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Work in Progress / Exodos

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Dimis
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Posted: 30th Jun 2015 15:02 Edited at: 30th Jun 2015 15:12
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Working on Fovos. About his look, i want his face to be hidden,so i gave him a mask, but he reminds me now the ninjas from Mortal Kombat. Maybe i should change his mask to a helmet.


His primary ability will be the power to draw out and use his opponents worst fears and negative feelings, to temporarily immobilize him. Now i need of a way to visualize this. My initial idea was to use a floating "evil eye" over the opponents head casting light, or something like that. Well, it looks more of an alien abduction scene, almost.
So i need another idea now. i will make a short video with the character in action later.


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Chris Tate
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Posted: 1st Jul 2015 20:28 Edited at: 1st Jul 2015 20:29
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He looks like one of the best character's so far; but MK fans will be very harsh against you if they saw this; so I think you are correct, especially regarding the green costume, without the hair he looks too much like the older Reptile characters from MK; I think it is the upper garment that gives this away more than the mask; perhaps add more detail to the shoulder pads, such as the spikes in your concept design. Everything else looks perfect to me;

but do not go by one opinion.

Keep up the good work; I look forward to seeing all of the characters ready so far, to compare them to each other.

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Ortu
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Posted: 1st Jul 2015 20:47 Edited at: 1st Jul 2015 20:48
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for the eye, you might try making it half the size and coming in at a 30-60 degree angle instead of straight down. maybe move it back in the z and then turn it towards the player abit to see more of the eyeball

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Dimis
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Posted: 12th Jul 2015 08:55 Edited at: 12th Jul 2015 08:57
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A video with Fovos and his special attacks also i made some changes to Deimos Specials. I gave him the ability to materialize a pair of rolling blades, that pop out of the ground and can attacks the opponent from front or back. HR image attached to post. Some occasional slow downs in the video are because of the recording. It is good that fraps can record the game in 60fps with minimum problems.

Changes to Fovos outfit. I gave him a half helmet, but i will keep the initial mask thing he wears for an alternative look. Spikes are added too, and changed the alternative color as suggested.


I also gave Deimos a half helmet too for an alternative look.



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Chris Tate
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Posted: 12th Jul 2015 11:03
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The graphics are improving with every video. Nice changes to the characters and the gameplay, music and sound.

Are you using anistropic filtering?

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Ortu
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Posted: 12th Jul 2015 19:40
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I like the look of the new outfit and helmets

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Dimis
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Posted: 13th Jul 2015 20:44 Edited at: 13th Jul 2015 20:45
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Thank you guys!

All credits for the background music go to wattywatts. He made 3 music tracks for the game!

Also I had to make some extra sound effects and it was fun and different than everything else i have made so far.

@Chris Tate I don't use anistropic filtering. I set every object's texture filtering to "2" and the result is almost the same. Something that i have noticed is that when using the 2.5d view, i don't need the anisotropy pluggin so much. But only when i use the 2.5d. I suppose that when viewing the objects from this camera angle the result is almost the same, practically. That applies mostly to the floor textures.

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Dimis
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Posted: 14th Jul 2015 16:03 Edited at: 14th Jul 2015 16:06
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Another gameplay video. Nothing noticeable really changed here. Most changes involve the particles. Now instead of fading i use animation to make the particle disappear. Recorded in 800x600 60fps and fraps handled it perfectly.

How does that flash effect looks when characters successfully hit the opponent? Is it too big? I want it to be very clear when a hit has been landed successfully.



Something that i will have to fix somehow, even by removing, it is Charon's cape. There is a bug there that produces a dark vertical stripe. It was there since the beginning, but now with the Adv. Lighting shaders it has become more obvious, it really bothers me. Plus, during animation the cape passes through other objects and the floor. I am thinking of changing it with something shorter, that will use bone animations instead of physics.

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wattywatts
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Posted: 14th Jul 2015 18:57
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Quote: "How does that flash effect looks when characters successfully hit the opponent?"

Looks pretty good to me. I might make the block bubbles a bit more transparent though, they seem just a little bit distracting as bright as they are.
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Ortu
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Posted: 15th Jul 2015 07:13
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This gets better and better

And nice work on the music wattywatts, really fits the game.

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Dimis
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Posted: 15th Jul 2015 09:19
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Thank you both! Yeah maybe they should be more transparent, i will try it.

Here is an image to show the problem i talked about before. I over saturated the image a little to make it more obvious.

On the right is the cape, as i made it in 3D crafter. On the left, in the game, you can see a blue vertical stripe on the cape. That happens when i use a shader. Anyone has any ideas of what it could be? Depending on the angle it becomes sometimes totally black.

Another gameplay test.Voreas in action. Next step is to integrate the weapons in gameplay. There is only a minimum usage during special attacks only.


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Ortu
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Posted: 15th Jul 2015 17:39
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hmm I would double check all the channels in your specular and normal maps, also maybe the face normals and smoothing groups of the mesh.

if looks like that section handles light differently, so I would check over anything that affects how light is handled.

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 15th Jul 2015 21:11 Edited at: 15th Jul 2015 21:18
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Lovely music Wattywatts; perfect for the atmosphere of the game.

Out of personal preference I'd say bank on the particle effects a bit more by creating unique effects for each character instead of the same for all the characters. Having the same effect on view for hours and hours could get boring, but having a variety with similar sounds could make the characters more appealing than they already are. The effects could be used as a major display in their own right, and a real selling point.

Obviously using the same effect makes it clear what exactly is happening, but it is a bit of give or take; more comptetitive or more aesthetic.

If what Ortu stated does not find the cause, try swapping the textures around for blanks or test texture sheets; find out the route cause of the problem. Could be the shader using vertex diffuse on the colour map, where you have a number of unintentially diffused vertices. Could be the actual texture itself having an off tint in the blue area that is overly satuated by the pixel function in the shader; quite common for shaders to boost the colour output because DarkBASIC tends to wash out the colours. Play around with the textures, but do not let it bother you because the character still looks cool.

What do you think about motion effects? For example having a streak of motion from the start of a kick to where the kick lands on the opponent so that you can see what moves the characters are doing more clearly. I think a post rendering shader could achieve that kind of effect nice with a bit of a motion blur on the punches and kicks; but this requires a bit of knowledge of post rendering effects. The other way is to 'onion skin' a little bit by having a few low poly clones at hand to simulate motion like they did with Agent Smith in the Matrix. Just a thought.

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Dimis
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Posted: 16th Jul 2015 00:45 Edited at: 16th Jul 2015 00:47
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ok not shader related. Here is the model imported to fragmotion only with diffuse texture.


It has to be something with the normals. In fragmotion the area with the problem is different.

Each character will have his own particle effect images. But mostly for his special powers not for the normal punches and kicks. But i was thinking of having the player select an elemental power for his weapon, after character select. So his weapon and maybe his normal attacks could have a different particle effect. But i have not thought how that could work. Elemental powers could change a fighter's attributes, things like speed and strength.

The motion blur type of effect is not a bad idea. Adv. Lighting has a motion blur effect but i can't get it to work. Low poly models is a way to do it, i could be wrong but i think that the extra bones could be another cause of a slow down, also the time to make an extra low poly model for each character is considerable. I want to test the advl motion blur effect further. I don't really see it working on the example demos on my pc.

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Ortu
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Posted: 16th Jul 2015 02:07
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the motion blur in AL is pretty subtle, I only really notice it when the camera is moving

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 16th Jul 2015 23:01
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Quote: "the extra bones could be another cause of a slow down"


I think the slow down will be considerable; but with you may get away with it if you limit it to a few ghosted characters, or consider drawing them to an overlay image. I used image based motion blur for one of my driving prototypes. Instead of drawing the camera to the screen, I rendered the camera to new images, then pasted the older images underneath the new ones with semi-transparency; the result was that all fast moving objects appeared to create a motionblur esque transition.

There are other ways to achieve the effect, over time you will figure out a way.

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Dimis
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Posted: 20th Jul 2015 10:21
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Cape is corrected. I had to give it separate textures to remove that problem. I was using tiling to texture it before, from a part of the character's skin texture. I don't know why that was causing the problem but now it is gone, and the cape looks better.

Quote: "the motion blur in AL is pretty subtle, I only really notice it when the camera is moving"

The AL motion blur is obviously too subtle. I tested the example again and i noticed the effect working on the background, when the camera moves too fast. Not very useful for my game.

Quote: " I used image based motion blur for one of my driving prototypes. Instead of drawing the camera to the screen, I rendered the camera to new images, then pasted the older images underneath the new ones with semi-transparency; the result was that all fast moving objects appeared to create a motionblur esque transition."


Rendering to multiple images is a good way to do it, but AL handles all the display and cameras. It will not play well with custom rendering to other images.

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 20th Jul 2015 18:13
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Are those boots the character is wearing? What ever they are, they look cool.

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Dimis
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2015 18:57 Edited at: 22nd Jul 2015 18:58
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Yeah, they are boots with many armored parts.

Here's another video with a new background. Also i added point lights to every fighter's special abilities that should produce light, projectile attacks, magic and such. The extra point lights don't seem to affect performance. There is always on the scene a directional light and a secondary point light. The extra point lights remain visible for some seconds only, but performance is still good.


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Lucka
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Posted: 1st Aug 2015 16:48
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Man! This looks GREAT!
can i suggest ya to edit first post? the game is soo better now!

hold on, man, we'r the last 300 DBPro spartans defending from 1 million Unity invaders!

Lucka - gawteam coder - www.gawgames.com
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Ortu
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Posted: 1st Aug 2015 18:07
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Indeed

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Dimis
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Posted: 4th Aug 2015 08:48 Edited at: 4th Aug 2015 09:23
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Thanks Lucka, and good suggestion, i should update the first post long time now. Well let's see for how long we can defend against those Unity invaders alone.
Since you mentioned spartans, i plan to have a character simply called "the Spartan" among the first 12 characters.

Some screenshots of the new background. I want to add a 2-3 buildings, closer to the foreground and some more foreground objects to complete it.


I have reduced the camera range to a short distance, to increase performance, so, to make the far distant objects appear really far in the horizon, i have them always fixed to the same X position of the main camera. So they move along with the camera in the X axis and that makes them look really far.

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PIXIMID
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Posted: 24th Aug 2015 00:16
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Nice sketch of your new fighting character.

What's that cool object he is holding???
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Dimis
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Posted: 27th Aug 2015 11:18
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Thanks PIXIMID, that thing was my initial idea of his weapon.

I will continue this project after August, i will take a break for a while to decide the direction that i will follow. The game is not becoming what exactly i wanted to make. Right now i am disappointed with performance. Too many alpha transparencies are becoming a problem now. A fighting game needs to have smooth flow of action during gameplay, otherwise it becomes unplayable. But there is no other way to make the characters appear to have godlike powers without using a lot of effects. In other type of games, a small slow down in certain occasions might not be a problem, but not in this case. Maybe the pc platform is not ideal for a smooth fighting game, and considering the amount of complains from gamer communities about the pc port of mortal kombat X, for example, being in many cases unplayable, this could prove to be truth. Anyway, maybe a game with less effects, relying more on kung fu action, with minimum special effects, could be more realistic. I need to think about this.

Another thing that puzzles me, is another sudden fps drop. I recently moved to another house, and now testing my game in the same pc, without making any changes, seems to produce more slowdowns! I think that my gpu is not getting enough power, there could be a power problem that i must deal with immediately. Otherwise i can't explain it, i opened the casing of the pc and everything seems to be in place, no loose wires or anything.

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Dimis
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Posted: 17th Sep 2015 00:34
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First update after summer. I am not really in the mood for game making (personal issues), but i am pushing myself to get things moving. Looking for a career change also, doesn't make things easy too.

I managed to stabilize performance. Besides anything else, my pc needed some maintenance, which explains some strange game behavior. Using Advanced Lighting with dynamic shadows works well. No fps drops bellow 59, well 59fps is probably a false reading, i consider that the game runs at 60fps at all times. Well now with the dynamic shadows when a lot of particles show up it might drop to 55 - 57 fps for a second, but that is insignificant.

Finishing the Library background, i wanted to make that head in the back to look alive. I added some bone animation to it, it has an idle animation during the fight and rotates left - right to keep tracking both fighters.

I think that it is safe to add some human activity in certain background. Some low poly - low bone models will probably be alright.



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Ortu
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Posted: 18th Sep 2015 04:11
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good to hear on the performance front.

so... demo?

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 18th Sep 2015 08:15
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Congratulations on the performance boost. Once you put your mind at work on the problems, you tend to solve them.

I look forward to that demo too, but also the storyline.

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Dimis
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Posted: 22nd Sep 2015 23:13
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Well I have to admit that part of the last remaining problems had to do with my pc. I think that it was not working at full potential from the time when I bought it! Maybe if i have been playing games with it i would have realized it sooner, but i play games on my consoles only.

Anyway a demo should be the next thing to do. Even if the gameplay will not be final. And yes i should start writing the storyline.

A question for Ortu:
Well i am asking you since you have worked a lot with Advanced Lighting, is there a way to set an object not to be affected by lighting sources and not to reflect shadows, without using an Alpha shader? Because i don't want that object to have transparency. Something like the "set object light" command.

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Ortu
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Posted: 23rd Sep 2015 00:58
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you just want it to ignore all light and shadow and just render exactly as in the diffuse?

i did that by accident a while back, think in the green channel of the spec map if you make it either 0 or 255 it will have this behavior. i believe evolved documented this in his explanation of the various maps and used.

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Dimis
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Posted: 23rd Sep 2015 01:29
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This is what i want to do. And also have no shadows falling on those objects. There are some objects that seem to be far in the horizon, but actually they are not that far, they are just small and that makes them look like they are pretty far. And this is because i have reduced the camera range a lot, to improve performance, so i can't actually position them very far. The only thing that breaks that illusion is when a lighting source (from a projectile for example) reflects light upon them, or if a shadow from the foreground falls on them.

Thanks man, i will try to play with the spec map and see what happens.

Testing a secondary character, an old man who sits in the background and watches the fight. Bone animated.


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wattywatts
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Posted: 23rd Sep 2015 02:18
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Looking good! I don't use advanced lighting, but couldn't you just use set object mask command for those far objects and not render them to the lighting camera?
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Dimis
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Posted: 24th Sep 2015 02:06
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Sure I guess it could work, i do use Advanced Lighting, but i am not an expert on how it works either.
Doing some work on another background. And added some armed guards who also witness the fight. They don't do anything special they just have an idle animation for now.



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Ortu
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Posted: 24th Sep 2015 23:18
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thier arms are set out a bit far from thier bodies, but otherwise look good

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Dimis
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Posted: 25th Sep 2015 00:57
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Yes you are right. There are 2 things wrong with those models, first is that their limbs bend differently when they are imported in DBpro, than they do in the modeling program. And maybe something in the animation translation makes their arms seem miss-positioned. But i corrected the arms with limb offset, i don't want to waste time trying to find why. Second thing again, is that there are some dark areas on their armor parts, that shouldn't be dark. Has to be some kind of bug when importing the models to DBpro. Anyway it is not very annoying, i think.



It is good to have real time shadows, but some computers will not handle them, so i added again the option to remove them. When disabling them, the distant light becomes darker for some reason, almost 40-50% down. I guess i could calculate that difference and make it brighter when the shadows are removed, so that will not be a problem. Now i just realized what happens when i activate bloom, the distant light disappears. I don't know why, it just happens.

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Fallout3fan
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Posted: 28th Nov 2015 10:44
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Need a free actor?
Willing to be hired as a voice actor for work and to put on a resume.
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Dimis
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Posted: 3rd Dec 2015 20:28 Edited at: 3rd Dec 2015 20:34
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Thanks for the offer, i don't need a voice actor now, not until i have a public demo ready, i will probably need a narrator then. What i do need is multiple character voices for the combat part. Attack and pain screams mostly, i tried my best to do 3-4 different voices, and i don't have any female voices.

A year has passed since i started this thread, and there have been so many updates, still i am not ready for a demo. Right now i am in the process of changing the character models. I am moving away from the "super hero" look. I smoothed the texture for the skins and i hand painted some extra textures to use as normal maps, both for the clothes and the skins of the characters. I am also adding more detail to the backgrounds and doing gameplay changes. Here are some screenshots for now, i will try to have a video in the next update.




edit

before vs after
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wattywatts
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Posted: 4th Dec 2015 22:01
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Looking pretty awesome man.
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seppgirty
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All i can say is WOW.
gamer, lover, filmmaker
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Ortu
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Posted: 7th Dec 2015 00:58
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New models are looking really great man
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 12th Dec 2015 04:54
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Nice looking art work; great to see you back in action
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Dimis
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Thank you guys, i have been busy changing many things lately, here's another character redesign, this time for Charon.


Now i want to decide about the next 2 characters that i plan to add, to complete an initial team of 8 fighters. One male and one female. About the male character i am thinking of a dead king who supposedly will have become a war god, after his death. Simply named the "Spartan".
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 14th Feb 2016 12:41
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Just posting to make sure this does not get locked. Looking forward to seeing some of your latest work if you have had the chance; spare time is not always available.
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Dimis
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Hey people, i am alive, in case anyone wondered. Really didn't have enough free time for an update, but i also had login issues. So never mind here's my first update in 2016, and thank you Chris for the bump, i think the thread was about to get locked.
Here are some images of new characters in development. I should upload some videos too, because i am doing some radical changes to the gameplay, making the game focus more on the weapons instead of hand to hand combat.



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Ortu
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Posted: 17th Mar 2016 21:02
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Characters look awesome man, great work
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 17th Mar 2016 21:13
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Welcome back. The colours are looking really vibrant (not that easier to achieve in DBP). How is Advanced Lighting working?
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Dimis
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Posted: 17th Mar 2016 21:51 Edited at: 17th Mar 2016 21:53
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Thank you guys, Adv Lighting works perfectly. The game runs smoothly between 58-60 fps all the time now, with shadows, except from the moments that a lot of effects are showing up. Without shadows it runs even better, as expected. The shadow casting is an issue. I did a test, made a full 3D arena where the characters can move everywhere, and although it was really cool when the characters where walking into shaded areas, i just couldn't keep the fps high as i wanted. I did have several objects casting shadows though. Of course i need to test on other machines to see how it works, and i should do it soon.

New weapon trails. They need more work to adjust better on the blades.


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Chris Tate
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Posted: 18th Mar 2016 00:25 Edited at: 18th Mar 2016 00:33
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Nice trails. That character in the middle picture on the right looks really cool.

Something which came to mind after watching lots of street fighter online games and fighting game reviews, I remember once upon I time I spoke about multiplayer support being a desirable feature. Some of the comments back then where somewhere along the lines of multiplayer is not needed, fighting games are played side by side with our friends on the same machine. Now looking at the genre in 2016, I could honestly say that multiplayer is a fundamental expectation of a modern fighting game. If a common player downloads a modern looking fighting game on the internet, he/she might wonder why they can't play it over the internet aswell; if you think about it from a non-developer standpoint. Just because Exodos looks modern, gamers might expect it to have modern features, and that's putting it in a nice way, players are a lot more harsh with expectations. With all of the potential tournaments, the low latency available, do you still intend to avoid multiplayer support?

I know you are more than capable, I can offer some help if you need guidence on shaders such as depth of field, or how to make the multiplayer work. I will be available on a regular basis to help you get started if you are not comfortable or have little time. It will add an additional layer of complexity, but it gets easier the more you work with it, and you got this far with advanced lighting, who knows what you could achieve next.
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Ortu
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Posted: 18th Mar 2016 01:09
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Nice trails, looks like you did them with polygon objects?

I'd agree that online multiplayer is an expectation of pretty much every game these days, but the point at which the game is now, I think I would let it come later and not distract from the completion of the offline mode.

Multiplayer is best and easiest implemented when it is planned from the start, but this project is far enough along that it will be no easier or harder to add it in now versus at the end, or even as an update post release.
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Dimis
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Location: Athens, Hellas
Posted: 18th Mar 2016 17:20
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Yeah, the trail is made of polygons. I use 2 hidden limbs on every weapon to locate the position of the blade in the 3D world. Now to do that accurately, get the actual limb positions when using bone animated objects, you need to have your objects to render to at least 1 camera first, that's the only way to get the actual position of every limb for the current frame, otherwise the limb positions that you are getting are from the last frame. This is the object that i use for the trails. I am thinking of changing it with something different, using separate plain objects for each segment of the trail.


About the multiplayer, i would like to have that option in the game. Even with todays low latency and all, is it going to be viable? Will i be able to exchange data between 2 remote players at least 30 times per second, idealy 60 times? Browsing some street fighter and mortal kombat forums most people complain about the low quality of the multiplayer mode, specifically for the pc version of mortal kombat X most players complain that the game is unplayable. Actually most people claim that the game is barely playable on a moderate pc even ofline but that is another issue. I fear that i will make a huge effort to install something that will not work well as expected. But again if it is possible i will need some help because i don't have any experience on multiplayer modes. And with adding more shaders too, but this is something that i will leave for last. I should first finish the gameplay and then see what other effects i can add to make the game even more modern. But i think that i will need more modern hardware too, my pc is good but outdated, the game should play perfectly with every effect on my own pc at least.
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 18th Mar 2016 17:46 Edited at: 18th Mar 2016 17:49
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Quote: "Multiplayer is best and easiest implemented when it is planned from the start"


Hence, one of the reasons I had to start again. lol.

But I found a nice way to slot in multiplayer to an offline game, it takes some work, but I should be able to help Dimis make the shift.

Quote: "I think I would let it come later and not distract from the completion of the offline mode. "


Funny enough, SFV did not even ship with much of an offline mode; not even any AI! Personally, this is one of the many reasons why I have this concern, and it seems Capcom have a similar multiplayer first focus



Now the next point is focus

From the early 90s to present the moment, I personally still find fighting game AI boring, and today I would not personally consider buying an offline fighting game. A beat-em-up, maybe, or something like Bushido Blade, maybe; perhaps Dimis will be the first to be able to entertain me for more than 30 seconds with fighting game AI, and I suppose the bots are nice for punching practice.

Ultimately, what I am saying here is personal. Take it with a grain of salt Dimis; this is one end of the scale, I am a person who does not play with friends offline; unless we are playing Wii Party or Mariokart. I am busy playing Counter Strike with my friends online, unless I am busying playing the AI in Civilization 5.

There are many people who do not want to play online as you mention.
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