Shield Update!

After a nice long day of hard work i have made good progress with the shield.





Then engine changes are sorted and I have set up a few torque functions to Apply damage to the energy of the player. However, this is slightly buggy as no matter what the evnergy level is, as soon as you shoot it it goes to zero and the shield is destroyed.








Here is a screenshot of my shield :D


I will investigate the damage problem. Probably something wrong with my shield::damage function.

Final Week: Programmers

Need to clean up some things before The 30th.

• Finish References
• Update Wiki
• Finalize Review on the Project
• Practice Presentation / Add all PP Slides together
• Port all remaining modifications into one build
• Test the final build of the engine

Other:

• Sam's Shield Mod
• Health/Energy/Ammo Items in the scene
• Datablocks for Weapons, Ships, Particles etc
• AI Fixing (AI Clients/Respawning)
• Battlefield Finalization

We're going to use Friday to prepare the engine and test it; but it would be best to get everything done before then.

Then final build will not be anything spectacular; and my review, will not be an entirely positive one. :)

Decided to stick with the title suggested by Adam; for now we need one, and we may as well use it; regardless of it's complete irrelevancy.

New Ship, A Few Ideas

Got bored today, started modeling a gunship. Haven't finished it, haven't started any unwrapping.
The back needs a lot of fixing up..

Anyhow; what I wanted to mention were just some ideas that could possibly be done; even if they aren't able to come off the task list, I'd like them here for reference.

• Maneuver Commands (Functions we can trigger from keys to perform special movements on ships)
• "Lock On" UI visible flag on/off for the cross-hair lock on
• Cloak (This was mentioned before) - Will showed me a link that would make individual textures possible, currently it isn't as each 'model', not object; has it's own texture.

Workshop

I've changed the workshop to read data from the datablocks instead of the database. Each ship will need all of the variables (mass, max speed etc) assigned in it's datblock.

The default guiObjectView control that comes with Torque doesn't support mesh hiding, so I had to make a slight modification to fix this.

There are still a couple of things that I need to check before I upload it.

I'm wondering if we still need all of the selection options that the original gui had:

We could probably just restrict it to the parts that will show a visible change to the model (if that makes sense).

Concept /Sign

Is there any refinement we can give, or a possible name - to this random space game?

"A post-apocalyptic, resource war amongst the remaining population of a dozen, space-age civilizations."

That pretty much describes the game, but what of a name? We don't exactly need in depth history or anything for this, but a name would help; and an icon to symbolize the game (to place as the executable icon as well as being displaying on the game UI).

In the presentation, not too far away; We plan on having a demonstration (short) after everyone has done their talk. All machines in the room (104 which I hope we can use for it), will have the game build as of the 17th week (if it is functional, if not an earlier version).

This will be running with the ability to join a server - which will be hosted off the main computer used for the presentation. Currently it's planned for around 20 players in a battlefield; but this can easily be increased; perhaps to 30 or 40 (we can have a scale on the 'host game' UI).

Once logged in to the match; player will be able to select a ship using Reuban's workshop UI; which they will use inside the battlefield; the game will only begin when the server player makes the decision (this is so we can start it once all the players are logged in).

Somewhere I suppose the simple controls will be displayed so people can hopefully make a quick adaptation (it is really simple) so they can fly around, fire lasers and blow stuff up! I suppose in addition to controls, the battlefield objectives need to be displayed... perhaps as a tool tip description when the battle type is selected by the server.

For now, it's cram time; some bug fixing, mission designing, variable tweaking, datablock creating, it all needs to be done in a short time.

If artists of ships have time; and their ship does not have a secondary weapon (something kickass and powerful); you can model it; otherwise we'll attach a generic weapon in a suitable (as far as we can see) position on the ship.

If you'd like any animations you can put them on your model and they will play ambient - I don't know if we have the time to adapt more complex animations when ships are not uniform.

If the scene of the of the pirate base is layed out in max; arranged to your liking (I'm sure this wouldnt take long putting all your models on \\earth and then merging them into one scene). Then I will place them into a torque mission file; and position them as you'd like; furthermore I could also give you the option to edit it and add in details; then to fraps it (we can set up a quick pathed camera to chase around the area); you can use that to display your area with things that are real time renders; rather than max-renditions!

I'll keep this short for now, adios.

enhanced weapons : fun for the whole family

ok so i got the most part of the homing code working again, the irony is it wasn't all that difficult just took a long time to figure out, that he had left out an ENTIRE script file, and then find why it wasn't 'exec-ing' it properly (well never found it out, just whacked it on the end of something else)

so after including that file, a total number of things that are now working,

• homing/sidewinder/terrain following (i.e. its now seeking targets)
• aimbox thingy (including changing colours when locked on)
• hud (interstingly it now changes colours like the box does)

anyway heres another piccy, yes the aim is off and everything but i wanted to show it working... in case you were also wondering, yes it also works with the multiple weapons/triggers thing i did before. (an 'unfortunate' side effect of using the same build/project). so yes you can fire 16 homing rockets simultaniously.

Presentation Preperation

A few notes on my todo list:

• Mitchel's ship needs one gun mount rotated (right side shooting right, 90* to the right)
• Josh's ship left constant emitter not working - possible miss-naming
• Stuart's ship booster off rotation, right gun firing backward - left firing right
• Code Basic Fighter AI - needs call out to script for possible collisions
• UI display for KOTH type game - resource count etc (Will?)

Presentation - Week 17

I've informed all of the programmers that we need to start preperation for this, as well as the multimedia guys - but Tim already organised this. I'll list a few of the things we need to do, including what to wear (we're programmers and artists... WHY would *WE* wear formal clothing? Even the top guys of our industry wear casual clothing to some of their presentations).

• Formal Clothing (Just a good shirt and pants)
• Speech
• Presentation Media (PP Slides etc)

We will get a practice presentation (most likely going to be a lot of messing around) in order, sometime next week or the week after. After talking to Alan it turns out that it is unlikely to be next week.

• We do need to try and create a flow from one person to the next
• Introducing yourself, and letting the previous speaker display the next slide when you are done

mount point in mount position

yeah more or less will be needed with the new wepons slots and such, just a small ish resource i have ported, that i will put up on the share.

just basically lets you pass in a value to the image you are mounting, instead of just reading it from the datablock, which lets you use the same weapon/datablock, to mount on many mountpoints...

whereas before if you wanted to mount a weapon on your left and right hands say, you would need two datablocks with different mount point values, now you can set that value when you mount the weapon in script...

about another 2 hours work there ;)

a little update :P

ok so the old code i had was working 100%... just did a little more testing... (+2hrs)

expanded the maximum number of triggers to 32, and mounted 32 wepons, all the tirggers fired all the weapons,[albiet one at a time not together, didn't test that :( ] absolutely without any problems...

so as far as limitations go on the images/mounts/triggers, we are far from limited :P...

picture of the triggers output code i wrote into default bind

What am i doing?

I'm modifying the ship workshop so that it gets the ship info from datablocks instead of a database.

I'll also work on the game hosting setup that Nick mentioned in an earlier post.

more weapons !!

yeah so i spent about 7 or so hours working on this :
under more weapons, in the torque resources folder, on the network share... it was harder than i initally thought... because you needed to increase the mask bits and stuff to get it to work, which is harder than it sounds... anyway

simply lets you mount 32 images (ie weapons), also i increased the number of triggers to 8, you can set it to 16 at least(and i have tested)...

yeah so you can have weapons mounted and firing from slots 0-7, with the code i provided, and even firing up to 14 weapons (could be a dodgy loop loosing one) at the same time... if you really wanted, you could link up two wepons per trigger, or just put more triggers, and you could fire all ~32...

Art Task: The Pirate Area

Because we are unable to get characters done by the due date of the presentation (due to many implications). Does not mean we should no showcase the art you guys have been working on!

You canassemble all of your building and other area art inside Torque, apply effects where necessary. Additionally you can edit the terrain, add in precipitation objects such as dustclouds and make it look nice.

To do this, someone who can explain what to do in order to get everything in there, how to use the tools and such. After putting everything in the scene we can take some screen shots of the area and put them in the presentation!

If you would like to do this, and if you have time - it may only take one class to do - but design it first. Something like putting all your models into one max scene first to arrange them even; it would give you a good perspective.

Update Time

Okay so here's an update on my progress (or regress im not quite sure)
Graham and myself have been working on the enhanced weapons resource with not much hope of this working on time :/
There are a hell of a lot of bugs and crashes, even though this Deepscratch guy said he got a working port!
But at least it compiles okay :) and the sidwinders are working properly

Anyway, my next task is to work on the shields, i hear the multimedia guys have got some shield particles ready?

Ship Drawings/Render

Sence I never posted any of my hand drawings i scanned them and here they are.

Also my finished ship render.

Finalized Marketplace

Here are all my finished buildings for the marketplace.. ta-daa

game concepts

if any people or nick want to look at our game concepts/stories they shall be on earth by end of today wed the 4th of nov

\\Earth\ProjectTemp\Supernova\Art\Game Concepts

:D

Andrew's Finished Ship

Here is my finished ship rendered, will put it in the earth folder.

Programming Task: Host Game (TS)

Game Hosting Setup.

What we need is pretty much a 'host online game', which would allow you to select a battle area and then set the amount of people that can join - as well as a few other parameters.

Main -> Host Game -> Set Parameters -> Hosted (Waiting for Players) -> Play

Once waiting for players - all we need to do is see their names, and the parameters set for the game. I suppose you can host the game without letting people in at this point - so everyone gets stuck with a GUI and nothing spawns etc.

Without waiting for players we would just spawn in against x number of AI; so we need a way to have the number of team members before. Things like random team and such could be options for the host to set. Setting the team on the client is the way Will has set up his code.

Please use the current build as it has Will's scripting in it.

If any programmer wants to do this (or has anything to say about it) comment here.

Map

This is the Map I made at the start of October.

update 02/11/09

redone nodes for Adam's stinger model.
redone collision mesh for Adam's stinger model.
redone Adam's stinger model import into T3d.
added particle effect to stinger engine.
added aiflyingvehicle from http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/93563/ (wasnt really satisfied with the current ai code).
attempted to get lights mounting on the ships.

Its about f%#king time

Finally my alien model is finished after so much crap, after having to rebuild it after having to it rig it a million times it is finally done enjoy because its probably only a matter of time before it is corrupted again

Documentation Preperation

Tim has just informed me that you (the awesome multimedia guys) are compiling renders and other images of your work. I would really like to use all of it, once completed, in the game documentation. I may start presentation planning - considering displaying our process - such as blogging, wiki, etc. At the end of this semester we will write a review to note what needs improving.

03/11/09: Just a few images of misc models used in battlefield scene *and some scene screenshots

alternate space dock and new ship

Since Vincents pirate base plan has two space docks, ive made an alternate design to fit this. It uses all the same objects, just rearranged, and one of the pads is broken. Texturing of both designs is coming along. I also made up another ship which actually started with a sketch, and includes boosters, secondary and primary weapons, as seperate objects.