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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsG-Force Fighter(s) - An Action 52 Remake
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Author Topic: G-Force Fighter(s) - An Action 52 Remake  (Read 5864 times)
SF
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« Reply #20 on: March 15, 2013, 08:48:46 PM »

So I tried blowing up a single tile to higher res to avoid filtering artifacts:



Here's the diffuse layer of the material I ended up with after a few tweaks:



I think as far as endless featureless tunnels made of ugly abstract colours go, it ends up looking pretty convincing:



At the risk of losing some of the Action 52 recognizability, the diffuse contrast can be lowered for more of a derelict space station feel:



Keep in mind the game isn't going to be from a side view and this stuff will be whizzing by you quite fast.
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« Reply #21 on: March 15, 2013, 09:49:29 PM »

So we've got this pointless mesh of pink and orange:



I tried making a single tron-ish texture out of the orange and pink matrices together and it looked amusing but not worth keeping. I decided the best avenue would be to try and rationalize the environment as a bunch of free floating orange cubes arcing pink electricity and/or laser security grids between them (lasers are secure, I've never seen one broken into).

I extracted and blew up the tile:



Apparently getting their offset right was too much effort.

That got me thinking as to how to use that asymmetry as part of the effect.

Some randomized splat tiling, multi-layer grunge maps, and shape recognition tweaks later, and we've got an alien puzzle cube:

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deathtotheweird
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« Reply #22 on: March 16, 2013, 12:35:32 AM »

I like that last look for the textures, it looks much better now.
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« Reply #23 on: March 16, 2013, 07:44:09 AM »

what is your plan for the important part
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SF
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« Reply #24 on: March 16, 2013, 11:51:53 AM »

I like that last look for the textures, it looks much better now.

Thanks! I'm suspecting that I post some of this stuff too early, because I get excited about all the possibilities (because I know what I'm thinking I'll do with it) while everyone else is just seeing some marshmallowy blobs of red and orange. Oh well, maybe being shown how everything is iterative and starts by looking like crap will help some other new people out.

I am becoming increasingly amused by the idea of a pink spaceship powered by sparkles flying through gritty brown Quake-like textures. I think I'll roll with this style, at least for some of the sprite-derived levels.

what is your plan for the important part

I'm guessing you mean gameplay? I haven't been talking about that as much yet because;

  • None of my current gameplay experiments have made for meaningful screenshots or demos
  • The viability of the technology I have in mind for the level/enemy generation will directly affect what I can do with gameplay
  • My available time is coming in short bursts at the moment, making it easier/more fun to work on little graphical features right now

I also don't believe in committing to gameplay mechanics until I can show myself a practical demonstration that they're actually fun. My current broad idea though is this: A survival-oriented projectile hell "shooter" where you yourself are unarmed. You have to use stunt-like movement to evade attacks, and can generate a gravity field of some kind around your ship. The gravity field can suck enemy pieces/projectiles into orbit around you. This creates a shield you can use to ram enemies, protect yourself from shots, or slingshot junk at targets.

I'm currently planning to extend the joke of things being based directly on Action 52 sprites by making the enemies out of voxels, and generating their shapes from sprite rips (I'll have to draw alternate views of most of them). Destroying an enemy will shatter them into their component voxels which can be used as more shield junk.

The voxels will be billboarded particles rather than "Minecraft cubes" so I'm hoping this means I can get away with a huge number of them on screen.
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« Reply #25 on: March 17, 2013, 10:58:51 AM »

I bought Bitmap2Material so I couldn't resist playing with it a bit more.

Next stop was these weird silver pipe things:





I did some reading and have a better understanding now of how to use normals and specularity from an artistic standpoint. Some tweaks later and I ended up with this:



Of course their crappy sprites only tile in one dimension, so I opened up Pixen and edited the top and bottom strips together by hand, plus some new material:



I started out by trying to preserve the lighting direction but quickly realized I didn't care.

Applied to the playing field, and with an additional heightmap, it looks like this:



This looks good from the side but repeats way too distractingly when travelling down the middle:



I applied the max-precision offset tiling algorithm to both dimensions, which not only solved the problem but added a lot of cool visual intricacy:



It's getting all System Shock up in this bitch.

« Last Edit: March 17, 2013, 03:08:47 PM by SF » Logged

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« Reply #26 on: March 17, 2013, 09:00:35 PM »

Got a basic gravity shield going, started to have misgivings about my original mechanics ideas, glad I prototyped them before committing, considering side-view gameplay after all.
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« Reply #27 on: March 18, 2013, 12:18:46 AM »

make it into stairfax! Anyway the graphic is very freaking sweet on this one, too bad you haven't actually start making the game yet(i mean gameplay).

Question for the movement tech demo, are there no other normal movement other than barrel roll and whatever-up-down-roll? Did you try using mouse movement?
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« Reply #28 on: March 18, 2013, 03:30:00 PM »

make it into stairfax! Anyway the graphic is very freaking sweet on this one, too bad you haven't actually start making the game yet(i mean gameplay).

Thanks! I have been working on the gameplay, just not posting much about it. I'm hoping to have something worth showing by the end of the week.

Question for the movement tech demo, are there no other normal movement other than barrel roll and whatever-up-down-roll? Did you try using mouse movement?

I'm not using the mouse since the game jam rules dictated only arrow keys and two buttons. I had wanted for a long time to experiment with a game where the "advanced" movement is the "normal" movement for that matter.
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« Reply #29 on: March 18, 2013, 09:11:58 PM »

I've added a perspective shifting system. Think Sonic Generations/Colours and their ability to instantly switch between 2d and 3d gameplay:







Different perspectives will have completely different enemy types and slightly different gameplay concerns. I've rigged up the movement system to handle this all gracefully.

Click here to try it yourself! Arrow keys to dodge, P to switch perspectives.
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« Reply #30 on: March 18, 2013, 11:17:05 PM »


This Is How You Dodge
Oh god I found out you can do multi-directional flips.

Also I hope there will be an option to turn the up/down inversion on/off.


This Is How You Drive
Ship that is not the way you should be facing.
Ship!
Ship, stop!
« Last Edit: March 18, 2013, 11:24:07 PM by DustyDrake » Logged

Leon Fook
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« Reply #31 on: March 18, 2013, 11:27:18 PM »

I'm not using the mouse since the game jam rules dictated only arrow keys and two buttons.
Ohh, right, i forgot the rule of that collab.

I had wanted for a long time to experiment with a game where the "advanced" movement is the "normal" movement for that matter.
It sound sweet and all, but won't the movement being snapped to one line or another and thus making it harder to dodge bullet? Or maybe your plan is to make it into something like Audiosurf? Not to mock on your choice of doing stuff, but I just kinda curious on how you gonna achieve that.
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« Reply #32 on: March 19, 2013, 05:20:03 AM »

Oh god I found out you can do multi-directional flips.

Haha yep! You can also stack the velocity of multiple flips in a row together if you want to dodge quickly, or you can cancel a single dodge by immediately dodging in the opposite direction.

Also I hope there will be an option to turn the up/down inversion on/off.

Yes, there will definitely be that option. I'm going to make it per-perspective too, in case you want up to be up in side view but down to be up in chase view.

It sound sweet and all, but won't the movement being snapped to one line or another and thus making it harder to dodge bullet? Or maybe your plan is to make it into something like Audiosurf? Not to mock on your choice of doing stuff, but I just kinda curious on how you gonna achieve that.

It's not mocking at all, I'd rather people critique everything early on.

The enemies will behave differently in each perspective. You're not going to actually have control over the perspective in-game, it will change itself based on the level. Enemies will only shoot bullets at you on the plane the gameplay is currently taking place in, so if you're in side or top view it''ll work like most 2d shooters for example. The gravity shield will make this system make more sense once I have it in there too, but first I need to get some working enemies.
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« Reply #33 on: March 19, 2013, 08:36:24 AM »

Pffffft



This looks so delightfully stupid I got tempted to roll with it before I found out how difficult it is to light.
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« Reply #34 on: March 19, 2013, 08:54:40 PM »

I tried making a matching front view of that farting duck turtle:





Unfortunately it won't play nicely with the voxel generator I was hoping to use, no matter how much I tweak it:



Going to just make all the enemies cubes for now and start prototyping gameplay.
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« Reply #35 on: March 20, 2013, 05:46:20 PM »

I've added a bunch of 2 dimensional vectors which control the length of your dodge moves on a per-perspective basis. It feels a lot more natural now.

I also played with the render settings a bit and found out that you can in fact control things like ambient lighting and fog through script. This has fantastic implications for the random level generator, as it's going to allow for a tonne of possible visual styles.

Not much to screenshot yet but here's a slightly improved engine light:

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« Reply #36 on: March 20, 2013, 06:00:51 PM »

I have to say from what I've seen you've been doing a fantastic job turning reeking crap into shining gold. I love how well you've redone the theme for the game. I can't wait to see more!
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« Reply #37 on: March 20, 2013, 08:43:55 PM »

Thanks a bunch man! Keeps me motivated.

I was hoping to have a prototype gravity shield demo up tonight but there's this weird physics bug I want to solve first and my new sleep meds are taking effecccccccccccc
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« Reply #38 on: March 22, 2013, 09:13:51 AM »

Finally got a prototype version of the primary mechanic implemented that I'm happy with. Behold, the G-Force:



Activating the G-Force will suck all nearby projectiles, scrap, and potentially small enemies, into a tight orbit around your ship:



Pressing the activation button again while you have satellites will burst your shield, scattering them:



The mechanic is perspective agnostic and works gracefully in 3 dimensions, even when your movement is confined to a 2-dimensional plane:







What makes this really special is the fact that absolutely none of this behaviour is "canned". The objects orbiting your ship are the result of a natural balance of forces involving no manual setting of positions and no parented transforms.

Aside from contributing to a very natural and satisfyingly physics-y feel, this also means that the satellites will rubber band around your dodges, allowing you to slingshot them at targets as a kind of long-reaching melee weapon:







This is best experienced hands-on though!

PLAYABLE DEMO
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« Reply #39 on: April 10, 2013, 02:04:45 PM »

Just wanted to let everyone watching this thread know that I am still in fact working on this. I've been quiet lately because I've been testing out a new Xtreme Programming methodology known as a "Nervous Breakdown".

When real life lets me get back to this I'll be implementing enemies for you to smack stuff into, and the random level generator.
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