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Work in Progress / The Taffer

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Lukas W
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Posted: 26th Oct 2009 02:08 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2009 00:03


This is a Thief inspired game, bordering on a thief 1 remake.
The editor and game are being worked on simultaneously now, with a main priority on the editor as it is necessary that it meets some expectations that the game will need in order to further expand.
The graphics in the game isn't a main priority. True, I want the game to look nice, but I want it to be fun to play and feel realistic even more that nice to look at.
The level in the game images and game video is a level I made in 3DWS. Basically my editor doesn't have a save/load function yet.

Features - Current version: v.0.01


Videos


Images





This is a DromED Inspired editor. I liked how dromed was easy to use and how fast you could make levels/missions in it, so I am aiming for that here. Easy to use, but completely customizable.

Features - Current version: Alpha


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Blobby 101
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Posted: 26th Oct 2009 10:35 Edited at: 26th Oct 2009 12:06
Looking nice! Glad to see you're finally getting somewhere with it.
BTW: Do you want that logo I made for it ages ago? (You requested it in a logo thread I made)

EDIT: well, here it is anyway heh, you can use it if you like, don't have to though

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Lukas W
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Posted: 26th Oct 2009 16:46 Edited at: 28th Oct 2009 14:39
Hey, yea I will still need that. Thanks for remembering.
I made it transparent for this post, but it will work having it in black background in the game. Thanks again.

TaffED - Alpha (26.10.2009)


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Bizar Guy
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Posted: 28th Oct 2009 22:24 Edited at: 28th Oct 2009 22:28
The video had some very nice movement. A shame fraps screwed it up so much.

I think a big thing you'll need to get to work at some point is the game running at 60 fps at least. I can't imagine you'll be able to keep up 200 fps when things become more complex, and I doubt all computers could run it that high even now.

Sergey K
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Posted: 29th Oct 2009 00:12
yeah too bad fraps decreasing the fps so we cant see the "real action" xD

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Lukas W
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Posted: 29th Oct 2009 00:31 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:08
Thanks for the comments.

I think there's a problem with my computer though, because every single DBPro game or code that I download from this website that uses some form of timer based movement; lags. More so the lower the fps rate.

You are most likely right, Bizar Guy, that once I start adding more stuff to the game it will be difficult to keep a solid 200fps. At the moment I am able to run the game at 900fps on the lowest resolution (320x240x16) and 110fps on the highest (1920x1080x32). The player module, which is nearly done, has hundreds of lines of unoptimized calculations which I assume, once optimized, will give a little fps boost.

I just know for sure that once the AI come into the picture (in a year or so), there will be a major fps drop. Mostly due to the fact that I want the AI to be as realistic as possible.

Anyway, back to coding. (It's insane how much time you spend programming when you don't have a job)

Edit:

That's enough for today! Here's a new pic of TaffED (notice the timestamps in the lower right corner.. I don't really feel tired though): Also, how do you like the textures I've made? I'm rather proud, especially since I have zero talent in the art department.

because the application is syncing the scene(s) 4 times (one time per camera) the fps drops an immensely amount: 900fps would become 225fps or something, 500 polygons would become 2000 polygons, etc..
This, and the fact that I haven't bothered (yet) with optimizing the code are two key points towards the low fps. I was also planning on doing certain checks, (for example only update the toolbar when a change happened, or when the mouse is (moving) over the toolbar.) to keep the editor from updating unnecessary stuff, which will give a better performance. I think.

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Agent Dink
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Posted: 29th Oct 2009 06:51
I love the death in that video. How the camera flawlessly rolled over the edge into the pool of water. That was great!

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Lukas W
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Posted: 29th Oct 2009 19:04 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:09
Thanks, yea the death is pretty cool. All that's happening is that the player module loose control of the player body so it's basically acting like a dynamic body instead of a user controller body, about three lines of code (If death=0 : controlplayer() : endif (not actual code, but you get the idea))

Also, I'm currently working on the timer based movement and timer based physics. If it wasn't clear from the video I made; the game doesn't run stable if the fps is low.

Here is a screenshot of how the rope behaves on 30fps
Note: the rope weight is 0.0001 (basically nothing) so how it is dragged down this much I have no idea.

Edit: Update.
It is now possible to climb ropes no matter the fps. It took a whole day trying to figure it out but apparently it was an error caused by my amazing coding skills (only joking, I'm not even good at this). Anyway, somehow I managed to get the dynamic objects to respond and react much better than they used to while the fps was low. In other words, the rope no longer sink as is visible in the above picture. Still, the higher the FPS the smoother the physics.
I also fixed a couple of bugs, like if you watched the youtube video you probably noticed that when you fall there's a lot of footstep sounds (they only appear on low fps's, which is very odd). Well that's fixed, I don't know what caused it but I just set it to check if the Y velocity was decreasing then that mean player is in the air and no footstep sounds can be played.
Next up is trying to figure out why you can't swim in 60fps, but you can when the fps is 200+.

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Drew Cameron
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Posted: 30th Oct 2009 00:08
Quote: "I love the death in that video. How the camera flawlessly rolled over the edge into the pool of water. That was great!"


I agree, that was perfect.

Lukas W
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Posted: 31st Oct 2009 00:17 Edited at: 31st Oct 2009 00:18
There might be some cool death scenes occurring once in a while during the game. For instance, a guard kills you while you are at the top of the stairs. You die and roll down, knocking over several other guards on their way up.


Anyway, I finally got the timer based physics to work. New (proper) video:


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cyril
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Posted: 31st Oct 2009 14:42 Edited at: 31st Oct 2009 14:44
Liked the video, It looks like the whole game runs on dark physics.
the movement looks real too. The deaths are perfect. And the test levels looks well design in teams of layout.
Personally i think this looks very promising.

edit: fixed my grammar mistake
Lukas W
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Posted: 31st Oct 2009 23:05 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:09
Thanks for the feedback. And yes, everything runs on dark physics. My only concern with using dark physics is that I have no idea how to go about creating rag-dolls. However, by the time I start working on the AI and all that, there will probably be either a demo by TGC or a demo by a smart user who has figured it out by themselves. By rag-dolls I mean a fully skinned mesh with bones, not primitive objects (those are easy to do).

The test level I made is just that, a test level. It will change as I code new features. The current one was made to develop the movement (ropes, climbing, ladders, and swimming in particular). The next test level will most likely be lots of tiny rooms with doorways, and of course doors that you open, pick, unlock and etc. Some doors will be breakable, some will open remotely, some will open vertically.. you get the idea.

Anyway, here's a new screen shot from TaffED
It is now possible to texture individual faces, and also the selected face will have its texture blended out to green-ish to indicate it is selected.
The blue, green, and red cylinders that you see is the rotation tool. You click and drag with the mouse to rotate.

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Plotinus
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Posted: 31st Oct 2009 23:07
It looks and sounds great. Good luck!
cyril
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Posted: 1st Nov 2009 13:42 Edited at: 1st Nov 2009 13:45
I saw Jammy on another thread that had done skined rag-dolls.
Maybe you can talk with him. Although he said his code was fairly messy to learn from.

http://http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=159588&b=36

hope this helps
cyril

edit: the editor almost has that professional look, nice work.
Lukas W
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Posted: 1st Nov 2009 15:11 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:09
Hi, I've had a look at Jammys code. It appears he has the skeleton split into individual limbs which he then loads and assign spheres bodies, which is then jointed and limbed together. So in a sense he is just using primitives. Though this might be a good idea to do (because then I can add limb chopping and stuff), I am not sure how the animations would look. The animations would have to be perfectly handled so as not to cause a space between one limb and the other.
I haven't experimented with adding a bone to a limbed character, or if it will even work.
Thanks for the tip though, I will have a closer look at this later.

Edit:
After some small optimizations, I managed to get the fps up to 900~1000. After 100 brushes were created the fps dropped to 100fps.
The old was 216fps down to 16fps. So it's a bit of a well done feat if I can say so myself, and it also proves that I suck at programming.

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RUCCUS
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Posted: 1st Nov 2009 17:23
Lukas, I haven't used Dark Physics yet, but couldn't you just use a primitive rag doll, hide all of it's limbs, and then apply it's limb's position / rotation data to the bones of your character? Seems to me it would work fine. If you still wanted to do limb chopping, one thing I've noticed in games that do this is they don't show the seam where the two limbs join. Instead they cover the seem with say a t-shirt, armour, or something else. Seems to work fairly well.

On the other hand if you skinned your mesh all together, then cut the mesh up but kept the skinning information / bone weights, theoretically themesh would still line up properly.

Anyways the game looks great. I think the feel of moving around that you've managed is the best part. It just looks so smooth and human-like.
Lukas W
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Posted: 1st Nov 2009 18:42
Ruccus, your points are valid but with DarkPhysics it is near impossible. Here is an image of my attempt at this: [link]. I am going to (not for a while though, because it's still a long way to go before the AI come into the picture) experiment around with what you have said though. Maybe I did something wrong that I wasn't aware of. Anyway, thanks for the tip and compliment.

As a side note, I have decided to rewrite the "Move/Rotate/Scale" part of the editor. After finishing the three tools I noticed that they are impractical and hard to use for precise measurements. I will most likely copy ideas from 3DWS because that application is very precise when it comes to this feature. And I cannot seem to remember how the features worked in DromED.
Well, anyway. This means that I have wasted 2 days of programming I'm glad I don't have a job at the moment, or I would never complete this.

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Lukas W
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2009 00:08 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2009 19:16


In this video I demonstrate a couple of features in TaffED.
Creation, Positioning, and texturing Brushes. As well as the wireframe, solids, solids+wireframe mode. And finally the Auto Camera Sync option.

It's not much, but what I wanted to show was the positioning of entities. It is now more like (if not exactly like) 3DWS. In other words, it is much easier to position entities with precision.

The next to do will be to re-write the rotation and scaling, so that they too are similar, if not identical to 3DWS.

The thing is, I have no idea how to go about the scaling. In the Top-Down view you will be able to scale on the X and Z planes. This is not a problem at all, but when the entity is rotated (for example 90 degrees on the z axis) it will still scale on the X and Z planes, when it should scale the X and Y planes (or whatever it will become).
I haven't figured out the formula for this calculation but I hope it will eventually come to me.

Edit:
Rotation is done, although it is different from 3dws. Next up is resizing.

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Lukas W
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2009 22:05 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2009 22:08
This is the new scaling work in progress. It turned out quite well in my opinion.

However, now I need to figure out how to scale globally on the XZ, XY, and YZ planes. As it is now it is scaling locally. What I mean is, say the brush is rotated 0 degrees on the Y axis. Apply scale of +50X and +50Z. This works fine because the entity is rotated 0 degrees. So the new scale will be 100+50, 100, 100+50.
However, if the brush is rotated 90 degrees on the Y plane and you begin to scale using same values (+50 on x and +50 on z) the new values would still be 100+50, 100, 100+50 which would scale the object wrong. With global scaling however, the scale would be 100+50, 100, 100-50 which is correct.
So trying to figure out a mathematical formula for this is going to take me a very long time.
So I might not bother, and instead use a cheap way out.

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Lukas W
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Posted: 4th Nov 2009 03:45 Edited at: 7th Nov 2009 20:34

update 1





Which gives taffED the following features as a whole:



But there's no time to relax, I will now begin to add different shapes, as well as "air" and "water" brushes. After that comes CSG implementation. And I noticed DBPro has Lightmapping commands, interesting. But they are most likely no good since Dark Lights is on sale as a plugin.

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 21:15
Think they're from FPSC.

Athlon64 2.7gHz->OC 3.9gHz, 31C, MSi 9500GT->OC 1gHz core/2gHz memory, 48C, 4Gb DDR2 667, 500Gb Seagate + 80Gb Maxtor + 40Gb Maxtor = 620Gb, XP Home
Air cooled, total cost £160
Lukas W
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 21:26 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 22:22
May be, but isn't Fpsc using DarkLights now?

Anyway here's the new gui. I needed window controls and my own Gui just wasn't fast enough so I put BlueGui to use (haven't used that in ages, so forgot all the commands..)

Nothing is new feature-wise, just the little gui update here. I think it's starting to take shape as an editor now. It's quite easy to use at the moment. With the Air Brush and Automatic CSG implemented it's going to take 2 sec to make a room, a corridor, and a room again

Edit:
Finally BlueGUI has completely overtaken the old one. I'm going to add some summary reports applications now. Then I'll begin to add new brush shapes.

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Lukas W
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 02:53 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 03:00
Now it is possible to create Cones in TaffED. Also in the screenshot is the List Objects tool. This tool lists all objects, brushes, lights etc. etc. that you have created. Using the listview you can click on an item and that entity becomes selected in the editor. The other window is a Object Histogram, which basically just gives a summary of how many entities you have created.

Anyway,

Now to try and add Cylinders, then Wedges. After that comes either air or water brushes. Whatever sounds easiest. After that is the automaic csg function. Then a save and load function. After that the test game function. Then finally a demo! After that, the "ladder tool", "rope tool", and "stair tool" must be created. Then, finally I can begin to work on the game engine again, with a direct communication to the editor, using the "test game" funciton.

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Lukas W
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 22:24 Edited at: 7th Nov 2009 04:17
Cylinder shaped brushes can be created now. There is a problem with the texturing, I believe the vertices are upside down or something.. will have a closer look later. The "set object normals" command doesn't do anything to fix this, so I'm not sure what I can do yet.

Edit:
Now it's possible to create Wedge brushes as well.

Anyway here's the latest:

Maybe I should switch default backdrop colour to white?

Edit:
Now it's possible to create water brushes. It is also possible to switch between solid and water on already created brushes.

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Lukas W
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Posted: 7th Nov 2009 20:30 Edited at: 8th Nov 2009 04:33

update 2

New Features:


Overall:


Edit:
Huh, well I'm stuck now. CSG implementation was harder than I thought, mainly because I don't get the results I want (doesn't look like it likes inverted faces). The help files doesn't mention anything useful, so I'll have to experiment around a lot. Worst case scenario and I'll have to write my own csg functions which could take months as I don't have much experience in vertex data manipulation. Maybe it isn't even possible. Anyway it will probably be a while until the next post. Another solution would be to drop the air brushes, and simply go with a solid brush editor like 3DWS.

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Bizar Guy
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Posted: 8th Nov 2009 06:52
Well, you've done it.

I was curious, so I looked up the theif games in detail, and now I'm gonna have to buy them.

The third one first, as it's on steam. The other two are apparently better(?), but they're not on steam, and from where I was looking don't sell for much less online. hmm. Maybe I'll check out a used game store.

I'm a sucker for rouges.

Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 8th Nov 2009 17:49
I think they're selling all 3 Thief games bundled together, although I forget where - I think it must be either Amazon or Steam. Regardless, even if you don't like Thief 3, at least play the demos for the first 2: Thief 3 was fun, and was technologically better, but didn't quite capture the right atmosphere for me. (Well, except in the Cradle level, but that goes without saying.)

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Lukas W
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Posted: 8th Nov 2009 19:13 Edited at: 8th Nov 2009 19:13
I saw a Thief 1&2 combo box over at the local GAME store for like $9.99, so go check it out if you have GAME over there. Thief 1 has some troubles running in XP/Vista though but there is a patch somewhere (I think it was user created) that fixes the issue. Thief 2 runs well on Vista without any modifications, haven't tried Thief 2 on XP yet.

The Taffer will probably look better, but it will most likely never give the atmosphere of playing a Thief game. It is my goal though, to give that feeling of actually feel like the characters are real, and what you do will cost you your life in real life, as I felt while playing Thief 1. Thief 2 didn't have this much of an effect on me as I pretty much knew what to expect after playing the first game; which is why I'm so connected with Thief 1. Thief 3 however, was a total disappointment to me as ION Storm decided to switch perspective into 3rd person (but you could switch into first person at any time. however, by optimizing the game for 3rd person the first person mode was NOT very good at all). The AI was much better, true, but it just didn't feel right. As Darth Kiwi said, the only level that was enjoyable, and that gave that awesome atmosphere of actually playing Thief, was The Cradle.

In short, It felt as if I was playing a game that was made simply to earn money.


Anyway, as for TaffED, I decided to drop the Automatic CSG function (first of all, it was slow to have it automated (obviously, but I didn't expect it to be this slow), second, it didn't work very well with my custom created, hard coded, objects/brushes). With that said TaffED will be a solid/water brush editor. However, I might get back to this. The obvious advantage to use Air brushes with automated CSG is lower polygon count on the levels.

Next on my to-do list:
New/Clear, Save, Load, Load into game engine and apply physics, combine TheTaffer with TaffED (so you can use the "test game" function). When this is done, TaffED is no longer in Alpha. Which ultimately means I will release a demo (with some pre-made levels that you can play)!

sorry about the long post

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Bizar Guy
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Posted: 8th Nov 2009 22:37 Edited at: 8th Nov 2009 22:40
Hmm, well I spent some time searching, and I can get all 3 in a bundle for $16-20.

I'll do that when I buy them. It's the best deal I've found, AND contains all three!

Edit: but yeah, everyone seems to say the first two are the best. I might just play them in order then.

Edit 2: You're editor is getting plenty of features now, it seems.
And so far, it does feel more in this game like you're playing as a person more than any other game I've seen.

Lukas W
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Posted: 8th Nov 2009 23:29 Edited at: 9th Nov 2009 00:54
The only real reason to play them in order would be to learn about the background story and the world thief takes place in. For example if you begin with the 3rd instalment first, you wouldn't understand the eye zoom thing, or who the keepers are/what they do. So you'd become very confused (if you're into details like that).


And thanks! I've been working non-stop for almost two weeks (because I don't have a job at the moment ) and so the editor progresses fast. The player movement was something I wrote over a year ago and it's been modified to perfection until now (though I'm not quite satisfied with it).

I've just finished the Save/Load/New functions, and will begin to implement the game engine with the editor now. yay

For now though, here's a new screenshot:


Edit:
Haha, looks like I'll have to rewrite the player movement module (again). It is not optimized for levels created in TaffED at all. I was hoping the conversion would be fast and easy but doesn't look that way: I get stuck on the most random places, the timer based movement is effed up again (seriously, I don't know how that can be), the fps dropped 200frames.. but first I'll have to fix the level scaling in TaffED (should be about 1/5th the size), then the texture ID's (The Taffer and TaffED uses different texture id's, which makes me wonder how I managed to miss that until now). Meh, guess I'll sleep and have a look at this tomorrow.

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Lukas W
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Posted: 9th Nov 2009 20:52 Edited at: 10th Nov 2009 00:06
The lack of willpower to do any programming today caused me to start working on the textures.


But I've already become bored of creating textures as well.. I think I'll go play xbox for the rest of the day.

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Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 10th Nov 2009 16:06
Wow, keep up the good work, I'd love to play this once it gets past the alpha stage!

I'd recommend playing the games in order, for the story: Thief 3's gameplay isn't stellar, but the story is (I think) as good as that of Thief 1, and probably better than Thief 2's. If you played Thief 3 first without the backstory then you'd experience the mediocre gameplay plus a confusing story, which would be bad on both counts.

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Lukas W
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Posted: 28th Nov 2009 23:39
Posting to keep this thread from dying (how many days does it take anyway?) as I haven't really done anything of major significance.

I have no idea what happened but I lost complete interest in programming (again) and so I haven't done anything at all except add lots of comments and cleaned the code. I will have a good environment to get back to when I get new willpower to continue.

Not sure when I will have a new update ready (editor), probably next year. As a side note I haven't yet found a job so I'm utterly bored. I think this is why I am unable to continue development.

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Lukas W
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Posted: 27th Jan 2010 17:28
Posting because I don't want to create a new thread for this game when I finally have something new to show.

The Taffer (+TaffED)
A thief inspired game along with the mission editor (DBPro). [on hiatus]

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