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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsPlanet Explorers - voxel based Adventure RPG
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zede05
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« Reply #120 on: December 19, 2012, 05:52:57 AM »

I've been busy remaking the landscape of the game...well, not really remaking, more like retouching. I've been adding rocking outcrops and stone bridges throughout the map, as well as perlin noises. It's looking pretty good but it's going so slow.

We're beginning to use Unity's mecanim system, and it's great. Very efficient and will save us a lot of ram and time. I would recommend all Unity users to at least take a look.

Screen for today:



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Hipshot
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« Reply #121 on: December 19, 2012, 06:16:10 AM »

This looks really swell, I'm gonna keep my eyes on this one.
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zede05
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« Reply #122 on: January 16, 2013, 03:49:53 AM »

We've been trying to optimize the voxel lod calculations the last few weeks to try to speed things up and allow for lod for all built objects. And as it turn out, we can't control the thing that really matters, which is how Unity generates its terrain collision. There will always be a giant drop in framerate for about a fraction of a second whenever new chunks of terrain collision mesh are generates. We're still looking at solutions but we're pretty much o-fer so far, might need that Unity source code probably (yeah, can't afford it, haha).

Here's a screen from the canyon section, starting to build up the landscape a bit.

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eobet
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« Reply #123 on: January 16, 2013, 12:52:59 PM »

Whoah, how could I have missed this one? It looks absolutely fantastic.

The scope you describe seem huge. Truly amazing if you can pull that off!

However, there's one game I think is missing from your inspirational titles, judging by the screenshots and trailer: Monster Hunter.
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zede05
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« Reply #124 on: February 03, 2013, 06:03:01 AM »

Whoah, how could I have missed this one? It looks absolutely fantastic.

The scope you describe seem huge. Truly amazing if you can pull that off!

However, there's one game I think is missing from your inspirational titles, judging by the screenshots and trailer: Monster Hunter.

Thanks! And yes, Monster Hunter did some inspiring. Smiley

In the last 3 weeks, we've added a lot of new items to the game. So much so that we're sorta scratching our heads going, hey, maybe we should test the stuff.  Undecided Joking aside, we were able to fix a couple of key issues, allowing us to move ahead with adding stuff.

One being the optimization of the order in which a voxel terrain chunk gets rendered. It used to have some problems, so if a player walks forward, some chunks behind him might be ahead of the chunk ahead of him in the pipeline...which just wastes processing power. It used to be that we can't travel faster than 10 meters per second or we'd fall off the map. Now, we can go 70m/s no problem. This opens up a lot of play possibilities. Airplanes, here we come.

The other thing we fixed/created was the ability to merge terrain, updated terrain, caves, and updated subterrain/flora/texture at any time. It used to be if we want to add new caves, we'd have to redo the entire section of the map, causing us to waste a lot of time redoing things over and over again, not anymore!

Here are some screens from when I was taking videos for the Kickstarter trailer. The game is becoming pretty fun (well, at least addicting), we wasted a lot of time making cars and raceways the last week when we should be fixing bugs.

















Yeah, I know "braking" is misspelled in one of the screens.  Facepalm
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« Reply #125 on: February 03, 2013, 06:31:18 AM »

I've been following this project almost since the beginning and I must say that the improvement is very well obvious. Those screenshots certainly get me more and more excited
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zede05
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« Reply #126 on: February 08, 2013, 08:00:47 PM »

I've been following this project almost since the beginning and I must say that the improvement is very well obvious. Those screenshots certainly get me more and more excited

Thanks!  Smiley

We've been testing out multiplayer in the office. So far we're doing a lot of proof of concept stuff with code already in place, just to see how much data is being used and the extreme conditions the multiplayer code can handle. Here are some screens from our 4 player LAN game where the host made a race track and everyone brought in their own custom vehicles (and it's really fun, we're gonna try unlocking weapons next). It's kinda funny since we didn't exactly plan for this in the original game doc, at all, we just wanted an adventure rpg. But as we went along designing our multiplayer system, with our creation system, it opened up a lot of possibilities. Now it's just a question of implementation on an offsite server, since we're sure LAN can handle everything.







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zede05
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« Reply #127 on: February 11, 2013, 11:48:21 AM »

Just sent alpha 0.5 out the door, you can grab it here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/planet-explorers/downloads/planet-explorers-alpha-05 or the torrent here: http://www.pathea.net/images/web/PlanetExplorersAv0.5.torrent

Here's the change list:

What's new in this build:
- switched over to Unity's mecanim animation system, saving the game over 300MB in memory
- ability to fight while on the move (press the x key to arm weapon)
- added rivers
- added new missions that starts to highlight the differences between the Earth and Martian parties
- added new npcs
- added new enemies (sentient aliens!)
- added new resources
- ability to make multi gun muzzles
- ability to make driven vehicles
- ability to put weapons on driven vehicles
- ability to trade creations (they're by the game saves in the Document folder, just take them out and give them away)
- laser and missile turrets
- able to see structures that are built up to 1km off- environmental fog
- better looking terrain with perlin noise
- optimized terrain generation so that you'll not be able to outrace it anymore
- options is now working

What we took out for now:
- launcher, this one's done but sitting there waiting for a0.6
- online/lan multiplayer, too much stuff going and we don't have enough manpower to cover this area entirely, it's working somewhat but not tested. We might have the lan version up first in the next alpha build actually (yes, even though lan versions invite pirates, we owe it to ourselves and gamers to make a fun game)
- generators, the basic programming is done but tweaking the numbers will take a while
- caves, we will have a new and better system ready by a0.6, but we didn't have time to implement it this time
- face morphing, we'll have a new version of this in the future that's more efficient, for now, nochanging the body shape or face shape, you'll still be able to change skin and eye color as wellas face types

Tell us what you think! I'll be putting the game on Greenlight once I finish up the trailer for that, so in the next couple of days.

Below are a few shots of our new cave system, it looks a lot better than the old one. We're actually still upgrading it, and the end result should look a lot more natural.





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« Reply #128 on: February 12, 2013, 05:03:58 PM »

Just started a 512*512 Adventure in Forest, I believe the seed was the default, I didn't think to check before I hit start. Game load screen hits 100%. I get what sounds like an attack or jump sound effect when I right or left click, though it's inconsistent so it's tough to tell. Game crashed after I alt+tabbed out. Same result after starting a random Adventure. On the fourth or fifth try loading got to 77% before the game actually froze and wouldn't respond to ctrl+shift+esc or alt+tab, unlike the previous times. Tried loading the Story game I had saved before trying Adventure and the game loads to 78% before freezing.

The Pathea splash screen is shown every time I return to the main menu. Not hugely important, just tedious.

Windows 7x64, 8Gb RAM, GeForce GTX 560 Ti
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zede05
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« Reply #129 on: February 12, 2013, 07:06:04 PM »

Can you pm me the game log? We haven't had a lot of this type of bugs before (mostly opencl crashes)

The 512*512 adventure map is kinda bugged at the moment, on average it takes something like 3-5min to load that map. A 256*256 map will take about a min 20 seconds.

Try loading story directly after loading the game and see if it crashes.
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zede05
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« Reply #130 on: February 23, 2013, 06:17:30 PM »

New a0.51 out: http://www.pathea.net/images/web/PlanetExplorersA0.51.torrent

Plus a new trailer:



Fixed lots of bugs. Now to get this thing onto Greenlight and Kickstarter. Man...speaking of Kickstarter, it's a lot more work than I expected to make sure everything goes smoothly and all the extra materials such as posters and tshirts are in order. Here's a new concept art we're using as a poster reward for KS:

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« Reply #131 on: February 23, 2013, 06:57:42 PM »

How have I missed this for so long? This game simply looks phenomenal!
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zede05
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« Reply #132 on: February 25, 2013, 02:22:23 PM »

How have I missed this for so long? This game simply looks phenomenal!

Thanks!  Smiley

Here's a new video of how to make vehicles:



I'm very proud of the creation system we came up with, it's very flexible and very powerful at the same time. The downside is that it takes a lot of programming time for each individual set, such as cars or planes.
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zede05
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« Reply #133 on: February 27, 2013, 07:45:14 PM »

Just put the game on Greenlight, please help us get on Steam!  Beg

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=129199308

The support on there's been pretty awesome so far, a little different from what I expected from some of the tales going around.  Shrug
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« Reply #134 on: March 02, 2013, 05:21:11 AM »

Just discovered this project.
The work is huge and I admire the commitment to something so difficult, but I'm a bit disappointed by the translation from concept art to actual 3d graphics and by this 90s childish futuristic graphic design (the hexagon energy shield, so PSO-like, or the interface), I think that it would work as well with a more refined cut. Don't wanna be the party-killer :D I just thought coming here to say it was the only way to give my modest contribution. Anyway I voted for it in Greenlight and I'll buy it 'cause I like your "mission" Smiley


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P.S. Hello everyone here! first post for me (I'm a positive guy).
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jctwood
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« Reply #135 on: March 02, 2013, 06:00:26 AM »

This looks phenomenal!
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zede05
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« Reply #136 on: March 03, 2013, 07:45:48 AM »

Just discovered this project.
The work is huge and I admire the commitment to something so difficult, but I'm a bit disappointed by the translation from concept art to actual 3d graphics and by this 90s childish futuristic graphic design (the hexagon energy shield, so PSO-like, or the interface), I think that it would work as well with a more refined cut. Don't wanna be the party-killer :D I just thought coming here to say it was the only way to give my modest contribution. Anyway I voted for it in Greenlight and I'll buy it 'cause I like your "mission" Smiley

Well, we are a small indie team. To do a precise 1 to 1 representation of our concept art on the Unity engine in an open world game is a bit unrealistic, heh. Still, I think after we're done with all the assets, we'll do a second pass on them and hopefully improve their quality.
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« Reply #137 on: March 03, 2013, 07:51:18 AM »

Is this in unity?
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zede05
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« Reply #138 on: March 09, 2013, 09:38:14 AM »

Is this in unity?

Yes. Though the voxel calculations are done outside of Unity.

Speaking of Unity, it's billboard culling and loading are pretty inefficient. We had to make a bunch of changes to get our frame rate up since the moment you pass 20 types of billboards within a certain distance, the framerate just goes to hell.
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zede05
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« Reply #139 on: March 22, 2013, 10:55:14 AM »

Alpha 0.53 is out. You can get it here: http://planetexplorers.pathea.net/download/
I'm really enjoying the feedback from the alpha players, since they're basically doing focus testing for us. But one thing I found was that players don't really know the limitations, so they want everythingCheesy But because we went the open alpha route, it's been helping with awareness as well as trouble shooting. Should everyone do it? Dunno, but it's been working out well for us.

We've also launched our Kickstarter campaign here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1757963851/planet-explorers Any help in spreading the word would be much appreciated!
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