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[friken]

I worked on the Lipoc ship today so felt like grabbing a gif. It has the refined art and new propulsion system.



gif is a big choppy, video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJF-h4qrDms&feature=youtu.be

Next thing I'll be adding is the damage system so there are fires, venting air, people getting sucked out, damage decals left behind etc. I REALLY look forward to hooking up the fruit-ninja-like object slicing so I can have a laser ship cut an enemy in half and watch the two parts float apart

[friken]

ok... finally some hard work paid off. All the time I spent making a flexible engine propulsion system allowed me to make some pretty cool engines for the Lipoc and now the Salrith. Now I REALLY can't wait to get the damage system in there and watch the salrith ship punch through the middle of a ship and split it in half. Gif (note pushing enemy through the sun was a bit tongue and cheek... there will only be one race in the game that can stardive and it will be epic


full video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80_AUrt4U5c&feature=youtu.be

[JobLeonard]

Dear lord, that looks awesome! Both of them!

[friken]

Dear lord, that looks awesome! Both of them!

thx!


I've been adding more ships and tweaking the engine system. Here is the Benev race ship w/ propulsion:



Next up, I've been working on weapon systems I can tweak heavily to use between multiple ship types while maintaining each ship feeling extremely different. The zapper weapon on the Benev ship (gif below) is an example. This one weapon script will be able to make lightning type weapons, lazer weapons, tractor beans, and more that look very different by tweaking setup and material used:

[friken]

So I finished up for the day -- pretty pleased with the Benev (race in the game) weapon script I made. I am trying to make all weapons in the game extremely customizable so I can get several in-game upgrades at a minimum, maybe even the same script customized to be weapons for several different ships without looking/feeling reused or general. I think I will be able to use this one for several types of laser weapons, lightning, tractor beam, scanning beams, etc just by using different materials and settings for it. I recorded a video showing me toy a little with it. Note the benev ship will use three of these or more but in the video I have only one enabled so you can easily see the customization.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VpPn5e8k1o&feature=youtu.be

After toying w it a while, I thought one bolt coming off of each nose prong looked good -- a whiter/fatter bolt in the middle and two thinner ones on each side. I think this will be the config used for the Benev primary weapon but hopefully from the video you can see some settings that would look good for other ships without feeling generically reused.

[friken]

So I've spent the day getting the zapper script a lot more flexible and added some cool stuff to it. Changes:

- forked lighting w/ ability to set max# recursive branches
- single pulse w/ fadeout

example(note I forgot the destination light):


- stream of awesome while holding down fire (note the lighting on target :


example of same script pulling off a more standard pulsed beam weapon by setting 0 branching and only two nodes (source/target) and then a funky material on a really fat no branching one w lots of nodes and high amplitude in the background:

[friken]

Long day of struggle. I was happy, a few hours, to get the damage decals working, then of course I wanted to break a ship in half. I recall messing with a mesh splitter for unity some time ago so I started playing w it. It didn't work at all for planes/quads. Found TurboSplitter on the asset store and thought I would try it. It does do what it says but I was a bit ahead of myself in thinking through using a splitter to 1/2 a sprite. It does work but is entirely impractical in my game for a few reasons. First there is this use case, along a diagonal:



add some decals on edges right? not so much. first issue is you can't generate colliders from the split parts as the colliders are 2d and generate w the material not the mesh (material stays the same, so even refreshing collider each part gets full mesh collider). then there is the issue where only two objects are created, two clones of the orig object but each w 1/2 the mesh and ALL the attached scripts.... ugh ugly... would need to really plan for using that And notice the little bits that really need to be separate meshes (anything now floating not connected in space).

So I ditched that idea entirely and decided to go with pre-planned break away. At first I thought I'd hate having pre-planned but in action it makes the most sense and can be tightly controlled to be relevant to what ship system will no longer function if getting 'blown off'. Here is the first example of loosing part of the krex. Loosing this will take out two systems, the smasher weapon (needs both wings on the nose to generate a forward pulse) and the turning thruster for that side.

[RecidivistSW]

Just a heads up.  Your link to indieDB in your first post is broken

[friken]

Just a heads up.  Your link to indieDB in your first post is broken

thx fixed

[friken]

Ok.... bucketlist item checked off. I've REALLY wanted to make a ship that can punch through another ship for a loooong time

Sarlirth doing what it does:

[JobLeonard]

  Now recreate that "I'll punch you through the sun"-gif from earlier on! :D

[friken]

Last few days I've been working on planetary battles. Pretty happy w the result. The camera system worked nicely for zoom/pan:

[JobLeonard]

That looks awesome in short bursts, but I'm wondering if it won't give motion sickness if it's like that all the time?

[muki]

As a hard sci-fi fan, love that the aliens truly look alien 

Also, the game looks beautiful!

[friken]

As a hard sci-fi fan, love that the aliens truly look alien 

Also, the game looks beautiful!

Thanks for the kind words.

That looks awesome in short bursts, but I'm wondering if it won't give motion sickness if it's like that all the time?

are you referring to the planet backgrounds or slow motion?

[JobLeonard]

I think the combination of slow motion with zooming - it gives this crash zoom effect that can get really jarring.

[friken]

Interestingly in limited (internal folks) playtesting I'm the only fan of the slowmotion music. I have a feeling it will be a feature either left out entirely or reserved for rare over-the-top weapon. The zooming is only for very long-range weapons -- I think I will limit it to only activate if the enemy is beyond a certain distance so you don't get the crash-zoom effect when fairly close. Thanks for the feedback.

[friken]

So I'm finally hooking up the combat UI. I've had the art assets for a while just been avoiding doing the cutups and nGUI work to get it ingame -- yes I really do hate ui work.

So I have a question for the group about the ship status silhouette on the UI. Pic:



My question is about color. At the moment I have it set so full health is the offwhite color like the power/hull meters. It looks aesthetically pleasing enough and it darkens on damage and faded completely away when destroyed.

Question:

1. color wise does this work well enough for the purpose of the display? I know many games use bright green to yellow to red transitions for damage, but not a fan of how those colors look in the ui.

2. as a gamer would you prefer to know exact status of a part % wise w a callout # on top or beside it?

also to make a secondary objective on why to have the ship status graphics at all, for auto-target weapons you will be able to tab through/select a specific enemy part to target.

[JobLeonard]

As a protanomalous person, I say screw red/white coloured indicators!

[friken]

Working on space stations for StarDiver.

Krex Station:


Frik Asteroid Base: