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[forsy]

Alright folks, the first official challenge is here!



Play it here!

There is an ending to the story, so be sure you finish it to find out what happens.

I'm not entirely sure how this will play out, but it seemed like a really good idea at the time tonight so I ran with it. I took a plane that was created today by a user, in this case the plane was 'basiC' made by 'elyetis', and made a challenge around it.

I think this could be a really good way to incorporate user built planes that might not have any real use in a normal game environment. Like the big ass shark plane or superman. I could easily come up with some challenges specific to those planes, but put in any generic situation they probably wouldn't do so good except for a good laugh or two. Plus with this "story" element, it could be some kind of ongoing thing.

[billyboob]

Does slapping really work in those situations though? What if she fights back? What if the children see? SCARRED FOR LIFE.

Will we be able to put together our own challenges?

[forsy]

Does slapping really work in those situations though? What if she fights back? What if the children see? SCARRED FOR LIFE.

I always forget about the children, my bad.

I have to admit, I haven't been getting much sleep lately. Combine that with a drink or two last night while I was working on this and you get "Operation: Wife Shaft".

Will we be able to put together our own challenges?

I want to say yes, but at this point I don't know the logistics involved in making that happen. My initial reaction is to say I'll just put in some level editing tools, but that is kinda boring, and unless I have a ton of stuff then you might not be able to get too creative.

Another more elaborate and not as accessible idea would be to figure out how to provide a Lift.dll or something along with the unity editor and people could build and export their own levels, and I could set up a system to throw those on the server and dynamically load them at run time. I think that is how KSP does their modding system with unity.

The KSP modding community is probably a little more hardcore than what would be required for this game, so perhaps an in game level editor would be good enough.

[forsy]

And we have a winner! "The Hess" was the first to complete "Operation: Wife Shaft".

It looks like 10 others tried it and failed.

A few ideas I'm thinking of to add to these...
- displaying the success or fail rate in the intro screen

- displaying names of people who have completed it

- incorporating the "ghost crash" thing that I brought up a while back, similar to watching other people fail in the demon's souls games. I think it would be pretty awesome as you were flying if you caught a glimpse of another plane as it crashed.

- a way for people to add notes or comments for others to see if they are struggling. "The Hess" just happens to be my cousin so I talked to him about it afterwards. He said he made it to the end once he figured out to lay off the pitch control and use more rolling maneuvers once you get into the shaft. Stuff like that would be useful to share.

[forsy]

Cheers   I have spent my evening failing up to this point.

I'm working on another challenge, this one is called "Whale in the Sky". I'm not going to post the image for it like last time since it isn't done and might need to be shelved until a later date, but here it is if you want to see it:

edit: I like this one too much, so I'm going to make it visible


The idea behind this one was to control a missile launcher and try to take out a fleet of those whale planes that BB made. There are two missiles in the system right now, a small one I created and one sionco created. I went with his because it was bigger, and these whales are huge.

My first task was to create a missile launcher you can control with the mouse and keyboard. This went pretty smoothly. The next task was to create a way to spawn a plane and have it fly automated without any user input. I've done this before with the missiles in previous and current builds so I had a start, but with missiles you just kind of fire it off and let physics take over it just goes where its going to go. With this challenge though I needed to get these whales to fly in a controlled manner. It took some refactoring and one minor major hack, which I will have to readdress.

The next problem I ran into was how I wanted to stage the challenge. I wanted it to be this big fleet of whale planes flying over the deep part of the map and you sitting on the other side firing off missiles left and right and watching the whales break apart and run into each other causing mass destruction. Sounds awesome and looks awesome in my head... well, it turns out the canyon is really big and in comparison the whales are tiny and the missiles are basically invisible at long range.

To remedy that problem I just moved it to the smaller, narrow part of the map. Tweaked the whales flight settings to handle the narrows, adjusted the missile launcher, time to get this baby finished!

I tried about 10 times and managed to hit the damn thing about 25% of the time. If you hit the body, the whale won't budge. The only way to bring one of these down is to hit the wings, either on the side or the fin on the back. Which almost takes a sniper rifle to do, and I've got a missile that seems quite underpowered and slow and a huge whale moving 200mph.

Not all is lost though, I managed to capture video of taking one of these guys down, sort of:



That was one whale, and I barely managed to hit him. I wanted to have upwards of 20 and the challenge would be to bring them all down. Maybe instead I need to change it to bring 1 down and any extra is just bonus.

I could always manipulate the properties of the planes in the scenario to work, but I want the planes involved to be entirely user generated.

[billyboob]

Could you add flapping wing elements? I will build a sky whale that flies without a hidden propeller.

Also, it will save me spending hundreds of dollars buying a radio controlled ornithopter.

[forsy]

I'm sorry billy... he's just too fat.

[forsy]

"Don't worry flappy whale, I'll help you fly!" - "Man Of Steel"'s last words



Son of a bitch, this gif might actually beat the two supermans carrying a non flappy whale. And the flappy whale actually flies pretty good once superman gets his clumsy ass out of the way.

[eigenbom]

drunk_wasp

[forsy]

drunk_wasp

drunk wasp is awesome, totally inspiring for a new type of gameplay.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you feel about it, "drunk wasp" will be featured in a future challenge titled "butt hurt", thanks to my dear friend "The Hess" who won the last challenge. This can't be good.

[billyboob]

Next linux build needs flapping wings. I have zero monies to make you do this. I compel you with words alone. Did you notice supes almost made it through the ring? What a douche.

So is sky whale flying with flapping wings alone... you removed it's innards?

Would it be possible to be able to test moving elements within the editor? Elevator, rudder, ailerons etc. I'd just like being able to see them move without loading the map.

[forsy]

Did you notice supes almost made it through the ring? What a douche.

You are the best, billy. I'm going to ask you to be a writer/designer if I ever make a dime off of this. "supes" is your new nickname. We were actually discussing whether or not he made it through the ring. It looks like he doesn't, but I'll give him an 'A' for effort, or should it be an 'S'? 

So is sky whale flying with flapping wings alone... you removed it's innards?

Given that I have footage of flapping wings, it must seem like they are in and functional. It was 75% hack job, and the damn "supes with flappy whale" gif took about 25 tries due to "supes" and his uncontrollable rage.

That should be a challenge - "Attach superman to a whale and make it fly".

After seeing them functional though, and with eigenbom's latest wasp build, I'm going to make it a priority to put the flapping wings in.

Would it be possible to be able to test moving elements within the editor? Elevator, rudder, ailerons etc. I'd just like being able to see them move without loading the map.

Do you just want to see them move or see how they affect the plane? I have a disabled diagnostic menu that shows lift/drag/etc but it is mostly useless because lift and drag is dependent on how the plane is flying, so I disabled it a while ago.

I suppose I could provide a "wind tunnel" of sorts and you could control the direction of velocity and wind, and with the colored lines you could see how the plane responds. I'm not sure if that is what you are looking for or if that would be useful or not.

Next linux build

The next linux build needs the "Operation: Wife Shaft" challenge also. I need to figure out how to package those up...

[billyboob]

Do you just want to see them move or see how they affect the plane? I have a disabled diagnostic menu that shows lift/drag/etc but it is mostly useless because lift and drag is dependent on how the plane is flying, so I disabled it a while ago.

For now just to see them move. I think it helps to know that they're moving parts and to be able to control them right off the bat. Might even want to do this for all moving parts, like propellers etc.

If you do that you may also want to show what the default key-bindings for those elements are (eventually allowing for rebinding within the editor).

The wind tunnel stuff would be an amazing feature but not sure it's needed right now?

[forsy]

Thanks for the turnaround last night guys. Went from the "fail" post to falling off my chair laughing at "supes" helping a fat, flapping whale fly.

For now just to see them move. I think it helps to know that they're moving parts and to be able to control them right off the bat. Might even want to do this for all moving parts, like propellers etc.

If you do that you may also want to show what the default key-bindings for those elements are (eventually allowing for rebinding within the editor).

The wind tunnel stuff would be an amazing feature but not sure it's needed right now?

Yeah, I think I will add a "simulator" mode where you can control it as if you were in the map. I'll start with just manipulating the wings and props, and then add the wind tunnel stuff later.

I have a feeling the wind tunnel part is just going to exaggerate the problems with certain designs, and if the user is not aware of what is happening it might be a turn off.

I'm actually really surprised and pleased to see the progression of planes. It is very rewarding to see people starting with an idea and a build and then finally getting it to fly. I just need to get the editor to a more approachable and user friendly state

[hogge]

Really cool.
I don't know how much time I've spent building planes in Kerbal Space Program. If you'd make a game that's specifically designed for that, it'd be amazing.

[forsy]

Really cool.
I don't know how much time I've spent building planes in Kerbal Space Program. If you'd make a game that's specifically designed for that, it'd be amazing.

I have watched some videos of planes in KSP and while their graphics are top notch the actual flight mechanics seem pretty terrible. However, I know that isn't the focus of the game so even having the ability to make planes in there is pretty remarkable.

There is already the ability in here to make planes if you want to try it out. I must warn you, it is still very early in development and not nearly as polished as the KSP build interface is There is already some pretty cool stuff being made though. The link for the latest web player is in my signature, otherwise here is the post with the latest windows and linux downloads: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=36851.msg993948#msg993948

[forsy]

Definitive proof that "supes" did not make it through the ring.

[forsy]

So just to show off a bit more about what is possible with the attachments and physics, I made this plane called 'the pusher'.



The plane has no powerplant, so it can't go anywhere on its own. There is a missile attached to the plane and the plane was designed to basically contain the missile after it is detached. The force of the missile is enough to push the plane and get it up in the air.



As you can see in the gif, the missile is a completely separate plane operating under its own physics, it just happens to be stuck pushing this other plane around.

'the pusher'

[GalaethGames]

I think I broke it sorry
if you click on unpublished planes, my phyco-fit-rocket just explodes, in the editor it seems to keep adding more and more attachments to itself.

this happened after I tried to add a 3rd of the same plane as an attachment

[GalaethGames]

ha it's ok now, although it just explodes.

before it kept adding new plane attachments and wouldn't stop until it slowed to a halt.