TopDown with modified ship and YouTube video

[ErosOlmi]

A new version with changed ship.

MbM_sMeOza8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbM_sMeOza8

Sources attached.
Sounds included.

[kryton9]

I really love this game. Thanks to you guys for such a wonderful example!! As you might know, I went through some game development in Delphi and now am learning C++ and to make something at this level is lots of work in those languages. Not that it isn't hard in thinBasic, but wow it is so much easier compared to those languages.

A game request, I would love to see a different color laser blast from either the player's ship or the enemies' ships. Now I go back to some more playing before bed time :)

[Michael Hartlef]

Are you guys experience the same?

When an enemy was hit, but not destroyed... after he leaves the screen at the bottom, its smoke particles are still alife and become bigger and bigger. Sometimes a big huge white smoke cloud takes up 3/4 of the screen. :)

Michael

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

first thanks to Eros for very nice players ship !

Mike - it is feature :) The particle grows up to some size and then disappears, or is removed if other source needs this particle. I made a tiny mod which makes particles to tend to fade away too + some tweaks which finally had no impact on speed ;D. Enemies now use different shots.

kryton9 - do you think you would be able to model 3D equivalents of this bitmap fighters ?


Bye,
Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

Boooh, I was doing different shoots too :P

Here is my version.

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi Mike,

I like the blue shot, so I stole it from your sample and put in my evolution.
Especially for you I raised %MAXPARTICLES from 10 to 64, so you can see now better huge explosions and their fade :)


Bye,
Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

Thief you are ;)

I'm not Krytonm but I took the task and made fastly this enemy.

[Michael Hartlef]

It is very lowpoly, but can be enhanced as someone likes it.

[ErosOlmi]

Wow, low poly but well designed !

[Petr Schreiber]

Cool stuff!,

low poly is good in this case, at least we can make megagalactic battles with lots of planes!
It reminds me of TIE fighter from StarWars.

Could you texture it ? :P

I can modify the source for multiple kind of enemies, so everybody modeling now ! ;D


Bye,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

Hey, do not forget mouse usage.
It seems we are all keyboard addicted here :D

[Michael Hartlef]

Wow, low poly but well designed !



With the right texture, you won't even notice that the polycount is that low. Here is a more enhanced version with a little cockpit. It has 174 faces right now.

[Michael Hartlef]

Cool stuff!,

low poly is good in this case, at least we can make megagalactic battles with lots of planes!
It reminds me of TIE fighter from StarWars.

Could you texture it ? :P

I can modify the source for multiple kind of enemies, so everybody modeling now ! ;D


Bye,
Petr





Cool, I'll try to texture it. But more tonight, as I have to do something with the family now. I'm curious what Kryton9 will come up with.

[ErosOlmi]

... Thanks to you guys for such a wonderful example!! As you might know, I went through some game development in Delphi and now am learning C++ and to make something at this level is lots of work in those languages. Not that it isn't hard in thinBasic, but wow it is so much easier compared to those languages.

All general purpose languages require a lot of code to do things. This is normal, they are not dedicated but must give all the power to make your dreams possible. C, C++ do this perfectly but you have to spend time to master them.

The trick is to have some dedicated library working on specific items. OpenGL is one of those.
thinBasic try to achieve this using modules. Modules are extension of the main core language working on specific arguments in the best way possible giving programmers high level functions that do a lot with few lines of code. And TBGL does this in a wonderful way. Pretty sure Petr will give us a lot of new presents in future ! ;)

Ciao
Eros

[ErosOlmi]

I can modify the source for multiple kind of enemies, so everybody modeling now ! ;D


Thank you Petr!

[Petr Schreiber]

This is fun :),

the new version with cockpit looks good!
As you say - good texture makes a difference. And as the model looks good, with nice texture it will be perfect.

Maybe I could change the explosions to be temporary light sources, this could add on "atmosphere".

I am also very curious about krytons creations...

If you will keep the low face count in all models, it could result in very nice epic battles, running at great speed.

I can see thinBASIC execution speed raised a lot from times when I created the script. I remember that in those eldest misty times I could not go very high on particle count because the processing took some time. Now it is done very fast.


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

Wow, I went to sleep a few hours ago and wake up it seems like I slept a week. So much went on and you guys did so much!!

I need to go setup a computer for "my uncle" (very close friends of my Dad's and so like an Uncle to me), so won't be able to work on any modeling till tonight my time local. I will try to make Eros's Ship since Mike has done the ultra cool attack ships. I have not worked on low poly too much, I always try to model everything and never get anything done the way I like. This will be good as for games I know I have to master low poly modeling. Mike's model is great inspiration!!!

Sounds like when you guys are done with this game it will be one of my favorite space shooters!!!

Thanks, now to download and test out all your guys hard work!!!

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi kryton,

I am very curious about your models.
Low poly is surprisingly quite difficult,
I just add few details here and there and we are going high poly :)

Good luck with setup of the PC :)


Petr

[kryton9]

I am back home and thought about modeling the whole time. Anxious to model the blue player ship. Hope to have something in a few hours. I will try to match that ship instead of making my own design, it will help me stick to low polygons :) Very exciting to work on this. Thanks for the opportunity guys!

[kryton9]

Ok, got the player ship modeled. Now on to texturing fun. I included 2 shots of the model in Blender.

Adding this part later: Although the screen grabs looked good below. When I went to test render and add textures, I noticed a big problem. Just wanted to write in case any of you also are modeling to avoid the same mistake. My error: I used the knife tool to cut new edges into the model. This worked fine. The problem cropped up when I went to combine vertices that seemed redundant and that wouldn't effect the planar surface of the faces they affected. Well, I was wrong, although they look fine in the pictures below and on the screen. when I rendered, I was getting strange results. So if you use the knife tool, probably just better allowing it leave the new faces and edges in that it creates. I attached a picture showing what appears ok on the 3d screen, part of the uv editor and a small render that showed the error.

Now back to start over on the model and this time not remove what seems extra :)

[Michael Hartlef]

Looks good so far. I suggest you don't use the knife tool at all and try to work only with extrusion. This way the polys align perfectly and are all connected. But you matched the sprite perfectly. Great job. Finish that beast.

I came back yesterday to late to do something serious. I hope you guys don't mind. I will head to work today again so, it will take some time to finish the texturing. Sorry.

[kryton9]

well, I had a really fun night and wanted to upload what I got done so far. I included the blender files and also the thinEdge files. I made a quick texture and was trying to figure out what is where. By looking at the bmp, you can get an idea. I also left the faint ship uv lines in the texture.

It makes you appreciate all the great models and texture you see in games. It does take lots of time it seems. In Blender you will see I am at something like 86 faces for the model, so that is why it is not anywhere as good as Mike's, well I had to blame my poor work on something :)

Off to sleep, who knows what wonders I will awake to if anything like yesterday, he he haha.

[Petr Schreiber]

Cool model,

can't wait to see it in action ;)
I have no idea about knife tool, but it seems it made 4 vertices of one face to be not in the same plane. Maybe you could enable shading in the modeling viewport to be able to spot it before render.

Good night, I am going to watch the model you just attached.


Thanks,
Petr

[Petr Schreiber]

Nice work!,

especially the rocket launchers on wings must make enemies afraid!
As the texture is quite darky, I will try to add some water surface behind the scene to make the contrast better.
kryton, you are hardcore man, you posted it around 4 of morning of your time :o

Mike, no problem. Take your time and then we will be able to put planes to direct fight!
At least I will have some time to prepare the script for "modelisation".


Bye,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

Yes, exactly. Petr is right.
Time is your time and is one of the most important aspect of humans. It goes only in one direction and we cannot get it back.
So no schedule to maintain at least here in thinBasic. Mike, all the time you will be able to give here it will a present for all of us.

Thanks
Eros

[kryton9]

That was the low poly model and all the files to show how to use them in blender and then see the output in thinEdge, I will make a much better texture today, I was rushing yesterday. I will try to texture bake with radiosity and make the ship white and let the lighting add the gradients. Hopefully. Then if all that works will make a nicer model based on that design with a little more detail. More hopefuly later. Glad you liked the test model :)

[kryton9]

Oh My Did you guys see the new blender updates and site? Look at all the new features :)

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-243/

[Michael Hartlef]

Good job Kryton. Here is what I have done. I hope it is ok as this is my first texturing job. The zip file contains the M15 file, the texture and the blend file. To be true, I modeled it inside Hexagon 2.

[Michael Hartlef]

Oh My Did you guys see the new blender updates and site? Look at all the new features :)

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-243/


Yes, this is a huge update. How do I ever catch up with all these new features, never mind the basic stuff. :)

[ErosOlmi]

Ladies and gentlemens here we have a new master of the universe: Mr MikeHart !!!!

Thanks a lot Mike !

[Michael Hartlef]

Thanks Eros, but I will share the flowers with Kryton, his fighter is great too. :)

[ErosOlmi]

Yes, of course.
I really like the spirit of cooperation here.
Thanks to all.

[kryton9]

Mike, Nice panel textures, I got lazy and am lazy to make such a nice texture, but it looks more like a ship then for sure. That fighter is the ace of the universe. My ship is a clunker waiting to be taken out by that speedy cool fighter of yours. Great job, will push me to work harder and make nicer ones.

In the meantime, if any of you have sketches of ships you would like modeled, upload and I can use them to model. It will be great excersice for me and more ships for use on projects.

I will try to make my clunker better tonight as I loaded the new version of blender. See what magic it can do :)

[ErosOlmi]

http://spaceships.30doradus.org/main.php

Just found. Can give some ideas.

[kryton9]

Thanks Eros, that is one of my pleasures to search for images of ships in movies and tv shows I loved. Those are masterpieces I can only dream of creating. But looking at them is inspiration and nice for triggering space day dreams!!

[Michael Hartlef]

http://spaceships.30doradus.org/main.php

Just found. Can give some ideas.


Hey, thanks for that link. A nice collection you found there.

[Petr Schreiber]

This rocks!,

I am not at home, but I will be soon :)
Multi enemy scipt is ready so be prepaired !


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

Petr, that will be cool. Let me know of any ship designs you would like.

Eros, Mike and Petr my hats off to you guys. After figuring some stuff out in blender today. I wanted to push things even though I was sleepy. I went into Wings3d, you can model very quickly in there. Anyways I went nuts and in about half an hour made this crazy test cruiser. Over 60,000 polygons. Like I said I wanted to push things as a test.

Anyways exported as obj. Imported into Blender. I used the decimate modifier in Blender and got the 60,000+ polys down to like 7500 or something like that. I then made sure all normals were facing out. I uv mapped it and texture baked it.

I exported with Mike's m15 export and low and behold, no crashes, thinEdge loaded it perfectly. I turned off the grid display and turned off the lights, I found out you don't see the true texture baked texture with the lights on, which makes sense. Anyways took a screen shot. This is all texture baked and in thinEdge.

So the workflow is there, I couldn't be happier. Now the that main workflow is Great, I can start modeling again.

Let me know if you guys are interested in any video tutorials about modeling quickly in Wings3D, going to blender, texture baking and then using in thinEdge and then later in thinBasic.

Well goodnight, here is a screen shot, I didn't put the model as I made the back really messy and wanted to see if it would crash. It was horrendous modeling with many many polys, extruded in wierd directions. I was shocked it all worked. Really says something about your guys programming skills!!!

[Michael Hartlef]

Of course I wanna see a tutorial about your workflow. And I am very happy that my blender script gets its use. ;D

That cruiser looks interesting, I would like to see it from a different angle.

If we don't watch out, this can turn into a nice community space fight game. ;) That would be a good test for thinbasic/TBGL and a bigger game project.

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

kryton9, I use Wings 3D for higher poly stuff too, very nice interface and fast modeling.
It was the program which lead me to idea to import OBJ I think.
Your high-poly beast looks awesome, really profi quality!

New Blender looks very nice, I am sad it is beyond my time capatibilities to find time to learn it better :(

I have prepaired early version of next-gen ;D space script. It contains both kryton and Mikes models, so it looks really nice. Also sound of explosions and shots is played with random frequency so it sounds different, hear beat is faster with lower "lifes" left. Also light source is placed on position of last explosion.
The code generally was revised, but still waits for some tweaks I have in head :)

Mike, I am sorry but I had to make your fighter smaller to 60% of its size because it was ... big :) I hope you won't be angry for that.

I am now thinking to make possible to create definition files for enemies and guns containing how much hit points they can loose before exploding and more.


Enjoy!,
Petr

P.S. I am leaving home now, so please don't be scared I don't reply till night

[ErosOlmi]

FANTASTIC
It seems Christmas time for me. Also it is a pleasure to see the effort of many be so concrete.

Cons:
a little bit dark :P

Added: I couldn't resist :D
ORf3b7XcDr4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORf3b7XcDr4

[Michael Hartlef]

Mmmh, it says, Video no longer available!

[Michael Hartlef]

Mike, I am sorry but I had to make your fighter smaller to 60% of its size because it was ... big :) I hope you won't be angry for that.

How dare you? ;D No, I'm fine with that.

Did I mentioned that it was ment to be a mega super duper battle destroyer?
So it was ment ot be biiiiiigggggg;D

I'm fine with that. I noticed myself that the models turn out big inside thinedge. But I think I allready have scaling at export on my list for the export plugin.

[ErosOlmi]

Right sentence should be "Video not yet avaiable"

YouTube takes from few seconds to many minutes, sometimes hours before finishing batch conversions.

[Michael Hartlef]

Ok, sorry, I didn#t know that.

[kryton9]

Oh my GOODNESS, WOW, wake up another awesome day to see such great work. That is really awesome Petr!!!

I will make my ship brighter for you. Sorry forgot about that when I got on texture baking quest yesterday in the new Blender.
With the dual gun shots, I got my highest score yet :) Love that, the battle looks epic with fireballs and explosions everywhere too.

PLaying this gives me lots of ideas, I am sure you had too. Like different ships for the player as he advances, different enemies, picks ups to advance to next ship, repair pickups, bonus point special targets just to name a few. Now that I see what the game will be like I can design better models for such features.

The problem is, this is too fun to play to sit and work now :) So it will be later tonight my time with new stuff. Thanks again to all you guys, really fun to see this come together!!!

Thanks for the credits on the video too Eros, I hope I can make more models to make my name up there worthy.

[Michael Hartlef]

Yeah, thanks for the credits in the video. Next time use Michael Hartlef, spreads my name around even more ;D

I just played the 3D version. It took this simple game to a next level. I love it. Seeing these ships now gives it a whole new level. Great job guys. !!!

[Michael Hartlef]

Not sure if you want to implement it but here would be something else to shoot at if you like.

An asteriod for a nice asteriod field. Make it spin nicely and Petr, yes you are allowed to scale it as needed. ;D

The zip includes all files I worked with. Blend, Hexagon, Unwrap 3D, Photoshop, the texture, M15,... simple everything.

[ErosOlmi]

Mike,
.M15 file is empty

[Michael Hartlef]

Thanks for spotting Eros, it is fixed and reuploaded. :)

Michael

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

I finally got home :)
Tommorow is latest hard day and I will have more time to improve script !

kryton - sure, I am thinking of power-ups and more! New texture for player ship would be very nice! I may put some bright background for the scene too.
The Cornelius Monkey is nice :) There is extreme power hidden in "baking". If I understand it ok, it would be possible to use it for lightmap like stuff even for FPS levels ? That would simply rock!

Mike - nice asteroid ! I will scale it up and down :D Awesome look and pretty low poly !

Can't wait to tune script for all those new features, but I can start working on it from tommorow afternoon, till then I am overloaded :/

Thanks again for models and Eros for great video !
If you have ideas for next fighters models... ;)


I must say it is GREAT cooperation with you guys,
Petr

[kryton9]

Just got back home from quick errands. Yes, texture baking allows lightmapping, well actually mapping everything onto a surface and calling from one texture. So you could lightmap a whole level and texture bake and you are all set.

I like the dark background as it is space, so making the ships lighter will be easy. I will do Mike's a little lighter too as well as mine.

The other option and this could be another level is like in a canyon background. Then the ships could be darker. I guess we are winging this as we go along, so for now space with lighter ships. Then we can do other levels and styles.

For powerups, will they be things that we need to shoot to get or run into? Any ideas on what they should look like. Mike's meteors are a good idea for powerups in space as it fits into the whole idea. And maybe a bigger enemy ship for the bonus points. Let me know what you guys think. This is already so much fun to play, really awesome and really smooth play, very professional feel to it!!!

[Michael Hartlef]

Yeah, powerups would be cool. I will see that I come up with some more enemy fighters the next days, different design but in the same style as they are from the same alien race.

We could also use (I let my mind run a little)

- satelites
- mines
- capital ships like kryton said, to use as the level boss enemy
- some kind of a star gate which ports you to the next level
- space platforms with turrets on it, We could fly over these
- cruise missiles
- a space dock to repair our ship in it
- cargo boxes that contain powerups
- shield models for our fighter (we would need an alpha texture here I think)

[kryton9]

Awesome ideas Mike!!

Guys I just redid the textures, the ships are lighter in color now and much easier to see.

Just replace the texture folder for the game with these textures.

Since Mike is going to model away making cool things too, I will work on a quick workflow video, nothing elaborate but enough to get you guys going if you want and to see it work all the way through.

Very excited, my learning c++ is on hold till I get caught up with doing all this fun stuff.

[ErosOlmi]

Much better but much bigger file.
Maybe you changed to 32 bit colors

[Michael Hartlef]

Hey Kryton, model something too, don't let me do it all alone :)

Here is the cargobox, with 3 different textures. Could be used as a powerup.

[Michael Hartlef]

I will work on a quick workflow video, nothing elaborate but enough to get you guys going if you want and to see it work all the way through.

Great, I'm looking forward to it.

Well, I hit the bed now. See you gyus tommorow!

Michael

[ErosOlmi]

Mike, you are to quick!
Your production is massive ;D

PS: YouTube video modified with full name and web sites reference:

ORf3b7XcDr4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORf3b7XcDr4

[ErosOlmi]

A little modified version:

new sound in case our missle hit an enemy
global variables used for sound defined at the very beginning of Sound_InitAndLoad function. This will avoid possible runtime errors in case no audio available

[kryton9]

Thanks Eros, Mike and Petr. THis is really fun and exciting seeing this move along so quickly and in such positive direction from an already fun game!!

I made tutorials showing the workflow, well I made them almost 3 times already. I keep going off in tangents and have a hard time staying on subject, or I mumble too much. I want to make them as I would like to see video tutorials, nice and slow with everything explained that is done with the keyboard and mouse. So I am going to start being picky when making my tutorials from now on to make them as nice as I can.

Thanks Eros for the title credit on the video, now I will have to work on my site. I just had some stuff as a test and mainly used my site for holding files to link to in forums :) Now it gives me a reason to work on it.

Mike, very glad you are modeling away. It is motivating me to do the same too. I will try to keep a uniform look to the ships I make too then for the player. I will make a simpler ship to start with and then move on now that I see how the game will be. Low Poly is all we need, so that is really great excerise.

I see that I have to work on making my bmp files smaller, which I will pay attention to from now on, since thinBundle is working so well, this way the executeable will be nice and small and even more impressive.

Petr, good luck with your last hard day. Amazed at how far you made this game in such time, you and Eros really are pushing how cool this game is. Thanks.

[Michael Hartlef]

Good morning guys,

man I could need some longer sleeping periods. But around eastern I will have 2 weeks off. Something to look forward.

Petr, good luck for your hard day, what ever it is.

Eros, thank you for extending and modifying the game. I will look at it when I'm done with this post.

Kent, yes low poly works extreme good in this game. I'm very surprised about it but I'm also very happy about it. MY wife said that it allready looks very nice at this stage. My little soon wants to play it, that's for sure.

Last night in bed, before misses turned the TV off, I had two new design ideas for the enemy ships. So I have allready something that I can turn into a model. Ok, I need some coffee now and then go and make some money for the family. ;)

Take care guys
Michael

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

I could not resist to check it here at least in morning :)

Eros, thanks for new explosions and other modifications. The EXE is cool too 8)


Petr, good luck for your hard day, what ever it is

Thanks! It is generally just very time consuming ;)

The cargobox is very nice too, thanks a lot. I am sure new ships will be perfect.
My brother started to model something like ship for this game too yesterday, but I am not sure if he is still working on it. I will try to add mine model too.

kryton, I am sure the tutorial will be great. The size of textures is big, but for example IrfanView offers multiple ways to convert it to 256 colors ( I know, sounds scary ) and the result is in most cases terrific. I used this trick for ZIP version of topDown release.

Bye,
see you on the evening ( Eros, Mike ) / afternoon ( kryton9 ) :)

[kryton9]

Good morning guys. Nice to see you all on here before I go to bed. I did about 7 takes of my workflow video. I finally got a pretty good one done only to find I didn't have the mouse enabled in the recording. I put it up anyways to show the work flow from Wings3D to Blender then to thinBasic. I hope you find it easy enough to follow. Since you are unfamiliar with it you can tell me honestly if it is a must to have it with the mouse, my intuition tells me of course redo it.

Anyways, I will take a break and look and play with the game a bit before heading off to sleep. Already 4:30am my time.

I will make all my models and put them up as one zip. Since the models are small in the game, I will make the bmp textures only 256 colors to keep the sizes down too.

Well off to some playing and looking at the latest downloads.
Oh, almost forgot the link to the work flow tutorial:
http://www.kryton9.com/tutorials/kryton9-Wings3D-Blender-ThinEdge-WorkFlow.wmv

[Michael Hartlef]

Thanks for the tut, I'll check it tonight (my time) .

[kryton9]

You are welcome Mike and if any parts seem confusing or you think I can improve please let me know. I want all my tutorials to be good from now. I just wanted to get that out after spending well tons of hours on it today :) Have a good day at Work!!

[kryton9]

I was just looking at the blend files that Mike had in his cargo and asteroid zip. If you open up the blend files, it is looking for the textures in the local directories that Mike used on his computer. Just select the texture button and then click on the browse for file icon next to the existing file name and path in the Load Panel for textures. Browse to the folder where you unzipped the files and reload the bmp files you want to look at.

The models and textures look good MIke!!

[kryton9]

One last idea I got while playing the fun game, Eros or Petr, something to add would be a way for the game to upload the player's high score to the web, maybe a page on thinBasic site for scores from thinBasic made games. Only upload if a score is higher than the existing high score for that game. And maintain a list of scores that had high score at one time.

Well one more round and off to sleep I promise :)

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

kryton9, thanks for nice 3D walktrough !
I can see you master all the editors at very high level, I liked it a lot !

The score upload is very nice idea !

I was thinking about TopDown and few things occured to me...

To not make the gameplay so repetitive, I was thinking of making some level file too.
It would be something very simple.

As you fly in just one direction, I was thinking of making level to be time-oriented ;)
What does that mean ?

The data file could be the following:


0:0 to 0:30 >
Spawn: Enemy1(3), Enemy2(2)
0:30 to 0:59
Spawn: Enemy1(6), Enemy3(6)
@1:00 > PutCargo( random(-5,5) )
1:00 to 2:00 >
@1:30 > PutCargo(-5)
Spawn: Enemy1(6), Enemy3(6)
@2:00 > Stage_End


This is just a concept, but what would it do ? You would set time zones and what would happen in them. The "nn:nn to nn:nn >" is time interval, "@nn:nn >" is set of operations occuring at one time.

The nn:nn is minutes:seconds.

Spawn: specifies which enemies to generate and in brackets is number of how much of them keep in screen.
Stage_End could take parameter, which would be next level/stage to load after finishing first one.

What do you think and what new events would you add ?


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

Petr, I think the pattern of attacks now is fine. Maybe just have fixed number of enemies(objects that the player must avoid, blow up etc) per level. Once that number of Objects is run through and the player survives the level ends and he moves to the next level.

Since we are all winging this game on the fly and pushing it more than intended with the great coding work you and Eros are doing, maybe we should start making things and see how they look. To give variety to the game, just some thoughts:
Mike would model the enemy ships to match the level player ship in his style.

Level finish is determined by a fixed number of enemy objects to run through or if the player is destroyed.

Level 1 (Game Start) player is in a small shuttle craft, no weapons. The first level is used to develop avoidance skills of player only. Use Mike's great asteroid model, the player has to avoid all the asteroids to finish the level.

Level 2 (add learning to use fire button) the player is in a slightly different shuttle, one with a gun. The object clear all the targets sent by the instructors, these could targeting units, cargo boxes, anything funny we can think of, coke cola cans, toy clowns etc.

Level 3 this would be where the game starts now. Except the player would have a small fighter with one gun. Mike would have his 1 gun ship.

Level 4 player like now with this fighter and Mikes ships with each having dual blasters

Level 5 to change from space, we move into the same view angle but in a canyon. These would be smaller fighters of a new design for variety.

Level 6 back to space with a new fighter for the player, this time he attacks a big capital ship that mike models, the capital ship has many guns and is stationary at the top or moving back and forth slightly, also between the player and cruiser are space mines.

Level 7 well we can all think of a final huge battle idea for this one or another different type of land flying battle like in the canyon, maybe over a city?

Anyways very exciting stuff, this game is so much fun and the latest slight variations in sound, explosions really adds to it!!

[Michael Hartlef]

Petr, I agree with your idea about the level file and timed events. What Kent is describing could be setup up easily with it I think. Something that could add to the gameplay would be some kind of patterns of paths, that the enemys would run on. Right now we have top down and some swinging left ot right. What I mean about the patterns are movements like on the old galaxian game.

[Michael Hartlef]

Ok, this is my idea for enemy ship no.2 (the one on the right of course :) ).

That could be the 1 gun ship that Kent mentioned in his level description. Let me know what you guys think and I try to texture it nicely.

For the stats, enemy ship no.1 had 174 faces, enemy ship no.2 has 140 so far.

[Michael Hartlef]

And this is a slight variation, 164 faces.

[kryton9]

Mike, wow very nice. Ok got me fired up to model some ships now :)
Thanks for the inspiration!!

[Michael Hartlef]

Hey, after Kent used the name TOPDOWN in one topic, I think it would fit the game as a name great. Something like

TopDown
Battle for the earth

or

TopDown 3083 A.D.

[Michael Hartlef]

Mike, wow very nice. Ok got me fired up to model some ships now :)
Thanks for the inspiration!!


Thanks Kent, your kind words are appreciated very much. Which one you like better?

[kryton9]

Version 2B, it is tough choice as first version matches evolution to second ship, but I think 2B looks like it is ready to fly and be a good challenge to shoot down :)

[ErosOlmi]

In second one cannons are missing :D

[Michael Hartlef]

It has a nose cannon ;) To much detail is useless as the models won't be viewed from very close, or? But I will see if I can fit a cannon somewhere.

[Michael Hartlef]

Ok next round, Enemy no. 3. Which one you like more?

Eros, I hope it ok with you that I post so many screenshots.

[ErosOlmi]

No problems with files.
thinBasic is hosted on a dedicated server with a lot of Gb of disk space.

thinBasic server is located here: http://webfarm.aruba.it/index_eng.asp
You can make a virtual tour in Aruba Webfarm

[Michael Hartlef]

Aruba? The caribean island? Cool!

[Petr Schreiber]

:o

Very nice designs!
I am for the second versions :)

kryton9, your level ideas seems pretty good to me ;)
Mike, I am not 100% sure how it was done in Galaxian, but I will google it out.

To set some name for the game - that would be very nice.
Maybe when the script starts it could show the game logo and controls ( even after F1, instead of MSGBOX ).


Thanks a lot,
Petr

[kryton9]

Mike, second one for sure.

Glad to know you have gigs of space Eros. Now we won't be sad to upload so much :)

Petr, Galaga the ships sort of peel off of formation and dive towards the player ship. It is a great effect.

If you notice the purple fighter peeled off of back row and now a blue one is peeling off and coming towards the player.

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

thanks - now I understand "pattern" look !


Petr

[kryton9]

Here is a picture of my Level 1 and Level 2 shuttles, without and with weapon. Next will be single weapon small fighter.

[ErosOlmi]

Mike, Kryton9,

wow, Petr will have a lot of material to play with.

[kryton9]

More is coming from me and I am sure from Mike in the coming days!! Thanks Eros.

[ErosOlmi]

Hi all.

I had a chat with Petr and we discovered a script parsing speed bottle neck when using ITERATE FOR statement.
I've done a parsing optimization in thinBasic Core module and updated a new thinBasic preview version 1.2.0.1

I need some confirmations from you regarding speed improvements you get when using current TopDown script or in general when executing scripts that make heavy use of ITERATE FOR statement.

Pretty sure speed improve is quite significative. Let me know

Ciao
Eros

[kryton9]

I was getting fps in the 60 before when the screen was really busy with lots of activity and now it is in the 70's, when little activity over 100, amazing how you guys squeeze more and more speed out of everything, that is sooooooo cooooool!!

In the meantime I modeled a canyon that Petr can use a test. This way you can say, need it longer, wider, lighter, darker etc.

[ErosOlmi]

Thanks for confirmation Ken.

On my box I passed from 90/100 FPS to 280/300 FPS in TopDown3D script.
I was surprise about this improvement considering I've just added 5 lines of code.
I suppose I can use the same technique for some other optimizations. I have to strudy more possible impact.

Ciao
Eros

[kryton9]

Wow your system is a Beast Eros, awesomely incredible frame rates!! That is very dramatic jump on your side, WOW!!!

Here are my small fighters, 1 weapon and 2 weapon design and with the original player ship that should make all I need for my player ships for now. I can tweak as needed.

[kryton9]

Here is the last of my models, till or if we need anything else.
I don't know if we will need these in the game, but here they are if you guys decide to use them.

Repair Dock, one side has blue player's color and viewed from other side red player's color

Target Practice Container

And Space Mine.

Petr, Eros, Mike, let me know if I need to change anything or you would like to see something different. I stopped using textures as the models in the game are so small and since it can be bundled with thinBundle to keep the file size small. I am just assigning colors in Blender's material without textures.

[Michael Hartlef]

Kryton on the Speed drug ;D

Wow man, you did a lot while I was sleeping. Great job, everything looks great so far!!!! I will texture my two fighters tonight.

Michael

[kryton9]

Thanks Mike, once I got the workflow figured out the other day, wings3d, blender to thinEdge, it is quick to model low poly at the small size the ships are. I am glad we are at this scale as fun to make so many models instead of spending a week on just one :)

Good luck with your texturing and modeling today too!!

[kryton9]

I made TopDown Splash Screen tonight too. Hope you guys like this one too :)

[ErosOlmi]

ken,

I have no words other than a big thanks. You are making super great work.
I really enjoiy all this cooperation. It's the first time it happen to me to feel so comfortable working all together on the net.
Hope all this massive work will bring us to have a good and nice game to play, able to involve other people in this project.
Also this continuous ideas and introduction of new concepts is pushing us to considering many other aspects that will improve thinBasic language and the core engine.

Thanks to all for this fantastic experience.
Eros

[kryton9]

Thanks Eros, I feel the same way. It is so much fun working with you great guys on such a fun project. It motivates and excites the creativity cells in the brain and when those cells slow down, you launch TopDown and play a few rounds and get all fired up.

[Petr Schreiber]

And I thought Christmas were two months ago :o ;D

This are so nice models and ideas and logos and everything !
I want to finish basic level setup to be able to play not so linear levels.
The canyon is very nice, and can be tiled easily, that's ok too!
With so cool models it will be super ! And knowing Mike is prepairing another stuff too...

THANKS,
Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

And I thought Christmas were two months ago :o ;D

But will get the presents only if you were a good boy ;D

[ErosOlmi]

Little modifications.

To fire use both [space] or [ctrl]. Different repetition speed and different armour.

Maybe for next version:

a bomb to destroy all enemies on screen
a rocket that will follow enemy
some AI for enemies. They are so sad to always loose :(


Waiting for Petr's new version :D

[kryton9]

Cool Eros, since we have alternate fire and a need for a missle and big bomb, quickly modeled something to use. I can adjust later as the game needs, but this gives you guys something to code with when you get to it.

Now back to some more playing for me with TopDown, my best score was around 2200, but lately I have not gotten close.

[ErosOlmi]

;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D
;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D
;D :D ;D :D
;D :D B I G B O M B :D ;D
;D :D ;D :D
;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D
;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D ;D :D

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi guys,

I will try all the new stuff ( which sounds great ! ) tommorow,
my sister had birthday so I was not in scripting so much today.


Thanks,
Petr

[kryton9]

Eros I like your Big Bomb better, that would be funny put smily faces all over the bomb like that :)

Petr, have a good time with your Sister's Birthday and with your family!!

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

dual shooting is very nice Eros.
Kryton, big bomb rules :D

I will today release "maintenance" release of script with some internal tweaks.
So no big changes today, but hopefully good base for next developement.


Thanks,
Petr

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi !,

I have finished the script facelift - for today :)

As I was sad to see so much models and none of them in action, I did first the ship definition file.
Now you can fight 4 types of enemies, each with different shooting style, collision and model.
Thanks to Kent and Mike again for creating them !

Hope you will like it.

As I introduced the ship definition files, let's explain it on file for #2 enemy:


Model = L2 Shuttle 1 Weapon.M15
BoundBox = 3.3x3x3.5
FireSlot = 0,1.1,0,30,0,30,20,4 ; 0,1.1,0,-30,0,30,20,4
Speed = 60
HitPoints = 30


As you can see, setup is quite basic. Bound box serves to better fit collision to each model.
Line you might find difficult is definitely the one with "FireSlot". On this line you specify how much gun slots the ship has. Maximum number is 4 now. You separate each slot by semicolon ( ; ).
Slot has various parameters: x, y, z, vx, vy, vz, hp, type

x, y, z is position of gun relatively to ship
vx, vy, vz is vector of the shoot, specified in speeds

hp is how much hit points the gun takes

type is number specifying which texture part will be used from game_shottextures.bmp

You must not use all of the slots at the same time !
New_Shot procedure takes special mask parameter, based on binary comparsion.
If you want fire all, just put 11 here, as it is "1111" in binary. To use just first 2 slots pass 3, as it is "0011", so read from right it sets flag 1 to first and second weapon.


Enjoy,
Petr

P.S. Who first beats score 2000 ;)
P.P.S. The rapid fire mode ( CTRL ) now fires from slightly different position and is less efficient to compensate the speed

[ErosOlmi]

Almost impossible to go till 2000
Nice, nice job Petr.
:o

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi Eros,

well, my record is around 700 ;D,
I was just curious is someone manage it over such a impossible border :D


Bye,
Petr

[Petr Schreiber]

Ok,

960 ;)


Bye,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

Mine is about 500 but I will try more.

Do you think something can be done for black background?
Or Core engine is too slow to manage other objects?

I will post my score
Eros

[ErosOlmi]

I just got 810 and you did 960 >:(

[ErosOlmi]

Got it !!!

[Petr Schreiber]

Yes Eros !,

but me too ;D
Tip for other players - not all the shots/ships are equally dangerous...

Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

Here is enemy2b with texture ;)

[ErosOlmi]

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

[Petr Schreiber]

Oh no,

Eros, how could you do this to me :D

Mike, perfect "shark" ship :o
Also quite big, so my scaling deviation starts to appear ;D


Thanks a lot,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

::) ::)

[kryton9]

@Petr Another nice wake up day to see so many nice new things. First wow Petr, lots of nice additions to the game. It sure makes it different playing seeing a fleet of different ships coming at you. The variety of sounds and colors of types is very very nice!!

On the canyon and other backgrounds, actually it could just be a render in blender matching the camera angle that the game is in. Then it can be a texture placed on a quad and if need be even scrolled. Does this sound correct? If so, I can work on such renders. Maybe you can tell me what size to make the renders to best fit the game and plane you will make in the game.

@Mike, the new model looks good, can't wait to see it in all its glory on the field of battle.

@Eros, I know how good you are in games from the coding monkey arcades, I just went over 2000 and was happy and then you went over 3000, wow. Congrats!!! Look at our frame rate difference, then it occured to me, I have antiAliasing turned all the way up on my card. If you look at the screenshots you can see the difference. AA is so nice, makes all the games look super.

[ErosOlmi]

The frame rate I get is thanks to this: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1907007,00.asp
It has ATI Mobility X1600 with 512Mb dedicated memory

It is really a best. The fasted around since some months ago.

[kryton9]

That is awesome Eros!!

[Michael Hartlef]

That is my best so far (1705) . Without the CTRL mode it is impossible to get high scores.

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

Eros - you are monster ! This is impossible :D

Mike - the slow fire is .. slow, but has bigger impact ! Combination of rapid and slow seems ideal in my fights :)

kryton9 and Mike, I was thinking of background.
Static prerendered background does not look very well, but scrollin' terrain is better !

I was thinking if you could create something like set of 6 tiles, different for each world ( hey, but one set would be ok too ! ). The tiles would be placed randomly one behind other to create illusion of never ending terrain. They could be very wide so I could randomly shift them left-right to make the variety better.

I was quick-trying to do something in thinEdge, but I am sure with some texture bakery stuff from modeling masters like you would look much better.

Here is preview screen, quite awfull terriain over there and also Mikes fighter in premiere!
It is much better feeling when masses of terrain scroll below you than boring black screen :).

Some green hills with mini lakes would be great, generally darker scene would be nice, if possible, please :-[


Thanks,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

I fall down from my chair looking this "awful" preview.
YOU ARE A MONSTER.
I want it. I want it.

:D

[kryton9]

Thanks for playing tips guys, After getting only like 250 with regular fire I went to CTRL fire and was able to get my score up. I will work on combo fire in my next round of playing and see if I can score better.

Petr, I will make one set of 6 tiles as a test for you to try. Mikes new ship looks nice in there. Can't wait to see it in battle.

[Michael Hartlef]

It allways makes me feel warm around my heart when I see my crewations being used. Thanks for putting them into the right place. This little game is true a great community effort.

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi Eros,

soon, soon :D

But first it must be improved :)

Mike, you can't imagine my feeling I am not forced to use my scary models but put there perfect stuff :)

There is my second try, flying over area near my university, nice feeling to know aliens are shooting it ;D
I was thinking of something less photorealisitc, with full and contrastive colors, not Warcraft III, but something between it and reality, to fit nicely with planes.

Can't wait to see the tiles :)


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

That looks surreal with a real background in there. Reminds me of "Indepence Day" the movie.

[kryton9]

I played around with tiles and terrains and I couldn't get it the way that I thought it looked good. So I decided to work on scrolling background. I think this works well.

The battle is above close orbit around a red planet. I just added a small bmp file and a subroutine to draw scroll on a quad poly.

[ErosOlmi]

Not my best but really great immersion with a background.
Good job Ken. Thanks a lot.

Now the problem is to be able to mix all those new advanced features in one complete game. But pretty sure we will be able !

[Petr Schreiber]

Nice!,

it really adds to the atmosphere.

Now imagine it with your tiles...

I have in mind this process to make the terrain less hardware demanding than long "noodle" of tiles.
It is just about displaying 2 tiles at time, one below you (#1) and the next before you (#2), when the #2 is too close, the #1 will be removed, replaced with #2 and new will become the #2.
Sounds complicated, but will work good I think without gamer noticing the trick.


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

I updated it, got 3 decent textures made that are different. The green one needs more work and so does the moon one.
As I play and see it scroll I can see where it needs touching up.
At game start picks random from 3 and uses. As I make more I can add them.

Glad you guys liked the background. I got some coding in, not much, but it adds :)

[kryton9]

Also just added R this is reset. So you can start a new game or restart during play to get different background, but you do reset score too and damage. So I put it in not to have to run the program to play again as I lose so quickly :)

[ErosOlmi]

;D ;D ;D 8) 8)

[kryton9]

Oh my Eros, we will never touch that score. WOW!!!

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi kryton,

very nice modification to TopDown!
I will prepare code for coming of 3d tiles now.
And Eros ... is not human being, that is sure now :)


Bye,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

What about printing on video time taken till Game Over?
Maybe not continuously but some kind of stats at the end.

Ciao

PS: I'm human, I'm human.
Oh, wait. My boss is calling me from Alpha Centauri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri) ...
"Yes, yes, ok ... One minute and I will return home."

Sorry guy. My wife have food ready. I have to go. See you later (I hope. My boss is not very nice today)
:D

[Petr Schreiber]

Good idea,

what about:

enemies killed
time taken
shots fired


kryton, can I integrate your tile with mountains and water into next release ?


Bye,
Petr

P.S. Eros, at least you admited it :D Good you can react on forum fast even from that distance

[ErosOlmi]

Ratio between enemies killed and bullets fired.
The higher ration the more master you are.

[ErosOlmi]

Hi all,

to give a little more atmosphere here it is a little improve in background.
Move local variable of fun ction scrollBackground to global one. Also add LastPlayerScore.


'-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
' Scrolling Background
'-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
global LastPlayerScore as long
global sb_x as LONG = 100 'vertex x coordinate
global sb_y as LONG = -5 'vertex y coordinate up/down
global sb_z as LONG = 100 'vertex z coordinate
global sb_u as SINGLE = 1 'texture x coordinate
global sb_s as LONG = 5000 'scroll rate


Now change scrollBackground to the following

'-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
' Scrolling Background
'-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUB scrollBackground()
if PlayerScore - LastPlayerScore > 200 then
if sb_s > 1000 then sb_s -= 1000
LastPlayerScore = PlayerScore
end if

tbgl_UseLighting 1

tbgl_UseTexture 1
tbgl_BindTexture ScrollingBackground
tbgl_BeginPoly %GL_QUADS ' Starts polygon definition based on 4 vertexes

tbgl_TexCoord2d -sb_u,gettickcount/sb_s ' Sets texture coordinate
tbgl_Vertex -sb_x, sb_y, -sb_z ' Adds vertex

tbgl_TexCoord2d sb_u,gettickcount/sb_s
tbgl_Vertex sb_x, sb_y, -sb_z

tbgl_TexCoord2d sb_u,gettickcount/sb_s - sb_u
tbgl_Vertex sb_x, sb_y, sb_z

tbgl_TexCoord2d -sb_u,gettickcount/sb_s - sb_u
tbgl_Vertex -sb_x, sb_y, sb_z


tbgl_EndPoly ' Ends polygon definition

'tbgl_UseLighting 1
END SUB

Mainly this will improve background scroll speed by on factor every 200 points till a maxspeed.
Seems nice.

Ciao
Eros

[Michael Hartlef]

Hi guys,

as you developing TopDown side by side, maybe you find this tool usefull.

http://winmerge.org/

It is great to compare sources and update them.

Michael

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

Eros thanks for nice mod, but new version works differently :-[
Mike, nice tool !

So here goes new version in all its glory :)
Best is the krytons map ( use R for new game and also new worlds ), the other are just my quick done variantions
hopefully replaced with something nicer from you guys!


Bye,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

Much better than my dummy solution !!!

[Petr Schreiber]

Eros,

your solution was very nice !
I just had this in advanced state of progress, so I was lazy to rollback changes :-[

This release is just begining - each world has just 1 tile now, but when more will be done, the level will be quite diverse.
Adding tiles to world is just as easy as adding new line to Tiles\ files.

I am curious with what tiles will come kryton, as the first was very good.
Maybe it could be done with even lower number of vertices.


Bye,
Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

Before I test the new version, here is the next enemy in it's full glory. I hope you guys like it.

Edit: Petr, I know it is to big. You can resize it, I know you like that ;D

[Michael Hartlef]

Niiiceee the new version. Good job guys ;)

[kryton9]

Hi guys,

as you developing TopDown side by side, maybe you find this tool usefull.

http://winmerge.org/

It is great to compare sources and update them.

Michael



Mike, I always wonder how those huge open source projects are handled. I know they use that cvs, but it seemed confusing to me, and of course it should be when dealing with many many people working on development.

This is looks like a nice alternative. Thanks. I can use that even working on my own code, This way I can develop along different paths and then later merge the best together later into one project. So very neat app it looks like.

The new model looks great!!, Nice color Scheme, I will feel bad having to shoot it :)

[Petr Schreiber]

Cool enemy!,

pleasure to fight with it.

As Eros said some time ago, AI needs tweaking.
I will try to bring it in some of new releases.


Thanks,
Petr

P.S. Mike, I resized it to usuall 60% :)

[kryton9]

Petr, nice touches to the game. All the stats at the end is really nice and I see your tile idea is in play. Cool. Thanks!!


Sorry about the tile not being ready. I want them to look good and then the polys go high. Can you do me a big favor. Can you add a key press like S in the thinEdgeViewer, stand alone executeable version, for viewing with smoothing on. This way I can start with low poly and see how it looks with smoothing on.

OK Now I will go start on some tiles.

[Petr Schreiber]

kryton9,

hope you don't feel like my slave :)
Take your time and do the job only when inspiration and mood for it comes !

The smoothing in viewer is good idea I will put it in next release !


Thanks,
Petr

[kryton9]

I love work(work to me is fun working on this cool stuff) and good ideas Petr, my pleasure. This experience with you guys is really fantastic and makes the days a real pleasure. Thanks that smooth feature will be so usefull in developing these terrain tiles.

[ErosOlmi]

As Mike said in another post, one of the best experience in working in team is when your efforts see the light in a concrete project.

Thanks to all.

[Petr Schreiber]

Yes,

I enjoy it a lot too ;)
kryton, I think new viewer with "S" key smoothig waits for you here (http://community.thinbasic.com/index.php?topic=593.msg3116#msg3116)


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

Petr, thanks that smooth view will come in handy in tweaking these terrain tiles.

I will have the first set of 6 tiles, It will add more variety or if you want to go with 2, 3, 4 etc... you will have a choice.
Once we finalize a number that gives good sense of infinite background, I can work on other sets.

[kryton9]

Petr, it is taking me longer than I thought, so here are 2 tiles to at least play and test with. It will be neat to see how they look in the game. Don't forget smooth render should be on for them if you can. I will add the tiles as I get pairs of them done, so you can use them in your tile tests.

Hope they work ok!!

[Michael Hartlef]

Petr, when you set smooth ON, are then the normal vector taken into account? If yes, then I suggest to add a smooth flag to the fileformat too when you add the normal vectors.

[kryton9]

Ok, I am having lots of problems with terrain tiles, but it is fun trying to figure out.

The problems:

Each 1x1 tile is a 2x2 tile in Blender. To get an ok terrain, I am ending up with 700 to over 1000 polys. The other problem is getting the tiles to look similar is yet varied is very tough doing it separately. When I try to do more than one tile and break it up later into separate parts I am having problems, either with textures, mapping or the polys get messed up. and forget about getting the textures seamless, there will always be a seam.

I thought let me do a test, if we were to have 6 tiles so that would 6 ( 1x1 ) tiles, equivalent to 2 x 12 blender tiles. that would probably be over 12000 polys for an ok terrain.

So I thought let me see if I can make a long tile the equivalent of 24 tiles 1x1 game tiles. This way, the meshes from tile to tile are lined up. I just had to do the 2 ends to match them up and got it looking nice. This way Petr, you can tile the same tile using only one loaded object and texture but it should look good and be seamless and hard to tell it is repeating.

So I present the long tile. The files might seem big, but when you divide by 24, you see a substantial savings in the equivalent tiles versions. In Blender it is 10,000 faces so that is under 1000 polys per tile and yet looks so much better.

Let me know what you think. I will wait to hear from you. I hope this solution works for you ideas.

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi kryton,

the tiles are perfect!
I just scale them to be 100 times bigger ( you know, me and scaling :) ).

Also if possible, make sure the highest peek will not be higher than 0.2 resp. 20 after resize in your models, else there could be visual artifacts.

Only thing - the tile 01 has texture with different "level of detail", so it looks different when binded to tile 02, please see screenshot.
But generally I like the tiles you created a lot !
Current design allows max 8 tile per world, but this can be changed.

In tile definition file, you can set smooth flag independently for each tile:


TILE=tileSetOne01.m15, 200, 0, 2
TILE=tileSetOne02.m15, 200, 0, 2

This is definition file for your new set.
First parameter is file name, second is how long the tile is in Z ( 200 is minimum now ), third is if to allow shifting randomly X when creating tile and last is smoothing flag ( 0 = no normals, 1 = precise normals, 2 = smooth normals )

Mike, when I set smooth on, I take the precise normals, find all vertices with same x,y,z coordinate and then calculate average of precise vectors to create one new "smooth".

My idea for file format - as there is absolutely no performance difference in displaying precise OR smooth normals, the format would save "just normals", doesn't matter if they are smoothed or not ( this would precalc editor ).
I think the flag would be redundant there then. So some parts of model could have precise, some smoothed ( this can be done from script now too ) but finally I would just assign per vertex normals and in game it would look as designed.


Bye,
Petr

EDIT: kryton, just reading your new post :)

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi kent,

your calculations are OK, but they don't count with tile swap mechanism inside script.

Remember that for 6 tiles, only 2 of them are displayed at one time, the unused 4 are just waiting in memory ( drinking cofee, playing dices) until they are requested. Then the one which is replaced goes for cofee and new one takes its place.
So even if the 6 tiles have 6000 polys, displayed are only 2 of them = 2000.

But the long tile looks good too. Only thing that makes me scared is that the smoothing doesn't work very well on it !
Is it possible some triangles became disconnected ?

Also I think that if you raise texture detail from 64x64 to 256x256, you will not need so many polygons maybe ?


Thanks a lot,
Petr

[kryton9]

Thanks Petr. Glad you liked them, but I found a problem with the long tile. I think just staring at it too much and I missed it. It is won't unwrap properly so the textures are stretching and not showing up correctly in the long tiles. So that idea is scratched because of that. I tried unwrapping and it just isn't matching the texture at all.

So back to smaller tiles. The problem with them is going to be the tiling issue in appearance. THat is why I went with the quad poly and just scolled the texture, no seams and easy :)

I like challenges, I will keep trying.

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi kryton,

to prove the seamles 3D tiles are possible, please use following patch over latest top down[/b].
It contains Mikes new ship as well as 3 tiles terrain. You must have superman eye to see where one begins and other ends.

How I did the tiles ?
In thinEdge :P

I just created quad 10x10, then subdivided it to be 10x10 mini quads ( this can be done using terrain tool too ).
Then I loaded textures, and using modifier I textured and deformed terrain at the same time.
When I was done with one tile, I saved it and then saved with name of new tile.

Pressed CTRL+A to select all, then in vertex properties set "Y" to 0 and started to work again.

When I was done with all 3 tiles, I just scaled them to be 10x bigger and created the definition file.
That's all :) Hope this will inspire you, on other side I am sure you will have better texturing, I let there the default one :-[.


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

Petr, it is a little after 6am here. I wanted to get it going but couldn't. I got on to see if there were any new posts and I was so glad to see your seamless tiles!!! Wow it beats anything I have done since yesterday with Blender. I have no luck with the terrain tool in thinEdge as couldn't figure out how to use it.

If you don't mind make the tiles and I can work on textures then. How did you get the edges to match up? Anyways, thanks I was going nuts trying to get something good and failing.

Mike's new ship looks so cool in there. They have this bug here called the Stink Bug, it looks like that ship. They are neat and so is the ship.
http://www.mastec.co.nz/Harvey/Harvey%20Stink%20Bug%202H%20LR.JPG funny but close enough drawing of one
Here is a photo of one: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ent.iastate.edu/images/hemiptera/stinkbug/greenstinkbug.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.ent.iastate.edu/imagegal/hemiptera/stinkbug/greenstinkbug.html&h=655&w=432&sz=25&hl=en&start=18&tbnid=mvtcYp6fIld5UM:&tbnh=138&tbnw=91&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dstink%2Bbug%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG

Well off to sleep, my eyes are crossing. Now I can sleep knowing you solved another tough problem, this time modeling related. Those terrain tiles looked really good. I will dream of textures tonight and make some tomorrow. Thanks again!!

[Petr Schreiber]

Good night kryton9,

I command you 8, 16 or 32 hours of sleep or you will be ill soon :D
Yes, there is some similarity between bug and ship :) It is good sometimes to get inspired in animal real, although I don't know if this was Mikes intention.

There is no magic in the thinEdge tile making, I am sure in Blender it is possible too.
If you want, I will create brief ( just screens ) tutorial on it and as you will see it you will recognize it is nothing hard.

The textures would be very appreciated !


Bye,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

Petr,

really nice version this one. It seems also more linear in terms of playability. Just impression.
Sure, more difficult to play !!!

I'm thinking of a way to send via net user scores and store them somewhere in thinBasic web.
Also a way to recognize users when they send scores. Some kind of user certificate thinBasic can produce as krypted file to be stored in user PC and where to take name user when sending games scores.

We will see.

Ciao
Eros

[Michael Hartlef]

Nope guys, I was inspired by this little creature, all came out of my little mind. But the bug is cute. Stink Bug ;D

[Michael Hartlef]

Petr,

really nice version this one. It seems also more linear in terms of playability. Just impression.
Sure, more difficult to play !!!

I'm thinking of a way to send via net user scores and store them somewhere in thinBasic web.
Also a way to recognize users when they send scores. Some kind of user certificate thinBasic can produce as krypted file to be stored in user PC and where to take name user when sending games scores.

We will see.

Ciao
Eros



I would just let the user type in their name or set a player name inside TopGun. Not everyone will have thinBasic installed.

[kryton9]

Petr I slept really well and now will reread you post about how you did it in thinEdge and try to do the same in Blender. I am ready and happy to get this going. I will also import a tile into Blender this way I can use the same scale.

One thing that occured to me when looking at it this morning. I think the ships appear to close to the ground for their shadows not to appear. I will try to make textures and feel of more distance so the player will not expect shadows below. But this leads to an idea for the next game we work on. TOPDOWN "Down and Dirty" This will be close to the ground shooter. We will have buildings, ground targets, ground vehicles and the player is in ground attack fighters, then we can really use this terrain tile to great use:)

Also now with your example program, I can test the tiles, I will just name them as you named your tiles and it should work, am I right?

Mike I know you designed your ship from your own imagination and evolution, as we saw its development. Just when I saw the cool ship with the neat texture design, it right away reminded me of the stink bug, which are really cool looking cute bugs. Love the new ship, really cool design and different. Can't wait to see more ships of yours!!

ErorI think having score fed via internet and posted on a high score page will be awesome. When a player gets a high score, I am sure they won't mind typing in their name before submitting.
Another option is to-- at that point ask them if they would like to save their userinfo in a file on their computer with a message they won't need to enter it each time.
I might be wrong in what I assuming, but what info were you thinking of storing that needs to be encrypted?

All The new version is tough, matches realistically sort of the chances of one ship up against all those enemies :)

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

kryton, you are right, just rename the tiles...
I will add some select world feature maybe, based on listing from directory.

Regarding score upload - great idea, but when game will be "stabilized". Now different versions have different difficulty so it is not very representative :)


Thanks!,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

Regarding sending score data over a web page, it is a matter of security and not allowing fake result.
Over internet, first priority is security. If we open to all just indicating a name, we can get full of fake info.

I will think about it.

[kryton9]

Petr, ok thanks it will help to see the tiles and textures in the game. I am almost ready to work. Just got done reading all my forums. All fired up and ready to go!

Eros Never thought about security Eros and fake information. As always more than meets the eye up front in development for the internet. I am glad you know all you do and will do it the right safe way. Good luck figuring it all out. It will definitly add to the game and fun of seeing if anyone can match the Mighty Eros. Your scores of late have just blown me away. As Petr says you are not human :)

[kryton9]

Guys don't hate me. I wanted to try out this idea and I think it is interesting. I didn't want to mess up with Petr's new code, so I used my scrolling background as a source, so this is not the latest game engine, but it does show the idea for a background.

I don't know how to apply smooth render to a mesh in thinBasic, so you see the polys, but imagined that smoothed and better textures. I just rushed to get the idea across.

Why did I do this? I think the scrolling terrain tile is a good idea, but the scale is wrong for this game. That can be used for our next game where we are near the surface fighting ground thingys.

I thought this is a fun space shooter so keep it in space. So please, I hope I am not out of sync with the group, just wanted to put this out there to look at.

This is a team project and Petr is the lead guy, so I am happy whichever way the group and Petr wants to go. So please let me have any comments and feedback.

Again this is not based on the newest code. But something I could modify rather easilly.

[Michael Hartlef]

I would go for a space background till we have a good way of using terrain. We still can use space platforms/bases with turrets one.

[kryton9]

Guys, I have been playing our game for some time and lots of ideas are coming to me. What triggered it was Petr's post on coding monkeys for the game. He mentioned many things and that got me thinking of story and game play. And then in just playing for some time tonight and enjoying the game so much, it occured to me we are onto something really cool. Not that we didn't know that before.

So here are some thoughts about the game:
The game I think we could have as it is now, an instant play mode. You got a few minutes and you want to get a round or two in you go into the type of play we have now. The other is story based game. The story is coming to me like I said from Petr's post. None of the characters are named, so I will just say kid, boss etc. If you guys like the idea we can flesh it out.

Kid, just graduated from flight school on Earth. His Mom and Dad are proud, but worried that he will be away from home and out in space and who knows what trouble (little could they know :) Kid searches for a job online and finds a job in the outer edge of our secure space area.This is the frontier for us humans and is now reaching areas near other species. Kid gets a job for Boss man. He is a nice guy, been through lots but still has a kind heart. Takes a liking to kid so gives him a job. He will shuttle supplies between 2 space stations. Simple enough that a rookie fresh pilot could handle easilly.

This is the first mission. Kid flies a shuttle craft with cargo. On his flight from station 1 to station 2 he gets a warning that a comet just broke up and one of the pieces smacked into a big asteroid and now there is a massive meteor shower right intersecting his kid's course.
The game he has to manuveur the shuttle and avoid all meteors and deliver the cargo.

Level 2 when he gets to station 2 and does level 1, boss man is happy he is safe and as his gratitude for getting the job done gives him a better shuttle with a weapon on it. He figures debris will be in the aread for some time to come from the impact. So this will be prudent.

Mission 2 is to deliver cargo from station 2 to station 3 farther away in the new shuttle. During the flight, an urgent message comes in a breaking news story. Apparently an enemy species is moving closer to our sector. We got news from those living even further out than our frontier, these are the true explorers and pirates of mankind. These space pirates(those that survived the encroaching enemy) are coming back to civilized space, our space. Kid is told by Boss man to watch out for pirates and get safetly to station 3.
So our mission now is to avoid the pirates who need supplies, supplies we are likely to have in our ship.

Mission 3, we manage to fight off the pirates and make to station 3. There boss man is happy to see us again. He tells us by order of Earth Mandate of Highest Priority all citizens are called to fight the new oncoming enemy. Boss man says that now we all work for the military till this threat is over and that we are recruited for now wether we like it or not.

Kid now gets a small fighter and the next mission is training in the new vehicle. He is too take out enemy cargo containers and know how to do pickups dropped in by big supply ships. He learns about what the pickups do and basic hard core game play information


Mission 4 kid goes off to first battle near the furthest inhabited human planet this is the first encounter. Kid fights off light fighters out on scouting patrols.

Mission 5 kid is rewarded and moved up to a bigger fighter with dual guns. He now encounters more of the attack forces small and medium size ships.

Mission 6 kid moves to the current fighter with a co pilot, of all people boss man. Together they face there first really tough enemy ships and find there are more than one race involved in the invasion. Kid and Boss man are rewarded for this discovery and coming back alive to give this intelligence report.

Mission 7 they are on the best fighter ship we have. Part of a fleet they go into almost the final battle. Part 1 is fight off the enemy invading smaller vessels, part 2 is take out the capitol ships.

Mission 8 the flight back home. This is the reward mission, just fun flying back through all the places we have been back home to Mom and Dad and they get to meet Boss man.

This then sets up game 2. Down and Dirty. Now that we have beaten an enemy this first round. Our governement wants to quickly expand our sector of space to make a buffer zone. This means sending our guys to do planet take overs of nearby planets under the enemy that are now ours as their space defenses are shot. We just need to take out ground strongholds and during this story we find a new peaceful race we haven't know being used as slave labor on these nearby outer planets. Together the second game continues....

Now about our development.

Everyday that goes by it seems more and more of the pieces are falling into place to really have an awesome engine to make a really professional game. That means that maybe we can sort of outline some ideas and have a plan. I think we work great together and it would help us all to work on different parts when tired of working one part and sort of fill in the missing pieces.

Mike mentioned input development as well as his script developments. Eros is working on the core to give us more commands and network central score repository and game coding. Petr is doing all the tbgl magic and development of the bulk of the game engine and game code. It would be neat to play our game with a rumble game pad for example. It would be neat to have music for each mission. And the list goes on and on.

So if you guys are in agreement, maybe we can structure out an outline and take this game to highest level we can. It is a fun game, the action is smooth and hot. This leads to coming up a studio name. Not that we are in this for money, but it would help us be seen as a fun group of like minded gamer/developers. It would be neat to have a nice studio name that now develops games in thinBasic

Well that is lots to look over. I was just having so much fun and my imagination and excitement boiled over. Sorry this is so long.

[ErosOlmi]

>:( almost my personal record.
Nice, nice atmosphere. Maibe few asteroids to try to avoid ... and ather little candy to change planet or move the starts or ...
Well, good work, Ken.

I will read your big post later ...

[Michael Hartlef]

Well Kent, I think your story outline is great. So far there is nothing much to add and I think it can serve well.
You know that this could lead into a big design and content job, right? ;D
I can only talk about me, so that is what I will do.

First, and the most important part, I would love to develop this game in the way you have described it. I think as you guys do a great job on the coding part, I can be more supportive with gfx and sfx. Of course, I will create the DirectInput module (it's getting closer to a first version) and will develop the blender export script further (that's my baby). So I would like to create more 2D/3D content and maybe some tunes/soundfx.

This is my commercial toolset, all legally bought so there are no license issues with created content:

2D tools:
PhotoImpact 10
Photoshop 6
Corel 10 suite
Anime Studio
Manga Studio 3EX
Motion Artist 3
SnapIt8

3D tools:
TrueSpace6.6 and 5.1
Carrara Pro 5
Bryce 6 and 5
Animation:Master 2003
Ultimate Unwrap 3D
Hexagon 2.1
Silo 1.42 and Silo2
Poser 6 and 5

Music tools:
FLStudio Producer Edition 7
Samplitude 8SE

Music Hardware:
General Music S2 Workstation
Yamaha CS1X Synthesizer (Powersupply broken but will be fixed soon)
Yahama Pacifica 112 guitar
Ibanez STGR 200 E-Bass
Line 6 TonePort UX1

Uff, now I seeing this list I guess I spend a fortune on my hobby :o

You all saw my modeling and texture skills. I know how to use poser pretty well and I think I could come up with some cinematics. After the Inputlib is done in its first version, I will make some test renders. Also I will try to
create some tunes so you can get the bigger picture of my skills.

The game you described would need lowpoly content for the gameplay and high detailed stuff for cinematics/renders. It would need soundfx for the gameplay and cinematics, plus a good amount of tunes for ingame background music and also cinematics. So there are several none coding jobs to fill.

1) Concept design ( raw sketches of scenes, characters and content )
2) Low Poly modeling of ingame content
3) Texturing the game content
4) High poly modeling and texturing of scene content for renders and cinematics
5) Assembling cinematics with movies, renders and sound
6) soundfx creation
7) music creation

I have no problems with using 3rd party content as long it is legal to use it, for an example stuff from DAZ for cinematics and renders. So Kent, what tasks would you like to take?

Here are some game functionalities we would need I think:

1) Joystick input (wip by me)
2) A terrain engine
3) Ability to playback movies in TBGL
4) Playback a good amount of 3D sounds and music at the same time
5) A way to describe and control the story inside the game ( a script inside the script language ;D )
Can you run scripts from within a script in TB?
6) Network score management

I don't claim that my thoughts are complete so feel free to extend or crush them. I'm curious about what the others think. And if someone else would like to join who didn't work on it before.

Michael

[Michael Hartlef]

>:( almost my personal record.
Nice, nice atmosphere. Maibe few asteroids to try to avoid ... and ather little candy to change planet or move the starts or ...
Well, good work, Ken.

I will read your big post later ...


Not bad. Why is the frame rate so low?

[kryton9]

Mike, thanks for replying with such good list and info and ideas. I think what you said is all great. Your list a great start for the outline. Since I already wrote a long post, I will wait to hear from Eros and Petr too before commenting back with more thoughts, but so glad you are doing what you are doing and the cool things you can do!!

I added a splash screen subroutine. I need to add music to it, so holding off, but wanted to let you guys know it is ready. You pass it the imagenumber and seconds to display. So Mike, a nice splashscreen music for TOPDOWN would be great when you are in the mood. I will wait to add that till you have something you like. I was thinking of doing a voice over for ThinBasic Make it Happen. So if you guys want record yourselves saying that and maybe we can layer that in with all our voices saying that. It would be neat to have kids and females say it too, sort of like an all encompassing group of players, male, female, young, old.

And finally Eros, that score is just insane!!!

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

kryton, your story plot is perfect, and good you have in mind open doors for "Down and Dirty" sequel.
Your new version is much better than current "tiled" one, I think we will go this way for current releases.
I have really the impression I am flying on top of huge planet !

Regarding the flight from station to station - in this case the rotating sphere would not be enough maybe.
So what about creating kind of solar system, and then say mission is about going from this position to another.
All would hapen in one solar system, but different parts of it.

Regarding the frame rate, I will try to tune engine for speed more.

Mike, you have perfect arsenal of powerful software, FL Studio is great !
Music for each level would be perfect...
Regarding videos - MCI functions can handle it well I think, so not so big amount of work for us.

All the ideas you guys mentioned in previous posts are great, regarding the voices - in FL Studio there is tool to make computer speak ( ;D ) with robot like profile. This could be of use too. Some brief messages like "beware, enemy fighters spotted" could add to the atmosphere !

kryton9, not sure about my voice, it would sound maybe more funny than necessary :D

Eros, I have no words for your monster scores, it seems we will add difficulty levels : easy, medium, hard, nightmare and "for Eros" :)


Thanks,
Petr

[Petr Schreiber]

I forgot,

to make model smooth, just replace current procedure with:


SUB loadRollingBackground()
tbgl_m15LoadModel "Models\moon2.m15", "Textures\",2, 0, %TBGL_NORMAL_SMOOTH
END SUB


I also noticed I get lower framerate when FireFox is open ???
Lower framerate is also because kryton renders the model using immediate mode, in display list you would get some FPS up.


Bye,
Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

I was just wondering why Eros got this low frame rate. He normally had fps in the 200 range before. 26 sounded way to low for his system.

Petr, about video playback: I think MCI is good if you just want to play it on the screen, in its on frame. Right? Maybe I'm missing something here. For cinematics this would be enough I guess.
But I was also thinking about something ingame related. Like for an example the little INTERCOM videos of Command and Conquer, where a commander tells you something about the situation in the battle. For this we would need the ability to playback a video with sound on a sprite/polygon. http://nehe.gamedev.net has a tutorial about how to playback a video in OPENGL. If you could implement something like that someday, that would be great.

[ErosOlmi]

It is not absolute low frame rate but immediate in that precise moment when you press "S" key to make screenshots.
Computer is so fast that when you press "S", 4/5 screenshots of about 1Mb .BMP each are generated, so you have a temporary low FPS rate.

No problem here :D

[Michael Hartlef]

I know I should do some work, but I had some ideas about characters and the locations where they could chat/act with each other. Maybe you like them:

Characters

Marc Napotani Space Pilot, Rank private
New Berlin Space Academy
Frank Mordun Flight Coach
New Berlin Space Academy
Roberto Napotani Father of Marc
former commander of a Space mining ship
Katarina Napotani Mother of Marc
former Space Pilot, injured in battle, then house wife
Antony Mc Burton President,
Luna Transports Cooperation
Jordan Millerson Mechanic,
Luna Transports Cooperation
Nora Erikson Intercom Agent
Spaceport M15
Angie Patrick Communication Officer
Rank Corporal,
15th InterOrbital Marines, United World Federation Forces
Ranjgid Surikahela Fighter Pilot
Rank Air Captain
23th Spacepatrol Coorps, UWFF
Sergey Wulkoev Fighter Pilot
Rank Air Captain
3rd Space rangers Platoon, UWFF

Locations

Marc’s home His room
Kitchen
New Berlin Space Academy Office
Flight simulator
Luna Transports Coorp. Office
Shuttle Bay
Spaceport M15 Intercom bridge
Luna bar
UWFSS Antigua The Bridge
Fighter bay
Rest rooms

Michael

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi Mike,

sounds good!, "New Berlin" and "SpacePort m15" look interesting especially ;)

Regarding animated texture ... direct video would be nice, currently we can do the same with "wide" texture, which has multiple frames of video store in one texture ( looks like photo camera film stripe ).


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

Mike incredible list of characters and names, I love all the names for characters, ships and location ideas!!

Guys This planet mode would be for the instant action and some mission games. But as you can see by the mission, the background would be 3d with a journey from space station to another, so the background would all be space with neat things in background changing as the level moves on. Since story based it will have some fun eye candy flying then engaging and then arrival. so give a real story and mission feel.

This all leads to the next thing. We need to break the code up into a project so parts can easilly be added, and parts can talk to each other.
We need to setup like bmp lists so that we don't write to a number but a constant and the same with models and other items.

Another idea and this is just an alternatvie: instead of cinematics to make it easier would be to make like comic book pages with bubble box dialogues. One page could hold multiple panels and the user can scroll the page with the input device as if reading a comic book. Mike and I could render the panels in 3d programs.
Little window popups like the news breaks and messages coming in as comm would be great as video for sure though.

Petr So using a list even if one mesh is faster then just rendering? I will write my routines and then as lead programmer you can super charge it.

Guys: I will work on models and help Mike with whichever way we go with story presentation and required media. Programming wise, I will do the splash screens and backgrounds. If needed I can work on some music although I am not really setup the way I would like for it right now, I will tinker and if I come up with anything good will submit it to you guys. Oh I can also work on input and output screens for the game. Like the score outputs, help displays that sort of thing.

[kryton9]

Mike You mentioned concept sketches. I know it sounds hard to believe, but I don't have a scanner at the moment. I had at one time 3 of them, but when I moved I gave them all away thinking I would buy when I got down here. But it is taking me longer in setting up down here than I ever planned. Anyways it makes it hard to sketch with a mouse, paper and pen is so much easier.

If you do some concept sketches and since now we have Us humans, the 2 enemy races, the future friendly race we befriend and free and then will join forces to fight the enemy in game 2. Of course all the locations in the story and your nice additions. We can sort of settle on some design ideas then and model to give a real uniform look. So in the mission game the ships will fit the races and story. In the instant game mode, all the ships can just be random and the player can pick their ship of choice.

Guys:Which leads to another sub to write a ship and item viewer which the user can study. I think I can handle code for that too.

we will need an options screen, someone more in tune with thinBasic and tbgl will need to handle that. we also need to decide and I think it would be nice to go fullscreen. It will be so much more immersive seeing it full screen.

[Petr Schreiber]

Perfect Kent !,

regarding lists - I use them for all static geometry, even single models.
Because in classic way you make your driver and thinBASIC busy to make the geometry again and again, frame by frame.
Display list is created once, and then you call its cached "image".

Comics book idea is good too, I liked it in MDK 2 :D

Regarding full screen, I am all for it :)

For sketches, I got "Painter" program with tablet, it is great tool. I believe free version of it must exist too.
It can simulate brush, pencil, ... very good stuff. Similar is "Smooth Draw".

kryton, what do you mean by item viewer ? Something like "shop" in game to buy upgrades and such a stuff ?

I am very excited by all the new ideas and possibilities, I am sure it will end as good game !


Thanks a lot,
Petr

[kryton9]

Petr by time viewer, I never thought of as a shop, but more of like a reference for the user. From the options screen they can go to a viewer to learn about all the objects in the game. This area will give more story back fill. They can browse all the models we have and read more about them. It will really add to game and build a history and a way for players to talk about the weapons, ships, stations, characters. It can also be used in another way as a selection for the player to select a ship for instant game for themselves and also possible ships to fight or select random and all the other ships will be coming in instant battle action :)

[Petr Schreiber]

Now I get it,

something like mini-encyclopedia inside game. How much damage can it take and so...
That so cool !

I would suggest to view the ships for example in some kind of hangar, as it was made in most of old good StarWars games :)

I am thinking of rewriting the code of the game completely when we will have the design stage closed...


Thanks,
Petr

[kryton9]

Petr, hanger idea is awsome to view the ships in. Yes it adds so much to the feel, good thing you remembered that and suggested it!! a different hanger for each species ships too, great more fun modeling to work on.

The other option is just leave the code as it is. If we write our stuff as functions then easy enough to put in. I know my splash screen and background were easy enough to plug into your fine code. I don't see why the rest wouldn't be the same. At least for this instant action game mode which we are making now. Then we can strip this current instant game version down into a subroutine that can be called by the main game engine from the mission style game.

I will work on making the instant action background better now since you guys liked the idea. Try out some more ideas to make it varied.

Do you guys think it will be ok to use Nasa space photos or should I just draw my own textures?

[kryton9]

Also the last post sort of leads to this. Since the game is going to be really cool and decent size, it would be nice to have support of png and jpg files useable as textures, this could really cut down on the files sizes and allow us to use bigger textures to make things look better, yet keep the size of the files down by 1/5 at least. I know this is tough to do, but something to work on that in the end we could convert all the bmps down into smaller size before the final release.

[kryton9]

I was just talking with a friend and he mentioned that his wife would love to play the game too. Which is interesting. Maybe we should give the player a choice to play as a boy or girl. Maybe the same story but with a female character instead of marc, the only name that comes to mind based on marc is marcia. What do you guys think? Or will it just make the game too complicated to support both genders?

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi kryton,

you are right about the texture sizes, BMP is overkill.
I must investigate on this topic, hopefully as Mike is using FreeImage he will get some knowledge to share.

Boy or girl - good idea. Worth to mention most of my friends choose woman character in RPGs for example as their avatar :)

Regarding NASA, I will have a look if there is some licensing information.

This project is so great, thank you guys !
Now I am going to allocate bed :) and tommorow ( as usual ) I will spend most of daylight time sitting in school.
Hope I will get there some new ideas :)


Thanks!,
Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

Yip, both sexes would be good too. So many ideas and thoughts, man my brain is boiling up. ;D

Just wanted to let you guys know that I got my gamepad working. I have to tweak it a little and then you will get a test run. Probably tommorow.

Eros, I got the hInstance from the atttach_process part of the DLL, but I think the requested command would come in handy too, when you want to call API functions directly.

[Petr Schreiber]

Mike,

this is great !
I will torture my brother to let me use his gamepad ;)

Wow, good news before sleeping, that will be wild dreams :)


Bye,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

Eros, I got the hInstance from the atttach_process part of the DLL, but I think the requested command would come in handy too, when you want to call API functions directly.


Mike, I see you already got all. Fantastic.
hInstance is passed from application to all called dll by OS, so, exactly, you can take it from LibMain.
And, again, you are right with new keyword. I will leave it to be used in case direct calling to external dll.

Thanks a lot.
Eros

[kryton9]

Great to sign on and see nice posts with exciting news and so much excitement!

On another note, is it possible to alpha fade meshes (m15) files?

Attached start of splash screen function. It is a Work in Progress :)

[kryton9]

Here is a site of Space Terms and Naming. Maybe we can find something that will make a good name for our game development studio :)

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsfgloss.htm

Here are some I liked:
Major Axis Studios
Plunge Studios
Satellite Studios
Shepherd Moons Studios

There are more but will let you guys make some recommendations.

I will check out latin and greek terms too.
Here are a bunch of cool sounding names of latin city names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_place_names_in_Europe

Greek Names:
http://www.behindthename.com/nmc/gre-anci.php

Just found this, a list of video game company names, so many good names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_game_companies

[kryton9]

Here is a fullscreen version of the old game. I tweaked the orb and background. I noticed it wasn't texturing correctly at full screen and that some the ships were disappearing into the planet near the bottom.

You can see in this version we can add and should add more detail to the ships and other models.

I will work on a better orb and background now that those minor bugs I had are fixed.

Should the stars be on a curved surface? I was wondering since they are far away would they look as they do now sort of scrolling flat or would it appear curved?

[kryton9]

OK, this is not the way the game will be, so don't think I put this here for that. I put it here to capture screen shots for fun and to use for splash screens in the future while we develop. But it does show how powerful and well written the engine is as with one line change you can get such a different feel.

I will alter this version like I said to update the TopDown Splash Page with the better and more developed models we make. it could even be used to capture scenes for our story boards.

Amazing how you can still play with this WILD VIEW!

For fun play with the numbers, I had myself start inside the cockpit of our fighter. Talk about wild, but when you moved you lost the view. But still cool.

Just change the one camera line, that is all to get different views!!

[ErosOlmi]

Ken,

I get headache playing this way :'(
but a lot of fun ;D

Nice experiment

[kryton9]

I get motion sick playing that way too :)

Also for girls name, since main kid is Marc and I had only thought of Marcia, but there is also Marcy. I guess her name doesn't have to start with the same letters. Just challenged myself to think of girl names with those starting characters :)

[kryton9]

Ok, I integrated Petr's latest with the stuff I have been doing, that is the splash screen and background are all now in one file.
I started to organize the folders somewhat too.

You will want to comment out the splash screen calls, but they are on by default. This way when it come time to test them, will be easy to call and to turn off when not wanted for heavy game play or testing other things.

I dumped using models for the planet type object. Just using list with sphere create command.
I didn't make a list for the splash screens as they are just at the beginning of the game.

I made all new textures for the planet and stars. Now you don't see seams at all and finer detail. The planet is smoother this way too.

I set it up so I can easilly develop more backgrounds and plug them in now.
I am just working on backgrounds now for Instant Action Game Levels. Hope to have more soon now that all is integrated and I am getting familiar with the cool tbgl commands and process!!

Make sure to set your screen resolution in the source file near the top, it is marked for easy find with comments.

[Michael Hartlef]

Sorry that I'm am not very active on this topic but I wanna get this input module done before anything else.
After that I will get back fully into this.

[ErosOlmi]

Ken,

you can check screen resolution inside script and set it the same in tbgl window creation.


'---Function to get info about system
DECLARE FUNCTION GetSystemMetrics LIB "USER32.DLL" ALIAS "GetSystemMetrics" (BYVAL nIndex AS LONG) AS LONG

%SM_CXSCREEN = 0
%SM_CYSCREEN = 1

DIM ScreenWidth AS LONG VALUE GetSystemMetrics(%SM_CXSCREEN)
DIM ScreenHeight AS LONG VALUE GetSystemMetrics(%SM_CYSCREEN)
DIM hWnd AS LONG

hWnd = TBGL_CreateWindow("My title", ScreenWidth, ScreenHeigh, 32)

[kryton9]

Thanks Eros, I will put that in right away and upload the script.
I also added a second level, just the stars below no planets. So was easy :)

Mike, what you are doing is vital for more fun to the game and maybe a chance to get higher scores, so no need to worry.

[kryton9]

My Best Score so far with all the hard ships and settings. Still about 2000 short of Eros's Score, but for me, a big improvement.

[kryton9]

Petr, I added some more ships shot textures. I figure you can have more choice to match the colors to the race or color of ship. I can't figure out how you are pulling the textures out for the shots. I place my new file and it kept giving me strage results. So I will leave it to you the master.

I can tweak any of them for you the way you want with the colors. I just gave you some variety and once see how it looks I can fine tune them.

[kryton9]

Time for sleep, here is the latest code. Lots of more variety with the background as far as the planet. More to come.

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi kryton,

you did perfect job !

I am sorry I am not so active now, but I will have more time from tommorow afternoon to fully dive in, I am looking forward to this moment !

Regarding setting actual screen resolution there is easy and "no API" way:


DESKTOP get size to ScreenResWidth, ScreenResHeight


The splash screens are great, only problem is that 1024x768 is not texture of power of two. It is surprising it works, so maybe it would be good to choose another size ( 512x512 ).

I will arrange the shot texture too, my fault the code is not prepaired well for this, I will add some universal setup for it.

Regarding alpha meshes - m15 models are now something independent on settings, so it keeps its factory setup.
I can add new flag to m15drawModel to accept color and alpha you set by TBGL functions easily, thanks for the tip!


Bye and thanks !,
Petr

[kryton9]

I know you are busy at school Petr, that is why I wanted to merge everything before you had time during the weekend to work. Glad you liked the additions. I am going to totally remake the topdown splash once we have more of the things done. It is there for a test right now.
I totally forgot about the power of 2 for textures, maybe just being divisible by 2 with no remainder is what matters? 1024x768 both modulus to 0 :)

[ErosOlmi]

Petr, I suggested API because I tried to avoid UI module.
But maybe you can add 1 new function to TBGL :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

Eros, now I can see your reason for going the Dark side of the ... API :) No problem.

kryton9, good observation, but specification speaks differently. Maybe as we have relatively modern cards it is ok.
But there will be always someone with weaker hardware :), so maybe if possible, try to make it smaller/differently shaped :-[

Bye,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

Planets are not really visible (I recorded at not high details)

AQ-rzVFNVK0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ-rzVFNVK0

[kryton9]

Came out nice Eros, thanks for making the video!!
PLaying it at full screen has helped me almost double my old scores. Your 5000+ in a small window is something else.
What is your high score with full screen?

I just started something tonight. Hope to have something really fun you guys will like this weekend. It will add to the project but is separate. Wanted to give you guys some suspense.

I can't believe it is 6am again. Well hope you guys have a great afternoon and evening.

[Petr Schreiber]

The suspense is unsurviveable ;D

kryton, show it now or I will be crazy :D
It is interesting to play higher scores in fullscreen, I wonder if someone has scientifical explanation of this :)


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

Petr, I think it is just easier to see the shots and to also move our ship in battle.

About the secret project, my initial tests went even better than I expected, and when I saw that all sorts of ideas came into my mind. All will add to it, but it makes it about 10 more complex. I hit a snag in making a dll last night. I spent about 9 hours trying to figure out what was wrong... it turned out I forgot to put the thinBasic_ in front of the dll. Go figure what a waste of time and hours of frustration. It was 6:30am when I went to bed this morning.

Anyways this set me back, but in the end it will be very very good and fun. Like I said it has grown in size with my ideas and things i have to create for it. But it will be worth it I think.

Sorry to keep you in suspense but I am very glad you are interested in it.

How are you doing in with school? Petr do you have Summer vacations or do you go to school year round?

[Petr Schreiber]

Now I am extremely curious :),

I am sorry to hear you lost some time on seeking problem, but you are not the only one, I had "luck" to fall in something similar too yesterday :) Solution was go sleep and look at it with fresh ( almost after reboot :) ) brain.

In school all goes very very good, thanks !
Regarding vacations - sure, I have some. Amount depends on how fast I do the final exams. Too bad summer is still too far away in time :)
Last summer was very good for TBGL tuning ;D.


Bye,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

I spent about 9 hours trying to figure out what was wrong... it turned out I forgot to put the thinBasic_ in front of the dll. Go figure what a waste of time and hours of frustration. It was 6:30am when I went to bed this morning.

Hi Ken,

I'm sorry about that. About that I thought to have written a clear help but if this happened, it means my thoughts were wrong.
Help is here.
http://www.thinbasic.com/public/products/thinBasic/help/html/modules.htm

On USES keyword, help is not really updated here:
http://www.thinbasic.com/public/products/thinBasic/help/html/uses.htm
because latest thinBasic loads modules in pre-parsing phase and not in script run-time phase anymore.

I will improve help asap.
Sorry.

Eros

[kryton9]

Eros, it has nothing to do with your help, just my bad memory. I thought it was something in my coding, just glad it wasn't. Right now I am back to where I was the other night, but in a stronger position, so I hope to make good progress and have the start of something cool for your guys. Even today I kept thinking of new things to add, so if I waited for final version it would not be fair. But soon as I have something to give you a good taste of things to come, I will upload it. Probably not till tomorrow night, but you never know :)

[kryton9]

Now I am extremely curious :),

I am sorry to hear you lost some time on seeking problem, but you are not the only one, I had "luck" to fall in something similar too yesterday :) Solution was go sleep and look at it with fresh ( almost after reboot :) ) brain.

In school all goes very very good, thanks !
Regarding vacations - sure, I have some. Amount depends on how fast I do the final exams. Too bad summer is still too far away in time :)
Last summer was very good for TBGL tuning ;D.


Bye,
Petr


Petr, Summer will be here soon enough. I am glad you will get a break and time to program away.
Update on my secret project: I keep coming up with more and more ideas for it. Are you ready for this? Right now I have a total of 654 controls for this projects. Yep, but out of this 654, the user interacts with 198 so far. As you can tell it is going to take time to finish this, but the skeleton is there and I am now just fleshing it out. I came up with a nice simple system I think. And today the interface finally came together, this was about the 5th interface design. But it makes so much sense when I see it now then what I started with.

I will leave this up to you, will you like to wait till I have all of the components working somewhat, or to show what I have now to give you an idea of what is coming. As I said I will leave it up to you.

I want to share it with you guys so badly, but on the other hand it will be so cool if I could flesh it out to at least all of the features working even at 1 stage, so you can see the power and fun. In a few hours I could have a very early version with just a very small part working but still you can get an idea of what will be, just not able to dive in and go nuts with it.

All I can say now is that the way OpenGl and the state engine is really nice and what you have done with TBGL is AMAZING. Just thinBasic is amazing for its simplicity and speed so is TBGL. I know it is a part of thinBasic now, but it is so impressive.

TopDown has such a smooth professional feel to it. It feels like a first rate program done right. The animation, reaction times and just over all feel is superb. Many other engines, they just don't feel right compared to first rate computer games. They might work well, but just as linux doesn't feel like Windows, it has something missing in the feel and the way the mouse works for example. I hope I can express what I mean. But it is such a pleasure to work in a language and engine that is first rate!!

[Michael Hartlef]

Leave the cat out of the bag Kent, you will kill Petr if you don't tell us. And I'm very curious too, just being more patient. ;)

[Petr Schreiber]

I ... am ... patient ... I ... am ... patient

AAARGH !

My head will explode soon ;D

But kryton - show it when you feel the time is ready, meanwhile I will use some anti-head-explosive-gadgets to keep me ok. :) I will be happy to see it when you think is the right moment. So take your time.

Regarding TopDown, I have few story ideas too. I will post them when they will be arranged well. To make the game more "profi" I am considering to bring some more smooth style of movement of ship. Now it is very artificial, you hold button and ship moves, you release it and it stops. I am thinking of some more realistic and smoother movement.

Especially with joysticks and gamepads it could work well.


Looking forward to your work,
Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

Some kind if rolling ot the left or right when they change the direction.

[Petr Schreiber]

Yes,

that's what I was thinking of too.
Now the ships behaves like shifting box, adding more to movement arsenal will take the impression of higher level, at least I hope.

I was also thinking of adding animated "jet flame" to the engines exhaust.


Bye,
Petr

[kryton9]

Wow great ideas. Maybe the cooler ship controls can come in later in the game. As a reward and for change of pace in the game. I think the control to start with now is just fine. Easy to control and get familiar with, but then each level can add a little wow factor to the ships handling and moves. Very impressive ideas, will be great to see in the game.

Very excited to hear some story ideas. It will be fun to work on that. My idea was just that an idea to fit sort of what we had and could go. But we can develop so much if we want to. So can't wait to hear your story ideas.

On my project, I will tell you what it is, but not show it till it is along to where it can be in a couple of days.
Spoiler to follow, so be warned.
While working on backgrounds the other night. I started to try to do more background stuff with code. Then all these ideas came to me and when I tried some tests, I was amazed how well it worked. Then I thought wow, it would be nice to not do it in code, but have a tool. So at first I had a star and nebula maker, but now imagine this. You will be able to create really cool looking space backdrops, use them as screenshots for wallpaper, art or in projects. Imagine the cool posters you have seen of outerspace created by artists, now you can easilly do similar things. Of course while working, all the things that could be in such a scene started coming to me so I kept adding.

Here is a list of what there is now and then what will come:
Stars: Bright Stars, Glowing Stars, Dim Stars
Galaxies
Nebulas
To come:
Planets, Moons, Comets, Asteroids

Just playing with one star map and one galaxy I drew, you can't imagine the combinations that can be made. I can't even imagine when I add all the other features and the maps I have planned in my head. Each of the items above can have 10 maps, with many many settings.

It will be lots of fun to design and dream of ideas with it, just as playing topdown as inspired so much already.

My Dad is coming back from his visit to Ohio this Wednesday, so I am trying to do as much as I can before he comes back. Then my time will be less than it has been the last few weeks. Well off to sleep. almost 8am here, yikes!!

[Michael Hartlef]

Wow, that will be an interesting app. Do you create it with thinbasic? Can't wait to get my hands on it.

[Petr Schreiber]

Sounds amazing,

and probably also good way to make the background unified in style,
as they will be produced by one tool.

I am very happy to see you are working on this now !


Bye,
Petr

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

I have just created sticky "Latest source download" topic.

TopDown3D version which is attached does not contain yet the Eros loader, nor the great Mikes music track and joystick handling as I must make it clear how to organize it.

So what's new in that version ?

* krytons splashes are back, in form of smaller textures
* Choice of game mode ( full screen / windowed )
* Fixed division by zero error reported by "Parker" on coding monkeys
* New set of krytons textures for shots inside

I would now be happy to discuss the game design, such as events in levels and other stuff and then I will come with new version of TopDown source, more esthetical and modifiable than now.


Thanks,
Petr

[kryton9]

Can't wait to download and try the new release Petr. Thanks.

Mike, the program Galaxy Designer is written in thinBasic. The interface form is written in Turbo Delphi and called as a dll.
I can't wait to finish the initital code and work on the maps for it and get it out to you guys for feedback and improvements.

Well back to finish reading the new posts, download the latest and get back to work :)

[kryton9]

Petr, very nice job on the new release!!

[Petr Schreiber]

Thanks kryton9,

but it was almost no work for me,
just few details.
It seems your splashes look good even in lower resolution :)


Bye,
Petr