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Once upon a time, I regularly frequented these forums. I spent a great deal of my middle teenage years slaving over FPSC, making entities, even writing some lengthy tutorials occasionally. Like a marriage though, FPSC and I had our ups and downs. The constant and unexpected, often unexplainable, bugs, the limitations of the engine and the slow pace of development all were the source of much agony over the years. Despite this, I kept coming back for more.

My last experience with FPSC was in the beginning of 2009, on a single-level game called "Acid Factory". Throughout the making of it, I was plagued by corrupted maps. I couldn't compile the map with full shaders because it crashed the build. Graphically, there had been little improvement in years. The limits of FPIs were also crippling, and the AI was pretty poor. After all that, I reluctantly turned my back on FPSC and decided to concentrate on my first love, filmmaking.

Annoyingly, two years later, I'm starting to get FPSC-pangs again. I've been lurking here for a few days, assessing whether FPSC has come on significantly enough. The progress seems almost too good to be true. So, I've got some questions I'd like to ask.

1) Are animated textures a go now? I understand shaders have been written to cope with this. What are the limitations of these animated textures?

2) Dark Lips. Has this been implimented in to FPSC and, if so, does it work with all characters, or only certain ones.

3) The editor source code got released, yeah? Has someone written a mod to get around that annoying 40x40x20 limit on level sizes.

4) Has poly-culling been improved? FPSC was once infamous for rendering huge chunks of unseen map that causes big slow downs.

5) It used to be that you could only have three characters in your level without framerate drops. Is this still the case?

6) Reflections. I hear this is 'possible' now, again with shaders. Anyone had any luck with this? Are mirrors possible now?

7) Have particle systems been implimented yet? Or are we still using decals for smoke?

8) Do dynamic entities still have box-shaped collision by default? I remember trying to make a train that the player could ride inside but always failing because the train had to be dynamic and therefore the player couldn't enter inside.

9) Does FPSC still suffer from unexplainable corruptions of data, or crashes during builds? I hear the latest beta is the most stable yet?

10) Any other notable improvements I should be aware of? No one's sneakily worked out a dynamic weather cycle, or day/night cycle have they?

Sorry to impose all these questions on you, but I would like to hear the opinions of fellow users. What stuff works? What stuff doesn't work? What stuff is a pain to get working but can be done? If all goes well, my intention is to make something this forum seems to have forgotten how to do: a non-honour game, without zombies.

AE

Hey AE, I was the same. I was one of the first to own an EA copy very early on, then I followed for a couple of years, but for the past 4 left it all behind, however when I come to return I had forgotten my details, email account was now invalid and I couldn't remember what card I paid with so I just went ahead and purchased FPSCx9 again (how cool of me eh?) so people probably think I'm new but I have been around the full hog.

However, upon my return I see fantastic innovations not just in the engine but from modders and scripters alike. I will try answer as much as I can but only to my 'so far' limited knowledge, but as the engine is now much more adaptable, it is quite easy to say, nothing is impossible anymore. period.

1) Animated Textures ARE a go now, bond1 made a shader effect for this, which looks pretty cool however I haven't gotten round to checking that out yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwuJaR7016U

2) LipSync is certainly available too as DarkVoices was implemented, AFAIK it works with rigged entities, probably have to have certain bones again something I haven't got round to trying yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo8fc7VMmYg

3) Out of all the mods developed, I have yet to see any talk of increasing map size. I think getting the current engine stable with the current map size is priority before expanding.

4) Culling has massively improved, even more with some of the mods such as WASP Mod. If you create simple portals, corridors etc. then it will render optimal frame rates from what I have tested. I have to admit, I have created 3 exceptionally large outdoor maps with plenty of static and dynamic entities and have managed to maintain optimum fps of at least 30 never below, however again, with the use of WASP mod using the same map I was achieving 50 fps!


5) The character/dynamic entity thing is still a bit of an issue, but most people are not adapting quite well to spawning enemies in a certain range/distance or when they are needed to save memory. However, I have noticed some frame rate drop with 3+ characters on screen at once, but nothing to complain about. It seems to worsen after 6.

6) I have noticed there seems to be reflection on the default water in the latest beta, however I haven't looked properly into that to see whether its hard rendered or shader rendered. I think one of the shader lads will be able to answer that one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW1-KLD9kmY

7) Particle's are now in use for decals. Some videos on youtube (especially the Nuclear Explosion one) show some of the awesome effects that can be achieved. You can now also set the decal to remain static in it's position rather than turn with the screen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeBcEnbC0w8

8) I haven't looked into making any models/importing into FPSC yet, but it seems this is possible. I downloaded a few of the free entities from the media section and a dynamic train I used I was able to freely walk in. Collision is still an issue, but not really with the player it seems to be more with the enemies.

9) I have been using the latest beta's since Jan and have compiled multiple test builds inc. SP and MP and haven't experienced a single crash yet.

10) Lots of notable improvements, probably too many to mention. I would go with the 'build on a whim' approach, in that if you start to develop your game using the latest beta, whenever you think you need something do a google search (forum.thegamecreators.com "search term") or use the forum search and no doubt you will have an answer or similar to what you are looking for.

FYI, the weather/night/day effect is now achievable using timers and a bit of scripting, however you would have to use a skybox without a sun (just clouds) as I don't think the skybox can be changed at runtime, so ambience and fog levels are changed to achieve the effect.
[Day/Night Cycle in the FPS Creator Community Guide]
also...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1yLHhnUhrA


Hope this helps dude, I am sure some of the more experienced shader guys/model creators will help you with the shader/model related questions a bit better.

You legend! That was really helpful, especially with all the youtube links. FPSC really has come on quite a bit.

I'd still appreciate other members' views on things.

AE

String sums basically everything up. I didn't manage to get every detail in his, so if I'm just repeating stuff, sorry. O-o

First, people HAVE talked of increasing map size. It's very possible, but people are worried about it lagging the game. However, if this is an indoor map, I know from glitching my game that this is NOT a problem. The main thing is if there is a door and walls seperating things from one another, it doesn't load it. (Exceptions to opened doors.) Of course, this could cause problems with outdoor levels, but it's possible to work around.

Reflections are now VERY possible (excepting the character - but would be easy enough to assign him a model) thanks to reflective water just in. I've seen it used many times since Water was implemented. I'm not ENTIRELY sure of how it works, and it's mainly for flooring, but the principle is all that matters.

Lots has happened to be honest, and if you just mess about in the forums for an hour or so, you'll see some of the awesome stuff around here.

If you turn the memory cap off, building and playing the games (from my experience) are entirely based on your specs. One map I can't play or build on my laptop, I can on my PC.

Of course, there'll still be bugs - it's inevitable - but the team around here are incredible, and will help you fix it fast enough. The only form of map corruption I've seen is in the beta, where occasionally, it decides to not show the textures of some segments, but you can just spend 2 minutes reinstalling the patch, and it's fixed. It never happens once the game has been built. It seems to occur during the test build. O_o

Ikey.

I bit the bullet and installed FPSC again, followed immediately by the latest update (V1.18.10). Upon running one of the sample levels with shaders enabled and full quality textures I found that while entities were rendered, none of the segments were, so I was basically just looking at a skybox. I played about for a minute or two in this test game and then hit escape only to have the editor crash on me.

Just spent the evening trying to fix the issue, but to no avail. I knew it was too good to be true. I might give it another go tomorrow...



AE

I've actually never seen this bug before... O_o Try 1.17 until 1.18's stable. Betas can be harsh to people.
1.17 doesn't have as much as 1.18, but it's a good thing to use to actually design your levels and see what FPSC can do as a base. If you decide to do this, I want to stress that you shouldn't judge FPSC on it. 1.18 is actually quite a large leap.

That happens when FPSC is running out of memory, make sure to close all programs before starting a testgame.

-Doomster

here's my answer:



Never used it, but Bond1 developed some shader that does that.



If its this Lipsync talking thingie: its in. Not for all the character of course. You aren't telling me that you want to use stock characters anyway, are ya?


My level's aren't small and they never reach that site... users who request this are usually completely new to mapdesign or screw at it:

Bottom line: You don't need it.


Framerate is all smooth as long as your not running some stoneage singlecore system.


Not at all... you can have a lot of characters running in a map now and its still working.


Yes, with reflective maps.


Are in. Never used them though.




Its running pretty stable...for fpsc.


There's Rolfy's Weather System out there...if you aim for outdoor maps that the player is in long enough to experience a day night cycle ... FPSC is not your engine.

Some major improvments are:

*Variables
*Airmod/Meleecombat with Firearms etc.
*Normalmapping on pretty much everything
*Water / Watereffects
*Postprocessing
*A lot of Sciptcommands I don't know by heart
*Perfromance

You might want to check this youtube video of mine. A small game made for a contest:

It features some of the features and a whole lot of enemies.

LINK



-Wolf

I'm with you AE. Although I'm not such a "seasoned" veteran of FPSC, I've been around for a good while (this is my second account...first got the ban hammer).

From what I've seen, FPSC is getting SO much better than it ever has been. I thought ragdolls in FPSC would only be but a dream and sophisticated particle effects was asking too much. But no, Lee and the rest of the great coding team was surprised and impressed me.

I can just piece together a small little level in about 20 min and it still has an amazing amount of depth with all the small things added.

All in all, I'm proud FPSC. I'm proud.

As with any engine theres a lot of hype, bells and whistles.

You have to look at how many games proper are actually produced with the products to date, although the defination of a game and whether or not its a success varies in game makers and game players concept of the term of course.

I guess in commercial terms its adjudged by how many copies of games made with any particular engine are actually sold and if its a financial success for the developers.

Engine developers showcase forums are normally a good indication of what can be done with an engine at any time given that most engines do not have an actual developers example of a game proper made with their products.

Failing that there may be of course many developers working away that no one knows about at such forums as these. I doubt there are many high end commercial developers working with FPSC however.

One cannot adjudge an engine by the individual features, possible or potential capability or what people say, now or in the future but only by what is proven at any given moment in time.

Well thanks, but I think I can safely say I know how to design a map in FPSC, even if currently I'm a little rusty. I personally don't think the 40x40x20 limit on 'playing area' is an issue, it's the fact that you can't place billboards, or other scenary outside that which is the drag.


Nah, I was just curious. I could only see it being useful to me in a hand-full of circumstances. Weather could be an interesting feature to implement though, and with a particle system already in place I'm sure it's more than possible.

I have to also say, Wolf, I was impressed by your video. Great job!


Good to see you're still around here, uman, your wisdom has been much appreciated for many years. Yes, I have been scouring the WIP and showcase boards for current examples; the overall quality seems to have gone up considerably.

..though what is it with these forums and zombies?

AE

That question has been on many of our minds. So...many...zombies...

Oh! I didn't mean you...I ment all these [/i]"I makez next crysis in fpsc, needz moar mapspace!!1" kids.[/i]
The billboard thing is something I agree with you.



Thank you



Was it ever different? I remember most people making some zombie shooter since I started to work with FPSC... I made two horror games myself and I must say that other scenarios (now that I'm working on a fantasy setting) are far more challenging and fun.

However: There are so much apocalyptic and zombie packs out there that most people simply do a game with them. I actually like survival horror games, the annoying thing is that a lot of people around here have more or less the same concept/storyline.

I'm certainly interested in what you are going to create



-Wolf

I have to agree with Wolf and obvious history, Zombie/Post Apocalyptic games are all the norm, where as if it's not that you're stuck in a WW2 bunker with lots of weird german guards wanting to randomly shoot you!

I have to admit though since the beginning of FPSC the scripting has come a long way, especially thanks to the ones who stuck by it, stuck at it and took the time to create work arounds, a LOT is achievable now especially with the mods, new variable system and separate timers.

Even though I would shamelessly regard myself as a real good level designer with years of experience to create believable scenes, I must admit every time I see Wolf's work it is awe inspiring to see! Always a pleasure to view and being inspired from.

I'm gonna be working real hard over the next few months on the game we are developing and hopefully (once we've rigged up the cutscenes with TF341) will be able to show at least some kind of preview on the forums!