Pottery

Welcome to the completely reworked pottery. Not only did we thoroughly redesign the building, but we also cleaned the kiln, oiled the pottery wheel and swept the floor.

Like any other building in Empires and Tribes, the pottery can be expanded to employ more workers and produce faster. Enclosed are the models of the two expansion stages.

We not only reworked the exterior model, but also took a closer look at the interior of the pottery and all the tools and furniture associated with it. For the first time there is a real medieval pottery kiln. For this we were inspired by the highly recommendable documentation about Guédelon which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEorXWLUSyI Spoiler: The photo also shows one of our new character models trying out one of the new animations. But more about that soon...

Even more environmental updates

Dear Community, I've been busy the last days to present you the Empires and Tribes version 0.4 with the new terrain system. Even though the pictures of the evergreen spring environment may not be the most Christmassy, you can look forward to a completely new look with new biomes, models, effects and shading. Besides the firefly effects of the last blog, completely new, more realistic tree and grass models have been added to the current version. Whether oak, lime, maple or fir: each tree species not only has its own specific leaf species and bark, but also differs in shape and height and in the shape and distribution of the branches. And this is exactly what I have tried to recreate as realistically as possible. Another effect that finally comes into use is the translucency effect. All foliage is not completely opaque, but allows small amounts of light to pass through. This is especially known from the shimmering effect on large meadows when looking towards the evening sun. And last but not least I have extended the distribution of the biomes a little. Besides the classic meadow and forest biome, there are now a sparse sand biome, coniferous forests, tundra-like landscapes and small birch forests.

Meteorological and environmental experiments

Some time has passed since the last entry and so a lot has happened in the world of Empires and Tribes. Most of the time has probably gone into the terrain and weather effects, so let's see what exactly has changed. On the one hand, the rather static sky has now been extended by a dynamically changing cloud system. A cloud dome is set over the entire world map, which moves at different speeds depending on the wind speed, the time of day and the weather and creates transitions between different cloud formations. In order to enhance the different moods of the day, it was also necessary to dive into Unity's Particle system. The Particle system allows effects such as semi-transparent moving fog to be created relatively easily. A black and white noise texture, a few adjustments to the shape and direction of movement and the fog prototype is ready. Scripts only determine the color at different times of the day, the transparency settings when the fog appears and disappears, and the location. And since I was busy with it once anyway, I gathered everything I could think of about buzzing objects and built some more particle systems: morning fog, dandelion blossoms, evening fog, fireflies, fog in the forest, shooting stars and... yes...fog during heavy rain. Speaking of heavy rain: the rain that has been dripping so far couldn't hurt a fly. Therefore there is now the chance of heavy rain and thunderstorms when certain random mechanisms take effect. The line renderer was a great help to draw the jagged line of the lightning in the sky. Now the impact place had to be determined and a very strong light source with very short strongly different amplitudes had to be provided at this for short time. A little more rumbling, depending on the distance to the impact location, and done. Finally I decided to recreate the trees according to more realistic aspects. To get a realistic picture it is very important to subdivide the trees into free-standing and forest-standing trees. Some trees have, due to the availability of sun and nutrients, a much more closed and larger treetop, whereas forests are characterized by a dense canopy of leaves far above eye level. In combination with a densely populated undergrowth of ferns and bushes, this results in a much more closed picture. At least, I hope so. Just have a look at the pictures, I think, Caspar David Friedrich would like it.