i wonder if someone have maybe some knowledge of this new free game engines out there, cause i don't see the coming of a new freedom force near, maybe we can start a project over years if someone is interested. i see some screenshots of game created and sure can handle a decent graphic.
i'm not an expert i'm just asking to know.
Well, I'm not sure there's a call to make a freeware Freedom Force clone, but there might be a call for a sort of top-down tactical RPG toolset, like Neverwinter Night's Aurora Toolset. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_toolset)
might be an interesting project to embark on. I have not played Neverwinter Nights but i like tactical RPGs somewhat. (ok, I may be off but I am thinking of Mass Effect 2 as somewhat of a tactical RPG in some ways)
I will take anything that can be customized and has heroes at this point, be it a flash game or a full on multi million dollar release. If anyone ever starts a freedom force style project I'll jump in with whatever skills I have (english/spanish translator, writer, mechanics ballance, years of comic nerdom).
http://www.panda3d.org/
Besides OGRE 3D has anyone considered Panda? Seems like a long shot but if meshes can be loaded up in there it would probably open a bunch of doors.
I don't see Ogre as a viable choice, as it's a 3D engine, not a full-fledged game engine. Panda, on the other hand, is a game engine which should be somewhat approachable, as one of its goals is rapid application development by students (Carnegie programming students are not exactly computer noobs, but it's a start). Supports mlre than just Windows, mature and comes with solid Python bindings.
While the current FF community doesn't look large enough to support a project of this scope, IMO, it is certainly worth exploring.
Quote from: Epimethee on August 05, 2010, 01:51:04 PM
While the current FF community doesn't look large enough to support a project of this scope, IMO, it is certainly worth exploring.
How large would it have to be? I mean granted the community is not as active as it once was but we are still large enough to lay the ground work, aren't we? I mean if you are just talking about the engine.
The bigger issue is rather or not it'd be more viable to do a "FF" or something based around original content. We don't have the rights to the "FR" characters. Of course, as stated here before, the biggest issue with creating with original content would be similar issues about rights ownership.
If we could get something like this off the ground, I think it would perhaps be a bit silly to try and make it an FF game in terms of IP. Much better to spin off something like Liberty Bay, some collection of original characters. After all, we wouldnt' want to give Irrational any headaches about copyright.
That and the fact that most meshes, mods and skins have nothing to do with Irrational at this point, seeing how we abandoned most of the templates they gave us a long time ago.
Quote from: Mr. Hamrick on August 05, 2010, 06:27:03 PM
How large would it have to be? I mean granted the community is not as active as it once was but we are still large enough to lay the ground work, aren't we? I mean if you are just talking about the engine.
no, the engine is Panda. We need to build some sort of basic car around it. :) How much time would it take? Well, something like FFX, a much more modest endeavour, took many thousand man-hours. And how many active professional developers have we got in the community? To get a shipping game, we'd need to attract some really dedicated talent or join force with an existing project. Of course, there might be an existing Panda-based game whose source code we can fork (a.k.a. Copy), saving quite a bit of work on the code front (which is of course only one of the aspects of creating a full game).
QuoteThe bigger issue is rather or not it'd be more viable to do a "FF" or something based around original content. We don't have the rights to the "FR" characters.
Compared to the issue of actually building a working (and fun) game, that's not really a bigger issue, no...
With that said, it indeed needs to be fully legal, meaning new community IP, such as Liberty Bay, as Benton mentioned.
Quote...the biggest issue with creating with original content would be similar issues about right ownership.
If
that's going to be a big issue, the project has no chance whatsoever in the face of all the other more concrete problems that will crop. Just agree on a Creative Commons license and move on to other problems. ;)
After glancing at the Panda 3D docs, forums and looking for a few alternatives, I must say Panda seems like a solid solution. For a full-scale from the ground up project, it looks like our best bet. Thankfully, AI support got added in the latest release, for example. Complex game examples, especially of RTS, seem completly absent, however.
Maybe a mesher could have a look at the docs? What I read looked interesting (3D Max and Blender support, possibility of manipulating bones directly from scripting, etc.), but I know nothing on the subject.
Quote from: Epimethee on August 06, 2010, 03:08:32 PM
After glancing at the Panda 3D docs, forums and looking for a few alternatives, I must say Panda seems like a solid solution. For a full-scale from the ground up project, it looks like our best bet. Thankfully, AI support got added in the latest release, for example. Complex game examples, especially of RTS, seem completly absent, however.
Maybe a mesher could have a look at the docs? What I read looked interesting (3D Max and Blender support, possibility of manipulating bones directly from scripting, etc.), but I know nothing on the subject.
Does this answer your questions? (with apologies to Alex)
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/object_pack1.jpg)
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/supersquad1.jpg)
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/pandatest3.jpg)
!
You rock, Tommy.
What are you thoughts on Panda so far?
Quote from: tommyboy on August 06, 2010, 03:43:16 PM
Does this answer your questions?
No, but it does raise a host of other questions about how you've been spending your time of late.
Let him be known as "tommyboy, International Man of Mystery."
ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunbueyist and Whirled Braker
Quote from: Epimethee on August 06, 2010, 05:25:44 PM
What are you thoughts on Panda so far?
That it's pretty "friendly" like most python type engines. It has several distinct advantages over working with netimmerse (or any other proprietry game engine).
1. Bump mapping (this one is better than ff/v3r, not other game engines which all tend to have this now).
2. The meshes are actually text files, editable in word, notepad etc. You can imagine how this opens up editing and mesh making possibilities.
3. It's open source (sort of) so its being developed and updated a lot, but if a feature you want isnt in it, you have a chance to add it yourself, or ask for it.
4. Animation is theoretically "mixable" via python commands. So you can take two walk or idle loops and create a third that is 20% anim a, and 80% anim b, or any other mix, or a random mix. In theory, one might never see quite the same animation twice, even in the same character. And it uses mostly individual anims (ie walk is one separate anim, run another, each in a discrete file), not long strings of them packed together in "keyframes". So you can pick anims from other similar sized characters and mix and match.
5. Programming is mostly beyond me. Or if it isn't, I'd have to give up meshing to have the time and energy to learn it. Thusly, my own attempts ran aground months ago. But I could get stuff on-screen inside of 10 minutes of starting, and there is a fair amount of code already in existence on the panda forums.
6. Nothing, and I mean nothing, feels better than starting from scratch, doing it the way you want it done, doing it "right". Want true airborne melee? Code it in. Want no upper limit on characters? Make it so (though obviously there will still be limitations). My dream was an open world 3d beat-em-up superhero-team moddable game with some tactical features and a watch mode. A cross between MUA, Tekken, GTA4 and of course our beloved FF. You could play directly controlling one supe, or guide a team a la FF. That may not be anyone else's dream, and I'm sort of happy to make stuff for other peoples games, but Comic-Book-Fight-World will always be the dream, for me.
Now, I might be up for some collaborative efforts in panda with a small team of people who deliver. Large teams of volunteers tend not to work well, and those who have no track record in getting stuff done need to go get stuff done first, then offer to participate in this sort of thing. For my part, I can offer meshing, skinning, animation, a smidgeon of coding and general old-school comic-book sensibilities.
I can make a thread with tutorials for meshing, skinning and so forth if people want it.
This is getting interesting. There isn't much I can offer beyond skinning at the moment, but I'm curious what can be accomplished.
Quote from: tommyboy on August 06, 2010, 05:58:59 PM
2. The meshes are actually text files, editable in word, notepad etc. You can imagine how this opens up editing and mesh making possibilities.
Yeah, it also makes parsing the file with a python script much easier.
Quote3. It's open source (sort of)
The core components are now fully open source, using a very reasonable version of the very permissive BSD license.
Quoteso its being developed and updated a lot, but if a feature you want isnt in it, you have a chance to add it yourself, or ask for it.
The only issue about adding a feature by ourselves is that the game engine is actually C++, not Python, so it's harder to code. Still, it's possible, which is huge. The time we've spent working around the FF engine's limitations... what if we could have fixed them instead?
Quote4. Animation is theoretically "mixable" via python commands. So you can take two walk or idle loops and create a third that is 20% anim a, and 80% anim b, or any other mix, or a random mix. In theory, one might never see quite the same animation twice, even in the same character. And it uses mostly individual anims (ie walk is one separate anim, run another, each in a discrete file), not long strings of them packed together in "keyframes". So you can pick anims from other similar sized characters and mix and match.
The other huge advantage I could also see, if I understood correctly: you can supplement the built-in animations with script-based one. So, for example, if you need Minute M... err, Doc Astounding ;) to sit for a cutscene, you could, even if there's no animation for this. And you might even be able to say, give stretching powers to a character on the fly. Also quite handy for Jivaro-Man's head-shrinking beam.
Quote5. Programming is mostly beyond me. Or if it isn't, I'd have to give up meshing to have the time and energy to learn it.
If the urge to do so ever takes over you, with your productivity, you could probably rewrite FFX from scratch in a week or two. ;)
Quote6. Nothing, and I mean nothing, feels better than starting from scratch, doing it the way you want it done, doing it "right". Want true airborne melee? Code it in.
And therein lies the rub: coding it (or designing it, or creating art assets, etc.) is lots of work. Making a finished product and an enjoyable one to boot requires way more work, plus talent, expertise, dedication and cohesiveness – after all, most commercial games take years of professional work and not many of them are all that good. Realistically, I'd trade some liberty for more "out-of-the-boxness", were it available.
QuoteMy dream was an open world 3d beat-em-up superhero-team moddable game with some tactical features and a watch mode. A cross between MUA, Tekken, GTA4 and of course our beloved FF. You could play directly controlling one supe, or guide a team a la FF.
I'd think that's something most of us FR'ers can agree with. I'd target something a bit more general than a superhero tactical RTS as far as the game
platform goes, to attract other developers, though. But for an initial non-beta release, something very focused, such as an arena superhero melee duel would be a more realistic goal (i.e., your beat-em-up in its simplest form).
QuoteThat may not be anyone else's dream, and I'm sort of happy to make stuff for other peoples games, but Comic-Book-Fight-World will always be the dream, for me.
<Offended voice>Well, MY dream is peace, justice, liberty and free cheese for everyone, but to each his own, eh? :P
QuoteNow, I might be up for some collaborative efforts in panda with a small team of people who deliver. Large teams of volunteers tend not to work well, and those who have no track record in getting stuff done need to go get stuff done first, then offer to participate in this sort of thing. For my part, I can offer meshing, skinning, animation, a smidgeon of coding and general old-school comic-book sensibilities.
Agreed. Most successful projects seem to have a few core members and a number of complementary contributors. However, this kind of project can (at first, at least) be separated into different tasks with limited overlap, reducing the impact of member turnaround. For my part... well, responsibilities prevent me from putting all that much time on this, so I can't be more than a secondary contributor. If you'd like my help, I can
work on user interface/user experience and visual design (my day job and formation, after all), Python scripting, plus some project management knowledge, web development, marketing, in addition to a few art & literature related skills, including French translation when the project takes the planet by storm. ;)
QuoteI can make a thread with tutorials for meshing, skinning and so forth if people want it.
That would be great, Tommy!
The key to a successful open source game project is to get something fun and playable released as soon as possible. The ones that die or crawl are the ones that go into closed development for years with nothing to attract interest or new blood. Get a playable basic game out the door with a few playable characters and that might be enough to both attract interest and get new devs on board to develop it further.
Now what would my concept for a superhero tactical game campaign be? Taking inspiration from Starcraft 2's storybased, strategical based hybrid campaign, I see a city world to explore. Heros are assigned to patrol, which opens up random encounters, which may unlock other missions. As time goes on, arc missions open up the map as well. There would be multiple arcs, some related to the main story arc, some completely optional and indepedent. Some would unlock as time went on, some would require certain things done in the course of patroling, and all would need the previous arc mission done. All arcs will standby and wait until the player wishes to do them, and all can be ignored entirely if the player wishes. In addition, things happen in the game world effecting these thing, new villain groups coming out, crime waves, and such. Some would be triggered by missions, some by time, and others just randomly.
The beauty of this setup would be that a basic version with just the random encounters and a few unlocked missions could be put together relatively quickly, with the other things added gradually. Perfect for an open source project.
To clarify -The Panda core is c++ but meant to be called from Python. A lot of the actual implementations of user functions are actually Python (i.e. written in python). I have personally added features to some Panda engine objects by coding python. C++ is of course faster, but Python will be fine for just about anything outside a calculation you need done super-fast.
Some of the pics Tommy showed are from a panda project we've worked on (off and on) since 2009. He did the meshes/anims/skins. I've done the coding. The above pics are from an older version, actually. I've added some newer ones below.
The 2010 version is actually semi-functional - you can edit character files and save them. I haven't added all the powers capacibilities yet. The battle scenes actually work, the heroes fight each other with basic melee AI (haven't added range powers yet). It's based on a game design I've done (at the moment very influenced by FF of course, but it has certain advantages over FF already)
Epimethee's point is well-taken, this is a huge undertaking. I have about 3,000 lines of code to do the basic shell you see in the pics (started on it in May 2009, edit: oops, realized itwas April 2009 after looking at my log)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/abenavides/FF/a.jpg)
More pics:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/abenavides/FF/screenshot-Sat-Aug-07-14-09-17-2010-10380.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/abenavides/FF/screenshot-Sat-Aug-07-14-09-08-2010-9993.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/abenavides/FF/screenshot-Sat-Aug-07-14-08-10-2010-6189.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/abenavides/FF/screenshot-Sat-Aug-07-14-07-54-2010-3834.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/abenavides/FF/screenshot-Sat-Aug-07-14-09-22-2010-10713.jpg)
Of course the project could go quicker if the lazy bum doing the graphics actually produced anything...
But the coding side is actually being worked on, and looks good. So much so that i may actually make some more panda stuff sooner rather than later..
OK heres my note/tutorial on how to create meshes in panda.
I can create a thread somewhere for it too, but wasn't sure if it should be in "other games" or "meshes" or what. So for now its here.
OK lets start at the very beginning, assuming a little familiarity with FF meshing.
Also I'll assume that you have installed Panda, and put its importer/exporter files where they should go.
I use Max 7 for Panda exporting. You could use 6,7,8,9, theres even an old Max 5 exporter (supposedly, though I've yet to find it myself) but no max 4 one.
I have, however, downloaded the Panda source code, in which is the source code for the Max exporter, so in theory, we could make one. In practice, I can't. Yet, probably forever.
Because Disney and Carnegie Mellon (the main driving forces behind Panda) both tend to use Maya, not 3ds Max, the Max exporters are not as well supported and developed and up to date as the Maya ones. So some stuff the Panda engine itself supports, like mulitextures, are not in the Max exporter. Go figure.
You can also export from Maya, Blender, Gmax, Wings3d, (though I think some of these wont export anims to Panda).
Anyway, back to Max.
Lets say we have our old FF mesh Max file.
We can just export that to Panda as is, but it will look weird. Why? Nothing is hidden in Panda, and Selection and Boundingboxes appear as solid objects.
So, FF Max file to Panda .egg file tutorial.
1. Open your FF mesh Max file in Max. Now save it as the same name, with say "_egg" as a suffix, so you now have "male_basic.max" and "male_basic_egg.Max". So when we make changes, we still have our works-in-FF max file original.
2. Go to "display" and click on "unhide all". Delete the bounding box, selection box, weapon node, handle, pickup base, cape top, bottom and cape dummies. Delete any extra stuff that would be hidden in FF (no "versatile" meshes allowed, I'm afraid". All we want left is the biped, and the basic geometry of the character. Probably time to save.
3. Go up to "rendering", "material editor". Select the material (we'll just assume it's male_basic"). Change the "shader" type to "phong" (the only shader Panda likes). Now in "maps", "diffuse" put "male_basic.tga" (Panda accepts .tga, .dds, .png, .tiff, .jpg, though I think the best choices are .png or .jpg, for technical reasons. But I'm lazy, so for now, I'll just use .tga here).
4. Bump/normal mapping:Still in "maps" in "bump" put your bump/normal map texture, lets assume its "male_basic_bump.jpg". I'll assume for now that youi know how to generate a "normal" map (I use the Nvidia Photoshop plugin to make mine)
5.Gloss: In "specular" level, put a monochrome, alpha'd map saved as a .png, and the same one in "Glossiness". Panda gets its Gloss info from the alpha channel. I'm having some trouble getting gloss to show as glossy as I want, so take this section as unfinished, and read the Panda manual/Forums and find out for me if I'm doing it wrong.
6. Glow:In "self Illumination" put your alpha -enabled .png glow file. Panda also reads Glow info from alpha maps.
7. Opacity: What we would think of as Alpha-d tranclucency. Use the "opacity" map slot. Havent played with yet.
8. You don't actually need anything but a diffuse map, but all the other stuff will help it look good. I believe (but could be wrong) that you can actually add gloss/glow/bump/opacity to a mesh via Python scripting, and/or editing the .egg file format (which can be done in a text editor surprisingly easily).
9. OK textures are sort of done, what next? Lets start by exporting our basic geometry, then do animations in a bit. Go to "create" tab, "helpers" button and click on the drop down menu that starts with "standard", just below it. At the bottom of that list is "exporters", select this. In "object type" you should now see a "panda 3d" button. Click it. Under "parameters" you'll see "panda egg exporter". Click the "add" button and a new "export settings" widget/window/box thing opens up.In "animation type" select "model". Type in a filename and browse to where you want to export to. Select "export entire scene", and click on "OK". The widget closes and back over in the "eggs" section your mesh name should have appeared with a ticked box by it, and the type saying "model". Now click on "export now", and it will. I have the "pview output" selected so it runs pview and shows me the output.
And that it.
Except, one caveat about texture paths. I now export directly to my game/mod, and have the setup similar to FF, so the hierachy goes Mod/game>Models>characters>male_basic>skins>standard. And in the materials of Max, I set it to load the textures from there, because that path is then stored in the .egg file, and the textures read from there.
One last thing, Panda can load .egg models, or a compressed version called .egg.pz or a further optimized version called .bam.
Until the latter stages of game development, I'd stick with .egg, as some of the compression routines are one-way (ie as if you could zip up a file, but nor unzip it). The compression ratios are very good though, for instance I made a massive level file of new york that was a 170Mb .egg file. I pzipped it and it shrank to a mere 17Mb. So if it looks like the files are big, this can be dealt with.
Alex and Tommy, I'm very impressed by what you've done so far!
Quote from: abenavides on August 07, 2010, 06:24:52 PM
The 2010 version is actually semi-functional - you can edit character files and save them. I haven't added all the powers capacibilities yet. The battle scenes actually work, the heroes fight each other with basic melee AI (haven't added range powers yet). It's based on a game design I've done (at the moment very influenced by FF of course, but it has certain advantages over FF already)
Epimethee's point is well-taken, this is a huge undertaking. I have about 3,000 lines of code to do the basic shell you see in the pics (started on it in May 2009)
So, basically, you are already where I would have expected a group of 5-6 of us to end up in two years.
Could you tell us a bit more about your plans and how the project going? What are the needs, difficulties, etc? I've noticed that the frame rate varies wildly from screenshot to screenshot... Has performance been a major issue so far?
And lastly... <puppy eyes> would you like help? If you do, how could we be useful?
Here's a rather basic question that may have already been covered (I have not done my part in reading *every* line of this thread). How convertible are already existing meshes, skins, fx, etc? Would *everything* have to be reaccomplished, or can we still make use of some of the excellent work that has already been done? I can't exactly contribute any content, but I can offer my thoughts & ideas (I know, there's plenty of that already).
Thanks for the tutorial, Tommy. I hope it stimulates meshers to look into this. :)
Quote from: tommyboy on August 07, 2010, 07:28:51 PM
OK heres my note/tutorial on how to create meshes in panda.
I can create a thread somewhere for it too, but wasn't sure if it should be in "other games" or "meshes" or what. So for now its here.
I guess if this takes off, we could probably ask our FR overlords for a dedicated forum, for example.
QuoteI use Max 7 for Panda exporting. You could use 6,7,8,9, theres even an old Max 5 exporter (supposedly, though I've yet to find it myself) but no max 4 one.
I have, however, downloaded the Panda source code, in which is the source code for the Max exporter, so in theory, we could make one. In practice, I can't. Yet, probably forever.
Because Disney and Carnegie Mellon (the main driving forces behind Panda) both tend to use Maya, not 3ds Max, the Max exporters are not as well supported and developed and up to date as the Maya ones. So some stuff the Panda engine itself supports, like mulitextures, are not in the Max exporter. Go figure.
You can also export from Maya, Blender, Gmax, Wings3d, (though I think some of these wont export anims to Panda).
Speaking through my hat (I've only skimmed through the manual and forum and played with the tutorial and demos so far): Would converting to Blender and exporting from it be an option (assuming Blender support in Panda is better than for Max)?
QuoteDelete any extra stuff that would be hidden in FF (no "versatile" meshes allowed, I'm afraid".
Speaking through my hat, cont'd: But would the hidden extras be needed anyway? We could add them as separate meshes linked to the main one, no?
Quote8. You don't actually need anything but a diffuse map, but all the other stuff will help it look good. I believe (but could be wrong) that you can actually add gloss/glow/bump/opacity to a mesh via Python scripting.
Worth looking into. I'll check the doc to see if I can find an answer.
QuoteOne last thing, Panda can load .egg models, or a compressed version called .egg.pz or a further optimized version called .bam.
Until the latter stages of game development, I'd stick with .egg, as some of the compression routines are one-way (ie as if you could zip up a file, but nor unzip it). The compression ratios are very good though, for instance I made a massive level file of new york that was a 170Mb .egg file. I pzipped it and it shrank to a mere 17Mb. So if it looks like the files are big, this can be dealt with.
Aren't .bam generated on the fly from the .egg? If so, unless doing an official release, there'd be no need to compress the .egg themselves (anyway, if this is a XML, putting every file in an .zip will probably compress by a similar ratio).
I'm really shocked that something this far along is already being worked on and as functional as it is. I would love to see it opened up as a full community project with the current peoples working on it as the leads. The fact that so much in Panda can be done via Python is good news to, making it quite moddable and accessable by many of the people that have been working on FF mods.
If you two were interested in pushing this for an actual release, I would suggest working first on making it a fully workable skirmish system, so basic ranged attacks would need to be finished up, but a lot of powers, attributes and stuff could wait until past the first release. The releases themselves should not have proprietary characters in them for legal reasons, but all that stuff can easily be made separately downloadable. After that, an actual campaign mode can be looked into, if desired. What do you all think of my ideas on that?
Quote from: Epimethee on August 07, 2010, 08:19:28 PM
Could you tell us a bit more about your plans and how the project going? What are the needs, difficulties, etc? I've noticed that the frame rate varies wildly from screenshot to screenshot... Has performance been a major issue so far?
And lastly... <puppy eyes> would you like help? If you do, how could we be useful?
Well, there are sort of two projects really.
Alex's, which is actually getting made and going somewhere, and mine, which is just a bloated rotting vapourware carcass at this point. They share art assets and some similar goals. We both want something with as much, if not more flexibility and modability as ff, something which will let users add their own characters, (though of course we could not possibly condone the use of copyrighted characters). Alex's is a more tactical approach, closer to FF in that way, mine was more of a free roaming beatem/zapem-up with some tactical elements. I floundered on implementing the physics engine I wanted, (which was probably unnecessarily over-functioned), and on being lazy and distracted by shiny objects.
As for frame rate, bear in mind nothing you see has been optimized in terms of the art assets (see my post above near the end on egg.pz and bam filetypes), and, neither has the python been optimized as far as I know. But I can seem to get about a hundred meshes on-screen without much slow-down partly because the engine supports instancing (that may not be the term, I'm rusty). Ive had a fair number of meshes on-screen without major problems, but it's early days partly because I stalled out on making scenery. There is a reason few full 3d games only have one artist, theres a bucket-load of stuff to make, and then I go and raise my standards and have to remake 90% of it.
So for me, as the art-assets guy, I could use other modelers/animators/texturers, but its not for me to invite people to join Alex's team without his say so.
Of course anything made as open-source or creative commons license would be welcome in my own little project, assuming I ever resurrect it.
For any dev types out there, here's my log of the coding effort. My background is professional software development (though not a professional game developer), so I'm quite geeky about logging things.
I realize a lot is gibberish - but it does show the effort thus far.
I've been busy with personal things lately so haven't moved coding forward recently, but a lot of the roadmap is designed.
-Performance has not been an issue (though, of course, I've only been working with about 10 characters at once). The frame rates do vary in the pics, but most likely because I'm running in a Windows box and haven't optimized for that. (thanks to Panda, this game should work on Windows, Mac, Linux, and evene browsers theoretically)
-I'm waiting for Panda 1.71 which will fix some things on compression/distribution which I need (the panda team is very good about updating, I think we started this project with version 1.5 of Panda)
- I need to go over some mesh things with Tommy as soon he gets back in panda mode. In SuperSquad (my codename for the project) - meshes can share animation folders, this cuts down on total space needed and will make it easy to "customize" a character's animations.
- I was coding the HUD (heads up display) - you see a very basic version of it on the screenshots
- I was also coding the power editor
# Version Date Comments
# 0.2.9 30May2010 showHUD(), clickable portraits, move chkMelee to character class and set KO() there,
# fixed sort when adding new character, squad lifebars, charEditor class
# 0.2.8 25Apr2010 Created new modules: CAMERA, CHARACTER, GLOBALS and moved all non-GAME class code there
# Added New, Copy, and Del Character options, character class handles all loading and
# gameplay options for characters, switched to single myGUI() handler func
# Much better OOP design, faster to extend
# 0.2.7 18Apr2010 readCharFromFile(), charSkin(), myGUITextBox, myGUIScreen
# myGUILabel, updated hero file format, showCharSave(), WASD controls, slowed down AI
# more buttons for main menu, better extra anim handling, Char Edit screens,
# dynamically handle anim sets by checking all files in mesh folders
# 0.2.6 04Apr2010 Added screens and navigation, logFile(), GAME_VER, myGUIButton(), GAME_STORY
# moved all load functions into myGame class, new format for hero files, playBattle()
# 0.2.5 15Jun2009 Fixed picker warning msg, made this the main program,
# panda stdpy.file, fixed object click crash, gameControls, render.analyze
# 0.2.4 23May2009 flying melee, cannot click dead chars, MISSION_FOES and MISSION_SQUAD melee auto-attack,
# loadMap, str2tuple, changed camera rotate control, camera zoom limits, togglePause,
# prevent camera from going under scene, toggleLabels, charMoveToPos (click and move)
# 0.2.3 15May2009 combatMsg, melee distance check, charDodge
# 0.2.2 03May2009 loadLight, RPG_FLY_HEIGHT, chkMelee/attack click, AI_DISTANCE_DETECT, Wframe/Texture toggle
# 0.2.1 28Apr2009 Anim set choice in hero files, support 3 sets of anims: MALE, MALE_CAPE, and FEMALE
# 0.2.0 26Apr2009 mouseClick(), getCharByName, implemented switching squad member by clicking
# 0.1.9 25Apr2009 Fixed AI flying, ConfigPrc settings, more global constants
# 0.1.8 24Apr2009 charTurnTo - to correct char running backward, updated charAI and charMove -allow AI flying
# 0.1.7 18Apr2009 toggleFly, charTakeOff, charLand
# 0.1.6 17Apr2009 MISSION_FOES, charAI, getNearestTgtChar, getDistance, taskAI, charIdle, updated charMove
# 0.1.5 16Apr2009 Camera Compass use
# 0.1.4 14Apr2009 Log file, cameraDump, "art" folder paths, camera follows char, ";" delim in files
# 0.1.3 11Apr2009 Portraits, camera controls, eliminated need for XAN files, switchChar and WASD move
# 0.1.2 10Apr2009 GAME_DIR, hpr options on loadChar, hero and XAN file handling, MISSION_SQUAD objects
# 0.1.1 07Apr2009 MyGame class (user controls), auto-loading of anims:global and xtra
# 0.1.0 05Apr2009 Initial version: loadObject, loadChar
My game is based on an idea I had over 10yrs ago (and which FF was shockingly close to). It would be similar to game likes the original Champions which never happened (not the current champions online) and the never-released Guardians:Agents of Justice. (but in real 3d like FF)
I have gone back and forth on controls (it's like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance / Warcraft at the moment, but I can easily switch to FF -like controls).
The screens look like FF right now, but that's because of the art assets I'm using for testing.
Okay, sound like you have a very definite direction you plan on.
As far as licensing, were you going or open source, closed source freeware, or indy commercial?
What are your plan for campaign mode?
Are you planning on focusing it on player created heroes, pre-sets, or a bit of both?
Are you open to making this a team effort, with you being in charge of course, and allowing a lot of other people to help you out?
Quote from: abenavides on August 07, 2010, 08:53:13 PM
For any dev types out there, here's my log of the coding effort. My background is professional software development (though not a professional game developer), so I'm quite geeky about logging things.
I'm certainly no professional dev, but from work and FFX, I can certainly appreciate the value of logs and code comments. Thanks for sharing them. They indeed give a clearer picture of all that you've accomplished. BTW, are you using PandAI, or was it released too recently?
Quote-Performance has not been an issue (though, of course, I've only been working with about 10 characters at once). The frame rates do vary in the pics, but most likely because I'm running in a Windows box and haven't optimized for that. (thanks to Panda, this game should work on Windows, Mac, Linux, and evene browsers theoretically)
Since my home computer is a Mac, it's a nice advantage of Panda as far as I'm concerned. It certainly beats having to use virtualization all the time, no matter how good.
BTW, the Panda demos have worked quite well on OS X (not a huge surprise, as Panda's OpenGL support seems better than for DirectX). Anyone tried Linux?
QuoteIn SuperSquad (my codename for the project) - meshes can share animation folders, this cuts down on total space needed and will make it easy to "customize" a character's animations.
Excellent news. I'd guess that if people adhere to a naming scheme, it'll also reduce incompatibilities and confusion.
Thanks for the info on the framerate, guys. While, as you mention, there's still a lot of code and art assets to add, it is reassuring to see that it has yet to be an issue.
Hadn't made a final decision on license. Probably leaning towards indy commercial or shareware/donateware.
The one thing I loved about FF (which I didn't fleshed out in my game 10+ yrs ago) was campaign or "story" mode. I would want a definite story to be playable but a lot of possibilities for player to not just go mission by mission . So there would be lots of detours for patrolling, random encounters, do this mission before that one, etc. Kind of World of warcrafty actually, now that i think of it, you have side missions, but there's a major storyline.
I have an original storyline in mind and I could never officialy condone it, of course, but I would probably also do mods for myself like JLA:Pawns of darkness . (maybe I would actually finish issue #7 in this :) )
At the moment, I don't need additional resource as I'm not really pushing it too hard. If that changes, I would look for help - at the moment, I do have Tommy as my art director and a few other folks I've been showing this to who are all ready to help test, add mods, etc.
Not using Panda AI yet, it was created in 1.7. It basically does pathfinding , evading, etc. Drawback is that you need to create a geographical mesh for the terrain and then run it through tha pandaai tools to create a file which is used by the AI. Not sure if this is going to be good for my end product as it's not too flexible. They are improving it though.
I'm using custom AI python code (not too different from my ez danger room code all those years ago :) ). There is actually a good sample on the panda forums called pandasteer which does everythkng with just python. I have a copy which I'll look through for ideas eventually.
Quote from: abenavides on August 07, 2010, 09:49:01 PM
At the moment, I don't need additional resource as I'm not really pushing it too hard. If that changes, I would look for help - at the moment, I do have Tommy as my art director and a few other folks I've been showing this to who are all ready to help test, add mods, etc.
Keep us posted on your progress. :)
QuoteNot using Panda AI yet, it was created in 1.7. It basically does pathfinding , evading, etc. Drawback is that you need to create a geographical mesh for the terrain and then run it through tha pandaai tools to create a file which is used by the AI. Not sure if this is going to be good for my end product as it's not too flexible. They are improving it though.
Yeah, that looked liked a huge pain point for something which needs as much flexibility as a super-hero game, with dynamic environment and characters of wildly different capabilities.
Quote from: abenavides on August 07, 2010, 09:49:01 PM
The one thing I loved about FF (which I didn't fleshed out in my game 10+ yrs ago) was campaign or "story" mode. I would want a definite story to be playable but a lot of possibilities for player to not just go mission by mission . So there would be lots of detours for patrolling, random encounters, do this mission before that one, etc. Kind of World of warcrafty actually, now that i think of it, you have side missions, but there's a major storyline.
I would have loved this in Freedom Force... something of a random challenge generator. Maybe one option for Patrol (muggers and maybe a robbery or super villain) and then at a high level you could get side quests kind of like invasions in XCOM. "A supervillain group is robbing a science lab" or "Aliens are attacking this city".
One of my ideas for a Freedom Force 3 is that side missions have a challenge rating and you get more prestige if you undershoot it and a lot less if you overshoot it. For example send Batman after a group of terrorists and get great prestige, send superman (beating them in 20 seconds) and get very little. That way you will end up trying to send a team that is proportionate to the crisis instead of just your 4 uber characters each time.
I would probably end up replaying it 50 times just building different teams and leaning heavily on the "random" content. I've always wanted a "team manager" game beyond your basic superhero action. You know... that feeling that you are in the watchtower or avengers mansion checking out threats and responding accordingly.
well i'm very happy to see already some good starts, i will suggest 3 things
1) The embrional state of this projects maybe hosted on some site with a new name(the things must be named to go on). on this site,the list of things to do so maybe who have competence can give a hand.
2) everyone have created meshes or skins or other things for ff give the full permission to use them in this new projects.
3)a new section of this forum about this project can be useful.
There is coming up for a name for the project. Since this is a clone of the Freedom Force concept and not an official continuance of it, there should be some sort of name associated with it. Perhaps, Liberty League or something?
Quote from: Tawodi Osdi on August 12, 2010, 09:49:00 PM
There is coming up for a name for the project. Since this is a clone of the Freedom Force concept and not an official continuance of it, there should be some sort of name associated with it. Perhaps, Liberty League or something?
Alex said above that he's calling his project Super Squad.
Now that we see that Irrationals next project is more bioshock, well, all the more reason, no?
On the other hand... yay! More bioshock!
It sounds like you can't use a transparent map to hide mesh parts then, Tommy?
Quote from: yell0w_lantern on August 13, 2010, 08:29:25 PM
It sounds like you can't use a transparent map to hide mesh parts then, Tommy?
I think that you probably could, but better than that, you can make a programme to build versatile type meshes on-the-fly. I made a very simple one where you could add a choice of bootcuff to a mesh. You could add sliders to adjust position, colour, size and shape:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/char_builder.jpg)
If someone who actually knew what they were doing turned their hand to it, well, you can imagine the possibilities.
Plus, you dont have to make the parts in Max/Blender/Maya. You can write programmes to create geometry on the fly in panda, to create textures on the fly. It really is very versatile.
That is pretty exciting.
To and Alex,
What you twp are doing is nothing less than amazing. I agree with Pod, it's exciting. I feel we are seeing the birth of a instant classic.
Good luck to both of you and thanks for all your efforts!
So in other words, a full fledge hero builder is possible, like in CO or CoX, while still allowing for old style meshing and skinning. Pretty cool possibilities here.
Huh. And I thought this topic would flameout and die after I posted. :P
I have some webspace/bandwidth I'd be willing to donate if the project so requires. Sling me an email (aaron.j.noble@gmail.com) if any of you are interested.
Quote from: catwhowalksbyhimself on August 13, 2010, 10:55:38 PM
So in other words, a full fledge hero builder is possible, like in CO or CoX, while still allowing for old style meshing and skinning. Pretty cool possibilities here.
Reminds me of the days of the crazy VX meshes that had all the pieces hidden in them, I used the same meshes for a bunch of skins. But I'm still an awful hexxer and skinner so doing it with sliders would rock my world.
Also it could allow for some limited item usage.
This is all a bit above my head I fear, but... wow... this is some exciting looking / sounding stuff. Godspeed mod makers of FF!
Thx to bump maps, which the panda engine supports, even someone like me (who's made maybe 10 skins in my life) can whip up a snazzy looking Professor Zoom.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/abenavides/FF/screenshot-Tue-Aug-17-19-24-14-2010-1758.jpg)
Huh... I'd written off all attempts to put FF on another engine as crazy talk, but looking through here I'm really impressed. It doesn't hurt that Panda supports Bump mapping, which is just about the only thing I feel the FF series lacked graphically.
I'm about to pull it up myself just to play around with the engine. If you need help, all you have to do is ask.
I am absolutely amazed with what you've accomplished here, Alex and Tommy.
I love the fact that this kind of grassroots game development is becoming possible now, thanks to engines like Panda.
Thanks !
I've grown to love Panda coding over the last year and a half, since I stumbled across it.
BTW - here's a link to a commercial game done in Panda:
http://www.vampyrestory-game.com/
(in addition to Toontown Onlines and Pirates of the Carribbean Online)
Wow guys. This is some pretty exciting and amazing stuff. I always thought freedom force would die. But this is awesome. Can't wait to see what else ya'll come up with.
Love the way it looks with bump mapping... I remember before FFVT3R came out it was an expected feature but it somehow did not make it in.
Yes, bump/normal mapping is awesome.
I make a mesh and skin and think, "that looks OK". Then I add the bump and specular and even my stuff makes me go "wow..". It really raises the look a whole level or two.
Skinners should be really excited by this as it makes skins even more important and versatile. You want to have actual textures in a model, like hair or fur or denim or scale armour? You have it, whilst retaining a ridiculously low poly count that makes for good frame rates.
And remember people, just because there is already one project in progress does not mean others cannot be started. If you have a dream game, try to make it happen. If what Alex is doing looks like your dream game, make yours anyway. The existence of one beat-em-up never stopped others being made. Doom actually made more fps games made, rather than people saying "oh, mine will be redundant".
And if you dont succeed, at least you will know that you tried, that you gave it your best shot.
I downloaded the nescessary files last night, so I'll be goofing off with it myself sometime this weekend. I'll likely pull it up sometime this weekend, see if I can find some tutorials for some simple games.
How much of an internal language does it have? I've played a dozen games with python and I can usually do the bits that runs off its own language but once it gets to python I'm often lost (See Civ4 for example, did some modding for that).
Neat.
Great points, Tommy. Anyone who's even a little interested in game-making, shoould check it out.
The Panda site is a lot better now than when we started (they've updated the docs, etc). And the forums there are very helpful (I get my stuff answered almost instantly sometimes).
The Panda download comes with a sample of something called "Roaming Ralph", which should introduce some concepts for games similar to FF. That and the panda walking tutorial in the manual are the 1st 2 things I really understood.
Quote from: lugaru on August 18, 2010, 09:21:31 PM
How much of an internal language does it have? I've played a dozen games with python and I can usually do the bits that runs off its own language but once it gets to python I'm often lost (See Civ4 for example, did some modding for that).
Panda's internal language is C++ – which is quite a bit harder than Python. (I'm somewhat surprised that Python feels that more obscure than other languages to you, Lugaru. It is considered a very good beginner's language. Pretty sure that, were you to do a few of the language's tutorials, you'd pick it up in no time.)
I need to put some actual effort into learning... mostly I just "mod" in the sense of changing 10 to 11 or red to blue with a lot of trial and error. Still this is a chance to learn something with less limitations, as opposed to learning how to mod for a specific game and well, running into the brick walls set by the designers.
Is Panda Linux friendly? I love Linux but it can be real pain in the you know where when it comes to making programs work on it. I would love to try my hand at skinning and modding, but I can't get half of the programs I need to work on my machine.
Yes, it is. Binaries are packaged for different distros: http://www.panda3d.org/download.php?runtime
As for the other programs, don't Blender and the Gimp work? As for the rest, well, if you don't need accelerated 3D, there's always the fallback solution: VirtualBox (or maybe Wine).
Wine is a bit touchy. I've heard of a service that charges so much for a year or month that allows a number of games and programs to be ran. As for Gimp, I have played around with it, but college and life in general leaves me little time to play around with. What I would really like to do is use my growing writing skills (my major) for writing mods, and I have not gotten any of those programs to work yet.
I finally had time to sit and read all of this. All I can say, is that Tom and Alex have really blown me away with this.
I know I saw someone bring up the issue of compatability with the current :ff:/ :ffvstr: skins and meshes, but I don't recall seeing it answered. If there is no compatability, would it be possible for extremely low level individuals like myself to create skins for this project using programs like (paint.net) or (gimp)? I have absolutely no familiarity with panda so I have no real understanding of what to expect, or how to contribute.
Also, once this game gets off the ground, what kind of programs will the average joe need to download/install in order to play?
OK, to spell out the compatibility issue:
Meshes and animations: ff and ffv3r use the gamebyro or netimmerse game engine, ie .nif files. Panda is a game engine using .egg files (though it can read some other formats).
Therefore, ff/v3r meshes and anims cannot simply be loaded in panda, or copied across, or currently converted en mass.
Apologies for megapost wall o' text.
However, if one is a mesh maker, one can take one's existing max files used for ff/v3r, and export them in a panda format (with a little deletion of unused bits, see my tutorial above).
You can also export to panda from Blender (free) or Maya (possibly free, cant remember).
I would imagine that a script to import .nifs into blender/max/maya and export .egg files would be possible. I am not offering to make it, because I can export meshes myself.
There are nif plugins which will allow ff/v3r meshes to be imported into Max/Blender/maya, and .egg exporters for all three platforms, so manual conversion is possible. WITH THE MESHER'S PERMISSION
So, to summarize, it takes some effort to get ff/v3r meshes into Panda at the moment *watches 99% of people lose interest at the mention of the word "effort"*, but that could change, possibly becoming nifskope levels of easy, or EZnif levels of easy.
Anyone already versed in Blender/maya/Max could already be making panda content.
Anyone who can programme a bit should be looking at scripting a conversion prog/plugin/script to mass convert, or easily single convert. If other meshers are agreeable. Take this statement as my permission to use my FF/v3r meshes and skins in Panda to get any other projects started, or to use in Alex's or my games when they are done. But you cannot sell my work, and credit should be given for what is mine. If the readme says I use anyone else's geometry, animations or skins in the mesh you may not use it in Panda unless you get their permission to do so. Other than that, knock yourselves out.
Skins: My panda meshes are made according to good old ff mapping (ie male_basic, etc), the skins you see are the skins I use in FF, with added bumpmapping and a different style of gloss(ie .refl).
Panda will "read" and "see" and display .tga, or jpg or bmp, but we decided for technical reasons (briefly, the best/most stable performance) to use .png in Alex's game.
But all the skins on all the meshes in all the screenies you have seen so far are actually .tga. (And mine. Nobody elses work/meshes/skins/anims/whatever is or will be used in this game without their explicit permission).
That's right. You could take your skins and copy them into our game (we currently are using the "meshname/skins/standard", "meshname/skins/alternate" naming/directory structure convention same as FF), AND THEY WILL WORK (you will still need to create/convert gloss/glow and bump yourself).
To summarize: Skins will work in panda, but gloss will need to be converted (takes about 20 seconds per file to greyscale and save the image to an alpha layer then save as a png, less time if you are a ninja), and a bumpmap should be added to see the full glory (bumpmaps can be made simply by running the male_basic.tga through nvidias normal map filter in photoshop, then saving as a png, though if you edit the result a little you get better effects, and the same is true with the gloss map).
So, ff/v3r meshes and animations will not work in panda, but can be converted, with some effort.
Skins will work in panda, but will need a little extra work to look their best.
As to what will be needed to play, the game will be self-contained, everything needed to play it will be part of the package, no extra downloads necessary. It will come as a standard installer which will make all necessary directories/shortcuts/what have you.
I hope that answers some of the questions about this subject..
Very much Tommy. Thanks for taking the time to explain. I'm really excited about what you guys are doing and appreciate all the work you're putting into this.
I've sometimes wondered if it might actually be a good thing if we had to mesh and skin from scratch for a new game. With all the popular comic characters pretty much already made there seems to be less motivation from people to skin. Of course the flip side is that having to start from scratch may kill existing meshers/skinners interest because they'd have to redo all their work.
Regardless it's good to see there are some easy conversion methods. When the time comes I'll be happy to start up another permission list.
I've been keeping an eye on this thread. All the work so far looks amazing. Downloaded the SDK and at some point hope to have time to do something with it.
What I'd really like to see would the major think both FF/FF3R lacked. The facility to script more freeforme campaigns. (So they were more replayable and open-ended)
A little like DrMike's Free Roam campaign but on steroids.
Would air to air melee be possible? Would it be possible to do such comic bookish cliches, like rescue civilians from burning buildings and such? I understand that these restrictions are in place because of issues with the animations involved. Or, am I jumping too far ahead?
Quote from: Tawodi Osdi on August 26, 2010, 10:37:37 PM
Would air to air melee be possible? Would it be possible to do such comic bookish cliches, like rescue civilians from burning buildings and such? I understand that these restrictions are in place because of issues with the animations involved. Or, am I jumping too far ahead?
Alex already has air-air melee in place and working, I still need to make more animations for it, (and to convince him to make air-ground and ground-air melee too, unless he already has..).
As for mission types like rescue, I hope so. As far as I know, he plans to have the game be open to modding, so I would hope that includes a flexible mission scripting system. Since it's all python-based, I think that sort of thing will be script-able, even if it's not built in to the game from the get-go.
Meanwhile, heres some of the stuff I'm trying to get in place:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/damage_decal_skin1.jpg)
First up, above: damage-decals. I want both generic and character specific stuff that can show people have taken damage. Above is my first proof of concept showing the same damage on two different characters. You have an alpha'd skin (or skins) that the game layers on to the existing skin when A characters's helath hits certain levels. I'm hoping we can mix and match about a dozen different ones, so you will rarely see two chars damaged in the same way. Also will apply to objects, as you might expect. Still needs some work, as the decals need to be confined to the character and not their capes (unless we introduce ripped cape alpha damage decals...hmmm.)
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/modular_buildings1.jpg)
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/modular_buildings2.jpg)
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/modular_buildings3.jpg)
Here we see my idea for modular building construction, and destruction. The idea is to have buildings which can be made up of simple wall and floor/roof parts,(first pic) making for greater variety in setting up maps. These will most likely also be packaged in pre-fab files to allow faster map making, if you arent one to build it all yourself.
The individual walls will take damage separately from each other (last pic), with total collapse occurring when enough walls get damaged enough.
Both ideas need a fair bit of work but are in principle things we can add that will make for a slightly more fun game..
:o Thats awesome. I especially like the battle damage. Do they all come at one time, or do more and more pop up as the damage progresses?
Quote from: vamp on August 26, 2010, 11:08:07 PM
:o Thats awesome. I especially like the battle damage. Do they all come at one time, or do more and more pop up as the damage progresses?
The model I favour is cumulative damage, with more and more small tears, rips, cuts, bruises, scorch marks, singes, cracks in armours etc showing up as your health bar goes down. Whether this is going to work, I don't yet know. I was having trouble layering on more than one set of decals when last I played with it. But the Panda engine constantly surprises me, so it may just need some more thought..
It's a great idea Tommy, I hope it works as you hope. I remember way way back someone was trying to see if a similar thing was possible in FF.
I'm pretty much floored by all of this.
What is funny is that so far you guy's are doing a lot of the things I had imagined would be awesome but never inquired about because it seemed impossible (the buildings is an example, I always wanted buildings done that way).
One thing I would LOVE to see though is an "interaction" system. Character plays a "manipulation" animation such as the one you use when you go to pick up an object or whatever. This animation can be used to disarm boombs, hack computers, repair technology, summon rituals... whatever. The idea though is to have an "X per second" based on skills. So for example a bomb requires 30 points of action and every turn you interact with it you reduce it by 3 until it is down to zero (disarmed). Somebody super fast (Flash) or super intelligent (or uniquely qualified) could reduce it by 6 or 10 or whatever each turn. That opens up the door to adding dozens of challenges to levels where one character is busy while the rest defend him. And it can be anything... freeing hostages, picking locks, disarming a doomsday device... anything. Just give it a statistic (like agility), an action point total and a trigger for when you are done.
So yeah, any typical item that requires interaction would have a total of action points required (say 40), what stat is linked (say intelligence) and stuff that modifies it (say +5 every turn if the character has scientist as an attribute). Also these things could be "blocked" so that you need at least 4 or 6 or whatever in a stat to make headway, therefore a character who is not super strong could not rip a metal door off its hinges (7 action points, so somebody with 4 strength takes 2 turns while somebody with 8 does it instantly).
Hopefully since it would be "simple" your AI could engage these objects... like if you drop an AI controlled Batman near bombs he will start to disarm them if he is not being targeted by any foes.
That is an interesting idea. I sort of like how it would make certain events play out differently depending on your characters abilities (this idea is why I loved the original Deus Ex, back in the day).
But it could have the effect of narrowing choices for the player if not implemented carefully.
Let's take the bomb-defuse idea for a moment.
Suppose my character(s) are neither smart, nor fast, nor have any special tech or equipment that would speed defusing up. If the timing and circumstances (ie interruptions) are too tight, a basic bruiser could find it too hard, or even impossible. I think that you'd have to balance such events to reward certain traits but without punishing their absence too harshly, to keep gameplay interesting for everyone.
Or to reward players who think how best to use their characters abilities. Could a super strong char throw the bomb high/far enough to do no harm? Could they pummel the timer or detonator till the bomb broke but didn't explode (risky)? Could they cover it with lifted scenery items or fashion a bomb-shield out of nearby items?
I would like to make problems which do not have one solution requiring one type of character be the norm. But also to have some that are only solve-able/accessible to certain types, though these would not be mission critical ones.
Certainly it's food for thought..
That's some good thinking Tommy.
One thing I liked about what lugaru said is that it could give some value to the smart heroes. FF doesn't really have any way to depict the intelligence of the Reed's, Batman's, and Tony's outside of specific scripted events and that a big part of those characters.
Hopefully it would be entirely up to the scripter if a challenge is balanced or restrictive more so than the programmer. Say it is implemented, one guy could be real creative (fill the level with optional evidence for a detective character to collect for bonus prestige) while a newbie might make everything hinge on one very restrictive challenge... bring the wrong character and you lose. In other words hopefully if it is great or sucks depends on the guy who made the level you downloaded.
I don't know what the guts of it looks like but multiple solutions would rule, such as shorting out bombs with electrical attacks or freezing them solid (to either add time or defuse them). Still I have no clue if this game would allow damage types to trigger effects, it is something that never worked out of the box in Freedom Force. Of course I could see somebody like The Tick run with the bomb to somewhere safe while Superman level strength might offer a "throw into the sun" solution to most problems.
"oh no, I spilled red wine on the carpet"
"with my chemistry skills I can clean that in a few seconds"
"too late, superman threw the carpet into the sun"
^_^
Man of Steel - Brain of Steel!
(or should that be cantaloupe melon?)
Heh.
meanwhile, I got the damage decals to work randomly in-game, triggered by a set level of damage:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/damage_2.jpg)
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/damage_v1.jpg)
Still a few wrinkles to iron out, as I'm no programmer.
I need to set a flag to show that this particular level of damage has been done, as at the moment it's layering the same decal over and over, I think, causing chars to lose gloss and bumpmapping as the decals are applied for the second and third time.
I need to work out how to only apply the decals to the male/female_basic part of the mesh, rather than extras.
I need to find out if it is possible to layer on more than one different decal to give cumulative damage, or if I have to make several sets (ie first you get a minimum damage decal randomly called from that set, then a medium damage random, then a max damage decal random).
I need to work out how to set it up so that say hulk or iron man get character specific decals rather than the generic rip/flesh/cut.
But I'm moderately pleased with where I am so far..
Okay, the thing I notice is how The Thing looks. Everything looks great, but Ben...
Quote from: daglob on August 28, 2010, 03:05:38 PM
Okay, the thing I notice is how The Thing looks. Everything looks great, but Ben...
umm... Ben what?
Looks awful? Great? Incomprehensible?
Whichever it is, he's still a work in progress as I got heightmaps working yesterday and he was the first character to receive one. (heightmaps or "parallax" maps are different from normal maps, and are used in conjunction with them to give the illusion of more polygons than there actually are).
Heres Ben with "just" diffuse, gloss and normal maps:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/steve_clint_ben1.jpg)
and here with the heightmap:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/steve_clint_ben2.jpg)
As you can see, I haven't quite mastered the use of heightmaps yet, but it's coming along...
I also just tweaked my damage decal script so it now has 3 levels of damage each of which adds in a random damage decal for Cumulative Visible Damage(c) TM patent not pending, no I'm happy about that :D
Nice work, TM!
Think I can resolve the remaining issues you mentioned.
I love the extra dimension that hight maps ads, it should be able to do some cool stuff like make 2d facial features more prominent or make muscles seem meshed in.
As for the damage decals those are certainly above the call of duty but already as is they would add a really cool element to the game.
Quote from: lugaru on August 28, 2010, 11:33:34 PM
I love the extra dimension that hight maps ads, it should be able to do some cool stuff like make 2d facial features more prominent or make muscles seem meshed in.
Yes.
It's really not apparent from static 2d shots, but the difference it makes having bump/height/normal on a mesh is huge.
It is, in many ways, going back to square one as far as the relationship between meshing and skinning is concerned.
It's making me rethink my meshing because now a skinned on belt can actually appear 3d (almost). Armbands, sashes, bandoliers, boots and other detail stuff I would have meshed in can be added at the skin stage. Some of us remember when male_basic or male_cape were the blank canvas the skinner bought to life. Well, we are back there, but better.
If other people choose to make content, specifically skins, I think that they will have a ball, because the diffuse and gloss textures are now only half the story.
Those muscles on Cap's legs, or Hawkeye's arms are not just painted on textures that look the same from any angle. They appear to be sculpted, meshed, 3d shapes with form and depth. I didn't paint on the white reflected highlights on Caps mail shirt, they are actually reflected and move as he moves, disappearing if he's in shadow, brighter if he's in a brighter light.
In essence we have high detail, high polycount meshes that are actually no more complex than ff meshes.
Look at this:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/nereid3.jpg)(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/nereid_wire.jpg)
Again, the highlights and shadows on the eyes and hair are not painted on and static. But neither does she have a ridiculously high polycount (she does have a more complex head than female_basic, but it's the same as my Supergirl_tf or Silk_Spectre_tf or Namora_tf or other recent female ff meshes). Those eyelids and eyelashes that appear sculpted are skinned on in the normal map, as is the hair texture that actually is a texture.
I'm increasingly inclined to release a male_basic panda mesh for you to skin and play with, because I think until people do, and see it themselves, in pview (sort of ctool for panda), you won't know what you are missing. I'm by no means ashamed of my work (the big pics probably tipped you off to that ;) ), but I'm not sure it really sells how good this engine can look, because most of this stuff is placeholders and me learning as I go, or just proving principles.
Quote from: tommyboy on August 28, 2010, 04:16:27 PM
Quote from: daglob on August 28, 2010, 03:05:38 PM
Okay, the thing I notice is how The Thing looks. Everything looks great, but Ben...
umm... Ben what?
Looks awful? Great? Incomprehensible?
I think what he was noticing is that Ben looked shiny. On the closer-up shots, I can see it on certain parts of Hawk & Cap as well, at least parts that I wouldn't think would be that shiny. Is shiny the way it will be, or are there a huge amount of options availble to skinners? On the other side, I'm really digging the way it looks on Cap's scale mail.
And on a different topic, who's that naked guy takin a swing at Superman? ;)
Quote from: Panther_Gunn on August 29, 2010, 01:37:51 AM
Quote from: tommyboy on August 28, 2010, 04:16:27 PM
Quote from: daglob on August 28, 2010, 03:05:38 PM
Okay, the thing I notice is how The Thing looks. Everything looks great, but Ben...
umm... Ben what?
Looks awful? Great? Incomprehensible?
I think what he was noticing is that Ben looked shiny. On the closer-up shots, I can see it on certain parts of Hawk & Cap as well, at least parts that I wouldn't think would be that shiny. Is shiny the way it will be, or are there a huge amount of options availble to skinners? On the other side, I'm really digging the way it looks on Cap's scale mail.
And on a different topic, who's that naked guy takin a swing at Superman? ;)
Yeah, the shiny issue is a thorny one.
It goes like this. If a char is matte, without reflection or specular highlight, you tend not to be able to see all the kewl bump/normal/parallax 3d type trickery.
The highlights a bit of shine gives you are the best way to actually see that stuff.
Getting it right is a balancing act I'm still learning.
Too much and you get the "plastic toy" look much complained of in mua, or everyone looks like Silver Surfer. Too little and you might as well not slave over the normal and heightmaps, as nobody will see them.
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/quick_panda1.jpg)
I initially leaned towards the left hand side of this pic, aka "my eyes! ze goggles, zey do nothing", but have toned it down towards the right hand side, settling on a compromise.
It's all adjustable in the gloss map, known hereabouts as "male_basic_refl", so if u r a h8t3r, you can manually adjust things to a less reflective world.
*wanders off whistling R.E.M.'s "shiny happy people"*
I liked Lug's idea about defusing bombs and hacking computers. It gives characters whose abilities are limited to being smart more to do in the game.
Quote from: tommyboy on August 29, 2010, 12:22:58 AM
I'm increasingly inclined to release a male_basic panda mesh for you to skin and play with, because I think until people do, and see it themselves, in pview (sort of ctool for panda), you won't know what you are missing. I'm by no means ashamed of my work (the big pics probably tipped you off to that ;) ), but I'm not sure it really sells how good this engine can look, because most of this stuff is placeholders and me learning as I go, or just proving principles.
If you did I'd probably play with it. I'm very interested in all this.
Quote from: Tawodi Osdi on August 29, 2010, 03:51:40 AM
I liked Lug's idea about defusing bombs and hacking computers. It gives characters whose abilities are limited to being smart more to do in the game.
i'll go one further. In addition to the idea about diffusing bombs and hacking computers, why not utilize some of the "ability" types seen in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. I am thinking specifically with regards to the Adept, Infiltrator, and Engineer classes. Powers that basically damage the shields of characters or barriers of characters in ME and ME 2. And even things like levitating characters and putting them into stasis (though those abilities move past my point) would be a nice addition past the typical range combat and melee powers.
The other thing, and the big one to me, would some sort of "stealth" ability. There is a cloaking ability in ME/ME2 but there are similar abilities and concepts in Batman Arkahm Asylum and Spliter Cell Conviction.
The point is that heroes who might be more the "brains" or not a traditional "tank" or "range" character would get nice little buffering abilities for the party and something to keep them from being constantly an easy target.
The intelligence stat is something I've thought about and can still easily add when a good generic implementation becomes clearer to me. Probably when I start coding the object class, it may lead to something. I do think everything that's been mentioned can actually be done in FF now, it just takes scripting- so the goal (like everything I do) is to make it simpler.
Do currently have plans for some traits (I call them "traits" instead of attributes) that deal with special skills, for example - martial artist , stealth, and escape artist. They will give some flavor/added value to ninj/batman type heroes.
Invisibility, Growing, and Shrinking powers are implemented in the current build I'm adding to (0.3.0)
I was gonna say an intelligence "stat" can be faked with attributes like "Dull" (for any and all who are bellow the average) and "Clever" and "Genius" for all those who are above. All characters would default to a stat nobody ever needs to define. Dull characters will come to the table with a lower stat that nobody will ever see if they need to do or defend or whatever in a brain powered situation. Meanwhile other characters will accomplish feats in half or a small fraction of the time.
But yeah, the main trap of designing a superhero game is specificity... if you design your game wrong (no examples off the top of my head) you end up with 10,000 superpowers, one for each individual thing you can think of, such as "mutant fire control, magical fire, cosmic fire" instead of just "ranged attack, and I choose fire as the type"... and you will feel like you are missing a bunch. When done right (Freedom Force gets a lot right) you end up with maybe 10 - 30 super generic powers applicable to anyone and then a few specific ones to fill in the gaps.
Abenavides: I've always liked that "you got it or you dont" skill system... in many rpgs you see characters with a rating in 50 different skills (1 in martial arts, 10 in driving, 5 in marksmanship) but for most RPG's I design you can either do something or you cant... and then your base stats modify how good you are even further. A character who cant pick locks simply cant pick locks, but out of two who can the more "dexterity" one is best. And yeah, I let some skills be purchased twice for extra bonuses making a character a master... say +1 to hit and +1 damage instead of just +1 damage or so on. Similar to how freedom force will have "leaper" and "super leaper", the second contains the first but also provides stuf the first does not besides just being better.
BTW growing and shrinking as in the mesh changing size on the screen? DUDE!!!
It would be nice to have a split power to emulate characters like Duo Damsel and Silent Majority.
Have posted my first Developer Diary, in case anyone is interested in how we got to where we are.
Assuming there's any interest, I'll post more in the future.
It's up at my home page:
http://alexff.com/
Lots of good progress in the last couple of weeks.
Thanks for posting this. It's neat to see how you guys got started with this. I hope you write more.
Very cool, Alex. I like this idea :)
I really like the DD. Hope to read more.
Both Alex and I are in agreement about releasing a panda mesh (or two, who knows) here for people to play with.
To whet your appetites, and to illustrate why I'm always blathering on about normal mapping, I give you the following preview pic.
What is of interest, I hope, is that the image on the left is wearing the very minimalist skin on the right. All the muscle definition is actual shadows and highlights, not skinned on. And the normal map I got this effect with is not even particularly well done, I just ran my base skin through the normal map filter, it could look much better. Then, if a heightmap is added (which it hasn't been here), it would look better still.
I hope this picture is worth a thousand words, because my fingers hurt if I type that much..
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/normal_mapping1.jpg)
I hope to have at least one mesh ready for people to download and play with inside of a week. Bear in mind that in order to view the mesh, or do anything else with it, you will need to download Panda, and probably the Panda SDK. I don't know if I'll supply any animations with it, as you don't need them to skin. I'll have to think on that.
Stunning stuff! Looking forward to samples.
What's performance like compared to FF btw?
Also... if I decided to get back into skinning (you never know) would I have something I could pull up the mesh in for reference? You know, like a makeshift hero tool or a pre-beta of the game that is stable enough to look at a mesh in...
Like Tommy mentioned, you'd need to install the Panda SDK, which comes with a utility called PVIEW to look at Panda models.
If I get a sec, maybe I can whip up a quick and dirty model viewer that would be a little easier to use.
Quote from: Symon on August 31, 2010, 09:55:32 PM
Stunning stuff! Looking forward to samples.
What's performance like compared to FF btw?
Well the stuff Alex writes hums along at 60-70 plus fps, even with my non-optimized models, big tga skins, no LOD models and pretty much everything unoptimized. It's running on my system at 1920x1080 in opengl or directx9.
I implemented some collision detection code badly which made it chug down to 30fps or less when zoomed out, but I am reasonably sure it's because of my poor coding. Everytime I try to add anything in, Alex has to clean it up and make it work properly.
By and large, considering it's in unoptimized Python rather than optimized C++, it compares pretty well so far. Theres still a lot to be added to the code, and to the art assets, so we are still finding that out, really.
I'm thinking that we should be able to put together something that looks reasonably next-gen, and performs comparably to ff in terms of fps. Like ff, if you load it up with highpoly-particle-spray-3MB-for-every-texture-models, something will give. So I'm having to learn how to not do all that, lol..
Thanks. Those initial performance figures bode well I'd say.
The shading and highlights look really cool. It's going to make skinning interesting, that's for sure.
Have started throwing together a quickie character tool. Need to fix the camera on it a bit before releasing.
Developer Diary #2 up at http://alexff.com
QuoteI added WASD controls to walk around, put up little portraits (can't click em, but they look cool), and you could press the number keys 1-8 to choose which squad member to control. Yes 1-8! Unlike FF, I wanted there to be the possibility of having big squads. A 7-man Justice League needed to be possible, dammit!
Both are things that I had put on a bunch of those "Freedom Force 3" wishlist threads. More than 4 members is a no brainer (X-Men is a great example of a team that does not work with just 4 on the field) and the WASD controls are really cool. After playing Dragon Age I fell in love with being able to just move around like I would in an action game instead of having to click everywhere. Point and click is the heart of any tactical game but WASD controls kind of saves you some time getting from point A to point B and feels more natural.
Just finished up a big new milestone (0.3.0) which features tons of new features and is just a lot more stable. Will do a dev diary on it soon.
Work on 0.3.1 , of course, is well underway - lots of stuff in that too:
1 little glimpse - Tommy has some great ideas on redefining what animated melee should look like. That and some grappling,flying, and er... other features we've been designing should make this game pretty dang cool.
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/melee_pain_dodge_matchup.jpg)
Sweet. Looks like you've got a coordinated dodge thing going. It'll be excellent for all the martial arts types.
Oooh! Now that looks pretty cool. :)
Cant wait to read the new dev diary, but I agree that the fight looks good!
this is awesome...
you just blew my mind
(lurking around.... absent but not gone...)
That pic above was an early version of the melee combat system we are developing.
At the moment we are aiming towards 7 types of melee: today I'll tell you a bit about the 3 most basic ones: left, right, low.
The idea of left/right/low is that the attacker comes from those directions, with one of a random bunch of melee animations made for those directions. So most melee-lefts use the left arm, melee-rights mostly use the right arm. The dodge anim is played if the target successfully dodges, a dodge-left anim is called from the dodge-left pool if the attack was a melee-left, a dodge-right if it was a melee-right, and a dodge-low if it was a melee-low. A hit calls a "pain" animation, and these too may end up being direction sensitive.
Here's one of my favourite matches to watch, Cap Vs Batman, (which some may remember from the classic Busiek/Perez JLA Avengers series):
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/cap_v_bats_combatsystem.jpg)
I'm still tweaking the animations, and the pic is without the "low" stuff, just some of the left/right melee/dodge combinations, and only a fraction of those.
The system Alex has developed is remarkable. It's incredibly flexible but simple to use, and allows characters to access "generic" animation pools, which is what Cap and Bats are using here.
These will be broad categories like male_basic (seen above), male_agile, male_martial_artist, male_melee_weapon and so on.
Extra custom animations can also be individually assigned to any character, so when I make some custom shield-using melees for Cap, he will get those in his own anims folder, and probably some custom dodges. These custom, character specific, anims can be played in addition to the "generic" set, or they can replace any, or all of them.
You could also take animations from male_basic, male_agile, martial_artist and mix them into the custom character-specific animation folder to build the Batman you want, who is part martial-artist, part acrobat, and part street-fighter.
Or, you can give a character their own completely exclusive custom animation set made just for them.
That's the current state of play on that part of the melee-combat system.
But I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about an interesting thing I've discovered about animations in panda.
You know how in FF if you give a male_basic sized character male_hulking keyframes they get all stretched and distorted? Or if you try to use male keyframes with a female character the same happens?
Well, the same thing happens in panda.
But.
Because the panda egg files are editable in a text editor, I've looked into them and figured out how to change the dimensions of the biped within the animations, so you can use a male_hulking type animation on a male_basic sized character without stretching or distortion.
Basically, there is a map of the positions of all the bones marked as x,y,z co-ordinates within each animation file. One needs only to copy these x,y,z values for each bone from a male_basic animation into the male_hulking, and the animation will work.
Now, what I need from the more clever forum members is some help with the next step, which is to stop copying/pasting by hand, (which takes about 30 minutes per animation), and move on to an animation conversion tool, or batch file, or something.
This would take an animation file, and a set of the co-ordinate values of the desired character size (I can build a library of those if necessary), and overwrite the animation's own x,y,z values for each bone with those from the desired character.
And preferably be able to save the output somewhere else, and do batch conversions rather than one-at-a-time.
Please pm me if you think that you can help, as any assistance would be most welcome.
Interesting! The system is looking very much like was I would have been hoping for in an ideal world. I'll PM you about the conversion script (which shouldn't stop someone else to have a go at it).
This melee system is really exciting. I really appreciate you guys sharing your progress with us.
Dev Diary #3 now up at http://alexff.com
Quote from: abenavides on September 20, 2010, 02:46:30 PM
Dev Diary #3 now up at http://alexff.com
So why did 'all work on SuperSquad' stop, out of curiosity?
Alex do you have or planning any kind of setting for a hero's material? Such as a hero being made of metal (like Colossus) which could be used as a flag for magnetic and other abilities like in FFX. I imagine things like that could be set as traits.
I really like reading about the process of making this. It's very interesting. I'm curious about system requirements. I realize I'm asking very early but do you think they'll be comparable to FF or significantly higher?
I cannot believe I missed this thread.
This is... wow.
Just wow.
Quote from: BlueBard on September 20, 2010, 03:06:09 PM
Quote from: abenavides on September 20, 2010, 02:46:30 PM
Dev Diary #3 now up at http://alexff.com
So why did 'all work on SuperSquad' stop, out of curiosity?
He is remaking XCom and a couple more classic games over the weekend. Hahaha, joking, no clue but given how crazy all the updates have it should be something interesting.
And yeah, glad to see you guy's are kind of starting from scratch (which is inevitable of course) since you are doing all kinds of stuff most us community members never dreamed of (context melee, damage decals, etc). If you guy's eventually need some non technical "pure manpower" help let me know, such as a boring text updating chore like you mention above.
Quote from: Podmark on September 20, 2010, 03:44:50 PM
Alex do you have or planning any kind of setting for a hero's material? Such as a hero being made of metal (like Colossus) which could be used as a flag for magnetic and other abilities like in FFX. I imagine things like that could be set as traits.
I really like reading about the process of making this. It's very interesting. I'm curious about system requirements. I realize I'm asking very early but do you think they'll be comparable to FF or significantly higher?
Alex can answer the metal material question, as I don't know, offhand.
As to system requirements, I think to some extent they will be higher, if you want to see it the way I have it in these screenshots.
If only because of things like bump/parallax mapping, which weren't generally available back when ff came out.
Not necessarily massively higher though.
I can tell you that the polycount of the characters is the same as FF meshes, for the most part. Other than having fingers, my male_basic is the same polycount as irrational's.
And I am a lot more conscious of framerate than when making models for an 8-year-old game, so most, if not all of the meshes you see in screen shots are a smaller filesize, lower polycount, and use less textures than the ff equivalents I've made.
But, I am generally making larger textures than some ff meshes because of the extra detail the engine supports for things like bumpmaps. But "only" 1024 by 1024, and Panda can be set to use a maximum texture size and scale down anything larger.
We will have Level Of Detail (LOD) on as much geometry as possible, this switches in lower polycount models if something is distant from the camera. We will have mipmapping (which does a similar thing for textures at a distance) on all textures.
I can also tell you that I can still choke FF (or v3R) to a standstill, even on my 8-years-later pc with a spec way, way beyond FF's requirements and a graphics card quite happy with most of todays games at reasonable settings. So in some ways its a hard one to answer. My current rig still cant give me 60fps in ff with FFX and 30 characters on-screen.
At the moment, with a city scene, 16-20 chars on-screen and AI controlled, I still get 40-70 fps, running at 1920 x 1080. And thats without the LOD in place, with models and textures un-optimized, and the code not completely finished. Last time Alex did a code optimization I got a 20-30 FPS boost.
The game will be scalable, in terms of graphics settings. Lower end systems will of course be able to turn down resolution, turn off per-pixel lighting, shadows, lighting FX and so on.
I think that we both want to make a game that's fun to re-play, and as, or more, customizable than FF, not some graphics-monster eye-candy fest that people play once and move on to the next shiny game.
So I think that if you tried to play our game on the pc you had when FF came out, you'd have to go lo-res, no fancy fx and no levels with 50 people on-screen. but I think that it might still be just about playable
(*not a legally binding statement. By reading this you acknowledge that tommyboy is entitled to half of any future earnings you may receive. Offer void in Canada an Northern Ireland)
Yes, eventually there will be "material" traits added (also thinking of adding gender and a few other things). I am expecting to add basic ones like metal, but also have a way to add special flags you want, for example "alien" or "made in japan" that you can chk with our own scripts.
Concrete-like Stone but vulnerable to heat*.
Diamond-Highly Resistant to Crushing and Piercing, Resistant to everything else except Mystical and Mental.
Uranium-Like Metal but Resistant to Energy and Highly Resistant to Radiation.
Mithril-Like Metal but Resistant to Energy and Highly Resistant to Mystical.
Plastic-Like Rubber but Resistant to Acid.
*I've seen a Concrete described at Freedom Fortress, but whoever came up with that probably has never tried to cut a steel plate out of a concrete wall with an acetylene torch.
One of the screenshots shows individual selectable resistances, so I don't think material will have anything to do with that anyway, which is better, I think. Alex can correct me if I'm wrong on that.
What if in addition to defining traits (which makes sense form a game engine/gameplay perspective), each character could just be assigned tags (like anything social network related) so that you could implement checks on basically anything. It would be up to the person scripting things to determine how they are used (if at all), but if a character were flagged as "Avengers, Short, Old, injured, goldenage, ultimates" etc... it could be used as like XML for characters allowing them to be defined and tagged with any kind of info that may or may not be used but personalized for each player as the tags are not essential to the basic gameplay.
It could be used with sorting and viewing characters if you have 1000's of them and you just want to view/select ones tagged with certain terms.
Cat, yep you've got it right. Since Resistances are directly controllable by you , there's no need to come up with materials for every combo.
Goggles, yep, the "tag" idea is exactly what I meant by "flags". I would like it to be open-ended text so people can put in whatever they like to use in their game or for filtering.
Thanks Tommy.
That sounds good Alex. I like the idea of flags because we could have a Kryptonian flag then create a Kryptonite object that effects only Kryptonians, etc.
Glad to see that there will be material traits besides the drop down resistances (which Freedom Force needed baddly). I got really happy when I saw that early drop down screenshot.
As for flags that is one of those things I put in most of my "sequel" threads, so I'm happy to see you are considering it. It would rock to be able to instantly get all the "avengers" I have made or perhaps do "peter parker" and get all his costumes or "heavy hitter" and get all my hulk and superman level fighters.
Also have you considered equipment slots? I've always liked the idea of "powers" tied into equipment as an option... stuff like having characters pull a gun if it is not meshed to them may or may not be possible but I think it would be a great way to fine tune a character before sending them on a mission, adding to their prestige cost therefore lowering your reward. What would rock is is players can create these similar to characters but in a separate category. Examples:
Bullet Proof Vest: +1 piercing resistance. (Batman might equip when going after gun smugglers)
Knuckle Dusters: extra melee damage.
Plastic explosive: 1 use summon of a bomb
More interesting is using it as power stacks:
Symbiote costume: extra strenght, agility, web attack, weaknesses
Vampirsm: hypnotic gaze, life stealing attack, etc.
That way you could do some crazy "what if" situations if you want.
Just read the dev diary. Man, I'm really excited about this game. Keep the diaries coming :)
Uhh.....Holy...Wow.
I have so much more to say, but for now, I think that will stand. What a testament to the dedication of some members of the community :wub:
I don't see why Cap and Batman should hog all the attention...
"Thou desireth Aerial Melee? Thou desireth Aerial Melee? Thou canst not HANDLE Aerial Melee!"
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/aerial_melee1.jpg)
Aerial melee, now with 20% more awesome....
:thumbup:
Very cool... love how the characters are looking with the extra effects too.
Wow, i'm really impressed with how far you guys have taken this whole panda project thing. You guys are really good. :o
Seeing how you guys are slowly being able to make everything look and feel a lot like Freedom Force and more, it's all cool and great to me too, but don't you guys worry that there will be some legal issues here? :unsure:
Quote from: Outcast on September 25, 2010, 04:21:45 PM
Wow, i'm really impressed with how far you guys have taken this whole panda project thing. You guys are really good. :o
Seeing how you guys are slowly being able to make everything look and feel a lot like Freedom Force and more, it's all cool and great to me too, but don't you guys worry that there will be some legal issues here? :unsure:
No.
The game we release will not use or contain any copyrighted characters, or any models, textures, animations, sounds, music, artwork or code from anyone except ourselves.
We are making it all, from scratch.
I'm just showing pictures of well known characters to illustrate that you can create any type of character within the game, even your favourite hero. But none of them will be in the game.
As to any similarities to FF, it's a tactical strategy game. There's a million like it, from Balder's Gate to Command and Conquer. We aren't using any FF code, or art assets, and our game will differ in many significant ways. The idea is not to recreate FF, why would we need to? There already is FF.
That's good to hear Tommy. Just checking to see if you guys got that part covered. That's all. :)
One less thing to worry about. :thumbup:
The animations are impressive! Looks like your fight system will be light years ahead the FF model.
Makes me jealous because I lack the talent to participate. It looks like it will be great once finished.
Quote from: tommyboy on September 25, 2010, 04:40:40 PM
Quote from: Outcast on September 25, 2010, 04:21:45 PM
Wow, i'm really impressed with how far you guys have taken this whole panda project thing. You guys are really good. :o
Seeing how you guys are slowly being able to make everything look and feel a lot like Freedom Force and more, it's all cool and great to me too, but don't you guys worry that there will be some legal issues here? :unsure:
No.
The game we release will not use or contain any copyrighted characters, or any models, textures, animations, sounds, music, artwork or code from anyone except ourselves.
We are making it all, from scratch.
I'm just showing pictures of well known characters to illustrate that you can create any type of character within the game, even your favourite hero. But none of them will be in the game.
As to any similarities to FF, it's a tactical strategy game. There's a million like it, from Balder's Gate to Command and Conquer. We aren't using any FF code, or art assets, and our game will differ in many significant ways. The idea is not to recreate FF, why would we need to? There already is FF.
Will this be a story-line based game? Will there be new standard characters since the original FF ones will not be used?
Quote from: Amazo Version 2.2 on September 29, 2010, 06:13:04 PM
Quote from: tommyboy on September 25, 2010, 04:40:40 PM
Quote from: Outcast on September 25, 2010, 04:21:45 PM
Wow, i'm really impressed with how far you guys have taken this whole panda project thing. You guys are really good. :o
Seeing how you guys are slowly being able to make everything look and feel a lot like Freedom Force and more, it's all cool and great to me too, but don't you guys worry that there will be some legal issues here? :unsure:
No.
The game we release will not use or contain any copyrighted characters, or any models, textures, animations, sounds, music, artwork or code from anyone except ourselves.
We are making it all, from scratch.
I'm just showing pictures of well known characters to illustrate that you can create any type of character within the game, even your favourite hero. But none of them will be in the game.
As to any similarities to FF, it's a tactical strategy game. There's a million like it, from Balder's Gate to Command and Conquer. We aren't using any FF code, or art assets, and our game will differ in many significant ways. The idea is not to recreate FF, why would we need to? There already is FF.
Will this be a story-line based game? Will there be new standard characters since the original FF ones will not be used?
Yes, there will be a story.
Yes, there will be new, original, built in characters. (In fact, one of them has already appeared in a pic in this very thread...)
There will also be danger room type scenarios, quick battles, random missions, and so on, for those who just want to pit superhero v superhero without a narrative rationale to couch it in.
Cool! I was wondering about that, actually. Will you guys be showing us the original characters in the game?
Quote from: Figure Fan on September 29, 2010, 07:08:05 PM
Cool! I was wondering about that, actually. Will you guys be showing us the original characters in the game?
Prior to it's release?
I dunno.
Preview pics and such? I'll ask him about it. Or if he reads this first, you will have asked him about it..
An intermittent series of character previews, part one:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/sgtshield.jpg)
And a later version:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/sgtshield2.jpg)
He may, or may not end up in the game.
Cool looking guy. I see his name is Sgt. Shield.
Quote from: Podmark on October 01, 2010, 12:12:14 AM
Cool looking guy. I see his name is Sgt. Shield.
Yep. I was surprised to see the name had never been used. Obviously elements of Cap in there, but he's not a "super soldier" and absolutely will never throw his shield in battle:
"Throw my shield? In a fight? Son, this is the only thing between me and bullets, knives and the occasional death ray. What kind of idiot would throw away a shield in a fight?"
Never thought I'd finally get to see one of your original creations Tommy. ^_^ Wow, I think that's a really nice character/costume design. And besides being unique, i think the name Sgt Shield kinda has a nice ring to it as well.
I've always enjoyed looking at these creative designs/ideas people come up with. They just always seem fresh and unique to me. I never know what the next one's gonna look like. :cool:
Looking forward to seeing the rest of the original cast of characters that might make it in game.:)
That is one big honkin' shield.
Everytime I open this thread, I just get more and more impressed. Sgt. Shield looks really cool. Thank you guys for putting so much work into this project.
I can't find the words to express how amazing it is, what you've done so far and what you're going to do.
Looks fantastic. Hope that sums it up enough.
This is a fascinating project and I must say I'm impressed. :thumbup:
Soooo....busy busy busy.
Firstly I've been getting the models set up so that they are all compatible with the male_basic anims. Yep, no more stretching or compressing if you give a female character male keyframes, or want those male_basic keys to work with a male_heavy based character..heres a couple of hulks duking it out with the male_basic keyframes
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/hulks_newanim.jpg)
Secondly, I've been setting up the characters to be able to talk and have facial expressions, and animating those for cutscenes, and adding some facial expressions into some of the in-game anims.
Which means cutscenes will not need talking heads (though you could add those if you wanted, I suppose).
Heres some of the work in progress animations from 3ds max for some of the emotion and talking expressions:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/face_anims1.jpg)
I've also been messing around with a system for trees and foliage which is coming along nicely:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/newtrees5-1.jpg)
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/newtrees7.jpg)
And throwing together more combat stuff.
I might be able to post a video of combat later, or tomorrow..
I seem to say this after every post you and Alex make, but this is very impressive. Having all models being able to use the same animations is really interesting, I didn't think something like that would be possible. The facial expressions look really good. Those are a great addition to your game.
So facial animations on actual in game meshes?
:thumbup:
That is a big wow, it would make great screenshots too to see a character flinching as they fly through the air after being blasted with a laser beam. You guys are doing a spectacular job, keep up the great work!
... btw do a youtube search for a game called Underbrush, it is the sequel to Lugaru. They get into some interesting things about foliage using some software to clone trees and branches and stuff to make things look lush without being system intensive.
Also have you dudes done any knockback tests? For me Knockback is part of the soul of Freedom Force (love watching characters get knocked into buildings and across the map). Just curious.
Facial animations?! That's amazing! I was thinking it would cool to have more of that kind of thing in FF through animated skins that I was playing with on a few customs I did. It's a lot of work just doing that, but what you're doing is even better! Those trees are looking good too and the compatibility with male and female basic. Pure awesomeness!
Very impressive. I look forward to seeing this come out.
Quote from: tommyboy on October 17, 2010, 11:24:21 PM
Soooo....busy busy busy.
Firstly I've been getting the models set up so that they are all compatible with the male_basic anims. Yep, no more stretching or compressing if you give a female character male keyframes, or want those male_basic keys to work with a male_heavy based character..heres a couple of hulks duking it out with the male_basic keyframes
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/hulks_newanim.jpg)
:thumbup:
Yep, Tommy's whipped up a ton of new art/model improvements lately. I've been doing less fun but still necessary stuff to optimize code, add a new object editor tool, and pave the way for ranged combat.
My biggest pain-in-the-butt right now is getting flying chars to land on rooftops properly. (got them to stop running through walls - but the rooftops - not quite :) )
Did meet up with Tommy in person recently which was fantastic. We definitely see eye-to-eye on a lot of what we want the game to be. His Sgt Shield also inspired me to dust off some personal creations to add as well.
So it's all good. Hopefully a new Dev Diary soon.
Pod, yeah, getting keyframe compatibility between different sized meshes has been a bit of a bear to do, but should be worthwhile for the freedom it will give.
I'm still hoping an animation conversion tool is possible, so even if a model is not set up correctly to be compatible, you should be able to convert animations to work with it. Fingers crossed on that one.
I should stress that, like facial expressions, meshes don't have to be set up as animation-compatible, they can be made as "ordinary" FF type meshes (exported for Panda) and will still work in-game as long as you provide your own compatible animations. We always try to let people have as much choice as possible, whilst trying to maintain the most compatibility. I can convert my basic FF max files in about half an hour if they aren't set up for animation-compatibility and facial expressions, so I'd hope others will be able to do the same. I'll very probably release a library of my Max files to help other meshers get started, so they can see how things are set up. I'm confident nothing I've done will be beyond anyone else's abilities.
Lugaru, I'm hoping we can get a system to blend in facial expressions during gameplay. It may, or may not make the final cut. I'm already adding expressions to various combat anims, pain anims etc., but it's kind of hard to see unless you are zoomed right in, and in slo-mo. It's definitely something I wanted, mainly for cut-scene goodness, but also for the possibilities in-game.
Knockback is on Alex's Big List Of Stuff To Do. Both of us want that in there, without a doubt. He's already got the basics of it figured out, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing what he comes up with as it is always better than what I hope for, or imagine.
Everyone else, thanks for the kind words and encouragement. We would probably do this anyway, but it's nice to know other people will be able to appreciate it.
Now, a little treat. A video I recorded in watch mode, of two chaps fighting.
Obviously these two wont be in the final game, they are for illustration purposes only.
The system is still not perfect, and some of my animations need work. Bear with us, it's still a work-in-progress.
But if you download and watch it, I think that you'll get an idea of why I spend so much time watching...err.. I meant testing...it
It's a 31.5Mb download, and there is no sound.
It starts in slo-mo but then immediately goes to actual game speed.
If you cannot play it, try googling and downloading GOM media player. That works for me.
I hope you like it:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/x9ae3dlw980hb7f/python%202010-10-17%2023-59-26-67.mp4
EDIT: Oh, and please dont post the video on youtube or similar. This is just a demo for you guys, and we don't own those characters and wont be using them. We could do without any "cease and desist" type actioon brought on by people misunderstanding the nature of the game..
I like how characters can push each other around. :thumbup: You mentioned knockback physics being an important factor for you guys. I'm glad to hear that and would be great to have a new game that reacts at least as good as the first FF. Just wondering, will there be physics related attributes like heavy-footed, hollow bones etc.. or will the game handle character's mass in a different way? What's the physics engine like?
Just watched your video Tommy, it's outstanding what you've put together. Really impressed with what you've been able to do.
So who would win in a fight between those two?....
Very cool news and Yeah, I watched the video. I'm not gonna go so far as to say it looks procedurally generated but the sheer variety and response you guys programmed in makes it seem so... it looks like most sorts of attacks, defenses and responses are represented. The fight looks great, especially the little bits of grappling as mentioned above.
Who would win? Read JLA VS AVENGERS, they kind of decide that it would take days for a winner to emerge BUT they are both smart enough to NOT fight each other. ^_^
Thanks.
The video gives a glimpse of how combat will look between ground-based, non-speedster, non-agile, non-martial artist combatants.
Throw in a few other fighting styles, grabs and throws, and you'll get an idea of one on-one melee combat.
Oh, and of course knockback. And, I hope, wielding weapons and anything else you can grab.
Air to air melee combat looks a little different to ground based, and air-ground and ground-air will also have their own look and feel.
I've also briefly discussed water based combat with Alex, we have some ideas for how to accomplish that, but it's a way down the line.
For today, here's a first look at two more of my original characters who may, or may not, appear.
Green Goddess, and Granite Girl:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/granite_girl2.jpg)
Granite Girl will probably have different hair, a different face, and may be more bulked up.
Heres their provisional bios:
Green Goddess: powers; plant control. Think moving trees and giant venus flytraps. Although costume is green coloured, no leaves or plant type stuff in it. She's not a "mother nature" stereotype, but a hard-headed scientist using her own plant growth and control chemicals. May share a powerset with poison ivy, eve, et al, but not a mindset. The plants are a means to an end, not her pals, subjects or pets.
Granite Girl: can transform to stone, but in that form is slow, both in speed and in wits. Makes up for it by being strong, and damage resistant, as one might expect. A bigger drawback is that in stone form she cannot breathe, and not being too bright in that form may pass out, unless she changes back within 3 minutes.
These are just sick Tommy, sick I say...but awesome. :lol:
Quote from: tommyboy on October 19, 2010, 07:38:52 PM
Green Goddess: [...] She's not a "mother nature" stereotype, but a hard-headed scientist...
...A hard-headed scientist with an acute fondness for PVC. :o
And, unless I am much mistaken, Granite Girl's abdomen appears to mark her as something of an (inverted) Sgt. Shield devotee, no?
;)
Spiffy designs, tommyboy! You and Alex might actually convince me to start
playing computer games again (as opposed to simply
modding them,
creating graphics for or related to them, or
composing/recording music for them).
ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Whirled Braker
Quote from: ow_tiobe_sb on October 20, 2010, 02:08:44 PM
Quote from: tommyboy on October 19, 2010, 07:38:52 PM
Green Goddess: [...] She's not a "mother nature" stereotype, but a hard-headed scientist...
...A hard-headed scientist with an acute fondness for PVC. :o
And, unless I am much mistaken, Granite Girl's abdomen appears to mark her as something of an (inverted) Sgt. Shield devotee, no?
;)
Spiffy designs, tommyboy! You and Alex might actually convince me to start playing computer games again (as opposed to simply modding them, creating graphics for or related to them, or composing/recording music for them).
ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Whirled Braker
Hadn't noticed that before, good eye.
Quote from: ow_tiobe_sb on October 20, 2010, 02:08:44 PM
Quote from: tommyboy on October 19, 2010, 07:38:52 PM
Green Goddess: [...] She's not a "mother nature" stereotype, but a hard-headed scientist...
...A hard-headed scientist with an acute fondness for PVC. :o
And, unless I am much mistaken, Granite Girl's abdomen appears to mark her as something of an (inverted) Sgt. Shield devotee, no?
;)
Spiffy designs, tommyboy! You and Alex might actually convince me to start playing computer games again (as opposed to simply modding them, creating graphics for or related to them, or composing/recording music for them).
ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Whirled Braker
Green Goddess is confident to the point of arrogant (using the name "Goddess" after all). She is aware of her physical beauty, and the distracting effect her costume has on men, particularly. She could wear a boiler suit and lab coat, but is pragmatic and will use her appearance to her advantage.
The Granite Girl/ Sarge Shield connection is actually a coincidence. Her skin is derived from a skin of human female musculature sans epidermis. The pic I copied for the abdomen laid out those muscles thus. I wanted her to look really ripped and *ahem* chiseled, hence the very visible musculature, hence the accidental "inverted logo".
hey tom, will you make the panda based meshes available for download so that we caould get a look at them as far as nifskope or skinning purposes? thanks.
Quote from: Amazo Version 2.2 on October 21, 2010, 03:19:20 PM
hey tom, will you make the panda based meshes available for download so that we caould get a look at them as far as nifskope or skinning purposes? thanks.
Yes, and no.
As far as nifskope is concerned, they simply aren't .nif files, so nifskope is never going to open them.
We are still hoping to be able to release some meshes and a viewer of some sort for people to play with, (or a demo of the game which will effectively be the same thing as there is a character viewer built in).
But since we are still establishing some of the basic building blocks and conventions, it may be a while till that happens.
Worst case scenario, if we cannot get a "character tool" or demo together, I can release some models and skins, and using pview.exe (which is part of the Panda SDK and can be downloaded for free) people can view and skin them to their hearts desire.
But again, I'm still not done with what the basic format will be, so I don't want to release something which will not allow people to make their own stuff for the game. As I've said before, I am using similar enough mapping on my own models that most FF skins would work with very little alteration, albeit needing new "_refl" and "_bump" textures to look their best..
solid. thanks tom. thanks for putting all this work into such an incredible endeaver. i'm really enjoying watching this progress.
Did you say "_Bump"? Ohhhh...I've been so waiting for something with that ability in an FF-based game for such a long time!!!
Do you plan on adding more attack types like sound for Banshee and Blackbolt?
Quote from: nrozich on November 07, 2010, 04:53:51 AM
Do you plan on adding more attack types like sound for Banshee and Blackbolt?
Probably, though to my mind, contrary to comic-book-physics, sound is just another form of kinetic energy, (except when resonance is involved). If you are vulnerable to a punch in the face, you are vulnerable to a sonic beam, if not, then not.
Characters who can shift frequencies to create resonant damage (and hey, maybe they all do that, subconsciously, for all I know) get a boost, in my world-view.
So I tend to think it doesn't require any fancy extra coding, though I guess it could be in the "damage type" list even though I would have it as a subset of "impact/concussive/kinetic".
Ultimately, that kind of decision falls to Alex, as he has to code it in. The version I have of the game would probably have sonic as a subset of "physical" damage. That could change.
And lest ye think a lack of posts mean we have given up, we haven't.
I have some pc problems which necessitate replacing a hard drive, and am loathe to model whilst there is risk of losing stuff.
But beyond that I need a particular bit of code written and proven before I can progress, as it will affect the structure of every character mesh, and pretty much every animation too, and I don't want to have to remake everything if I can avoid it.
We've also been playing with stuff like setting up weapons or hair (or anything else) as being defined and added in hero files, or at the character creation screen, and code to "draw/holster/drop/pickup" weapons. To spell out the obvious, weapons will not need to be "baked into" a mesh. Mjolnir or an uzi can be separate model objects which are picked up, dropped, stolen, used, etc. The code we have discussed may have powers assigned to weapons, so if you pick up a gun, the power "shoot bullet" becomes available to you. Pick up a sword, and "stab" or "slice" are added to your powerset.
There are still lots of wrinkles to iron, and decisions to make.
Here's the proof of concept "draw/holster code" screenshot, below.
Neither character model was made with a gun or hammer in it, these are separate "weapon" models assigned in the hero file and called by code, and a key pressed to draw or holster them, with a custom animation played upon doing so.
Obviously Batman wouldn't use a gun, and both weapons need much tweaking on the "holster" positions and rotations. But you can sort of see the idea..
I favour a tag assigned to weapons that will define where a weapon gets holstered, be it hip, back, calf, etc.
It's all still an on-going process.
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/weapon_draw1.jpg)
That weapons idea is great Tommy. You guys got some amazing stuff going on here.
Everything is looking great so far. Keep up the good work. I can't help but notice the characters look a bit like plastic though. How do you plan on addressing that?
Quote from: nrozich on November 07, 2010, 05:28:04 PM
Everything is looking great so far. Keep up the good work. I can't help but notice the characters look a bit like plastic though. How do you plan on addressing that?
I'm not sure what you mean by "plastic".
It's possible that you refer to the level of specularity, (or shinyness, or reflectivity).
This will vary from character to character, depending on their costume and the materials they are made of.
Personally, I prefer what I've been doing, to what seems, to me, to be the dull, flat, matte colours which are the alternative.
But it's an artistic choice. If Alex tells me to tone down the specularity, I will do so.
I've chosen the levels I've chosen because with more specularity you get more visible normal and bump-mapping.
I know some people dont like that look, as it can make the characters look like "action figures", (as was often complained of in marvel Ultimate Alliance).
If other people dislike it, the options for them would be to turn off "per pixel" lighting, or, reflections, or to edit or delete the "_refl" textures.
I'm sure that as other artists make content for the game other styles and looks will become apparent, so if you don't like my particular style, you will have other choices.
I think it's the way the new bump mapping or whatever is turning out that leaves that impression. Since you're using temporary skins with quickly generated maps, it doesn't always work out perfection. This will be refined later on, I am sure.
Thanks for the clarification. Mainly I'm talking about for example, Wonder Woman. She looks kinda bony and indented in the upper body. Since its a placeholder I'm sure thats just the issue.
Quote from: nrozich on November 07, 2010, 06:57:19 PM
Thanks for the clarification. Mainly I'm talking about for example, Wonder Woman. She looks kinda bony and indented in the upper body. Since its a placeholder I'm sure thats just the issue.
That folded arms pose seen at that angle does look horrible, I'll grant you.
I would hope this little montage will put your mind at rest a little that in other poses, and at other angles, she looks a bit better:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/wonderwoman.jpg)
But yes, it's all work in progress stuff, and I've been experimenting with how far you can take the bumpmapping. Perhaps I overdid it on her upper body.
Will beam attacks be reflectable in this?
I don't think they were in FF (but it's been a while since I've played around in the danger room so I could be wrong) and that would be pretty awesome if they are. Just a thought that occurred to me today.
Quote from: GoldenGladiator on November 07, 2010, 08:16:28 PM
Will beam attacks be reflectable in this?
I don't think they were in FF (but it's been a while since I've played around in the danger room so I could be wrong) and that would be pretty awesome if they are. Just a thought that occurred to me today.
I hope that they will be reflect-able. At least once, anyway.
But since we have barely begun work on how to represent and implement beams, I don't know for sure.
WW's muscles are over emphasized there to the point where she looks emaciated.
Again, I think that's just an issue with the new mapping.
Items are a huge deal to me, I love the idea of being able to equip things that add powers and for anyone to be able to do so.
seems like a really good concept with a lot of potential.
Being able to add equipment could a good way to make super inventors like Brainiac 5 and such more useful in the game. Of course, the script writer would have to write that into their storyy; unless, you can buy equipment during creation and advancement stages.
The more I see of this thread, the more it really blows my mind. You two have done so much so far, it's crazy awesome.
It's like the inmates finally got control of the asylum, and you're running things the way we've been whining for for years.
Waiting patiently for the next dev diary.
Quote from: catwhowalksbyhimselfWW's muscles are over emphasized there to the point where she looks emaciated.
Again, I think that's just an issue with the new mapping.
If i may, i don't think the bump map must necessarily be redone, it looks more like the bump mapping is set to a default setting that is too high (most likely 100).
If there's a way to directly find a percentage modifier inside the 3d engine, tone it done to 25/30.
The thing is, with the current setting; every white pixel on the bump map is at level 0 (no distance from the surface of the mesh), and every black pixel is at level 100 (assuming that's the default setting). The gap between 2 points is therefore too high, giving this "plastic" (sometimes called "wet") aspect to the mesh.
By reducing the bump mapping to 30, you still get an added volume effect, but the range is smaller, and the muscle won't seem to "pop out" so much, smoothing the result.
It's a common problem when you first try bump mapping, the default setting is always too high.
(note that i never used a 3d engine, i'm just talking from my experience in 3d architecture in 3ds max)
edit: not sure i was clear, here's an example, with bump mapping at 30 on the left, and at 100 on the right.
http://img44.imageshack.us/i/bumplevel.jpg/ (http://img44.imageshack.us/i/bumplevel.jpg/)
Quote from: Trelau on November 20, 2010, 10:04:13 PM
Quote from: catwhowalksbyhimselfWW's muscles are over emphasized there to the point where she looks emaciated.
Again, I think that's just an issue with the new mapping.
If i may, i don't think the bump map must necessarily be redone, it looks more like the bump mapping is set to a default setting that is too high (most likely 100).
If there's a way to directly find a percentage modifier inside the 3d engine, tone it done to 25/30.
The thing is, with the current setting; every white pixel on the bump map is at level 0 (no distance from the surface of the mesh), and every black pixel is at level 100 (assuming that's the default setting). The gap between 2 points is therefore too high, giving this "plastic" (sometimes called "wet") aspect to the mesh.
By reducing the bump mapping to 30, you still get an added volume effect, but the range is smaller, and the muscle won't seem to "pop out" so much, smoothing the result.
It's a common problem when you first try bump mapping, the default setting is always too high.
(note that i never used a 3d engine, i'm just talking from my experience in 3d architecture in 3ds max)
edit: not sure i was clear, here's an example, with bump mapping at 30 on the left, and at 100 on the right.
http://img44.imageshack.us/i/bumplevel.jpg/ (http://img44.imageshack.us/i/bumplevel.jpg/)
Yep, that's pretty much spot on. As I said earlier, I've been playing around with the bumpmapping, and did crank up the values on the map itself, rather than the setting in the model. The values used in the 3dsMax itself are the default ones, about 30, IIRC.
I can dial it back in the map, or most likely, keep the higher value for some parts which really need the extra definition (I'm currently using bumpmapping to define her bracers, rather than model them, so there its very useful), and lessen it on the musculature.
Or perhaps I'll "flesh out" the model itself, it was originally made for a younger woman than Diana, and is therefore slighter than it might be.
Since using bumpmapping is new to me, I'm learning how best to skin it as I go. It's fun, but quite different from traditional skinning, and that's why I occasionally stumble a little as I go.
As ever, I welcome criticism, and thank those offering it. It all helps.
If you want to actually add detail to a mesh with just a map, you shouldn't use bump mapping, but, Normal Mapping or displacement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping)
Normal mapping is what is used to add a great amount of detail on a otherwise plain mesh.
Bump mapping should only be used to add texture (grain, scale-skin effect, defining the vein in the wood, etc)
Normal mapping on the other hand is the perfect tool to transform a simple cylinder in a finely crafted bracer
If the engine supports it, it might be a better choice. But to be fair, normal mapping takes a little more work: you actually have to make an "enhanced" mesh on wich you actually model the details, then you project it on the base mesh, and you get a map (looks like a bump map, except it goes from blue to red to define the volume instead of just grey).
Normal map is more precise than bump, and has the advantage of allowing you to carve your mesh: bump mapping can only add volume on the surface of the mesh, normal mapping allows you to move every point above or under its initial position on the mesh.
Or to put it more clearly:
(http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/Radeonx850xtpeagp/images/normalmapb.jpg)
Yes, I actually mean Normal mapping when I use the term "bumpmapping". It's a bad habit I've gotten into.
Panda supports Normal mapping, Bump Mapping (often called "parallax" or "height"), and will at some point get Ambient Occlusion.
For now, the Normal Mapping is what I use most. The Bump/height/parallax is a bit more problematic. It does work, but the results arent great (at least, not the way I've been doing it).
But rather than make hi-poly models as a source for the displacement maps, I'm tending to make the Normal/displacement maps by hand. That may change, but for now, it's the quickest way to get it done.
If you intend to do a lot of characters, doing it by hand is clearly a lot faster (like, a loooooot)
And panda will include ambiant occlusion? Damn, definitely looking forward to it. You basically have your hands on an industry-level video game engine (instead the most recent stuff, like particles and realistic physics maybe) and with guys with your talents, i'm pretty sure we'll get to see some cool stuff.
I'll try to find some info on how to do normal maps by hand, as i've never done so myself. If i find something useful i'll let you know.
Actually, the popular game Torchlight is made using Panda, so that will give you an idea of what it's capable.
Quote from: catwhowalksbyhimself on November 21, 2010, 05:04:55 PM
Actually, the popular game Torchlight is made using Panda, so that will give you an idea of what it's capable.
For real? Love torchlight.
How is this coming along?
I was JUST talking about this the other night. Now that FR seems to be back, how is this project progressing?
Another bump. Btw I'm back too.
add me to the group of curisous cats please.
I just checked in hoping for a little news on this extremely promising project. I guess I'm a curious cat too!
did you notice my 'something big' post?
Quote from: bearded on November 27, 2011, 10:22:41 PM
did you notice my 'something big' post?
Just in case...
http://freedomreborn.net/forums/index.php?topic=54778.0
Howdy folks, it looked like Alex posted an update on this at his site:
http://www.alexff.com/
Thanks for the tip Benton.
Still very interested in this project, I really hope it goes further.
Wow. Lots of progress.
I am truley amazed with progress on this project and hope for continued success!
Respectfully,
Heya,
Dev Diary #5 is now up at http://alexff.com.
I'll be interested to see how this goes. I'm keeping an eye on both your project and Bearded's (as far as I'm concerned, 2 new games=more potential for awesome) and I'm really happy to see what you've done so far. I can't wait for the pre-alphas to come out so I can fiddle with the art tools... see which works better from my perspective.
I've even got a bump map for my av ready and waiting.
I'm very interested in this project. Seeing things like synchronized melee and flying melee along with larger character sets is very exciting.
Thanks for your continued work Alex.
This is looking really cool, Alex. I'm glad to see it's still coming along. :)
I get more excited every time I hear more about it. Between this and bearded's project, we have some great stuff to look forward to.
If this were to go commercial, I would of course be one of the first in line to shell out the cash.
Finally got my flying heroes to land on a roof and not sink through it!
This is one of the last things I remember working on when I stopped in 2010, so I'm pretty stoked that I got it working. :thumbup:
grats!
I'm glad to see you guys are still keeping at this.
Congratulations on making more progress on the project. But..i can only imagine that coding this all alone must be hell... :wacko:
Nah, it's one of my hobbies , like playing guitar.
It would be a lot more work if I had to coordinate or lead a team of programmers (which is what I do at work :) )
Learning about making a 3d game has been great.
Quote from: abenavides on January 26, 2012, 01:45:19 PM
Nah, it's one of my hobbies , like playing guitar.
It would be a lot more work if I had to coordinate or lead a team of programmers (which is what I do at work :) )
Learning about making a 3d game has been great.
on the other hand, i'm putting all my free time into mine. learning c# and java and boo by examples and tutorials. it is hard work, but very rewarding.
Quickie Dev Diary update today !
Brief, but maybe some interesting tidbits.
http://alexff.com/
Thanks for the update Alex. I'm very curious on how this might differ from Freedom Force.
I will say that I'm very happy you've separated resistances from Traits. One thing I loved about Freedom Force was how you could use it to pretty accurately depict almost any hero. But the limited number of Attributes really hindered that, especially before FFX. In an earlier Diary you stated you'd be limiting characters to 10 traits, while that sounds like plenty (especially with Resistances separated) I'm curious why you capped it at all. Is there a programming reason?
Hi Podmark,
Good questions.
Yes, it was capped just because it's easier to program that way.
However, the big design change I mentioned in my last Diary would affect this very radically.
Playing catch up here. I'd love to see some more of the original characters possible.
Here's a couple of preview pics (more characters stlill being created and even these aren't finalized yet)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/abenavides/FF/screenshot-Mon-Feb-06-21-42-28-2012-9017.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/abenavides/FF/screenshot-Mon-Feb-06-21-42-44-2012-10090.jpg)
Looking good.
Have you switched to a cool down power use?
It's nice to see some of the original characters for super squad(the game/project). :)
I recognize a few of them and know that Tommyboy created them. But are all these characters his creation? Or are there some which you yourself created? ^_^
The way powers work is being overhauled right now. Cool down is a real possibility but I haven't finalized.
Re: the pics above - all original characters.
3 by Tommyman, 3 by myself, and 3 by Lightning man , all used with permission :)
By the way , it wasn't planned for them to be evenly distributed among the creators that way. :) it just happened and I didn't realize it till I counted them just now.
Quote from: abenavides on February 07, 2012, 02:49:15 PM
Re: the pics above - all original characters.
3 by Tommyman, 3 by myself, and 3 by Lightning man , all used with permission :)
Nice...i wonder which 3 are yours and which 3 are by Lightning man. :)
Quote from: abenavides on February 07, 2012, 02:49:15 PM
The way powers work is being overhauled right now. Cool down is a real possibility but I haven't finalized.
What's this cool down power feature? Is this the waiting time for energy levels to recharge after a power has been used? :huh:
Cool down is a feature of some games where a power is used and cannot be used again until some time has passed. You still need to spend energy to use it, but you may have to wait until it "cools down". Not saying this all be in ss, but I'm looking at all options.
T help you guess which characters are which - tommy did skin 6 of the 9, including the 3 characters created by Lightningman. I have done the skins for the 3 characters I created.
Quote from: abenavides on February 07, 2012, 03:22:55 PM
T help you guess which characters are which - tommy did skin 6 of the 9, including the 3 characters created by Lightningman. I have done the skins for the 3 characters I created.
Haha. I think i know which 3 are yours Abenavides. :) Hyperwave (red suit and yellow triangle emblem guy), The Atomic Superman (on his left), and the Blue girl with the yellow utility belt. Right? :D
Yep!
Tommyboy's bumpmapping and your clue helped a lot Alex. :P
Yes, I havent finished my skins yet, so still need to take advantage of special graphics features. I work on them to take a break from coding. I can think of a bunch more characters that will be added eventually.
Alex, I'm eagerly following y'all's project. This is great news and info, thanks for sharing. As for power usage, this is, of course, y'all's project, but if you're interested in opinions, let me say that I really dislike cooldown models for power usage. I'm think an energy system is way WAY better. Feel free to disregard my thoughts, though ;)
I'm impressed with how much progress you done, guys. It looks like an impressive game.
The original characters are looking good too, I'm already curious about their back stories.
Quote from: BentonGrey on February 07, 2012, 08:04:23 PM
Alex, I'm eagerly following y'all's project. This is great news and info, thanks for sharing. As for power usage, this is, of course, y'all's project, but if you're interested in opinions, let me say that I really dislike cooldown models for power usage. I'm think an energy system is way WAY better. Feel free to disregard my thoughts, though ;)
I don't know how much coding and scripting this would require, as I'm a total n00b at this, and this is just a mere suggestion, but could it be possible to make an option in the "Game Options" menu that lets the player use either system, or both?
Quote from: BentonGrey on February 07, 2012, 08:04:23 PMAs for power usage, this is, of course, y'all's project, but if you're interested in opinions, let me say that I really dislike cooldown models for power usage. I'm think an energy system is way WAY better. Feel free to disregard my thoughts, though ;)
Quote from: spydermann93 on February 07, 2012, 11:14:06 PMbut could it be possible to make an option in the "Game Options" menu that lets the player use either system, or both?
I second these opinions, but as Benton said it's your game make the decision you like best.
I had a work colleague who, whenever anyone asked him if something was possible to add, "sure. anything is possible given enough time and money."
So , option for both systems - possible. Likely? probably not as I prefer picking one so I can finish this someday :).
That being said - purely energy-based is simpler to develop (and is kinda already implemented). I would get around to finalizing this when real playtesting starts and I start seeing how unbalanced all the powers are :)
(Tommy recently destroyed an enemy squad with one character by just growing a character to giant size and going invisible. So there's plenty to do in that area :) )
Thanks for the feedback, it's always helpful.
This is gonna sound crazy but... balancing powers should be our last concern. I think part of the problems :ffvstr: had was that they tried to rebalance things to be fair in multiplayer, killing a lot of range, transfered inertia on thrown objects and other features.
I wanna be able to make Superman and Aunt May, and not be surprised when the guy in blue wins.
Know what you mean and it is my last concern, as I'll be looking at it last when all the code is done :)
However, it doesn't mean that all chars are created equal - it just means I wouldn't want 1 specific power or way to play overpowered - if I give Aunt May a specific power (say invisibility) she can now beat Superman every time. This would be due to the power being very cheap or not costing enough energy or recharging too fast - it could be a million things. A complex area but the goal will always be for it to be fun.
Thanks for posting pics Alex, I look forward to following this along.
A little too busy to write a Dev Diary, but a quick update:
- Finished v0.3.2 , which delivered 34 items (25 new features, 9 bug fixes)
- Working on v0.3.3 which is planning to also deliver 34 items (24 new, 10 bug fixes)
Major revision to a number of areas are underway:
- Camera control has been totally reworked to be more natural and eliminate some bugs
- Movement for non-player characters also totally reworked to be more realistic and AI-efficient
- Support for glowing items in skins
- Editor allows player to set his hero's height anywhere from 4 to 10 feet.
- Our patented Sync-Melee ™ has been reworked to use 3ds Max contact frames (something Panda doesn't normally support). This makes the melee fights (ground and flying) look even better.
- Tommy has worked out improved mesh creation techniques which make it possible for all meshes (of all sizes) to share a standard set of anims (100s already in the shared library!)
- Tommy has also just worked out how to get diffuse, normal (bump), glow, and reflection (gloss) maps working in 2 textures instead of 4, greatly optimizing memory.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/abenavides/FF/screenshot_Thu_Feb_02_00_46_04_2012_4534.jpg)
Exciting stuff. Thanks for the update.
QuoteTommy has worked out improved mesh creation techniques which make it possible for all meshes (of all sizes) to share a standard set of anims (100s already in the shared library!)
That is awesome.
Quote from: abenavides on February 14, 2012, 08:50:54 PM
- Editor allows player to set his hero's height anywhere from 4 to 10 feet.
This is awesomely cool. I'm assuming that command then scales the mesh to the appropriate height and proportions. Are there plans to have it work with meshes that are already larger than those values, with the appropriate height labels, or is it felt that most characters beyond those sizes are going to have custom meshes anyway? (godzilla, transformers, galactus, cthulhu, etc)
Wow. If you've added 25 new features and 24 more. You guys are making lots of progress. Congrats. So far the interface is looking nice too. :cool:
i'm in late to say this project is absolutely amazing, congratulations.
i don't know if the kind of help i offer is needed, by the way i can draw loading screens or whatever you guys need.
this of course if :
1) such draws are needed.
2) you like my style of draws for this project (i have some pics on this forum in the artist's alley section as some of you already know.)
this is my DeviantArt gallery: http://naitvalis.deviantart.com/
let me say amazing work again.
Hi naitvalis
Thanks very much . Don't need any artwork right now, but I'll keep it in mind. Your stuff is really nice looking. Thx!
Was on holiday, but have gotten back into coding this past week and the progress has been great. A huge new area of game functionality has opened up. I'll try to post a new dev diary soon.
dont know if this has been asked yet, but is this going to be an online game, or a downloadible one?
Neat, can't wait to see it!
Amazo
This is a downloadable game.
The online version would take me another 5 yrs :)
So much going on with it, haven't had time to post. We have reached a great new level of functionality on this and are working out the kinks. But , it's sweet.
Quote from: abenavides on March 23, 2012, 08:55:16 PM
Amazo
This is a downloadable game.
The online version would take me another 5 yrs :)
So much going on with it, haven't had time to post. We have reached a great new level of functionality on this and are working out the kinks. But , it's sweet.
Sounds cool. I'm excited to see another update :cool:
Still too busy for a proper update - but here's an interesting pic:
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/b7572459-1.jpg)
OK, yes, tons of heroes and it looks very cool.
There's something else all these heroes have in common ... they are using a new feature in the game.
I'll be back to answer that later.
Why is flash in there twice? And it's two copies of Barry too, as that's clearly his belt on both. Y U NO LOVE WALLY!?! WALLY IS TEH BETTERZ!
... sorry, Tomato are am painting display shelves today. Paint fumes gone to brain meat may have.
Well, it could be:
1. Wally in his pre-Shiny costume (in pic)
(http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a384/tommyboy2002/5e7ae750.jpg)
2. A Flash from a parallel Earth (Earth-SS)
3. A Flash from the future (next Thursday, most likely)
4. Flash is so fast, you think you see him in more than 1 place at once
5. I like messing with people (especially the fumes-impaired)
I don't know what the feature is, but Thor has about 60 seconds to reclaim Mjolnir.
Hmmm...let me take a guess....I notice some have hands on their hips, others have their arms crossed, while others just have their arms hanging by their sides...
Could it be an "idle pose" animation loop?
Not it's not an idle pose. We did that it 2009. (in fact there at probably several different idle loops in that pic all randomly selected )
Ok, here's the deal. All the characters in that pic are using 1 mesh.
Quote from: abenavides on April 07, 2012, 12:54:30 AM
Not it's not an idle pose. We did that it 2009. (in fact there at probably several different idle loops in that pic all randomly selected )
Ok, here's the deal. All the characters in that pic are using 1 mesh.
Hmm...alphas?
Quote from: abenavides on April 07, 2012, 12:54:30 AM
Not it's not an idle pose. We did that it 2009. (in fact there at probably several different idle loops in that pic all randomly selected )
Ok, here's the deal. All the characters in that pic are using 1 mesh.
That is seriously cool.
Probably a bit more advanced that alphas, I would guess. I'm definitely in favor of more versatility though.
There are a few alpha parts in there, to control the shape of a few parts, but basically, the game's character editor now allows you to customize parts on your character. I'll try to post a video on this in action.
Quote from: abenavides on April 07, 2012, 07:06:56 PM
There are a few alpha parts in there, to control the shape of a few parts, but basically, the game's character editor now allows you to customize parts on your character. I'll try to post a video on this in action.
Hmmm....
very interesting.
The biggest question I have is how good of a computer will I need to play it. Unless the graphics and other programming elements are super efficient, it looks like it will be a resource hog. As it is, I can barely play FF on the old computers I have.
Osdi, as the game is far from complete , there's no way to answer your question yet. (Though I have no idea how you are coming up with "resource hog" from a bunch of pictures).
I would say that if your computers can't handle FF, which is over 10 yrs old, then you ain't playing this.
I don't mean to necropost here, but I was wondering if this project was still being worked on?
Me too.