Top-Down view in JK

[Compos Mentis]

I'm working on a mod. In this mod, I need a top-down view of the player. Basically, I need it to feel like a top-down arcade shooter like raiden. I'm going to use a series of large 3dos moving past the player to give the illusion of movement so the camera doesn't really need to move. I just need it to limit the players movement to within it's POV somehow.

Any ideas?

[LKOH_SniperWolf]

Carefully placed invisible one-way adjoins.

[Compos Mentis]

...wow I'm dumb heh. To be honest I didn't think of that because all of my jk editing is cog-related.

I guess it'd be simple to just change the camera then to my ghost....

I'm sure I'll be posting more cog-related questions later. Thanks for clearing that up though :)

edit: how would screen resolution affect this? Not at all? (it's also been a while since I've even played jk heh....)

[LKOH_SniperWolf]

Screen resolution shouldn't, as long as you keep the edges accurate in a higher resolution, I think.

[Compos Mentis]

Awesome, thanks

[Quib Mask]

My only suggestion is during testing check multiple display resolutions ratios. 1280x1024 and 1024x768 are 5:4 and 4:3 respectively, and account for most aspect ratios.

If the invisible restraints are the same in those two resolutions, it means they'll be fine in all of them. If they don't stay the same, you might have to suggest an aspect ratio in the readme for desired performance.

Also, have you ever played Shikigami no Shiro? (I believe that's how it's spelled) It was released as Castle Shikigami (or something like that) in English. Anyway, it's a vertical shooter like Ikaruga, but where you're weird demon hunter people who fly. It uses a precise vertex for collisions rather than the large area circle that Ikaruga uses, so the projectile patterns enemies use can be very tightly packed (and beautiful, really) where you dodge just barely between waves of shots.

QM

[Compos Mentis]

Yeah I have played that. I'm a shmup freak!
That's why I'm making one :-D! It'll be a twist on Ikaruga's gameplay, combined with a bit of r-types firing system (charge shot etc).

I have most of it planned on paper. The great thing is it's not an entirely difficult thing to make besides all the models (which I suck at). So I imagine that I'll actually finish this eventually :)

[Quib Mask]

The biggest reason I asked about Shikigami is you could just use player models and be lazy. =D

I had thought about this type of thing too; are you planning to support multiplayer? If you're giving enemies fixed firing patterns, you should consider using triggers (or some other messaging system, like 1 projectile that has a class cog with flags of 0x240 that then fires a bunch of other projectiles) this way JK won't have to sync a buttload of projectiles over the network, but will still be able to fire really awesome sprays of shots and stuff.

QM

[Compos Mentis]

So far my plan is just a single-player mod. Mainly because I have no expierience doing multiplayer coding. Once I get things more settled I'll talk to you about getting it working in mp :).

I'm actually really looking for a good source of models because I can't do it for crap. I'll probably model the main ship as I have a design in mind that matches my back-story...but enemies and such are going to be a pain.

[JediKirby]

Are they all going to be ships? If you can upload drawings of ships, I'd be able to model ships for you.

JediKirby

[Compos Mentis]

Yeah. Ships and a few simple organics/structures to build the levels with. I'll send you the drawings once I finish most of the coding. Once I have a working prototype I'll be much more likely to have enough drive to finish it heh.