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Work in Progress / MikeS GameMaker [Developer Log]

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MikeS
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Posted: 7th Mar 2005 07:58 Edited at: 8th Mar 2005 08:44
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Hi there,

Well, spent all of today working on this project. It's a fully functional game maker. Right now, there's really only one kind of game you can make, and that's a walk around beat em up.

The first map editor is almost complete, and it's what will be used to develop all of the outdoor games.




Current Features:
-Create ,save, and load matrices
-Loading of textures for matrix and skysphere
-Saves all information to be loaded into game engine
-Smooth Matrix

Pending Features:
-Generate matrix from heightmap
-Built-in help files

I plan on using an old editor of mine for outdoor games. It's currently on hold until we get some native csg commands in DBP, or I write my own. (Some of you may remember this project)



Current Features:
-Vertice lighting

Pending Features:
-CSG
-Lightmapping
-Export as .x

The third alternative, is to support .bsp maps. Haven't personally played with BSP much though. I understand it's pretty much broken though, so that may need some heavy modifications to get working.

Anyway, here's an in game clip of my game engine. Basically what goes on is there's a small intro(.avi) and you've just been stranded on a planet, and aliens are coming to get you. Kill them all and get to your spaceship and you win!

[Highest Quality 17 megs]
http://www.curvedbasic.com/gm/concept/Moon_higher.avi

[High Quality 8 megs]
http://www.curvedbasic.com/gm/concept/Moon_high.avi

[Low Quality 3 megs(no sound)]
http://www.curvedbasic.com/gm/concept/Moon_low.avi

*Note: Music by a band called Hoobastank, alien model from the Alienware compo., and the model is included in DBP. They're all placeholders for now.

Anyway, time to talk a little bit more about the engine and its features itself. This is being programmed in DBP, so it performs exceptionally well (60+FPS with 50 aliens on screen animated at once on my machine). As of now, there's three different ways to win a game.

1.) Kill all the enemies
2.) Reach a waypoint(like the spaceship)
3.) Kill all the enemies and get to a waypoint

I plan on adding a few more victory conditions, such as collecting a set number of items.

The whole engine is based on scripts and config files. All intro files can have a combination of an .avi movie and text. I have a mini parser in the works that can really improve the introductions by giving them narrations.
With this parser,I can also tweak enemy properties to how I like(Damage, awareness, speed, health, etc.), as well as other game factors.

Just to keep myself in order, I'll write down a pending feature list.

Pending Features:
- Guns
- Spells and effects
Water
- BSP support
- Indoor Level editor
- Loading and placement of scenary objects
- Unlimited levels
- Development environment for Scripts and configs
- *Multiplayer(considering)
- Customizable Menus
- Customizable In game interface
- A* pathfinding or something similar
- Day/Night cycles

Things to Fix and work out:
-Smooth animations(ensure an animation finishes before starting a new one.)
-Improve lighting(More control over ambient light)
-Improved water

User Suggustions:
-Lan co-op play
-Interactable objects.(Throwing, etc.)


<- Designates something has been added or checked off.

Some other things to be expected of course are piles of media which I've been collecting for some time, as well as other little editors. Built one last week that'll tell you everything you need to know about your system, which could be helpful if you just want to know what your system can push.

Kind of a lot to suck in at once, but just let me know your comments about the video if anything .

Also, please give any suggustions you have for this project. The earlier I implement new features, the better(Ex: Multiplayer).



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
(Formerly known as Yellow)
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Baggers
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Posted: 7th Mar 2005 08:58
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Wow man, sounds sweet..and damn hard work too. But this intro is so well laid out id back you all the way to completion !
Im just Downloading the video now, The only other help i can give is on opinions:
Multiplayer-If you do it, start with LAN, get a good solid game going on there and then consider over the web...Id personaly love to see a Decent CO-op game done in DB (Or anything for that matter, i havnt seen a truly great co-op game in a while now)
Um...ok im dry man...i may be back after seening this video !
Good Luck man
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MikeS
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Posted: 7th Mar 2005 09:36
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Hi Baggers, thanks for the feedback. What do you think of the video?



Anyway, a little update. I spent the last hour cooking up a small multiplayer chat program to warm up my multiplayer skills a little.



All messages are sent fine as far as I can tell, and fairly fast(Haven't measured the speeds yet).

Multiplayer will actually be super easy to setup for what I plan. Actually only planning on 2 different multiplayer modes. One will be the standard deathmatch, with just players, while the other will be co-op in a level like you see as above.

The thing is, this is the first project I've really been excited about in a long time, so that's definitly a good thing.



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
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Wiggett
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Posted: 7th Mar 2005 09:54 Edited at: 7th Mar 2005 09:56
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whoa whoa whoa wait a sec, walk around beat em up?! damnit im tryin to put together an xmen beat em up like xmen legends style, if i can use your engine that saves me huge trouble! when i get this vietnam shooter minigame finished i wanna see your game maker!

edit: watched the vid, prety basic a beat em up, but still somethign i can use will be using my own xmen models aswell as giving them abilities and being able to pick up objects to throw etc. but can that be added into your engine easily enough?

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Jess T
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Posted: 7th Mar 2005 10:37
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Looking nice.

It's great to see that you've organised yourself.
All too often people ( including myself ) start off just going at it with nothing but what's in their head, and concequently it never gets finished.
But, you've nailed it on the head this time.

The video looked nice ( 'cept for the extreme low quality in 3MB ), albeit that the characters move a little slow.

It'll be interesting to see where this takes you

Jess.


Team EOD :: Programmer/All-Round Nice Guy
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BF game programmer
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Posted: 7th Mar 2005 11:09
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awsome the video looks great

james bond rules
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Nack
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Posted: 7th Mar 2005 11:27
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oooo look nice! game editor! WOOOT! i race u to release mike! hehe


I have NOT abandon these ^......^_^V hehe
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MikeS
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Posted: 8th Mar 2005 07:16
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Quote: " will be using my own xmen models aswell as giving them abilities and being able to pick up objects to throw etc. but can that be added into your engine easily enough?"


Was planning on everything being static, but since you mention it, I'll work it in. Have been doing some experimentation with Newton Physics recently, and I'm just trying to learn the basics. Newton could always be a possiblility, though I have plenty of physics functions of my own. Although, Newton having built in collision would be a definite plus.

@Jess

Thanks for the compliments. Organization is definitly the key to any project especially in a massive one like this. I have a higher quality video if you like, but 68 megs might be more filespace than I can afford.

@BF game programmer

Thanks

@Nack

Hehe. I'm still very eager to see more and more of your game editor.

---------------------------
Homework load will be light this week, so that means lots of work will get done. Planning on adding water to the level editor, as well as custom interfaces.



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
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Jess T
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Posted: 8th Mar 2005 08:33
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Quote: "Thanks for the compliments. Organization is definitly the key to any project especially in a massive one like this. I have a higher quality video if you like, but 68 megs might be more filespace than I can afford."


Anytime
And, I agree. Without the organization, things get confusing and just fall apart very quickly!
I downloaded the low quality vid cos I'm on a strict internet budget ( Uni charge crazy prices per the MB, on a T1 connection. It's like giving a kid a lolly and saying "Now, if you eat it, we'll have to cut off your arm." Thanks anyway

Jess.


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MikeS
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Posted: 8th Mar 2005 09:03
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Hehe, I see why you had to go with the low quality video then.

-------------------------------
Small update:

At the moment, I'm developing the multiplayer portion seperatly. Both the game engine itself, and this multiplayer program have a modular design, so this will pose little to no problem when it becomes time to hook them together.

Multiplayer Features so far:
- Stores username
- Four users successfully connected(No idea where I'll actually put the cap at this moment)
- Text chat

As well as working on the multiplayer in the last few hours, I added some more to the engine. Water was added, and I must say it looks very nice. Basically, it's just a ghosted matrix and has three parameters you can set(sea level, wave height, wave speed). Have to say it looks nice.




I also plan to add another parameter defining if the water is poisionous or not(This will allow you to have lava, etc.), or to just disable water entirely.

The last thing I messed around with, was some ambient light settings. So when you go underwater, the screen is dimmed blue, and it returns to normal when you resurface again. I plan on adding some more control for the user to define day/night cycles. I even wrote a little snippet, so it may end up something like this if you want to preview. http://www.curvedbasic.com/Forum2/viewtopic.php?t=25

Well, those are all the updates for today. Still working on the interface. Only really a matter of creating a few images for right now, so I should be able to finish that by the end of today or tomorrow.



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
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Nack
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Posted: 8th Mar 2005 09:54
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whoa...u hav..updates so fast! VERY nice...u mite acutally beat me! *shake fist* this should be interesting, multiplayer lol....btw if u want to see shots..i posted a few on my site b4.....hehe

-nack


I have NOT abandon these ^......^_^V hehe
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Benjamin
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Posted: 8th Mar 2005 20:40
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Looks very interesting. Just wondering something: when those four users connected, as well as you seeing them, could they all see eachother?


"Lets migrate like bricks" - Me
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Mattman
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Posted: 8th Mar 2005 21:39
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CB coming back! Nice, can't wait to see a finished product

Something to doing?
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Digital Dragon
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Posted: 9th Mar 2005 02:40
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Bit of topic but I am trying to make a simple chatroom and I dn't have a clue how to get one like MikeS'. Could you plz point me in the right direction
thx

Working for ELB software on Realms of Tutopia!
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MikeS
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Posted: 9th Mar 2005 08:47
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Ooo Nack, looking very very good.

@Benjamin

If you mean physically seeing the player, I haven't implemented any 3D system quite yet. If you mean seeing them as in being able to all talk to each other, then yes, they all update at the same time.

@Matt

Hehe, thanks. Everyday becomes better and better as I get to mess around with the engine.

@Mrnaughty

See the codebase for multiplayer, the DBP functionality example, and do a search around the DBP section for "multiplayer" or "chat".



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
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Benjamin
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Posted: 9th Mar 2005 19:48
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I meant them all being able to see eachother as in they all show up in eachothers checklist. Nevermind, I didn't see those images before


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MikeS
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Posted: 14th Mar 2005 00:47 Edited at: 14th Mar 2005 00:48
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[3/13/05]

I'm still around and working on this project. Did a lot of work on the multiplayer yesterday, but encountered some bugs unfortuantly. These bugs might just be because I'm trying to run more than 1 copies of the same multiplayer .exe at once. Can't know for sure, but am going to keep messing around with it.

The way this project is headed, is there'll still be single player, but I'm going to put a lot of focus on getting the multiplayer part built right.

Also fired up my old copy of VB6, and I'm going to work on a project manager for the project(and to learn VB ).

Finally, I posted a small snippet of a DBP interpreter I was working on in the general section(under the compiler thread). This isn't what the syntax is, but it's what it may look like.(Left is DBP code, right is my scripting code)





A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
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The Nerd
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Posted: 15th Mar 2005 22:50
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You gonna sell this program or is it gonna be free?


PanzerGames website :
http://www.panzergames.tekhawk.com
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MikeS
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Posted: 16th Mar 2005 07:20
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I'm planning on the engine being free, yet I'll put a watermark on it. If you want to sell games made with this, then I may slap on a license fee or something.

Still haven't decided whether I'll pursue the commercial road though. It's all a matter of the end product.



A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
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