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[CoreDumped]

This is a shooter inspired by games like Alien Abduction where you shoot stuff that moves

The engine is powered by mostly opensource stuff
Renderer: Ogre
Physics: Bullet SDK
Scripting: Lua
Audio: OpenAL
Input: OIS
Modelling/Level Design: Blender
Music: Hyperduck SoundWorks
Art: Bought some textures from DexSoft Games

The entire gameplay is scripted in Lua and the engine is coded in C++

I'm learning Blender and will hopefully create some decent levels after i am done with the gameplay

EDIT: Latest Video:



EDIT: Latest Screenshot:




Video:
Basic lighting model with Normal, Specular, AO




Older level with previous engine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_fQUwoz1o&feature=related


The engine is cross platform with platform specific stuff abstracted to plugins and tested on Windows and iPhone/iPad

For more details, visit: http://syntheticarc.com

Ali

[saint11]

Interesting, do you have more info/concepts on the style?

[hyperduck]

Yay! Nice to see you dude :D (we did the music behind this!)

[tesselode]

The graphical style looks pretty good, but of course the scenery is pretty plain right now.

[CoreDumped]

Yay! Nice to see you dude :D (we did the music behind this!)

Hey Chris/Dan,  thx! how are you guys doing?

Hopefully I'll get the game done this time :D

[CoreDumped]

Created a new level in blender:

[CoreDumped]

The graphical style looks pretty good, but of course the scenery is pretty plain right now.

thanks. added more visual detail for you viewing pleasure

Interesting, do you have more info/concepts on the style?

I'll update that shortly


Uploaded a new Video:




Here is the basic rendered scene using Diffuse/Normal/Specular Mapping



Added support for pre-baked Ambient Occlusion.  Looks much better now. Notice the darker shades below the platform.   Also added a Bloom filter



I need to reduce the batch count (85!).   Although instancing is supported, the entire level is one single mesh (for light mapping).   So the sub-meshes are not instanced.

[CoreDumped]

Added bullets using billboards and ribbon trails.  A bullet can be assigned a trajectory handler script which takes care of the path of the bullet.  e.g. the sine wave path in the pic, or it could home in on a target

Can be configured from within Lua

[DementedChicken]

Nice!

You're using similar development tools as me. A lot of people say never use a 3D modeling tool as a level editor, but I used blender + python scripts as a level editor for a project which I put on hold (too ambitious! ) and it worked well.

Are you developing in Linux?

I like the look of the ambient occlusion render in blender. If your environments are not dynamic, you could consider putting a pre-rendered ambient occlusion map on the level to make it look even better!

Just a thought.

Whoops, didn't read it properly, it looks like you did put an ambient occlusion map on! The ambient occlusion makes a big difference to the blue scaffolding, etc. I wish I could do this with my game now, but the levels are procedurally generated so it will take a bit of work.

Any more info on what you plan to do with gameplay, etc?

[mokesmoe]

This game looks really cool. I love the graphics and the music.

[CoreDumped]

Thanks guys

As for using blender,  you are right, it could be a decent level editor but it doesn't offer you much control.   I'll have to use workarounds to define triggers/spawn points etc

The main reason I'm using Blender as a level editor is for the pre-baked AO

Are you developing in Linux?

Nope   I'm on windows.  I like the Visual AssistX plugin in MSVC ^_^

[Qqwy]

This looks very nice  . I really like it.


Also, It might be interesting to make some kind of level that loops around at some point, as opposed to the levels you have now. You could make a level that plays on a sphere or something. Of course, this could be hard to implement with the code you have now, but it might be an interesting idea.

[DementedChicken]

As for using blender,  you are right, it could be a decent level editor but it doesn't offer you much control.   I'll have to use workarounds to define triggers/spawn points etc

Heh heh, me too. My scripts for adding spawn points, etc. actually just add an empty mesh with a name that follows a special naming convention. Then when the level is exported, the export script looks at the name of each object and if it follows the naming convention for a spawn point then it interprets it as that instead.

Not exactly ideal but it's still a lot faster than writing your own level editor from scratch!

[CoreDumped]

Added AI Path finding support with navigation meshes using Recast Navigation

New Video:

[CoreDumped]

This looks very nice  . I really like it.


Also, It might be interesting to make some kind of level that loops around at some point, as opposed to the levels you have now. You could make a level that plays on a sphere or something. Of course, this could be hard to implement with the code you have now, but it might be an interesting idea.

Thanks. Thats an interesting concept, kinda like mario galaxy.  However the nav mesh generation won't work with it

[hyperduck]

It's looking brilliant man. Too good.. stop being so good.. ENOUGH ALREADY!

[CoreDumped]

It's looking brilliant man. Too good.. stop being so good.. ENOUGH ALREADY!

^_^

[DementedChicken]

Oh! I was looking at recast a long time ago but never got a chance to try it.

Is it easy to work with? What's it like?

[CoreDumped]

Oh! I was looking at recast a long time ago but never got a chance to try it.

Is it easy to work with? What's it like?

Yep its simple to integrate.  There is no documentation but the code is well written and heavily commented.

It comes with a nice editor where you can create your nav mesh for a level and save it.   Then you load this nav mesh in your game and perform path finding queries on it

You could also generate nav mesh during runtime, since your levels are procedurally generated

[DementedChicken]

Yep its simple to integrate.  There is no documentation but the code is well written and heavily commented.

It comes with a nice editor where you can create your nav mesh for a level and save it.   Then you load this nav mesh in your game and perform path finding queries on it

You could also generate nav mesh during runtime, since your levels are procedurally generated

Yet another thing with bad documentation!  The lack of good docs for Blender's python script API is a source of many of our woes ...

But if you recommend it then it must be good! The current version of Tropical Dungeons is getting a custom path finding algorithm, but if (when?) we do our next game I'll definitely try it out. If I ever get stuck I might ask you for advice though!