Difference between revisions of "DevBlog"

Revision as of 11:54, 15 June 2007

2007 June

Ghoulsblade 13:54, 15 June 2007 (CEST): After experimenting a bit we decided against making sfz combat based on fast reaction time and dogfight navigation, which quickly leads to frustrating "where is the enemy" problems. Instead weapons won't have to be aimed manually, they'll work like turrets, and if the enemy is in range you will be able to hit him without effort.

The deciding factor in combat will be stuff like weapon ranges and strengths and weaknesses of different weapons against different shield-types, homing missiles and counter-measures, maybe also a bit of energy management. This makes positioning, tactics and equipment a more interesting component.

Therefore a 3rd-person perspective of your own ship will probably be better than 1st person, for getting a better overview. This also fits nicely with the ship-editing features, because if you designed your own ship, you will want to see it =) Another benefit is that this makes it easier to use the mouse for gui stuff during combat, as there is no more need to use the mouse as joy-stick-like aiming tool, like in 1st person. So we can use the mouse for clicking on a target list, display tooltipps over hud-elements, and configure weapons and autopilot maneuvers with a proper gui using the mouse instead of with dozens of key-combos like in most 1st-person-joystick space sims.

The massive multiplayer spacegame eve-online also has a similar gui to what we are aiming, I tried it some time ago and it had some interesting gui (ingame web-browser, 3rd person stuff like described above, target lists, cool map) and some nice gameplay elements (frequency crystals for weapons, buildingplans for equipment, most stuff could be crafted, also weapon ranges were very important) but it sufferes from being massive multiplayer and having rpg elements, e.g. you needed skills to do stuff and training a skill takes hours or even days, also death there means you loose equipment that took days to get, so people tend to be rather careful when and what to fight.

This leads to lots of ressource grinding, which i personally don't like too much, as it eats so much time. By not going massive multiplayer, and focusing on coop instead, we will try to avoid these problems.

Ghoulsblade 23:44, 11 June 2007 (CEST) code is now online (not trunk, but branches/eihortport)

hagish 14:46, 10 June 2007 (CEST) friday night ghoulsblade and i worked on sfz. due to a lack of internet (his t-online router sometimes acts a bit bitchy) the current code is not online but here are some screenshots. you can now fly around kill each other using the custom ships. the satellites with the green lasers are a first test of tower-defense like "towers".

Ghoulsblade 23:00, 7 June 2007 (CEST) pirates hunt the player, and player laser can now damage and destroy stuff

Pascal 08:27, 6 June 2007 (CEST) : Pulled actual source through VC 2k5 EE. Shooting pirates seen on a Windows XP flagship. :-P

Ghoulsblade 23:39, 5 June 2007 (CEST) : pirate attack ! they don't move yet, they only turn towards the player and start shooting lasers when he comes close enough, but lasers don't do damage yet =)

Ghoulsblade 09:38, 5 June 2007 (CEST) our sourceforge project has been approved =) soon we'll have a nice mailinglist (6-24 hours)

Ghoulsblade 22:54, 4 June 2007 (CEST) : experimental colored hud-text for all objects

Pascal 17:30, 2 June 2007 (CEST) : first working version of sfz-editor under Windows XP with MS Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition successfully created. Without sound support.

Ghoulsblade 13:30, 2 June 2007 (CEST) : network code is proceeding nicely, netmessage system with format and size checks is in place, udp works, resyncs are sent, received and handled, and the plugin system is also starting to take shape.

2007 May

Ghoulsblade 03:29, 28 May 2007 (CEST): first network experiments, tcp-connection was established and chat-text was successfully transmitted.

Ghoulsblade 04:33, 20 May 2007 (CEST): "intelligent guessing" mode for shippart placing is working, we just have to optimise it a bit as it gets rather slow when there are may shipparts on the scene. also load and save is now possible, the filebrowsing dialogs are just very simple so far, but its a start =) here's a ship hagish just made in a few minutes :

hagish 04:35, 20 May 2007 (CEST) upgraded the fmod sound code from fmod3 to fmodex. full ack, the ship editor is totally shiny :)

Ghoulsblade 22:09, 19 May 2007 (CEST) placing parts in the shipeditor is slowly getting more intuitive, parts are placed by selecting a part type and clicking on the side of an existing part of the ship in the editor window.
the algorithm for calculating the most good position starts to work, but finding a good rotation/mirroring need a bit still a bit work when the parttype being placed is different from the parttype that was clicked. when this is working we will create tools for putting different skins on the parts (eg. solid metal, window,...) and applying color.

Ghoulsblade 02:01, 16 May 2007 (CEST) : some experiments with calculating a voxel grid from convex mesh-shapes, will be used for intersection testing in shipeditor.

Ghoulsblade 17:31, 12 May 2007 (CEST): experimental mirror tool working, added ramp and pyramid with z-length = 1

Ghoulsblade 14:51, 12 May 2007 (CEST): implemented ramp primtive using the texture hagish made

Ghoulsblade 03:17, 12 May 2007 (CEST): we planned a lego-like intuitive placement system for spaceship parts, experimented a bit with geometry generated via code, hagish made a "cockpit-window" texture, and we tried a cubemap-skybox-reflection on it, looks nice in motion.

Ghoulsblade 19:31, 11 May 2007 (CEST) : hexagon mousepicking is working now, i also made the algorithm to generate them generic to make cone-shapes that might be used as simple cockpits and engines with a few nice textures. (one of them looks like a nice escape pod, another already gives the impression of a heavy freighter)

Ghoulsblade 13:48, 11 May 2007 (CEST) started experiments with prism shapes, hexagons look good as building block, but mousepicking isn't working correctly yet.

Ghoulsblade 22:22, 10 May 2007 (CEST) ship editor now supports different part types (just a few coloured test boxes so far), object-types now support "hueing" : the original asteroid is gray, the brown color is applied via code, also we have simple laser-beam-thingies now =) i also cleaned up the wiki a bit.

Ghoulsblade 00:22, 9 May 2007 (CEST): first experiments with an ingame ship-editor have begun, just now its just colored boxes, we'll have spaceship parts instead of them soon.

Ghoulsblade 23:52, 2 May 2007 (CEST): added lighting to mainmenu background scene, looks a lot nicer =)

Ghoulsblade 12:19, 1 May 2007 (CEST): it has been quiet here since we've been busy coding on http://iris2.de, but now we also resume work on sfz. currently we're working on the svn branch branches/eihortport until it is somewhat playable. we can reuse lots of code created and refined in iris2 for sfz, and we upgraded to the new ogre version eihort. now we have a nice main menu, and code for udp-networking is also done, but still has to be tested, that should speed things up a bit, as we plan to use two connections : tcp for important events that can't be lost and udp for highly redundant realtime resyncing for nice multiplayer.

2007 April

2007 March

2007 February

2007 January

2006 December

we started a little mod using the 2d ingame graphics from a friends browsergame xotus (http://www.xotus.de/)

2006 November

Ghoulsblade 19:00, 8 November 2006 (CET) : it has been a while, i worked on iris with science, have a look : [[1]]. iris and sfz use a common codebase, both build on ogre3d and lua, so both project benefit from each other. For sfz, i just started preparations for using multiple scenemangers, so we will be able to do RTT (render to texture) soon, which is needed for a nice 3d map in the hud.

2006 October

2006 September

Ghoulsblade 01:34, 11 September 2006 (CEST) : repaired collision detection and pirate ai

Ghoulsblade 20:49, 10 September 2006 (CEST) : target indicators fixed, f-key cheat disabled, "jump" menu available when far enough from system center. Location creation is now handled via a map-file-loader, different skyboxes and fog settings are possible. Collision and radar are still broken as well as the pirate ai for target picking.

Ghoulsblade 20:13, 9 September 2006 (CEST) : location system is working, in the current svn you can teleport between our first 2 test-locations using f1 and f2. Known bugs : collision and radar isn't working, and the hud-target-indicators still show objects outside the current location. Will be fixed soon.

Ghoulsblade 01:33, 8 September 2006 (CEST) : location systems starts working, some heavy code restructuring has just been finished, and although collision detection is still broken, we definitely moved forward. Beware that this evenings svn commit is still work in process, and might be unstable, but it compiles and runs, and i gotta sleep a bit now. Nothing new is visible yet, as there is no ingame command to change locations, but the code structure is ready, so we should see some basic traveling features any day now.

Ghoulsblade 01:27, 8 September 2006 (CEST) : a few points are still open, but the hud is basically functional, and work on the location system (which is mainly used for travelling) has started, so its time to move on to the next point on the roadmap

Ghoulsblade 18:37, 6 September 2006 (CEST) : been busy starting the iris and zw rewrite, but now also working a bit on sfz again. Next thing planned are locations, eg. traveling between different places instead of just the one lame old asteroid field, but it'll take a while as this is a major design decision, so we have to plan carefully.

Now there are multiple locations, and you can travel between them by "jumping" when you are far enough from the current locations-center. For now jumping is instantaneous and without any visual effekt. But fog stuff and different skyboxes look nice, so here are some screenshots:

2006 August

Ghoulsblade 14:47, 15 August 2006 (CEST) : After long silence (the end of the semester, lots of tests, and a lot of guildwars to save our sanity) things start rolling again. I'm currently cleaning up a few things in the code that have mutated a bit while experimenting with them, and the lua interface.

2006 July

Ghoulsblade 16:27, 3 July 2006 (CEST) : jehaww, the text element for our gui system is ready

the basic drawing primitives (clippable panel with borders, clippable text) for our gui system are starting to work

a radar (lower right of crosshair) and a radial grid (big circles and lines to objects)

2006 June

Ghoulsblade 23:05, 1 June 2006 (CEST): it's been quiet but we have quite a bit of progress, just no time to write about it, speedlines have been added to give visual feedback for own velocity, the hud-element-system has been made completely scriptable, and we just found and fixed the "crash on ship death" bug under win, so a more playable win release should be available soon. I also just made a "buyzone" near the space-station, that shows a hud button when the player is within, still todo is to actually be able to buy something (just weapon upgrades for a start) and getting destroyed enemies and astaroids to drop something collectable to give the player cash to buy things with =)

Ghoulsblade 23:19, 1 June 2006 (CEST) i changed our roadmap a little, now trading (at least equipment) is on our current milestone...

Ghoulsblade 08:14, 19 June 2006 (CEST) : we tried CEGUI but didn't really like it, so we are currently working on our own little GUI-System. It will probably feature html-like dialog-specification-syntax, so custom dialogs can be sent from the server, strong lua integration, and customizable layout-handling.

Ghoulsblade 23:22, 29 June 2006 (CEST) : after playing (too much) guildwars, i finally completed the border-color-clipplane-thingie, a graphical element that will be used intensly by our gui, it can be coloured freely, even colour-transitions from the edges, supports clipping (for parent-child hierarchy and scrolling later on) and consists of 3x3 parts (middle + borders), where each part can use its own set of texturecoordinates, and the middle can have a seperate texture from the borders, e.g. something tilable.

2006 May

we got stars, and speedlines

2006 April

Ghoulsblade 17:56, 24 April 2006 (CEST) : sorry, it has been quiet lately, i have been (and still am) busy porting iris (a 3d client for ultima, see [[2]]) to the ogre3d engine, so far they have been using a homebrewn engine. My port is far from playable and only a rough test, but i couldn't resist to upload a few screenshots, see IrisOgreScreenshots

Ghoulsblade 13:37, 17 April 2006 (CEST) : After a full day coding with hagish, we have lots of cool new stuff, hud target info and aiming help thingies, simple but damn cool physics (try playing pool(billiard) by ramming asteroids) and even ingame dialog windows (for entering playername and such)

Ghoulsblade 23:39, 15 April 2006 (CEST) : sorry, i've been a bit quiet these past days, needed to clean a few things up before starting work on the HUD (using ogre input system now, smartptr and listener improved, c++ timer class implemented) but now the HUD is started, and we have a simple crosshair, more will follow soon =)

Ghoulsblade 20:05, 11 April 2006 (CEST) : worked a bit on shots and explosions, looking quite nice now i think (3 new screenshots), still not animated though, screenshots can be made ingame by pressing "f", dumped particles from this roadmap, not really needed currently, so now we are done with milestone number 2, jeeehaww !

Ghoulsblade 00:27, 11 April 2006 (CEST) : cleaned up the code a bit, improved the "beam"-primitives cam-adjustment, explosions now have a real billboard, firing while mousebutton is down, drawing spheres for debug is now possible (ClientSetEllipsoid)

Ghoulsblade 04:20, 10 April 2006 (CEST): after one afternoon coding with hagish, we got lots of work done, see svn-log, and just now i upped a few Screenshots, enjoy =)

Ghoulsblade 14:48, 5 April 2006 (CEST): things continue to go smoothly, the first "experimental, non-detonating, ogre-head-shaped seeking missile" is targetting the player. I just rearranged the roadmap a little, hud was moved to the next release, and this milestone is now focused on weapons and destruction

Ghoulsblade 00:20, 4 April 2006 (CEST) : i like lua, now i already use it to controll most of the server & client message transfer as well as object creation, and integrating newly joined clients into the server... really a powerful scripting language. If this continues to go so smooth, we might have missile and other weapons sooner than expected. It is not the time for funky graphics yet, though...

funny stupid trails and shiptrails

worked a bit on explosions...

The first screenshots of V0.2, asteroids (can be destroyed / big ones split) "beam" primitive for something-like-billboard-line like bullets non-animated sample explosion damage instead of instant kill totally dumb ai-ships (just constantly firing and flying towards player) no fancy graphics yet, but at least there is more on screen

hud stuff, target indicators and such

2006 March

Ghoulsblade 00:10, 31 March 2006 (CEST): After a little coding pause (learning about Lua, playing guildwars and iwar2, planning how to use lua for various things...) i started integrating Lua, i am really suprised about this scripting-language =)

Ghoulsblade 00:14, 14 March 2006 (CET): direkt hit weapon is now working, other ships can be killed per mouse-click. They just disappear though, no visual ray or explosions yet. However that finishes our first milestone, now the work on sfz0.2 can begin =)
See also Screenshots , it's still ugly though....

Ghoulsblade 02:28, 11 March 2006 (CET): almost done, network runs fine, only weapons are missing now. the graphics are still ugly of course.

The first screenshots of V0.1

• 

  really ugly graphics, but enough for testing network and hit detection

• 

  one deadly mouse-click-shot later (with no visual weapon feedback yet (no visible ray, no explosion))