EDITOR







IN-GAME



there are 3 different thruster types in the plans, each with their own unique look.

different relative power levels in each thruster class have different colors associated with them.

short little demo vid showing how the mouse controls the ship
http://binarydemons.com/~strike/files/lunar_shipcontrols.wmv


the white line is controlled directly by the mouse, while the ship attempts to turn to face the same direction. collisions can disrupt the ship's ability to right itself, which can affect both flying and aiming capability (this is exploited in a couple of ways in the game design).

the ship 'springing' back and forth when it tries to match the target rotation is not intentional, and there are some ideas ive got to mitigate that a bit

tweaked some particle emitter parameters and changed blending modes, these look a little more like flames now

That looks so cool.

Sorry if i missed it, but how are the hitboxes created?

The B2 doesn't have afterburners. And if it did, they would be a clean, efficient blue flame, not a poofy red one.

I think that is awesome, cool to see how it is all coming together. maybe I missed discussion before but do you have an actual game planned out?

this is the first time ive mentioned this, but the "uber sidescroller game engine kit" garbagio is scrapped. i only have a month or two left to work on this project, and there is no way i will get it to any level near where i was hoping.

so, yes: there is an actual game designed now. im going back to the original idea for this project (a space shooter).

having the whole game preplanned means that i can cut a lot of development time by just hacking in what needs to be there for this particular game; rather than trying to keep the base code so flexible that theoretically any 2d game could be created with it.

i would LIKE to stick with the sidescroller idea, but like i said my time is running out, and i need to have something as a result of the several months spent on this project. ive spent over a month working on GUI alone, which was a relative waste of time (although thankfully, all of that code works very reliably and can still be used for menus and hud).

the real turning point in deciding to scrap the sidescroller came when i was working on articulated model code and realizing how much a pain in the nuts it was going to be to get it all working properly, animatable, and scaleable. i knew i would be spending well over a month on that alone, and it still wouldnt be getting me closer to any in-game combat or gameplay: just getting objects and characters on the screen. that's when i decided i needed to reevaluate where this project was headed.

Ummm... needs categorizing folders.

it has them. this screenshot was just a Search for *.h,*.cpp in the base source folder

Darn, I was hoping you'd finish the engine so that I could use it for an idea! BAH! usux.

ion thrusters

heres a short little video showing the other new gameplay visual thing: ship shields. other than the shield and thruster visuals, the video doesnt show anything you havent seen before in any of the other video clip(s).

http://binarydemons.com/~strike/files/lunar_shipshield.wmv


since i literally just barely set this up, i haven't tweaked with the damage multiplier and/or shield recharge rates, so not enough damage is dealt for you to see the shields change color. they become more translucent and reddish when the shield strength deteriorates.

Are you SM_Sithlord?

no, but i asked him to draw me some spaceships and he ended up starting a JK mod that uses them

oh, okay then. I just noticed the same ship used in this and the project on the jkhub and got a little worried.

laserz

Very impressive work. DirectX? OpenGL?

Why aren't you showcasing this on GameDev.net though? I noticed that you have an account there.

DirectX

i might show it at gamedev when levels are being loaded up =)


heres another screenshot with the newest addition: the player's visibility radius.

dynamic objects (space trash, other spaceships, lasers, etc) are clipped to the visibility radius, while environmental objects (walls, forcefields, wormholes) are dimmed when outside of the radius.

the visibility radius is also used for exploration. the entire map initially is 'unexplored' and is either not drawn, drawn fully black, or drawn using a generic wall tile (not sure which will look best yet). as the visibility radius moves over environmental objects they will be flagged as having been explored, and will always be drawn.

a 'minimap' is available; activating it will pause the game and zoom out the view so that the entire map or a large portion of it is visible. areas that you have explored will be visible (although still dimmed).

Dude that sounds like it really has potential. I can't wait to play!

another short video, this one shows the new map exploration goodies.

please note: the blue/yellow is test map-data

this has gone through a couple stages.. initially, i set it up so that unexplored tiles were just drawn solid black and would draw normally the instant they were 'explored'. this looked very bad.

next, i set it up so tiles would fade in from black quickly when they were explored. this looked better, but still 'chunky' since each tile would be its own solid shade.

finally, i threw out that whole system and rewrote it from the ground up, using some tricky subtractive and minimal-value blending operations to produce the silky smooth exploration region that you see in the video. amazingly, this method is actually far more efficient than the previous attempt; and looks much better as well. the cost? a render-target texture that consumes just 1 pixel per tile

http://binarydemons.com/~strike/files/lunar_exploration.wmv

Though I like the fog of war and visibility thing in most games like Civilization, it seems a bit weird in a space shooter since your line of sight in space is basically inifinite. So it wouldn't be logical. (Even though it might work nice gameplay-wise)

I do recommend some changes though. The circle end really abrubtly at the moment, this particularly looks ackward with the cut-off starships. It would look much better if the circle had a fade near the edge (and the same for the starships which are at the edges).

Also what might add some more interesting gameplay is to make the player not the centre of the visibility circle. Let the centre be somewhere in front of the player. This way the player has less visibility of things behind him. Though whether this would be of any use kind of depends on what kind of scripts will be attached to the enemies.

Blend the edge of the visability radius

you have some good suggestions.


actually the one you both suggested involving objects drawn partially in the visibility radius is already taken care of.

objects have a "last seen" orientation; if they go out of view, they will continue to be drawn where you saw them last, except they will very very slowly fade out. if the object comes into view again, the old 'ghost' is removed.

the portions of objects that are partially or fully outside of the visibility radius are dimmed, like the rest of the environmental objects and tiles (not shown in video currently). special effects (thrusters, lasers, etc) are not even drawn outside of the visibility radius.



i agree that it would be more realistic to have an infinite visibility range. it would also be more realistic to have no air resistance. but like you say, these things can detract from gameplay

the exploration feature is more of a guidance system than anything, in terms of gameplay. for example, lets say you have just blown up a forcefield generator in some maze-like portion of the level. instead of flying blindly to find your way back to the forcefield that was just deactivated, you can zoom out and get a look at the path you took.

the exploration and visibility radius also work great as culling algorithms, giving a pretty significant boost in performance.


edit: i misinterpreted what you meant about the exploration bit.. yes, it wouldn't make sense in more of an asteroids-like setting, but there are levels with walls in the plans for this game. you'll be flying through rooms and corridors

Your circle should be more like a Gaussian. Other than that, looks like it works well.

it is probable, though not gauranteed, that the vis. radius will remain looking like this.

im going to keep working towards gameplay goals, rather than arguably menial visual enhancements.