Twilight of the Gods
Community Forums/Showcase/Twilight of the Gods
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| Since I have released a new Demo of the CSP Game Engine, I'd like to know if you had problems with the Demo. Did the Font load properly (like the one on the intro bmp)? Any crashes? Those who want to watch this version closer may like the following cheats: twizara =player cannot die twicaspar = player can fly trough walls (good for studing things) twigunz =give all guns twicure me =cure player twigimme ammo =add 100 rounds ammo to current weapon twiinfo =show debugging infos, including free videoram Additionally I want to mention: I have decided to make the Protagonist of my Story a Woman. Not only because sex sells :) and I am supporting emancipation of women, but also because I had this cute model on my harddisc and I did (imho) successfully reanimate her, especially concerning her shaking ***. Thanks for the content some of you provided kindly (I hope I mentioned all of those artists in the credits). Have fun! DOWNLOAD (6.54 MB)     |
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| Where is the download link? Andy |
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| Sweet, I love these special little demos jfk! |
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| You forgot this, jfk: DOWNLOAD By the way, just wanted to know, are you norc? Seems like a lot of people have old nicknames still in use elsewhere. |
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| Yes, I was norc some time ago. But what's a name, Mr. John Doe? ;) Yeah, forgot the dowload link, but you can follow my sig. @Jeremy - thanks! This is the 4th level. Maybe one day I got enough levels to make a game out of it. Probably you will then already know all those levels from demo releases :) Well, it's still far from that point. |
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| Good job, the controls were a bit more sluggish than I'd have liked, and keeping above-water is a pain, but it's a good effort nonetheless. And I can't believe I sat through the credits. That's a long freakin' list you got in there, jfk :P |
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| Noel is right, especially the mouselook is way too smooth. Apart from that: Great demo! High-quality graphics and some very nice highres textures you've got in there. I want more levels! ;) Kungfista |
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| JFK, how about the next level is multiplayer? I'd work with you on that if you want ;) |
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| Rad new level, not quite as long it seems as the others? Maybe it's just me. Also, dagnabit you forgot me in the credits ;) |
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| Yes Jeremy, this level is not as big as the other demos I released in the past. It's more a quicky, if you want. Maybe because I made it easier, so it seems to be smaller because you can complete it earlier. Anyway, it was a test for the new features. I really wonder how the multitexture underwater caustics worked for you. Because this is as well a new pretty sophisticated method I use. In Decorator I appy Textures with a special string in their names to underwater zones. Those surfaces can be regognized at runtime, and additional brush layers will be applied to them, using an animated water texture. The animated water texture is as well something new because I worked hard on this sin/cos distorted water animated texture. Mixing the sin/cos animated watertexture with the screen distortion effect when under water was a further challenge. I am not planning to release this engine as a multiplayer thing, instead I will concentrate on a real entertaining story. Maybe I'll add a AI partner for the player, maybe a dog, cat or raven. If I am going to make something multiplayer in th near future, I'll start from scratch and make something arena-like. The philosophy is completely diffrent. In a single player game there is a story, a start and an end. In MP there is an ongoing Competition, conversation and community (Spacestation deathmatch showdown as well as War scenes with teams etc.). MP games that use single player engines in a "we against the NPCs" mode are most times half-hearted imho. If you want to make this real good, it's very hard. Too hard for me, maybe. But anyway, I am looking for level designers who want to coproduce levels for an upcoming indie release - just for fun, because it is likely that this engine won't break into the market and competite the big ones. Jeremy I am sorry I forgot you in the credits. I just didn't have the time to sample all nicks (and then the list would also be much much longer :)). I tried to find a user list (once we had it here), without success, so I spent one hour or so to copy paste as many users as possible, mainly from recent threads in this forum. The best way to be in the credits would be to coproduce levels with me :) @Noel - if you don't really like the smoothed camera, press F2 and deactivate camera smoothing. It will then be completely non-smoothed. Pretty unrealistig IMHO, but anyway. I totally agree with the Swim-problem. Actually there is no swim mode at all. You have to decide: dive or get out of the water, using the ladder. I really wish to add a working swim mode soon, but currently this is kinda dilemma since the engine structure makes it real hard to implement this properly. I am waiting for the ultimative idea to solve this :) I do now think this engine becomes one by one something that is more than 50% of a commercial engine, this means the goal is not so far as the beginning of it. |
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| JFK, The underwater effects were spectacular. The work was worth it. I also liked the lighting effect and the ambiance with cut scenes was a lot better too. I can see where the effort went in. I just always like to see some good multiplayer action for a FPS even if there's single player. I wouldn't expect the multiplayer to be co-op but maybe just some sort of innovative head to head mode. Maybe one player can be all the guards and the other must still try to complete the mission. Still if that's not what it's meant to be, that's not what it's meant to be so no biggie. Good luck with the rest of the levels etc ... |
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| Had a quick play with it and it looks pretty good. I didn't encounter any issues with it. One thing I'd suggest is mousewheel support for changing weapons. Looks like you're at the point now where you could add some extra levels and make a budget game with the engine. |
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| Maybe one player can be all the guards and the other must still try to complete the mission Perfect dark had this, one player does main mission while the other kept respawning as a guard. - Nice demo. One thing I'd like to see added is a looser aim cursor, instead of a fixed position one. |
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| Sorry i don't answer by PM , Norc-Jfk, but u rarely remember to check ur BC PMs... ;) And sorry if I repeat things in the thread, as I haven't read it.. So you can collect thenumber of votes per "feature" (I always that sentence of "it's not a bug, it's a feature!") - loved the bullets spots in the wall...very realistic too (Halo stuff? good job..) yet though a more advanced demo should make the difference between bullet hole in wall (cement based) and the ones on metal. - the weapon/hand movement, as in the chateau whatever-the-french-word ;) , a bit to non-gravity like... there's some of this too on the camera rotation..there you have to avoid that last inertia when ending the rotation... -the jump. Is non natural. Is like go up, down. A jump is quicker, as different moments and a bounce when fall at floor. A bit of camera shake. Look at Ut2k3 or 2k4... -the scientist model at the intro...I don't really like segmented arms... his hands, being in close shot, shout have fingers, and a load of more work, animate em manipulatinmg the stuff... As well as arms keep a bit like floating, un-naturally separated from torso... Also body and arms a bit less...bulged... the ant is asking for a texture or darker colour, unless my monitor is playing me a bad joke when I put top high the gamma to see...I have it always in "darkness" It'd be great to replace lightmap for one that has not the light once u shot at it, but that'd be asking too much (heh, doing one new rendering per switched off lamp...) the soldier animation...I'd make it a bit more natural, energetic... I liked the textures, garage metal door, boxes, etc. I agree water looks very cool. I liked the general feeling of th eweapons/shooting. think about making the mouse wheel change the weapon, if that's possible in Blitz3d. Yet though you really need a better free sound for weapon firing unloaded. I can easily find u a free one if u want. In general, I liked it a lot. Just thought I could write here some of what i could think of to improve. |
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| Thanks for the suggestions. I am happy if this release is noticed at all :) Sorry for notoriously not answering PMs on BC :) I agree, gravity and jumping are very weak points. I am thinking about to rewrite the whole gravity system. It's just a big patchwork atm. As for the intro I have to say - I didn't have the time to make something real nice. I know, the scientist looks horrible, esp. his hands when close up to the camera. This is worse than HL1 :) But anyway, it's telling a story. BTW the Ant has a texture, but for some reason it is missing in the intro , but it's there in the game. I just realiszed this bug, cause the texture worked fine also in the intro when I tested the zip on the development machine. Strange, cause it works one time, then it doesn't. Maybe I had 2 ant Models in there, and one used a static path. Not a big deal imho. The idea with the bullet holes is a good one. I have also thought about to use diffrent sounds on diffrent materials. For this I'd have to index each and every surface right after loading. This surface list could then also be used for various other things like footsteps etc. But honestly, there is so much real basic stuff I first got to fix, to do or to finish. Eg. the gravity system, or a better weapons system (scrollbar HUD thing, yes, Mousewheel is a good idea too) including a realistic Reloading system, that will mess up the whole weapons loader of course, so upcoming versions won't be compatible, but who cares. Furthermore 3th person view, other scoring for shooting at enemies (headshots etc), although this will bring up new problems with one-mesh characters... There is a lot to do and I ask myself if I'll ever have the time to do it all by my own. At least, we slowly start to find it no more so very unrealistic to compare this work of a single person with the commercial engines that were produced by an army of highly specialized pros. Well, I still love to create levels, and that's the most important thing to me. This level was done on about 1 week. Thanks for your comments, to all of you. |
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| Jfk, This is a great stuff. Sure, I also have noticed there will ALWAYS be something to add/remake, but as far as I can see, the engine is pretty much stable and all work as it should ... I only want you to not leave this in the middle of development, it is already good and it will be better when finished :) Paolo. |
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| This is very good, but there should be splashes when bullets hit the water. Actually, maybe you should toy with the water surface a tiny bit to get it right because it doesn't look perfectly watery yet. Underwater is very nice though. Also, totally non-engine related, I survived two things of C4 going off under my feet :D Still, great game, and great engine. Nice job :D |
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| yup, the danger of sugesting improved is at the end sounds as the demo is lacking those...and not, is amazing what u did already :) and being only one... those are just fo ru to write down for when u feel in the mood for them, and no need an special order of building. At ur pace. I wish i were free to help u. |
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| Very cool. how about just finishing Project Plasma so we can have a free FPS engine? |
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| Nice work. How do you do the underwater effects? they look terrific. How do you reload the gun? |
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| >>how about just finishing Project Plasma so we can have a free FPS engine? << Unfortunately it seems like Frank wants to make Plasma the ultimate and ideal Engine and therefor he's kinda lost in complexity. I'd rather suggest to take Robs FPS Framework and add a few things and soon you got your tiny game engine running. you could also use the CSP engine 2, but honestly, it's spaghetti al dente at its best that requires me, jfk, personally to edit the code :). |
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| Plasma is a dead end IMHO... |
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| Rob - you cannot reload the gun :) The magazin capacy is as high as you pick up ammo, no need for reloading. But of course, this is on the to do list. Got to add a reloading animation sequence for all weapons... The water is using two things: a 2nd and a 3rd animated texture layer giving a caustic ambience and a sinus distortion of the frontbuffer. It was tricky to make that distortion work on diffrent resolutions btw. and i never tested it above 1024. And then there is also some fog. |
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| Excuse me for the off topic reply. how about just finishing Project Plasma so we can have a free FPS engine? If you want a free FPS engine, maybe take a look at Vein. At best, it's free, open source, and as far as I'm concerned better than Plasma. But I'm biased, being the author and what not. |
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| byside the fact that we maybe really should open a new thread to discuss fps alternatives generally, what is the current state of your engine? |
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| I discontinued mine a couple months ago to pursue other interests (among which include Lotus, my smaller project, Sync [an OpenGL/C++ engine which I rarely work on -_-], and a potential successor to Vein). At the stage it was at I felt it did enough for my purposes- and by the time I was done with it I didn't need it anymore ;) I'm still working on that demo of Vein, but it's going slowly since I can't do too much on normal days (I exercise now ;) and when I do have a lot of time I invest it in my more valuable projects (Lotus and my slightly odd preprocessor [which now supports type methods and inheritance]). |
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| j... the techinical aspects of your game demo are really worthy of merit... swimming around the underwater grottos, shooting the weapons, the movement (mouselook needs a lil adjustment), exploring the level... the lighting, all really great... but... and please take this as constructive... this lil demo is a perfect example of why so many people would hate to see another fps made... now, i realize that this is just a demo and still a WIP, but... with the possible exception of shooting some very non threatening bots... i never really felt that i was ever threatened, or that i had any real purpose in being the first person here. something is sorely missing... it's that element, or combination of elements that made Medal Of Honor a breed apart from the run of the mill Doom, Quake fps wannabees... i really don't know what to suggest... but i post this because the game is at a stage where it can still be made into something really fantastic... maybe to solve a mystery, a puzzle, while being pursued by people, creatures, someone or something that offers a real threat... maybe that would do it... one of the older demos... the one where you had to get past the gaurds, and into the building... that one seemed a lil closer to having that elusive quality of being there... ofbeing threatened, and having to accomplish something. also, the bots seemed to have more presence... they seemed more 'alive'... i don't know exactly why, but it has been lost in the current level demo... hey, a few suddenly things come to mind ... (1) the gaurds need to talk, in MOH they yelled "ALARM" when they spotted you... (2) when you shoot em, they need to scream... and when they fall you gotta hear em hit the ground... (3) ambient interior noises... mechanical sounds, creaking, something. hey... i hope that there is something i have posted that can help, while the development is still at the stage where changes can be made without ripping everything apart. just that one or two things need to be added to what is currently a nice graphics showcase. good luck --Mike |
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| you are right, tho there are sounds, but the mix is bad, so you don't hear them most times. there's winds, power generator, water, computer sounds, enemy footsteps, a variety of "hey" sounds for each enemy char. You know the problem with the listener, the falloff parameter is defined for the listener and not for each sound, so it can be pretty hard to mix it right. But I agree, it needs a plot. Currently it's absolute nonsense, no puzzle, no quest or challenge. But of course this is only a tech demo with a bad sound mix. Mainly exposing the new FX, including the usage of the lightbeams-in-dursty-air meshes we were talking about some time ago. And the water as well. BTW a lot of people found Secret of Manes and Operation enduring Pretzel too hard and told me to make it easier. |
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| I wish there was a simple fps tutorial even simpler that robs. I would have no clue where to start to make my own fps. Great Tech demo by the way. :) |
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| it isn't a big deal. start with a walk trough thing and add the features one by one. of course it may be hard to make it better than the commercial engines. |
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| Hehehe...they're coding with Blitz3d on one of the computer screens! |
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| i didn't mean the evil empire is using the blitz IDE, I just had to hurry, so I had no time to install office to take a screenshot, instead I just pressed "prnt-scrn" and continued mapping. If you use a "sharpen" filter on the texture you may see this listing is a part of the YAL code from the code archives :) But the average player won't know that this is Blitz. |
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| "Operation enduring Pretzel", best demo name Ever! I think a way to add to gameplay value would be to make the ants faster (possibly able to pounce on you and bite you like headcrabs), and instead of them shooting out toxic gasses, they could do that and also shoot a fast spurt of green stuff at or near you with gas rising from it. It would be far scarier than a bullet because you can see it, and it would possibly give the ants a bit more of a scary factor, as I noticed that they can actually be very frightening if they weren't so pitiful and weak. |
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| Yes, I agree, tho you have to see that the engine is a simple one and currently the ants use exactly the same functions as the guards do. It is kinda flexible, but not that much. I'd like to see some species attacking the player physicly too, but that requires a special mode that will have to be implemented carefully. |
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| What *exactly* is CSP, is it released yet, if not when, and how much? :) |
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| It's a corporate identy brand: Cyber Skunk Pictures. Don't confuse the CSP Game Engine with the M$ CSP Engine, or the CSP Cypher Engine. The choice of the name is not extremly genious, but I can't chanche the name every other day. And maybe it has something to do with my experience with some special plants. |
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| IMHO The best playable FPS written in Blitz3d to date ! Very impressive - Nice work jfk ! |
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| Hey, thanks a lot! |
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| One issue I've noticed with this game that I also encountered with the last one is that, occasionally, when you throw the explosive, it dissapears. A few seconds later when the explosive is due to go off, I get a 'Memory Access Violation' error. I'd say the centerpoint of the explosive is lining up with a polygon seam allowing the explosive to fall through. I assume the MAV is caused by a zero being returned by a pick operation. If so then you need to check for a zero return from the pick. Something else to be aware of is that picks can sometimes pick between polygon seams too. |
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| Indeed, thanks, this happend one time to me too, when I wildly clicked the mouse while throwing the bomb. I was pretty shocked, MAV! I tried to reproduce it, without success. I wanted to fix this, but since it happened only one time, right before I uploaded the file, I thought I'll fix it later. I guess it won't happen when you throw it with one clean left mousehit. I'll let you know what it was. |
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| Ok, I found the cause. You need to press "1" to select the c4 weapon. The MAV happens when you press "1" to select the c4, then release the key, then press it again and keep it pressed until you have thrown the bomb. Take it as quick-exit feature :) No, just kiddin. I'll fix this soon, next version for sure. At least it seems to be easy to fix this. |
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| @jfk What's the cheat codes you have for THE SECRET OF MANES ??? Id' appreciate them as I would like to study your mapping in more detail using the clipping mode or fly through walls mode you have implemented... Thank's!! ;) P.S. Also... Do you happened to still have that mummy model laying around somewhere? And would it be ok to use it in a free game im' making for the community? Please let me know! Thank's again! The character A.I. is really good too! How long did it take you to code the A.I. for that game?!? |
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| The AI was done in a couple of hours and to be honest, it's very simple, surely too simple. You cannot use the Mummy unless you have bought the Darkmatter CD (amazone.co.uk) since it is part of that CD and I cannot give you the permission to use it. I have the right to use it royalty-free, but I cannot distribute it as a model. Anyway, the darkmatter CD is well worth the price since it also includes lots of cars and military vehicles. Only the character animations are crap. The Cheats of Secret Of Manes are the same as in Twilight, exept you need to use the 3 leading Letters "som" instead of "twi", eg. "somzara" or "somgunz". The same goes for "Operation enduring pretzel" where the 3 letters are "owh". |
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| ok.... Thanks! I still your game is very decent indeed!! ;) Great work there! |
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| thanks :) |
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| I sjut played that yesterday. enjoyed it . I ran out of ammo too fast though. |
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| hehe thx. just remember one of those .50 bmg rounds costs 5 dollars :). Well actually they are not .50, more like 9mm para. Use the cheats (twigimme ammo) |
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| Dam it, the K6-2 can never run anything, but the two seconds of music that I hear before the program selfterminate are ok. |
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| I'm sorry to hear that. Did you try to run it more than one time? DX sometimes crashes the very first time it tries to run a game. Even with pro releases. (Maybe try to fiddle with the screensettings) |
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| I think the bullet range of the ants needs to be lengthened. I've yet to have any of them actually hit me with a shot. There seems to be some thresholding issues when emerging from the water, too. Possibly using a timeout to delay the enabling of the transition effect may fix this, although it may cause additional issues. A bit of thrust applied in the appropriate direction (depending on whether you are entering or exiting the water) would probably be a better solution, but how easy this would be to implement depends on how physics based the code is. You could also try using some method to apply a certain amount of movement resistance at the transition point. |
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| Thanks for the suggestions. I think the bullet range of the ants (same function as the fire and plasma of the dogs and mummies in SOM) needs some work. eg. the "bullet" should not stop after a given range, but progressively lose velocity. Nad yes, maybe the range should be higher. The water mode transition dilemma made me think about it too. I also thought about to use some kind of sinusbased up and down as an additional force when the camera is near the water surface. EG. In deus ex 1 it's done this way. |
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| Perhaps rather than losing velocity based on distance, the ant bullet could lose hurt value points the further they travel. |
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