next »

[Mittens]

this is so cool

[billyboob]

I think you may want to split the editor menu into basic and advanced.

One designed for quick build and light editing, using prebuilt props/parts (fuselage, wings, propellers, landing gear etc) that players share (along with complete designs).

Advanced would contain any features dropped from the basic editor along with any to be added in the future.

[forsy]

this is so cool

Thanks

I think you may want to split the editor menu into basic and advanced.

One designed for quick build and light editing, using prebuilt props/parts (fuselage, wings, propellers, landing gear etc) that players share (along with complete designs).

Advanced would contain any features dropped from the basic editor along with any to be added in the future.

Very good idea. This is something I had also thought about. After seeing what freedom and some creative minds can produce in this game, I absolutely need to keep some kind of version of this existing editor and functionality. I also think prebuilt parts with a drag and drop interface is equally necessary for accessibility and just casual enjoyment of building and flying stuff. If this will require two separate interfaces, I'm not sure yet. I'm sure the evolution of the rest of the game will impact some of this as well.

Speaking of evolution... I just made a gif that had me in tears which deserves its own post.

[forsy]

[Christian]

I'm beginning to think you made this game for the sole purpose of generating awesome GIFs

[eigenbom]

What am I seeing?!  I have no words..

[forsy]

I'm beginning to think you made this game for the sole purpose of generating awesome GIFs

I don't know how I can top this last one. I've stared at this thing for 30 minutes with a dumb grin on my face. If this is the best thing that comes from this game I can probably die a happy man.

What am I seeing?!  I have no words..

I sent this gif to a buddy on skype with this message: "i cant even find the words..."

Long story short, you are seeing superman on the left that can't fly for shit doing his best to get in the way of superman on the right who is just not interested in dealing with that so he gets the hell of of dodge asap. Ultimately, the guy on the left fails so bad he chops the tail off the shark and they both end up in flames.

This was my test scenario for getting attachments working again. There are two of the superman planes attached to the shark plane. Easy to configure in the builder. I detached both the superman planes manually one after the other. I named the gif jumptheshark.gif but I hope we're not even close to that yet

edit: I just realized I referred to the plane as "guy". Thanks BB for humanizing a plane.

[GalaethGames]

A sample of stuff people have built.

click to enlarge

I demand a multiplayer game, although I wouldn't be able to shoot at the doggy, as it's sooo cute!

[Christian]

Will there be a downloadable version? Unity Web Players are kind of laggy for me sometimes

[forsy]

I demand a multiplayer game, although I wouldn't be able to shoot at the doggy, as it's sooo cute!

The world of Lift is a scary, violent place. Blame whoever made the dog because that thing is definitely taking a missile to the face.

Will there be a downloadable version? Unity Web Players are kind of laggy for me sometimes

Starting with this next version I will have downloadable builds for windows. I haven't heard any strange reports from the linux build users so I think I feel comfortable releasing a windows standalone as well.

I wonder if I could have a special url to open a plane in the downloaded version when you click on it. I think I've seen some applications do that.

[forsy]

Just put up build 0.1.2.

Web
Windows download
Linux download



Big news in this build is the attachment system is back.

Attachments:
- each plane can have up to 10 attachments (just an arbitrary limit)
- attachments can contain other attachments, so essentially it is unlimited, however I have not done extensive stress testing
- setting them up should be fairly self explanatory once you get into the editor
- the 'spawn on load' toggle is there so you can get attachments like the gif below without having to build planes way off the ground
- see the controls menu for how to operate them

Other minor changes:
- added a stall indicator - this goes off if a wing has "stalled", which means the angle of attack is past a certain threshold and the wing no longer generates suitable lift. Unfortunately this will also go off with certain builds if wings are placed in unnatural ways Not sure what to do about that yet.
- exposed the "breakable" toggle in the editor, so you can now control which components can break. If you have a plane with all components unchecked you can fly head first into the wall and keep going Kinda fun to play with. I noticed a couple user built planes that were prone to breaking so this should help with that too.
- planes are downloaded on demand now as opposed to one big chunk. I need to address the way they are saved before I think about changing it back. Much faster initial load now, however there is a very small delay when looking at the different planes.




The sky is the limit... ...with this attachment stuff, even in its current state. These gifs with missiles are good to test the system with but they are far from creative. There's also still some usability stuff to figure out and improve, both in game and in the editor. I like where it is at though, it seems quite flexible and stable.

edit:
I should add a few notes on some things that might not be obvious:
- flight controls (throttle, pitch, etc) only affect the current plane
- you can use the tab key to cycle between attachments on a plane
- while you are active on an attachment, the flight controls will manipulate that plane
- for example, in the 2nd gif in this post there is an elevator on the bomb below. I could have switched to that attachment and tried to fly the plane as a whole with that elevator, but given the size and location of it it probably wouldn't have been very effective.
- the plane is still treated as a whole unit as far as the physics is concerned, so there is some really cool stuff that can result from this

edit 2:
and I already see a bug with the new build... if you click a plane and it doesn't show up and then everything else stops showing up, just hit play and it will reset. I think I already see the problem and will fix asap!

[eigenbom]

Cool, I added a bomb to shorty, now I just need something to shoot!

I wonder if you also need to indicate that the plane is almost stalling?

[forsy]

Cool, I added a bomb to shorty, now I just need something to shoot!

I wonder if you also need to indicate that the plane is almost stalling?

Damn, you are quick!

Something to shoot? I have an idea for something to shoot.

Make a plane, with a missile, your new shorty will do. Add another attachment, the doggy. Put it waaay out in front of the plane... see where I'm going with this?

Free updates for life if anyone can make that happen

[GalaethGames]

awesome, it gets better and better!

I've built a little 10 missile super glider thing, if you can get it off the ground

[forsy]

awesome, it gets better and better!

I've built a little 10 missile super glider thing, if you can get it off the ground

That is a fun one. I definitely need to build something to blow up now. Hard as hell to get off the ground though. I ended up having to launch the missiles right away so I was lighter, and then recreate them once I got in the air.

Funny side note and gif. I have the code set up to have parts randomly break off if their change in velocity from one frame to the next is greater than a certain threshold. The number is purely arbitrary, it just felt good with whatever plane I was using for testing at the time. It will be exposed to the editor eventually.

Anyway, at some point I ran into some issues with attachments and the code related to components breaking. To fix whatever issue I was having I just set it up to detach all attachments if any attachment was going to break. With the recent code change to allow attachments to go "full throttle on release"...



It took a couple times to reproduce because there is some randomness to the code. Due to the fall, one of the attachments was going to break. In turn, all of the attachments were released, and because they were set with the "full throttle on release" flag, they all fired off

Definitely did not see that one coming

[forsy]

I just realized in the latest build I also "fixed" some code that was setting all the wheels on the landing gear to be oriented vertical and forward with the plane, regardless of how they were oriented in the editor. This fix has caused some issues in some existing planes, such as the Dodo. That one no longer moves because the front wheels are angled away from each other.

You can see what I mean here:
Old, working Dodo
New, broken Dodo

Not sure how this should be handled long term. I will have to do some testing to see how the wheels inside of Unity work under different angles. It might have to go back to a locked orientation.


Also, BBinator, your Apache Capitalist Death Machine has a link to a youtube video in the notes, but youtube is telling me that video is unavailable. Just FYI.

[eigenbom]

You should put a (clickable) twitter name field in the plane description and get a twitter account yourself. Social media my friend..

[forsy]

You should put a (clickable) twitter name field in the plane description and get a twitter account yourself. Social media my friend..

Alright fine, I set up a twitter account and added it to my signature

I'll think about your suggestion. I think it would be more useful to be able to tweet a link to a plane or something. Then I have to figure out integrating twitter... might as well just go all out and have user accounts where you can personalize all of that. I'm not sure I'm ready to go down that road yet, so maybe a basic twitter link like you suggest is appropriate for now.

[eigenbom]

I don't think user accounts are necessary, and definitely don't authenticate with twitter or anything like that. The plane URL sharing thing already allows people to share their designs, so that's sufficient for twitter/fb/etc. I only suggested a twitter field in the description because a lot of indie gamers are on twitter and it'll be a simple way to connect a plane to an account, who you could then tweet directly if you wanted to (for instance the CapitalistDeathMachine comment you put above). Also if you add plane ranking or metrics (e.g., max distance flown), then you can occasionally tweet things like: @eigenbom's plane "shorty" is currently the slowest, flyable plane. Can you do better?

[forsy]

I don't think user accounts are necessary, and definitely don't authenticate with twitter or anything like that. The plane URL sharing thing already allows people to share their designs, so that's sufficient for twitter/fb/etc. I only suggested a twitter field in the description because a lot of indie gamers are on twitter and it'll be a simple way to connect a plane to an account, who you could then tweet directly if you wanted to (for instance the CapitalistDeathMachine comment you put above). Also if you add plane ranking or metrics (e.g., max distance flown), then you can occasionally tweet things like: @eigenbom's plane "shorty" is currently the slowest, flyable plane. Can you do better?

That competition stuff is definitely going to happen.

I might set it up to automatically post to the Lift twitter account when a new plane is published, that sounds kinda neat. Then I wouldn't have to authenticate each user and it could all be done hidden away on the server code.