Scary Robots (was Still Falling)

[jph_wacheski]

hummm., thought I would have posted something about You are Falling that I did long ago for that 7dfps,. guess I just posted on my blog. Oh well;

http://7dfps.org/?projects=you-are-falling

Anyway, I was inspired to revisit this when Kj posted and answer to someone about launching an object the way the launcher is facing, as trig problems seem to limit my game development,. this little code snip makes shooting easy (thanks Kjell!);

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float X, Y, Z, SX, CX, SY, CY, SZ, CZ;

// Some caching to speed things up :-)

X = CurrentModel.Rotation.X*PI*2;
Y = CurrentModel.Rotation.Y*PI*2;
Z = CurrentModel.Rotation.Z*PI*2;

SX = sin(X); CX = cos(X);
SY = sin(Y); CY = cos(Y);
SZ = sin(Z); CZ = cos(Z);

// Set velocity relative to rotation ( 8 is the actual velocity )

CurrentModel.Velocity.X = (CX*SY*CZ+SX*SZ)*55;
CurrentModel.Velocity.Y = (CX*SY*SZ-SX*CZ)*55;
CurrentModel.Velocity.Z = (CX*CY)*55;

I was messing with that and added the terrain setup I had used for the 7dfps game and now I have a nice rolling valley to build my next game in,. . The other motive is that I am still having loads of fun with SunVox and want to be able to work with some tunes using the dll,. so I dropped my current Android game to the back burner (although it is coming along nicely) so as to test some stuff with this,. . Now hacking around with the zbullet stuff for a possible better physics solution to my simplistic hackery you see in this build.

Currently my terrain 'physics' consists of adding speed if last-z-on-ground-hight is higher than previous and vise-versa,. more to come. Would like to do something like vector locust gameplay wise,. more turret building and base construction stuff anyway.., need ray casting vs terrain for AI of any use to work though. (line of sight)

[Kjell]

Hi jph,

Anyway, I was inspired to revisit this when Kj posted and answer to someone about launching an object the way the launcher is facing

Seems like you're only using 2 axes ( Ats used all 3 in his StarFox project ), so you could have simply used the approach i posted back in 2008

need ray casting vs terrain for AI of any use to work though.

Raycasting a height-map can be done using a very easy ( and fast ) intersection test, so you could always write it yourself if you don't want / need a entire physics engine.

K

[jph_wacheski]

Yes, I was likely using that older method for the 7dfps game,. however that new stuff just got me messing around with this new idea. I like getting a nice bit of code that does something useful and seeing what can be done with it.

"Raycasting a height-map can be done using a very easy ( and fast ) intersection test"

Would you do a tinny example,. I would very much like to use rays for line of sight on my AIs,. currently I am just balancing random tests with timers to get some organic semi-intelligence that does not just crush the player.

What I am using for the terrain is just the noise3 function for the mesh gen. and then testing in real-time with the same values, so when

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 if (currentModel.position.z-.25<noise3( currentModel.position.x*terrain_lock, currentModel.position.y*terrain_lock, terrain_seed )*125)

is true I hit the ground. I did try setting up the physics however getting the scaling right (between the simulation and the actual mesh) was driving me nuts. It was a bit of work to sort it out for this implementation as well.

This is actually enough physics for the game I am attempting to build, and easy/quick to work with,. I will revisit the physics dll later. This game was mostly for messing with the SunVox dll.

Here is a video of the current state of it; http://youtu.be/2yuWsr0PUXM?hd=1

[jph_wacheski]

ok I have a basic demo,. just for performance testing I post it here,.

I recently worked out a GUI I like for this that is all done in Fonts and renderTexts ( I was using meshes at first but I like the feel/ease of use of this better,. I am still balancing the player movement, speed, jumping,. etc. basically everything is still just tests, however it is feeling like a game already. Much more to do though.

I will add a menu system and at least 2 more areas for an alpha-demo release on my site,. I am going to do a pre-purchase thingy,. as soon as I work out a good system to provide updates for people that paid. Perhaps just a password protected forum on my site (wordpress), or does anyone have a better solution for that? I was looking at this [ http://www.icprojects.net/paid-downloads-plugin.html ] however it just does one-off downloads, with no updates,. will be good for finale game perhaps. I was going to use Desura, however it is a bit of a headache to work with, and requires a 'wait for approval' delay in updating,. and takes a cut ;(

feedback please.

Oh, I should add that you can Invert the mouse Y Axis control by pressing Y, and that you can change the sight buy pressing G, also press SPACE or LBM to skip the intro.

[Kjell]

Hmm,

as soon as I work out a good system to provide updates for people that paid.

Does Desura allow you to use a auto-update mechanism in your game? Or does that validate their terms? Otherwise that could be a option.

K

[jph_wacheski]

Desura has an auto updating feature,. you set up a 'folder' on their server and when you change the contents only the contents that changed are propagated to the installs,. I just did not like the waiting for them to approve new uploads,. and that they take a percentage, if they had a larger (steam like) base perhaps but i think it is like 7k currently. (also the client itself is a bit buggy) I think I will just work out something simple on my site,. I would like the game itself to look for updates and patch itself,. but this is stuff I really have little interest in working hard to implement, trying to focus on building a game I enjoy playing.

[Kjell]

Hi jph,

I would like the game itself to look for updates and patch itself,. but this is stuff I really have little interest in working hard to implement

Agreed .. that kind of stuff is boring to write / should have been build-in etc. On the other hand, it's really easy Attached is a simple example that automatically updates itself ( from 1.0 to 2.0 ) .. as long as you're connected to the internet and Dropbox isn't offline.

K

[y offs et]

Scary-Robots :
That, by far, is the most immersive product I've seen created with good 'ole ZGE.

Needs a compass, and some kind of faint sound of operation of the robots, so they can't sneak up behind you quite, and I mean small, so easily.
Grenade launcher duels are fun. The robots must be guarding something, probably connected to those earth-springs or smoking plants.
The font was unreadable, probably fixable with a menu to choose screen res.
Seemed like an awful lot of info, but then the game is easily paced.

Bravo jph

[jph_wacheski]

kj- neat,. it gets something,. but then the .exe is not a valid executable (according to windows) and the other file is just called foo no extension. Anyway I will keep it low tech for now.

y's- thanks! It seems I have finally gathered enough skill to build one of the games in my mind. What text is unreadable for you? I can read everything even down in a 640x480 window, what screen res. are you in?? The bit of noise on the left of the game play screen is just the array of bot locations, not really useful to the player, (does tell you how many are still active), I just left it in as decoration/noise. Perhaps mip-mapping the font will help. You can shut that off using the G key to change the sight settings.

I should have noted that, THERE IS A RADAR! It only appears when the player stops moving for a few ticks,. a small arrow will point to the closest bot,. it is located in the sight. this is for several reasons,. I want the bots to be able to sneak up on you,. so if you can always seed the closet ones direction this made the game too easy,. also cuts down on cpu usage calculating the direction, and for internal logic the players tech simply requires you stand still to listen for locations.

Yes, I am planing to add some bot noise,. as you say, they can sneak up now,. their firing does make sounds, but the music overpowers this most of the time,. The current audio network (in sunvox) was just hacked together as needed for testing and I am now rebuilding this. I realized yesterday that I can use side-chain compression to mix the music down when important sounds are generated,. sunvox is very cool!

[y offs et]

Scary-Robots :

All the print is unreadable, right from the intro. I use 1360-1024 res. - perhaps unusual, but works for my failing vision without glasses. Since the game starts full-screen, there is no option to experiment with different res. Mipmapping swap just removes all print.

There is an arrow! I was going to mention I would have done something more with the colors and size of the sight components. Can't see the use of sideways sight, unless you can shoot around corners.

Great music (says this flutist). I wouldn't add too much bot noise - the music does a lot for the feel of the game.

Gotta go try that sighting arrow.

[Kjell]

Hmm,

it gets something,. but then the .exe is not a valid executable (according to windows)

Weird .. i tried it on multiple systems and haven't had any problems myself. Sounds like it didn't download the update properly somehow. The example doesn't have any error handling nor checksum validation which you normally do want obviously.

the other file is just called foo no extension.

It's just a temporary file that would have been cleaned up when the updated application is launched .. but since that didn't happen it did not get deleted.

I guess a even simpler approach would be to download for example a ( RSS ) feed into your program and display a message ( that opens the appropriate url in a browser ) when a new version is available

K

[jph_wacheski]

thanks kj that is another fine idea,. . i will explore that.

Ys would you please test the attached, I rebuilt the font,. the old one was an odd size 2048x128 or something,. only thing I could think that may have thrown it off? Anyway, new one is 1024x1024 let me know if this fixes the font issue, thanks a bunch.

so I am going to reorganize my sound network,. build the menu system,. and add a couple more areas,. and lots of other stuff I'm sure,. .

[y offs et]

font fixed.

[jph_wacheski]

excellent,. thanks!

Ville,. there seems to be a bug in the font code when using non-square images. (for some vid-cards) Could just add a note to the docs.

I now have a menu working nicely,. but going for a bike ride to get more beer,. want to add more before updating the demo.

[jph_wacheski]

Ok, we now have a decent menu system working on this. press ESC to pause the game and access the options and help screens,. the help screen has multiple pages to hold extra info,. (and perhaps a beat-box like Debug has eventually,.) I added a new music part that plays when the menu system is open,. it is even cheesier! (I likes my fromage) I started a few different tracks in SunVox, a very ambient harsh-noise thing this morning that should work its way into the game at some point, and a few different styles of tunes. although I am leaning to ambiant/techno for this project,. The work flow is quite good with the sound system and ZGE working nice together.

There is also a new feature when you clear the level,. (read the text) and many little smoothed out edges. enjoy.