sci-fi, the 1970's in all their sterile lab environment glory.  Also if you're building an aliens-style sim never forget that white environments make the blood show up better :).  Gtox's work represents a large amount of effort which comes together well at good value and price.  Definitely worth a look if it suits your needs.

HenryHam's TGC Store Products

Ask anyone in the FPSC community about Henryham and you'll generally get an answer bordering on reverence.  Henry offers a number of items which are available via his store but also a few goodies are lurking about which can be brought into the Reloaded engine from his website here:  http://www.henrysfps.com  or from http://reloadedfiles.co.uk

Here's his TGC store link: http://en.tgcstore.net/?md=artist-view&aid=56327

Looks like someone is a fan of Chuck Liddell :)

Henry's website has a number of tutorials, old downloads (which don't work in chrome, but work fine in firefox) but appears that it could use an update.  For example, on his youtube channel, there's another tutorial not listed on his website:

So point is, he's a bit community minded.  This is reflected in his interactions but also his pricing for top tier models available on the TGC store.  Speaking of, his models are superb.  They're relatively low-poly but have a high degree of attention and detail.  This is ideal from a game making standpoint as the fewer polys you have, the better the performance will be.  It's the sacred cow of design since usually lower poly count equals poorer detail.  It takes a certain eye to play around this type of constraint and often times many developers will eschew this in the name of higher graphical detail at the expense of thousands of polygons for a single small object.  That's not in and of itself bad, but polygons add up and you want every saving you can, come optimization time.

Henry's models typically fit a wide variety of themes, but mostly are centered around modern environments.  I only have two real complaints.  The first is the colors aren't quite what I like.  I'm not a big fan of bright colors in games unless they're being used to attract the eye to something, such as a pathway.  Henry's colors (particularly his blues and reds) are just SLIGHTLY brighter than I'd prefer.  Your miles may vary.  The other, probably more pertinent issue is that many of his very well designed buildings are unfortunately of various ethnicities.  In this sense, they may end up excluding them from certain level designs.  Ironically, one of them uses the 'nice beer' sign and texturing that wolf uses.  Not sure where they both got it from, but there it is.  So in that sense, they compliment each other well.  So it's not really that big of a deal as long as you can keep it from seeming out of place with the rest of your scene.

What one item can I not live without:  I probably spent an hour looking at every single item Henry offered at least a dozen times.  This was a REALLY hard choice.   In the end, I feel that if you are an FPSC:Reloaded owner, you will have either the base  'bronze' modern set or in my case the 'gold' set which includes a significant amount of assets.  Most of which are modern themed.  I also own the city set,  which was on sale until the end of Sept.  Henry offers one great piece which fills a glaring void for those assets:

Behold, the city square.

Park benches included.

This item fills a genuine void in the products I had and assume others most likely have as well.  It's my preference from his selection, though please do check for yourself.

The bottom line: Henry's well priced, community driven models can't be ignored; he's got a lot of free products out there on the TGC store/his website which are still viable even in the modern engine.  I highly recommend a thorough evaluation for yourself!

Just an FYI

Since this is my first week here I'm trying to schedule my posts so even though a few are written up they're being posted next week to help save the need for me to write every single minute.  Henryham is next up on deck so stay tuned!