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[Gorman]

Just working things out in silhouette mode. It is somewhat striking, but totally fashionable:



Here we have some gliadin free wheat on the left, a "tree" with seed in the center, and a bovine animal on the right. This constitutes the three farmable crops of No One Can Stop The Farm Pioneer.

The wheat and tree are fully articulated and should share the same growth system. I was hoping the cow might be able to share the same growth pattern, with the legs performing the function of a branch, the body a leaf, and the head a seed. So umm hey Robert, you should think about that one.

I guess i should nail this mothertruckin space truck. Choice bro!

[Robert]

You had me as soon as you said 'choice'  :D (man, I miss New Zealand).

Oh dear, I didn't embarrass myself with my yokel antipodeanism did I?

Anyway, time for update number 3! Things are proceeding apace at Team Dino HQ. We've got about 70% of the gameplay implemented - you can now plant, grow and harvest trees, build your cow pens, and watch your bovine companions make sweet cow lurve and breed little cow bebbies. The demands from your family and the regular shipments to the Galactic Core are being made and tracked. To do: cows need to be fed, be able to butcher cows, growing and harvesting wheat, fulfill orders, and be able to lose the game by missing an order.

Anyway, here's YouTube video of the trees growing:





The bars on the sides are the demands placed on you. We wanted a much more free-form game where it was up to you where you took it, so if you chose to grow your family then you'd need to provide more food, etc, but due to the time limit that might have to wait. Oh yeah, and the pink and blue boxes are the cows. Gorman's delivered some udderly cowtastic textures but we haven't got them in yet. Hopefully by tomorrow!

[Derek]

Beautiful...

[Massena]

Beautiful...

Seconded there, I like the fact that everything is in motion, it makes it all come together.

[Matthew Longworth]

That is beautiful.  I especially like the floating lights in the sky - gives it an almost dream-like quality.  Can't wait to see what it looks like when finished!

Do Want++

[deadeye]

This is amazing 

I'm just sad because I doubt my computer will be able to run this

[ChevyRay]

You just made my week with that vid. GORGEOUS.

[Robert]

Thanks for the feedback guys! All I can say is full credit to Gorman, having seen the trees beforehand as just plain black boxes the textures make all the difference. We're working on hopefully posting another vid some time today.

I'm just sad because I doubt my computer will be able to run this

Yeah we've been keeping tabs on the performance issues and have been optimising a bit, and we hope to have a day or two over Easter to get it running faster and leaner. All I can say is that it runs perfectly in debug mode on my Core2 Duo 2.2. And that was before we added frustum culling, and release mode should make an awfully big difference on top of that.

Now to write the BobbleHead(float bobbleness) function...

[dustin]

I'm sad my computer probably won't be able to run it because it's a mac... 

[Robert]

I'm sad my computer probably won't be able to run it because it's a mac... 

The engine used for NOCSTFP can run across Win32, Intel Macs (maybe other Macs, just we haven't got any to test on!) and Unix platforms. I did just put in a nasty Win32-only bit of file-system code last night, but we could get it released on all three platforms. If not for the end of Easter then probably not long after!

[dustin]

woo hoo!  This makes me happy to no end.  Not only because I'll be able to run it but it's just nice to see stuff taking advantage of open source (I assume it must be opengl at some level...)

What engine is it?  Or if it's just your own personal thing what is the lowest level code not written by you?  (ie. is it straight opengl or torque or something?)

[Robert]

Sweet as! I'm part of a three-man company that does websites by day and games by night, and we've been working on the engine for a number of years... bordering on seven at last count! The other two guys are the main tech heads, but I know that our graphics guru has a thing for OpenGL so that powers our renderer. We use a few external libraries like python, freetype, cg, boost, opcode, libpng and OpenAL.

It's called EMP cos nukes are cool, it stands for something as well but I never remember.

[Robert]

Cows!





This vid just shows them moving around and breeding (no animations sadly! ) - you can see the little tykes popping out when the Daddy cow cuddles up to the Mummy cow. They also have different states of hungriness - they get really scrawny and have droopy ears when they're half dead from starvation. And then they get in your wheat fields and chow down all your hard work... sheesh.

But hey - no said it'd be easy being the Farm Pioneer.

[Saint]

Cows!

Awesome!

... but what happened to the moving stars?

[PHeMoX]

This looks awesome, finish it please!!! 

[Massena]

Cows!

Awesome!

... but what happened to the moving stars?

I'm guessing they still move, but slower. The moving stars were really cool, I think you should make them move at least fast enough to be noticeable.

Great work anyways, I'm in love with your game!

[Robert]

Awesome!

... but what happened to the moving stars?

I'm guessing they still move, but slower. The moving stars were really cool, I think you should make them move at least fast enough to be noticeable.

We've just increased the speed of the stars in the latest version, so check out the next video and let us know if they're fast enough! We slowed them down because they didn't really look much like stars when they moved so quickly, more like fireflies, and also you lose the parallax when you go hurtling through space as you can't really see them moving in relation to each other. We're hunting after that happy medium!

So this vid is about the crops:





They are running at really hyperspeed just to show how they grow and die etc. Nothing really new here, it's the same tech that runs the trees. In the game wheat is the fastest of the crops to grow, but you have to feed your cows with it so they end up eating a fair chunk of your output.

[Oddball]

Another beautiful looking game for the VGNG competition. It feels very serene. The stars in the new vid seem about right. Will there be a day/night cycle? And is gameplay based on a single planet, or can not even space stop the farm pioneer?

[Robert]

Will there be a day/night cycle? And is gameplay based on a single planet, or can not even space stop the farm pioneer?

In the game so far there a moon and another much larger planet you can fly to. In the crop video you can just see the moon as a gray blob at the top.

We were going to add a day/night cycle, but early on in development it got canned along with revolving planets and orbits. I thought all of that would be a cinch to implement but very quickly found out otherwise!

So space can't stop the farm pioneer. However, bailing out of your spacetruck and landing on the moon, only to watch your vessel hurtle away from you into the inky blackness of space... *that* can stop the farm pioneer. :O

[Smithy]

Will there be a day/night cycle? And is gameplay based on a single planet, or can not even space stop the farm pioneer?

I'm wearing steel-toed boots right now. There's no means known to man that can stop or even slightly impede me so long as I keep them on. Not even space.