   Alpha Build
  I've been working on this game for a while now, learning the processes as I go. I've uploaded some alpha previews of the game, in the form of two demos; the first is a vehicle demo, where you can drive a vehicle around level, a lot of which is programmer art. The second is a character controller demo.    In the readme files are details on how to spawn entities. In both demos, you can spawn vehicles and objects. In the vehicle demo, you can also play around with different framerate caps, although at framerates abouve 60 the physics get a bit sluggish (I've not yet figured out why, all the usual things are not to blame)    If you do download this and have something to say, please feel free to make your feedback here. I have a very thick skin (last week somebody shot me with a BB gun and it bounced off. srsly.) Please bear in mind the following:0) You must use the shortcuts .bat files, as the executables take parameters and will complain if you dont give them any.1) There are no graphics effects other than texture maps.2) There is no sound3) Most of the meshes are programmer art, some of them were made for me by Sirisian. In particular, the gate building in the character demo.4) The character is not animated - he simply hovers around the level. The scene graph currently thinks that he is an inanimate object.This has now been updated, and has .bat files as suggested by Codeka. Thanks. Clicky [Edited by - speciesUnknown on May 23, 2009 3:33:32 PM]
  Neat! What are you using for physics, is it custom?I should probably just point out that shortcuts are pretty useless because they assume we've unzipped the folder to exactly the directory that you zipped them up from... you could use .bat files instead.   ;Quote:Original post by CodekaNeat! What are you using for physics, is it custom?I should probably just point out that shortcuts are pretty useless because they assume we've unzipped the folder to exactly the directory that you zipped them up from... you could use .bat files instead.oops...[edit] yeah, i took your advice. It works far better with .bat files. Thanks.[Edited by - speciesUnknown on May 18, 2009 7:18:16 PM];  I'm adding an updated version since the shortcuts dont work for everybody.   ;  hi, long time no IRC, :(I'll give you a play by play. Downloading..Excellent installation procedure. Launched vehicle demo..Window is partially below screen. Have to use keyboard hax to move it up.Textures and models look silly.The physics are pretty solid. IIRC this the havok vehicle kit? I've never actually played with it out of the box. Just used havok as the integrator and did custom wheel calculations. This simulation seems to be more robust and consistant as far as transitions to static friction.Unfortunately it still suffers from havoks collision detection. First experienced when hitting the steep incline at high speed, the vehicle will just veer off to any direction besides where you want.The first thing that ruined it is the camera being fixed to the vehicle. Even with a perfect simulation this is going to make it look like it drives like a space ship. No human holds their head steady in car. It would be cool though to implement fixed vehicle cameras such as looking in the rear view and just general bad ass crooked hood cam shots.Backwards much faster than forwards, wtf is this big rigs? The car flipped it has no wheels and now i'm below the terrain.Application seems to start where ever the mouse cursor is after launching the app.Saving work: loading character demo: I shit my pants.My guy is 16 feet tall, moves like a space ship, moves fast as shit with what appears to be his cock out (though you can't actually see it).You need to make some effort to indicate the state of the player, his ground state specifically. It will be important how you utilize that in game.Camera is retardly fast, is this stuff time based or frame rate dependent?Why are the controls opposite that of the vehicle. i'm supposed to move my hand or what?Overall rating:Go back and review burt  (Edit: c+, you passed, sort of, this should not be alpha, this should be tech demo 1)Continuation:No jump? If you're using havok that's literallygroundState = hkvCGroundState();jumpState = hkvCJumpState();csm->AddState(GROUND, groundState);csm->AddState(JUMP, jumpState );groundState->WantsJump(); //or something silly like that.I appear to be having some kind of mild heart attack. Some kidn of chest blockage, it feels very strange. I just ate at subway, call them if i die plz.I see a ladder but no ladder state either? Commonnn, back to vehicles:Is LShift the ebrake? I'm glad the controls are back to normal. Do the different textures have different friction values? it doesnt seem like it really. Maybe.Collision is too elastic, it'll whip you around 180 out of no where. Increase dampening during collision, independently on all 3 axes. You'll definitely want an in game debug value editor to tweak (aka tune) the vehicles efficiently. You may want to lower the spring rates or dampers to loosen the body up a little more. The distance between your hard points and the center of mass will cause a torque arm introducing body roll. Use that to acheive the desired roll input. Same for squat and dive.Got vehicle stuck under ramp, need vehicle reset button. Have fun with that, muahaha... well one that doesn't allow the player to escape the leve.I like the big huge level, it's fun. Couldn't find the gate building though..[Edited by - bzroom on May 18, 2009 11:51:30 PM];Quote:Original post by bzroomhi, long time no IRC, :(Yeah, you did kinda get yourself banned. Its good to hear from you though. Is there any other room where you tend to hang out? Your advice is always valuable. I'll be on afternet somewhere as always.Quote:I'll give you a play by play. Downloading..Excellent installation procedure. Launched vehicle demo..lol, what installation procedure... I've not yet looked at actual installers.Quote:Window is partially below screen. Have to use keyboard hax to move it up.Textures and models look silly.I did say that most of the models were programmer art.Quote:The physics are pretty solid. IIRC this the havok vehicle kit? I've never actually played with it out of the box. Just used havok as the integrator and did custom wheel calculations. This simulation seems to be more robust and consistant as far as transitions to static friction.Unfortunately it still suffers from havoks collision detection. First experienced when hitting the steep incline at high speed, the vehicle will just veer off to any direction besides where you want.The first thing that ruined it is the camera being fixed to the vehicle. Even with a perfect simulation this is going to make it look like it drives like a space ship. No human holds their head steady in car. It would be cool though to implement fixed vehicle cameras such as looking in the rear view and just general bad ass crooked hood cam shots.Backwards much faster than forwards, wtf is this big rigs? The car flipped it has no wheels and now i'm below the terrain.Havok has started to annoy me actually, at first it appeared that the vehicle controllers were quite awsome, but the way they respond to high speed hits is irritating. The way they naturally accelerate into oblivion in reverse is my fault, ive not spent much time calibrating the vehicle.Quote:Application seems to start where ever the mouse cursor is after launching the app.This is SDL and its retarded window management. In the vehicle demo, if you press TAB to go into console mode, the mouse is not restricted to the window, and you can drag it by the title bar. At some point im going to rip out SDL and replace it with native win32.Quote:Saving work: loading character demo: I shit my pants.My guy is 16 feet tall, moves like a space ship, moves fast as shit with what appears to be his cock out (though you can't actually see it).You need to make some effort to indicate the state of the player, his ground state specifically. It will be important how you utilize that in game.Camera is retardly fast, is this stuff time based or frame rate dependent?Why are the controls opposite that of the vehicle. i'm supposed to move my hand or what?Overall rating:Go back and review burt  (Edit: c+, you passed, sort of, this should not be alpha, this should be tech demo 1)I left the mouse at a stupidly reactive speed, and I didnt fix the controls - im in the middle of ripping out my control system and replacing it with a new one. LSHIFT is supposed to make the vehicle turn at a greater angle, you will notice this on corners. I'm using this as a way around the lack of analogue controls on a PC game which console gamers are used to.Quote:Continuation:No jump? If you're using havok that's literallygroundState = hkvCGroundState();jumpState = hkvCJumpState();csm->AddState(GROUND, groundState);csm->AddState(JUMP, jumpState );groundState->WantsJump(); //or something silly like that.I appear to be having some kind of mild heart attack. Some kidn of chest blockage, it feels very strange. I just ate at subway, call them if i die plz.I see a ladder but no ladder state either? Commonnn, back to vehicles:Is LShift the ebrake? I'm glad the controls are back to normal. Do the different textures have different friction values? it doesnt seem like it really. Maybe.No, thats an illusion of the imagination, all surfaces have the same friction values. A couple of people I've shown this to have said they like how the grass is more slippery... I just smiled and said nothing.Quote:Collision is too elastic, it'll whip you around 180 out of no where. Increase dampening during collision, independently on all 3 axes. You'll definitely want an in game debug value editor to tweak (aka tune) the vehicles efficiently. You may want to lower the spring rates or dampers to loosen the body up a little more. The distance between your hard points and the center of mass will cause a torque arm introducing body roll. Use that to acheive the desired roll input. Same for squat and dive.Excellent advice, just what I was after (I was secretly hoping you would play this and comment :) )Quote:Got vehicle stuck under ramp, need vehicle reset button. Have fun with that, muahaha... well one that doesn't allow the player to escape the leve.I cant figure out how this is happening. I think ill just have ramps with vertical faces at the back to prevent this. Any attempt to prevent it would likely interfere with calibrating the physics in other ways.Quote:I like the big huge level, it's fun. Couldn't find the gate building though..The gate building is in the character demo, but it is textured using programmer art - the UV coords are complete but i dont have a real-art texture for it.Thanks for the advice.   ;  The strafing keys are inverted I guess when I press left the character goes right.Other than that it worked fine.   ;Quote:Original post by Black KnightThe strafing keys are inverted I guess when I press left the character goes right.Other than that it worked fine.rofl. I kept telling him that :P I showed my brother it and he kept wondering why I was accidentally moving in the opposite direction so I have him play with it for a little bit.   ;Quote:Original post by Black KnightThe strafing keys are inverted I guess when I press left the character goes right.Other than that it worked fine.Yeah, there is a bug in the input system, but im not planning on fixing it because im making big modifications to the input system. Currently, the key code of keys as they are pressed is propagating right down to game logic level, I plan to have the input system translate it into a "virtual controller" with a number of axis and buttons. If the bug still exists THEN I will fix it.For the vehicle demo I chose WASD where the bug doesnt manifest itself. Ive learned that, in future, I should fix any kind of input bug before releasing a tech demo / alpha build, as it stops people from testing things properly.I was mainly concerned that the character demo wasnt going to work; on my machine, when I run it from VS, it works fine, but if I run the demo you are all using from explorer, the physics system is frozen, but only for the character demo. I have no idea why.Has anybody experimented with the in-game console and the instancing system?   ;Quote:Original post by speciesUnknownIs there any other room where you tend to hang out?Nah sorry, #gamedev and #graphicschat were the only rooms i visited.Quote:lol, what installation procedure...Precisely.Quote:Havok has started to annoy me actually, at first it appeared that the vehicle controllers were quite awsome, but the way they respond to high speed hits is irritating.Unfortunately this is a side effect of any vehicle simulation. Havok is actually pretty decent. If you talk to any vehicle programmer they will have endless nightmare stories of situations like these.Quote:At some point im going to rip out SDL and replace it with native win32.You might be able to just set the window position?Quote:A couple of people I've shown this to have said they like how the grass is more slippery... I just smiled and said nothing.Perfect, ship it.Quote:I cant figure out how this is happening. I think ill just have ramps with vertical faces at the back to prevent this. Any attempt to prevent it would likely interfere with calibrating the physics in other ways.It happens when you have penetration on both sides and any non zero friction value. You can try to increase the simulation quality (HIGH, PROJECTILE) to try to prevent the penetration in the first place. Ultimately you may need some kind of collision listener which can determine if the vehicle is stuck. Not sure how you'd do that, may need to apply a force and see if you get a response. Say for instance the player got himself stuck on the raised median of a highway so his wheels are just spinning: I'm applying an input but i see no output, i'm stuck. Reset.You'll need a reset, incase the vehicle gets flipped. Intuitively you'll have the reset button raise the vehicle a little so it can settle back down into the scene. If the player kept mashing the button they'd float off into the sky (slowly). You'll want to raycast with a very enlarged ray, vertically at the current vehicle location. Choose a respawn position along this ray if you can. You may need to shape query to see if the vehicle will actually fit where you are proposing to spawn. you may need to shift the ray in the horizontal plane if no suitable respawn point is found. Alternatively you can just create artist placed spawn points and or spawn points along the way so that if the vehicle needs to be reset, it goes back to the last spawn point.But yea, clever collision content is going to be the name of the game in preventing unwanted situations (in most cases), but you're gonna need a lot of other case based tweaks too. Such as collision dampening. (vs on-wheels dampening, vs in-air dampening).   