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[forsy]

Post #100!

0.1.0 is here! Now with 100% more editor!

(click to enlarge)


Click to play! and build!


This is so completely not user friendly and I'm going to provide very little instructions for using it. Aside from the attachment stuff which hasn't been integrated into the new system yet, it is 100% functional and capable of building whatever you want.

Just about everything related to the physics and plane structure is available to edit, so it is very WYSIWYG. There are basically no rules or limitations. It is not difficult to make something fly, but at the same time it is very easy to make something very bad at flying. The big red dot is the planes center of gravity and the little red dot is the selected components center of gravity.

A few rules... names need to be unique and there are some keywords for the wings: "left aileron", "right aileron", "rudder", and "elevator". If those words are part of the name of the wing they will be controlled by the different keys while flying. This will be the first thing to be fixed and improved.

Each time you press "Save", it generates a new unique id and url for the plane so keep that in mind. You can press "Test" or press F11 to go back and forth between game and editor in order to iterate without saving.

There is a "Copy Link" button that will copy the link to your plane to the clipboard. Otherwise, all saved planes will be available for viewing at http://www.czkproject.com/lift/.

Also, thanks for everyone reading and participating in this thread. Looking forward to the next 100 posts!

[eigenbom]

Lol, what a crack-up! I had a quick go, but I look forward to making something more complex later on.

Edit: I had a good play with it but couldn't make something that flies properly. Although it was hilarious watching my planes almost take-off and then somersault around. Sorry for flooding your place DB, you need a delete function!

[billyboob]

Insane there is still no unity web player for linux. Grrrr.

[forsy]

Lol, what a crack-up! I had a quick go, but I look forward to making something more complex later on.

Edit: I had a good play with it but couldn't make something that flies properly. Although it was hilarious watching my planes almost take-off and then somersault around. Sorry for flooding your place DB, you need a delete function!

Haha, that is so awesome. I tried a few of those and had a good laugh trying to fly them

As for flooding the DB... I had 2 options when I set this up. I could either keep overwriting the previous plane by default, or just keep saving as new versions. I didn't want to overwrite by default because then I could just open up your builds and do whatever I wanted and then you would lose whatever you did. You can also just keep going back and forth between the editor and testing with F11 until you are happy with it and then save.

Since everything is public at this point even a delete function would be problematic. Maybe I should look into setting up some kind of account system, even though that puts a bad taste in my mouth.

[forsy]

Insane there is still no unity web player for linux. Grrrr.

I don't have a Linux box so I don't know if this will work, but if you want to be a guinea pig you can give this a shot.

Linux

[GalaethGames]

Insane there is still no unity web player for linux. Grrrr.

I don't have a Linux box so I don't know if this will work, but if you want to be a guinea pig you can give this a shot.

Linux

Works well (except for my flying skills)

but a little problem with the ground colour, which appears to be white, not sure if this is a unity thing, or the fact I'm using 64bit ubuntu

really looking forward to the finished game!

[forsy]

Works well (except for my flying skills)

but a little problem with the ground colour, which appears to be white, not sure if this is a unity thing, or the fact I'm using 64bit ubuntu

really looking forward to the finished game!

Thanks for testing! I've built a 64bit Linux version, maybe that will make a difference.

Linux 64bit

Your lack of flying skills is likely due to trying to fly the planes eigenbom created

Because of that I've also make a quick adjustment to the server. There is now a "public" flag which needs to be set in order for planes to show up on the list. It is defaulted to true so it won't really alleviate any overcrowding if a lot of stuff is built and saved but at least I can go in and disable some without permanently deleting them. Non public planes will still work with direct links.

I've cleaned up the list for now.

[GalaethGames]

Thanks, much better, it's really fun.
although the same problem with the ground being white (although all the blocks are the correct colour)

[eigenbom]

Yes, please delete all my crappy planes. Eventually I imagine you'll want some private/public system, where I can build a bunch of planes in private and then publish them if I want. Using localstorage could be a simple way to do that. But who knows .. if you make this a downloadable game then you may have to roll your own auth anyway.

A temporary measure could be to split the "edit" option into "edit" and "clone & edit". You could protect the individual planes with a password, which would be required if you click "edit". That way I can come back to my same plane each day and make a few modifications, etc.

A final suggestion is to make it quicker to test a plane and then re-edit it. E.g, F11 from the editor could immediately bring up the test level, then pressing it again would switch you back to the editor (bypassing the password stuff I suggested above).

[Pemanent]

I know nothing about how to fly a plane or even how it should work but this just feels right. I can't really describe it, but you've really hit the physics nail perfectly. They just feel like I think a plan should! Even if that means I flew for 2 seconds and crash landed upside down it was fun and just felt right.

eigenbom your planes suck. 

[billyboob]

So my biplane sucks. Thanks for the linux support! I just spent an hour building something that flips on takeoff. At least it looks like it could fly!

Thanks, much better, it's really fun.
although the same problem with the ground being white (although all the blocks are the correct colour)

Same here if I run this on default intel gpu. Switching to discreet (nvidia) helps.

A final suggestion is to make it quicker to test a plane and then re-edit it. E.g, F11 from the editor could immediately bring up the test level, then pressing it again would switch you back to the editor (bypassing the password stuff I suggested above).

I can do just this using the linux executable. Feature not included in web player version?

[forsy]

Thanks, much better, it's really fun.
although the same problem with the ground being white (although all the blocks are the correct colour)

Glad you enjoyed it. I'll have to look into setting up a linux machine eventually so I can see and fix this stuff first hand.

[forsy]

Yes, please delete all my crappy planes. Eventually I imagine you'll want some private/public system, where I can build a bunch of planes in private and then publish them if I want. Using localstorage could be a simple way to do that. But who knows .. if you make this a downloadable game then you may have to roll your own auth anyway.

A temporary measure could be to split the "edit" option into "edit" and "clone & edit". You could protect the individual planes with a password, which would be required if you click "edit". That way I can come back to my same plane each day and make a few modifications, etc.

A final suggestion is to make it quicker to test a plane and then re-edit it. E.g, F11 from the editor could immediately bring up the test level, then pressing it again would switch you back to the editor (bypassing the password stuff I suggested above).

I left a couple of your planes in, they are still really cool designs even if they don't fly

I had a version locally with a separate "clone & edit" button, but for whatever reason I thought it would be too confusing or complicated and ended up removing it. Maybe I will rethink that...

And as billyboob pointed out, F11 should just bring you back and forth between test flight and edit mode. I'll double check the web player build and make sure that is functioning properly.

[forsy]

I know nothing about how to fly a plane or even how it should work but this just feels right. I can't really describe it, but you've really hit the physics nail perfectly. They just feel like I think a plan should! Even if that means I flew for 2 seconds and crash landed upside down it was fun and just felt right.

eigenbom your planes suck. 

Thanks! I've probably spent 90% of development time on the flight mechanics so that is nice to hear. I will have to drop in some of my old gifs of early flight tests to show where it started, they look pretty bad I think they might actually be in the screenshot saturday thread...

Maybe a comment and rating system is needed in the game so you can let everyone know to stay away from eigenbom's planes

[forsy]

So my biplane sucks. Thanks for the linux support! I just spent an hour building something that flips on takeoff. At least it looks like it could fly!

Your plane looks awesome, too bad it can't fly

There is a balancing act that you need to do between the center of gravity, where the wings are, and how big the wings are. Those wings are huge so they will generate a lot of lift, and if your center of gravity is too far back then it will just flip like you are seeing. Also how big the wings on the tail are can make a big difference for stability.

I will quote myself in the editor release post:
"It is not difficult to make something fly, but at the same time it is very easy to make something very bad at flying."

I think we are seeing that first hand Just takes a lot of trial and error before you get the hang of it.

[billyboob]

Feel free to delete the biplane clones. I've wrapped my head around how to get it all going so it wont take long to start from scratch. And I seem to have hit a bug that keeps ignoring new edits and/or saves (and I don't want to spam your server testing the issue).

I knew I'd skipped something important relating to the editor (names for ailerons, rudder, elevator).

[forsy]

Feel free to delete the biplane clones. I've wrapped my head around how to get it all going so it wont take long to start from scratch. And I seem to have hit a bug that keeps ignoring new edits and/or saves (and I don't want to spam your server testing the issue).

I knew I'd skipped something important relating to the editor (names for ailerons, rudder, elevator).

I went ahead and edited your plane and made some changes and saved it and it worked fine. The only thing I can think of that would cause that bug is if you had components on the same level in the hierarchy that were named the same, such as having two "elevator" components next to each other. This will hopefully be hidden eventually and handled automatically but for now its just something that you need to keep in mind.

Also working on a better solution for the annoying wing naming convention.

By the way, I love your plane. I'm sure it was a pain to build so now I'm thinking of how the interface could be changed to make that a little easier... you should post a gif of it getting hit by missiles when you are done

It's also cool to see you build a traditional plane design and eigenbom build something crazy. I'm hoping the crazy designs will end up being flyable with enough tweaking.

[eigenbom]

And as billyboob pointed out, F11 should just bring you back and forth between test flight and edit mode. I'll double check the web player build and make sure that is functioning properly.

Oh right, yeah that does work, sorry. Also you should put a direct link to the Lift game in your sig.

[eigenbom]

Yes!

[Excy]

Oh god, some of these gifs are hilarious, loving the look of the game! Do you have a Twitter I can follow?