Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: maxphoenix on April 05, 2001, 04:50:00 pm
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Hi all, i just wanted to let you guys in on a little seacret. I started putting together a team to design the next generation in Space Sims. When i get a web site up and we get a few more poeple willing to work for peanuts, ill fill you in on more.
So far we are aiming for 2 years or less
The list of wants:
10 races
30 systems
180 (18 per race) single player missions
team based multiplay
Massive Multi Player Arenas <broadband only>
Space combat
Plantery Combat
8-30 ships per race
Infantry Combat
3-4 armour types
Mecha Combat
3-12 mecha types
The main idea behind the game is to put you in the galactic battles you have always wanted to be in. Battles with Hundreds of enemys instead of ten's of enemys. The abilty to take the battle to their homeworld and spill their blood on their own soil.
we are looking at the list of wants you guys have for the next gen, and are looking to see which ones we can fit in =)
If you guys wanna help out by modeling or coding let me know and i'll fill you in on the whole project.
Later
Romall Smith
P.s.
One last thing we are hoping to make it completely Mod-able,(setting up a semi offical mod group) so if you can do
Star Trek, Babylon 5 ,WingCommander or Star Wars models let us know.
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Romall Smith
Space Unknown
[This message has been edited by maxphoenix (edited 04-05-2001).]
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Unless you have a lot of experience writing code and modeling, you are going to have major problems! Just ask some of the people who tried to make FS3.
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Webmaster of GTD Wolf ("http://www.geocities.com/jdd1617")
"It could be worse."
"'Tis only a flesh wound!"
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i have a lot in modeling as do the team i have so far but we only have one great programer and 2 novices.
were young we got a few years to throw in to this. im just hoping we can get the community behind us. if not it maybe a long trip. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/frown.gif)
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Romall Smith
Space Unknown
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I'd help if I could but I'm just no good at code or modleing. That's why I have Maeglamor on my campaign staff as the Head Modeler.
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Webmaster of GTD Wolf ("http://www.geocities.com/jdd1617")
"It could be worse."
"'Tis only a flesh wound!"
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i understand but if you decide you wanna help in any way let me know. we are atleast a year away from launch +P more like 2 or 3.
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Romall Smith
Space Unknown
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I'am aiming to be a graphist (I'm going to learn this next year, already taken in the school), so I could apply as a ... graphist!!! yeah!!!!
Anyway, this project sounds more ambitious than many "official" games, and you plan to do it in 2/3 years? Blizzard took 4 years to make Starcraft, wich was from the begining way less ambitious. You should try to begin with something easier to do than a full scale war simulator (tm)... Try to concentrate on one theatre of operation (ground, space...). That's my thought, as I've seen lots of projects of this kind appear, then disappear...
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venom2506
Member of the Robotech mod for FS2 ("http://robotechlan.com/freespace2/")
and of Hidden Terror, the Shivan campaign ("http://shivancampaign.homestead.com/index.html")
and My own page ("http://www.geocities.com/venom250681/Venom2506.html")
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blizzard toke thatlong because they had to design the engine...were using the tribes 2 engine so there's about 2 years or so off the time
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Ten races?
Look... we have enough crap on the market, if you intend on ten different groups that interact diffrently and require different tactics (i.e. think the races in Starcraft and Warcraft III) then don't make them cliche' aliens but make them human groups which are just as alien.
All plots can be done with humans, since all aliens are in 99.9% of sci-fi are humans in funny outfits.
Honestly, if you're serious get a professional writer, one who is a good, solid sci-fi writer who is known for non-cliche' writing as well as doing their homework.
Also "hundreds of ships at a time?" Get the engine to handle it, but do not design missions in such a way.
Look at real combat, real tactics, real physics, and make something fun out of that by mixing, matching, collaberating, and making excuses when all else fails.
Planetary combat in a 3d engine is frankly insanity due to the sheer size of a planet and the needing to render that, now there are ways that you can do multiple "staged" missions such as in Starlancer which allow for an illusion of descending towards a planet during an engagement, and then switiching to a seperate engine for the aerial combat.
Mecha combat? Infantry combat? You better build the surfaces like Tribes and you better make it non-cliche'
"The next generation?" I really don't think so... If you can pull it off without it's being a complete pile of Star Wars retold the Nth time, then it might be worth looking into...
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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/ ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/")
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Sounds interesting!!! I'm looking forward to it!!
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...and one day, Man will journey farther and faster into Space. - My thoughts
GTD Excellence ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/excellence") Webmaster
NeoHunter< [b][email protected][/b] >
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Well, I tend to agree with Ace in most parts. 100's of ships.. how many polygons per ship? each ship having at LEAST one texture, that means 100 textures + ALOT of polygons.. that is, assuming you were to make it 3D.
Using the Tribes Engine... is that copywrited?
Using other's mods... is that violating copywrite laws as well? or do you just plan those for the unofficial modded parts.
And as far as space/planet combat, are you going to transcent from space TO the planet, or just have it simply switch to the ground scene when you reach an objective.
This game does sound too ambitious. But, if you do somehow manage to pull it off, I'm for ya all the way. However, remember the term "Mech" is copywrited by Fasa. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
As far as the cliche's go, Well, that's up to you. Personally, I haven't seen anything "new" in the Sci-fi world in a long time.
Now for the suggestions:
Aliens... First, don't make them all "carbon based"... What if some are gaseous in nature? some aquatic...ect. Most of the alien ideas have already been done in one form or another, so, making it unique will be impossible.. somehow try to make it original. OR, do what Ace suggested, make it all human based fighting each other.
Build a resource structure to limit the ammount of ships. Sure, it may lead to "rushes", but two types of games seem to make it big... Either combat type with one pilot only, or strategy resource dependent games. The only game I know of that combined both fairly well, was Battlezone.
How long is the typical game time going to be? If it's too massive and too long, nobody can finish a game online. Trust me, I've seen a few online games that take too long to finish, they never become popular online. Somehow, you'd have to limit the game time to 1 hour. Any longer will be too much.
Also, limiting the bandwidth for online gaming rules out ALOT of people. Remember, not everyone as broadband or can get it. Making it broadband only pretty much rules out all places except the US. That's alot of income potential loss there. Also, if a 14 year old child wants it, his momma must be pretty rich to give it to him to play online games. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
Space engine, like ace said, should be semi-realistic. Personally, I like the I-war engine the best from ALL space engines I've played so far. That'd be my suggestion.
I don't know if it could be possible, but item upgradability would be nice. for example, thickening the armor of a mecha or changing the weapons, but you'd have to have weight/energy/speed ratios. thicker armor would mean heavier/slower.
And last suggestion... don't make any "super weapons". In all my gaming experience, the only units used online, are the most powerfull. All the good games were based on an even weapon system. the Mechwarrior system had heat to balance out the power of the weapons... Starcraft had resources to balance it out, ect.. But, if there were a Single most powerfull weapon (like LRM's in MechCommander), then you'll only see those used, and not any sort of medium in between.
Just my thoughts.
Neal
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Wow! That was long! (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
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...and one day, Man will journey farther and faster into Space. - My thoughts
GTD Excellence ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/excellence") Webmaster
NeoHunter< [b][email protected][/b] >
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I've seen ambitious projects like this fail, but I've also seen them succeed.
I just hope you fall into the latter category.
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yea that was long (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
Well first lets start with the copy rights.
we are working on names for the stuff that dosen't infringe on copyrights. The mods are going to be so poeple can solve the age old question ... which show has better ships. we know that it will happan anyways so we just thought we would help the process. The tribes 2 engine has been licensed, im just waiting for the package now.
the races have been mostly chosen. we have 7 of them now and the other 3 we are gonna let the community pick. we hope that at least one or 2 will be completly new, but we also very ambitous (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif). the human only idea was done to death with colony wars. The humaniod with alien features has been done over and over by SW, ST and B5.
Game [b/]
Its going to be 3d like XWA or IW
The story of the universe is being written by a good writer,who is on the team. The storys so far are far from StarWars. As of now it is quite uniqe. we hope to use physics similar to B5. however we are still really eairly into development. We have a 2 advisors from the armed forces. one is a marine and the other is in the army. so the tactics will be real. The ability to modify ships with diferent weapons is something we would like but we don't know if it will be possiable.
Graphics
ships will be between 800 and 2000. the higher poly count is reserved for large ships. we are designing the game around what will be avilable in 2-3 years. so many of todays systems will not beable to handle the game on possiable even its lower settings (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/frown.gif).
Space combat
The game is mainly in space so the space combat is going to be the most scrutinized part. having 8 ships come outof a huge carrier and take on wave after wave of 10 fighters has also been done. we belive it would be better if the carrier launched half of its complement if not the full complement to defend its self from a large attacking force. 100 ships in a single battle may never happen, but we still would like to give that option to poeple. resource management is being added to keep every one from using the battleships
Planetary combat
If we can do it we will. the scope would be large but we have a few ideas on how to handle that. If we can have real re-entry then we will. however that still in the air on if we can or not.
Mecha combat
This is a option we want to add. having customizable mecha to take planets would add a new depth never before seen in a game of this type. The only catch is having to transport the mecha from the ship (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif).
Infntry combat
Tribes 2 proves the engine can handle this so we have no worries. Well as for the cliche
part...if you call being forced to take a transport to the planet and assault it cliche then to late (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif).
Misc
There is no gametime on the arena servers. The option to host games and play on hosted games will be there tho. The 1 or 2 arena servers will be setup to allow a few thousand poeple to play a galactic war(if the cost is to much to run, we would have to make it pay to play (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/frown.gif) ). The hosted games will be setup by the host, so time is up to them.
The super weapons in the game are going to be powerful (like the death star, Vorlon Planet Killer, or Borg cube.) however they will also have large draw backs. Such as resources,speed, and size. the availbity of the ships will be based on a ranking system.
Meaning Joe l337 logs in for the first time.
He has acess to some fighters, some mecha,
and up to a destroyer class ship. Were as James T. Vorlon has been playing for a few weeks and has kept his rank (that will be hard to do). He would have acess to larger more powerful ships and weapons.
wow that was really long i hope to get input from you guys about this.
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Romall Smith
Space Unknown
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This does seem interesting, however I would advise making the campaign something sort but extremely detailed in it's branching.
(i.e. instead of 100 missions and a campaign per faction, having one 30 mission campaign that on average you play 20 missions in however it's scripted to branch at almost every descision made so that you have extreme amounts of replayability despite the plot overall being linear, different missions will place you in different areas or the same area with a different situation)
I would still advise making the alien races human factions, as well as keeping the technologies plausible except for FTL drives which would not bothered to be explained.
One last thing, will this game engine feature arbitrary geometry modification? It does intend to be next generation...
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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/ ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/")
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It should if the programers do there jobs. Tribes 2 does
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Romall Smith
Space Unknown
[This message has been edited by maxphoenix (edited 04-06-2001).]
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Well, I have been in the gaming system and have seen alot of your idead, but seperated in various games. here's the results of some issues:
Long campaign
Heh, Well, as far as the online game scene taking place with a big area, in an ongoing campaign... I have seen this done with Heavy Gear I. However, the campaign turned out to be one sided, since the default selection had all the new first picks. The southern Militia never stood a chance, since on the game scene, it would default to "northern". Everyone first joined the northern militia, and it ended up being a one sided fight.
Even if you fixed the default selection, one perosn wouldn't want to join a loosing team. Balancing that would be hard, and something to consider.
Items based on rank
Again, I have seen this problem with Heavy Gear I and ALSO Diablo I. Heavy Gear's solution was to just take out the ranking system all together. Diablo's solution was to limit the levels when you joined a game, and to totally dis-allow a new player from joining a more advanced game. This setup would have to be handled by the server, since cheats/hacks will eventually arise.
Ultra Powerfull Weapons
Although in some areas, I've seen this happen and be able to be used effectively. Diablo I has it's Kingsword of Haste. MechCommander has it's LRM 20 Racks, Doom had it's BFG. Heavy Gear had it's Bazooka, and MW2 had it's Timberwolf. In all those, they became so popular, it became almost impossible to play a game without seeing one of those, and it ended up being one sided. Again, I stress good balancing.
Pay Servers/bandwidth
That could be a solution to your problem.. AND fit along side the "building up your rank" idea. UO is a good success story, so is Battle.net's Diablo II. However, if you combine that, with the "broadband users only" theory, then you just won't be able to have enough users to keep up the service. Requiring broadband severely lowers the ammount of people available for your market, while at the same time, increases the traffic (and necessary bandwidth for your own servers)... I don't know where the cost/profit area would be, but I am guessing that a bandwidth dependent game would cost too much to do feasably. Releasing the game that requires direct connects for play would open the area to eventual cheating. You should consider that when designing, and come up with some sort of solution.
Super High polygon rate
Well, again, you're slicing off another big income potential there. Sure, you can design your game for computers 2/3 years in advance, but to be honest, alot of income comes from people who don't have the money to upgrade their machines. Remember, you're competing against the X-box, or perhaps some newer version of the Playstation or whatever... If it came down between spending $30 for a new game, they'll choose the one they can afford instead of chunking down $1000-$2000 for a new system so they could play a $50 game online.. not to mention they have to have broadband. Do you see my major concern?
Well, I just wanted to show you my concerns, and probably shed some light as to why they've seen these ambitions rise...and fall. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
Neal
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thanx neal your concerns are in the right place and the sameones we had a year ago when we started thinking about this game.
We are well aware of the fact that we are tring to put 3 possiable 4 genres together.
We are kinda hoping that helps to set us apart.
yea its true that we are alienating possiable income source. However we wanna do a good game. I have seen games sacerfice playabilty so that they can get more income. Im not saying you won't beable to play with a 56k or ISDN. I am sayng that it will be optimized for broadband.
Long campaign[b\]
That is a situation that will happen anyways so we have a little surprise for the players
(http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)once the coding is laid down and we are sure it can be done ill let you know.
Item Based on rank[b\]
this would really only apply on the arena servers. people running there own games (like QIII, UT, or T2) would have the ability to set the options of the game. That way they can chose which races or ships to allow.
Ultra weapons[b/]
have you ever wanted to blow up a planet?
many people have, and we want to give them that option. How about defend a starbase from
the mother of all space ships. Having ships of supreme power would unbalance the game a bit ,but would add for a better experiance. On the Arena servers it would be very hard to get one of these craft.
Super High Poly [b\]
Look at the ships in wing commander: Armada
and compare them to the ones in wing commander profacey (sp). The diferance is huge. Now look at wing commander profacey (sp) and compare them to earth and beyond.
thepoint i am tring to make is that if you focus on what people can run now your game is no better then what is out now. If you look at computers only 3-4 years ago were systems 200mhz and 64 megs ram. Now they are 1000-1500mhz and 128 -1280 megs of ram. If i had started 3 years ago building on what was avialble , i would have had a good game but graphicly inferiour. So are focus is on a game that people will be able to play and still enjoy a year or 3 later (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
UO has players from years back although its inferiour to AC and EQ. However EQ has made more money and built a large fan base in half the time.
thanx everyone its good to get feed back.
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Romall Smith
Space Unknown
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"Now they are 1000-1500mhz and 128 -1280 megs of ram."???
Hem, I just bought a new computer, it's a 900 Mhz, and I thought it was powerful (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/frown.gif)
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venom2506
Member of the Robotech mod for FS2 ("http://robotechlan.com/freespace2/")
and of Hidden Terror, the Shivan campaign ("http://shivancampaign.homestead.com/index.html")
and My own page ("http://www.geocities.com/venom250681/Venom2506.html")
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And Venom's computer makes my 1 year old PC w/ 550 mhz look like crap.
[edit: Oh yeah, 100th post!]
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Webmaster of GTD Wolf ("http://www.geocities.com/jdd1617")
"It could be worse."
"'Tis only a flesh wound!"
[This message has been edited by Grey Wolf 2009 (edited 04-06-2001).]
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And your computer makes my 1½ year old Celeron 466MHz look like crap (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/biggrin.gif)
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In researching my Endeavor project (after the presentation in October, I plan on porting it to an independent engine), I have run across a number of USEFUL references.
The Tribes 2 engine (soon to be available) at http://www.garagegames.com ("http://www.garagegames.com")
The Genesis 3D engine (http://www.genesis3d.com)
The Fly 3D Engine (actually has built ship combat examples) at http://www.fly3d.com.br ("http://www.fly3d.com.br")
Morfit (http://www.3dstate.com/ also has lots of flight potential)
All of these engines are free or cheap, and have lots of prebuilt examples, so if you have few programmers, you have a jump start.
Programming references:
Morfit has a 200 page book for free (3D Programming for Windows) on their site, 3 books that are proving invaluable to me in addition to the morfit book are:
"3D Games: Real Time Rendering and Software Technology" from Addision-Welsey publishing (the Fly 3d text book)
"3D Game Engine Design: A Practical Approach to Real-Time Computer Graphics" by David Eberly fromMorgan-Kaufmann Publishing
And finally: "Beginning Direct 3D Game Programming" from Prima Tech books by . Engel.
As far as Ace, et al's concerns, be sure you pick up a copy of "Game Design Secrets of the Sages" from Brady Games books. That will give you a sense of the real challenges you face and suggestions for overcoming them in a game world (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
There are of course numerous good books on managing software projects, the best of which is probably "Code Complete" from Microsoft Press.
Good luck, you have set out on an ambitious project.
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Inquisitor: Ever the source of bountiful and useful knowledge. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
Actually, Tribes 2 does not have arbitrary geo-mod, Redfaction does, you should check it out. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/ ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/")
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doh thats what i was thinking of. sorry ace i hope we can include that it would make for an interesting addition.
Inquisitor thanx i cam across thse engines in my searc but not the books your info will help greatly (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
Hearing about the 1 1/2 old celedon system don't you guys agree that if designers had started making games 2 years ago( in anticipation of the 1ghz 256 ram and geforce 3 pixle shading ability)the games would be incredible.
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Romall Smith
Space Unknown
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Maybe you can talk to Kenny and get him to turn 5th sun into a 3D game. (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
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Manphoenix:
Maybe, but the 1 1/2 year old system couldn't run it, also my 500 mHz Celeron couldnt, and a lot of othes couldn't run it too. All those people couldn't play the games, and so, wouldn't buy it. See the point?
Most people simply don't have the resources of the newest hardware, so games are made for what the mayority of people have, not what they could get.
[This message has been edited by Starwing (edited 04-07-2001).]
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Halo is a game that you may not beable to play on your system. The games coming out in the next year or two are going to require that you upgrade something. whether it be ram, processer, modem, hard drive or what ever. if you have a 4 gig hard drive you have to upgrade to have more then 1 or 2 games on your system. MW4 is over a gig in size some of the nex gen are over 1.5 gig.
In 3 years games may be upwords of 5 gigs a piece if not more. point is that you are have upgrade at some point, everyone does.
We don't want to cut off a possiable income source but we don't want are game to suffer because we wanted more money.
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Romall Smith
Space Unknown
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Technology marches on. Either you have the cash to keep up or you fall off.
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Yes, right, but talking f mw4 I can't have it JUST because I don't have enough room on my HD. I won't buy Hallo because my comp won't be able to handle it. When I'll have a comp that can make it run (in 2, 3 years?), hallo will be outdated, a old game that I won't buy. I buy games that I can run, that's not more complicated than than. Wehn Strike commander came out, I had a 286, and I couldn't run it. My next computer was a 486, Strike commander was no mpre, better games were out. Strike commander was to my knowledge the first flight sim with mapping. A big step isn't it? I missed it, because I couldn't play it. I had the occasion to play it after, it was just a boring experience. Don't mistake me, I don't mean SC should have thrown away it's beautif and all new revolutionary bitmaps just so I can play on my poor 16mhz comp. But at this time I could have demos that for long used smooth bitmap (and even some bump mapping, can you imagine this???). And they ran perfectly on my computer! So it's just an advice: when I see what my computer can do (sacrifices works perfectly on my computer), I have no reason to change it, and so I won't change it for one new game that has been misprogrammed for the dull reason that in 2 years, there will be 2.5 Gh computers.
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venom2506
Member of the Robotech mod for FS2 ("http://robotechlan.com/freespace2/")
and of Hidden Terror, the Shivan campaign ("http://shivancampaign.homestead.com/index.html")
and My own page ("http://www.geocities.com/venom250681/Venom2506.html")
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All part of the service (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
Oh, and hosting of servers that can handle 1000's of players will be too expensive. Unless you have financing, and a lot of it.
And, creating a client-server environment like that is ALOT different than your typical peer-peer game. Diablo II has the realms, Asheron's Call and EQ come to mind as well. They have tremendous challenges just keep the service running, let alone the naked expense of hosting. Diablo Realm servers are hosted at Exodus.
I have built datacenters at Exodus facilities. BELIEVE me, you don't have the money yet. Once you start getting into the 1000's of concurrent connections, you start having to care about real time loadbalancing (F5 makes a hardware load balancer that works for alot of IP based trafiic, as does Cisco, plan on 6-25 thousand dollars each, and plan on buying 2 of them, and plan on having to modify them to work with non-web UDP traffic.), and then you have to consider the machines that the service actually runs on. Not your average desktops, take the Compaq DL580, 4 Processors, 1 gig of RAM, 5x18gb SCSI disks, with WinNT4.0 enterprise licenses, 20 k a pop. Not to mention the enterprise class databse you will need to build and maintain to keep track of all those players (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif) Sure you can save a little cash by going Linux for the backend, but the hardware doesn't get any cheaper (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif) And I haven't even hinted at the money you need to host at a place like Exodus. Blizzard can afford it because Diablo has topped the sales charts since it's release, and they probably have a colo deal that a new-to-the-field group won't have. AC can do it because they are backed by MS and charge for their service. EQ can do it because EQ is like crack. Ultima Online couldn't do it, so they cancelled.
Build the peer-peer game first, the centralized server things is a whole world of financial hurt you want to avoid your first time out. It will be challenging enough. I'd recommend going for a reasonable player limit per game (if you are really using the Tribes 2 engine, which is a good choice for large areas and large numbers of players, 60 sounds like a good number), and supporting that with AI. Sorta a combination Tribes and Starcraft (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
Anyway, first things first. Have your 3 programmers grab one of the other engines while we wait for garagegames to notify us, and build some demos. Morfit was the easiest, or try one of the others. Just build a ship-ship multiplayer (2 player) game that fly's over some terrain. Have the ship be stock models. That becomes your tech demo, your "proof of concept" for some of the basic stuff. Take that skeleton game and swap models and terrain out, make sure you are good at that kind of stuff, then add models to it, etc. Will give you a CLEAR indication of what you are getting into and what you need to do to succeed (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
Of course, write EVERYTING down.
[This message has been edited by Inquisitor (edited 04-07-2001).]
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that was a good game, strike force. I don't expect people to upgrade for my game. Though i know many people that upgrade when a game of epic scale is released. many poeple only buy a computer every 4 years at best. Others get a new one every year. I hope we can malke i god enough to last a few years but also give lowend players the chance to play one another on LANs or with the grapics turned all the way down (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif).
I play alot of games and my voodoo won't handle then as well as a geforce 2 so this summer i am upgrading to geforce 3. If i don't i won't be able to play the games coming later this year.
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Romall Smith
Space Unknown
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Hehe, decided to add commentary to my quip above, and someone slid in and replied (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
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hehe thanx for the info. we have a meeting tonight so ill talk to everyone about it. Yea the arena idea is what we wanted to do if we have time or if not do after the game comes out.
Yea 64 is what tribes has and we get the source to that so we may just go with 64.
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Romall Smith
Space Unknown
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Hey Ace got you some info that relates the the geo-mod possiablitys
Pat Wilson -GarageGames
I'm not sure that everyone grasps the magnitutde of what V12 is. This isn't an exe file that you write a few scripts for, make a few models for, slap some maps into and boom, you're done. This is a game engine, this is raw source code. It is absolutly no problem to add another object into the list of things to render. (Essentially adding it to the world)
You could dynamically add buildings without redoing the lightmap. It'd be a bit more difficult, but you could just multitexture the landscape texture or existing lightmap. Know what I mean? You'd have to have a set texture for that building at the light angle know what I mean.
About the importing...umm well you can if you write the importer =) Once again...full source.
Edit:
About the destruction, there are different ways of doing this. You could have set spots that would destruct, which is currently the way to do this...or you could have some fun with it and do some boolean geometry operations. I belive there's something on constructive solid geometry in Flipcode somewhere, and it's something I'm very interested in. Basically to create the effect I think you're after, you'd take an explosion radius, probably modeled as a sphere (invisiable of course, or you could the sphere for the explosion special effect if you do it that way) and check if that sphere intersected any polygons currently in the world. If it did, you'd want to clip everything that was inside the sphere, basically I'd do it this way: Any vertices that intersected with the sphere would replace the vertices of the triangles that continue further. [For whatever reason I can't seem to communicate what I mean in this idea] Ok, say you have a triangle a,b,c. The top point is a, bottom points are b and c. The explosion radius comes, and after the check, we find it contains vertex a. There are now two vertices that need to be created, one on line ab and one on line ac. So you create vertices, a1 and a2, and then you have a quad. Divide that quad into two triangles and you're done. (The engine may allow the use of quads, but usually it's either triangles or n-gons...it'd be cool to redo the engine to use n-gons *puts it on a list of things that'd be cool to do*) Now, this (obviously) requires processing time, and I'm not sure if, in your application, it would be worth doing.
Edit2:
Now that I think about it, it may be much more complicated to add this to the engine because tree data structures aren't really useful for data that changes a lot. And since V12 uses Octrees, I'm not sure how easy it would be to do this, it'd be possible, just not feasable perhaps. I guess it all would boil down to, "How badly do you want to be able to do this."
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The Red Facttion engine was designed with so called "geo mod" from the start.
V12 is an engine. It's a mechanism of rendering polygons and lighting them. It's physics and terrain modelling and world building and avatar control. It PROBABLY has collision detection, but you may have to write that.
That's it. Everything else you have to write. I'd pass on the "geomod" not necessary to make a truly remarkable game.
Good storys, compelling graphics, avatar control (can I fly a ship, run around like a monkey, or get in a tank?). That's what makes Tribes 2 pretty spiffy. Think about the games you REALLY dig, you get to do things that reflect to your personality. And you are entertained at the same time (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif) The other stuff (including "geomod") is just sauce. GOOD sauce, mind you, but not necesary (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/wink.gif)
Recent games that made a mark on me:
Giants
Mechwarrior 4
Tribes 2
Each game let me play the way I wanted to play, against other people or AI, that were playing in totally different styles. Mech 4 has what, a dozen different vehicles, and a couple of dozen weapons? And I can mix and match? Giants: speed boat racing, shooter, play a 60 foot godzilla. Tribes 2: Tanks, planes, bikes, snipers, engineers, lions, tigers, bears, oh my!
Before that it was the Freespace series and Descent 3. I could bomb, escort, dogfight, whatever (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif) Descent 3 let me tunnel dive or *gasp* go outside and dogfight.
I want control, variety, and a good solid story. Give me some of each of the 3 above, and I will play the game (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
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Inq is right, Geo-Mod is sauce, but good sauce.
It allows for in space-sims the effect of heavy weapons doing proper damage on large scale targets. (i.e. bomb type weapons creating craters, beam weaponry tearing holes in ships, etc.)
I'd make a suggestion that when working on the game mechanics, mention everything you want within the design document, however keep a plotline to a minimum. (keep everything to it's basic points 'ten races' is easily 'ten factions which are unique in how they interact with eachother')
This allows your writers maximum room, while you can focus on getting gameplay to work.
Later on, when you have the ideas like "we want this group to have an ammo based weapon that does this and have a cool special effect" listed, then have the writers work out everything about the weapon, and the artists base their concepts from that.
Often writers and artists have to backtrack from the lead designer's wants of what the plot and look would be, but if the lead designers and programmers focus on the idea behind the device, and give the talents more leeway, then you'll wind up with something a lot more original. (this is from observing the developers who handle their game design in this fashion)
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Ace
Staff member FreeSpace Watch
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/ ("http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/")
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I talked with my team and they decided that we are going to do a few things.
30 diverse missions for each race. That way you can play the other side of some battles.
Geo-mod, we had talked about it a while ago. The programmers decided that if they have time they will add it if not they will add it after launch
Ace had a good point about factions so we are looking into adding a few factions. that is also based on the amount of time we have.
One of the races got the ax and another may as well. so that will leave 5 races for the community to help us come up with.
last bit of news we are still on track (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/ubb/noncgi/smile.gif)
we have another meeting thursday and saturday so ill keep you guys posted.