StinkyBug_2

[Michael Hartlef]

Hi folks,

here it is, M15 ready. I hope you like it. I took the freedom to add a race texture version. I really have to work on my texturing skills, they suck. :-\

Cheers
Michael

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi Mike,

perfect! Thanks a lot!
The racing version looks pretty bloodthirsty :)

And the texturing is very nice, I usually end with random noise :D


Thank you a lot!,
Petr

[ErosOlmi]

Hey that are awesome.
But ... wait. Where is the circuit?
They seems to need a magnetic levitation circuit.
;D

[Petr Schreiber]

Could not resist and created arctic racer mod :P


Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

Thanks guys, I'm glad you like it.

Petr, I can imagine the sound this race version does. A quitely wosh, and the freezing wind blows just seconds after it past you by. :) Great job!

[matthew]

Those models look really good, they remind me of the racers in Wipeout (http://matthew-4gl.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/wip3out.jpg). :)

[ErosOlmi]

Hey that are awesome.
But ... wait. Where is the circuit?
They seems to need a magnetic levitation circuit.
;D


Exactly Matthew. In my prev post I was just thinking to Wipeout.
I first played it in my 10 years old Playstation 1
Very hard to control but great fun and great graphics at that time.

[kryton9]

Very nice guys!

[Petr Schreiber]

Wipeout HD is coming, with soundtrack including Kraftwerk :)...

Mike, Kent - for TopDown or any other game, I think we should arrange better plan before we start coding, any ideas?
Should we continue the line of simple top down shooter or add some specialities like big "mother ships"?
From my side only sure thing is that it will be entity powered :)


Petr

[Michael Hartlef]

Let me think about it for a few days.

[ErosOlmi]

Wipeout HD is coming, with soundtrack including Kraftwerk :)...


what what what ?
:o

[Petr Schreiber]

No hurry Mike,

I am writing things to paper now too :)

Eros, how could you miss Wipeout HD :P
Here some video: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/31648.html?type=

It seems to be PS3 only now, but who knows. Interesting is the movement, it almost seems to me that they created the tracks around some bezier curve for example, and the vehicles go on the same curve just with some function vector shifts.


Petr

[kryton9]

Wow that trailer was awesome!!

About TopDown, to tell you the truth, I am not too happy with the current version, it lacks the fun of the earlier versions somehow.
Also I am thinking of how we can make it modular and pluggable, so that users can make own content too and the framework can
use those.

I would prefer to let you guys work on adding all the features to the language and then we can get to work on the game with all the power
available to us.

Don't get mad at me guys, but just my honest opinion.

You might say, well what would we do different if we wait:
1. Imagine the ships showing damage, breaking apart evetually in different ways.
2. Weapons that could be so much more elaborate... perhaps a missle that breaks into multiple warheads
3. With shadows we could have the smaller fighter ships fight with a background of a massive capital ship that has turrest too. The shadow would show how close to the surface we are flying while also fighting enemy fighters and taking out turrets.
4. The HUD needs to be better to give the sense of being in battle and providing useful additional info, radar to show what is coming, where pickups are etc.

Don't let this seem negative, just I think time to develop is better use of your guy's time at the moment. The game already shows what can be done currently quite well.

[Michael Hartlef]

Thanks for the input Kent, I appreciate it. Some comments about your ideas:

1) Damage and breaking apart can be done via different models
2) This again would need different models and also some kind of state machine that will controll when a entity appears and disappears. Can be done allready too.
3) If you talk about 3D shadows, then yes, TBGL needs some easy functionality here.
4) This is again graphic stuff that reacts on code. Can be done allready with the current TBGL functionality.

@Petr: Do you have 3D shadows on your dev-list?

[Petr Schreiber]

Hi,

thanks Kent for the ideas, we talked about it on mail already :)

Mike, shadows are on the list, but not for TBGL 0.2.2.

They may come as soon as in 0.2.3, just testing whether stencil or classic projected texture shadows are better. Definitely a useful feature.

My idea is that next TopDown "public preview" ( <> our "internal" versions ) version will come with TBGL 0.2.3 because:
- it will have support for less space costy texture file formats, so smaller download
- will start to introduce advanced stuff as shadows

But that does not mean we could not start working now, and add those features when they became available and stable.


Petr

[kryton9]

Nice comments back guys and good ideas too.

I wrote in email to Petr, that I am thinking on how we can make game development more modular. By that I mean we have the engine framework that can be updated without us changing any internal code. This would mean a way to design levels and save the data in such a way that the engine just reads all the data from the files and knows how to use the content.

SQLite is recommended as a use for this sort of thing by its creator which I was very happy to hear in the lecture.

I currently am at a lost on how to proceed. But you guys have much clearer minds than mine and I will be glad to make or work on anything you ask of me.

I am trying to develop my toolset to allow me to make tools for us, so I am more behind than I ever intended. But I think by using irrlicht and c++ I can soon make tools to help us. Probably nothing concrete usefull till mid to late Summer realistically.

So in the meantime I can make music, sound effects, graphics and models, just let me know what you guys envision and would need. Code wise I am dead at the moment :)

[Michael Hartlef]

No problem Kent, just your ideas are helping allready. I wish you good luck in finding the "holy grale" for your development goals. I was on the same journey long long time ago, so I can imagine how it is.

[kryton9]

Mike, I already settled on thinBasic as my interpreted language of choice. I think FreeBasic will be my compiled language of choice. But as both languages are actively being developed, I thought I might as well use the time to learn c++ better and to really play with cross platform libraries.

So far I have settled and got working:
Code::Blocks IDE with mingw on windows which is the gcc compiler.
Irrlicht 3d engine
wxWidgets for GUI interface.
Next on the list is sqlite.

So it is getting there :)

[Michael Hartlef]

...But as both languages are actively being developed...


Did you mean that they are not stable enough to do something serious with them?

[kryton9]

No of course not, Mike :) There are times frequently when I look at c++ code and say, why don't you just go and work on a project in thinBasic, there is so much you can already do and stop the torture of looking at this strange code in c++. And I might just do that, but I will give it another 2 more months to see where I end up on c++.