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lief
07-07-2005, 10:59 PM
http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/3002/windrider12zz.th.jpg (http://img292.imageshack.us/my.php?image=windrider12zz.jpg)
http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/3981/windrider23ef.th.jpg (http://img292.imageshack.us/my.php?image=windrider23ef.jpg)

a couple of screens of the project which was originally destined for same comp as cairns' dragonflight.

2d flight combat / trading / rpg game set in a group of islands in a fantasy post-apocalyptic world. probably will never get finished. savage has played it!

Sly
07-07-2005, 11:11 PM
That's not fair. You can do art. :)

lief
07-07-2005, 11:55 PM
hye.
and im usually lookin for something productive to do so if any of you need any quick art done, sprites etc, bearing in mind I don't do 3d renders, im more than willing to help (no 3 year projects with 24Gig worth of PNG sprites needed thanks...)
bye.

czar
08-07-2005, 12:42 AM
I like your graphics. When are you putting up a running demo?

lief
08-07-2005, 01:21 AM
when I have one :)
at the moment the glider thing can be flown and run out of fuel. engine can be turned on and off, revs can be changed. thats about it. looks pretty so far though... some sound effects, ambient sound & one music track

lief
08-07-2005, 01:59 AM
ok here you go:

flyable fatewind demo... crappy geocities hosting, so feel free to host it for me someone...

it is all 2d, made with asphyre pro, using fmod for sound (and ogg files which are cool), i use photoshop to draw everything, and adobe audition & sony soundforge for sound creation & mastering.

about 1 - 2 weeks of work...

http://www.geocities.com/liefmichael/Fatewind.zip

1.9MB

controls...

'E' turns on/off engine
'Z' lowers engine revs
'X' raises engine revs
cursor keys fly - as per standard flight sim

you can stall the plane to a certain degree, you can also glide for short distances, but climbing and turning without a slight dive may stall you.

flying into the wind with enough speed will give you a lot more lift, flying with the wind will give you less lift directly but more speed, which then translates to more lift i guess. you can land on islands or water at the moment :)

problems

fps is limited to 60 i hope (shhh im not doing time based movement... naughty).
map does not work properly in this version
water ripples occur on land as well :)
waves around island need tweaking
you will need to restart if you run out of fuel

i find it fun to just fly it around for a few minutes, but then that might just be because i made it.

HopeDagger
08-07-2005, 02:54 AM
Geocities dastardly warns be that this page is unavailable to viewing. Ca va mal. :(

lief
08-07-2005, 03:35 AM
http://www.geocities.com/liefmichael/index.html

ahh yes. no direct linking to files... here you are. i'll have to keep this page maintained with stuff...

Traveler
08-07-2005, 08:30 AM
Those screenshots are looking very good!
Will be checking out the game when I get home!

[edit]
And so I did. I can say this demo plays as well as it looks.
You really should continue working on it!

edit2: oh yeah, you forgot to add the filename in the link on your page. I don't think its a problem for most. But you may want to help the lazy :)

edit3, 4 and 5: stupid typos :evil:

WiZz
08-07-2005, 03:13 PM
Nice game, nice graphics :)

lief
11-07-2005, 12:29 AM
well the link i posted didn't make it any easier did it?
its fixed now so check it out if you couldnt before...
traveller: thanks, you've motivated me to keep working on it :)
wizz: thank you.

everybody: any suggestions for programming the islands?
at the moment they are 256 x 256 pre-painted images which obviously is very limiting. i don't want a 32x32 tiled look. I may get around it with larger tiles (128x128?) which will also help the engine generate the waves.


If Random(30) = 0 then
begin
TempInt := Random(256);
TempInt2 := 96 + Random(32);
WavePoint.X := Round(Islands[i].Pos.X + Round(Sin256(TempInt) * TempInt2));
WavePoint.Y := Round(Islands[i].Pos.Y - Round(Cos256(TempInt) * TempInt2));
With Islands[i] do
AddWave(WavePoint.X , WavePoint.Y , GetAngleToPoint(WavePoint,Point(Round(Pos.X),Round (Pos.Y))));
end;

as you can see, im working on the islands as if they are circular. which means all islands need to be circular. and buildings need to be placed in same way (angle and distance from centre of island)
i want bigger islands and smaller islands and stuff. tile map is obvious way... any other suggestions?
i was pondering 3d engine for game but it will quadtriple the development time as i don't know much about it.

probability: tiled map for islands and water, with game as 2d platformer once you land on islands (leaving your plane where you land).

any suggestions or thoughts?

WILL
11-07-2005, 01:45 AM
2d flight combat / trading / rpg game set in a group of islands in a fantasy post-apocalyptic world.

You know in an article I just submitted there is this thing called the Litmus test that can be used to see if your game might be good or not.

Basically you sum up the game in two scentances and if it sounds cool, you may have a winner. You're sounds pretty cool in just this line here. :)

I'll have to try this one out sometime soon. I wonder how the combat and controls will turn out.

Well you could have the screen zip right into the island once you hit the ground and then you open to however you want your 'on island' gameplay to work.

You can be a bit creative with it this way. Make each island different once you land. Give each island a defining character so that it's not just the same dull island on each one. Maybe each one has a specific fruit they grow and eat or different planes or weapons you can buy or upgrade to. ;)

Also what is the story? What happened to the world? Who is this guy zipping around in planes in this tropical setting? Whats his goals? Are there monsters, pirates some big baddie? Do you compete in races or duals in your planes? You got me currious... ;)

lief
11-07-2005, 02:40 AM
ok the back story so far (no game doc yet, just notepad txt scraps on my desktop...) in fragmented slightly itemized form

You are *insert Name here*. You live on a group of islands, which as far as you know is the entire world. In actual fact, you have never actually left your own island before.

The world many years before was affected by global warming, causing sea levels to rise world-wide, leaving scattered islands in place of vast continents.
And its very hot and tropical of course.

Some technology of the old-world exists (though a lot of it is beyond the scientific understanding of the islands inhabitants - some say on islands many weeks away there are people with 'magical' machines) - engines, junk metal, most things that float etc

You make a living by flying your gliderwing through the islands, scouring beaches and the sea for flotsam and jetsam, cargo and junk from another era and selling it through out the island chain.

On your last outing, a big storm blew in and you crashed... *darkness* - you wake on an unknown island, surrounded by unknown islands. Two gliders buzz overhead, the pilots shooting at each other with strange weapons until one glider, damaged beyong salvation, spirals downwards and splashes into the water. Fighting? Where the hell are you?

You had better get your glider fixed, find a weapon, and find or fight your way home!

Trading will play a big part in this game, as will aerial combat.
Pirates are waiting to pounce on any glider that strays from the protection of the larger islands.

I hope to have a system in place that will allow you to actually work for the pirates if you like, which of course will turn the normal islanders against you. You can of course stay neutral however.

How does that sound?

lief
11-07-2005, 02:53 AM
oh yes, i forgot to expand on the island idea...

each island has different shops, or experts such as:

refuelling stations
mechanics
weapon smiths
tailors
grocers
engineers
builders
and various wise people who can train you for a small fee
along with the usual quests from regular npc characters

i am not sure whether to do the 2d platformer thing for islands, or have it as a gui thing when you land for visiting shops etc.... the workload would be huge if i wanted the extra goodness of the 2d platformer.

the other thing, the map would be randomly generated, so its different each time you play (with basic rules and guidelines for distances between certain shops, people, pirates etc)

oh, and the gliders don't have fixed weapons, the pilots shoot rifles, muskets etc therefore can't shoot directly forwards, but on angles (sideways) and can aim while flying (less straight shooter and more rpg-type skill rolls)

some weapons:

crossbow
rifle
musket
pistol
shotgun
slingshot
blowgun
bombs
very inaccurate bamboo rockets (?)

yes.

WILL
11-07-2005, 03:03 AM
Wow that sounds like fun! :)

I am currious as to how people lost their knowlage of all the technology we have today though. Maybe another factor that effected us from keeping up-to-date... Hmm...

Well I like the concept. And I would surely like to play it when it's done. Keep up te good work! ;)

lief
11-07-2005, 03:13 AM
I am currious as to how people lost their knowlage of all the technology we have today though. Maybe another factor that effected us from keeping up-to-date... Hmm...

lol i have no idea. told you it was sort of incomplete at the moment.
i know! its not that they have lost all knowledge, but a few generations without electricity and scientists have caused electronics and computers to become faint memories in the minds of the grandfathers and great-grandfathers still alive.

tech level: think very countryside farm, basic machinery (and not so basic), small combustion engines... the other limitation is what they have to work with, they do not have mineral mines or access to new materials aside from wood, natural materials and whatever they can salvage.

now. lets see how long it takes for me to give up on this idea... i give myself 2 months.

Traveler
11-07-2005, 08:23 AM
Wow,.. a pretty good concept. The idea reminds me a bit of a game I used to play years ago (I can't remember its name). In that game you could buy three different kind of crafts(bomber, fast fighter, and one in between) various weapons, bepending on the craft you bought.
You started on you own island (where fuel and repair stations were situated) but had to fly off to other islands where you had to face enemy fighters and STA guns.

It sounds like a very big project though. And as you already have doubts about adding a 2d platformer too, I would recommend against it. At least for now. I guess you could always add it later. (Perhaps something small could suffice though, something like 'land near a building and infiltrate it to plant a bomb' or something like that)

As for the islands, I was already wondering how you did those. I was kinda surprised to see you used one large image for those. I think tiles are a lot better because you can vary the shapes and size of your islands much better. I wouldn't worry about the waves that much. Its a nice thing to have but remember that it only serves as eye candy.


lets see how long it takes for me to give up on this idea... i give myself 2 months.

That's another reason to keep it simple. You have enough ideas here to keep yourself busy for a at least a year.

lief
11-07-2005, 10:56 PM
i really do need tiles for islands for ease of collision testing with water etc...
also lets me do the random map building with far less hassles. just have to start drawing a good tileset!

Traveler
12-07-2005, 07:29 AM
Here are 2 tutorials you might find interesting:
:arrow: Tutorial 1 (http://legion.gibbering.net/golem/tutorial_tiles.html)
:arrow: Tutorial 2 (http://legion.gibbering.net/golem/tutorial_walls.html)

WILL
12-07-2005, 08:07 AM
Hey how come you never add any tutorials to the Library? Keeping all the good ones for yourself huh? ;)

Well you could try polygon collision detection instead of distance or tilebased. It might make for more acurate depiction of the islands. AND you won't need to have them all boring circles.

The only flipside is that it will take more CPU juice to pull it off.

cairnswm
12-07-2005, 08:13 AM
I saw those screen shots on OnGameDev and they looked absolutly stunning. I think youve got the common problem of trying to do too much in your game. Take the time to simplify it and you'll find you can get it completed.

Change the structure of the game to being level based. Each level you need to fly over the idlands and shoot down some enemies.

Forget about landing on the islands, make a single landing point at the end of the level where you get your next 'mission' and have the chance to upgrade/buy new weapons etc.

Believe me - learning to simplify your game to a basic set of requirements is the best way to get to make complete games.

czar
12-07-2005, 08:28 PM
@traveler Those tutorials show off some nice terrain.

Which reminds me...

I wrote a 3d terrain editor program using Omega. I have since gone on and populated my pseudo 3d world with pre-rendered 3d images. (reiner's gfx) The problem is you quickly chew up the graphics memory so I was thinking.

1. Would it be possible to render a 3d model to an offscreen buffer and then slap that rendered image onto the screen? That way it would use much less memory and the upside is that very little would have to change in these types of pseudo 3d programs.

2. Would it be possible to actually render a 3d image directly to the screen.

I can see either of these two possibilties working nicely but I have no idea how to go about loading and animating a 3d model. Are there any good tutorials that show how to load simple .X files or .3ds files and then animate them? In delphi...

lief
12-07-2005, 10:22 PM
there was too much to get it completed in 2 weeks yes. but that is how far I got in 2 weeks, which I am very pleased with.

I do cut back on game features to be able to complete a game, but doing it as levels and landing once does not make it any easier (or i don't see why) to program. I have already implemented landing on islands and a dummy shop loop, just nutting out a gui system on paper.

when making a game by myself, apart from the standard docs, make a list in notepad of all the things needed to be coded or drawn or whatever, a fairly detailed list. prioritize those things taking into account their interdependencies and knock them off the list one by one. What I also do, is move all optional stuff to the end of the list. I can finish the game about halfway through my list...

will: yes, i wrote a poly hit tester in preparation. did you mean actual textured poly islands as well?
traveller: thanks for tutorials. i'll post my tile-set-in-progress tomorrow.
czar: 3d I would LOVE to do with this. in a perfect world i would do this. in a perfect world i would know how to do this. would i make a model for each island? the whole darn map? how do you make water go halfway up an island?

thanks for your support everyone...

lief
15-07-2005, 12:57 AM
well... i'm going 3d. i've got a water plane working, and some crappy islands which actually look like mangled cubes (hey, they are!). I can move the camera around as needed, now i just have to model some proper islands and get the water looking how i want it.
it will be cool in the fact that it will have proper lighting for the time of day as i planned, with a moving sun and all and colored lighting.
it will not be cool in the fact that it has to work on a 5+ year old laptop, as that is what i have at home. So no multitextures, no shader effects, blah blah
I'll have to try and figure out a way to incorporate my experience with 2d effects & textures in to cover over the imperfections.

going to give zpaint a go tonight... see what i can do with it for the islands.

screenshot soon!

ps. thanks to lifepower for all help with asphyre and 3d stuff...

Traveler
15-07-2005, 07:24 AM
Somehow zpaint sounded familiar, but I had to check it out to be sure.

Here's the link if anyone else wants to have a look : http://www.steffengerlach... (http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/)

Good luck with your 3d endeavour :)
Looking forward to future screenshots!

lief
17-07-2005, 09:54 PM
no not quite?? i have zpaint2 which is a 2/2.5/3 dimensional painting tool, even rivalling ps in its control of brushes etc, with some really high performance, high poly count modelling stuff. i'll find a link and post it...

lief
18-07-2005, 06:58 AM
hmmm can't seem to find a link... anyways its pretty high tech.

ok question anyway... if i was to make a day/night cycle (sounds hypothetical but its actually already in progress), what do you suggest for "time of day" icon... will be a little 64 x 64 icon picture eg. Sunrise, Day, Evening, Night

Should I

a - Make it real. Make a sun go up and down, with little dynamic clouds etc with modelled (read morphing gradients, not real) skies

b - Draw 4 icons and just switch between them, with blending overlays if needed to add a bit of realism (eg. Sunset overlayed with nightsky, one fades in, one fades out as time goes past, just to stop sudden flick)

I'm thinking people will not actually notice the transition, unless they are actually watching it change.

I love building atmosphere in a game... doing gameplay aint my thing however :)

ill have new screens soon.

cairnswm
18-07-2005, 07:08 AM
I'd just make them flick over. The other option is to have the sun move in a circle for day amd the moon for night. Grade the background based on time of day/night. Adding clouds and cool sunset/sunrise images would make it really nice :)

Traveler
18-07-2005, 07:32 AM
Well you could do what Blizzard did in W3, where the icon is moving from night to day. Its a nice effect and very clear to the user.

An effect like in WoW is also very nice, where night/day is like in the real world. If you play in the evening, its slowly becoming night. Very cool :)

Sly
18-07-2005, 11:38 AM
This was cool. It gave me something else to think about for a while. :)

I had seen this effect in some other game. Cannot remember which one though. So I had to make some sample images to show you what I mean. Gotta love Google Images. :)

Using these two textures
http://users.on.net/~sly/images/day-night.png
http://users.on.net/~sly/images/day-night-frame.png

Draw the top half of the sun/moon texture onto a quad (128x64). Now draw the metallic frame (I suck at drawing metallic frames) over the top. Ok, so that gets you a sun. To change the time of day, use a texture matrix to rotate the sun/moon texture. This will give you a rotating texture within the quad, for example:

http://users.on.net/~sly/images/day-night-cycle.png

Hope that helps.

cairnswm
18-07-2005, 12:34 PM
Or copy and paste the images sly just put up ;)

I bet if you ask nicely he'll even create the images for the specific hour so the day. Actually thats not a bad idea sly - redo the image with 24 images - one for each hour ;) - it will save us all the effort :lol:

Sly
18-07-2005, 12:39 PM
If you rotate the texture at run-time, you can represent any time of the day you wish. :)

Traveler
18-07-2005, 02:08 PM
It gave me something else to think about for a while
Sooo, what problem is on your mind then? 8)

Great solution you have there, though.

Sly
18-07-2005, 10:26 PM
Sooo, what problem is on your mind then? 8)
Something other than trying to improve the code for DonkUI. :)

lief
18-07-2005, 11:34 PM
An effect like in WoW is also very nice, where night/day is like in the real world. If you play in the evening, its slowly becoming night.

islands light up with little torches and lamps and windows shine light out onto ground... was one of original goals for game (or visual aspirations anyway)... anyone flown over a city in an aeroplane at night? same effect but on smaller scale, warmer lights...

you know the sailing ships with the lamps hanging from the back? wanted same style for gliders, they have a small lamp hanging from each wing tip, at night it will reflect from water, and light land if close enough.

day/night already works in an uncompleted platformer i was working on. (probably why unfinished...). Was based on real-user time... the idea was that they could play the game at different times of day and get a different set of enemies and dangers etc... want to visit the towns? go through the day... want to get nearly killed in the forest? wait til night.... some missions would require you play at different times...

anyways... side tracked....


The other option is to have the sun move in a circle for day amd the moon for night. Grade the background based on time of day/night. Adding clouds and cool sunset/sunrise images would make it really nice

very viable option... this is basically what i first wanted....




Draw the top half of the sun/moon texture onto a quad (128x64). Now draw the metallic frame (I suck at drawing metallic frames) over the top. Ok, so that gets you a sun. To change the time of day, use a texture matrix to rotate the sun/moon texture.

And this is almost perfect. almost. i will work with this one...

THANK YOU ALL!![/quote]