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Work in Progress / Super Badass Spaceship X

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Dr Tank
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Posted: 1st May 2009 04:57 Edited at: 1st May 2009 04:57
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OK It's been a month. Here's a quick rundown of what's going on.

Done recently:
increased minimap resolution so can have a finer steps in building size and positions.
Shots and missiles with different meshes and textures.
Explosions in a range of colours (different texture sheets)
New enemy gun/missile launcher models - 3 types of guns so far.
Fixed a few bugs
Better menu with options including volume control
End of level fade out when last target destroyed instead of abrupt end previously.

Up next:
Update set of ground buildings
Update enemy ships, including using separate objects/limbs for weapons
Finish level editor
Make levels
Work on weapon balance

This is taking longer than expected, but it will be done at some point. Thanks for your patience!

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JLMoondog
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Posted: 1st May 2009 10:30
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Very cool

Kuuhaku Kyuushuu!
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=144785&b=5
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Darkowen
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Posted: 1st May 2009 12:58
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The video looked really great man, Well done! Cant wait to try it out.
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Valle
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Posted: 1st May 2009 19:13
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great game!

some suggestions:
-the menumusic is awesome (did you make that dnb tune yourself?), you should add some music to the game too!
-it should be easier to collect items, you have to be very precise to collect them at the moment

Its very polished overall with much love for the details, i also like the fake-planet effect

btw what do the bars represent when you press shift? e.g. i cant imagine what the red and yellow bar at the "fps"-tag could stand for...

keep on coding! I'll watch this!


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Dr Tank
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Posted: 1st May 2009 20:26
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Thanks very much guys.

Quote: "-the menumusic is awesome (did you make that dnb tune yourself?), you should add some music to the game too!"

The tune is by Lucifer and it does kick ass. I'd like to put some more music in- for things like level end, briefing etc. I've not really considered putting any over the actual gameplay, but maybe i should give it some thought. A lot of my face oldskool games (mostly Amiga era) didn't have music for gameplay, but now come to think of it, quite a few cool games do. I should think about this!

Quote: "-it should be easier to collect items, you have to be very precise to collect them at the moment"

This has been addressed since the last demo. There's now a automatic powerup "hoover" that attracts nearby useable powerups towards the player. Also there's analog movement on joypad, and it's a little less twitchy on keyboard.

Quote: "btw what do the bars represent when you press shift? e.g. i cant imagine what the red and yellow bar at the "fps"-tag could stand for..."

That's a coding tool. It just shows how long various routines are taking to run- notice things like FLY-FLY COL go up on levels with many flying enemies - that's the collision between moving things. I should take that out for the final version. There are some other debug keys as well. Try <,> and the numeric pad numbers.

Thanks again guys. Hopefully i won't take too long posting the finished version.

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Dr Tank
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Posted: 6th May 2009 03:19 Edited at: 6th May 2009 03:20
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I'm still slowly generating more media.

Giant fans!!!!! The middle bits spin around quite pleasingly, and can be hidden once the top of the cylinder becomes obscured because of the world curvature.

I've decided to keep things simpler and have the larger objects not destroyable. There's still a lot of work though- i'm using xNormal to make ambient occlusion maps, and my own prog for perlin noise textures, and then mixing them together in Paint Shop Pro. It's a bit labourious, but i'm getting into the swing of it. Need to write down my settings and process and go over my existing objects and make them match. Really quite a bit of work.

Then actually dreaming up new buildings that work with my limited collision system. It's getting done, but slowly.

Thinking that making the level editor and making some levels will be relatively straightforward.

Also i reduced my terrain texture size and got a bit of a framerate boost, which was nice.

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JLMoondog
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Posted: 6th May 2009 08:56
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Looking good as always. Sooo..can I blow the fans up? I really want to!

Kuuhaku Kyuushuu!
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=144785&b=5
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Dragon Knight
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Posted: 8th May 2009 14:50
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Very nice , that would be brilliant if everything could be destructible, perhaps using your vertex explosion i believe i seen around the forums a while back?

*Applauds* the great work

I love the lighting under the vehicle!


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Dr Tank
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Posted: 9th May 2009 03:20
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Thanks guys.

I want to put in as much destructability as possible, but have to put some kind of limits if i want to ever get it finished. I'll pop out v1.0, then work on stuff for a sequel.

Destructable stuff is a major headache, and i'm quite undecided. The way i'm doing it at the moment- swapping one object for another- has the benefit that it's quite light on the game engine at runtime. However, it requires that i make more objects. Also, unless you hide it with a huge explosion, it's obvious to the viewer what's going on.

I'm contemplating the vertexdata explode idea. For a long time i thought it wasn't doable - i'm using instanced objects, that get instanced when they come into view, and deleted when they go away. You can't change the vertexdata of an instanced object. However, having done some tests, it seems not to be implausible to just clone the objects. There is still the downside that the vertex manipulation is slow enough that having about 10 explosions at a time would cause significant slowdown. I could make workarounds like using larger pieces made of a number of triangles and sharing vertices, but that's a big job. Also it makes everything look like it's made of paper thin stuff, although it's a cool oldskool effect.

So I'm still undecided. Going to sleep on it!

BTW Josh i put your pillar object in. Looks pretty sweet. Still have to make a broken version.

I'd really like to break objects into solid pieces. Heard there are some CSG commands in DBP! I have an idea - going to have a bit of a play and see what i can do about that!

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JLMoondog
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Posted: 9th May 2009 04:18
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Really? Awesome! Can't wait to see a screen of it in action.

Kuuhaku Kyuushuu!
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=144785&b=5
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Dr Tank
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Posted: 17th May 2009 04:18
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Took a while but...


I made a "cutter" object in ms3d (basically a box with a jagged side), and used DBP's CSG commands to make a broken mesh for the pillar. Quite longwinded, and results in quite a messy, quite high poly mesh, but does the job.

One problem is that it's quite big and so it's glaring that it just disappears, so i need to work a bit on hiding this with explosions.

A problem i'm bothered by at the moment is the flying height. At the moment, it seems silly that the spaceship can't fly over low walls - especially since it keeps a constant altitude and doesn't go up and down with the terrain. However it's also nice to be able to take cover behind the walls. So, i'm pondering some kind of altitude control- perhaps a "duck" button. Maybe this will result in too many controls - especially considering i might like something free for weapons switching. - i could use the 2 remaining shoulder buttons (weapons take the two others) for altitude , and map weapons switching to the a/b/x/y buttons. Or i could have a simple binary height duck button...

If i have terrain following i should have line of sight, change the targeting to add upward velocity, 3d collisions... It amounts to quite a bit of work.

Maybe i'll just keep it at simple as pos and release it ASAP. Maybe altitude control can go in v2.0.

I can keep churning out my new models whilst i ponder what to do. What do you guys think? Is altitude control an overcomplication?

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JLMoondog
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Posted: 17th May 2009 23:09
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Looking good.

As for altitude control, I wouldn't care for it. Right now the game feels good with the two dimensions of movement, adding a third would start to complicate movement and combat. But if you really want to, maybe a short 'jumping' ability could be useful. Take cover behind a wall, then jump out to unleash a barrage of missiles before taking cover again.

Game is looking good though. Keep it up!

Kuuhaku Kyuushuu!
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=144785&b=5
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Dr Tank
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Posted: 18th May 2009 02:39
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Thanks dude. Having tested it out i definitely agree that an extra dimension is overcomplicated. I don't have enough fingers spare really. Plus it would mean a ton more work. So that's out. Maybe if i do BADASS SPIDER TANK X then i can put in jumping like you say.

BTW You can fire from cover by "jerking" towards the edge of cover, and firing a missile- you stay covered and the missile drifts sideways then forwards. Quite snazzy, but at the mo the game's pretty easy and you have no need to.

Am currently working on vertical launch missiles, like Darkcoder suggested if i remember correctly. I've got the rotations sorted, which was kind of tricky. Next the homing algorithm, and to make a silo object. Maybe some subs for the sea levels! I'll need to add in some kind of 3d collision, then i can have artillery units too without much fuss.

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Dr Tank
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Posted: 19th Jun 2009 17:44 Edited at: 19th Jun 2009 17:46
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It's been a month so quick update. Not done much largely because it's been too hot, but got some done yesterday.

* Fixed problem of objects obviously switching from undestroyed to destroyed model- delayed change until explosion large. Also less explosion "clipping" by objects

* Made submarine and missile models


Next up:

* Finish missile control routines

* Finish level editor

* make a few more models

* balancing, tweaking etc.


I've obviously overrun my previous deadlines, so won't set another. It's done when it's done. Sorry.

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JLMoondog
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Posted: 19th Jun 2009 19:35
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Very cool, can't wait to play some updated-ship blazing-shoot crazy-missile flying-madness!


http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=151107&b=8&p=0
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Hunter H111
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Posted: 30th Jun 2009 07:30
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This is turning out to be a great game Dr Tank! I have a little suggestion but I'm not quite sure how hard it would be to achieve. Would if you had a day side and a night side on the planets.
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tiresius
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Posted: 30th Jun 2009 08:47
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Dr Tank-

Can you describe how you made the minimap? It looks really nice - if you can describe the technique it would be much appreciated.

I'm not a real programmer but I play one with DBPro!
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Dr Tank
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Posted: 6th Jul 2009 21:37 Edited at: 6th Jul 2009 21:38
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Thanks guys. Have made a little progress on this. Working on level editor next.

Hunter H111 - i like the day/night idea. I have a day/night thing going on in my Asteroid Worlds game. However, this is on a wrapping square, so i would be able to make something similar, but not the same. Also, it's hard enough making everything clear with just one lighting scheme ( although i could use cliched neon highlights on everything). I'll think about this for a sequel. Trying to keep things simple and get it finished, because it'd be nice to actually finish a game for once.

tiresius - Here's a snippet describing how the radar "blobs" are positioned on the map: http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=115028&b=6

The actual scrolling minimap is a little more complicated. I have an image of the game map, which wraps around. My original method was to use a many sided polygon (say ~20 sides) textured with this image, scaled so only part of the map is shown. This object is locked to the screen, looking more or less like a circle. Then i scroll the texture and rotate the object to move or rotate the map as the player moves and rotates. The white circle on top is another object, light ghosted.

You may have noticed that in recent screenshots, the circle is perfectly round. I am no longer using a circular object. It is now square, and the circle is achieved by using blendmapping - one layer is the map image, and the other layer is a circle for alpha transparency. At least for the version of DBP i have, you can't scroll and scale uv data independently using the simple DBP commands. Therefore I use vertexdata commands to manipulate uv data for individual texture layers.

Hope this helps. I can show code if you like.

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Dr Tank
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Posted: 23rd Jul 2009 19:20 Edited at: 6th Aug 2009 05:14
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I've made some progress. Level editor is nearing completion. Here's a pic:

Done:
*Can add and remove buildings, enemy units, powerups.
*Automatically prevents buildings from overlapping.
*Can change terrain tiles
*Ground height locked under certain buildings
*can load and save maps. Uses memblocks. Quite fast.
*terrain height editing
*flagging target objectives
*edit player start point
*code to load maps into main game

To do:
*more terrain editing functions

Aug 05 - level editor is basically fully functioning.

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C0wbox
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Posted: 23rd Jul 2009 21:23
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=0 I'm confused now man, what's your outcome to the following statement?:

if "Mr.Tank"="Dr.Tank"
print "Yez"
else
print "No "
endif

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Dr Tank
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Posted: 23rd Jul 2009 21:54
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Yez.

Basically i was logged me out of my old account, and i no longer have the password nor the email account i signed up with.

Still working on the editor. Terrain height editing is working. Going to add a few more "brushes" - like smoothing, unsmoothing, random etc. I'm also trying separate sea and ground objects as someone suggested earlier in this thread.

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Jimpo
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Posted: 23rd Jul 2009 22:07
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Quote: "After that, i have a few things i'd like to add to the game. Then i'll post something playable."


Looking forward to it

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C0wbox
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Posted: 24th Jul 2009 04:30
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Quote: "After that, i have a few things i'd like to add to the game. Then i'll post something playable."

xD It had better be up to standards with Zone. (I hope you have stealth ships now, lol)

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Dr Tank
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Posted: 24th Jul 2009 05:40
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Oh man. Pimping aint easy. I still can't really decide what height the player should be, what you should be able to fly over and that. So many pros and cons. Reckon i'll carry on doing what definitely needs to be done, churn out the models i need and hopefully i'll make these decisions in my sleep or something.

Quote: "Looking forward to it "

You and me both dude.

Quote: "xD It had better be up to standards with Zone. (I hope you have stealth ships now, lol)"

Not sure it'll be that good. I am seriously considering the stealth ships. And mines. Come to think of it i've got a mine model lying around. They'd look good in the sea. Cheers.

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Dr Tank
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Posted: 24th Jul 2009 19:26
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Here's a test in the editor of water with ground at the same time. Having choppy waves and beaches looks a bit odd, since the waterline can move around a lot. Working on fudging the water "physics" to be less choppy in the shallows. Looks quite pretty in editor. However, draw distance is much greater than in game. Also no curvature. Still have to test speed in actual game.

Next i should add all existing game units to editor - basically loading models, and write level importer for main game. A chore but not difficult.

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JLMoondog
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Posted: 24th Jul 2009 20:57
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Ah, so exciting. Any chance the editor will be included with the final game?

Keep up the good work. Can't wait to try a new demo.


http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=151107&b=8&p=0
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Dr Tank
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Posted: 25th Jul 2009 00:50
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Quote: "Ah, so exciting. Any chance the editor will be included with the final game?

Keep up the good work. Can't wait to try a new demo."


Thanks. Hopefully i won't keep you waiting too long. It seems the more i do, the more ideas i have, but think the time for v1.0 will soon be at hand.

The editor is a bit unwieldy. I may as well bundle it with the game as it is with a few instructions though. At some point i could tidy it up, but first priority is to get the game done.

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JLMoondog
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Posted: 25th Jul 2009 01:24
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Quote: "It seems the more i do, the more ideas i have,"


This is why Indie games rock harder then industry games.


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Dr Tank
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Posted: 25th Jul 2009 04:46
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Quote: "This is why Indie games rock harder then industry games. "

More like this is why i never finish anything.

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JLMoondog
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Posted: 25th Jul 2009 04:48
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Hah...I'll agree to that.


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Dr Tank
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Posted: 2nd Aug 2009 05:43 Edited at: 15th Aug 2009 05:02
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Quick progress report.
The level importer is working. Took a lot longer than i anticipated. Stupid constants, scalngs etc. I really need to start using some system where i can tweak my variables in game or via text file. Recompiling takes ages now the game is as big as it is.

Now the tedious job of putting in all my objects. Am sprucing some up and adding some along the way. Have reverted to flat textures for the flying things. Making the perlin, ambient occlusion maps that i had for some of them is very labourious, and doesn't contribute much to the awesomeness. Plus i like oldskool flat textures.

Aug 03:
Flying enemies park up more nicely when player out of range
Now using "rounded box" collision for square buildings

Aug 05:
Powerups added to editor
All current buildings added to editor
Enemy ground guns added to editor
Guns return to start angle when player out of range
level importer updated

Aug 06:
taken out unused files. game folder down to a manageable 13Mb (unzipped)
fixed bug with gun angle

Aug 07:
stopped collection of energy powerup when energy full
tidied folder- now just an .exe and a media subfolder (containing various other subfolders)
fixed player model

Aug 13
*reduced file sizes, including music using a cool prog called "mp3tweak". Total file size down to 11Mb, loading times faster.
*all models converted to dbo, .x importer stuff excluded via ini file. Now total game size is under 10Meg. Rared is 3Meg
* reduced model texture sizes to max 256x256. Load time about a second less
* beginning to tweak draw distance, camera variables etc.

Aug 14
*improved shot collision - elevated shots now pass over the top of buildings. Shots colliding with top of things not supported yet- will need bigger overhaul if want vertical missiles, artillery. Not in v1.0

Up next:
*make more building models
*make levels
*tweak variables
*make some gameplay design decisions!
*switch off debugging routines
*record replays
*post a demo!!

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