Difference between revisions of "DevBlog"

Revision as of 22:48, 1 November 2007

for download, see Main Page

2007 October

weapon icons

Ghoulsblade 03:44, 1 November 2007 (CET) hagish and i met today, and we decided to focus on combat. some notes : Sfz31.10.2007 i already started making a few weapon-icons, they're rather simple, but should do for getting started.

(unguided missiles, last 3 can split into multipe warheads, in different formations)

(guided/homing missiles, the last one is remote controlled)

laser,projectile,railgun,charging,e-drain,tractor,emp,plasmaglob

afterburner,chainlightning,lightning,plasma(like flamethrower)

combat/weapon ideas

Ghoulsblade 21:33, 29 October 2007 (CET) sorry, not much progress on sfz lately, my studies keep me rather busy at the moment, and hagish and me spent the weekly code-evening in the last two weeks on freeartsearch.schattenkind.net

some thoughts on the next steps : i've been tempted to investigate existing terrain-rendering addons/scenemanagers for ogre, but i think it's too early for that, and our current simple heightfield terrain will do for now.

i think improving combat is important, it's not really fun currently. i guess we still have to experiment a lot to get this right, but here's a few things i'd like to try :

• a wide variety of different guided missiles, with varying degrees of speed, maneuverability, damage and area of effect radius
  • also missiles splitting into multiple ones in several shapes, either for hitting multiple, or fast moving enemies
    • it might be interesting to control the time of the split manually, e.g. in the middle of an enemy group
  • this might not be fun unless we add some kind of max-speed for combat
  • remote controlled missile with cam, e.g. you see from the perspective of the missile, and guide it to the target manually (might be funny in coop mode, when you don't control a ship)
• charging weapons, e.g. hold fire-key to charge up, and then release a big shot
• weapons that are powerful but overheat quickly, to make hit&run interesting
• projectile weapons that are not instant hit like the current beams
• close range weapons (lighting ark, slow moving plasma projectiles, plasma flame-thrower, energy leech cable....)

devblog rss feed

Ghoulsblade 19:25, 19 October 2007 (CEST) there is a rss feed for our devblog now : http://sfz.schattenkind.net/wiki/index.php?title=DevBlog&action=feed&feed=atom using http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiArticleFeeds i'll ask hagish to add it to the new syndicate at http://planet.freegamedev.net later

video upload support

Ghoulsblade 23:07, 18 October 2007 (CEST) : i just added support for directly uploading and embedding videos here and in a few other wikis, see http://wiki.freegamedev.net/index.php/MediaWikiExtensions for details

<flvplayer width="320" height="240" loop="false">Sfz18.10.2007.ogg</flvplayer>

planet gameplay notes

Ghoulsblade 15:19, 16 October 2007 (CEST) : some notes from a chat with kaelis : PlanetsInGameplay

combo system

Ghoulsblade 02:45, 10 October 2007 (CEST) : not much news this and next week, busy with studies, sorry. started working on a combo system last weekend for combining objects and constructing things from multiple components using tools, and specifying that in a somewhat human readable syntax to make modding easier for non-coders. first syntax draft and a few notes : writable/combos.txt

also i worked on a tile-free walk system on a tilebased map for iris this week, that might also be interesting for sfz. short video from iris : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbf6_ByFD-A

ode buggy

hagish 17:08, 3 October 2007 (CEST) : last night i worked on ode binding and tried to add a little testbuggy on a heightfield. ode buggys are complicated than i imagined. so i first needed to improve the binding to be able to handle the complete collision in lua.

Ghoulsblade 22:59, 2 October 2007 (CEST) : sfz planet walk experiment (just simple tilebased at first)

• http://ghoulsblade.schattenkind.net/files/sfz_walk_01.avi (ca 360kb)

2007 September

Ghoulsblade 03:12, 29 September 2007 (CEST) : also as you can see we now have youtube support in the wiki, thanks to hagish

hagish 01:21, 29 September 2007 (CEST) : Yeah, we got the first ode heightfield to work

Ghoulsblade 23:40, 25 September 2007 (CEST) : the geometry editor prototype now supports materials/skins, and you change the skin of a side by clicking it.

hagish 14:45, 25 September 2007 (CEST) : the new ode binding (nearly a 1:1 binding the the ode.h) starts to work. You can test it with the flag -ot. Rightclick to move the camera, leftclick to add a force to a box and space to reset the scene.

Ghoulsblade 21:07, 23 September 2007 (CEST) : hah ! i found out how to detect them, now it works the way it should =)

Ghoulsblade 19:50, 23 September 2007 (CEST) : geom edit triangle generation starting to work, but we still have to remove inner triangles, i currently have no idea how to detect them :(

Ghoulsblade 15:52, 23 September 2007 (CEST) : we're currently experimenting with a simple geometry editor where you can turn on and off the edges of a cube to describe the geometry of a ship-part, this allows to create ramps, pyramids and similar shapes with a relatively easy interface.

Ghoulsblade 02:04, 22 September 2007 (CEST) : more heightfield tweaking, now with a nice cc-by texture from the blender repos (see readme)

Ghoulsblade 23:01, 21 September 2007 (CEST) : first experimental heightfield on planet :

Ghoulsblade 04:33, 19 September 2007 (CEST) : first very simple planet landing

Ghoulsblade 01:27, 18 September 2007 (CEST) : threads are working now, and the keepalive message for online games that is sent via http to our masterserver (a php script which just keeps track of running games) is now sent using the threaded http netmessage util, so the game doesn't hang anymore while the connection is established =)

Ghoulsblade 03:08, 17 September 2007 (CEST) : starded playing with boost threads, made 2 threaded utils :

• sending a simple network request and waiting for the answer
  • e.g. for loading a php page via http, like for our online-game keep-alive message.
• loading a big file to memory

Both are i/o operations, so making them threaded prevents the game from hanging. I haven't finished the lua bindings for them and haven't tested them yet, but making them threaded was very easy with boost. I made it so that our code can be compiled without boost and without thread support, in that case they still work, but are blocking operations.

hagish 03:11, 16 September 2007 (CEST) : worked on the mission system and improved the ui (mission display, waypoint) a bit. first little kill mission added. you can create the test mission using the F9 key.

Ghoulsblade 12:09, 15 September 2007 (CEST) : we worked a bit on sfz last night, we had to kick the boost::timer as it was very unreliable, (varying second length, depending on wether i move the window partly outside the screeen...) and hagish convinced me to finally look up the SDL code and extract the essential bits for timing and it was easier and shorter (win:1 line, linux:3 lines) than i though, and now we have a good timer that needs no extra lib. hagish started redesigning and extending the mission system, things might currently be a bit broken though. I improved the file-browser-dialog code a bit, and now you can navigate directories. It's still rather ugly as it is not easy to make scrolling support in our current gui, but it's better than before. Also i cleaned some rather old code in lib.timer.lua, that is now easier with the listener system.

hagish 16:25, 9 September 2007 (CEST) : Last night i implemented basic rocket support and started enemy groups handling code for kill missions.

Ghoulsblade 00:07, 6 September 2007 (CEST) : i tried adding the stuff from the ogre cellshading demo to sfz, it worked, but looks bad, and does not support textures, only plain color materials. so this won't do, we'll need something completely different if we decide to use a slight celshading effect.

Ghoulsblade 03:18, 4 September 2007 (CEST): just added some new models from kaelis and classic_traveller_diehard :

Ghoulsblade 02:30, 4 September 2007 (CEST) : we've now got an ingame bug reporting system : when an error occurs for the first time, you are asked if you want to send in a bug report, you can do so with one click on the SEND button, no copy-pasting needed, and you can see the info that will be sent.

hagish made an irc lib and i just built it in, now when you start sfz you can chat in our irc channel. the username used for irc is auto-detected from your system user, should work on win and linux, and a 3 digit random number is appended just to be sure.

i also made a new win binary updated the downloads on the mainpage =)

Ghoulsblade 01:03, 3 September 2007 (CEST) : we now have a master/gamelist-server. when you click "host game" the game is announced on that server, and other players can connect to it, if your firewall/router allows incoming tcp connections on port 6666. The currently open games are listed on the start menu screen. you can customize the game name by adding a line like this to data/config.lua :

 gGameName = "YOURNAME's game"

hagish 21:09, 2 September 2007 (CEST) : I experimented a bit with ode. Ode itself works quite well and the basics are very easy. I tried to implement a good ode-based ship movement but i experienced problems with the correct roll/pitch of the ships. They did nothing or circled around like crazy. I'll look inti this another time. Lugre got a basic IRC implementation (very basic, you can login, join and chat :) ) for our lobby.

Merlin 03:56, 2 September 2007 (CEST) : If your energy consumption is higher then your production and your energy equals zero one of the energy consuming entities is unequiped

Merlin 21:49, 1 September 2007 (CEST) : I just started helping with sfz and implemented my first feature. If you press "left alt" the names of all objects will be shown and there are some modificators (press and hold "left alt" and in addition)

• "a" shows only asteroids
• "s" shows only ships
• "b" shows only planets and space stations (b stands for base)
• "e" shows only enemies

2007 august

Ghoulsblade 02:45, 31 August 2007 (CEST) : not much new code in the past few days, just a few small fixes (just now : hud-target-line should work on all systems) i've been busy finishing something for iris. but a few nice models and interesting discussions in irc and in the forum have happened in the meantime.

Ghoulsblade 15:21, 25 August 2007 (CEST) : another coding night with hagish and many news to report :

• new ship-model for pirates
• shipeditor : ctrl-click for mass placement (hard to explain, just try and see)
• shipeditor : quicksave button
• shipeditor : improved lightning
• shipeditor : shift-click : line tool
• equipment system starts to work, various equipment parts added
  • shield-battery : shieldmax+100
  • big shield-battery : shieldmax+200
  • shield-charger : shieldrechargerate+50, energyrechargerate-5
  • fusion-reactor : energyrechargerate+50
  • nickel-cadmium-accumulator : energymax+100
  • titanium-armor : hullmax+200 (has to be repaired first)
• ship-engine-exhaust particle/trail can now be placed, and there can be more than one per ship
• ship orientation during flight improved
• pirates now get angry and attack you when you come too close
• pirates now call their friends when you shoot them
• pirates : dead pirates spawn new little ones
• interior : you can save/load the interior layout you created by f5/f6
• a new, huge shiptype is available

Ghoulsblade 22:35, 24 August 2007 (CEST) : mesh editor starts working.

Ghoulsblade 00:33, 24 August 2007 (CEST) : i started working on a simple ingame mesh editor, this will be useful for importing new models, so the rescaling,rotating and repositioning of them can be done with a grid in game coordinates and other ingame models like the space-man for size comparison blended in.

Ghoulsblade 16:53, 23 August 2007 (CEST) : now i also added the models from classic_traveller_diehard ingame. scaling and position still has to be adjusted, but i plan to make a seperate tool for that.

Ghoulsblade 16:33, 23 August 2007 (CEST) : i extended the blender-ogre-exporter script to be more comfortable, see http://ghoulsblade.schattenkind.net/ogre/ and i adjusted our blender export howto : HowToExportFromBlender , it's now much more comfortable to get a .mesh file. Kaelis already tried the guide successfully, and improved his biotube model to work better ingame :

hagish 01:23, 23 August 2007 (CEST) : First ode binding working. In the lab you can see 2 bouncy fridges :) (start sfz with commandline parameter -lab)

Ghoulsblade 00:26, 23 August 2007 (CEST): a few more screenshots with better engine trails, and my first try to import blender models (hagish imported the other models so far). I found exporting/importing is currently very troublesome because i had to rename many things and change filepaths, so i'm thinking about looking into the exporter sourcecode and trying to add an option to automate this in order to make exporting easier. Also the models still have to be rescaled, repositioned and rotated before the can be used correctly ingame, and i think i'll try to make an ingame editor for that, so they can be compared directly to existing ingame models like the spacesuit for a better size-impression, and i can blend in a grid in ingame coordinates this way. It'll be quite a bit of work, but i think it will be well worth it in the long run.

Ghoulsblade 02:49, 20 August 2007 (CEST) : hud stuff : edgemarkers and name display for objects

Ghoulsblade 23:12, 19 August 2007 (CEST) hagish and i met this weekend and coded like crazy =)

• we've replaced the billboard-planets by 3d-ones with textures from the freeorion orion project that were available under cc-by-sa (see README for credits)
• hagish added a spaceport menu listing planets and stations
• mousepicking is now more accurate and when there are multiple objects under the mouse you can cycle between them by clicking repeatedly
• we tested multiplayer networking and solved a few bugs and issues, it works fine in a LAN
• we accidentally "discovered" a feature, when you exit a ship while it's autopilot is activated, the autopilot does not switch off, and it continues to not only approach, but to actually FOLLOW the target if it is a moving ship. by repeatedly undocking fighters from the mothership, setting them to follow leaving via spacesuit and re-entering the mothership, we built a little fleet of fighters following us and made a few screenshots
• hagish improved a few things in the gui system
• you can now "call"/mark targets by pressing strg-t for the rest of the team, they have a red hud-border and can be selected by pressing t
• a line marker now helps finding the direction to selected targets that are offscreen
• we experimented with engine trails
• we built in the gui graphics that ray made for sfz
• a few changes in how cargo is handled internally in preparation for a generic container/equipment system
• we now have a little cursor
• we made a lot of screenshots

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

  earth is under attack

• 

  first planet experiment, not quite round enough, but kinda funny

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

  new gui skin

Ghoulsblade 18:27, 15 August 2007 (CEST) : simple delivery missions are now working, e.g. you can earn some extra iron by bringing supplies from earth to mars. still far from actual gameplay fun, but it's a good start.

hagish 22:42, 14 August 2007 (CEST) : ok, openal should work ok with wav and ogg files in the current svn version. but it sounds a but sloppy (if i use openal with alsa). I also added a random name generator based on this article: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2016.asp

hagish 21:54, 7 August 2007 (CEST) : added some icons and keybindings to the shipeditor to make using it more comfortable.

Ghoulsblade 00:33, 6 August 2007 (CEST) we're back from dusmania, had a lot of fun, some interesting talks, and saw lots of spacegames this year, but mostly 2d. we also worked a bit on sfz and talked with a few people about it and got lots of positive feedback, which is very motivating =D hagish started experimenting with random generated structures that can be used for plants and lightning effects, and i just finished a geometry generation utility called loft (the green thing, not yet used with hagish data), that can be used later to generate geometry for plants with the data generated by hagishs lib.

Ghoulsblade 00:39, 4 August 2007 (CEST) : bought weapons can now be equipped from cargo dialog
hagish : solar system loaded from file, asteroids marking planet orbits

Ghoulsblade 17:34, 3 August 2007 (CEST) : a very simple trading starts to work, you can now buy and sell iron for other things, but so far they're useless, but that'll change soon. hagish and i will be on http://dusmania.de/ this weekend.

archive

DevBlogArchive