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Work in Progress / Faction conflict

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Satchmo
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Posted: 23rd Sep 2008 04:42
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Quote: "satchmo.
Yes!! I don't think it would run without! All the characers currently use 1 base mesh with different animations. weapons are also instanced, as are duplicated scenery items.
"


Good, I shouldn't have even doubted you.

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 30th Sep 2008 03:15
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Finally!
I have a little update. I can now get the entities AND scenery loaded from the editor into the game engine, using only one file to store both types of data (scene and character).

Bit of a mission to get rid of the bugs (a lot of anomalous cube appearing), but it's there. With everything in place to start building levels I'm going to start work on the character controls. (moving your team about, and controlling individual units in 3rd person). I don't think it should be too bad to get the basic 3rd person control in there. shooting and physics are already functioned in for the AI so the player will just call the same ones.

Originally in my plan, the irradiated were to be a totally AI faction. They would always be there as a menace you would have to waste ammo on, but I'm really starting to think they would be fun to play as. Coding player melee will make character control more of a chore, but I think getting to chainsaw marines will be too much fun. Opinions?

Sorry there are no screens. I'll try and get a quickie up...

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 30th Sep 2008 03:24 Edited at: 30th Sep 2008 03:24
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screen.. bit budget.. sorry... just fancied a little show and tell.

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Jesusaurisrex
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Posted: 2nd Oct 2008 02:00
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dude this is awsome.

Jesusauris... APPROVES!

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Inspire
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Posted: 2nd Oct 2008 02:47
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Yum.
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KeithC
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Posted: 2nd Oct 2008 05:44
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Butters; I would appreciate a response to the thread I've had stickied with your name on it:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=137427&b=21

-Keith

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Cyborg ART
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Posted: 5th Oct 2008 14:24
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Looks really good! Great work!

P.S. Check your mailbox if you want


Yousiesta is back...
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 18th Dec 2008 13:43 Edited at: 18th Dec 2008 15:26
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HEY! THis project is not dead!

I've been working on adding some major new features to the engine, and I've finally finished one of the biggies!

There is now a cover AI system, that means characters will identify areas of cover and use them during gun combat. It makes the whole thing look alot more real, as NPCs dont stand around suicidally on the spot getting blasted, they actually have a sense of self preservation.

The map in the following vid is just a mini test environment, 2 against 2 NPCs.

Check it out, I think its super uber cool! feedback much appreciated!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=koZxl76_4wI
(watch in high quality mode!!)

if you have decent internet, I advise getting the High quality version from

http://rapidshare.com/files/174532077/cover_demo.wmv.html

I hate YouTube quality by the way! Cant really see the tracers or the muzzleflash propperly!

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Kohaku
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Posted: 18th Dec 2008 16:06
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Looks really good!

I'd suggest you chuck a bit of fog in there and maybe some smoke from the guns or something that slowly drifts and fades away and it'll be more atmospheric.

Also, if you match the contrast of the bad/good guys with the world around them, or vice versa, it'll look even neater.

You're probably planning to do all of that when you feel it's ready anyway though.

So keep it up!


You are not alone.

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Inspire
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Posted: 18th Dec 2008 22:10
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The cover system itself looks great, although the movement of the characters seemed really slow and odd.

Awesome job though.
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 18th Dec 2008 22:43
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Inspire:

Thanks man, It has been a goal of mine since I started making games on Games Factory to do a decent cover system, and 10 years on I'm getting close, so I'm really proud of it!
You're right about the animation speed. It's partly because I want to see what's going on, and make sure the right things are playing, and partly down to FRAPS, and the animation/FPS smoothing being out!

Kohaku:

Cheers for taking the time to watch and comment, I appreciate it.
I'm not sure about general level fogging. The game story is completely changed (I couldnt hack making something so cheezy-sci-fi), and the levels will be set almost entirely in public spaces - offices, stations, malls etc, so I'm not sure if fog will fit, but I've got a nice volumetric effect using smoke particles that will happen when things catch fire or whatnot.

Character contrasts are right. The test level is using some FPSC textures, and the final ones will be brighter and more vibrant in keeping with the characters (who are all office-worker types!)

_**************************************************************_
!!NEW VIDEO!! !!NEW VIDEO!! !!NEW VIDEO!! !!NEW VIDEO!!
_**************************************************************_

I updated the cover system to recognise low objects as cover as well as walls. So characters can not crouch behind tables. Depending on the situation, they will either blind-fire (shooting without peeking out), or stand and shoot then duck back.

Heres a vid, theres one guy using a desk for cover, and one at the back using a doorway.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz_mdhivneY

_**************************************************************_
!!NEW VIDEO!! !!NEW VIDEO!! !!NEW VIDEO!! !!NEW VIDEO!!
_**************************************************************_

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Inspire
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Posted: 18th Dec 2008 23:28
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The new video is beautiful.

I am psyched to play this.
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 19th Dec 2008 14:16
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Thanks Inspire,

Thats actually inspired me to crack on with this. Name and nature eh?

I'm having so major issues getting the characters to work out what cover to pick once there are say 20-30 characters rather than just 4.
It all still runs at a good speed, they just tend to pick the worst places to stand!

At the moment, I'm using my old "find targets" code in conjuntion with the new "find cover" code, and I don't think the 2 work that well together, so the "find targets" thing will need to be re-done to make everyone more sensible.

On the upside, I finished the cover animations for rifles and MGs, so now all characters (rather than just SMGs as in the video) can use cover!

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Alucard94
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Posted: 19th Dec 2008 18:17
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Wow, that's awesome.


Alucard94, the member of the future of the past.
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Inspire
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Posted: 20th Dec 2008 02:49
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Quote: "Thats actually inspired me to crack on with this. Name and nature eh?"


Haha, I get that alot. I always end up using my name in some pun like that...

This game sounds promising. What ever happened to FotF or Contrast? I know that at some point your hard drive died, so you lost stuff...
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The admiral
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Posted: 20th Dec 2008 07:38
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Looks quite smooth only thing i noticed is the ai stays out of cover when its reloading so maybe they should move back into cover to reload then get back into action.

The admiral
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 20th Dec 2008 14:00
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Alucard: Thanks!

Inspire: Wow, FOTF and CONTRAST are long over. I'm still wanting to do a game in black and white, but I would want to have only white textures and all the black shading coming from a normal and spec map.
It's something I'll return to. FOTF I lost all my files for when my HD died. That and Umbra.

Admiral:
Thanks, and thank you for leaving a comment. Well spotted with the reloading, that is something I was aware of, but I only have the "standing" animation done for reloads, they also need one for crouched and hidden, also, there is no difference between the pistol/rifle/shotgun reload at the moment, but I will eventually do those anims.

I'm working on re-jigging the code for the target finding at the moment. I'll post a video of the rifle cover anims later. Right now the cover AI is only "clever" when there are up to about 10 characters, so I need to sort it out so that they don't do retarded things when there are more people.

On the editor side of things, the editor now supports the cover AI system, so the cover positions/types and so on can be changed in the editor. I'm now working on adding lights into the editor/save/game, because it's killing me that there isn't any light mapping...it looks so...1999 right now..

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Inspire
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Posted: 21st Dec 2008 00:22
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I didn't think you were still working on them, I was wondering why you stopped.

But damn, that sucks. I thoroughly enjoyed Umbra.

That sounds cool though. I always wanted to make a game for my own personal enjoyment, and just try to put a ton of decently smart guys on screen. That's what I think this game is gonna do, if not more.
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Chris Ritchie
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Posted: 21st Dec 2008 15:14
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Excellent job Butter glad to see this project moving on, always liked the look of this one. The AI looks great, cant abide dumb enemies myself. Looking forward to the next update, keep up the good work.


Lead programmer ULIDIA
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 23rd Dec 2008 13:34 Edited at: 23rd Dec 2008 13:39
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Quite a cool update...I hope. I have a new video up, showing a larger number of characters using the cover system on much larger map. Appart from some obvious bugging, where they stand to reload, and occasionly pick cover thats right in the open, it seems to be running pretty well. Even with CPU-hog FRAPS running I still had a quite acceptable 33FPS.
Check the vid at the bottom of this post.

Here are some more texture variations for the characters:




*******NEW VIDEO**************NEW VIDEO**************NEW VIDEO*******
*******NEW VIDEO**************NEW VIDEO**************NEW VIDEO*******
NEW VIDEO HERE
WATCH IN HIGH QUALITY, OR YOU CANT SEE ANYTHING!
*******NEW VIDEO**************NEW VIDEO**************NEW VIDEO*******
*******NEW VIDEO**************NEW VIDEO**************NEW VIDEO*******

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Alucard94
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Posted: 23rd Dec 2008 13:55
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The cover system is superb! Although I have to say, the bullets are going quite slow.


Alucard94, the member of the future of the past.
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Inspire
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Posted: 23rd Dec 2008 17:31
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That looked amazing!

Though I didn't like how the team I was rooting for lost...

And yeah, the bullets do move terribly slow. haha
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 23rd Dec 2008 22:59
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LOLs

Yeah, the bullets are a little slow right now. I think they lose some speed on recording.. I was having trouble with them not colliding with walls after a certain speed. To be honest I gotten used to them that speed, so thanks for the heads up Alucard!

Inspire
Quote: "
That looked amazing!
Though I didn't like how the team I was rooting for lost.."

Thanks dude. The Earth Force guys always seem to get killed! I think the weapon balance is way off, with most of the Corvex having Assault Rifles!

Glad you liked it though. I'm (finally) working on player stuff tonight, hopefully there will be a degree of interactivity in the battles soon!

Over and out!

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Progressive new
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Posted: 24th Dec 2008 04:39
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Awesome job

I liked.





Good look
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Plystire
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Posted: 24th Dec 2008 11:35 Edited at: 24th Dec 2008 11:37
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I have to say, Butters..... Wow. That was absolutely superb!! Your cover system was great to watch. I was so enthralled by the AI, actually, that I almost didn't notice that you have guys limping around. Lol, if you've mentioned that, sorry, I pretty much started skimming the thread around the time fallen one came in.


About bullets... I noticed that they seemed to have a certain intentionally slow speed about them. I had the same problem for the bullets in my game. I ended up increasing the speed to what I needed, had the bullets keep track of where they were in the last "check for bullet collision" routine and used that in conjunction with their current position to produce a line segment that I could use for quick lineseg calculations. More often than not you can get away with a cpu-cheap "distance to line segment" calculation for characters, but for static objects, a line-to-box collision tends to work best if you can keep the amount of those low enought o not effect the framerate.

Of course, what am I going on about here?? After seeing that video you've probably already had that or something better implemented!


Great work! Don't stop!!!


The one and only,


Proud supporter of FPI EditPad!! Make scripting easy!
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 24th Dec 2008 13:45
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Cheers Progressive.

Plystire, thanks for the comprehensive reply! I have to say, I think the Fallen1 essays probably put people off the first page! Anyway, now that you mention it, I don't think I did actually mention about the limping, but yes, after a certain amount of damage they will bleed, and limp. You may have noticed that some even fire off a few final shots as they die!

The bullets suggestion is good, although it does make the framerate suffer! There can be anything up to about 250 tracers flying around at any time. The best solution I can find is to precalculate the point at which a shot will hit a wall when it is fired. And then only check collision with characters once it's moving. If it doesn't hit any characters and it reaches the pre-determined collision point then it must have hit the scenery.

Player control is turning out to be 100x more of a headache than I expected. I've got noob style WASD with no rotation. Keep getting DarkAI errors, even though the player control function has NO darkAI commands in it. Hopefully Jesus will save the day, what with it being his birthday tomorrow!

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 4th Jan 2009 02:30
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Well, it's been a little while since I posted.
I've made very few changes to the actual look of the game, and have been working at adding player control. Both 3rd and 1st person.
Have a video of the new player controls, and resulting game play here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=IX3iLO1BoFU

Please check it out!

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draknir_
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Posted: 4th Jan 2009 04:51
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Very cool vid! I love seeing how this progresses. The bullet tracers still seem a little slow to me, but maybe that's an aesthetic choice.

PS: I've got to know what the name of that RATM remix is! Please ?

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Bizar Guy
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Posted: 4th Jan 2009 05:57
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Amazing vid!

PLEASE finish this one, you're very good at this.

I like that you really can't see when you blind fire, and much more. This could be one of the few shooters I end up enjoying.


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Airslide
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Posted: 4th Jan 2009 07:03
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Sweet video. The only thing that bugged me was the player movement speed and the animations - obviously it's still a WIP so those are bound to change. The player movement didn't seem natural enough (perhaps the speed or a camera thing, or maybe I'm just crazy ). The animations could most certainly benefit from Enhanced Animations, which I highly recommend, as it will smooth the transitions and allow you to play multiple animations on the same character (ie: reloading and running at the same time).

The first person could probably use a first person weapon model or something, with animations setup to replicate the third person animations - that way it might seem more natural to the player.

Great job, can't wait to see how this turns out

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djchaos
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Posted: 4th Jan 2009 11:24 Edited at: 4th Jan 2009 11:28
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Butter fingers would you mind if we slightly borrowed some of the World Editor ideas (not the game ideas). mainly the way it works and stuff, it won't look anything like the one you've made but the way it works seems really kool

edit: the world editor won't be made public, it is for in-house use only

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 4th Jan 2009 14:13 Edited at: 8th Jan 2009 12:45
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draknir_

Thanks... oh and that tune:
It's from a live set by Sebastian from Ed Bandger records.

Bizar Guy
Quote: "Amazing vid!
PLEASE finish this one, you're very good at this."

Hey thanks dude, that's really nice of you to say! As you can hopefully see, I have been putting in MANY hours on this. I have no intention of leaving it unfinished, although I am a long way away from done!

Airslide
Thanks. I know... the player control esp the 1st person bits are very clunky. I think the run animation is the main offender, it's way too jerky, but then there are over 2000 frames of animations on these guys, and they're all hand done!
I have enhanced animations, I've just found it a bit long winded to use. I suppose I need to do small practice project first.

djchaos
Um, what do you mean? I wasn't aware thay my world editor had anything very original in it that could be copied!! But I'm flattered you would like to!

I want robotic legs.

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Airslide
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Posted: 4th Jan 2009 21:34
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Once you establish a system for using Enhanced Animations, it's pretty straightforward. For example, I've made a model importer utility that I use to convert models to DBO. I also use it to export animations in the EnAnim format, and strip the model of its animations before export. In game it's not that difficult to set up.

If you want, I can send you my little utility, after I make it so it can read the animation ranges in through a text file (as it gets tedious setting them up one by one over and over again if you need to re-import something). It uses BlueGUI so it's pretty easy to get the hang of.

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 5th Jan 2009 10:58 Edited at: 5th Jan 2009 11:02
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Spent all day (and most of the night) yesterday actually modelling and retexturing assets to go into level editor.
I now have some actual war torn streets for the player to run around, rather than rubbish looking test areas.



Made some smaller important changes to the engine too. Weapons now do varying amounts of damage (so a shotty at close range is a 1 shot kill), also added new AI for team mates (follow player, find cover near player, cover you if you move up etc). I'll make a shiny new video as soon as I've finished optimising.. until then, if you missed it on the last page, then Heres a link to a video of the player control system

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djchaos
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Posted: 5th Jan 2009 14:08
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nice work mate!, are you still working on that game that was based in a London council estate in the future?

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Bizar Guy
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Posted: 5th Jan 2009 14:42
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Nice, it looks like The visuals are pretty well set. From an artistic point of view as well as a gameplay one though, there are a lot of places on the map where the textures of the characters and the map blend together. Not like camouflage, but like there's nothing to define them. The two ways you can solve this are a high contrast color pallet, or some good lighting with high value brights and low value darks. I don't remember if you said, but I'd also guess you're planning to add light maps to the map.

Of course this isn't high priority at this point, but I would recommend trying some more extreme lighting on the characters.

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draknir_
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Again, fantastic work, I love the style. It reminds me a bit of Deus Ex, which is nothing short of awesome.

It might be worth considering an increase in the resolution of those ground textures, they look a bit splotchy at the moment. If the camera position is going to be higher than what we see here it probably won't be as noticeable, but right now they really contrast with the higher resolution characters and objects.

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 8th Jan 2009 12:45 Edited at: 8th Jan 2009 12:46
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Quote: "are you still working on that game that was based in a London council estate in the future?"


That game is actually what this started out as. Except that was very badly coded, I reached a point where there was no extra FPS to be saved, and more features to be added. So I made an editor to have more control over the way my actual levels were loaded and handled by DB, and this what I have now. My theory is that with a solid editor, and a tight core game engine, I can actually make the council estate game again, and faster in the future.

Quote: "there are a lot of places on the map where the textures of the characters and the map blend together. Not like camouflage, but like there's nothing to define them."


True, and well observed. I've just kind of started trying to add light mapping, but I'm having a hard time, because dark lights wants to use something like 2x2 DBP units for each 1 lightmap square, but my characters are only 6.5 DB units high, so the shadows are massively blocky, the only fix (short of changing the scale of everything), is to set the light map detail higher, but that pushes the load time for a level into the "read a book and make a cup of tea" region.

Quote: "It might be worth considering an increase in the resolution of those ground textures, they look a bit splotchy at the moment."


Agreed. I'm thinking of dropping things like the guns from 1024x1024 down to 256x256 and upping the floor from 1024x1024 to 2048x2048.
We'll see what happens when I get the normal mapping and lighting in. It might not be so bad!

Thanks for taking the time to comment guys. It really is feedback from others and encouragement that keeps me feeling like working on this! Anyway, I took a break from making code to model some new buildings for the level, here they are... a mansion, with pillars nicely setup for peak and shoot fighting, and a modular factory (3 parts) that can be aranged in different layouts!




I want robotic legs.

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djchaos
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Posted: 8th Jan 2009 13:49
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I am guessing you are using 3DSMax? you really need to add a "sky light", go to modifiers and turn on "Cast shadows" and render, see the difference? now render-to-texture a complete texture map (you might need to change the UVW layout) and it will give you a far better result

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 9th Jan 2009 10:17 Edited at: 9th Jan 2009 10:18
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DJ Chaos.

That post sounded very patronising! I use Maya 8.5. And the images were rendered in DB. I realise I could have put up some nice renders done in Mental Ray, with like caustic illlumination and whatnot else, but it always seems a little pointless, because they never look that good in game!

Quote: "complete texture map (you might need to change the UVW layout) "

Both models are perfectly UV mapped, no overlaps, no mirrored sections, no stretching!

I want robotic legs.
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 10th Jan 2009 17:00 Edited at: 10th Jan 2009 17:08
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I realised that outside player mode I got nearly 60FPS, but once I went into player control mode it dropped to around 30FPS! So I spent a long time sorting the player control functions etc to get them nice and tuned. Then I applied the same techniques to the AI. I get around 70FPS on the non player control. and 55FPS on player control!


Thanks you for feedback everyone! Taken alot on board and changed some things from peoples crit:
*Quadrupeled the speed of tracers!
*Increased peak animation speeds - although still too slow!
*Floor textures are now 2048x2048 (blurred due to neccessary quality settings on the laptop!)

Still to fix:
* No "moving and reloading" animation
* Allys don't recognise if player is using cover
* Ally commands (move to, take cover, attack) still super buggy, and no hud for them!

Next things to implement (it's all about the light baby):
*Lights and Lightmapping
*sun rays
*Shadow mapping

So, a new video! This time we're outside of the test levels, playing a city street. Player and 2 allies, and a number of enemies to fight.
Even with FRAPs running it still holds around 30FPS, which is quite acceptable!
Sorry it's a bit hard to see the enemies in the distance!
I'm going to work on the actual character models this weekend, so expect another exciting update soon!

VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO VIDEO

I want robotic legs.
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Airslide
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Posted: 11th Jan 2009 06:28 Edited at: 11th Jan 2009 06:31
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Don't forget to mess with enhanced animations! I bet if you start learning it now you'll find you don't necessarily have to make a number of extra animations, and the smooth transitions alone are well worth it.

The video looks great. May I make a few suggestions? First off, I don't know if it was just the perspective, but your gun seems a little too accurate perhaps - this is a minor detail at this point, but I think it would make combat a little more interesting - and make the tracers look a little better - if you decreased the accuracy of the player's weapon (or weapons in general, though it seemed like the AI was a little less accurate).

Also, how are you handling bullet collision? Judging by the previous video, I'd say that the bullet collision is a raycast between each point of the tracer (or perhaps the tracer is a box checking for collision). Since they are faster now, you could take the HL2 approach - bullets hit instantly, and tracers move fast but slow enough to be noticed. So even though your target could be dead before the tracer technically arrives, to the player it looks fine. It's really a performance thing, you only have to do 1 raycast as opposed to multiple or a box collision.

On another note, do you think you could tie the muzzleflash to the weapon? It seems kind of odd having it stay behind when your gun moves away, even if only for a moment. It seems to stay a little too long too, making it seem like a constant but spinning muzzleflash during automatic fire, and it may look better with a brief pause. Of course, I don't know this for sure, your way may really be better when compared, this is just my first thought Also, the camera seems to be able to stray a little to far from the player, and I never noticed you looking up or down...

Anyways, great job! Sorry I came up with so many things to criticize, but in the end it makes the game better

EDIT: Wow, I was having a terrible time wording the above. I'm almost having trouble understanding my own writing

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The admiral
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Posted: 13th Jan 2009 06:54
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Yes with advanced animations you can play more than one animation at a time so you can apply walking to the legs and reload to the arms etc.

The admiral
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 13th Jan 2009 10:43
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Quote: "Don't forget to mess with enhanced animations!"


Quote: "Yes with advanced animations you can play more than one animation at a time so you can apply walking to the legs and reload to the arms etc. "


Yes, thanks guys! As I said earlier, I actually own Enhanced animations already, but as there are ALOT of animation commands, implementing it is going to be alot of work! I am aware of all of the benefits of using it.

Quote: "I think it would make combat a little more interesting - and make the tracers look a little better - if you decreased the accuracy of the player's weapon (or weapons in general, though it seemed like the AI was a little less accurate)."

There is no difference between the accuracy of a weapon in the player's hand or an NPC. The accuracy is dependent on the weapon. It interesting you mention it though, because I thought I needed to make them more accurate! I guess that's something that will be decided in Beta.

With regards to tracers, I'll look into what you're talking about, they are an area that could really do with alot of optimisation!

OK, with muzzleflash I have the problem that the gun is glued to the character's hand limb, so if I glue the muzzleflash to the weapon barrel limb it dissapears!

Anyway, I'll look into all of this, including enhanced anim. Just don't hold your breath for enhanced anims, because I'm not doing it any time soon!

I want robotic legs.
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 13th Jan 2009 11:14
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Video

I want robotic legs.
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Inspire
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Posted: 13th Jan 2009 23:12
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The new video looks sick, although I do think that the textures need to get bumped up, and that you should darken the texture on the big monster guys (they seem way too light, I just wanna hug them).

Quote: "I want robotic legs."


I was just talking about that today. Weird.

Keep it up.

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Airslide
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Posted: 14th Jan 2009 03:29
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Quote: "Yes, thanks guys! As I said earlier, I actually own Enhanced animations already, but as there are ALOT of animation commands, implementing it is going to be alot of work! I am aware of all of the benefits of using it."


Well, truth be told, you'll end up spending a lot more time on it the longer you wait

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