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TIGSource ForumsCommunityJams & EventsCompetitionsOld CompetitionsCockpit CompetitionHard Aether [FINISHED]
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Mikademus
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« Reply #40 on: March 18, 2009, 09:17:38 AM »

(Can you notice that I like this game and concept by the way I'm hanging in here?)

There is a plane of reference within the Solar System. Most planets are aligned (rotate around the Sun) at roughly the same plane, call it the rotational disc or something. Or you can us the equatorial plane of Earth, or the Earth-to-Moon and Moon orbit as the plane.
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« Reply #41 on: March 18, 2009, 12:20:29 PM »

call it the rotational disc or something.

You could get all properly scientific and call it the ecliptic plane!

DST ECL +3E5K
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Mikademus
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« Reply #42 on: March 19, 2009, 02:34:31 AM »

call it the rotational disc or something.

You could get all properly scientific and call it the ecliptic plane!

DST ECL +3E5K

Thanks, couldn't think of the correct name when I posted Smiley
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nihilocrat
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« Reply #43 on: March 20, 2009, 07:21:40 AM »

Posted the techdemo, hope y'all like it.

Next up, I will probably be getting the laser to work. There are some silly shenanigans I do in another game to get beam weapons, so I'll use them here as well. Yes, it's completely unrealistic to see a beam of polarized light in a vacuum, but I am letting fun overrule reality in this one case.

After that I will angrily get back to messing with render-to-texture, or at least getting cockpit overlays to work. I might have to fall back to using a static 2D cockpit if I can't make any progress.
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Mikademus
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« Reply #44 on: March 20, 2009, 09:22:05 AM »

Sorry, won't start here either (have WinXP).
* Mikademus is a sad camper
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nihilocrat
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« Reply #45 on: March 20, 2009, 09:37:22 AM »

Yeah, this is going to be hard because I actually don't have an XP machine at home, and I don't have the latest version of my code over here at work. Hopefully I can use VirtualBox or some other virtualization layer to build it in WinXP. The error I get is so vague and non-sequitur that I'm not sure I could make a proper build in Vista.

I still need to get around to making a linux partition. Theoretically all my games are cross-platform because I only use cross-platform libs, but I usually just never get around to making the builds for all the systems.
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« Reply #46 on: March 20, 2009, 01:51:22 PM »

Works fine on my Vista laptop - although the first thing I did was get the camera in the wrong place with WASD. I like the art style even more in-game than I did in the pictures - good stuff. The music also works fine.

A couple of minor suggestions:

* The framerate is super smooth, it might be worth limiting it to get the feel of the era you're looking for.

* The ships feel a little bit responsive for their implied size, and they could do with some damping on the attitude (rotational) thrusters - these are a bit on-off at the moment and they make things feel light rather than heavy as a result.

* When the missiles explode, you could switch the main lightsource to match the explosion for a dramatic effect.

Looking forward to seeing the next version!

Will
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nihilocrat
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« Reply #47 on: March 20, 2009, 07:51:41 PM »

Thanks for trying it out! I guess since you didn't mention it I should make sure... did you hear the onboard computer's voice when you fired a missile and it detonated?

*I don't actually know if OGRE lets you force the framerate, but I actually hadn't thought of that. I'll definitely try playing around with it.

*I'm actually going to make the rotational physics behave properly, meaning, you have to counter-act any force with an opposite force. It should make maneuvering particularly difficult, particularly if I make the acceleration slow and thus encourage people to over-compensate.

*I hope you can tell there's a light attached which fades out quickly. I might try out your idea, but it might screw up the illumination on the planet. Currently, you might notice that the entire planet lights up when you explode a nuke, because I haven't set any sort of attenuation on the light yet.


I'm betting more and more that I'm not going to finish by the deadline, but I'm going to try to not abandon the project because of that. Hopefully it will actually motivate me more, because I'll care less if it's not very fun compared to all the other entries if it's not going to be judged alongside them. As usual for me, I got a little creatively distracted, but I got that out of my system by drawing some only-a-few-shades-better-than-mspaint mockups. Personally I find I can regain focus pretty well if I just write down the design or draw some stuff to get the rosy images of a cool game out of my head, instead of start yet another project that's going to hardly get anywhere.




Play the game "Gravitar" and you have a very accurate view of my idea. That's not my handwriting, I just don't own a tablet so I moused the whole thing.
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« Reply #48 on: March 20, 2009, 08:57:23 PM »

Doesn't work on my XP, but that might be because it's a fairly old laptop.
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nihilocrat
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« Reply #49 on: March 21, 2009, 09:22:05 PM »

Posted new version of the techdemo. It should run in WinXP.

The slowness of my upload rate reminds me of dialup.
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Fuzz
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« Reply #50 on: March 21, 2009, 09:54:53 PM »

I'm getting this:
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Mikademus
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« Reply #51 on: March 22, 2009, 08:22:36 AM »

Yay! New version works on XP! However, the mouse buttons doesn't seem to, when I click I get an error message in the console saying that some resource couldn't be found.

Also, could we get full screen support?

Looking very nice though! Smiley
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« Reply #52 on: March 22, 2009, 08:41:49 AM »

Actually it should be running in full screen anyways, I might have used an old config file in the confusion.

If you are impatient, you can edit ogre.cfg and switch Fullscreen to "Yes".

Please be more specific about the resource issue... it might be espeak complaining and not the rest of the application.
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Mikademus
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« Reply #53 on: March 22, 2009, 09:55:32 AM »

Yeah, it is espeak. Nonetheless, nothing fires when I click any mouse button, and nothing changes from the right button (which should switch between look and control mode, right?) so there might be something up with the input.
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« Reply #54 on: March 22, 2009, 11:34:46 AM »

I'll look into that a little more, but right now I'm looking into completely re-doing the interface. I think I'll drop the 3d cockpit entirely and go for a single or a set of 2d overlays, because OGRE's overlay stuff and GUI libraries are quite mature and should make it easy to get things up and running.

The way OGRE3d overlays work, it looks like I might be able to include the cockpit as a static but 3d component, so hopefully that means it will be lit just like any other 3d object. If not, no worries, I will just take a screenshot of the cockpit and use it as the overlay background. I'm sad that I'm giving up on something that would be pretty cool (completely 3d interactive cockpit) but it's in the interest of getting a game out the door, so if I'm successful I will be much happier than I would be if I just had a crappy/nonexistent 3d cockpit.

edit: I think I like my decision... see the original post.
edit 2: Also, new techdemo! Hope this one works out better somehow...
« Last Edit: March 22, 2009, 04:23:19 PM by nihilocrat » Logged

Fuzz
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« Reply #55 on: March 22, 2009, 11:52:38 AM »

When I try to open it it says that the application configuration is incorrect.
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nihilocrat
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« Reply #56 on: March 22, 2009, 07:50:29 PM »

New techdemo out!

Here's the addendum that py2exe provides me when I build the game on my virtual WinXP machine (via VirtualBox):

Quote from: Command Prompt
The following modules appear to be missing
['app', 'com', 'font', 'gl', 'graphics', 'image', 'lib', 'media', 'psyco', 'reso
urce', 'sprite', 'text', 'win32api', 'win32con', 'win32pipe', 'window']

*** binary dependencies ***
Your executable(s) also depend on these dlls which are not included,
you may or may not need to distribute them.

Make sure you have the license if you distribute any of them, and
make sure you don't distribute files belonging to the operating system.

   OLEAUT32.dll - C:\WINDOWS\system32\OLEAUT32.dll
   USER32.dll - C:\WINDOWS\system32\USER32.dll
   SHELL32.dll - C:\WINDOWS\system32\SHELL32.dll
   ole32.dll - C:\WINDOWS\system32\ole32.dll
   WINMM.dll - C:\WINDOWS\system32\WINMM.dll
   WSOCK32.dll - C:\WINDOWS\system32\WSOCK32.dll
   ADVAPI32.dll - C:\WINDOWS\system32\ADVAPI32.dll
   msvcrt.dll - C:\WINDOWS\system32\msvcrt.dll
   WS2_32.dll - C:\WINDOWS\system32\WS2_32.dll
   MSVCP90.dll - C:\PythonOgre\arbiter\MSVCP90.dll
   MSVCR90.dll - C:\PythonOgre\arbiter\MSVCR90.dll
   KERNEL32.dll - C:\WINDOWS\system32\KERNEL32.dll

I was probably going to provide the source anyways, so I might farm out building to y'all. The dependencies are really tiny: python 2.5, Python-Ogre, and py2exe. I would appreciate if any Mac / Linux users (well yeah uhm I just dont uhm have a uh linux box handy right now geez what sort of linux nerd am I?) would pipe up and offer to build on those platforms.
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nihilocrat
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« Reply #57 on: March 24, 2009, 06:25:57 AM »


Shot at 2309-03-24

Small improvements, added some AI, though for this screenshot I've turned it off. I am wrestling with Python's garbage collector so that ships actually disappear when they are destroyed. Currently, it seems their physical body gets removed correctly, but nothing else...

Once I get the lasers working and tie up a few loose ends, there will actually be something resembling gameplay. Except for a few other improvements, I think I want to keep the interface the way it is (confusing and user-hostile). Do you think this is a good idea?
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Mikademus
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« Reply #58 on: March 24, 2009, 08:40:17 AM »

Actually, no. Your game is too good for intentionally being made annoying in that way. I mean, it isn't a conceptual or anvant-gardistic game, but rather has a nice promise, good execution and appealing retro-referencing graphics. Therefore, let the interface be as it would on a spaceship, that is perhaps a bit in the way but necessarily so, but not MORE than that.
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nihilocrat
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« Reply #59 on: March 24, 2009, 08:57:41 AM »

This is really an important element for me, because making a proper graphical interface would require some extra work figuring out if I've got to do RTT or if I can do it with overlays. RTT this time around would be much simpler though, because I can just render it to an overlay element.

Did you mean to say that, from its current status, it should be /less/ annoying, or that it's okay being just as annoying as it is now? You can figure out where stuff is by comparing the numbers in the readout to figure out, for example, which way to turn to face a target.

I'll see if I can't at least get a graphical radar / attitude indicator and be done with that. If not, I'm not going to make stuff any /more/ terse, just keep it at the same level. I need to fix the azimuth/altitude display to work properly, right now it's calculating properly but it's offset somehow, I need to play with the math.

Anyways, I'm reverting back to gameplay-oriented development... I need to get them lasers working, along with playable AI, some sort of main menu, having ships properly die, etc.


update: slogging through boring target prediction code makes me a saaaaaad panda
« Last Edit: March 24, 2009, 07:13:57 PM by nihilocrat » Logged

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