Advanced Tactical Fighter


Unfathomable Depths said:
Very early Windows build.

Any comments welcome :)
...
Click to expand...
Very early is right. I've never played the original, but I think I might have the general idea down.

1. You could start by adding some method of preventing the user from going out of bounds.
2. The controls don't feel right, even for a hovercraft. It should slow down when you stop pressing the accelerator. Gravity would make it feel more natural. Flying up cliffs like they aren't even there just feels weird.
3. Obstacles or something to shoot at.
 
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Unfathomable Depths said:
TheGoodDoktor said:
I think you should add a shadow to the craft, that would make a big difference.
Moving forwards it would be a good idea to get a raytrace implemented then maybe a projectile system and a particle system so you could fire weapons.
Do you do any processing using the heightmap prior to rendering? Being able to deform the heightmap in the game would be a cool feature.
Click to expand...

Yea - there will be a shadow. Right now I'm just using a semi-transparent copy of the players ship. I'll fix this soon.

What do you mean by a 'ray-trace'? For collision detection?

Irrlicht has a built-in particle system I think. Eye candy like that is way down the list. I don't know how it will perform on the Pandora so I'm keeping it simple for the time being.

Projectiles - yes - cannon and missiles first.

No deforming of the landscape. I've seen examples of it being done in Irrlicht but this is my first proper 3D game so I'm keeping it pretty basic and concentrating on gameplay.
Click to expand...

For the raytrace I mean a function which you specify a line in 3d and it will trace this line through the scene and determine if it hits anything and where, if you're using a heightmap you can write a pretty optimal one. You can use this for projectiles, sight checks and many other useful things.

Simple example:

int Raytrace(const Maths::Vec3 &start, Maths::Vec3 &end);

return value: surface type hit (-1 for no hit)
start: Position to start trace from
end: Position to end, modified by function on collision.

Particles don't have to be 'eye candy' at this stage, you could just do something simple for a bit of feedback. Your choice really.
 
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The camera needs (in my opinion) to be more sort of fixed to the craft, while i like the effect of the camera lagging behind when flying over small hills and such, but when flying to and from higher ground the craft disappears out of sight.
Perhaps if the camera height was sort of fixed to the crafts height, but didn't follow it unless the craft was entering the upper/lower bounds of the screen?

I agree whit Mr.Confuzed that the control feels awkward.
If it's a classic hovercraft is should turn quiet fast, velocity changes occur quiet slow and there would be no steering other than the change of direction of the forward force.
If it's just a 'hovering' craft, well i guess that a little faster steering wouldn't be too bad.

I also feel that the camera Should lag a little behind when turning, and then settling on the same direction as the craft, but that is just a feeling.
A sort of afterburner a la terminal velocity style would add a lot of fun, especially since it would make turning somewhat easier, well it would feel like it was easier anyway :)
A jump ability would also be quiet nice, if for nothing else just to be able to use the afterburner, head towards a mountain and jump, just to see the craft flying of towards the sky :D
 
Unfathomable Depths said:
Ahh, artwork - the bane of my games programming life. Anyone interested in doing some?
Click to expand...
I'd be willing to, I'm still quite new to this, but I'm pretty sure I could do it.
 
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Excellent feedback, thanks everyone :)

Dimacus said:
The camera needs (in my opinion) to be more sort of fixed to the craft, while i like the effect of the camera lagging behind when flying over small hills and such, but when flying to and from higher ground the craft disappears out of sight.
Perhaps if the camera height was sort of fixed to the crafts height, but didn't follow it unless the craft was entering the upper/lower bounds of the screen?

I agree whit Mr.Confuzed that the control feels awkward.
If it's a classic hovercraft is should turn quiet fast, velocity changes occur quiet slow and there would be no steering other than the change of direction of the forward force.
If it's just a 'hovering' craft, well i guess that a little faster steering wouldn't be too bad.

I also feel that the camera Should lag a little behind when turning, and then settling on the same direction as the craft, but that is just a feeling.
A sort of afterburner a la terminal velocity style would add a lot of fun, especially since it would make turning somewhat easier, well it would feel like it was easier anyway :)
A jump ability would also be quiet nice, if for nothing else just to be able to use the afterburner, head towards a mountain and jump, just to see the craft flying of towards the sky :D
Click to expand...
Some decent ideas there Dimacus. I'll give them some thought. Thanks :)


Jourdy288 said:
Unfathomable Depths said:
Ahh, artwork - the bane of my games programming life. Anyone interested in doing some?
Click to expand...
I'd be willing to, I'm still quite new to this, but I'm pretty sure I could do it.
Click to expand...
Sorry, position has been filled by (naw)mcx who is going to co-design and do the graphics.
 
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OK, I could do music, here's my rendition of The Entertainer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d87C1g0sbkY
and my version of Sea Chanty:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEiHINNZPSs

If you have any requests, please say so!
 
It seems that you are now rendering the hovercraft thing twice. I didn't notice right away, because it looks like a shadow at a glance, but I don't think you want that.

Also, the camera shouldn't be able to lag 360 degrees, maybe 20. Fortunately though, the lag allowed me to find another issue: the craft is accelerating based on camera direction. You can tell, just stay still, turn until your facing sideways or backwards and then accelerate.

Reverse is gone, which should be fine as long as you can turn fast enough.

The craft tilts side to side, but not up and down.

I vote for faster steering anyway, because the craft has wings. :)
 
cheers for that Mr.Confuzed :)

1 - Yea - shadow needs done properly - but it's such a non-gameplay related issue. I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. heh

2 - You're right - the camera lag should be limited. That's not a bug and it's not going to be a feature, I just liked it :p

3 - Reverse will return, I think. Not sure - need to add some NPCs and work it out from there.

4 - You are the first person to spot that! Fecking nightmare to rotate on all 3 axis - so for the sake of my sanity and speed of development I'm going with what I have.

5 - Everyone these days wants faster everything - perhaps this game is about just flying around and looking at stuff ;)
 
Hmm, Thunderstruck? I'll try it. BTW, I just uploaded a version of Longing for the Wind, I'll go practice Thunderstruck.

 
Unfathomable Depths said:
Minor update.

Friction introduced
Bounding box

http://www.fileden.com/getfile.php?file_path=http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/27/1978308/ATF.zip
Click to expand...
Nice, it works. :)
For the Pandora of course, the Game needs serious tweaking to run smooth, I have a Core 2 Quad 9400 and it eats 100% of one processor (25% overall), I doubt that the Pandora can handle this. ^_^
Well, the map seems to be easy tweakable, just make a nice big texture and a matching height map and maybe some detail-texture plus the fav. Skybox, could be an nice Editor too. I don't know it it makes sense to make a Editor that also can run onto the Pandora itself but maybe some day in the future... ^^
Oh, I know the game is in early stage and there are much more important things to do but is it possible to match the distant-fog color with the different Skyboxes? The Effect would be much better when the 3D surface somehow is "melting" into the Skybox, so the Skybox itself needs some kind of fog or you have misty distant mountains of the 3D Surface and sharp 2D Mountains from the Skybox etc... not easy to discribe... AND not so important yet. ^_^

EDIT: are TUNNELS possible with this Engine and within this game? Could be fun, maybe some kind of egypt Map with huge hidden Tomb structures under the surface, funny setting for such a game but of course it is not meant to be a "Descent" clone :lol:...^^
 
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fusion_power said:
For the Pandora of course, the Game needs serious tweaking to run smooth, I have a Core 2 Quad 9400 and it eats 100% of one processor (25% overall), I doubt that the Pandora can handle this. %)
Click to expand...

it's probably not framerate-capped, that's why.

edit: Of course tunnels are possible with Irrlicht Engine. However, you'll need to work around the heightmap to make them happen, since heightmaps do not allow room-over-room or anything.

Probably what you would do is have the heightmap drop below the bottom of where the tunnel will go, and then the tunnel would be a separate mesh node that covered the top of the tunnel and possibly the bottom as well.

I'll make some pictures in Blender to explain this better, hang on..
 
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Right now I'm getting 300+ FPS on an old PC (2k Athlon, Radeon 2600 AGP gfx). If I get a 10th of that on the Pandora it will be very smooth - on the video I posted the average framerate is 11 FPS!

I've no idea how this will run on the Pandora - Irrlicht is finished - Cpas wrote this: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=32538&start=45

I've got the basics down. Just gameplay now. And I've got naw(mcx) on my side. Scotland will make this work.

*EDIT*

FREEDOMbut not in all 3 axis because my math isn't up to it...
 
lulzfish said:
edit: Of course tunnels are possible with Irrlicht Engine. However, you'll need to work around the heightmap to make them happen, since heightmaps do not allow room-over-room or anything.

Probably what you would do is have the heightmap drop below the bottom of where the tunnel will go, and then the tunnel would be a separate mesh node that covered the top of the tunnel and possibly the bottom as well.

I'll make some pictures in Blender to explain this better, hang on..
Click to expand...
Thats what I wanted to say but my english is to crappy for all the tech-speak :lol:

Yes, the Surface still uses Height Map but at some spots there could be made holes (special color into the height map to kill the polygons at this spot?) into the surface and the entire sub-level has its own 3D mesh, not longer height-map powered. Just "normal 3D rooms with floors, walls, ceilings... :)
 
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