[Disc] Current Games 4

some little progress on my ASE (3dsmax ASCI 3d- export format) reader:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/mmvr2/flash...eriment_01.gif
(shows the classic max teapod mesh from the top view)

I found some really good documentations covering almost everything I want to know about the format- will post about those and the knowledge I discovered in the soon future.
As for now I can already read in multiple objects- with their vertices and faces. Once I reach the UV(w)- maps it gets interesting as I have already some nasty ideas on how to boost the 3d- engine.

Mh...our english-speaking artist is quite busy so I'll write the presentation myself. I love to pimp anyway ^^


Partisan - Tactics Battles
World and Story
As the title says, Partisan Tactics Battle is a Tactical RPG, with a classic 2D isometric view. The game takes place in a steampunk world in which there is magic and medieval weapons but also mid-advanced technology like basic guns, cannons and steam machines.
The story is divided into 4 chapters, the first one is somehow an introduction and the second forces you, Roarc, to take side in a civil war between Alchemists and Mechanists which is raging in the Kingdom of Potager. The player can really choose his side and it affects both the story and the gameplay =)
You'll discover by yourself what happens during chapters 3 and 4 because I won't spoil it.

Gameplay
The game is divided into a great number of missions (which you can start in Taverns, docks or guild posts) most of it being side quests. However, most missions lead to a fight which is the center of the game. It's a tactical RPG afterall.
There are up to 30 jobs available in battles and different capacities, depending on wether you're teamed with the alchemists or the mechanists : the alchemists can make magic using runecards and control demonic-summons whereas the mechanists can use tools and control terrific machines.
We're also planning quite a good number of mini-games including a fishing mini-game which you can play all over the game in various fishing spots and which can provide you powerful secrt equipments =)

Graphics
The game features hand-made pixel graphics, thanks to Adarias. Here are a few samples :
http://img365.imageshack.us/img365/987/testmap2wo5.png
Our current test map

http://fil.razorback.free.fr/Partisa...ractersge2.png
All male jobs and a few female ones (WIP)
All the characters have the same green hairs because the heads are added by the code and it permits us to have a wide range of haircuts and colors ^^

http://www.pixeljoint.com/files/icons/attacktest3.gif
An attack animation


Music
The game has a complete soundtrack composed by Tbop (The Blade of Parliament) in a traditional RPG style.
Samples :
-Piano version of Jimenez's Theme
-Music from the port town called Panto


The game wil be released in a long long time, in English and French.
You can find regular news on our developement blog which now has bilingual entries : http://partisan-tb.blogspot.com

Whaooo!

Edit: My "Whaooo!" is for both the 3d max thing and the RPG showcase :thumbsup:

That looks stunning :). I can't wait to play it. The art is superb and the story sounds very interesting (i quite like the whole steampunk thing). Looking forward to it.

Ali

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Originally Posted by alillm

i quite like the whole steampunk thing

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Exact sentiments.

fil_razorback, I'm sure you know I'm enamored with this game but it truly looks stunning, this is torture knowing it wont be released for a "long long time..." I don't know if I can wait!

Both very cool there guys. I love the look of that Partisan Battle. It's got the feel of a loooong-term project though so I'm not holding my breath to play it any time soon. How about releasing the Alpha or early Beta when you've done the first level or so?

Render, always enjoy your stuff.

seriously, release a beta, like today please! I am holding my breath, and its starting to hurt.

@ fil_razorback:
your artist did nice work

again,- little progress:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/mmvr1/flash...eriment_02.gif
can now read the UV data (lower left corner),- and started some basic 3d- display. Started testing with some skew functios as well for the UV- faces on the 3d- view model.
And because I want to use the iso/ ortho- perspective I can spare out double triangles on quad faces (wich most modelers do anyway) and render each quadface as 1 uv- face without opacity or masking. Depending on the mesh this could decrease greatly the needed calculations per frame.

little progress on the UV- mapping:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/mmvr1/flash...eriment_03.jpg
though the texturized 3d- model looks yet a little bit wacky in the 3d- viewport

wont upgrading this project to AS3,- as Flash 9 Beta requires WinXP - and I avoided that one so far,- sigh.. propably w´ll need to update booth soon. But but I think that AS2 F8 will do pretty fine for now

Still working on "The Enforcer"

Got the alley way done now, and have been able to compress the game into under 3 mb.

http://truimagz.com/truimagz/games/enforcer.html

http://board.flashkit.com/board/

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able to compress the game into under 3 mb.

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now that is some amazing work,- and I was worrying there for you ;). So did you left out some frames,- rendered a different framerate or imported it as movie,- not image sequence?- because those things can greatly decrease the filesize- but 3MB is laready very good for such a game.

Wow, The Enforcer is comming along great. Good work! I like the way you balanced the gameplay. Nicely done.
Waiting for more ;)

Regards

hmm,- guess I´ll soon open a thread for this case itself as it grows slowly..

still with the 3dsmax ASE format engine:
took me 2 evenings to get it propper working,- but works like a charm now:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/mmvr1/flash...eriment_04.jpg
its about slicing a triangle (any kind) out of a footage (image, bitmap, movieClip,...) and normalize it in a way so that I can use it propper for skewing later on
http://mitglied.lycos.de/mmvr1/flash...eriment_05.jpg
skewing as in this sample screenshot but instead just with the trianlge thus half of a rectangle shape.
I havent put it together with the previous things but now I should be able to display the textures of the 3d models propper (propper in a way flash allows me).

nice one. I have no idea what your doing but nice one :D
whats the plan for this anyway? more dynamics for your portfolio or a new game?

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Originally Posted by mr_malee

nice one. I have no idea what your doing but nice one :D
whats the plan for this anyway? more dynamics for your portfolio or a new game?

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rofl ,- ok I agree to some extend that it´s hard for someone else to follow here,-
but it is for this baby:
http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...19&postcount=4
the jagged alliance 2 flash game,- and right now I working on the texture reading of the 3d- format so that I can skin any poly object in the engine with a texture.
but I could use this propably for anything that has to do with triangles, meshes or polygons. I might explain the procedure in another thread

cool, for what i see that game looks super hot. And yeah, i see now why you would want to render textures on 3D surfaces.

Guess i'd better get my act together and get at least a beta of my RTS up ;)

hooray,- finally implented in the 3d- engine:
(in case you wonder,- this is a flash screenshot!!,- just added the descriptions)
http://mitglied.lycos.de/mmvr1/flash...eriment_06.jpg
though there is no z-sorting yet but I am working on that,- but that will happen once I start transfering the current rendering method to a blitting one (using 1 bimap object only) as discussed here some time ago (blitting).

Imo. I think that UV- mapping & skinning is mostly underated today but that´s also cause not many 3d-artists like the job or dont master it propper. Hopefully the engine will speed up even more with blitting allowing me displaying 500+ triangles at once in 42fps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by renderhjs

hooray,- finally implented in the 3d- engine:

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I honestly can't wait to see this in action. :)

Question though, I think I remember reading in your orthographic engine thread that you were using AS2, correct? Are you still coding in AS2? If so, that only makes this even more impressive.

yes,- still using windows 2000 (cant install flash beta9 atm),- though I plan upgrading to XP (ever hated but I have to) next week. Hopefully I can update this to AS3 as soon as possible.
right now I try already removing annything unnecessary and ~120 polys run at ~24fps but that is far away from my goal- but like I said I haven´t touched my secret weapons.

Ugh it's been a while anyhow here s my current thingy altough its on ice for a week or two as the heavy exam bombardement started again. Yah it looks like **** and all that but what can i say...

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/363022

Render, I assume you're not using mc's to hold the polys, but just using a z-buffer and blitting straight to a bitmap ? ( I'm asking 'cause that's what I've got in mind to speed up my 3D class ).

Looking very nice btw, after playing with 3D for a little while, I can really appreciate the lengths you're going to. Oh, going to open source your ASE parser ? ;)

Squize.

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Originally Posted by Squize

Render, I assume you're not using mc's to hold the polys, but just using a z-buffer and blitting straight to a bitmap ? ( I'm asking 'cause that's what I've got in mind to speed up my 3D class ).

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he he not yet :angel: that´s what I am atm. up to,- been watching today some AS3 lectures and finally some good introduction into classes ect. that´s why I am a little bit slow here. Also the z-sorting method isn´t perfect yet and it´s easier fixing now as with the blitting mehthod.
Downloaded some samples from some threads here about the blitting (esspecially the particle demo with the guns) just crazy that speed.

but I have another thing in mind to speed up things:
1.) having mixed motion & static objects- render only if action trriggers
2.) reducing lots of triangles by rendering 2 pair triangles as 1 quad face (possible because of my projection type)
3.) simplified PI numbers (and that does alot)
4.) AS3 (doh I really hope to finally install the stuff soon and try everything out

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Squize

Oh, going to open source your ASE parser ? ;)

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you can have it right away if you want,- it´s just little bit messy and very AS 1.5 style (no classes ect.)
I have written some handy smal function that search and take out blocks of the format- and another function to filter out at once certain characters or patterns.
But I think it might be better creating a thread giving interested people some insight into the format- the UVW data and how everything is handled. But if you ever used max it´s all very natural.

some minor update:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/mmvr1/flash...eriment_07.jpg
created a ultra low poly character (71 triangles/poly´s) with messy UV map yet (maybe I give him 1 or 2 more triangles in his head). As you can see I already worked a little bit on the z-sorting (still not good enough) and the 4 characters are way to big for the game,- the real size wich it´s going to be can be seen on the right. Sadly I must interupt the next few days this project with another important one (homework) but next things will be rig system,- motion system and some test´s with iso sprites.

Hmm since its like it used to be and i feel ignored with most posts i ll just not bother posting and go back to stealth mode ^^.

Anyhow very nice start there renderhjs i ll look forward to play your JA2 game but please promiss not to make it to hard, as thats the reason why i actually never finished the original game even though it was great. But it might still be a bit a big game to work on just thinking about all the objects and detail that JA2 had its sort of rpgish in a way and might be tough work building up all the levels and stuff. May be i am wrong though...

@ leechmasterB

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used to be and i feel ignored with most posts i

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maybe because:
- no pics
- newsground link (slow & heavy GFX loading site)
usually I ignore every ewsground link as it´s one of the slowest websites I know- put I gave it a look,- so its a preview video
- why not posting the direct link to the video,- without the whole useless ads & gfx:
http://uploads.ungrounded.net/conten...=0&w=640&h=480

the formation thingy looks nice like AOE2- though the framerate from the video looked like it currently drops a little.

posted this just a few seconds ago in the 3d- section:
http://board.flashkit.com/board/
more info and a 3dsmax tutorial on how to propper export can be found in the thread:
http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...68#post3807868

render, you make me feel inadequate. :)

Anyway, since I've actually been working on flash over the past few weeks, I'm pretty proud to be able to show something again! It had been a quite while since I'd opened flash, over a year I'd say, but since I've got a bit more free time from work (hospitality + january/febuary=spare time!) I decided to rewrite one of my old engines, and actually finish it this time (and I'll swear by it this time.. untill something else catches my ADD fancy;))

Artificial Intolerance
A little history.. I first started working on this game way back in 03, infact it appeared in the second incarnation of this thread, so a few of you old timers may remember me taking about it. I've rewritten, scrapped, overhauled and tweaked so much over the years that I would go from periods of massive progress to little to none. I even lost the source and much of the resources for the game at one stage due to hardware failure. But as much as the universe tries to prevent this game getting done, I've vowed to finish it... one day.

In rewriting the engine, i've taught myself to use AS2 and classes which is something I had very little experience or knowledge of. Took me about half a week to get the hang of it, but once it clicked things pretty much fell into place. Since my AS1 code was relatively well written and organized, I was able to reuse many chunks of the old engine to make the new one, but I'd say I still had to rewrite 70%+.

Engine Features
This engine uses an amalgamation of several engine types that many of you guys will be familiar with. The main tile engine uses the gAS method to form the basic level structure and handle most of the collision checking. The scenery/entity engine is a derivative of strilles objectScroller engine idea, using this I can create many elements of the game. Level design, enemies, interactive stuff are all handled through it and I could do pretty much whatever I want with it. It also features a particle engine which I derived from ipred's (I think??) old,old,old AS1 method. I say derived loosely as apart from the the GFX which I'm using as placeholders at the moment and modeling of their behaviour, it's all rewritten from AS2 and speed. Sweet, sweet speed :)

Screenshots
DIE BOX!
http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/4199/img1gw7.png

You too...
http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/2762/img2qa8.png

OH NOH!
http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/1207/img3jc5.png

DancingOctopus:
looks gorgeous, any possibility for an online demo? The FPS values look pretty high o_O for such a screen resolution - i´d like to see it thus this in action

Well hope this applies to this topic...........

After some tweaking and shortning I finally got the cyborg shelf worthy, and got me my first game sponsorship =) (pat, pat)

http://creativededication.com/private/TA_logo.jpg

http://creativededication.com/private/gamepreview.JPG

http://truimagz.com/truimagz/games/cyborg.html <---- play it


I know to some this may seem like no big deal, but to me it is, because The Cyborg is not the best game I have made, but I got quite a pretty penny for it. Quite excited myslef. It's a step away from the mondain webworld

Now The Enforcer, almost finished is goona pull in twice =)

renderhjs:
Thanks for the input, btw its a really impressive engine you got going there.


DancingOctopus:
Yeh i remember that game nice to see you working on it again and looking forward to test it.


http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/9...vecult3so0.jpg

Well i had uploaded the demo/preview video to newgrounds because i am lacking a website/ftp atm. And no playable demo available yet because there s no gui/menu (the one visible is just a layout test).
Anyhow so far its pretty pleasing...

The screenshot shows AI vs AI in resource gathering and building (without the strategic unit).

@ LeechmasterB:
now that´s actually a way better fondation to discuss about ;)
Is the perspective absolute top view (dune, max,..) or can some tiles/ objects overlay others behind it? Also what dimension do the maps and the game will have- is it possible to build buildings/ items yourself like a defence wall?

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I do have now a online demo:
ASE online demo
http://mitglied.lycos.de/mmvr1/flash...eriment_08.jpg
it currently has 2 different rendering attempts wich are quite different. Nr. 1 the slower one uses no masking or Drawing API elements it just transforms movieClips together (thought this would be a fast way :| ).
Nr. 2 is a little bit faster because it uses the Bitmap- Object for drawing the Textures and it is more accurate- but it´s not yet what I want- I am yet searching for a way to blit the triangles into 1 bitmap object (hopefully there really is a way).

max edit screenshot (for comparison to know where the polys are):
http://mitglied.lycos.de/mmvr1/flash...eriment_09.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by renderhjs

@ LeechmasterB:
now that´s actually a way better fondation to discuss about ;)
Is the perspective absolute top view (dune, max,..) or can some tiles/ objects overlay others behind it? Also what dimension do the maps and the game will have- is it possible to build buildings/ items yourself like a defence wall?

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I do have now a online demo...

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Wow, your demo runs really smooth (altough only 14 fps max). But it doesnt feel choppy or anything and yes method 2 is definatelly faster and also has less clipping errors or whatever those are.


As to the other stuff... the perspective is nothing fix yet and i can't decide what the final one will be. I tried out how iso perspective would be like but it dropped the fps quiet a bit because of the rescaling of the tiles. Not sure about the map size yet either...
Some of the planed buildings/things are:

- limited resources
- unlimited resources
- varius kind of factories and food production buildings (some gender specific)
- since transportation is cool but a pain to the performance long paths can be shortened by building additional "basepoints/trading stations".
- Defense buildings

Which all makes the economical management a bit tougher.

In short lots of planed things and hope not to have to cut any out of the concept. But the gameplay weight is not focused on the fighting/battles hence there wont be all that many different military units. It should be a primarilly economical based gameplay in the way of "settlers" for example.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by renderhjs

DancingOctopus:
looks gorgeous, any possibility for an online demo? The FPS values look pretty high o_O for such a screen resolution - i´d like to see it thus this in action

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The engine's still in a fairly primitive stage, enemies haven't been properly implemented yet and I think i'll have to rewrite their methods completely... But I'll try and put something together when I get home from work tonight to give you an idea of the speed it runs at.

Right now though, running it in a browser loses around 10fps, even though it's generally using less then 10% of my CPU resources. Particles are the biggest CPU killer, but it will be very easy to scale them down for slower machines without losing too much of the feel of the game.

BTW, that demo you posted is amazing. :eek:

DO - Looks sweet :) I think I remember it although I could be getting confused with your top town bug shooter which was a very similar style I think. I’m Looking forward to playing it.

Render - That’s an awesome demo :D. I got a constant 22 fps, no changes, was very smooth. You juts have to make sure it can hold out in a game. Really love what you are doing though.

Leechmaster - That looks fantastic. Looks like Mr Malee has some competition for the first proper flash RTS :). I Can't wait to play it.

Ali

True to my word, I've put together a quick level. Since it's basically only a tech demo, it's pretty tiny, there's no objectives, nothing to kill, and maybe slightly buggy. The size of the tile array is actually 4-5 times larger then what I've utilized, but since it holds the same data, you can get a feel for how big these levels could be without slowdown.

In the demo you can see some of the object interaction with the elevators; the 2 buttons and the elevator all sync with each other via a built in scripting engine. It's pretty boring in application here, but I can think of a few fun puzzles or scripted sequences it could produce.

Lastly, the browser versions of the flash player seem to drop 10+ frames for no good reason, so I'm going to provide a link straight to the .swf so you guys can play in the standalone if you wish.

Controls: W- Jump, A/D- Move left/right, 1-4- Weapons, E- Use objects, Mouse/Click- Aim/shoot.

Online:
http://users.tpg.com.au/asdfrewq/AIgame.html

Swf:
http://users.tpg.com.au/asdfrewq/AIgame.swf

VERY nice :D
most impressivly is imo. the performance (on this crappy very old computer 700 Mhz) pretty fluent. The whole demo so far really reminds me of the good old duke nukem titles (1 & 2) or commander keen. Also nice collision checking/ shooting.

oh before I forget it... finally something fresh that doesn´t smell so commercial ;)

Very smooth DO, ive always loved your engines :) the way you do shooting and scrolling is so fun. I'm really looking forward to playing a full game now. One thing.. how do you get into the room with the load of creats in it? I couldn't jump that far.

Ali

alillm

THanks, i am pretty afraid of malee's competition lol, as he s got ways more possibilities to make it nicer with as 3. But i try to get something acceptable together anyhow. :)

DancingOctopus

Very nice engine, runs silky smooth here too and the particle effects look cool aswell as the doors. And yeh at the end i was also stuck at the point alillm mentioned. ^^

@ render:
Wow, 700Mhz... I didn't think there were too many of those out in the wild still. Just curiously, what FPS are you getting? My target spec for medium level graphics is 1.6Ghz, which is the slowest I can test on here. If I can get a decent framerate on that, I figure I'll be able to hit a fairly large chunk of the webgame playing audience.

As far as inspiration goes, while I certainly played the games you mentioned back in the day, I think my main inspiration was the mid-90's game Abuse. I played that game to death.. Bunches of fun!

@ LeechmasterB & alillm:
Opps, I forgot to mention earlier that pressing "s" at the start of a fall will slow your descent. You'll need to use that to get into the box room.
Thanks guys for the kind words guys.

Ah, ok :). Just a couple of things I didn't like which you may be planning on changing anyway:

1) on the elevators the smoke given off by the character goes through the elevators when going up and blows all over the character when going down which I think looks a bit odd.

2) The damage done by the rocket launcher isn't as much I think it should be. I think it would be better if the explosions it creates do damage as well, so you can blow things up without being so accurate.

Obviously this is still heavily a WIP, but those are the only 2 things in the demo which I didn't like.

Ali