Project PLASMA FPS 2004: Thread 3
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Project PLASMA FPS 2004: Thread 3
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| Project PLASMA FPS 2004: Thread 4 |
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| jfk wrote: ah, ok, got it. But now I have 2 suggestions: You should scale the guide quad to the complete size of the Level. You can achieve this by parsing all vertices, using TFormPoint to get their real world positions and store both, the min and max of x and z. this complete x*z size will then be used as the guide size. you should also store y Min and Max, and drop the markers from Y max, and (see below) continue dropping them until they are out of Y-min. Second: Although it is possible to drop Markers on multiple levels/floors now, it cannot be done in one step. You should implement a feature that will -position a marker when it hits the ground -continue seeking for the next lower floor until it's out of the meshes Y-minimum. If both things are implemented, it will be a one-click job, and everything can be automated, including pathfinding etc. What do you think? I can do it, but, we may have trouble with collision on unseen surface like under ramps etc. I'll see what I can do. |
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| Ok. Needless to say the Waypointer is already very useful and works well! |
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| jfk Thread links added. See top post. It may be necessary to increase the WAYPOINT_MAX (bot.bb) value (2048) to avoid errors. If you run into trouble let me know. Also the levelload will set collision Type 1 on static geometry labeled 'struct' (short for structure). If you use a b3D without labels you will need to set the collision type to 1. |
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Hello again. here is a another update.    |
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| Note the shoulder pads are seperate so I won't have to worry so much about the shoulders deforming properly. The character is deforming well overall after redesigning the mesh several times Have to redesign the kneepads and the feet,they are both a bit boring right now. The metal is all very grey right now, I will be putting in some colours over the metal to make it more interseting |
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| Looking even better, Ruz! I have some time tomorrow and should be able to improve & update the site. Can't wait to play with the new stuff. Thanks Frank, JFK, Ruz, and everyone else for getting involved! |
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| Ruz, Off the hook! |
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| yeah I will try and do as much as I can for you guys, since I am doing portfolio work, its all good practice anyway. What animations do you need for now?. Are you at the stage where you can add the player to a level yet. I am not a great animator but can do reasonable walk/run cycles |
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| Looks very nice! I think as a first step we need as a minimum : walk run idle attack (use generic gun) die Later we will probably have to add all possible moves a human player can do. The goal is to emulate a human player realisticly. I can help animate too, but I work with CharacterFX. It can import .3ds, .obj and Milkshape Ascii .txt files, where the Milkshape Format is the only one that supports bones - byside .cfx. How do you think should we deal with the exchange format? |
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| erm, not sure . I was planning on using puddings B3d exporter from max using character studio. I suppose we will have to do some thinking on this. I really hate milkshape. It pains me to use it. perhaps I could buy character fx too. |
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| If you have Milkshape, check out the possible import formats, maybe we can use milkshape only for the conversion - which is what I do anyway. It can import .SMD Wasn' there a SMD export plugin for Max? |
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| Slightly offtopic, but, I registered Milkshape via ShareIt on Dec 21, 2003. I have yet to receive any product or response from ShareIt nor chUmbaLum sOft. Did anyone else experience this? |
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| There is an smd exporter for max , but its a pain. lets just see how it goes. I do have a full animation set from previous mods I worked on. The only ones that need improving are the run and walk really. That will do us for now and we can sort out the details etc later . I mean if you like you can just do all the animations if you like and export them from your program, but I would really rather leave milksape out of the equation personally cause its just a glorified file converter. it also does weird things to the keyframes. Does character fx export straight to Blitz format? |
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| Yes, CFX exports to .B3D nicely. BTW I wasn't talking about converting Animations with Milkshape. Just the Mesh and the Skelleton, to be able to create Animations in CFX. |
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| ah i see. I am pleased cfx exports to b3d , good so hmm, will milkshape read cstudio biped data ie translate them in to bones?( using smd I presume) Anyway I have to finish off the model first and the rigging. shouldn 't be long now.I will look more in to the file exchange thing then. |
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| Grr Arrrrgh. I am delayed in updating the site. I'm trying to download the update for gameSpace. It must be capped or are allowing too many peeps to download at the same time, as I am only getting 4kbps out of my 3meg connection. And it's also irritating that I've had to deal with 3 timeouts so far. I hope the files aren't corrupted when it finishes the download. ====================== Anyway, I hope to have it updated by today. |
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| No problem, Dangerdave. BTW. here's the latest version of my 3D ASTAR Pathfinder Demo. It has now a neighbour check priority list that can be reduced to non-diagonal steps, and it allows mouse-driven rotation of the scene after the process to study the path. Please add it to the Page the sooner or the later, thx: http://www.melog.ch/dl/astar3D_2.zip |
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| Well, I updated the site. It is still using the same format as I had used. (Ripped and reformatted from Franks post) I'm still trying to find an easy and simple way to make it more automated. The site is updated with Frank's updates, Ruz's latest pics and JFK's new astar3D. Thanks, Dave |
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| nice one dave. will have some more pics today |
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| Yo Frank! I've got a couple of ideas (mainly techno/trance stuff) for Plasma. Before I start putting them down, what format would you like them to be in? I would prefer MP3 or OGG (because I can do the most with them), but tracked files (XM/IT, preferably IT) are fine with me too (even though I can't do everything I'd want to with them as I can do with MP3/OGG). It really depends on what you want, though. |
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| Ash, I'm in favor of the MP3 format as it is a popular format. I would like to get input from the others on this. |
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| Doesnt MP3 have some liscensing issues though? |
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| I'd prefer .ogg format |
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| I would also prefer OGG, as it is free, and generally has better sound quality for the compression, than MP3 does. (I thought MP3 only had licensing issues if you were selling your products? I was always under the impression that if your product is commercial and uses MP3s, then once you sell a certain number of your product, you had to start paying licensing fees. I was not aware that the licensing issues existed for non-commercial products. However, I still prefer OGG...) |
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| wish i hadn't done them so small now. Can I use two 512 textures instead. and increase the poly count to 2000? |
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| Ogg sounds great! (Pun intended:)) |
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| 2000? that's a lot. doesn't doom3 use 1400? (plus dot3 blended details, ok). But if you think it's neccessary then there must be a reason. Do you want to restart form scratch?!? |
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| jfk, We are going with your pathfinding system. I would like to assist you? Please advise. |
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| Bah! 2000 is fine! Go at Ruz! Two textures is fine too! ============================ If you are reanalyzing the model, could it be a little less symetrical? The original looks good, but it seems a little too cookie-cutter, and shiny 'n' new. |
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| Since I got the update to gameSpace (1.5), I have been playing with it's direct export to the .B3D format. There are some quirks, but it seems like a decent solution. |
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| jfk .The problem was that as usual what you see in pshop and what you get in game are two very different things. Initally it looked awful. I decided i there end that there is no need to increase the poly count to 2000. Its stands at around 1300 right now. I may put some more geometry in the leg to give it some more structure. There is just so much you can do with a texture before it starts looking unconvincing. But its definitely getting there now, looks quite nice after much redesigning and tears . thats the only thing I hate about doing this - the repetion and mucho refining. Not sure if I should leave the textures at 256 or go for 512 each. Suppose 256 is better for speed, but thats the trade off. |
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| AFAIK the texture size doesn't matter for the speed, but it will use more video-ram (big surprise), But - byside the fact that editing 256-textures might be less work - you should work with 512 Texels each, later you still can resize them, Blitz will not care if it's 256 or 512 since the UVs are from 0.0 to 1.0. We even could offer a budget mode that would load the small version of the characters, along a number of other ram-saving actions. DangerDave - GameSpace seems to be a very decent App, but it's also not very cheap as far as I remember. It might be ok to produce animations with it. But we still need to make a good decision about what format we gonna use to exchange the mesh inclusive bones to be able to animate it in Max, CFX and now GameSpace. Frank - the problem with my demo is: when there is a complicated path to find, eg. a big S-shaped path, the amount of required memory is enourmous. My windows usualy starts to swap ram to the harddisk and then it takes fancy times to complete. We could use mine to precalculate paths. But first we need to calculate the amount of memory required to store the precalculated paths. We discussed a method which would store the best next step to reach each of all waypoints. This means if we have 20*20*10 clusters (4000) then each one will store 4000 Direction vectors. So we already consume 16 Megabytes, assuming we use 1 byte for the direction vector in a bank. Also: precalculating 16 Millions Paths could take a pretty long time. We really need to check these things out first. At least, with the Waypointer we can now drop markers, store them in a list and assign all of them to a cluster, based on their positions. This way we have a real useful 3D-raster as the basement for the pathfinding that fits the level geometry. |
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| I will leave it 256 for now and further down the line I will do a 512 version. Its looking quite detailed now I will post some progress tonight. Got it rigged and did some base animations too expect a little demo soon. any thought on a demo level anyone? ooh keen I am |
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| jfk, 16 Millions Paths! Wow. We will obviously have to find a way to reduce this number or speed up the algo:) Applying your method in a level map will yield better results for us to access its pathfinding performance and memory consumption. Ruz, Sorry, I'm not very good with level building. However, jfk, is an awesome level builder. |
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| From my experience I know that a walktrough demo is a very little job compared to charcter design, ai and so on. The reason why we first concentrate on a bunch of theory is: it is easier to buid controls around the AI than to build AI around controls. I think, to get a representative look of how the Char is going to look in the game we need the waypoint functionality. But, if you want I can set up a little demo and let the char patrol along a waypoint track. We could also modify my "seek and destroy" demo that uses the Maplet example level, and simply replace the Cubes by characters, maybe reduce the number of enemies. However, this kind of waypoint tracks will not be used in the engine since they use static paths. I mean, we could do some simple stuff like in the CSP Engine, which does not include real pathfinding, instead simply uses some predefined Paths and attacks from there if required - but I think we will go further with the plasma engine. |
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| [/quote]but, I think we will go further with the plasma engine.[quote] Agreed. Ok. Just let me know what I can do to assist you. I'm going to continue to work on my version of the pathfinding system. Currently, there is a collision bug, open queue sort issue, and a close queue optimization problem I would like to solve. Next, study up on Blitz Animation System. I'm also interested in your VIS Compiler NextGen, which unfortunately was removed from the code archives. Do you have this code available? |
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| Nah - that was not very efficient. It used to slice a single Mesh Level into several Cluster-Parts and therefore drasticly increased the surface-count and additionally added a lot of triangles (doubled intersecting parts). Not a good idea IMHO. It would be better to work with a Level Builder that stores each Quad as a Child (=Surface), so it could be hidden effectively without the need for Slicing. But even then the Level must be made of LEGAL GEOMETRY, which is limiting the Level Editor pretty much. Personally I think the best way is to use a low camera range. If you look at my latest demo, Secret Of Manes: the camerarange is set to max. 50. I designed the Level in a way that the player will never see a longer distance than 50. I think this works perfectly for FPS Geometry. Even in the early Quake days, it was a design note, not to make wide range rooms. I suggest: Let's add VIS Occlusion later, when the game engine actually works. Let us nail this Bot AI thingy now. |
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| Ruz, How are you exporting the character so that animations look good? I used Physique and my stuff looks aweful when in B3d - I guess doewn to the weights issue again?!?! Any process suggestions please? Ipete2. |
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| I am just extremely carful how I build my meshes . Because as you say we have no vertex weights , every verex weight defaults to a value One. so for example the elbow verts are either part of the lower arm or the upper arm, not blended 50 percent between the two. just build in extra verts in between them you get a reasonable result I am going to upload a little animation demo soon of my new character and it deforms pretty well, even in extreme poses. The shoulders still causes the most headaches, but is overcome by the addition of a shoulder pad parented to the collar bone. that way you just can't see any bad deformation underneath or you can add an extra bone in the shoulder, but I haven't really tried this yet. Last piece of advice is use 'skin' rather than physique. its much easier to set up and gives slightly better results. |
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| Ruz, as always you have the answers, thanks for that. I'm going to have some more time to try this in the next few weeks or so (I think) so I'll let you know how my ameteurish attempts get on! Ipete2. |
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| NP .if you need any help give me a shout . |
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 well its gettin there. looks ok in game too. i still have to refine it a bit and sort out the back pack. hm i might start on the hand soon. have a few other bits and pieces to sort out first though. it was tough doing this because I had been used to doing large 1024 textures in the ut2003 engine which is a luxury really. I also resolved a few issues in my texture work ie not enough contrast. I am pleased I did it at 256 thogh, its almost like doing working rough. i am sure it will look way better at 512 |
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| Looks phantastic! |
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| Let me know when I can give the bugger an ugly mug, Ruz :) |
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| Ruz, I Love IT! We have got to give this guy a name. What about: "BRON". |
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| Ok Noel . I have just about sorted the body. he has a small back pack and I have to arrange the uv's better on the head skin then its all yours. JFK /Frank pleased you like it, took ages to sort out. Hmm Bron or even RedRon |
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| 'RedBron' |
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| sounds bit like red baron, cool |
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| what's next? should we really use a-star? not sure if it can be used at all in realtime. the more clusters in the grid, the slower it is. and for that 3rd dimension it's even a lot slower. maybe some other pathfindig algos are faster? z-find anyone? I am pretty busy this week. maybe I'll find some time to look into this, we'll see. Currently I also think about the level format, the entity format, including a flexible properties-wrapper. Well, there is a lot to do and there are also a lot of things we must define first. so I will now start working on a Level geometry for a deathmatch test with bots and multiplayer. |
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| shame we can't get more people interested in this. I am sure its within reach to get a nice demo up and running. I have been working on my village project today , but I will do some more work soon. Looking forward to a test level JFK so apart from it being sci fi, whats the twist on this game, any good ideas yet anyone. Might also get chance to do a female character soon. |
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| jfk I propose we use your Seek & Destroy pathfinding technique for basic navigation and 2D A* for collision avoidance if necessary. The Seek & Destroy pathfinding Code will have to 'modularized'. I would like to give a go at developing a version of your S&D system. My A* can be used for collision avoidance as its 2.5D, uses realtime collision, and its fast for short distances. However, I've stumbled on what appears to be Blitz collision bug. I have to solve this for it to be useful. Waypoints can be placed in the level in a variety of ways: Waypointer, Waypoint Recorder, Level Editor (w/label). The Level Loader and Engine can support all of these methods. We'll just select one of the methods for the demo. What tools will you be using to construct the level? |
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| Thought I'd quickly offer you full use of my assault rifle model (once it's skinned- don't want to give you something half-way). Seems interesting, so far, although I have my doubts about the project, so I might as well try to dismiss them by trying to assist in some way. A picture of the aforementioned rifle is in 'Various Stuff' under 'User Creations'. |
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| saw that rifle, looking good so far noel. suppose even if the project doesn't work out long term , it still good practice. like working on a mod really |
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| I am using Maplet for this time. It's gonna be some kind of quake2 style map with lightmap, should fit together with the scifi theme. I still need a bunch of textures. |
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| hmm i am not much help there, level texturing and me don't get on. Any chance of using some of your nice sci fi textures noel |
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| Ruz: Permission granted. Edit: Uploaded: http://s87776868.onlinehome.us/stuff/textures_020904.zip |
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| cool, nice one |
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| hey thanks a lot! |
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| jfk, Can you provide a brief explanation on how your Seek&Destroy operates. I almost have a clear picture, but, it has not quite there yet. I may be able to get something up and running today. Sincere Thanks. |
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| there are tracks with waypoints. the enemies walk from one point to the next with a specific stepwidth. when they see you, they test 3 positions: one step back, current step and next step. they will then go to the neares point from where they still can see you. Well, when they are close enough, they don't come closer and attack/shoot instead. Here's a screenie from the test level I am working on. I must say - wow, Noel, your Texture is top - all other textures look like crap byside yours :/ (removed, see nu screens below) Don't expect too much, it's only a test level. I think I'll finish it tomorrow. |
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| looks ok though. looks forward to seeing it |
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| Nice. Strange how that pipe texture works well for a wall... |
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| jfk, Thats looking AWESOME! |
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| I will make a start on the hand this weekend and send on the player mdoel too, complete with run animation. if I can do a decent walk cycle I will post that too. |
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| Ruz: If you need a hand, I've got one to spare as well- no, really: http://s87776868.onlinehome.us/stuff/hand.zip I posted this a while back for free. Picture:  Feel free to modify it if you want. |
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| Thaks noel, but I am going to do a hand that matches the red bron player model, so my hand and your hand are not much use ij that regard for now. I was going to ask you to give me hand |
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| I have a working version of jfk's Seek&Destroy, but, theres a bug as the bots will not seek. I could use a hand jfk when your available. Download the most recent Wip Zip. The 'wipseekanddestroy.bb' looks for the test.b3d, test.waypoints(waypoint.bin), and test.csv(blank) in the maplet folder "d:/program files/maplet". So, you have to change the path and rename some files to get this to work. My version of the Seek&Destroy is located in the bot2.bb |
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| ok, here's the level, please read the readme.txt (level is on the PLASMA Project Page) Frank - I'll look into that. |
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| Frank, sorry, you took my 50 lines code, implemented it into the many hundreds of lines WIP bunch of include files. Now it loads the level, but the bots completely remain invisible. Sorry, I cannot find that bug since the current WIP is a jungle of include files to me. As I said before - debugging is much harder when you don't develop parts as autarc prototypes. All I can say by now is I think it's a bad idea to load the Level geometry as an animated mesh just to be able to read interior entities from the children names. Personally I think there is no way around a dedicated Map editor that will let the user merge meshes, sounds etc etc etc. into a NON-B3D format Map File which will include all paths to the content of the map: level geometry, 3d sounds, static and animated interior, particle emitters aso.. Well, I made a Level Editor for CSP which did exactly this, I released it as open source, virtually nobody cared about it, (at least noone ever released something based on it) so it is probably a bad idea to do this one more time. |
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| jfk, I merely added your code to my existing code. With exception of labels, the code should function the same. I divided and reduced the code into 3 functions for modularity: botSDReaction(this.bot), botSDWaypointSeek(this.bot), and botSDSensor(this.bot). The botSDSensor() contains the seeker code. I overlooked something in my translation, I'll figure it out. The idea behind using labels is to use an existing editor. You could design all your geometry in one map if desired. The levelLoader is very flexible. Loading separate objects is no problem. However, if you insist on writting a dedicated map editor, I would be highly in favor of resurrecting your editor source to avoid rewriting. |
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| using loadanimmesh for the level mesh slows down the app afaik. further one has to parse the whole family tree to check any linepick or collision. I vote for a static level mesh without labels handling. It seems to be a nice idea to be able to name a child "put a light here", but in the end it's way more "WYSIWYG" when you simply position a Light in a Editor written in Blitz. Yes, of course, I can offer my Editor. But this would mean we will have about the same possibilities like the csp engine. My wrapper didn't handle every possible setting. Although I think it's enough. This way we'll have a level loader too. But - you know, it's written in my style. No types in use. It seems they were not required :) BTW. I added your seashell idea (automated for the whole level), and put the A-Star onto the waypoints it produced (was dammit tricky). Now it works 90%. I still got to fix some little bugs and solve some logical problems. There is still an unbearable lag when it searches a path to a location that is not on the same floor. Maybe this should be solved with predefined paths to the next floors. Did you like the level? Took me a whole day. |
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| "All I can say by now is I think it's a bad idea to load the Level geometry as an animated mesh just to be able to read interior entities from the children names." Just wanted to point out that you can still do the old fashion way and load the b3d files manually. Loading a level with loadanimmesh and it slowing down sounds kinda strange to me( ofcoarse, I have never attempted that yet). I say you guys should work with the B3D file format. It's a native format that everybody can learn from and mabie even help Mark expand on it in the future. just my 2 cents... |
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| jfk, The level is EXCELLENT! It should not be difficult for us to add interactive objects: Switches, Door, Platform, Ladder, and Props to in the future. Interesting, I haven't experienced any performance differences with using loadanimmesh vs loadmesh on any of the my platforms: PII 400, PIII 700, Duron 1G and P4 2.0G. One of my major concerns with loading individual geometry is surface count. Using your editor will save time. The current features your editor supports should not be a problem. We can add new features if necessary. Seek & Destory Fixed. There was a problem with camera setup. The Seek & Destroy Path concept is very good and really fast. I'm gonna expand on it to seek other objects. |
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| Thanks Todd, your suggestions are welcome. Currently we use B3D, but the ENgine will be capable of handling .X and .3DS as well since there is no diffrence in the loading procedere, byside the EntityFX must be set to fullbright if it's using a Lightmap - a thing that must be configurable in the Level-Editor. Frank - thank you nice to see you like it. Concerning adding new features to my editor: Not sure if this will be very easy. In fact it would maybe be a good idea to restart from scratch cause the code is pretty ugly and the Gui is not very flexible. The main problem is: It is using an Array with entity slots, each of them contains all necessary entity properties. Now, when the editor is selecting an entity, it's working with a copy of the array entry. This means first it has to load the copy, and after the chanches it has to write it back to the array. This is complicating the source. |
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| "byside the EntityFX must be set to fullbright if it's using a Lightmap - a thing that must be configurable in the Level-Editor." Interesting... that makes sense, I'll add that to my todo list. :) The media, the map and the model, are looking cool! |
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| In fact it would maybe be a good idea to restart from scratch cause the code is pretty ugly and the Gui is not very flexible. I was afraid you were going to say that, lol. Creating level editor can be very demanding and I personally do not desire to take on the challenge. Developing the GUI alone can be a major pain. On the other hand, the community could benefit from an FREE open source Map Editor. If you elect to start from scratch, perhaps the GUI can be omitted. If you elect to include a GUI, I would recommend using a 3D GUI, that could also be used for designing in-game huds and control panels. Another alternative is to contact developers who have made editors and try to get our hands on the code. The biggest challenge with this isnt getting the code but, understanding it. |
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| Hum - not sure if the editor really needs a 3D Gui- 3D guis are always harder to implement than 2D guis IMHO. I would seperate the two things: gui for the editor(s) and Menu for the game. The game Menu can be a custom design, it doesn't require a fullfledged gui. We should not concetrate on fancy gui stuff, rather progress with the parts that are vital for the game. I want the game to be playable asap, no matter how dumb it might be in the beginning. Then we add a lot of handlers, such as doors, health system etc. et voila there's the game. Ok, if you think we can use my Editor, I will take some time soonish to make the gui a bit nicer. I will then provide a basic Level Load function, and you will have to rewrite it to make it a code that fits in the current core. This is the editor window in its current state. Personally I find it extremly useful, but some gadgets are a bit uncommon. I think it's only up to a good Documentation. Did anyone of this team ever use it?  BTW Frank (Or DangerDave), can you upload the plasma_levelmesh1.zip to the project page? I had to delete it on my server because I need the space urgently, thanks. |
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| Referring to one of your earlier posts, if you have trouble losing connection in the middle of downloading files you should get GetRight i think it's www.getright.com but you can google it if that's the wrong url. It lets you download files, with resume, also you can specify an url to dl, and you can download files numerically i.e. if a site has 10 3d models model1.zip to model10.zip you can just tell it the number range and it will auto download. There are probably some other download resumers out there but, I've found getright works pretty well. |
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| jfk I agree. A full fledge is gui is not needed ingame and that gui looks great. I've been looking for a way to help on this. Chris Fullers BlitzUI is a Free Full Powered 2D GUI Lib. I have downloaded and I'm very impressed. It has an editor, examples, and documentation. Its user-fiendly and fast. We could use this gui lib for other tools. I'm ready for the level loader. |
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| Ok. CodeD - thanks. GetRight is a pioneer in the genre of Download Managers capable of resumes. Personally I use the Opera Browser which has resume built in. |
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| Hello everyone! Sorry that I haven't been around much. I have updated the website with JFK's level. ------------------------- JFK, I haven't used your editor. It looks good. --------------------------- I know I haven't contributed to this yet, but I should be able to do so soon. Thanks, Dave. |
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| NP! BTW - I think we should start thinking about methods to implement several features. Personally I have made good experience with filename based recognition of some entities with special jobs. An example: A lightbulb mesh is loaded as "bulb.3ds". The engine has a list (loaded from a file) of filenames of meshes which require a Light Flare effect, and in the list there is also the name of the corresponding Flare sprite File, as well as it's scaling parameters and maybe an alpha value and spriteviewmode/blending Mode. This way each merged interior mesh can have a light flare, it only has to be defined seperately. But of course, we could also activate Flares on Meshes with a special action trigger string such as "hasflare" in the name field or something. There are Pros and Cons for this Method too. |
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| @jfk he man i love your level |
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| Thanks. Just imagine how it's going to look with containers, light coronas and stuff. |
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| There's one further point I'd like to discuss: I think we should implement the bot AI like this: If the Game is running in multiplayer mode then the Bot AI is only active on the host machine and will only send their positions to all clients, so they virtually don't know if it's a human or an AI player. |
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| will do the animation for the player tomorrow will have run,walk,still,idle,fire(small gun) for now I will also post the max file/b3d file for your inspection yeah i suggest we only have small weapon for now now so we can avoid doing seperate animations for small gun/big gun |
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| Hehe - most ego shooter only have big guns :). That's ok. I'm looking forward to play with Mr. Red Bron, so to say. To make it easy we can first clone him several times and edit the hue of the red parts of the texture, so the player will be able to choose his ego from Red Bron, Green Bron, Blue Bron etc. These available Chars will be stored in a list, so later we can add any modded chars easily. |
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| yeah i suggest we only have small weapon for now now so we can avoid doing seperate animations for small gun/big gun Do you mean that you have to animate the gun with the character movement (ie MD2) or that you have seperate animations for the weapon (ie reloading, etc). |
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| basically I feel we just animate the movement of shooting. ie a small gun is one handed, big is two handed like in Unreal Tournament So for fire it will be a 15 frame looped animation. i will be exporting using b3d pipeline, so we use exrtact animseq Also i wll be doing alll the amimations in one max file, so we have one big long sequence. its just easier to have one max file then 30 seperate ones. But anyway if you want big guns and small guns , its still doable I suppose you can just attach the weapon mesh to the biped hand bone, using find chilld or something ( for the bots I mean) |
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| Couldn't you save one Animation File for each Sequence? I would really prefer this since it's the way CharacterFX works, and in Max it's possible to set start frame and end frame before exporting. It might be a bit more work, but in the end we won't need a Sequences Description File for each Character. |
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| well its easier for me to do them seperate, but I hadn't quite figured out how to import animations in Blitz to seperately, making it hard for me to test right now so for example if I had ten animations that would be 10 b3d animation files? Is there way in blitz to import a default file with the bones and mesh and then load animation sequences on the bones if you get my meaning. |
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| Well, I think it's not possible to export the animation without the Mesh because the bones are connected to the Vertices, even if not weighted (but you could try anyway), but I think you should not worry about those few hundred kB we waste this way. There are also some Pros: You could use the same Animation Files for diffrent Chars, as long as the Skeleton is the same. In earlier times I worked with MD2-like Multi-Sequences too, but then I found it much better to use a File per Sequence. Be it in Blitz, CharacterFX or 3D Studio (I've got an old version). Importing them seperately in Blitz is easy, Load the static mesh first, then use LoadAnimSeq to add Animation Sequences to an entity, then they are indexed from 1 to n. |
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| ok, no probs I will try that out today. damn, i have been really struggling a bit recently My graphics are getting better and better but my understanding of coding is not good. |
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| Please checkout the WipSeekAndDestroy at your leisure. I actually had it up and running last week. Please read the readme.htm file. |
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| I'll look into that tomorrow, I am very tired now (evening here). I am already in post-while-shut-down mode. later. |
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| I get an error on this , ie entity doesn't exist or similar, probably the bot. |
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| I asked for discussions about methods of implementing -AI in Multiplayer Enivroment -Special Jobs Items (such as LIghtflares or Doors etc.) See above. |
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| Ruz, Entity does not exist. Please describe in detail where you get this error. The demo is flaky because it relies on external files not in the same path as the code. You may have to alter the code to make changes. jfk, I'm not certain as to how we will implement AI in a Multiplayer environment. IMHO we should have a basic network core working first. The behavior of the network core will determine wether or not we can use the AI method you propose. I had little experience with the multiplayer network code. Hopefully, someone who has will assist. 'Special Items' should be implemented like any other object. We can either load them in with method I purposed in the Levelloader (b3d, csv, aux) or as you purposed. The engine should have specific code modules (ie door.bb, flares.bb, particle.bb) to manage these items. One of my major concerns is optimization. We have yet to discuss it. IMHO, optimization should be implemented at the core and can be if we deal with them now. Optimizing later may require major rewrites. Here are some of my concerns: loading independent geometry, equals more surfaces. Why load in 1000 enemy meshes when 10 is the max visible at any given time. What about Portals and LOD. Some type of Hidden Surface Removal should be included. LOD can be implemented on practically all geometry using the mesh switching technique. IMHO, the engine will be useless if it does not address these optimization. |
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| Implementing doors and other interactive things as door.bb might not solve the problem since such things, eg. a door requires several interfaces to the core: -initialisation in the level loading procedure -call(s) in the main loop -including of the function(s) Personally I am not sure if it's a good idea to use a high number of Include Files. So when you see a function call, how do you know in which of the 100 Include Files you have to look for that function if you want to edit it? Further you need to load all 20 Files in the IDE whenever you want to work on the Engine. LOD, HFR and VIS is a thing that will complicate this massively. There is no good and working example of a homebrew HFR around yet. Please tell me which complete Bitz Game! is using a HFR. I suggest you load the walktrough demo I provided with the demo level and check the camera range setting. You'll see the range is max. 50 blitz Units. THere is no need for HFR IMHO. At least if we make this Engine for Indoor Levels. I don't want to start too many things with this, I am still afraid this will suddently die when we start too many things at the same time. Instead of saying "yes, we implement interactive Items the one or the other way, but let's talk about VIS" we better should decide ONE way to implement items and then proceed. I will not start on the level editor as long as there is no decision about this kind of stuff. There is a reason why I ask this, it's not only spontanous nonsense. and anyway, Frank, you are looking for a level editor in the general forum - I also don't start with the edition of the csp editor for plasma when it is not a clear decision that we want to use it. you know these situations, somebody asks for some Sourcecode, then you write an example for that newbie, but he never uses it - that's scaring. |
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| The thing that could cause problems is the amount of players/bots on screen at any given time. I reckon blitz would baulk on this pretty quickly I think what jfk is talking about with regard to LOD as regards the level geometry is sensible. And for this kind of FPS, it think its again wise just to have indoor levels. I suppose if the project rally blossoms , then you can think about adding the fancier features. I suppose it s the thing to get a working demo up and running soon as possible. Is the priority here to make an engine framework or to make a game , bit confused.( perhaps both) Is there any code yet/any plans soon for animation control of the characters.I have been working on my own for my other demo , but had a lot of problems. lastly can I upload my stuff somewhere. i don't want to use my planet unreal site for this. |
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| jfk I apologize for the rant on optimization, it was completely off topic. A modular engine design will most likely result in a decent number of include files. Documentation should provide details on functions,etc. If one needs to make modifications to the code they will need to reference the documentation. All the code that deals with a particular object can be stored in a single module file. From a Main.bb perspective the only functions required are doorStart(initialize), doorUpdate (main loop), and doorStop(clear memory) function. As far as how doors can operate in the engine. Doors will require a mesh and collision. Players and Bots will need control mechanism to switch the door open/close manually or automatically. Doors can slide horizontally, vertically, and swivel to open/close. A sound is played when a door open/close. Please ignore my post in the general forum it has nothing to do with PPF2K4. I was under the impression that we agreed to use your editor as my position is to avoid writting one. Your editor can determine how we implement the specialty items. I anticipate changes will occur, but at least we will have something to work with. |
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| Ruz It looks like the next plan is to implement doors and flares. I would like to get my hands on the RedBron Model. I can then play with animation and AI. |
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| doing it right now,I can email it to you if you like basically I am having to reskin it because of this and that reason ,which will take about another 40 mins. I have changed the height so it is 1.85 metres in 3dsmax , an average 6 footer in reality( thats why i had to reskin it.The save envelopes function in max is a bit flakey) I will send you a b3d file with a run cycle and 'still'animation. I will updload the max and texture files to where ever you want me to. |
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| Well, I've started working on a track. It's a drum 'n' bass track, and I tried to go for a UT-style vibe with it. Anyway, tell me what you think. This track is still a WIP. Have a listen. |
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| Ruz, Please send RedBron Model to frankie_taylor@... Ash, Sounds good. Look forward to it. |
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| yayyy , I done a little demo. you will get it in about 10 mins frank if you press 'm' he runs if you press 'n' he is still. more animations coming soon. |
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| Frank - we first need a level editor. For this we use the bespoken entity wrap standard (thread 1 or so). Together with the Level editor we need the Level loader. If we once have the level loader, we can implement the initialisation of doors and other interactive things. If we once have the initialisation working, we can implement the handling of these things. Step by Step. |
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| jfk, I am going to busy the next few days on my other demo, so do you want to do some more animations?. i sent frank the files anyway. I only did still and run( fast walk)for now. fire should be easy. perhaps we can use find child in blitz to do 'run fire'. anyway no biggie I sure you have lots for work to do too. BTW what the hack is a 'wrapper' |
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| Since it's an open source project I expect Frank will upload it to the project page asap (see my sig). I will then try to import it, not sure if I can do that, unfortunately I still ain't got UltimateUnwrap3D which can import animated B3D. A wrapper in this case is a list of entity properties we will use in the leveleditor to define a merged MEsh or sound: POsition, scale, rotation, texture flags, shininess, alpha, FX, collision mode, dynamic properties etc. The level loader will then use these parameters to load all level components the same way as the editor. The Parameters are wrapped around the entity, so to say. |
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| Ash - sounds nice - maybe the drums should be a bit more decent IMHO. Nice synthy sound tho. |
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| oh ok, NP. i thought you could import animated b3d files. I will try and do some more anim soon. ahh so thats a wrapper,nothing to do with toffees then. ash - that sounds cool ,nice work man |
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| Ruz I did not receive any files:( My forwarding service limits email size. The forwarding service is disabled. Please resend at your earliest convenience. Thank you. Ash Amazing Work! Its in the top post. dangerdave My access to project page is not working. Please assist. jfk, The levelloader for the editor and engine should be the same, in fact the same function. Wrapper no prob. I would suggest a list of objects and properties, starting with Door. ;Type Version Type Door Field Id% Field typeid% Field entity% Field close.vector Field open.vector Field speed# Field state% End Type ;Array version Const DOOR_MAX%=24 Dim door_type%(DOOR_MAX%) Dim door_entity%(DOOR_MAX%) Dim door_close_x#(DOOR_MAX%) Dim door_close_y#(DOOR_MAX%) Dim door_close_z#(DOOR_MAX%) Dim door_open_x#(DOOR_MAX%) Dim door_open_y#(DOOR_MAX%) Dim door_open_z#(DOOR_MAX%) Dim door_speed#(DOOR_MAX%) Dim door_state%(DOOR_MAX%)We can modify properties as needed. I have ideas for other objects as well (ie ladders, platforms, etc) but more interested in seeing what others have. |
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| Frank, I'm not sure what is happening. Can you let me know? Please email me. (Click on my name) I ftp using the plasma account when I do updates so I know that username/password is working. |
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| ok frank resent, hope you didn't disable it again he he |
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| Ruz, Can you send it to me as well? Please click on my name and use the address there. |
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| nprobs |
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| There is a way to write an engine that works for absolutely any game type. But on a side note, how is the FPS relient engine comming? Has it produced anything yet? |
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| Ruz, Received your email. I will be adding waypoints to jfk's test level and hopefully, will be putting the RedBron to work. dangerdave, I probably overlooked this. I'm not certain as to what site to ftp to. Please advise. Yes, finally received my MilkShape 3D Registration. |
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| Frank, example: in IE, ftp://www.stewartsoftare.ca/web enter name and password. |
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| Ok, we still need somebody in the team who purchased UltimateUnwrap3D to port 3dsMax work to CFX. Frank - I agree, level loader must be the same, at last they use the same basement. But instead of working out the door handler first we simply define something to be a door in the editor. It is then up to the engine, to handle it correctly. From my work I know that it is a very useful technic to store multiple properties in one string. This might sound dumb, but in fact it makes the editor incredible flexible. The engine at the other hand won't have any difficulties to extract those trigger strings from one string, using INSTR. This way you can add a lot of dynamic items without to edit the editors gui each time. I hardly reccomend this. Later we still can make some Gui elements that will assemble that string in the background. Until then there is a Text Field where the user has to enter things like "isdoor_vertical" or "isweapon_3" etc., of course, documentation required. For the Light Flares I still say: let's use the names of some light meshes (lightbulbs, lamps etc.) to determine if and what light flare effect they have. So there is a text file that has all those mesh filenames that require lightflares stored, together with all further necessary informatons for the flares (as described earlier). The engine will load that list and in the level loading procedure it will compare every mesh quickly with the Flares List and add them to a Flare Sprite List, containing all Flares by index. This List will then be used in the game loop to hide/show flares depending on visibility of their lamp and the distance. I wanted to work on the editor this evening, but I am kinda sick today, heavy nausea - will maybe take some days more, sorry. |
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| JFK, I didn't realize that you needed a max to cfx converter. I have unwrap3d and will do it. (EDIT) What format is needed? I didn't find a CFX file format on the unwrap3d website. =================== Get better, and then play with this stuff. Have you tried Gravol, Bismuth, or something? |
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| export to Milkshape Ascii .TXT, that works fine in CFX, Thanks a lot!!! BTW Animation is not required, only the Mesh with the skeleton. |
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| OK. I will do it now and then update the site so you can download. |
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| Hello Everyone. I've updated the site with Ruz's model and I've converted the mode to ASC format. Please let me know if something is wrong with the ASC files. Please note that you will need the other files for the textures and other support files. |
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| ASC? But this is a 3ds max format? I meant Milkshape .TXT Format. AFAIK .ASC does not store the bones, somebody correct me if I'm wrong. I'll try it anyway. |
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| OOPS!!! Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. I've made the change on the website. |
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| JFK, Note that unwrap3d doesn't save as MS3D ASCII directly. I had to save as MS3D and then open MilkShape and save as ASCII. Note that when I exported from unwrap3d to MS3D, I selected the option to save smoothing per group. I have another version that I didn't save smoothing per group. If you need this version, tell me and I will put it on the site. |
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| It'd help if there were a non-Milkshape user-friendly format available- reasoning: not everyone has Milkshape. Such as 3DS (which if I'm not mistaken stores bones). In any case, a format native to MS3D is utterly useless to me. Edit: Nevermind, just noticed (odd that I didn't, but it happens) that there is indeed a 3DS version available. Disregard this post. |
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| Noel, There is MAX and 3ds files in the max zip, and there is B3d file in the b3d zip. What other formats are needed? |
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| well not everyone is going to be doing animations I presume , so only the animator needs the ability to to that. It would be damn well easier if i just animated the thing , noel does a new skin for it and jfk does coding along with frank. too many cooks and all that soon as I fix my animation stuff in my project( 'bout ten years time) i will have more time. BTW, milksahpe is cursed |
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| dangerdave: If you want other suggestions for file formats: ASE (though it isn't used by many programs, it's a nice ASCII-format), OBJ, LWO, etc. Common file formats. Anyhow, I edited my post prior to your reply to mention that I'd not noticed that archive. And MAX files after version 3 don't work for me anyway- one of the many disadvantages of not having the money to upgrade- it'd probably be cheaper to just buy the latest version instead of upgrading anyways.. sorry, went on for a bit too much there. Ruz: Speaking of a new skin, if it weren't for the fact that this PC lacks a floppy drive I'd already be transferring it to my computer and skinning the git. But, my parents for some reason thought not getting a floppy drive was a good idea, so I'm screwed until later. |
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| he heh i mistakenly took out my floppy drives on both my pcs. I then put them back in i use them quite a lot now. Noel, you can dl the evaluation version of max 6 , fully functional for 30 days. |
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| Ruz: Yeah, but it's still just a trial. I can just as easily import the 3DS file anyway. And pictars:    |
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| Looks great Noel. Amazing differance between Ruz's and yours. It'll be difficult to believe they are the same mesh. Cool stuff. |
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| nice one noel. looking good. Hows the uv layout so far? I left a bit of space in the head for now in case we need to add stuff. hmm I bet you want to think of a name for him? |
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| The UV's are fine as far as I've seen. There's a weird triangle right above the nose that has some mucky coords though. A name? Oh, I already have one. It's in the filename, actually: Panatone. Utter gibberish, and it's the way I like it :P. Just noticed our skins will be signifigantly different. And thanks for the comments. |
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| thats the good thing they should look entirely different. I will fix that tri soon panatone sounds ok to me. hmm i have a weird urge to do a six million dollar man skin at some point |
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| Ruz, I have 20 bots running around in the test level. However they are 180 reversed on the y axis so they are running backwards. I have tried to compensate with code, however, it is more effecient to correct the geometry. Can you assist. Sincere Thanks, Frank Taylor |
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| Just wondering. Can we have different amount of frames for a movement, ex. running, than another character? For example if the RebBrun model has 20 frames for running, do all other models have to have 20 frames for running as well? What if we get some non-humanoid characters? ==================== Should the models be animated from the same point in space? Can there be animation used that moves the character to another point in space? Example: If a model was animated to look like it's climbing a ladder, can the model be animated to actually move up? Meaning the model's animation starts at the bottom of the ladder and the animation finishes at the top. OR, the model's animation starts and finishes at the bottom of the ladder. (The arms and legs move, thats it.) It hard to describe but hopefully you understand. * * * * * * * * BTW, I vote for a new sticky post. |
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| dangerdave: Regarding the latter chunk of your post, I'd recommend sticking to a single point in space- that way you won't have to alter the entity's position in regard to the current frame. Depends on the subject though. |
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| normally its static.Dave don't worry i have done all this before and have a good handle on it. For example all of the run cycles in max are running on the spot. jump animation is just the body pose of a jump, not actually moving up. the engine will do that |
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| also you can have however many frames you want for each animation, but is nice to keep the file sizes as small as possible. the characters in the ps2 game I worked on had about 2000 frames of animation. BTW i have just done a few more animations a 'hit' and 'fire'. came out ok. i am going to do some dying sequences today Frank/jfk, are you going to write custom animation stuff to handle all the diiferent poses/sequences.Probably be quite tricky to sort out. |
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| Also frank, the problem is that the b3d pipline imports meshes back to front so I have to export them backwards so they come out correct in game. its correct in the demo I supplied so how come its wonky ? BTW how was the framerate with all those bots, did they look ok? |
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| Ruz, The demo does not move the character. When I attempt to do so the character moves backwards so I have to inverse the z value. To better illustrate, when the camera and entity are moving in the same direction, with the bot positioned slightly ahead of the camera, you see the front of the bot, when you should see the rear. ;modified RedBron Demo
Graphics3D 800,600,16,2
SetBuffer BackBuffer()
redguy=LoadAnimMesh( "scifiguy.b3d" )
redguywalk=ExtractAnimSeq (redguy,0,18);sequence 1
redguystill=ExtractAnimSeq (redguy,19,19);sequence 1
campivot=CreatePivot()
PositionEntity campivot,0,0,0
camera=CreateCamera(campivot)
PositionEntity camera,0,10,-6
light=CreateLight()
For loop = 1 To 100
cube=CreateCube()
PositionEntity cube,Rnd(-50,50),0,Rnd(100)
EntityColor cube,Rnd(255),Rnd(255),Rnd(255)
Next
AmbientLight 220,220,200
ScaleEntity redguy, .1,.1,.1
PositionEntity redguy, 0,0,0
EntityShininess redguy,1
;If KeyDown(50)
Animate redguy,1,.4,1
;EndIf
While Not KeyHit(1)
PointEntity camera,redguy
MoveEntity campivot,0,0,.1
MoveEntity redguy,0,0,.1
UpdateWorld()
RenderWorld()
Flip
Wend
End
As far as performance goes they perform well ~75fps until I turn distance checks which drop the frame below 20%. No optimizations have been made.PS: I also toyed with the textures and came up with some pretty spooky ones hehe. Ruz, great work! |
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| strange how that's happening, umm I will repost it with guy facing the other way. |
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| Ruz, Thanks a mil. |
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| I will do it tonight after I finish the latest animations I now have run/shoot/take hit/still fire and am working on the first dying animation this afternoon might sqeeze in an idle if I get time.( if I am not too idle) |
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| Wow, a lot is going on! Please upload this first version of a level editor to the project page, thanks: http://www.melog.ch/dl/pledit05.zip |
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| hmm, the editor didn't seem to work. i koaded in a b3d fle , the mouse starts wobbling around and there is no sign of the model |
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| did you follow the tips from instructions.txt ? First try the following: run pledit.bb press ESC when it asks for a Building Mesh press H to unhide onscreen Help Press L (as described) to load a PLD file (test3.pld) this works well You can also start a new level from scratch. For this you need to load a BULDING Mesh in the first Dialog. The Mesh must be positioned somewhere near position 0,0,0 and one MEter should be about 1 Blitz Unit. If you want to use "loader_only.bb" with a Level you have created, you maybe need to correct the initial Player position, if you don't, your player will (if the start position is under the Bottom of the Mesh) probably fall out of the level due to gravity. Press G to turn off gravity and collision (flytrough mode). Make sure to read the blinking text in the file-requester. |
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| ok, will do |
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| I've uploaded the level editor to the website. |
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| jfk, The Pledit05 is in the top post. Dangerdave will have to upload it the PPF page as my access is still a no go:( The editor looks very good and has a unique feel to it. The gui is not bad at all. I'll be playing with it tonight along with model and animation. Good job! Ruz, I can wait to play with those cool animations. |
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| Frank, Please email me the problems you are having. |
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| thanks! some impressions...   Lamps and flares taken from chateau pregny - these are just some placeholders, of course. |
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| That looks totally different. Has RedBron walked through it yet? |
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| I have no idea - seems like he is turning his back against the camera :) But Frank, couldn't you add those 180 degrees to all RotateEntity Commands? (Blitz wraps angles automaticly anyway) Later we can store this value in an Enemy Info File, together with paths etc. dangerdave - diffrent? Is that good or bad :/ BTW - maybe the flares are way to big/bright/opaque, but this can be edited easily (flares.plinf) Now we need a number of scifi theme interior meshes, as low poly as possible. containers are cool since they only have 12 Tris - BTW thanks halo for your container textures. Some variants of oildrums with toxic solutions etc... Any other ideas? |
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| great stuff jfk. toxic oildrums would be great. i can build the models easily, but someone else will have to texture them. animations are coming along fine. my animations are not perfect but not too bad. i am just refining them now. probably post the update tomorrow. Is there any kind of story going on apart from sci fi theme The danger is here that we are just seeking to make an Unreal tournament clone. I any case I am looking forward to getting bron running through the level. |
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| yeah stupid me/ just thinking that the model is reversed because in my demo I need to have the camera looking at the players front., so i left it the wrong way in max. in the b3d exporter, the direction is reversed. anyway simple to fix |
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| Is that good or bad :/ It means it is much better. The only thing would be to allow more ways to enter and exit areas. Too many dead ends. ================================== I was thinking about robot ememies. Could be small ones that hover, could be mech-like ones with just the bottom half and the weapon that it picks up is on the top and on a turret. |
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| * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * NOTICE - NOTICE - NOTICE - NOTICE * * I will be updating my site and so * the plasma files will be unavailable * for awhile. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * |
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| I have updated the site. NOTE that it is not at 100% yet. Ruz, I have sent you an email containing your name and password. jfk, please email me to get your name and password. frank, please email me to get your name and password. |
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| But Frank, couldn't you add those 180 degrees to all RotateEntity Commands? I tried to compensate with code, but, resulted in some undesirable animation effects. Correcting the geometry will be the most effecient remedy.I've been playing with Pledit and have added a CSV import and export. Your generic object/property implementation is very dynamic. However, I'm not certain that the engine will deal with objects in the same manner. No matter, I can write translators for each object as necessary. Just bringem on. I would like to expand the property editor menu with more specific properties for special objects (ie doors). Once I wrap my thoughts around the menu system, it should not be difficult extend the property list. Labels aka usernames can be useful. Associating media with object type is ok, however, we would have more flexibilty just simply to use an object typeid or label, thus, no filename changes are needed. Now this is where things are going to interesting as we merge different code and coding styles together. With communication and diligence we should be able to bring it altogether with minimum fuss. I'll post my modified version of Pledit in the near future. |
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| rayy- animations are coming out nice, will post em later today. need some sleep first. done run/runfire/takehit/still/idle/dying1/dying2/stillfire |
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| Ruz, I have attempt to import the redbron.MAX model into 3DSMax 5. Unfortunately, I recieve lots of 'class' errors. Do you have any ideas on how I can correct this? |
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| Frank, I don't know if this will help but you can try the ASC files that I converted. http://www.stewartsoftware.ca/~plasma/files/redbrunasc.zip |
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| frank , its a 3dsmax 6 file, you can't use it in older version. import the 3ds file instead. |
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| ther is a probem now. I can't just reverse the direction of the mesh because its screws up the animation sequences. aniamtion like 'run' work fine becasue its running totally on the spot, but for example dying where he falls backwards , he then falls forwards AND vice versa so there is no point just reversing it either way Frank can't you just position the camera on the opposite side of the mesh, then rotate the camera or point it at the player |
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| Frank bare in mind that I have realised Doors, elevators, bonus, weapons, health, breakable walls, elevators etc. with exactly this object structure. I explained how I did this earlier. Further you don't have to rename a File to add properties such as Light Flare. Instead you'd have to add the filename to the flare info filem not matter if you use notepad or a gui driven tool to do that. How's astar progressing? |
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| scrub what i just said. i re keyframed them the opposite way round and its just about back to normal now. will get them posted soon. |
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| jfk, I have no problem with using the Pledit's object system. However, if I were to create or use someone elses door module, It could use a type and different labels. In other words, these modules may be coded many ways. The levelloader should handle the translation of the Pledit's object into the PPF engine object with no problem. Astar is on the drawingboard indefinitely until I isolate the collision bug. I dread recoding. I want this to work, but, I'm getting frustrated. Ruz, I can not manipulate the camera I any fashion to correct this problem. I have to manipulate the character. Heres what I have tried to do with the current Seek&Destroy code: 1. Load character mesh, rotate, and copy the entity. Result: Completely deforms the geometry and animation sequences. 2. Rotate character during Seek&Destroy pathfinding. Result: Highly sporatic flicker...not sure why. Other possible workarounds: 1. If the character is using bones, I may be able to reverse the mesh and inverse the animation keys at load. 2. With some recoding I may be able to rotate the character mesh within the Seek&Destroy Algo. However, these are still a 'special case' workarounds I would like to avoid. The mesh should be 'load n play' for ease of use and effeciency. Others may contribute charactre meshes and they all should be handled the same in the engine. |
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| Ruz, Please forward me the lastest RedBron update. Thanx |
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| just posted the update to dave, frank. updated animation list in txt file |
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| I got the files. Will put up tomorrow afternoon. (around 5 EST) ============== BTW, can frank or ruz try adding a download at the site? This one of the things I was trying to get for the site. I wanted people to upload files, post news, and post in the forums. Thanks Dave |
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| cheers dave hmm you have to upload from an existing web source I believe? Btw I got the editor up and running. the problem was that my village b3d file was just so huge in the editor you couldn't see it. yup basic but working well, easy to navigate and place objects. can you export to b3d with the added entities?. i could do with that for my own project |
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| The Tokamak Pak (Tokamak Game Physics SDK 1.0.10 & Sweenie's twrapperv04 for Blitz3D) is too powerful to ignore. It has been mentioned before, and I only mention again for discussion (my current focus on bot ai). |
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| Frank - of course, it's up to the engine to handle exeptions such as interior objects with special functionalities. As I said before, we can: a: Add a GUI element for each and every special job in the Editor. IMHO this will complicate the Editor more and more. b: Define some reserved Trigger Words which can be combined in the Name Sting field. Again: for the Engine will be VERY easy to parse this string and detect those special Words, and initialze whatever is required. This is just my humble opinion, I think this would save us a lot of time. Of course, the Loader can be rewritten from scratch at any time. The current version just shows how to read in the level files produced by the editor. It doesn't really matter if Arrays or Types are used. (and it also shown a method to assign Flares to specific Filenames) Ruz - No, the editor cannot export Meshes. It don't makes much sense because this way you still can remove things while the game is running (eg. blow up oil-drums, pick up things etc.) which would be very complicated if everything was merged to one multisurface Mesh. This tool is thought to work like this: manually copy all required meshes to your game folder and import them (well in fact only their relative path) into the level file. |
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| ah i see regarding the mesh export thing. makes sense now. Currently I am doing that in max. the choice is either export as one big mesh and use find child to manipulate stuff , or make a note of the x,y,z positions and type them in blitz. the latter makes more sense right now anyway the editor seems pretty cool.the beef I have with most editors is the poor navigation controls, but this one doesn't suffer from that what are we doing for shadow system BTW |
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| Team, My concern is surface count with the use of one large mesh vs independent meshes. I believe using a large mesh on only requires one surface, which is more effecient. With one large mesh you can delete or hide child meshes with no problem. In either case, some form of record keeping must be maintained. I use Max as well and it is what my levelloader design was based on. |
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| Shadows? How about Shaun's (sswift's) system? I haven't used it myself, but I've heard it's good. |
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| Ash, We will implement features later. However, all code will be distributed freely with no restictions. If these systems have some special licensing or restrictions they cannot be used for PPF2K4. |
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| Of course, unfortunately we cannot redistribute sswifts shadow system. |
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| we could just re name it frank and jfk's shadow system. |
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| Nah - as long as I don't know how many stingers sswift has stored under his bed I won't risk this :) Of course, it would be nice if every little thingy in the map had a correct shadow. But: thigs which can be picked up would then need interactive shadows. Imagine an Oil drum you can blow up by shooting on it. It would look rahter dumb if the shadow would remain there after the drum has disappeared. And keep in mind: a high number of dynamic shadows ala sswifts system will renarkably slow down the engine. Don't forget: this is not a simple demo, we have to do a lot of other things in the same time, and they are sucking pretty much too: Linepicks, Polycount, AI, etc etc etc. Maybe we just have to realize that we won't be able to have shadows like in doom3 mixed with AI like in UT. But anyway, watch the game release reviews - even today there are a lot of games they even don't have dynamic shadws on the main characters! I think we just should take care to place things in a way that it won't look _that_ wrong. |
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| BTW. DangerDave - I have just realised how excellent the new Page is - sorry for not mentioning this yet. Very nice work! Thanks a lot! This was a lot of work to do, I higly respect this. EDIT There are still some Problems: I cannot change my Password, it just keeps the old one. I cannot post in the forum ("could not insert forum post" msg). This might be up to the opera browser I use, and/or the fact that I have turned off java script(?) |
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| jfk, I posted this eariler, but, may have been overlooked due to numerous post. I'm satisfied with Pledit. If we have to add features to support the engine easier, then I dont have a problem. We just have to define the properties for the special items so we can write the code to control them within the engine. This is the only factor of delay. As I mentioned previously, we need a list of items and their properties. Heres my list of items: Switch (multipurpose trigger for actions and events) Ladder (verticle climb) Door (sliding, swivel) Platform (vertical/horizontal moving lifts) Prop (ie oil-drums, fans, etc) Spawner (bots, ammo, power ups) Soundfield (sound) Light (flare, halos etc) We can write some properties for starters and add/remove as needed. The sooner we agree to a list of items, the sooner we can start coding. I'm modifying th seek&destroy code to seek specific waypoint locations. This will allow the bots to seek out other bots, items, and protection. Spawners are positioned on waypoints. The Bot AI is Finite State and will be hardcoded. But, I intend to code a large number of rules to handle bot behavior changeing with events, self checks, audio triggers, etc. |
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| Sorry folks, I have been busy. I will post Ruz's new character files. ----------------- I still don't like the site as I still have problems with formatting and still can't find a bloody simple uploader and downloader. I also need to make sure that unregistered users have access to the forums, downloads, news, etc. |
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| Frank - I would maybe use a seperate Tool for the Bots, you might embed this in the Waypoint recorder, this might become a AI Editor or something, that runs seperatly from the Map editor. The other items and their properties - I think there is no need to define everything right now. If you agree with the method to activate special items trough action strings, we might add the handlers one by one. So I would suggest we start with the doors. A door is a simple box, scaled to the Door shape and textured nicely. there might be more complex doors, but the simple ones only use one box. So in the editor you have to position a door mesh and scale it so it will fit the door space. Now enter the word "door_vertical_left" (just an example) in the name field. Done. All you need to do now is to write a handler for the Loader and the engine main loop. This is the way I would work. It allows the addition of an infinte number of interactive items, one by one, without to edit the editor. It's the method is used with my demos and it allows real quick addition of further features. you can also add things like "doorsound=snd\door3.wav" or "locked=5" etc. |
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| Oh, yeah, Ruz, BTW, maybe we gonna have to darken the RedBrons Texture a bit, so it might fit better in the current level ambience. Or maybe we simply brighten the lightmap, although this will maybe lower the contrast to fully lighten zones. |
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| Coming along pretty cool Noel, Photoshopping it? |
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| getting there noel. not sure about the feet.perhaps you could lose the teeth on the toecaps.also perhaps the wrist section should be metal to give a bit of contrast with the orange. JFK, don't do anything to the texture, i will alter the vertex coloring in max to fit in with the level ambience. I have your level on my work machine now so i can play aorund with it. personally I like that full bright look, 'cause you need to see the players clearly in this kind of game. I am not sure if I exported with the full bright flag, will check . |
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| Looks good Noel. If the hands have similar texture as the shoulder pads and the boots, I it would tie in well. |
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| Frank, Does PostNuke have upload module that allows uploads from the registered users hard drive? I need to make sure that phpnuke/postnuke can run on PHP 4.1.0 and have registered_globals ON. I will download the lastest of each and take a look. PostNuke seems kind of stagnant. It been at .721 for ages. ================ NOTE: This is repeated on the website. |
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| It looks like I may use PostNuke and use the UpDownload module. When I update the site, I will create user accounts again and give you the same name and password that I emailed you. Frank, if you have any tips, please let me know. Thanks Dave. |
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| Finally, Here is a quick link to the new file Ruz sent me. It contains the animation list and the new model file. http://www.stewartsoftware.ca/~plasma/files/newscifiguy.zip |
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| cheers dave i may put a new demo up if i get time |
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| Ruz, Awesome work on RedBron! Running perfectly. Noel, Looks like a level boss! Dave, Great work on the site. |
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| New Thread: Project PLASMA FPS 2004: Thread 4 |
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