Title: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 01, 2005, 09:52:19 am I have decided to create a clone or sequel to UQM Using my Physics 2D Engine (http://Physics2D.sourceforge.net/) for the physics. I would like to use SDL via SDL.NET (http://cs-sdl.sourceforge.net/index.php/Main_Page) for the Graphics and IO so it can also compile on Linux. I first plan to make a newer version of Hyper Melee then proceed to making the single player from there.
To show that this is not the idle talk of an over ambitions programmer I offer you these 2 screenshots as proof of my intentions. This earthling cruisers and missiles are both controlled by a primitive AI, and the missiles explode on contact. (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/Fleet1.JPG) And this one: (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/Fleet2.JPG) You can get more at this thread (http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=2456.0). I won’t be really starting the project until my finals are over, but I could use some help it and can’t hurt to start getting a list of C# programmers who are interested. If you want to learn C# but don’t want to spend the money to get visual studio 2005 just to have an IDE don’t worry Microsoft is giving away free versions (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualcsharp/download/) of it. Unbelievable huh? EDIT: For Downloads of the source and binaries of this game go to: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake/ (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake/) Wiki: http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/wiki/ (http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/wiki/) Forum: http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/forum/ (http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/forum/) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Culture20 on December 02, 2005, 12:05:10 am C# & linux? Mono's not that advanced yet. Is your code easily portable to C/C++?
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 02, 2005, 12:55:15 am C# & linux? Mono's not that advanced yet. Very soon, it will be.I’ve been keeping loose tabs on the mono project and from what I have seen the release to come will have all the features needed for my game. Also its advance enough for SDL.Net right now. Is your code easily portable to C/C++? No I rely heavily on the garbage collector. I’m not planning to have this written overnight. It has taken a long time to get my physics engine to the point it currently is at. There are still 2 things I want to add to that before I really start this project. Also I need to start learning SDL.Net or have some one learn it for me to handle the IO and Graphics part of the game. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: UAF on December 04, 2005, 07:35:46 pm Hmm... I can't help myself from looking at the empty half of the glass and ponder what would happen if all the ambition programmers will help TWL, which is fairly advanced, instead of starting their own projects and eventually leaving them unfinished.
Maybe it'll be wiser for all to work on one project, so when the inevitable happens and a programmer leave the project before it is finished there will be others to replace him... Nevertheless, good luck. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Censored on December 04, 2005, 09:31:25 pm aren't there people working on TW ?
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 05, 2005, 02:00:45 am Hmm... I can't help myself from looking at the empty half of the glass and ponder what would happen if all the ambition programmers will help TWL, which is fairly advanced, instead of starting their own projects and eventually leaving them unfinished. A Valid point, but there are a few counter points I would like to make.1) How I plan to write mine is almost the complete opposite of time warp. 1A) I use geometry for collision detection not pixel checking. 1B) I have collision with friction and changes in angular velocity. Timewarp does not do this. 1C) I plan to have the ships 3D rendered instead of Timewarps 2D sprites. 1D) I have mine written in C# while Timewarp uses C++. 2) Because timewarp is so far along mostly what is left is debugging, and no programmer that I know of enjoys that. 3) There is a certain feeling when you start a project from scratch, and I enjoy it. 4) I dont plan to leave mine unfinished. EDIT: 5) Also the fact that it is written in C# will make it so more of the programmers who have time for this kind of things (collage students) more inclined to pick up the project. Since C# and Java are the languages of choice now (at least in my collage). aren't there people working on TW ? Yes. (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=13354)Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on December 05, 2005, 05:16:32 am "Hmm... I can't help myself from looking at the empty half of the glass and ponder what would happen if all the ambition programmers will help TWL, which is fairly advanced, instead of starting their own projects and eventually leaving them unfinished."
This is a very good observation for freeware as a whole. For every 3 projects out there, 2 might go dormant for a long while or perhaps die, but if you took the assets of the two failed projects and combined them, you'd probably have another successful one. The only thing is those two projects might have completely different goals that can't be met in a single game. "1C) I plan to have the ships 3D rendered instead of Timewarps 2D sprites." I think Timewarp uses sprites rendered from 3D models as well. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Jomandran on December 05, 2005, 07:56:02 am Frankly, there's good sense in not throwing more labor into the black hole of TImewarp. It's a little like saying, "I don't see why shipwrights don't get out here and try to dredge up and patch the Titanic, rather than launching new boats." No matter how fine a ship the Titanic may have been, it's well sunk and dead now, and all the labor in the world won't change that.
Timewarp was coded haphazardly, it's code is shambolic, and at most you can hope to be another foot soldier ground up in Stalingrad. On his own project, BioSlayer may well fail (who knows? he shows a clarity of vision that puts TW to shame), but if he fails, at least he failed doing something exciting, and if he succeeds, the credit is that of a creator, not a maintainer or advancer of bloatware. It's like wondering why coders don't join the nine-year-old Starflight III, rather than making Weird Worlds, or pour their energy into Freecraft rather than making Wesnoth. Shrug. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Ivan Ivanov on December 05, 2005, 08:51:52 am "1C) I plan to have the ships 3D rendered instead of Timewarps 2D sprites." I think Timewarp uses sprites rendered from 3D models as well. Yeah, however in BioSlayers game the ships will be 3D, not just sprites (even if they were rendered from 3D models in the first place). They will be able to move in 2 dimentions only, though. Remember Aftermath? It's gonna be something like that. (If I understand everuthing correctly, that is) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on December 05, 2005, 01:04:44 pm Hey! I never abandon my projects, I just put them on ice... but I got a very large freezer. The size of it implies I'll finish all my projects simultainiously when I'm 100.
Of course I suck donkeyballs at coding, but my SC project just took a tiny step forward with this primitive benchmark test 350 ships (http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/shiptest_screen3.jpg). Bioslayer's physics engine is looking promising and I feel a certain envy. I don't even know how to make a quad tree but hopefully it'll come to me... maybe I'll get to decorate one for x-mas... every time I place a decoration in the tree there's little subdivisions happening... uh time to sleep I think. I hear the toothfairy drops a quadtree under your pillow if you're nice... Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on December 05, 2005, 06:28:17 pm "It's like wondering why coders don't join the nine-year-old Starflight III."
8 years old, I'll have you know (it has really just been the last 4 or 5 years, before that it was mostly an amateur project.) Besides, SF3 has already made strides to break out of the exclusive allegro library thing, and follow a newer, more organized coding structure. "Yeah, however in BioSlayers game the ships will be 3D, not just sprites (even if they were rendered from 3D models in the first place)." Oh, I thought he meant rendered ahead of time, not in game. In that case, what file format will you be using for your models, Bioslayer? "Of course I suck donkeyballs at coding, but my SC project just took a tiny step forward with this primitive benchmark test 350 ships." Cool, who's ships are those yellowish ones? Mrnmhrm, maybe? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Jomandran on December 05, 2005, 11:27:06 pm it has really just been the last 4 or 5 years, before that it was mostly an amateur project Versus now, when it's a professional operation? ::) Title: Enough talk, let's see what you got. . . Post by: Deus Siddis on December 06, 2005, 01:05:09 am "Versus now, when it's a professional operation?"
Hey, what do you think professionals do in their spare time? Besides, it should really be about what you output, not what your career is. But what I meant was, the first few years of the project were probably more like throwing ideas around and experimenting with different coding approaches. Not that this is any excuse to you, it seems you know a lot about how to go it alone and do a project right. Could we see a link to your website with your successful freeware game(s) for us to download? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on December 06, 2005, 02:25:37 am DS> It's the small personal fighter ships by the 'Space Amazons' (working title). They're the sisters of the Androsyn (read sex androids).
Professional can mean either "skilled" or "person who works with". Not sure what the proper terminology is for people's projects. I can think of these types, maybe somewhat blended with each other:
The same guy, except his initiative skill is high, so he starts pulling unstructured teams together. Eventually the project pours out into the sand due to the lack of organization and faded intrest from team members. Rather common. Something inbetween here. More or less professional people getting together. Some of these projects actually emerge into a beautiful little butterfly. The one man army, like the Cave Story guy. Rare. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on December 06, 2005, 06:22:01 am "The one man army, like the Cave Story guy. Rare."
Aftermath, Black Sky, and now UQM Remake. It doesn't seem to be that rare anymore. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Jomandran on December 06, 2005, 07:21:50 am www.taleworlds.com
But of course, some of us moved on from that to professional gigs. And by "professional" I don't mean "amateurish, horribly out-of-date, and scared to admit to our meager fanbase how slowly things are coming." I'm sorry if I'm harsh on failed projects, but honestly, who are you kidding? Timewarp and SF3 both have, what, about 35-50 man years of labor on them? In six man-months Aftermath was built. How can you possibly explain that, other than by poor management, sloth, and incompetence? TW is at least playable, if ugly, incomplete, and unimpressive. But SF3 is simply what you'd expect a group of high schoolers ca. 1993-94 to produce after about six months of work: a few prerendered extremely polygonal graphics with gross textures, a meager graphics engine, and a bunch of huge promises. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 06, 2005, 08:10:25 am So many Posts...
(If I understand everuthing correctly, that is) You understand correctly.Bioslayer's physics engine is looking promising and I feel a certain envy. Dont feel envy when you can have access to all of it's source code and an IDE to compile it for free!Oh, I thought he meant rendered ahead of time, not in game. In that case, what file format will you be using for your models, Bioslayer? I don’t know yet. I'm taking a computer graphics course next semester, so it’s almost perfect timing. Also I am planning to use SDL.NET so it most likely will be one supported by that library. Aftermath, Black Sky, and now UQM Remake. It doesn't seem to be that rare anymore. I think its gunna need a better name then "UQM Remake" any suggestions?There is a good reason why these solo projects (at least mine in particular) are happening. Programming languages have come a long way since the days of SC2. C#'s Garbage collector does at least 50% of the work for me. Also IDEs that make programming a lot easer have become insanely easy to use and learn. The increase in processing power since then makes it so you can write a game in an “inefficient” language and get away with it. The availability of generic high level libraries that come standard with languages now a days also reduce the amount of work, because its already been done. It has come to the point where anyone with a bit of patience, a brain and a computer can program some pretty fancy programs. Right now I’m thinking about the general implementation, the big picture. So any feature requests or ideas that pertain to this stage of development would be greatly appreciated. Or any libraries you know of that would be useful for this project. Remember they have to be compatible to C# in some way. These are the few libraries I’m thinking of using. Graphics: SDL.NET Sound: SDL.NET I/O: SDL.NET Scripting: Lua.NET (http://www.lua.inf.puc-rio.br/luanet/luainterface/) Physics: Physics2D (of course) I should rename my project to Physics2D.NET just to make it consistent. ::) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on December 06, 2005, 10:52:46 am Dont feel envy when you can have access to all of it's source code and an IDE to compile it for free! Well, I'm a Basic guy, because I have zero patience. I'm using BlitzMax now, it's somewhere between Basic and C. It can do linked lists, 'types' with methods, inheritance etc. It's fast enough for most of the stuff I do too.Aftermath, Black Sky, and now UQM Remake. It doesn't seem to be that rare anymore. Yeah, maybe it's becoming more common, because it's much easier to code and create assets now. One man armies were probably the most common 'back in the day' though, lots of commercial games were made by just one guy (Adventure for example). Ghyyaah! Makes me wanna resurrect my Adventure project. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on December 07, 2005, 12:55:16 am "www.taleworlds.com"
That doesn't appear to be freeware. "In six man-months Aftermath was built." No, Aftermath is not finished. "Timewarp and SF3 both have, what, about 35-50 man years of labor on them?" Hey, most of the people who you feel have failed the SF3 project (including the management) are gone, the majority of those working on it today came in less than a year ago to restart things. To us it is a new project. What sucks is that people still blame us for failures we never made. If we haven't brought a game to compeletion 7 years from now, then you can hammer us. "I think its gunna need a better name then "UQM Remake" any suggestions?" Well, if you can't use "Star Control," maybe something that relates to the rise/return of the (New) Free Star Alliance. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 07, 2005, 12:51:49 pm I added Ray tracing stuff to the physics engine.
(http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/lasertest.JPG) See that little line? That took hours to code. But the cool thing is that each time it hits something it gets impulse applies at the point of contact. Right now I’m thinking on how to do a uniform collision event architecture for both collidable bodies and rays. raytracing will be used for all the "lasers." As of right now everything is in the physics engine that is needed for the project to go forward. The Drones lighting will need a little tweaking to be done, but all the core needs are there now. I should really be studying for my finals and getting my projects done but this thing pulls me like a magnet. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: TiLT on December 07, 2005, 10:16:17 pm See that little line? That took hours to code. You managed to make a line in just hours? Man, some guys have all the luck. All I get is stack overflows and heap corruption. ;) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on December 07, 2005, 11:57:02 pm What's this garbage collector? ( I'm using BlitzMax and it has some C stuff. I coded an array that keeps lists of objects (sort of like a quadtree, but just an array (not very memory efficient but it saves me the trouble to create trees)). I think I'm linking and deleting everything as it (the objects) moves through the array cells, and I made lots of bounds checks and object counting. Still the program just slows down. It happens in a 'Type' (might be class in C) Method where I got a local handle to the objects I iterate through (for loop) when doing a Pythagora distance check. I asked on a forum and I got the reply that I should run the garbage collector (automated in the new version of BlitzMax I'm DLing now), and that should fix the problem. )
Disregarding my problem (It might be solved when you're reading this), why are garbage collectors needed? Are objects spontainious or unstable somehow? Maybe my Method Local Temp object handle isn't deleted after the Method ends/returns? I'm puzzled (and completely new to Methods and Linked lists). Edit, yep it works now, Mister 'Garbage Collector', whatever he does, did the trick. Screen. (http://web.telia.com/~u48508900/gridcheck.gif) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: meep-eep on December 08, 2005, 01:19:38 am They're not needed. But they offer advantages, mostly to the programmer (and also some disadvantages).
I just wrote a big reply before my PC crashed (first Linux crash in about 2 years). This Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_(computer_science)) says it better than I did anyhow. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: harth1026 on December 08, 2005, 02:23:24 pm I should really be studying for my finals and getting my projects done but this thing pulls me like a magnet. I wish I had that kind of dedication. By the way, what kind of help are you looking for? I'm mainly a C++ programmer with Visual Studio 05, but I have some knowledge with C#. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 08, 2005, 06:12:13 pm By the way, what kind of help are you looking for? I'm mainly a C++ programmer with Visual Studio 05, but I have some knowledge with C#. I’ll admit it, this is my first time doing a project that has to deal with any significant amount of media. So mainly I will need some one to deal with graphics and sound since I have most of the core logic written or already thought through. Do you know OpenGL? That’s how SDL.Net implements its 3D graphics. Also once I get the design complete I will need to put in all the content. So there are plenty of things needed to be done. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: harth1026 on December 08, 2005, 11:34:28 pm I know a little OpenGL. I can draw colorful 3D object with OpenGL and do a little morphing stuff with them... but lighting and texture mapping are beyond me right now. I'm still trying to figure out the NeHe tutorials on those topics. If I put a little time into it, I can figure that stuff out.
Title: More Eye Candy Post by: JonoPorter on December 09, 2005, 12:01:21 am I decided the screenshot of the single ray does not fully show what the ray is. So I made this one.
I call it the super point defense. (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/SuperPointDefence.JPG) It is 2 fans of rays that spread out from the ship at 2 points. Everything that a ray hits (except other rays) has impulse applied to it. This is the definition of a force field (except that its not a continuous field, but a fan of rays, and that it is impulse not force.) As you can see a ray does not go past the first object it hits. You managed to make a line in just hours? Man, some guys have all the luck. All I get is stack overflows and heap corruption. ;) You should make that your Signature. It's not really luck its C#. The only way I ever got a stack overflow in C# was an infinite recursive call. I've never heard of Heap corruption in C#.I know a little OpenGL. I can draw colorful 3D object with OpenGL and do a little morphing stuff with them... but lighting and texture mapping are beyond me right now. I'm still trying to figure out the NeHe tutorials on those topics. If I put a little time into it, I can figure that stuff out. If you want to get started you can look at look at how SDL.Net does things. I will have to set up a SF.net project and the CVS before we really start the project. I've Updated Physics 2D with a more recent version so go download it to boost the project's stats. Here is the URL: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=149642 Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Censored on December 09, 2005, 01:26:27 pm See that little line? That took hours to code. Hmm, wouldn't it have been much easier to look at the UQM code for the tracing? maybe instead of "drawing" lines in a circle, "draw" circles that expand from the ship and look for collisions (I don't mean to implicitly draw them, of course) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 09, 2005, 09:23:07 pm Hmm, wouldn't it have been much easier to look at the UQM code for the tracing? maybe instead of "drawing" lines in a circle, "draw" circles that expand from the ship and look for collisions (I don't mean to implicitly draw them, of course) 1A) I use geometry for collision detection not pixel checking. EDIT: I do something like that for the impulse wave class. Its what is used to describe explosions.Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 11, 2005, 04:07:27 am maybe instead of "drawing" lines in a circle, "draw" circles that expand from the ship and look for collisions I Think I miss understood your question.(I don't mean to implicitly draw them, of course) This is all the code that was required to make that fan of rays once the ray code was in the engine (I re-factored this to remove line wrapping.) Code: double lenght = 700; double impulse = 5000000; double deltaAngle = .03; double endAngle = 1.9; Vector2D direction = Vector2D.Rotate(Vector2D.XAxis, this.mainship.Rotation); Vector2D origin = this.mainship.Current.Position.Linear + direction * (this.mainship.BoundingRadius + 30); RaySegment2D forwardSegment = new RaySegment2D(origin, direction, lenght); world.AddIRay2DEffect(new AttachedImpulseRay(this.mainship, forwardSegment, impulse, new SingleStep())); for (double angle = deltaAngle; angle <= endAngle; angle += deltaAngle) { Rotation2D subRotation = new Rotation2D(angle); RaySegment2D leftSegment = new RaySegment2D(origin, Vector2D.Rotate(direction, subRotation), lenght); RaySegment2D rightSegment = new RaySegment2D(origin, Vector2D.Rotate(direction, -subRotation), lenght); world.AddIRay2DEffect(new AttachedImpulseRay(this.mainship, leftSegment, impulse, new SingleStep())); world.AddIRay2DEffect(new AttachedImpulseRay(this.mainship, rightSegment, impulse, new SingleStep())); } Also it would not be easier to make an expanding circle to do the detection because rays will not always be grouped in such a fashion. Actually the only place where I can see the use of a large grouping of rays will be in implementing the umgahs weapon which is more of a polygon then a circle. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 12, 2005, 08:36:41 am I fixed a few things wrong in the contact/resting state of my collision response.
Afterwards it worked so well I decided to try something new. Put a bunch of Ur-Quan around a really large gravity well. (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/planetfall.JPG) I'm thinking how this can become part of the game. I had fun trying to launch the Ur-Quan into orbit periodically. I never could quite make them break escape velocity. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: evktalo on December 12, 2005, 06:39:17 pm That's one funny screenshot.
Good luck with your project! --Eino Title: Another Day Another Feature. Post by: JonoPorter on December 14, 2005, 03:42:42 am Good luck with your project! thanks.I just made it so an event can be raised when an object touches a ray, making this screenshot possible. I call it "Shields Weakening!" (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/Shields_Weakening.JPG) If I just confused you let me put it in layman’s terms: The Missiles now explode when they hit the shields (Those lines coming out of the Ur-Quan Dreadnought) instead of just bouncing off. Are you guys being annoyed by me constantly putting up images of my project? I can stop if you want me to. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: meep-eep on December 14, 2005, 04:11:24 am Are you guys being annoyed by me constantly putting up images of my project? I can stop if you want me to. I'm not. Please continue. This is your thread, if anyone doesn't like your pictures, he/she should go look somewhere else.I for one like these pictures. Why are you going with lines for a shield btw? That would look worse and worse the bigger the shield. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on December 14, 2005, 04:59:04 am "This is your thread, if anyone doesn't like your pictures, he/she should go look somewhere else."
But they won't know that they don't like them until they've already seen them! :o "I just made it so an event can be raised when an object touches a ray, making this screenshot possible." Nice! Will you soon be adding a HP system to the shield rays, so that they recede as they take damage? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 14, 2005, 06:10:02 am Why are you going with lines for a shield btw? That would look worse and worse the bigger the shield. Oh I don’t plan to use the lines as shields (not initially). It’s just that it is easier to make them point in every direction and test their collision logic then to write code to point them at another object and test both. Also it’s a good way to see how many I can use before the system starts to slow down. The small shield has 209 rays in it and the larger “ugly one” has 125 rays in it. I can easily increase that number by a power of 10 and it still is able to run without seizing up (too badly). Nice! Will you soon be adding a HP system to the shield rays, so that they recede as they take damage? The thought had crossed my mind. And to appease meep-eep I could make it so it’s not a bunch of rays, but a bunch of triangles (when drawn) with 2 of the edges of each triangle being a ray, and the third being the line between the ends of the rays. So it would look like a giant solid donut. MMmmmm donuts.But I probably won’t be doing this any time soon. I have a lot more important things to work on like finishing my first design of the generic interfaces for everything that happens in hyper melee. This includes how damage is handled, how weapons affect ships, how weapons affect other weapons. It’s not easy to design a system of generic interfaces to handle everything that happens in Hyper Melee. I’m also trying to design it to be very easy to change and add things to boot! Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on December 14, 2005, 09:24:24 am I enjoy seeing this stuff too. It's especially interesting since I'm a geek and have a similar project. Fun to see how other people approach things.
I've been toying around with the thought of making pressure object types that gradually push everything they collide with rather than bouncing it. Maybe this is a good way to do shields, Orion rocket propulsion and explosions that behave like explosions? Perhaps many pressure objects will be able to navigate(fill) a maze... In DIRT (http://datarealms.com/) the rocket is propelled by tossing away its mass. Even bleeding will propel the player (and the player can bleed a lot). Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 15, 2005, 06:46:47 pm I've been toying around with the thought of making pressure object types that gradually push everything they collide with rather than bouncing it. Maybe this is a good way to do shields, Orion rocket propulsion and explosions that behave like explosions? Perhaps many pressure objects will be able to navigate(fill) a maze... If you find actual equations for this pressure wave I would like to have them as well. Right now I use something I call an impulse wave for explosions. In DIRT (http://datarealms.com/) the rocket is propelled by tossing away its mass. Even bleeding will propel the player (and the player can bleed a lot). I looked at the credits and Arne is in as the art director is that you? If so that is pretty cool.Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on December 15, 2005, 09:37:51 pm If you find actual equations for this pressure wave I would like to have them as well. Right now I use something I call an impulse wave for explosions. I looked at the credits and Arne is in as the art director is that you? If so that is pretty cool. Heheh, I'm an artist, not a coder, what I had in mind was simple nonsolid objects that repel stuff ,including their kin, within a certain radius. Place several in little cluster and they'll start repelling each other, automatically giving the impression of an expanding explosion with little puffs. They could expand as they dillute/lose pressure. It would be like an explosion of mini explosions. Hydralic pressure is just way above me I'm afraid. I made some very basic pressurized stuff for my Boulder Dash (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/retro/bdscreen7.jpg) variant though, but it was tile and turn based. Yeah I'm doing a bit of art for DIRT. The coder just got the allegro code port working (sort of) so there might be some progress in regards to actual gameplay soon. Are you planning to have multiple gravity wells? I was toying with the idea of making a Lunar Lander game where you shuttle stuff between 2 asteroids (a binary system). Your engine would probably be good at this. The physics would allow all sorts of interesting stuff like geostationary orbits (if there's rotations and no 'space friction'). Title: The Kohr-ah Cleansers Post by: JonoPorter on December 17, 2005, 07:33:46 am Are you planning to have multiple gravity wells? I was toying with the idea of making a Lunar Lander game where you shuttle stuff between 2 asteroids (a binary system). Your engine would probably be good at this. The physics would allow all sorts of interesting stuff like geostationary orbits (if there's rotations and no 'space friction'). My engine can already do all this. Well I’m finally done with finals and I now plan to put real effort into this project. Since no one has suggested a name I’ve decided to call it “The Kohr-ah Cleansers.” I’ve already written a new Broad phase collision detector called sweep and prune with the help of Magnus, a new member to my project. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on December 17, 2005, 10:32:39 pm My engine can already do all this. Well I’m finally done with finals and I now plan to put real effort into this project. Since no one has suggested a name I’ve decided to call it “The Kohr-ah Cleansers.” Cool. I just got the gravity part working. My bodies merge when colliding too, so I can do little solarsystem creation simulations (pic) (http://web.telia.com/~u48508900/games/grav2.gif). I think the Asteroid Lander concept could be interesting. “The Kohr-ah Cleansers.” - As a paraphrase on UrQ Masters? 'Cleansers' doesn't sound very agressive and title-ish to me, although I'm not speaking english natively. Hmm, I think that wording might also suggest that it's the Kohr-Ah that's getting cleansed (by the Chmmr?), sort of similar to 'The Ghost-Busters'. How about using an object from the game like that Melnorme MetaChron, or the Ultron, or some planet? You could always try reading through the dialog txt files (http://www.sa-matra.net/quotes/) and look for catchy words or sentences. Hmm how about 'Snakes on a Dreadnaught!' I’ve already written a new Broad phase collision detector called sweep and prune with the help of Magnus, a new member to my project. Did you see this thing called N? You probablydid. The website got some nice tutorials (http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/tutorials.html). Found it when trying to figure out what Broad phase collision detection was. Is this (http://web.telia.com/~u48508900/spacegame/astroids1.gif) it? I have no clue what I'm doing so I'm probably reinventing the wheel a lot. Sorry for posting my own shit in your thread, I just get excited when there's geeky stuff going on. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Megagun on December 17, 2005, 11:50:46 pm D.I.R.T. rules... Too bad my system is way too crappy to be able to run it remotely nice, though. :(
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 18, 2005, 05:03:57 am “The Kohr-ah Cleansers.” - As a paraphrase on UrQ Masters? 'Cleansers' doesn't sound very agressive and title-ish to me, although I'm not speaking english natively. How bout The Kohr-ah’s War Crimes?But the other names I thought up were: The Earthling Losers. The Spathi Cowards. The Umgah Jokers. The Chmmr Cross Breeders The Yehat Traitors The Syreen Babes. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Zeep-Eeep on December 18, 2005, 08:17:27 am How about:
The Korh-Ah Doctrine Or The Korh-Ah: Cleansers of Filth Title: Free Star Post by: Deus Siddis on December 18, 2005, 06:20:47 pm How about "Free Star."
Free Star sounds a little like Star Control, it makes sense because you are the new alliance of Free Stars, and you're making a freeware game (unless I misunderstand.) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 18, 2005, 09:23:22 pm How about "Free Star." Free star actually sounds good and nothing came up when I Googled it.Now I have a question: How should I deal with copyrights in terms of toys for bob owning the rights to UQM and mine being a clone or sequel to it? What do I need to do to give credit where credits due? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: 0xDEC0DE on December 18, 2005, 09:36:54 pm How should I deal with copyrights in terms of toys for bob owning the rights to UQM and mine being a clone or sequel to it? Why are you asking us when you should be asking them (http://www.toysforbob.com/database/tfb_contactus.html)? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: rarr on December 24, 2005, 08:00:58 am The Ur-Quan Remasters? You're taking a game made for older hardware and improving the technical aspects, which is similar to remastering. Remastering something is, after all, creating a new 'master copy', which tends to improve the quality over an old copy made on a less powerful medium (compare VCR tapes to DVDs, for example - they have to be remastered for the DVD, and since DVD is a better medium, the master can be of better quality). Maybe a bit clunky to say though.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 28, 2005, 08:45:21 am I just used mono on Linux to compile my 2D physics engine.
After the annoying install process and extracting my engine this is all that was required to compile it. I had to make static classes non static but that is a trifle. Code: gmcs -recurse:'*.cs' -unsafe -out:physics2d.dll -target:library Now I have not actually ran it since I don’t have a non Direct-X driver, but IT DID compile. Right now I’m doing work work so the progress on the game shall be slow for a while. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: whydotnet on December 30, 2005, 12:18:37 pm It can be an interesting project, but .NET sucks.
Sincerely I can't understand why using .NET, specially if you want an open-source project, no excuses about .NET is an open standard, m$ is controlling that shit and has own stuff on w$ implementation... .NET sucks, even more than Java. Better really open things like C/C++, Python, Ruby... Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: ^Nytro^ on December 30, 2005, 04:08:37 pm a few suggestions : "The Kohr-Ah Revolution" (just to make it a little bigger)
or "Star Masters" (or even "Star Mastering" as a direct 'upgrade' to "star control"- symbolizing it is star control taken a few steps further) or "Ultimate Control" *obviously all being variations to the previous releases Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on December 30, 2005, 09:09:26 pm It can be an interesting project, but .NET sucks. Nice Rant.Sincerely I can't understand why using .NET, specially if you want an open-source project, no excuses about .NET is an open standard, m$ is controlling that shit and has own stuff on w$ implementation... .NET sucks, even more than Java. Better really open things like C/C++, Python, Ruby... Do you have any reason other then .NET being associated with Microsoft for your hatred? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: harth1026 on January 02, 2006, 11:34:49 pm I think his problem is that he doesn't want to take the time to learn it.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Culture20 on January 03, 2006, 06:06:22 am Or he may not have the $ to pay for a compiler.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 03, 2006, 06:47:28 am Or he may not have the $ to pay for a compiler. Ummm... The Compiler is Free (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fe6f2099-b7b4-4f47-a244-c96d69c35dec&DisplayLang=en) And the Visual C# 2005 Express Edition IDE is Free (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualcsharp/download/default.aspx) Also the Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition IDE is Free (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/download/default.aspx) And for those VB lovers The Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition IDE is Free (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vb/download/default.aspx) Im pretty sure he has all the money he needs to "pay" for it. If you don’t believe me look at the pricing of The Express Editions on Microsoft’s site. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/faq/#pricing) .NET sucks, even more than Java. Better really open things like C/C++, Python, Ruby... I would like to see how well a physics engine written in python would perform. I get disbelieving looks from people when I say I’ve written one in C#. One of my friends, who is a python advocate just laughed and then started crying when I suggested he should try something similar in python. Also An Update on the Game Thing: Game Dynamics: I got most of the interfaces and base classes written to my satisfaction. I’m still thinking about some nitty gritty details, but I think I’ve got it mostly figured out. Now I’ve got to work on implementation, because implementation reveals pretty fast what I have missed during design. Graphics: Stalled, because I don’t want to spend all my free time trying to make the thing look spiffy when the rest is not even finalized. Sound: What’s that? AI: I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. Actaully I’m aprouching the point where I need to start thinking about this. Anyone have some good links? Scripting: I’m approuching this stage as well, but am not thinking about it much since Lua.NET is really easy to use. Other: Anything else I’ve forgotten? Any features you would like me to ponder on? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: ^Nytro^ on January 03, 2006, 11:58:15 am If I may ask, what about menus and customizebility to the game?
for instance, even UQM haven't got these features finished. Would you handle this at an early stage? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on January 03, 2006, 06:02:25 pm "Anything else I’ve forgotten? Any features you would like me to ponder on?"
Well, since this is a remake of SC2 (unless I've misread what you've said) then I guess its a question of what could have been added in that game. So I think there was three areas to consider: 1) Make it so that in combat, there can be more than two ships fighting at one time. Fleet battles would be more interesting, and if you had a lot of smaller vessels fighting one or a few UQ, it would not be able to pick them off one at a time-- they'd have a significant advantage fighting en masse. 2) Advanced planets. Much larger worlds with infinite life and mineral wealth, and maybe be able to land on homeworlds and such (as seen in Star Control 2's predecessor, Starflight 2. 3) No ending. After you destroy the Sa-Matra, you get a new ship and can play on forever. There will no longer be many or any quests to do at this point, but you can continue to explore, fight, build up your fleet/ship, etc. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 04, 2006, 09:03:28 am Question about UQM.
int he content there is a .ani file in each of the races dir in the comm dir in the content file. I understand what the first and last 2 values mean: blackur.0.png 0 87 0 0 filename unknown unknown xPos yPos What are the 2 unknowns? Thre reason why is im trying to figure out how to use the conversation images for my game. Take a look at my progress: Quote What I need right now, is a Touch-o-Vision. (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/clickovision2.JPG)And: (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/clickovision.JPG) The animation where i click is activated, and if i double click it loops. so im poking at the kohr-ahs eyes. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: meep-eep on January 04, 2006, 09:59:57 am See doc/devel/aniformat.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 06, 2006, 01:36:03 pm (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/Ligthing.JPG)
I’m to tired to explain what this is at the moment, but it involves lightning. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 06, 2006, 09:35:31 pm I rewrote the code for the collisions to force all rays to be in a group. This improves performance when a large number of rays are close to each other. As a result of this new grouping allowed me to write the code for lightning in a fairly short amount of time, compared to what it would have been. I used a recursive midpoint displacement algorithm to generate the lightning. Now if a ray in the lightning group intersects with something all the rays that are after it are removed. Making it so lighting stops after it touches something.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: NamelessPlayer on January 06, 2006, 10:27:05 pm I started dicking around with the engine, and one of the demos gave me an idea.
You know that one demo where ships in the shape of Cruisers fire homing missiles at you? I started using the rays to send the things flying back. This gave me an interesting game idea... Your ship has none of the usual weapons-no energy bolts of doom, no missiles. However, you do have a repulsor device, which can be used to send projectiles, asteroids, ships, and the like flying away. For some reason, other ships are trying to scrap yours, so you have to take them out by any means possible. This usually involves reflecting your projectiles back at your assailants, but some projectiles may be unaffected by the repulsor, requiring you to use things such as asteroids, enemy ships, or scrap to chuck at them. I'm considering some things before I start tinkering: -Should the player ship survive more than one hit? I was thinking of having external engines, which when hit, would start wobbling and eventually coming off. Maybe you could hit a key to jettison them if they go critical, so they won't explode and damage your ship further(should engines go critical, even?). This would hamper your manueverability and speed, of course. The main hull could probably survive one or two hits before the entire ship is destroyed. Maybe I should use a Vindicator-type ship without the "side rails" so that individual modules(new to the mix being thruster modules on the main body to compensate for the lack of the rails)can be damages and destroyed independently from the ship. -Should there be an all-encompassing repulsor mode(hit R to see what I mean in the Physics2D demos)with a vastly reduced range? -Should there be an energy limit for the repulsor? If both repulsor modes are included, the all-encompassing mode will suck energy VERY fast, and even so, area-of-effect weapons like missiles may still damage your ship. -Furthermore, if this idea of mine does hit a major stride, with some improved graphics and the like, will adding the names of anyone involved with the creation of the engine be enough to avoid any plagarism issues? Okay, so maybe I'm jacking the thread, but I can't help it. I give you the best of luck on this project...okay, maybe I can't give luck, but it's the thought that counts, right? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 07, 2006, 12:14:32 am Let me clarify something if you are confused about it. The demos in the physics engine are very basic. They were written to test the physics aspect of something. So in the demos there is no damage or energy use. That’s because in my mind physics only encompasses collision detection and applying impulse as a reaction (the homing missile logic is an exception.) The project this thread is talking about has a lot of thought put into a lot of code that wraps physics objects with damage and energy use for actions. I have yet to release any code of the project because I haven’t decided which license to release it under (or even made a SF project for it) and right now its in to much of a flux.
Nameless player; Those are interesting Ideas. I hope to make the game really easy to change so you could easily modify it and add what you want. The plagiarism issue is already dealt with by the LGPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html) license I have it (the physics engine) released under. Thought I don’t claim to be an expert on how credit is given on a open source project I think just listing the names should be enough. If you want to mess around with the more recent changes, the physics engine now has a SVN repository. svn://jmb.mine.nu/ultra/physics2d (http://svn://jmb.mine.nu/ultra/physics2d) To use this install: SVN (http://subversion.tigris.org/) If you want to explore it with windows explorer use: TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/) If you have VS 2005 you can use: AnkhSVN (http://ankhsvn.tigris.org/) Once its installed I think the comand to Dl a copy to your computer is called "check out" The websites those are hosted on still confuse me. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: NamelessPlayer on January 07, 2006, 05:41:11 am I don't know what you did-maybe it had to do with the optimized rays-but the new release certainly doesn't stress the old AMD Athlon XP 1800+ nearly as much. Hats off to you for not reminding me how much I need an upgrade!
Maybe it's a bit too early to be asking this, but how are the graphics handled? By the requirement of the DirectX SDK, I'd assume DirectDraw, but it seems you want to use SDL for the sake of Linux support(now if I could just get access to the Linux partition on my legacy PC...). If I want to develop a small game using this engine that runs on OSes that aren't Windows, that leaves me with SDL and OpenGL. I'm leaning towards OGL(since I believe it may have better hardware-acceleration support), but SDL seems to be worth considering. Note that I haven't started learning any of the graphics languages yet. In case you're wondering why I asked about graphics, it's because I have a few ideas for spacecraft that I might want to crank out a few sprites for. In the case that polygons are used instead...how the heck would I make models compatible with the engine? 3ds max 8 won't install(problem with licensing process being unable to start-I think it's the fault of WinXP being somewhat botched after dealing with all of that damn malware; such a program would also be overkill for making 2D ships), so that's ruled out. As for new ideas for my game using this engine: -Maybe the power and/or range of the repulsor can be changed. Higher power levels will repel objects better, but will really eat into your ship's available energy. Also up for consideration would be the range of the repulsor, where higher settings will, of course, eat up energy. -What about having the repulsor suck more energy as it repels objects? This could help with the viability of my next potential idea: -I'm considering having ships mount more conventional weapon modules-generally things like machine guns, large cannons/railguns/etc. missiles, and mines-maybe even energy weapons. MGs fire lots of bullets, of course, and can be easily repelled; maybe some of the higher-powered ones can slowly bore through a repulsion field. Missiles will keep going until they hit something, and may or may not be repelled, depending on whether they are designed to DOR(detonate on repulse)or not; DOR missiles generally have a large explosion radius to deliver area damage through a repulsion field. Cannons/railguns/etc. fire single rounds at extreme velocities and require a VERY STRONG repulsor field to stop. Energy weapons, unlike the others, cannot be repelled and feed off of your ship's energy(who would've guessed?). I'll probably make them short-ranged MGs, for long-ranged ones would defeat the purpose of using repulsors. Maybe I'm getting a little too in-depth with something I haven't even started working on yet, but it's probably better to integrate these features in the beginning than tack them on in the end, with a little room for modification afterward as needed-after all, optimization is a good thing. Now all I have to do is learn C#...(and hope that my programming teacher starts with the actual programming in VB .NET soon-that's right, I haven't even done a Hello World! program in class yet!) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on January 07, 2006, 05:46:06 am "However, you do have a repulsor device, which can be used to send projectiles, asteroids, ships, and the like flying away."
That just gave me an idea. What if you had a repulsor line, that you could orbit around your ship ( or whatever). When when things shot at you, you could move your shield in place to block them, and at the same time, send it bouncing out into space or into another enemy. If you missed blocking it, and got hit, you take damage or die. Sort of a Jedi lightsaber game or something similar (you could even make it so if you got close enough, you could hit an enemy with your lightsaber thingy and damage or destroy them.) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: NamelessPlayer on January 07, 2006, 06:20:51 am "However, you do have a repulsor device, which can be used to send projectiles, asteroids, ships, and the like flying away." Interesting, but I'm not sure how that would work in the case of possible energy constraints.That just gave me an idea. What if you had a repulsor line, that you could orbit around your ship ( or whatever). When when things shot at you, you could move your shield in place to block them, and at the same time, send it bouncing out into space or into another enemy. If you missed blocking it, and got hit, you take damage or die. Sort of a Jedi lightsaber game or something similar (you could even make it so if you got close enough, you could hit an enemy with your lightsaber thingy and damage or destroy them.) Maybe, when I whip something up, I'll implement both methods and collect feedback to tweak as necessary, and find out if I should dump one of them. Heck, you just got me thinking about different repulsor types(which I'm not sure if they should be unique per ship or not-they definitely don't come in module form! Or maybe they should...)! Title: Oh My Gosh the Ur-Quan have point defense! Post by: JonoPorter on January 07, 2006, 07:01:43 am I changed a few things added a few things to be able to generate this screen shot:
(Oh My Gosh the Ur-Quan have lightning point defense!) (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/Ur-Quan_Point_Defence.JPG) This is the reason for all the ray stuff. So I can do point defense and generate the lighting that the probe uses. I just did both in one stoke. If you guys are not all giddy about seeing this screenshot something is wrong with you. I don't know what you did-maybe it had to do with the optimized rays-but the new release certainly doesn't stress the old AMD Athlon XP 1800+ nearly as much. Hats off to you for not reminding me how much I need an upgrade! Most of the credit for this change goes to Magnus who introduce me to a collision detection algorithm called sweep and prune (a hell of a lot faster then my collision grid). He wrote the original algorithm that showed me how to program it and I incorporated it into the engine. Maybe it's a bit too early to be asking this, but how are the graphics handled? By the requirement of the DirectX SDK, I'd assume DirectDraw, but it seems you want to use SDL for the sake of Linux support(now if I could just get access to the Linux partition on my legacy PC...). If I want to develop a small game using this engine that runs on OSes that aren't Windows, that leaves me with SDL and OpenGL. I'm leaning towards OGL(since I believe it may have better hardware-acceleration support), but SDL seems to be worth considering. Note that I haven't started learning any of the graphics languages yet. I use Direct3D. All I am doing is drawing polygons strait onto the screen. The “ship models” are just a list of points that make up their shape and what each point should be colored. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: ^Nytro^ on January 07, 2006, 09:25:53 pm That screenshot is f***in' impressive, way to go.
that's a hell of a point-defence there. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: evktalo on January 07, 2006, 11:42:31 pm These shots are really enjoyable.
There's an artistic quality. :) --Eino Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on January 08, 2006, 05:10:57 am Hmm, when my masters have weapons like that, I think I'm better off remaining a slave.
Damn cool stuff !!! Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Zeep-Eeep on January 08, 2006, 01:35:33 pm I love that screen shot. Very cool looking. I'm glad the Ur-Quan
don't have that baby in the game. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 10, 2006, 12:09:45 am I just made a sf.net project page for this.
Currently the name is “The Ur-Quan ReMasters.” Though there is nothing there at the moment here is the link to it: https://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake Title: The First ScreenShot! Post by: JonoPorter on January 13, 2006, 02:29:17 am Guess what I have finally got the game to the point where I can take screenshots. But before I go on let me explain something: All the screenshots before this one have been simple demos in my physics engine. Objects had no damage and could not die. They had no special logic to govern health energy or the recharge of either. They did not even have values for this. Also the “Weapons” you say in use were hard coded to the users ship no matter what it looked like. Also all user controls were hard coded for that single object. The project you are about to see a screenshot from is a wrapper of the physics engine giving objects these values and ways to effect them. Right now it still uses DirectX for graphics and user input. So the screenshot itself isn’t all that exciting but what it shows is. The Druuge Ship on the left has a dynamic controller attached to it that me to control it. The one on the left has died because I shot it a few times. When the druuge ship dies its parts are turned into objects that are governed by the physics engine and several explosions are created along the ship to scatter them. The hope it that later in game development there will be fields of debris to show how deadly a battle was. I even might make them “asteroids” for the probes.
(http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/TheFirstScreenShot.JPG) I started with druuge because they are one of the simpler ships in terms of game logic. I don’t know what ship I should code next… any Suggestions? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Zeep-Eeep on January 13, 2006, 02:51:45 am A scout?
Title: Re: The First ScreenShot! Post by: NamelessPlayer on January 13, 2006, 03:42:39 am Guess what I have finally got the game to the point where I can take screenshots. But before I go on let me explain something: All the screenshots before this one have been simple demos in my physics engine. Objects had no damage and could not die. They had no special logic to govern health energy or the recharge of either. They did not even have values for this. Also the “Weapons” you say in use were hard coded to the users ship no matter what it looked like. Also all user controls were hard coded for that single object. The project you are about to see a screenshot from is a wrapper of the physics engine giving objects these values and ways to effect them. Right now it still uses DirectX for graphics and user input. So the screenshot itself isn’t all that exciting but what it shows is. The Druuge Ship on the left has a dynamic controller attached to it that me to control it. The one on the left has died because I shot it a few times. When the druuge ship dies its parts are turned into objects that are governed by the physics engine and several explosions are created along the ship to scatter them. The hope it that later in game development there will be fields of debris to show how deadly a battle was. I even might make them “asteroids” for the probes. Freaking AWESOME!(http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/TheFirstScreenShot.JPG) I started with druuge because they are one of the simpler ships in terms of game logic. I don’t know what ship I should code next… any Suggestions? The only problem? TortoiseSVN can't seem to access your SVN server for an update. Very annoying. I just attempted to repair the install, to no avail-then again, it may have something to do with Service Pack 2 and a generally screwed-up Windows XP(damn OEM Compaq discs not working with "sfc /scannow"!). Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 13, 2006, 04:23:24 am Freaking AWESOME! Yea the server is down. But the server is only for the physics engine, though this game uses the physics engine it is not part of it. So even if it was up you could not get access to the source code for the game. Also I don’t plan to release the source for the game for a while.The only problem? TortoiseSVN can't seem to access your SVN server for an update. Very annoying. I just attempted to repair the install, to no avail-then again, it may have something to do with Service Pack 2 and a generally screwed-up Windows XP(damn OEM Compaq discs not working with "sfc /scannow"!). Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: NamelessPlayer on January 13, 2006, 04:48:20 am Freaking AWESOME! Yea the server is down. But the server is only for the physics engine, though this game uses the physics engine it is not part of it. So even if it was up you could not get access to the source code for the game. Also I don’t plan to release the source for the game for a while.The only problem? TortoiseSVN can't seem to access your SVN server for an update. Very annoying. I just attempted to repair the install, to no avail-then again, it may have something to do with Service Pack 2 and a generally screwed-up Windows XP(damn OEM Compaq discs not working with "sfc /scannow"!). I still would like to mess around with the new demo, but it's your project, after all. Title: The Ur-Quan ReMasters Post by: Deus Siddis on January 13, 2006, 05:45:16 am "I started with druuge because they are one of the simpler ships in terms of game logic. I don’t know what ship I should code next… any Suggestions?"
The Sa-Matra, hehe. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Draxas on January 13, 2006, 08:04:20 am I imagine Shofixti, Yehat, and (perhaps) Thraddash would also be fairly simple, since their main weapon in every case is a simple direct-fire dealie, and their secondaries don't seem terribly complex either.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 13, 2006, 09:54:14 am A scout? Here is the scout. I've also added something I call a status box, under the ships.(http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/TheSecondScreenShot.JPG) I need some kind of video capture device, because I just can’t get very good screenshots, using ctrl-alt-prtscn. if i could have captured a third screen shot you would have seen the druuge go boom. EDIT: ok heres one of many (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/BigBoom.JPG) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 13, 2006, 10:36:05 am I've been tiring to decide what license to release this under and then I found the license I wrote as a joke when I sent it to a friend. Remember this was a joke and I don’t plan to release it under this.
Quote The Ur-Quan ReMasters is a 2 Dimensional Space Game Written in C#. Copyright (C) 2005-2006 Jonathan Mark Porter This program is NOT free software; you CANNOT redistribute it and/or modify it. You CANNOT even look at it without my explicit permission. If you do not agree with this license delete all hard copies and soft copies of any material relating to this program and acquire a sudden case of amnesia, so you forget ever having this in your possession. This is distributed in the hope that it will make you envious, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. All rights reserved. This License will self destruct in ∞ seconds. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Draxas on January 13, 2006, 05:54:57 pm Hmm... Either that Scout is really tiny, or you made the Mauler really long, because they look to be a little out of scale at a glance. That Glory Device pics are awesome, though. How does it work? Judging from the status bars in the first series, it seems to do gradual damage the longer a ship stays inside the blast radius. Am I right, or does the static shot not really capture what's going on?
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 13, 2006, 10:19:36 pm Hmm... Either that Scout is really tiny, or you made the Mauler really long, because they look to be a little out of scale at a glance. That Glory Device pics are awesome, though. How does it work? Judging from the status bars in the first series, it seems to do gradual damage the longer a ship stays inside the blast radius. Am I right, or does the static shot not really capture what's going on? It’s hard to get things right because how I do things is very different from UQM and Time Warp. Since I use geometry and they use sprites there is no easy conversion (that I know of.) Now if I had access to some 3D models I could write code that would get the polygons from that.Also energy recharge is how much is gained per second (floating point), while UQM does something I don’t quite understand. And yes you are right about how damage is done by the glory device. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 14, 2006, 11:37:53 am Hm... perhaps you can borrow the meshes from aftermath? Those are probably around the poly range you should be shooting for. I think "thatsteveguy" modelled some those ships, so maybe ask him.
There is some discussion about model sources in the Vega Control thread (http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2365) (culture20's WIP mod for Vega Strike) Specificially, the models used to make the TW sprites (not meant for in-game use because of high polycount, but useful just the same- although I don't know if I would trust the scale of these as absolute, better to use in-game sprites as visual references): http://www.geocities.com/bunchamodels5000/ http://www.geocities.com/bunchamodels5001/ See SC3D (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc3d/) for additional high-poly models. BTW: Try FRAPS (http://www.fraps.com/) for the screenshots. It's designed specifically to take screenshots/video of OpenGL and DirectX apps. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 14, 2006, 12:43:29 pm I was playing my game for a while and it eventually got to the point were it became unplayable, especially with bullets bouncing back at me.
(http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/clutter.JPG) Thanks for the links Halleck. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Culture20 on January 14, 2006, 05:05:34 pm Vega Control thread (http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2365) (culture20's WIP mod for Vega Strike) It's probably better referenced as a WNIP mod. I keep restarting and dropping it for more important things...There's someone else that made some low poly models for a SC mod for freespace. Unforunately, they only released a binary, not anything usefull like source & models: http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/forum/index.php?topic=1062.0 Maybe if you send them an email they'll share resources? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 14, 2006, 09:03:57 pm Heh... as a matter of fact, I just asked them about it in their thread (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/forum/index.php?topic=1062.0) on the PONAF board.
About Vega Control... would you mind doing, say, a small "data dump" or patch release? Or at least posting your current data as a WIP somewhere. You never know who might pick it up *hint hint* ;) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 15, 2006, 09:35:33 am I've just got the earthling cruiser fully functional (sorry no screen shot). To do this I also wrote a fully functioning auto-targeting system. To do that I wrote a Faction system where a faction is a side and it knows who is hostile with whom. Right now you could have more then two sides battling it out. My first computer graphics course starts on Tuesday so I’ll start learning how to use all those models out there.
The IDE I’m using is eating all my memory and makes the game run slow even with zero processor use. Anyone have a few sticks of Rambus memory they want to donate to the project? Ill probably release the source code for the game and release a newer version of the physics engine tomorrow er… today, but I need to sleep first. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 15, 2006, 10:54:53 pm As promised the source has been released.
You can get them at the following links. The Ur-Quan ReMasters (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake/) Physics2D (http://physics2d.sourceforge.net/) The Ur-Quan ReMasters download has a compiled version of Physics 2D already in it so no need to download physics 2D (unless you want to help the project stats). The only thing correct in terms of game play is health and weapons damage the rest is... screwed up. Now does anyone want to work on the web site for this game? It doesn’t need anything extravagant , basically a about page stating what its about with a few cool images, or some such. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: NamelessPlayer on January 15, 2006, 11:34:09 pm As promised the source has been released. Not too shabby, for an early project. I really hope that we get dynamic zoom ala 3DO SC2 soon, as well as having the status bars moved somewhere else(so that it won't be as easy to pinpoint, say, a cloaked Avenger).You can get them at the following links. The Ur-Quan ReMasters (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake/) Physics2D (http://physics2d.sourceforge.net/) The Ur-Quan ReMasters download has a compiled version of Physics 2D already in it so no need to download physics 2D (unless you want to help the project stats). The only thing correct in terms of game play is health and weapons damage the rest is... screwed up. Now does anyone want to work on the web site for this game? It doesn’t need anything extravagant , basically a about page stating what its about with a few cool images, or some such. As for creating a Web page...I could probably craft a rudimentary one, but I wouldn't be able to create any fancy images or whatnot. Just a simple page with a navigation bar on the left. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 15, 2006, 11:39:13 pm Now does anyone want to work on the web site for this game? It doesn’t need anything extravagant , basically a about page stating what its about with a few cool images, or some such. As I've said in your other thread (http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=2456.60), I'm more than willing to help with the website, but I need more specifics on what you want it to look like. You say you want it to "conform with source forge's look and feel" but I'm not sure what you mean by that, exactly. Do you want it to integrate seamlessly into your SF.net project page? Do you simply want it to share attributes such as general layout and color scheme? The more specific you can be, the better. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 16, 2006, 03:15:12 am You say you want it to "conform with source forge's look and feel" but I'm not sure what you mean by that, exactly. Do you want it to integrate seamlessly into your SF.net project page? Do you simply want it to share attributes such as general layout and color scheme? The more specific you can be, the better. Basically general layout and color scheme. I would like a about page. A feature list with an image to display current state of each feature. A forum where people can post without an account. And maybe some kind of online documentation thing. The ultimate goal is a website that gives a good impression and one I don’t have to worry too much about maintaining. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 16, 2006, 03:46:07 am Gotcha. I'll see if I can cook up a quick template for you.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 16, 2006, 03:54:49 am Gotcha. I'll see if I can cook up a quick template for you. Would you rather become a member of the project? then you could edit the website yourself. Does anyone know or know where i can get the meaning of the values in the .ini files for the ships in timewarp? If i had those then i could easily convert them to the values i need, and make my game playable. EDIT: By the meaning of I mean: For ship rotation is it in degrees a second or radians a second? For acceleration and max velocity what units are those in? For rates like recharge rates is it in milliseconds or what? I’ve look all over the time warp documentation and could not find the description. My way of doing things is. I use floating point values instead of integers to store my values. For rotation it is in radians a second. For Rates it’s in units a second. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 16, 2006, 08:42:13 am I just got the Utwig Jugger fully functional. Just need some way to convert this info in Timewarps .INI files, to make it true to the game.
I’m thinking about doing the Chmmr Avatar or the Mmrnmhrm X-Form next because those are the ones that would be hardest for my current to design to handle. Chmmr because it has those butterflies and the X-Form because it changes shape. Now what would you prefer? To have the Chmmr’s butterflies to act like some fighters that swarm the ship like fighters patrolling around it or like how UQM currently does it? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 16, 2006, 09:01:33 am Would you rather become a member of the project? then you could edit the website yourself. That's not strictly neccessary for the moment. I always prototype my websites locally, but if you want me to post it to your project's webspace when I'm done with the first draft, feel free.My username on sourceforge.net is fadookie. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 16, 2006, 09:22:17 am Would you rather become a member of the project? then you could edit the website yourself. That's not strictly neccessary for the moment. I always prototype my websites locally, but if you want me to post it to your project's webspace when I'm done with the first draft, feel free.My username on sourceforge.net is fadookie. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 16, 2006, 09:40:56 am Cool!
I'll post the site as soon as I'm done with the first draft. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 16, 2006, 09:25:00 pm Just so you guys can criticize it here is a screenshot of the Utwig Jugger.
(http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/UtwigJugger.JPG) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Draxas on January 17, 2006, 02:41:49 am Seems reasonable. I trust you wouldn't call it finished unless the shield worked correctly, right?
I have to say, this certainly looks like it's coming along nicely, and you didn't try starting off with all the easy stuff, either. I can definitely see this being pretty darn cool when everything is in place, considering how good it's looking now. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 17, 2006, 06:10:58 am Seems reasonable. I trust you wouldn't call it finished unless the shield worked correctly, right? Correct; the game logic works but there is no visual queue whether it’s running or not. Except that the energy is going down.I have to say, this certainly looks like it's coming along nicely, and you didn't try starting off with all the easy stuff, either. I can definitely see this being pretty darn cool when everything is in place, considering how good it's looking now. thanks.Just got the transforming part of the X-form working correctly. I had to make it a little more constrained then i wanted to. Right now its a Druuge cannon that turns into a Earthling cruiser and back. Even though I knew it was coming it still made me laugh allot. ;D I also wrote a ship selection screen so when a ship dies I can replace it with one of my choosing. It has images representing each of the ships. Here is a screenshot of that: (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/ShipSelection.JPG) As you can see it has the xform looking like a druuge ship! :D I'm still very desperate for an explanation of the Ship's .INI files in TimeWarp. I don’t want to spend hours looking for it when I can be programming. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 17, 2006, 10:14:23 am The X-Form is fully functional now.
And I have made a new release with it. The Ur-Quan ReMasters (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake/) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 18, 2006, 08:26:50 am Cool. I'll try to get that template done this weekend, I'm pretty busy this week with the first release of Elite Strike (http://eliot.bambi.net/elitestrike/) and RL stuff.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 19, 2006, 07:32:16 am If anyone cares the Chmmr is now fully functional. Yes and that includes the tractor beam and the butterflies. Here is a screen shot for you to make fun of or just ignore:
(http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/Chmmr-Passed!.JPG) I won’t post a new release with it unless some one asks and if I feel in an accommodating mood. Basically the butterflies are held in place by joints. I could not get the swarming logic to work to my satisfaction but the logic will work well with the Ur-Quan Fighters. I'm thinking about doing the orz next since it has that turret that rotates, and logic with the marines. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 20, 2006, 07:43:41 am I was sure the completion of the chmmr would have inspired some sort of comment, by some one, oh well…
I decided to do something easy before I did the orz. So I did the Spathi Eluder Getting the logic and everything behind it done took only 6 minuets. Getting so it looks close to the original (creating the polygons that represent the shape) took: 12 minutes. This goes to show that I am trying and succeeding in making the code easy to modify. The main reason why I am trying not to do all the easy stuff first is because if I run into a problem on one of the harder ships that will require a major redesign, I will have to apply that redesign to all the existing code and that is a pain. After the orz I am thinking of doing one of the ships that has a weapon that while holding down the fire key does something special. Like the Chenjesu Broodhome, the Melnorme Trader or the Kohr-Ah Marauder. Any Favorites? Anybody willing to voice a suggestion? Anyone? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 20, 2006, 10:36:19 am Hm... supox would probably be interesting to code. So would the arilou.
As for general comments... it looks pretty good, but it's hard to tell from a screenshot how well the zapsats are performing, etc. It would be cooler to see it in action. Also, while I find that your crude ship graphics have a certain low-poly charm to them, don't expect them to inspire mountains of replies. :) (I know the feeling... I used to put up screenshots of new elite strike ships which would usually garner two to no replies a piece.) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on January 20, 2006, 01:30:51 pm The ZFP stinger could be difficult to do if its ram is attached to (inside) its body. Then it might push itself away from the target or something.
Thought about using regular bitmaps for the ships? Maybe it would work to have a top projected texture and then a 3D topside of the hull to work with a lightsource and an ambient source. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 20, 2006, 10:22:07 pm The low polygon count on the “models” is because they are only there so you can see something until the 3D models are I use. They are actually only 2D. I could use a picture as a texture on the polygons but that would be work that I will ultimately throw away when I transfer to 3D models.
You could think right now what you are seeing on screen is the bounding shapes for collision. Right now my main concern is game dynamics not graphics. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 21, 2006, 08:59:31 am Indeed, it's a good thing to be concentrating on the core of the game instead of "gold plating" and eye candy at this stage.
Just don't expect too much public response. :) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 21, 2006, 09:41:21 am Guess what ship is working now? And not only working but fully functional?
Ill give you a hint: It starts with a 'O'. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Draxas on January 21, 2006, 05:07:54 pm You got the Orz to work, turret and Marines and all? Nicely done!
Any chance we could see some screenies of that thing in action? And yeah, I second the idea of not throwing in eye-candy at such an early stage, especially if it will end up being throwaway work as you said. So long as I can tell what's going on, I have no problem with the simple poly screenshots, and considering how long I've been playing the game, I can pretty much figure out what's going on in them from that. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 21, 2006, 10:19:58 pm I was planning to post this screenshot last night; in fact I already had it on my web server. But before I could make a post with plenty of words explaining it, the power went out. So in order to avoid a hard boot I shutdown my computer and went to bed.
Now here is the screen shot of the 2 newer ships: (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/OrzVsSpathi.JPG) Well the orz was pretty darn hard to get working right. Halleck found the correct logic for me on how the marines do damage inside the ship. Getting the turret to work was rather annoying as well. And I have made a new release for ya. The Ur-Quan ReMasters (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake/) EDIT: There is now a binary release for ya as well. Title: The ship of the day! Post by: JonoPorter on January 22, 2006, 06:42:15 am I should start calling this thread the ship of the day. Since that is what it has been for the past week. The more recent ship was rather easy but still required a bit of time. It was the Melnorme Trader. But I didn’t stop their today. I put in a planet and managed to make the zooming and scale imitate UQM. I also made it so the stars appear all the time.
EDIT: I also just put in randomly generated asteroids. With the new zooming and camera handling it’s just as fun as the original. Except for the lack of an AI opponent, and having only 9 of the 25 ships. I should probably figure out how to use the CVS thing and make it so I don’t have to do so many releases, for you guys to have access to the most recent stuff. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 22, 2006, 11:11:03 pm Since I didn’t feel up to figuring out the CVS yet; I have made a new release for ya.
The Ur-Quan ReMasters (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake/) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 23, 2006, 02:15:16 am I reccomend the TortoiseCVS (http://www.tortoisecvs.org/) client for windows. It integrates right into windows explorer and makes CVS operations a breeze.
Title: Quick-Save! Post by: JonoPorter on January 23, 2006, 07:55:50 am Sorry guys no ship of the day today.
I instead cleaned up the code and went though the physics2D and made it so I can serialize the World2D class. Then I went though the game and made sure I can serialize it. The result? A simple quick-save feature, so you can save right before you do something incredibly stupid and then load to avoid the horrendous consequences. The hope is I can use serialization to be able to transfer the world or enough to recreate it over a the network and have multiplayer. I just decided to do a quick count of number of lines I have put into this project in order to impress you. The Physics2D project is now at 18,243 lines of code. The Ur-Quan ReMasters project is now at 9,855 lines of code. That’s 28,098 total, all written in about 6 months. I’ve heard a vote for the supox, the arilou, and the zot-fot-pik. Any other favorites you guys want created first? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Draxas on January 23, 2006, 08:34:23 am Despite the fact that you used it in nearly all the early prototype screens, you still haven't done the Dreadnought... I'd like to see that one, complete with working fighters.
Then again, I'd also like to see the Thraddash get their representation, too. As far as ship that might be difficult to code, I could definitely see potential problems ahead with: Syreen - their secondary, and getting the "drift" behavior of loose crew correct Umgah - Bizarre ship functions all around; no-energy primary, jerky retro-rockets, unusual energy regeneration, etc. Ilwrath - Cloaking device, and that quirk that spins them in the right direction when you fire while cloaked Arilou - Inertialess drive and ability to ignore gravity effects Slylandro - More all-around weirdness; the lightning arm might be done already, but they have other odd traits: Unusual drive systems, unusual energy recovery, immunity to the Syreen's secondary, etc. Supox - Lateral movement from the secondary VUX - Close proximity warp-in Androsynth - Bizarre "tracking" systems for the bubbles, comet manuvering Just a random sampling, in no particular order; since I don't really know how the code works, I can't predict whether these things will be trouble or not. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: ^Nytro^ on January 23, 2006, 01:09:04 pm Mycon would be good to try, their blasts have their own "virtual hitpoints" that are represnted by the blast's size and shape. also of coarse the blasts' tracking ability and low,velocity-affected speed.
plus the crew regeneration which I assume being somewhat easy? also I suggest VUX, though I don't recall if you've already done it? the limpets are fun and unique. and surely I want to see pkunk in action, besides it's shape I don't see a special difficullity, plus their primary fire behavior appears to be similar to other ships' the way I see it (like yehat, and supox- though theirs is faster). and about your recent accomplishments- it is all very good, way to go, the project is going very well. I'm really impressed by the speed you release new ships..... just hope all the 'finished' ships really are completely finished, game-logic wise. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Evktalo- on January 23, 2006, 07:47:20 pm I really enjoyed those recent shots. I'm gonna take a quick peek at the binaries. Congratulations to your project! It seems you're on a roll, BioSlayer.
--Eino Title: Ship of the Day: Kzer-Za Dreadnought Post by: JonoPorter on January 24, 2006, 08:34:57 am Thanks for the replies guys they are actually very helpful both intellectually and emotionally.
I have now finished the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za Dreadnought (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/Ur-QuanVsUtwig.JPG) It is fully functional. The fighters return to the ship, they fire and swarm and circle the opponent (not just ram and bounce off). Also instead of just targeting the main ship they also fire at anything considered hostile. So I found if you get enough fighters you can overwhelm a chmmr, because the zap sats have the same range as a fighter! The Main weapon works as well, but that’s to be expected. All that’s really left is to set the numbers correctly. Costs of the fighters, and the rate at which they are launched and so on. Right now I’m trying to get a good picture of a massive fighter on fighter war, before i do that. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: ^Nytro^ on January 24, 2006, 12:17:42 pm There are several technical details that I noticed, now I'm aware that those parameters are to be corrected, but I just wondered whether they are set in purpose and so on.
- the star: the star is bigger and its gravity behaves differentlly. I myself haven't yet decided if I like it or not, but it's gravity range and force seem greater, while the speed it draws seemed to be noticebly reduced. it is now a bit harder to catch speed with a star, and plus, somehow now it is very probable to get completely stucked with the star and die moments afterwards. also, the star seem to draw ships that are WAY distant. so I just thought- did you plan this, BioSlayer? and is this going to remain the way it is? also, some breif notes- - the druuge cannon really doesn't push the ship fast enough backwards during fire. at first I wondered if it even does. -can't the ship selection screen timing be delayed in about a second (like the original) so we could watch the ship exploded with your (really impressive!) wracks scattering feature? -in your latest develop, do the Ur Quan fighters get "lost in space" after a long period of flying, like they do in the original? besides this I had an idea, that instead of just dissapearing after a while they (the fighters) could simply "really run out of fuel"- and just stay in place, or act like an astroid- just hang in space and get drawn to the star, unless- the lovely Dreadnought picks them back aboard. (or maybe not, since it does make the dreadnought stronger). -is the Utwig shield going to become visible any time soon? - can the X-Form's form shift procedure be animated in multiple stages? I mean, so that we could see it actually change? - is it possible that also the sizes of the ships will be changed to become proportional according to the original game? lastly, I just want to say the engine really rocks, it's neat that you can actually "twist" another ship by rotating my ship next to it. generally I enjoy playing it. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: GeomanNL on January 24, 2006, 09:27:49 pm Some comments:
- cool project. - cool colorful graphics and screenshots. - Timewarp doesn't have the best code around, but it works. I base twx on that project, and well - in the end I rewrote just about everything, but at least I didn't have to start from scratch and could replace stuff piece by piece. - .Net should not pose any problem for a 1:1 combat game. I've read on the net some estimates which vary somewhat. Most say that the overhead by the .net interpreter is just a few percent (because the C# code is interpreted to .net format, and then compiled, and then executed), some about 10%, and one claim of about 30% CPU load. I don't think it makes any difference for this project. There's a good discussion here. http://www.codecomments.com/archive292-2004-9-280002.html (http://www.codecomments.com/archive292-2004-9-280002.html) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Draxas on January 25, 2006, 03:10:53 am I love that shot of the fighters picking apart their hapless victim. Excellent work once again!
If what you say about the way the fighters now behave is true, this makes the Dreadnought vastly more powerful... And also a lot more realistic and sensible. There's no reason that fighters shouldn't be able to act as "portable point defense," though it does make the Dreadnought a much more fearsom adversary; a lot of the typical ships employed against them simply wouldn't work anymore. Earthlings and Spathi in particular seem to get the short end of the stick here. As far as the "disappearing" fighters goes, though, as I recall, it wasn't so much that the fighters run out of fuel, that the substandard "slave-grade" life support system onboard just gives out after a while, killing the slave piloting it. Thus, retrieving the fighter after that point would be useless; the crewman inside is already dead. Seems like a pretty smart feature, considering that a mass of autonomous fighters could otherwise easily turn on their master and destroy the Dreadnought to make a bid for freedom. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on January 25, 2006, 03:36:33 am Actually, I think the fighters are automated, not slave-piloted.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on January 25, 2006, 04:49:35 am Actually, I think the fighters are automated, not slave-piloted. Well it would make much more sense for them to be slave piloted since your crew goes down when you launch em. Title: Re-factoring Fun Post by: JonoPorter on January 25, 2006, 09:39:26 am Sorry no ship of the day today either. A few things in the design have been bugging me so I have decided to do a massive overhaul. The main thing is: I hate it when I see the same block of code twice, and I have entire methods that are exactly the same. So I’m making major changes to reduce the amount of duplicate code and to add more flexibility at the same time. With one major change that I have done I’ve reduced the line count from 10,741 to 9,857. That’s not a small amount of cleanup. I’m also thinking about how to get rid of all the events in the code, because serialization and events are not friendly.
Here is a screenshot of a bunch of fighters blasting each other away: (The green Ur-Quan have split into 2 sub-species the red and the blue. They are fighting over the ancient precursor artifact which will lead them to the holy blood gulch canyon.) (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/Ur-QuanVsUr-Quan.JPG) - the star: the star is bigger and its gravity behaves differentlly. I myself haven't yet decided if I like it or not, but it's gravity range and force seem greater, while the speed it draws seemed to be noticebly reduced. it is now a bit harder to catch speed with a star, and plus, somehow now it is very probable to get completely stucked with the star and die moments afterwards. also, the star seem to draw ships that are WAY distant. so I just thought- did you plan this, BioSlayer? and is this going to remain the way it is? The gravity equations in the game are realistic they are pulled from wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity) I’ll most likely figure out how to break my physics engine in order to appease ya and get UQM unrealistic gravity, but it’s not on the top of my list right now. - the druuge cannon really doesn't push the ship fast enough backwards during fire. at first I wondered if it even does. The Druuge cannon uses the same logic as the rest of the guns in the game (they all have recoil) so all I had to do to “fix” this was increase the mass of the projectile. Now it has 4 times the mass of a Shofixti Scout, and Ships on the receiving end get quite a jolt from it. -can't the ship selection screen timing be delayed in about a second (like the original) so we could watch the ship exploded with your (really impressive!) wracks scattering feature? I would like to have the selection screen be delayed as well. I have put some though into it, but not a whole lot. I’ve been more concerned with the game logic. Also when I do it, I want to do it right. -in your latest develop, do the Ur Quan fighters get "lost in space" after a long period of flying, like they do in the original? besides this I had an idea, that instead of just dissapearing after a while they (the fighters) could simply "really run out of fuel"- and just stay in place, or act like an astroid- just hang in space and get drawn to the star, unless- the lovely Dreadnought picks them back aboard. (or maybe not, since it does make the dreadnought stronger). The fighters have the same lifetime logic as any solid object in the game. If they don’t return to the mother ship, before their timer is up they disappear just like bullets do. -is the Utwig shield going to become visible any time soon? The answer is yes, but this goes back to the question of graphics. On of the main things I want to do is switch to OpenGL so it can compile on Linux using Mono. So I really want to wait on doing any spiffy graphics until I’m sure I won’t be wasting work. The scaling of the ships would be easy for me to do but I would have to do it. I would have to find the lengths of all the ships and then scale then and the length of ships is not readily available to me. - can the X-Form's form shift procedure be animated in multiple stages? I mean, so that we could see it actually change? - is it possible that also the sizes of the ships will be changed to become proportional according to the original game? lastly, I just want to say the engine really rocks, it's neat that you can actually "twist" another ship by rotating my ship next to it. Thanks.generally I enjoy playing it. Some comments: Thanks.- cool project. - cool colorful graphics and screenshots. - Timewarp doesn't have the best code around, but it works. I base twx on that project, and well - in the end I rewrote just about everything, but at least I didn't have to start from scratch and could replace stuff piece by piece. - .Net should not pose any problem for a 1:1 combat game. I've read on the net some estimates which vary somewhat. Most say that the overhead by the .net interpreter is just a few percent (because the C# code is interpreted to .net format, and then compiled, and then executed), some about 10%, and one claim of about 30% CPU load. I don't think it makes any difference for this project. There's a good discussion here. http://www.codecomments.com/archive292-2004-9-280002.html (http://www.codecomments.com/archive292-2004-9-280002.html) One of the main reasons why I didn’t join the Timewarp project is because I wanted to have realistic physics (collisions with rotation and friction) and Timwarp does not have this. I know C# is slower then normal C++, but I accepted that back when I started the physics engine, and from that I have gained a lot of knowledge on how to speed things up in C#. Also it’s a little late to switch now. The main reason why there is slowness in the game is the way I’m using Direct3D there is a wait call somewhere and it gives it artificial lag. If what you say about the way the fighters now behave is true, this makes the Dreadnought vastly more powerful... And also a lot more realistic and sensible. There's no reason that fighters shouldn't be able to act as "portable point defense," though it does make the Dreadnought a much more fearsom adversary; a lot of the typical ships employed against them simply wouldn't work anymore. Earthlings and Spathi in particular seem to get the short end of the stick here. If it happens to unbalance the game to much I could change it so they act like they do in UQM.Here is how I would do it: I would change this line in the KzerZaFighterPrimary static constructor: Code: DefaultTargetingTypes = new TargetingInfo(TargetingTypes.Enemy); To:Code: DefaultTargetingTypes = new TargetingInfo(TargetingTypes.None, TargetingTypes.Enemy | TargetingTypes.Ship, TargetingTypes.None); About the fighters: I did read somewhere that they are indeed piloted. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 25, 2006, 11:30:52 am I think that the fighters are piloted by slaves, but I think they have an auto-targeting laser. This may be cause for confusion.
Also, they are referred to as "autonomous" in the SC1 databank entry. Perhaps people mistook this to mean "automated"? Title: Re: Re-factoring Fun Post by: meep-eep on January 25, 2006, 01:24:05 pm I’m also thinking about how to get rid of all the events in the code, because serialization and events are not friendly. And then there's me, wishing the UQM code were event driven... I'd never throw out transparancy of the general design for ease of implementation. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on January 25, 2006, 04:22:59 pm Also, they are referred to as "autonomous" in the SC1 databank entry. Perhaps people mistook this to mean "automated"?
That's probably it, though I thought it also said someplace that a dreadnaught was manned only by a UQ and its dynarri translator, because they so hate the presence of others (including fellow UQ.) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 25, 2006, 08:41:20 pm Yes, there is only one ur-quan. The rest of the crew are slaves. ;)
Title: Re: Re-factoring Fun Post by: JonoPorter on January 26, 2006, 12:26:54 am I’m also thinking about how to get rid of all the events in the code, because serialization and events are not friendly. And then there's me, wishing the UQM code were event driven... I'd never throw out transparancy of the general design for ease of implementation. Let me explain a little more of what I mean, since C# is rather different then C and C++, to see if you miss-understood me. In C# an event is basically a list of delegates (method pointers) that will run when the event is called from inside the class it belongs to. The only requirement for a delegate to be added to an event is for it to have the same parameter list and return value. There are 2 major conflicts that arise from my design using events. The first one is I rely heavily on cloning (could be considered the same as memcopy) When you clone an event you get the delegates that are still pointing at whatever they were. Let’s say you have a delegate that decreases energy each time a weapon is fired. If you cloned the ship it is in, then the next time you call the event it would decrease the energy of the ship it was cloned from not from the new clone. The second is I plan to use serialization (a way to put objects into a stream.) for several things. When you serialize an event it has to serialize all the delegates in it. And to serialize a delegate you have to serialize the class the method the delegate is pointing to. The problem is you cannot restrict events to have delegates that points only to classes that can be serialize. So if one non-serializable class has a method used as a delegate in an event; it will throw an error. The solution is to mark events as non-serializable, but then the event is worthless, since when you de-serialize the event it would be blank. Though events are very useful they just don’t fit into my game design without breaking it. If you think I should still keep the events I would like know your reasoning why. I searched online for what transparency with programming is and found several different definitions. I was wondering if you could ask you to define what the term means to you. I apologize if I sound as if I’m talking down to you. I assure I’m not trying to sound that way. It’s just how I type. Yes, there is only one ur-quan. The rest of the crew are slaves. ;) Then that explains whey they lost the second doctrinal war. Since they refused to bring slaves into their doctrinal war against the Kohr-Ah that would mean that each dreadnought has only one crew when it goes into battle. But before you said they would do that because it is stupid you should remember that can never apply reason to fanatics, because it is lost on them. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on January 26, 2006, 01:24:08 am ??? I don't think that theory holds much water. All of the ur-quan that I ran into were fully crewed, at least. The reason that I remember for their defeat from the game is that the ur-quan forces were weakened during the first war.
Also, the crew of a dreadnought is not necessarily made up of thrall races that we are familiar with. Remember that the dreadnoughts must have been crewed before the ur-quan entered the sector, so a lot of the crew is probably made up of prior thrall races, or perhaps a third class of slave (not as autonomous as thralls, but not slave-shielded.) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Draxas on January 26, 2006, 02:42:13 am If I recall correctly, the SC1 manual states that the crew of the Dreadnought is composed of a single Ur-Quan captain (plus Talking Pet), and the rest of the crew is drawn from the ranks of their combat thralls. However, it is a distinct possibility that some of those combat thralls might be from outside the sector that SC2 takes place in, and are thus members of races that we never get to interact with.
And the reason for the Kzer-Za's loss in the doctrinal conflict, while never explicitly stated as such, is pretty clearly laid out over the course of the game: At the end of the war with the Alliance, the Shofixti detonated their sun and wiped out approximately a third of the Ur-Quan fleet. The Kohr-Ah appeared in the sector only a short time later, and the Kzer-Za had too little time to rebuild their forces before initiating the doctrinal conflict. Since the Kzer-Za refused to use the Sa Matra against the Kohr-Ah again, they were fighting at a distinct disadvantage, and lost through the power of numbers alone. Title: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on January 26, 2006, 04:11:06 am "Yes, there is only one ur-quan. The rest of the crew are slaves."
That would mean that either the slaves are Taalo, or the green UQ can tolerate other species, while the brown and black UQ cannot. Title: Re: Re-factoring Fun Post by: meep-eep on January 26, 2006, 05:13:51 am Let me explain a little more of what I mean, since C# is rather different then C and C++, to see if you miss-understood me. I didn't realise there was a built-in type for events in C#. In C/C++ you'd have to do such things yourself. Which is more work, but it also means you won't run into problems when the built-in type isn't flexible enough.In C# an event is basically a list of delegates (method pointers) that will run when the event is called from inside the class it belongs to. The only requirement for a delegate to be added to an event is for it to have the same parameter list and return value. Quote There are 2 major conflicts that arise from my design using events. So you'd have to update the delegates when you clone a ship. That doesn't sound like a big problem. (Also, I wouldn't use events to decrease the energy when a weapon is fired. Events are for responding to changes in state, not to be used instead of a normal method call.)The first one is I rely heavily on cloning (could be considered the same as memcopy) When you clone an event you get the delegates that are still pointing at whatever they were. Let’s say you have a delegate that decreases energy each time a weapon is fired. If you cloned the ship it is in, then the next time you call the event it would decrease the energy of the ship it was cloned from not from the new clone. Quote The second is I plan to use serialization (a way to put objects into a stream.) for several things. When you serialize an event it has to serialize all the delegates in it. And to serialize a delegate you have to serialize the class the method the delegate is pointing to. The problem is you cannot restrict events to have delegates that points only to classes that can be serialize. So if one non-serializable class has a method used as a delegate in an event; it will throw an error. The solution is to mark events as non-serializable, but then the event is worthless, since when you de-serialize the event it would be blank. Yes, you'd have a similar issue to handle when you work in C/C++. You just cannot include references to objects that aren't (being) serialised. In C/C++, you'd do the serialising yourself, so you can decide which fields you do not want to store, and reconstruct relations between objects instead of deserialising them.If it's all-or-nothing in C#, then I guess you're SOL. Perhaps you could ignore the built-in event system and make your own, like you would do in C/C++. Quote Though events are very useful they just don’t fit into my game design without breaking it. If you think I should still keep the events I would like know your reasoning why. I'm talking about transparancy of design. Which basically means that it is easy to understand. Keeping your invariants simple and generic, separation of concerns, that sort of thing.I searched online for what transparency with programming is and found several different definitions. I was wondering if you could ask you to define what the term means to you. By using an event-driven design, the method triggering the event doesn't have to know anything about the listener, and the listener doesn't have to know what caused the event. Title: Ship of the Day: Supox Blade. Post by: JonoPorter on January 26, 2006, 08:53:34 am I know she’s not much to look at but the logic is there and fully functional.
(http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/SupoxVsUr-Quan.JPG) I mostly continued with the re-factoring of the code. So that is why it didn’t do something more complex. meep-eep your arguments have swayed me. I’ll leave the events in. I will have to somehow enforce strict discipline when it comes to what registers with the events though. Now I need to go to bed so I can get some homework done in the morning. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Draxas on January 26, 2006, 08:28:40 pm Lateral movement is working & everything? I must say, you never cease to amaze; it's one thing to take weeks or months to get it perfect, and quite another to get complex behaviors like these done in less than a day.
*Applauds* Title: Ship of the Day: N/A Post by: JonoPorter on January 27, 2006, 08:36:42 am Lateral movement is working & everything? I must say, you never cease to amaze; it's one thing to take weeks or months to get it perfect, and quite another to get complex behaviors like these done in less than a day. *Applauds* *bows* ;D Thanks. I always appreciate words of encouragement. Sorry no ship of the day today. I instead continued with the re-factoring and recoding of certain things. Today I pulled all the logic out of the weapons and put it in a class called WeaponsLogic. Then I replaced the InstantExplosion class with that one that implemented… Well I did a LOT. What I was going into detail about was that now because of theses changes a lot of redundant code was moved into a generic class and gives the ability to change something in one place and have it affect everything that uses it. The end result is I can now accurately do the Mycon’s primary weapon. I believe that was the last major hurdle to the design, before I believe I can do everything for super melee minus the hyperspace effects and the pkunks hallelujah effect (just the effect not the re-spawning). Also I’ve started messing around with SDL. And I’m thinking the first thing ill do with SDL is transferring all the controls over to it. Then I’m thinking about trying to add some sound. I forgot to mention last night that I managed to make it so the ship selection screen is delayed by a little bit, so you can watch the ships blow up. Title: Re: Ship of the Day: N/A Post by: NamelessPlayer on January 27, 2006, 09:36:30 pm Lateral movement is working & everything? I must say, you never cease to amaze; it's one thing to take weeks or months to get it perfect, and quite another to get complex behaviors like these done in less than a day. *Applauds* *bows* ;D Thanks. I always appreciate words of encouragement. Sorry no ship of the day today. I instead continued with the re-factoring and recoding of certain things. Today I pulled all the logic out of the weapons and put it in a class called WeaponsLogic. Then I replaced the InstantExplosion class with that one that implemented… Well I did a LOT. What I was going into detail about was that now because of theses changes a lot of redundant code was moved into a generic class and gives the ability to change something in one place and have it affect everything that uses it. The end result is I can now accurately do the Mycon’s primary weapon. I believe that was the last major hurdle to the design, before I believe I can do everything for super melee minus the hyperspace effects and the pkunks hallelujah effect (just the effect not the re-spawning). Also I’ve started messing around with SDL. And I’m thinking the first thing ill do with SDL is transferring all the controls over to it. Then I’m thinking about trying to add some sound. I forgot to mention last night that I managed to make it so the ship selection screen is delayed by a little bit, so you can watch the ships blow up. Okay, so there was quite a bit of OT stuff in there-needless to say, the point is that the final product is bound to blow us all away(as well as give a good starting base for my Repulsor game I detailed a few pages back). Oh, and when't the next release? I wish that you'd get that SVN server of yours up and running again, this time with a link for UQRM... Title: Ship of the Day: Mycon Podship. Post by: JonoPorter on January 29, 2006, 08:20:22 am I didn't do anything yesterday concerning this project because the Auto Assault Beta event started yesterday. And I played it during all of my free time.
I did the Mycond Podship for ya guys. The only thing about it that you could consider non functional is when the main weapon takes damage it does not expand to the size appropriate for what damage is left in it. (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/Ur-QuanVsMycon.JPG) Oh, and when't the next release? I wish that you'd get that SVN server of yours up and running again, this time with a link for UQRM... Ask and you shall receive. The SVN server is not mine, but it is up. (only with the Physics Engine). The Ur-Quan ReMasters (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake/) I've dedicate this release to my brother James, who would have been 25 today; if it wasn’t for a climbing accident. James would have loved the fact that I’m remaking this game. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on January 30, 2006, 09:52:16 pm There is a new Release for you all to download. If you visit this site you can get it.
The Ur-Quan ReMasters (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake/) Maybe ya guys miss understood me. Because very few People have downloaded it. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: TiLT on January 30, 2006, 10:43:03 pm I'm happy just reading about your project for now, but I'm definitely going to download this when it's more complete. I'm awed by the speed at which you're progressing, and will be very very impressed if you manage to keep it up.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: meep-eep on January 30, 2006, 10:54:05 pm I'll wait for the Linux version...
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: 0xDEC0DE on January 31, 2006, 12:42:14 am ...and I'll keep an eye out for a MacOS X build...
Title: Feat of the Day: SDL.Net. Post by: JonoPorter on January 31, 2006, 09:38:19 am I decided it was about time for me to switch over to SDL.Net. So I did.
What this means is that DirectX is no longer required to compile and run my game. In even simpler terms it means it can possibly run on Linux. The thing that really threw me off about OpenGL is that coordinate system is totally different then DirectX. Other then that it was a really simple switch. The status boxes aren’t working yet but that’s the only thing. Right now I’m thinking on how to rewrite the timer for my physics engine so that it’s a lot more consistent. I’ll try running it on a Linux system tomorrow, to see if it will work. I will be testing it on either a Red Hat or a Fedora core system. My Other Brother has Macintosh laptop with MacOS X so I can test it on that too (If he lets me). I'm happy just reading about your project for now, but I'm definitely going to download this when it's more complete. I'm awed by the speed at which you're progressing, and will be very very impressed if you manage to keep it up. Unfortunately I didn’t take any blow off classes this semester so I will have to be spending more and more time doing homework and studying. But I will still try.Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Zeep-Eeep on January 31, 2006, 02:11:44 pm I hear the next version of Fedora will have built in
mono support. This should help those of us running Linux to enjoy your project. I've never coded .NET before, but I might learn just so I can help with this wonderful project. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: aguesst on January 31, 2006, 04:40:26 pm Now, just a quick question about your graphics. Right now it looks like you have flat polygon shapes to define your clipping plane. Are you going to lay a higher resolution 3d model or are you just planning on using a flat 2-d bitmapping to your clipping plane?
Or, and this would be even cooler, are you planning on using some sort of normal mapped flat graphic. That way it would look (mostly) like a really high res graphic with responce to dynamic lights and all, but at a fraction of the cost. The only places that would get sloppy is at the edge of your screen where the perspective wouldn't respond exactly correct, but other than that it'd be cool Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: TiLT on January 31, 2006, 04:49:34 pm Whoa, normal mapping is a tall order for a game where most of the screen is black. Space games have traditionally been able to push more polygons because of the very nature of the scenery, so coding a normal mapper would be more work than it's worth.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on February 01, 2006, 01:06:09 am Indeed. I think BioSlayer is using these 2d polygons as placeholders and boundary/collision boxes. The hope is to get some good 3d models eventually.
Title: Feat of the Day: Linux! Post by: JonoPorter on February 01, 2006, 08:06:25 am Yep I managed to get it to run on Linux. Do you know what caused the most problems other then the unofficial nature of windows forms in mono? The fact that there is no easy to use installer for SDL.Net on Linux. I had to comment out a lot of automatically generated code that seems to do nothing. I works for the most part except for a few glaring problems with winforms, but the computer I tested it on has issues.
I also rewrote the timer and it seams to be working a lot better, then the old version. Halleck is right about the polygons as placeholders. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 02, 2006, 12:49:10 am I just added the source to the cvs repository of the sourceforge site.
Title: Sadness of the Day: Sound Post by: JonoPorter on February 02, 2006, 07:36:10 am I was trying to get sound to work you know when the weapons fire they have the appropriate sound? I managed to get the battle music to play in the background with 4 lines of code. But when I tried to get the weapon sounds SDL.Net got some rather strange errors. I know if that didn’t happen I would have had sound completely functional by now, on at least one ship if not all of them.
I’m so sad I really hate delays and wasted time. :'( Title: I once was deaf, but now I hear. Post by: JonoPorter on February 03, 2006, 09:46:51 am here is the CVS info:
username@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/sc2-remake The module name is "The Ur-Quan ReMasters" I just added sound using another method then SDL. Right now the Earthling Cruiser,The Ur-Quan Dreadnought and the Chmmr Avatar have all the sound associated with them working. The rest have only the death sound. The sound has only one channel though and can only play one sound at a time. :-\ But it will only be this way untill SDL.Net is fixed. I decided not to do all the ships becuase I have decided its about time for me to start looking into lua.Net and to see how much of the ships logic I can put into the scripts. So right now im Thinking about what changes will be needed to support Lua.Net. I have commited the most recent changes to the CVS repository. Title: This is why I wrote my own physics engine. Post by: JonoPorter on February 04, 2006, 08:04:34 am I tried to get Lua.Net working but it would not cooperate. Instead I fixed SDL.Net’s code concerning the sound and have switch back to that for the sound. Though the sound is strange. It pitch is significantly higher then it should be. The chmmrs primary weapon sound like an alarm clock. Anyone have knowledge of what up with this? Considering UQM uses SDL and I’m using a .Net wrapper for SDL, and it’s the same sound file. I kind of annoyed at how much trouble I’m having trying to get all these other people’s libraries to work.
Halleck are you still working on the website? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: meep-eep on February 04, 2006, 12:29:03 pm We're using SDL in UQM, but not SDL_mixer or SDL_sound.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 04, 2006, 03:56:12 pm So how is sound played?
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: meep-eep on February 04, 2006, 04:19:02 pm Using the standard SDL audio functions, in combination with fOSSiL's home made mixer (or OpenAL, but that's not really generally usable).
Title: Re: This is why I wrote my own physics engine. Post by: Halleck on February 05, 2006, 12:29:52 am Halleck are you still working on the website? It's coming along, albeit slowly. I'm trying to combine some ideas from the ogre template and the one Arne posted, and go from there.Title: BioNews: your daily source of bad grammer. Post by: JonoPorter on February 05, 2006, 09:08:52 am It's coming along, albeit slowly. I'm trying to combine some ideas from the ogre template and the one Arne posted, and go from there. OK I was just wondering (and planning and scheming but you don’t need to know about that!)I’ve got the sound working completely now. It’s just that the .wav files had a strange frequency that everything but sdl.net could handle. So I just converted them to .ogg using an open source program called Audacity. And they play at the correct rates now. In other news: Well I have decided that Lua.Net is not going to work out. Basically it is that Lua.net is for .Net 1.1 only as far as I can tell and there are no signs of life on the website. After that I thought about using Jscript to do my scripting. I was pretty darn impressed with C# ability to compile JScript and run it during run time. I was even more impressed when I figured out that it can do the exact same thing to C#. (Yes you heard me right a C# program can compile another C# program then run it.) So I was thinking I could use C# as my “scripting language” for things that require code to run. I tried it out and it worked! Self compiling code… I wonder if there is any good use for recursive compiling. I looked up on mono and it appears to have this ability as well, but I have not confirmed that. Anyone want to do that for me? What do you guys think about having all the ship .cs files and any other .cs files that could be used for mods only compiled at runtime? I could easily write code to check if the files have change last time the program was ran, and only compile it if it has, so it would still be fast if I can do it right. The only real cons I can think of are: It’s not simple, but lua.Net had the same problem also. Its Huge risk of code injection, but lua.Net had the same problem also. A few pros I can see are: Consistency, there is absolutely no difference between C# and C#. There is an IDE available for it. It is Very powerful. Clean Compared to a scripting language. And it can be faster. Any you can see that I haven’t? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: meep-eep on February 05, 2006, 09:49:25 am Using a scripting language you decide what it can do or not. If you're using C# for scripting, can you prevent it from using functions to read or write from files, or open sockets, etc?
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 05, 2006, 11:20:01 am Though i was thinking about this before you brought it up. I hadn't thought to heavily about it. So once i did started thinking heres what i thought up:
Actually I have a lot more control then I did with lua.net. When I compile it I have to tell the compiler class what assemblies for it to link with and I will keep it to System and the 2 assemblies I generate. Alone the System assembly contains a lot of code that could be very nasty. So before I compile a piece of source code and run it I will look though it for keywords that are required (no way of going around using them) to get to the stuff that can do damage, and if they exist the compiler will skip that file. Lua.net on the other hand I could not do that to, because it can reference any assembly it wants and it can do that though strings that are created in the script. C# does have a similar ability, but they would have to use the classes in the Reflection namespace and I scan for that word. 8) I think that’s a pretty convincing and secure way of doing things do you agree? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: meep-eep on February 05, 2006, 12:15:35 pm Not bad, that C# (at least in this aspect).
Although I would suggest instead of naming the things the script writer can't use, you name the things he/she can use, and forbid the rest. That way, if you overlook something, or a new version of C# adds a new function that can be abused, you won't have a security hole. It's a good security principle in general btw, having 'deny' as default. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Erekose on February 05, 2006, 06:01:35 pm I've been lurking in this forum for quite some time now, several years in fact and first I have to thank the creators of Ur-Quan Masters for doing such a great job bringing back this classic.
Second I come from a Java background and I know that many of the features of c# and Java are similar so may be there is also an equivalent for Java's security system. The Java security system handles sets of permissions that are applied to code, depending on the fact, how it was loaded. Permissions can control a lot of features on a very fine granularity, ranging from creating, writing and reading files on the system, connecting to the network, creating new threads down to reading the which Java version runs the code. This technique is used for Applets for example. To come to the point, if c# supports a similar facility it would be ideal to prevent code loaded with the script classloader (or whatever the c# equivalent for loading code at runtime is) to do anything harmful. So it might be worth the time to check if c# supports that. Anyway I think you are doing a great job on your remake and I can't wait for it to be finished. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: DwD on February 06, 2006, 01:04:41 am I have downloaded, compiled and played with your 2D Physics Engine from sourceforge.net.
I gotta say it's interesting. I'm perusing your code for tidbits I might use in my own feeble programming efforts. Keep at it, I can't wait to see a functioning meelee. ;D Title: When games need security. Post by: JonoPorter on February 06, 2006, 02:37:37 am I just included the security restrictions part of the C# as well, but I’m leaving my code in place because when the security restrictions are violated it throws a run time error and I don’t want my game crashing because some one is trying to be a moron. The security is so tight around these that the only way they could use them with nefarious intent is if the system the game is running on or the game itself is already compromised.
I also added a hash checking to see if the source file needs to be recompiled. It also checks to see if the .dll generated from the source file is altered. And just to go the extra mile the file the hash code is stored in is encrypted! I may have to remove the encryption part if mono does not support it. This all happens when the game is started up so you don’t have to worry about it slowing the game down once it’s running. Not bad, that C# (at least in this aspect). It is a good suggestion, but that would not be as easy as you make it sound. Although I would suggest instead of naming the things the script writer can't use, you name the things he/she can use, and forbid the rest. That way, if you overlook something, or a new version of C# adds a new function that can be abused, you won't have a security hole. It's a good security principle in general btw, having 'deny' as default. Also .Net does not change very often there has been like 3 versions of it so far (that I know of), and I pretty sure the compiler built into C# would compile it as the version the game was compiled as. Keep at it, I can't wait to see a functioning meelee. The current release on the website is functional it’s just not complete. unless you want to report a bug?Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: DwD on February 06, 2006, 06:04:39 am I love the melee!
You should choose a format to import your ships from. I'm sure there are LOTS of folks out there just itching to put some new models into it. ;D Title: Re: When games need security. Post by: DwD on February 06, 2006, 06:14:00 am I pretty sure the compiler built into C# would compile it as the version the game was compiled as. The compiler has gone thru several changes as you say, as has the .NET Framework. Your code will not compile on VS 2003 with .NET framework 1.1. While there is some forward compatability, iffy at best, there is absolutely no backward compatability. Did I say that right? Oh well, you get the gist of it. Title: Re: When games need security. Post by: JonoPorter on February 06, 2006, 09:53:57 am I love the melee! Thanks.You should choose a format to import your ships from. I'm sure there are LOTS of folks out there just itching to put some new models into it. That’s what all this talk about using C# as a scripting language is about; making it really easy to add stuff to the game. Only ships at the moment, but I'm thinking how I want to use this new capability. It’s to way much to store information about planets and star locations (I plan to use XML for that). Maybe I could add scripted scenes. The compiler has gone thru several changes as you say, as has the .NET Framework. Your code will not compile on VS 2003 with .NET framework 1.1. While there is some forward compatability, iffy at best, there is absolutely no backward compatability. Did I say that right? Oh well, you get the gist of it. um... no. I'm using .net 1.1 libraries, and they work very well except were improvements in .nets 2.0 garbage collector bring forth bugs that went unnoticed earlier and some differences causes a few bugs. So there is extensive backwards compatibility. The reason why I could not use Lua.net is because it has a non .net .dll it uses to interface and that required .net 1.1. I'm thinking you misunderstood what compiler I was talking about. Check out the System.CodeDom.Compiler namespace. What I was trying to say to meep-eep is that if a new version of .net came out the “scripts” would still be limited to the classes in the .net 2.0, because that game that compiles them is still .net 2.0. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: DwD on February 06, 2006, 01:17:28 pm I stand corrected then. I used The free Enterprise edition of VS 2005 to compile your code with .NET framework 2.0 and it works just fine. Perhaps it would compile on my VS 2003, if i made new .sln and .vcproj files.
There is a 3D language for models, based on XML and VRML, that might work for ships. It's called X3D. You can find specs and several open source viewer/editors on web3d.org. With C#'s inherent ability to read XML, this may be a quick easy way to import new ship models. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on February 06, 2006, 07:57:14 pm There is a 3D language for models, based on XML and VRML, that might work for ships. It's called X3D. You can find specs and several open source viewer/editors on web3d.org. With C#'s inherent ability to read XML, this may be a quick easy way to import new ship models. I'd be wary of any XML-based formats for in-game models, they tend to have bloated loading times. I know this from the Vega Strike project, which originally used plain-text XMESH (XML Mesh) files. They have now switched to "BFXM" or Binary formatted XMESH files- compiled XMESHes which decrease load times dramatically.Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 09, 2006, 01:53:03 am I’ve been pretty quite about what I have been doing for the pass 2 days and the simple reason is that I had test and a project due today. I’ve been thinking about the “big picture” and I think I should start getting the communications part of the game started as well as the hyperspace and solar system parts.
As for communication my current plan is to use the content strait from UQM. But if someone has a better idea id like to hear it. I’m thinking for the solar system instead of having it in 3D with the camera positioned like it is in Starfleet Command 3, with it behind the ship and 45 degrees above the XY plane. So you can see far in front of you. What do you think? Basically I’m asking YOU for input. I’m asking at this very early stage because right now I’m going though the design in my mind and trying to figure out how to do it. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: guesst on February 09, 2006, 06:14:22 am Do you read the PoNaF boards? (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/forum/index.php#1) If you were looking for some threads to give you an idea of where to focus your development, check this one out:
http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/forum/index.php?topic=868.0 People have been writing their own melee scenarios. If you wanted you could make a custom scenario editor that would make these possible. Also, that old board has some pretty nifty ideas in the Suggestion for the next Star Control (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/forum/index.php?board=2.0) boards. I personally liked this one: http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/forum/index.php?topic=954.30 It's from another similar (abiet less promissing) project that someone else has developed. I myself have a rather lengthy post in that very thread referencing some of my old ideas. If you have the time and desire to read them, they could provide you with alot of great ideas. Mind you, I don't advocate blowing development of a project into such an out of hand big thing that in the end all you get is endless development, but there are some cool ideas that I personally would love to see implimented one day, but am too unmotivated/unskilled/lazy to do myself. Title: Ship of the Day: Arilou Skiff Post by: JonoPorter on February 09, 2006, 08:08:59 am The Drive Works
The Laser Works (though it targets the closest enemy object not just the ship) The Teleporter works. (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/ArilouVSChmmr.PNG) And the “Model” is the closest to the originals yet! No Sound yet but that’s just a matter of copying the right files and naming them right . I Managed to somehow kill the CVS it wont let me commit so anyone know how I can delete the stuff currently in the CVS and then commit the current stuff? If you have the time and desire to read them, they could provide you with alot of great ideas. Mind you, I don't advocate blowing development of a project into such an out of hand big thing that in the end all you get is endless development, but there are some cool ideas that I personally would love to see implimented one day, but am too unmotivated/unskilled/lazy to do myself. I like your idea about the curved space around a planet. I don’t see how I can implement it not without a great deal of pain but ill think about it. I most likely would have to use a 3D physics engine. I could not implement those challenges yet because my game lacks one very important thing an AI. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 09, 2006, 08:47:21 am If I may ask, what about menus and customizebility to the game? I’m sorry I missed your original post! Now I shall fix this oversight!for instance, even UQM haven't got these features finished. Would you handle this at an early stage? I’m planning to use windows forms heavily. Mono claims to working on it and planning to have the forms finished in a few months. Windows forms will allow me to do a lot of spiffy GUI stuff with minimal effort and I can easily change how it looks and feels to mach that of UQMs. "Anything else I’ve forgotten? Any features you would like me to ponder on?" I’m sorry I missed your original post! Now I shall fix this oversight!Well, since this is a remake of SC2 (unless I've misread what you've said) then I guess its a question of what could have been added in that game. So I think there was three areas to consider: 1) Make it so that in combat, there can be more than two ships fighting at one time. Fleet battles would be more interesting, and if you had a lot of smaller vessels fighting one or a few UQ, it would not be able to pick them off one at a time-- they'd have a significant advantage fighting en masse. 2) Advanced planets. Much larger worlds with infinite life and mineral wealth, and maybe be able to land on homeworlds and such (as seen in Star Control 2's predecessor, Starflight 2. 3) No ending. After you destroy the Sa-Matra, you get a new ship and can play on forever. There will no longer be many or any quests to do at this point, but you can continue to explore, fight, build up your fleet/ship, etc. 1)I’m defiantly writing it to be scalable. In theory I could add a 3rd player with a joystick right now. Though I would have to write a bit of code to handle the joystick. It would most likely kill the zooming though. Nor is there a way to change your current target or know which ship you are targeting. 2)I’ve not actually thought much about the planet side of the game. Only to think that I will need to add a world friction to the physics engine in order to do it. 3) That would be very hard. Since all the current dialog is geared towards the ur-quan and kohr-ah threat and the fact that you would have no precursor service vessel, changes the game dynamic drastically. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on February 09, 2006, 04:00:40 pm "I’m thinking for the solar system instead of having it in 3D with the camera positioned like it is in Starfleet Command 3, with it behind the ship and 45 degrees above the XY plane. So you can see far in front of you. What do you think?
Basically I’m asking YOU for input." SFC3 allows you to switch between overhead and chase view. Perhaps you could do the same, at some point, since you've already worked things out for the overhead view. (This would be cool in Aftermath too, come to think of it.) "I’m sorry I missed your original post! Now I shall fix this oversight!" No problem, I had forgotten I even posted it. "1)I’m defiantly writing it to be scalable. In theory I could add a 3rd player with a joystick right now. Though I would have to write a bit of code to handle the joystick. It would most likely kill the zooming though. Nor is there a way to change your current target or know which ship you are targeting." If and when you wanted to implement something like this, you could just have it so the player controls zoom manually or the view can stay centered between you and your target, sort of like in aftermath (or SFC3.) "3) That would be very hard. Since all the current dialog is geared towards the ur-quan and kohr-ah threat and the fact that you would have no precursor service vessel, changes the game dynamic drastically." This would require so major additional plotwriting. But it would be funny if, instead of making a sequel, you simply modify the original so that it just goes right into the sequel timeline without skipping a beat, like a jumbo expansion pack. Title: Re: Ship of the Day: Arilou Skiff Post by: guesst on February 09, 2006, 04:35:54 pm I like your idea about the curved space around a planet. I don’t see how I can implement it not without a great deal of pain but ill think about it. I most likely would have to use a 3D physics engine. I'm impressed you read all the stuff I wrote. I write alot of stuff but never assume anyone's reading any of it. It's not as difficult as you might think. If you know anything about polar coordinates you're working with a fixed sphere. The only problem is rendering the thing because you have to convert the polar back to xyz which, as I remember, relies on the trig functions and may raise your system requirements slightly. Then again, games like this tend to run so far under the minimum requirements of other games that you may just have the processor power to spare. If you need more help on the matter I'll look up the functions you need. (good review for me.) Quote I could not implement those challenges yet because my game lacks one very important thing an AI. So you dummy up a rudimentary AI and plan on adding chalanges in the future. Again, this was just a future development goal ideas sort of thing. You know, get an idea of the final product to give you something to work towards. Title: Ship of the Day: Androsynth Guardian Post by: JonoPorter on February 10, 2006, 09:07:13 am Yep I got this ship of nasty uniqueness done.
It’s the only ship that does damage on contact. It’s the only ships with missiles whose control system is screwed up. It’s the only ship who alternate form does not have weapons. It’s the only ship that has a state that is dependent on energy. The model needs more work on both modes but which one does not? (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/YesMoreAndrosynth.PNG) The red one is in meteor form the blue one is in normal form and shot out some bubbles. The bubbles have their strange tracking system though it’s not an exact match of the original since I didn’t want to dig though the UQM code to know how they should act. The meteor transformation works and changes back when the ship is out of energy. The meteor form does damage on contact. I’ve also made steps towards cleaning up the code a bit more. I'll start with commenting the interfaces. I'm impressed you read all the stuff I wrote. I write alot of stuff but never assume anyone's reading any of it. It’s just because with a forum like we have here there are a lot of people who just don’t post and as a result we think no one cares. You hear that people? Your silence is hurting us! ;) It's not as difficult as you might think. If you know anything about polar coordinates you're working with a fixed sphere. The only problem is rendering the thing because you have to convert the polar back to xyz which, as I remember, relies on the trig functions and may raise your system requirements slightly. Then again, games like this tend to run so far under the minimum requirements of other games that you may just have the processor power to spare. If you need more help on the matter I'll look up the functions you need. (good review for me.) The major problem with that is that my physics engine has no Z coordinate. It’s all done with X and Y. Hence it’s not as easy as you presumed. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: evktalo on February 10, 2006, 04:15:12 pm Nice shots again!
Unfortunately, I found I couldn't test remasters since my hardware will soon turn five, and that's a bit old. --Eino Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: DwD on February 10, 2006, 04:20:33 pm While I do understand your desire to move the project forward, I believe, that it would be in your best interest to choose a modeling format for your ships at this stage. What ever format you choose will require some coding to import them.
I don't claim to be a c# guru or anything, but it's my experience, that something like importing models could effect the later code of a project. my 2 cents. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on February 10, 2006, 08:04:42 pm Perhaps once he gets all the ships in and the game working as he wants it. It's not exactly as if artists are stampeding to get their ship models into this game.
I agree with BioSlayer that asthetic concerns are secondary at such an early stage. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Draxas on February 10, 2006, 08:36:54 pm Art can wait. Besides, the near-perfect technicals that he's churning out with almost frightening regularity are beautifukl in their own way. ;)
Remember, if you don't like the look, just recite the gamer's mantra: Graphics are not important, gameplay is everything. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: DwD on February 10, 2006, 09:47:18 pm Yes, he does have a very good engine here, but, even in the concept stage of programming, providing a way to import various resources such as models and textures or sprites is included, if only as a blank method. Don't let me stop your momentum tho. Just thought it might save you some headaches later.
:-X As a matter of fact, I am studying some rudimentary 3d game programming in c# right now. It looks to me like the most common modeling format, is a directX mesh. I just happen to have a modeler that will export this format. ;) I can supply some 1st run models for experimentation if you want. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: TiLT on February 10, 2006, 10:11:25 pm You mean the .X format? I'm using it (temporarily) myself for a game I'm coding, but it's a bloated, slow format. For example, I made a simple model consisting of 5 2d-planes. The size of the X-file? 2 MB.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: DwD on February 10, 2006, 11:33:22 pm I just exported my model of the Thraddash ship ( to .X) in my personal image to the left. It consists of 12-12 sided spheres (You cant see them all in the image, they're nested inside each other. In the model, they are semi-transparent and luminous.) and 73 polygons. Total size 703KB and this before it's converted to binary.
I admit, it's a pretty simple model and it has no textures to import, but it is definately Thraddash. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 11, 2006, 12:05:06 am I just put in all the sounds for all the ships that are currently in the game.
The only sound I cold not switch to .ogg is the orzes “Go” sound when they launch a marine. Anyone want to convert this sound to .ogg and send it to me? The reason why I’m switching them from .wav to .ogg is SDL.net had problems with the .wavs. Other then the orz all the ships now have sound, unless I missed a few collision sounds. I agree that I should start thinking about the 3D models or atleast make stubs for them. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on February 11, 2006, 12:14:17 am I just put in all the sounds for all the ships that are currently in the game. The only sound I cold not switch to .ogg is the orzes “Go” sound when they launch a marine. Anyone want to convert this sound to .ogg and send it to me? The reason why I’m switching them from .wav to .ogg is SDL.net had problems with the .wavs. Other then the orz all the ships now have sound, unless I missed a few collision sounds. I agree that I should start thinking about the 3D models or atleast make stubs for them. i don't mind sendin it to ya Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 11, 2006, 12:34:05 am i don't mind sendin it to ya could you upload it using this site? (http://jon.ssofti.com/few/) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on February 11, 2006, 12:53:00 am allrighty ;D
any specific folder? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 11, 2006, 12:54:40 am Well my plans to start investigating how to do 3D graphics with OpenGL has been cut short by a moron.
nehe.gamedev.net has been hacked. allrighty ;D any specific folder? anywhere is fine Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on February 11, 2006, 01:07:44 am Well my plans to start investigating how to do 3D graphics with OpenGL has been cut short by a moron. nehe.gamedev.net has been hacked. allrighty ;D any specific folder? anywhere is fine i'll get right on it .:: EDIT ::. it's in "../files/secondary.wav" Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 11, 2006, 01:27:22 am it's in "../files/secondary.wav" I was hoping it would be "../files/secondary.ogg" Since I was saying I was unable to convert it from .wav to .ogg. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Dean on February 11, 2006, 02:29:40 am Done, same folder, "secondary.ogg". Sounded awful when I first converted it for some reason, so I jammed it through a filter, amplified and bass-boosted it. If it sounds funny and you just want a direct conversion, I put "secondayNORM.ogg" up also.
- Dean Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 11, 2006, 04:35:18 am Done, same folder, "secondary.ogg". Sounded awful when I first converted it for some reason, so I jammed it through a filter, amplified and bass-boosted it. If it sounds funny and you just want a direct conversion, I put "secondayNORM.ogg" up also. Thanks. I'll be making a new release with all these sounds.- Dean Now the entire Gamedev.net domain is down. This really slows down game development. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 11, 2006, 06:40:02 am I’m so HAPPY! :D ;D ;D :D :D ;D ;D 8)
What I am about to reveal to you may seem like a minor bug fix but its more like a new feature and them some (and them some more). Remember a while ago I was trying to figure out an anti tunneling algorithm (http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=2456.msg31558#msg31558)? So I’ve been trying to solve this problem from the beginning. Well I just figured one out finally and implemented it and it works! I thank God for the brain he gave me so I could figure this out and for answering my prayers. (More then just code goes into this game it’s also powered by prayer!) ;D See what was happening was if an object was moving too fast (druuge cannon) it would tend to fly right through another object with no collision being detected. As you can see this would be a major problem. This algorithm solves that! Making it so most high speed collision should be detected. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Dean on February 11, 2006, 07:56:03 am Neato. Care to give a simple explanation as to how your anti-tunelling algorithm works?
- Dean PS: I thought I was alone in thinking Evangelion is the greatest thing since sliced bread :P Title: It Simple REALLY! Post by: JonoPorter on February 11, 2006, 08:55:40 am Made a new release (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=156952) with all the changes this week. It binary only. If you want to get the Source just use the CVS the module name is ReMasters. It features the new anti tunneling algorithm! You may have to DL and install SDL.NET
Neato. Care to give a simple explanation as to how your anti-tunelling algorithm works? Sure… Actually it’s hard to use the word “simple” in a sentence that includes the words “vertex”, “edge”, “rays”, “time steps”, or “integration”.Here is the semi-short, cryptic and assumes you know a lot explanation: Each time step I store the position of an object for use in the next integration. If an object is moving at a very high velocity to another object I then use this collision detection routine instead but only on the first collision phase. For each vertex on the polygon of the first object I get where it was last time then create a ray to where it is now. Then I use that ray to see if it collides with the polygon. If it collides I then calculate the time that it collided and store that along with other information. If another ray collides sooner then I use that. Then I flip the algorithm and check each vertex of the second polygon against the first in the same manner. The ray that collides the soonest is the ray I use to determine the vertex. I use the vertexes current position as the collision point. Then the collision normal is the normal of the edge that it collided with. This algorithm is only ran at high speeds because it doesn’t work well for low speeds for the same reason it is so hard to get contact forces working right. It makes a few assumptions that I don’t like but I’ll live with because it works alot better then nothing. Like assuming the Polygon’s edges do not move while the vertexes do. So this algorithm won’t work very well for 2 objects approaching each other at a 90 degree angle at a high velocity. Say that 10 time fast! :o Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Dean on February 11, 2006, 10:42:44 am :o Sadly, my year 12 physics isn't up to that. You've just prooved why you should stick to writing games, and I should stick to writing lowly embedded C applications for AVR microcontrollers.
Congrats on such AMAZING work so far. Can you submit that as a physics project for extra credit? :D - Dean Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: harth1026 on February 11, 2006, 03:17:07 pm :o Sadly, my year 12 physics isn't up to that. You've just prooved why you should stick to writing games, and I should stick to writing lowly embedded C applications for AVR microcontrollers. Yeah, I can see why Blizzard turned me down and why I'm writing camera drivers instead. Keep up the great work. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: DwD on February 11, 2006, 04:08:10 pm Is sourceforge.net having trouble today, or is it just me?
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 11, 2006, 08:18:32 pm Thanks for all the compliments. :)
:o Sadly, my year 12 physics isn't up to that. You've just prooved why you should stick to writing games, and I should stick to writing lowly embedded C applications for AVR microcontrollers. It is not as complicated as I make it sound. And it’s mostly geometry not physics. Also remember I have been working with this stuff for 6 months so I’m pretty sure I would feel the same way if I had read this explanation 6 months ago.Yeah, I can see why Blizzard turned me down and why I'm writing camera drivers instead. Keep up the great work. They would most likely turn me down too. Is sourceforge.net having trouble today, or is it just me? I can’t access it either.EDIT: Now its back up. Title: Re: Ship of the Day: Androsynth Guardian Post by: guesst on February 11, 2006, 11:52:22 pm It's not as difficult as you might think. If you know anything about polar coordinates you're working with a fixed sphere. The only problem is rendering the thing because you have to convert the polar back to xyz which, as I remember, relies on the trig functions and may raise your system requirements slightly. Then again, games like this tend to run so far under the minimum requirements of other games that you may just have the processor power to spare. If you need more help on the matter I'll look up the functions you need. (good review for me.) The major problem with that is that my physics engine has no Z coordinate. It’s all done with X and Y. Hence it’s not as easy as you presumed. No Z? Aren't your graphics 3d? I guess I don't know enough about 3d graphics. And at this point the converstion from XY to delta/lamda would be... difficult. But if I could write equations that would translate the polar coordinates of the two ships to X/Y coordinates relative to some third center point (and related distance equations) would you like to see them? One thing to think about is when rolling around a globe the distances could get funny so I'd recomend that if the ships get a certian distance from each other, say a quarter of the way around that you either focus the view on the player ship or find some way to split the screen until they're closer again. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 12, 2006, 01:34:08 am No Z? Aren't your graphics 3d? I guess I don't know enough about 3d graphics. The physics engine is 2D the graphics is still 3D. The physics engine has its own vector classes that are separate from the graphics engine. I’m getting the same problem with the mod files for the victory ditties as I had with the wave files. Does anyone know a program that can convert .mod to .ogg? I’ve just written all the code for the victory ditties but I have no good ditties to play. Well they all play but they sound awful. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Clay on February 12, 2006, 02:51:27 am The long painful way (that you probably have access to) is to simply load the mods into winamp and select the "wavoutput" in preferences.
Then you can use any wav 2 ogg program you have handy. Mod 2 ogg in one step will likely be hard to find. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 12, 2006, 03:57:52 am I found a solution to this problem. The sound works allot better if I increases SDLs buffer size. So that’s what I did and the mods now sound fine.
I now have the victory ditty play for a ships that wins. I also wrote code that slowly moves the camera over the victor. Now all I need to do is put in special graphics. Finish the rest of the ships and make a proper selection screen. Of course I still have the non melee part of the game to do. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 12, 2006, 04:20:27 am I’ve been researching into how to do the 3D models and my first step I’m trying to find a common model format. Unfortunately it seams that everyone including there cousins have their own custom format and no way to convert between them. I would like to use the .X format because a lot of models out there are already in that but there is no way that I can find to use them in OpenGL. Do you guys know where I can get a tutorial that uses the .X format in OpenGL?
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: DwD on February 12, 2006, 02:39:43 pm There is source and an executable to view .ac models in opengl at ac3d.org (http://ac3d.org/resources.html). The .ac format is from the modeler also available on the website and its inexpensive, last time I looked, it was only $35 US. If you want to try this before buying the modeler, I can provide the models for you. I already have 4 of the ships modeled without textures.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Michilus_nimbus on February 12, 2006, 09:39:32 pm Hey there,
I'm pretty impressed with what you've done with ReMasters, but I thought you should know 0.1.05 crashes immediately after trying to execute it. 0.1.04 works like a charm. I'm trying to run it on my laptop: P4 2.8 Ghz, 512 mb ram, Win XP SP1 with all the latest drivers. I hope this isn't a serious problem. Looking forward to future versions, Michilus_nimbus Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 12, 2006, 11:50:08 pm Download and unzip the files in the zip below into the same directory as the executable. That should make it work.
http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/dependecies.zip (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/dependecies.zip) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 13, 2006, 01:10:22 am Well I have made yet another release (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=156952) despite the short time that passed it actually has a few additions. Added the ditties for a victorious ship and cleaned up the code even more. I switched over to a more recent SDL.net version. And I eliminated the popping noise (at least on my computer).
Rob Loach From SDL.Net told me the files I needed to include to make it so downloading SDL.net is no longer needed. So you won’t need to worry about downloading anything extra except for .Net 2.0 Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: ^Nytro^ on February 13, 2006, 02:47:47 am I just wanted to express my impression from all the latest progress in the game.
many stuff is improved, I also noticed the delay of the ship selection screen after ship explosion was implemented! well done. very good job with the sounds. though, I hope you still remember that, at least in my opinion, all the timing/speed/damage parameters of the various weapons should be corrected (for instance- urquan fighters luanch rate should be faster, comet mode speed should be faster.... and so on) of coarse, these things aren't urgent. I didn't really understand why the planet is more oval-like now. could you explain it? what 's with the .ini files definitions from TW that you needed? I wonder if that's accomplished? not that I found it out myself.. and another thing- I really liked those "destroyed ships' wrecked parts scattering". This is a very nice, but it could be even much better if those parts were smaller and there were more many of them. just imegining a fight with this plus the final 3D-models graphics give the whole gameplay a step forward in realism. Title: Ship of the Day: Dill-Rat Avenger Post by: JonoPorter on February 13, 2006, 05:12:24 am I was making a chart of ships that still worry me and the Dill-Rat was among the highest so I decided to do it. The Dill-Rat required quite a few changes to get the cloak to work. The entire status box disappears as well so you won’t get to know your energy while you are cloaked. The Dill-Rat “model” follows the shape of the Dill-Rat very closely but it still looks wrong. Once the Dill-Rat cloaks all tracking weapons loose lock on the Dill-Rat, but the camera still follows it. Also when the Dill-Rat fires while cloaked it rotates to face its enemy.
(http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/dillrat.PNG) Here is the chart I was working on: (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/ProgressSoFar.PNG) I just wanted to express my impression from all the latest progress in the game. The sound was a pain to get working.many stuff is improved, I also noticed the delay of the ship selection screen after ship explosion was implemented! well done. very good job with the sounds. though, I hope you still remember that, at least in my opinion, all the timing/speed/damage parameters of the various weapons should be corrected (for instance- urquan fighters luanch rate should be faster, comet mode speed should be faster.... and so on) of coarse, these things aren't urgent. Yea, fine tuning can wait. I always disliked game makers who spent all there time balancing a game when they should be squashing bugs.I didn't really understand why the planet is more oval-like now. could you explain it? The planet is oval because I don’t know OpenGL very well, but I'm trying to learn.what 's with the .ini files definitions from TW that you needed? I wonder if that's accomplished? not that I found it out myself.. I got help on the timewarp forum.Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Deus Siddis on February 13, 2006, 05:19:31 am "I was making a chart of ships that still worry me and the Dill-Rat was among the highest so I decided to do it. The Dill-Rat required quite a few changes to get the cloak to work. The entire status box disappears as well so you won’t get to know your energy while you are cloaked. The Dill-Rat “model” follows the shape of the Dill-Rat very closely but it still looks wrong. Once the Dill-Rat cloaks all tracking weapons loose lock on the Dill-Rat, but the camera still follows it. Also when the Dill-Rat files while cloaked it rotates to face its enemy."
I somehow have come to the conclusion that saying "Dill-Rat" brings you great happiness. :) "Here is the chart I was working on:" Wow, you've really come far. Why are you worried about the marauder, but not the broodhome? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 13, 2006, 05:39:11 am I somehow have come to the conclusion that saying "Dill-Rat" brings you great happiness. :) ;DWow, you've really come far. Why are you worried about the marauder, but not the broodhome? The Marauders blades spin but that does not affect the blades heading. It’s as if the blade is 2 different objects with a pivot, Then It also tracks but only enemies that are nearby. Also the lifetime is strange because it’s not based on range but on how many blades exist.I’m gunna have to write a lot of code that is specific to the blade. I did another line count: Remasters: 14,307 Physics2D: 18,257 Total: 32,564 Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Miltazar on February 13, 2006, 07:18:20 am I just downloaded the recent version. I installed the proper .net framework but the application gives the following exception(using a just in time debugger): System.TypeInitializationException
I'm using winXP, ati x800 pro, athlon 3100+ Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on February 13, 2006, 08:14:59 am I just downloaded the recent version. I installed the proper .net framework but the application gives the following exception(using a just in time debugger): System.TypeInitializationException I'm using winXP, ati x800 pro, athlon 3100+ i get that same deal with the newer versions (doesn't happen with 1.0.4) I have : WinXP Home .NET 1.1 /w service pack, and .NET 2.0 AMD Athlon 64 3400+ (2.9 GHz) 1.50 GB of Ram (i doubt this will help, i just wanna be a show off ;D) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Miltazar on February 13, 2006, 08:38:05 am I just checked, 1.0.4 does work, 1.0.5 and 6 do NOT. Wierd...
-Miltazar Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 13, 2006, 09:03:46 am Unfortunately that does not tell me much other then that it happened in a static constructor and I have a few of those. I should have seen this coming. Don’t worry I have some experience debugging programs where I have no access to the machine itself.
I have just written a new version that catches the errors and displays them to screen. And lets you give me that information so I can see what is screwing up. I suspect the sound is the problems though. http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/ReMasters-0.1.06-Binary-WithDebug.zip (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/ReMasters-0.1.06-Binary-WithDebug.zip) EDIT: If you want help me debug you can send me your machines ::) me and my P4 2.4 Ghz and 512 MB rambus. That happens to be 4 years old. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: guesst on February 13, 2006, 10:36:37 pm Forgive me if this has been covered already, but now that we're 14 pages into this thing I find combing though the past pages daunting.
So for those of me who've forgotten, what are your long term goals for this project? (I'm resisting the urge to try to prompt certian responced from you about certian aspects I would like to see, but this is your project and I want an honest answer.) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Miltazar on February 13, 2006, 11:19:43 pm Oddly enough the version with debug, although a tad slow loading up, actually does work perfectly. I like the aspect of the avatar's satellites moving off when they die.
However the mycon's primary weapon is suppose to die with weapon fire. I was unable to destroy the shots with the dilrats...didn't try anyone else yet. -Miltazar Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 14, 2006, 12:55:35 am Forgive me if this has been covered already, but now that we're 14 pages into this thing I find combing though the past pages daunting. Ill ignore the implication that I am dishonest in my posts.So for those of me who've forgotten, what are your long term goals for this project? (I'm resisting the urge to try to prompt certian responced from you about certian aspects I would like to see, but this is your project and I want an honest answer.) I was hoping to have a website by now. So all the information could be presented in a nice clean format. Once helleck gets it up I can start getting a lot of info on it. I’m remaking the entire game, not just the melee. The idea is to remake UQM with code that is over-engineered for the task. Making it so it can be easily extended and changed. After I have the entire game remade and working to my satisfaction I might work on a sequel or something to that effect, but I don’t want to go into detail because that is so far off that it’s not worth contemplating. The plan is to make it very close to the original except where I take liberties. A few changes that I can think of off the top of my head are: General: Add home world like graphics for melee, solar system and hyperspace. But still having movement restricted to 2D. Melee: Realistic Physics. Ability to add ships without having to recompile source. Network multiplayer. Galaxy: Planets and moons move in their orbit as time passes. Story: Add sub quests that are found through exploring. Add the black spathi squadron. There are a lot of things I want to be done but a lot of them require complex explanations of what I mean. Oddly enough the version with debug, although a tad slow loading up, actually does work perfectly. I like the aspect of the avatar's satellites moving off when they die. Strange I hate it when errors disappear on their own. However the mycon's primary weapon is suppose to die with weapon fire. I was unable to destroy the shots with the dilrats...didn't try anyone else yet. -Miltazar Thanks for pointing that out the problem with the mycon. I have fixed the problem. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on February 14, 2006, 01:35:18 am Oddly enough the version with debug, although a tad slow loading up, actually does work perfectly same here (very wierd indeed) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: guesst on February 14, 2006, 03:19:20 am Ill ignore the implication that I am dishonest in my posts. I meant to imply nothing. I just meant that if I started asking about this-or-that it may serve to alter your answer, when my purpose was to get YOUR idea of what this project is about, not your responce to my ideas about what this project is about. So, now that you've done that... Why realistic physics? Is it because it's easier to program? (Don't try to fool me. I know the math behind them both.) The problem with that is SC was never about real anything. Why do you lose crew when you ship gets hit, but your hull remain unharmed. In a "real" scenario, once you start losing, chances are you gonna keep losing as your weapons /thruster /life support systems fail one by one. Why not make it so if you hit someone you do damage to both ships relative to the speed you were going. That would be more realistic.StarControl is about gameplay, not realistic models of space combat. In other words, if you don't put gravity whip in the game I'm going to be disapointed. Now, I noticed you had a thing where you were trying to animate the original 2-D conversation pictures, and that's fine, but if I were you I'd work on some 3-d character animations instead. FF or PR3 (don't remember which) mentioned that they liked the way the 3D characters were done in StarCon, so you can go ahead with their aprovial. However, it will be difficult on a programming level. Character animation is always a pain, but it's your decision in the end. However, I suspect that that little bit of decision wil probably wait, hu? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on February 14, 2006, 03:23:04 am I was hoping to have a website by now. So all the information could be presented in a nice clean format. Once helleck gets it up I can start getting a lot of info on it. Yeah sorry about that... if you want I can whip up a quick temporary one just so you can get the information out.That actually might be better... the more content we have, the easier it will be to decide what sections to split it into and how to organize it. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 14, 2006, 09:24:17 am Why realistic physics? Because I want to and because I can. Is it because it's easier to program? It’s a hell of a lot harder. (http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~rbridson/docs/rigid_bodies.pdf) (Don't try to fool me. I know the math behind them both.) What possible reason would I have to lie to you?Now, I noticed you had a thing where you were trying to animate the original 2-D conversation pictures, and that's fine, but if I were you I'd work on some 3-d character animations instead. It is going to be the originals 2D pictures, unless you have a complete set of high quality 3D character models or know some one who is extremely good and is willing to spend months making the models for all the races for free. What is more likely is convincing some one like Arne to spiff up the current images a bit. Like what clay is doing in the “make it better thread (http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=2666.msg34965#msg34965).” Yeah sorry about that... if you want I can whip up a quick temporary one just so you can get the information out. How bout just putting up a wiki for now? I’ve seen some pretty good wiki only sites.I've updated the CVS witht he most recent changes. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: ^Nytro^ on February 14, 2006, 02:55:22 pm In other words, if you don't put gravity whip in the game I'm going to be disapointed. I agree about this point. currently getting a gravity whip with the star isn't affective at all, and it seems that most of the slow ships are generally faster to balance things a bit. I'd choose to change that, but the only case in which I'd be concerned is if it's gonna take a lot of code manipulation. because if we're talking about a few tweaks to the parameters, this could even become an optional feature. however, except for this I'm completely pro-realism. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: guesst on February 14, 2006, 04:31:36 pm Why realistic physics? Is it because it's easier to program? It’s a hell of a lot harder. (http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~rbridson/docs/rigid_bodies.pdf) You're doing RIGID BODY PHYSICS? I take it back. Now my question is are you sadistic or something? It is going to be the originals 2D pictures, unless you have a complete set of high quality 3D character models or know some one who is extremely good and is willing to spend months making the models for all the races for free. What is more likely is convincing some one like Arne to spiff up the current images a bit. Like what clay is doing in the “make it better thread (http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=2666.msg34965#msg34965).” Well, if Arne does them, IMHO it'd be better if he made original picutres. It seem to me Arne would find it more satisfying and so would everyone else with the final product. I've been playing with the idea of quasi-3D models, the sort that you find on animatics for movies where they take the storyboard drawings and animate them as sort of 3d cutout animation. Sort of like Parapa the Rappa but a bit more grown up. The effect, while unique, is perhaps not appropiate to this sort of thing tho. It would work for the ZFP or supox, but for the more human characters, especally the syreen, it's not soft enough. Maybe appropiate for a different project, but not StarControl. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Regis on February 15, 2006, 11:20:01 am I might not be in a position to really offer praise because I'm just a new guy but I like what I see thus far. I even thought it was nifty with the effort you put into your stub ships, the flat point ones that will eventually be replaced by 3D models. They're pretty nifty as temps.
It'll be fascinating to see a remastering of Star Control II based off such physics aswell and being a redo of the game, there are many new ideas you can take into account. I have a few awesome ones but I won't share them because I don't want to burden you with ideas until you're ready to work on the core game. As for your progress thus far though, it's very, very impressive. I even bothereed to read the entirety of the 15 pages and it's surprising how fast the project has evolved. It's more surprising that you're so free and open with your sources. It's always a nice thing to see yet another person who's very talented and yet not greedy regarding their works. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 16, 2006, 01:09:54 am I might not be in a position to really offer praise because I'm just a new guy but I like what I see thus far. The ability to Praise has no qualifications only the ability to criticize, but people do that without the qualifications anyway.I even bothereed to read the entirety of the 15 pages and it's surprising how fast the project has evolved. So am I. Though it hasn’t evolved it has been continually redesigned and recoded. I wouldn’t want to see what randomly changing the code would do. It's more surprising that you're so free and open with your sources. It's always a nice thing to see yet another person who's very talented and yet not greedy regarding their works. Let me be honest; if there was some way for me to get money for doing this I would try it. Collage students need to eat to. I’ve had tests and projects to take my time so that’s the reason for the apparent lack of progress. And I have another test tomorrow. So I’ve been mostly thinking not programming and I have come up with a few ideas I would like to share. Right now I’m thinking on how to do the dialog. In UQM (correct me if I’m wrong) there seems to be a very rudimentary event system. Where some global event happens and it changes the dialog options of a race or 2. What I’m thinking is replacing the current system with a quests system like that in many RPGs today. The quest system would include a quest log that is automatically populated. For example: After talking to commander Hayes about broadcasts from the rigel star a entry would appear like: “Investigate Rigel Star System.” And after you talk to the zot fot pik there the entry would be crossed out. And a subfield would be put in under it saying: “Go to <insert zotfotpik coordinates>” And maybe you could click on an item in the list and get the original conversation where you got this information. Also by programming it dynamically I could make it possible to add simple quests that will earn you RU or add an entire subplot. Another feature would be ability to browse the information of all the stars and planets you have visited so far. With ability to sort by estimated mineral worth or by planet hostility. It would also contain information about ships presence and so on. Could also add the ability to buy star system information from multiple races including the melnorme. Like you could get information about all the planets in the spathi’s sphere of influence just by threatening them. Like in the above quest system when a race tells you about their home world the information will be updated to include partial data on the system. Another thing I was thinking about is having an end of game screen that tallies up thing like number of enemy ships killed, speed at which you won the game. And so on and gives a final score. This would add replay value so you can try to beat your own score. So what do you guys think of these ideas? Do you guys know any libraries for quests systems? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Amscray on February 16, 2006, 06:58:20 am Quote Let me be honest; if there was some way for me to get money for doing this I would try it. The obvious answer seems to be to use original content and sell it as shareware (or tipware). I'm still more than slightly baffled as to why you're remaking an essentially flawless (or low-flaw) game. It's like remaking Casablanca so that it could be done in color . . . . Why bother? I'm sure you have two dozen awful writers and at least two or three good ones itching to help you with a story. Art, for all his obnoxiousness, could probably do an all right job, and I always found Arne's SC3 idea pretty compelling. Quote What I’m thinking is replacing the current system with a quests system like that in many RPGs today. This seems like it's a weird replacement, like, "We're going to take out his failing lung and replace it with dialysis." The quests system you describe is just a journal / log system and is totally separate from dialogue; or, at least, is just a supplement to dialogue. FWIW, I think the dialogue in SC2 worked pretty well, especially for its time. I'm not sure whether many games at that point were doing talk trees yet. (The VGA Sierra games would've been the first ones, right? Ultima 7 used a word-list system. Darksun used talk trees but came later, I think. Star Flight used "moods.") I don't see any reason to change it, esp. given that there's already so much (maybe too much) talking. A journal / log system would be a nice addition, since it's just annoying right now to alt-tab out and do it in Notepad yourself. I can't see why you'd need a library to do it, though. It's just variable tracking, very basic stuff. Quote for x = 1 to Total Quests for a = 0 to QuestParts(X) if QuestAssigned(X,A) > 0 then Display QuestText(X,A) ' and indent if A > 0, skipping lines after each display if QuestAssigned(X,A) = 2 then StrikeThroughText ' to show that the quest is complete; 0 = not gotten, 1 = assigned, 2 = complete end if next next Wouldn't that do it? So for example, you would have Quest 1 QuestParts(1) =3 QuestText(1,0) = "Unite the Three Rings of Power" QuestText(1,1) = "Obtain Ring 1 from Elrond" QuestText(1,2) = "Obtain Ring 2 from Gandalf" QuestText(1,3) = "Obtain Ring 3 from Galadriel" When you first meet Saruman, the gam esets QuestAssigned(1, 0-3) to 1. So you have the heading that says get the rings, then the three parts. When you complete each part, it sets that to 2. When all three are 2, it sets 0 to 2, thus completing the quest. I don't really see why you need a lib for that . . . . Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on February 16, 2006, 08:00:42 am I might not be in a position to really offer praise because I'm just a new guy but I like what I see thus far. The ability to Praise has no qualifications only the ability to criticize, but people do that without the qualifications anyway.I even bothereed to read the entirety of the 15 pages and it's surprising how fast the project has evolved. So am I. Though it hasn’t evolved it has been continually redesigned and recoded. I wouldn’t want to see what randomly changing the code would do. It's more surprising that you're so free and open with your sources. It's always a nice thing to see yet another person who's very talented and yet not greedy regarding their works. So I’ve been mostly thinking not programming and I have come up with a few ideas I would like to share.Right now I’m thinking on how to do the dialog. In UQM (correct me if I’m wrong) there seems to be a very rudimentary event system. Where some global event happens and it changes the dialog options of a race or 2. What I’m thinking is replacing the current system with a quests system like that in many RPGs today. The quest system would include a quest log that is automatically populated. For example: After talking to commander Hayes about broadcasts from the rigel star a entry would appear like: “Investigate Rigel Star System.” And after you talk to the zot fot pik there the entry would be crossed out. And a subfield would be put in under it saying: “Go to <insert zotfotpik coordinates>” And maybe you could click on an item in the list and get the original conversation where you got this information. Also by programming it dynamically I could make it possible to add simple quests that will earn you RU or add an entire subplot. Another feature would be ability to browse the information of all the stars and planets you have visited so far. With ability to sort by estimated mineral worth or by planet hostility. It would also contain information about ships presence and so on. Could also add the ability to buy star system information from multiple races including the melnorme. Like you could get information about all the planets in the spathi’s sphere of influence just by threatening them. Like in the above quest system when a race tells you about their home world the information will be updated to include partial data on the system. Another thing I was thinking about is having an end of game screen that tallies up thing like number of enemy ships killed, speed at which you won the game. And so on and gives a final score. This would add replay value so you can try to beat your own score. So what do you guys think of these ideas? Do you guys know any libraries for quests systems? I think this would be a great addition, but that's only my opinion plus the ability to buy information on star systems before you visit them is a great idea and threatening a spathi seems even better :D and the revised event system is a great idea too Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 17, 2006, 03:59:40 am Mr. Amscray, what you've just said is one of the most insanely currish things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent, self-deprecating (http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/deprecating) response were you even close to anything that could be considered a constructive or encouraging thought. Everyone on this forum is now lesser for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on February 17, 2006, 07:56:07 am Actually, I initially was thinking the same thing he said about your "replacing" the conversation trees with a quest system. It sounded like you were saying that you wanted to "replace" the dialogue with a quest system which doesn't make any sense. On closer inspection I realized that you were probably referring to the event handling system as what would be supplanted.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 17, 2006, 08:24:59 am He caught me in a bad mood, but mainly I just didn’t like the negative attitude of his post and that’s what I said in very extravagant way.
Yea it’s the event system that I’m thinking about replacing with a quest system. He also massively over trivializes the programming needed to do the quest system. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: TiLT on February 17, 2006, 11:26:45 am Don't let the idiots get to you. They're everywhere, and will make you insane in the long run if you let them.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Amscray on February 17, 2006, 05:17:44 pm self-deprecating Do you even know what that word means? Quote He also massively over trivializes the programming needed to do the quest system. Quest systems are absurdly easy to do. It's all just a simple scripting system. You could always use LUA or Python if you wanted to go over the top, but it would be totally unnecessary. I don't understand why such an obviously strong programmer as yourself is wigging out over something so easy . . . . Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: TiLT on February 17, 2006, 05:24:56 pm Amscray, please do us all a favor and find a different open-source developer to "encourage". Thank you.
Title: Extra Credit. Post by: JonoPorter on February 18, 2006, 05:28:51 am Well I decided to do something special since I’ve not been working on this game as much.
Here is a screenshot of the result. (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/SyreenVsSlylandro.PNG) Yep I did 2 ships at once. It ended up that the syreens siren call was that hardest part to do. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 19, 2006, 02:16:17 am Got the cleaners done.
(http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/TheCleaners.PNG) The only thing that is not “working” is that the blades lifetime is different. They now last about 20 seconds and you can have as many as you can put out in that time. New Status: (http://jon.ssofti.com/screenshots/ProgressSoFar2.PNG) Concerning the 3D models: I’ve been trying to figure out how I’m going to do it. If I was still using DirectX then it would be easy because the .X files are native to DirectX. Unfortunately the only way I can find to use the .X files is to buy a program that converts them to a format that is usable by OpenGL and I don’t have the money for. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: guesst on February 19, 2006, 03:13:08 am I find in amusing, perhaps telling of you as a person, that the ships that were major concerns were the first ones you attacked and got out of the way. Way to go.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on February 19, 2006, 10:41:25 am I've got a friend who seems quite enthusiastic over the Xbox live indie game thing (with that geometry wars game doing good). I suppose there would be problems with copyrights/trademarks though, unless you change the designs and just makes it an SC-ish game :/
I'm still curious about the ZFP stinger, are you gonna have a little telescopic ram come out and do... collision stuff? ...and I do realize that the graphics aren't important at this stage, I was just curious what you had in mind there. If you want help with some 2D stuff I might have time to do something. Fully animated stuff might be beyond my patience though, and 3D models are totally beyong my patience (and skill), plus I think they look poopy anyways, being biased towards 2D as I am. Have you played rival schools? Maybe I have mentioned this (I always bring up Rival Schools in this context), but RS has this neat system with character that comes sliding in against a background. They're sort of like pinups (knees and up), and there's a couple for every basic mood (angry, happy, neutral, crying, etc). This makes the characters feel quite alive, despite being still images. Many other Japanese RPG's uses this system. It helps to create a wider range of emotions than what SC is doing now with some 'jittering' images. I can imagine the Utwig having a couple of sad and ultra sad images, then a super happy delirious joyous pink flowersprinkling ultra kawaii image that comes just out of the blue when you finish the ultron thing. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 19, 2006, 11:21:45 pm I find in amusing, perhaps telling of you as a person, that the ships that were major concerns were the first ones you attacked and got out of the way. Way to go. It really just a smart way to program. If I did the easy ones first then went to the harder ones and they require sweeping changes I would have to make sure the changes have no adverse effect on the other ships. The fewer amount of ships to retest or recoded the better.I've got a friend who seems quite enthusiastic over the Xbox live indie game thing (with that geometry wars game doing good). Could you post a link explaining this thing? I'm still curious about the ZFP stinger, are you gonna have a little telescopic ram come out and do... collision stuff? I was thinking about representing it with rays, but in such a way that it looks about the same. Since it has such a short lifespan. ...and I do realize that the graphics aren't important at this stage, I was just curious what you had in mind there. I was thinking of taking the current communication images and making them 32 bit color and a higher resolution. And make it so the image looks better (less pixilated and higher detail) not just blown up. How much effort would this take?I can imagine the Utwig having a couple of sad and ultra sad images, then a super happy delirious joyous pink flowersprinkling ultra kawaii image that comes just out of the blue when you finish the ultron thing. I like the idea but how much effort on your part would this take?Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: guesst on February 20, 2006, 12:11:31 am Have you played rival schools? Maybe I have mentioned this (I always bring up Rival Schools in this context), but RS has this neat system with character that comes sliding in against a background. They're sort of like pinups (knees and up), and there's a couple for every basic mood (angry, happy, neutral, crying, etc). This makes the characters feel quite alive, despite being still images. Many other Japanese RPG's uses this system. It helps to create a wider range of emotions than what SC is doing now with some 'jittering' images. RS is not the first, or last, game to do this sort of thing. It's very popular in Japanese games. Let's see if I can name a few... Final Fantisy Tactics Advanced, Fire Emblem (GBA), Advance Wars... hmm, a couple of GBAs is all I can think about, but I've seen it before. It's a good effect, but I'm not sure it's StarControl-ish enough. Again, this supports the idea of ... Quote ...change the designs and just makes it an SC-ish game :/ Plus side, original games allow wider release. Minus side, creativity is difficult, time consuming, and runs the risk of sucking. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 20, 2006, 01:01:50 am Made another release with all the recent changes. Binary Only. (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=156952)
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on February 21, 2006, 12:32:53 am RS is not the first, or last, game to do this sort of thing. I know, If you read my post you will see that I mentioned other japanese games having it. I mentioned RS cuz it made quite an impression on me. It was many years since I played it though, so maybe things have evolved a bit. It's a good effect, but I'm not sure it's StarControl-ish enough. Maybe not, but I don't think it's a huge step away from the "SC-feeling". Sort of depends how well it's styled into the SC look. I do feel the current animated stills doesn't give enough range of emotion. The Utwig is a good example of this, but most species seem to have different emotional states. Quote from: BioSlayer I was thinking of taking the current communication images and making them 32 bit color and a higher resolution. And make it so the image looks better (less pixilated and higher detail) not just blown up. How much effort would this take? --- I like the idea but how much effort on your part would this take? Well, I don't know which would take longer. Enlarging and cleaning up someone elses work is not that fun anyways. I think though... that the original artist dude has some of the pics up on the net. I recall seeing a chmrr pic and a Talana in hospital pic. Here's a rough. Of course now he's posing silly, I suppose stuff has to be posed so it fits the character in question, SC is not a beat-ém-up game of course. Some characters might be tricky to pose, like Spathi or ZFP, cuz I wouldn't know where to crop them (upper legs). Some character might be sitting very obscured, it would be strange if they got up and posed in front of the viewscreen... although StarTrek captains tend to do that I think. The backgrounds could be made to fit the different settings (homeworld, ship, spathi moon, whatever). (http://web.telia.com/~u48508900/rivalcontrol.jpg) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 21, 2006, 01:34:25 am I like it!
The only thing I would change would be to give him pants! And where is his cigar? So are you thinking about doing multiple images for facial expressions? I’m now thinking on how I will redesign the communications part of the game in order to be dynamic enough to handle both the original images and whatever you produce. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on February 21, 2006, 12:00:00 pm Your wiki is ready. (http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/wiki/) I finally managed to get it working with some hacked up sql commands to generate all the neccessary tables.
I can't guarantee that it will hold together since there were no fancy integrity checks (nor any other auto-config niceties) but so far it's working fine. Also, potential sluggishness is not my fault, blame the shared database server. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on February 21, 2006, 02:29:50 pm haha yeah I drew the cigar on a pose doodle that failed then I forgot it when I redrew it. I didn't have patience to come up with clothing so I gave him speedos cuz I was tired and in a silly mood.
It wouldn't just be faces, but shots of the upper body. I suppose each species have a few different emotions, and not always the same ones. example image (http://web.telia.com/~u48508900/rivaltest.jpg). Possibly the backgrounds could be a bit detached from the character, mostly serving and a suitable atmospheric backdrop. I'm not sure how they would 'wipe' when the emotions changed during the conversation. I haven't played RS or a japanese RPG in quite a while, so I'm not quite sure how it works. Maybe I should take the Playstation out of my closet and see... I think in RS there were several characters interacting against the same background and that might not work here. Edit: Just played some RS. The technique used for transition between the different emotion pics depends on all character being against the same background and stuff. Since SC conversations concentrates on the enemy viewscreen and Zelnick/Captain is never showed, the transitions between any emotion pics will be more difficult to pull off. Sliding it in and out of the picture might look akward, and fading/wiping might too. It could of course be possible to flip back and forth between the Captain + vindy BG and the Alien + its BG, and give the captain enough emotion pics to link to the conversation options so it doesn't get boring... but it might get redundant with the player picking the conversation option and the captain saying it, unless the conversation option is an abstract of what the captain will really say, which comes as an exciting surprise as the captain tend to be rather witty. Maybe each some backgrounds could have monitors visible, and various images can be textured/morphed onto those surfaces, like Zelnik making a threatening pose if he say something mean, or the vindy with data. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: meep-eep on February 21, 2006, 04:50:43 pm You could have some static in the communication (at all times), and make sure there's some static when you switch the image.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: guesst on February 21, 2006, 06:23:05 pm Dude, the dummied up screen totally rocks! Speedos and all.
Edit: Just played some RS. The technique used for transition between the different emotion pics depends on all character being against the same background and stuff. Since SC conversations concentrates on the enemy viewscreen and Zelnick/Captain is never showed, the transitions between any emotion pics will be more difficult to pull off. Sliding it in and out of the picture might look akward, and fading/wiping might too. Which is exactly what I meant when I said that the look wasn't StarControlly enough. That sort of pan off/pan on when the emotions change is distracting. Try just switching it. No pan/wipe. When the emotion changes, the picture just *blip* changes. I don't think that'd be too bad, thinking about it. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Draxas on February 21, 2006, 08:08:06 pm Try just switching it. No pan/wipe. When the emotion changes, the picture just *blip* changes. I don't think that'd be too bad, thinking about it. I was going to suggest the same thing. A lot of RPGs do this with a "face box" that corresponds to a particular character speaking, and they simply "blip" to a different expression as the mood dictates. While this might be a bit tougher to do with more of a character's body showing, it probbly shouldn't be too bad unless their pose changes drastically during transitions. The question of where to crop pictures is a good one; I know I basically think of Spathi as little more than disembodied eyestalks. ;) Also, showing a range of emotions on certain aliens may be problematic. Would an Ur Quan look any different when angry, really angry, afraid, or speaking of the Words? How about the Chmmr or Mycon, who don't even have recognizable faces at all? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: guesst on February 21, 2006, 08:54:08 pm Try just switching it. No pan/wipe. When the emotion changes, the picture just *blip* changes. I don't think that'd be too bad, thinking about it. I was going to suggest the same thing. A lot of RPGs do this with a "face box" that corresponds to a particular character speaking, and they simply "blip" to a different expression as the mood dictates. While this might be a bit tougher to do with more of a character's body showing, it probbly shouldn't be too bad unless their pose changes drastically during transitions. Even dramatic changes shouldn't be too bad IMHO. Quote The question of where to crop pictures is a good one; I know I basically think of Spathi as little more than disembodied eyestalks. ;) Also, showing a range of emotions on certain aliens may be problematic. Would an Ur Quan look any different when angry, really angry, afraid, or speaking of the Words? How about the Chmmr or Mycon, who don't even have recognizable faces at all? Leave that to the artist who does the rendering. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on February 22, 2006, 01:31:53 am I've added a forum (http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/forum) with guest posting enabled as per request. Drop me a line once you make forum and wiki accounts so I can upgrade them to admin status.
Also, what license do you want to use for the wiki? GFDL or a creative commons license? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 22, 2006, 04:50:54 am Arne I have a question. Are you willing to do all of the communications? I think there are like 26 of them. Also do you want me to list you as a developer for the project?
helleck has done a good job with the web site you should check it out. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on February 22, 2006, 12:13:44 pm helleck has done a good job with the web site you should check it out. I sort of skirted my duties as a web designer... but we've got a place for content now and that's what matters. :)Glad I could finally be of assistance. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Arne on February 22, 2006, 01:04:28 pm Arne I have a question. Are you willing to do all of the communications? I think there are like 26 of them. Also do you want me to list you as a developer for the project? Well, I have to warn you, I have... focus problems. I tend to abandon and resume a lot. I'm very laggy and unreliable. I need to make an assessment of how much work I'd need to do. Very aproximated: The number of background images is number_of_homeworlds + number_of_ships = 45ish? The number of character images is ((number_of_homeworlds + number_of_ships)*0.66) * number_of_emotions_average = 150ish? So it's maybe some 200 images. Some homeworlds could have special characters (like the safe ones), whilst other have a generic character for both the ship and homeworld. Wormies probably only hav one emotion pic, and I can imagine Melnorme keeping a pokerface too. I'll try to figure out more accurately what images are needed and then post something in your forum. Edit: Added something on the Wiki : talk page (http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page). Feel free to move to where it belongs. I used the wiki cuz maybe some other person could finish what I started and add their expertice. Edit again: I don't know how realistic 200 images is, some are very easy, like the Melnorme, Slylandro, UrQ backgrounds, and others are more complicated, like the ones with lots of perspective. The characters vary in difficulty too. It would take me 3 months to do all images if working fulltime, and more realistically 2 years if just noodling with it every now and then. Maybe the lander crew could use some backgrounds and characters? It would be cool to see how it looks where they are. Edit: I like Meep's idea with static. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on February 22, 2006, 02:21:41 pm Hey bioslayer, what exactly is needed to do a full compile of your source?
.:: EDIT ::. nvm i figured it out... :P hey, you know you still have 1.06 still in the cvs? Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on February 22, 2006, 02:44:44 pm hey, you know you still have 1.06 still in the cvs? I think he was having some CVS issues... maybe we should start an SVN repository using SF.net's new SVN service.Arne: I don't think there's a section to fit that sort of thing on the wiki now, but there should be. I might add a development area for this sort of thing. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on February 22, 2006, 02:50:07 pm i've always wanted to know this, but can you checkout a cvs with mingw / msys?
or would i have to use that other command shell one (forgot it's name) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Halleck on February 22, 2006, 02:54:33 pm I don't think you can, but you can get a cvs commandline client for dos if you really want one, and there are infinitely better clients for win32 such as TortoiseCVS...
Dunno what you mean by the other shell... are you referring to cygwin? That does have a cvs client IIRC. EDIT:Evidently you can get packages that add cvs for msys (http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=2327866) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on February 22, 2006, 02:57:48 pm I don't think you can, but you can get a cvs commandline client for dos if you really want one, and there are infinitely better clients for win32 such as TortoiseCVS... Dunno what you mean by the other shell... are you referring to cygwin? That does have a cvs client IIRC. cygwin... thats it, thanks Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 22, 2006, 06:00:00 pm I just didnt update it, but now it has the most recent.
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on February 22, 2006, 06:17:58 pm i hate to be the bearer of bad news, but i think your cvs is broke ???
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 22, 2006, 08:28:11 pm remember the module name is "ReMasters" not "The Ur-Quan ReMasters"
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: guesst on February 23, 2006, 01:48:15 am I've added a forum (http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/forum) with guest posting enabled as per request. Drop me a line once you make forum and wiki accounts so I can upgrade them to admin status. Also, what license do you want to use for the wiki? GFDL or a creative commons license? Ugh, another forum for me to get addicted to. I'd love to think I'm always contributing something that'll effect the final product, but until I program / buy a tablet / discover time spewing out of a localized white hole I don't know if I should even attempt to jump on this board. Is anyone checking this regularly? Actually, I wish it were linked somewhere easier to find than page 18 of this thread. Now for something completely different... Arne, re: conversation drawings, I think you're overtaxing yourself with 8 emoticons for each race. I know a perfectionist like yourself like to do that to... yourself, but maybe you should start simpler. Think 2 each, happy and angry. If you have to punish yourself 4, happy, angry, about to attack, neutral. Okay, you've still got alot of picts, but that should take down the majority of them for now. Add the rest later, if you really feel you need to. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 23, 2006, 02:05:11 am I'm checking the forum. there are a few post there now. Mostly by me though.
I put some links on the first post of this thread. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JHGuitarFreak on February 23, 2006, 05:08:34 am remember the module name is "ReMasters" not "The Ur-Quan ReMasters" i was actually talking about the web CVS at the time, it's fixed now of course. :D Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Censored on February 23, 2006, 08:26:53 pm Hey BioSlayer,
I haven't completely followed this thread (it's quite big now) so forgive me if you've already addressed this; I'm not sure if you intend to create a SC1-based starmap or not, or something else that requires graphs (by the mathematical definition, not the visual sense), but if you do, there are already well-based algorithms and that make the whole thing very very easy to do, see also at http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=2682.15. it's really not complicated and is very much 'in-phase' with your object-oriented programming; I highly recommend it. (it's just that I'm studying now to a test in Data Structures and Algorithms and all I can think of is how easy it can be to implement SC1 starmaps with it ;)) Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 24, 2006, 04:03:41 am I’m not quite sure how I will do the stars, but it most likely will be very similar to UQM.
Also could any more post be directed to the UQRM forum? http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/forum/ (http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/forum/) It's a better format then a single tread. Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: Censored on February 24, 2006, 04:20:47 am I think you have an option to lock the thread, since you opened it. might help (though add a final post with links too, because people tend to go to the last page).
Title: Re: UQM Recreation Post by: JonoPorter on February 24, 2006, 07:13:00 am This thread has been lock all future post relating to this game should be posted in the Forum created for it:
http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/forum/ (http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/forum/) You can also get information from the wiki at: http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/wiki/ (http://sc2-remake.sourceforge.net/wiki/) The SourceForge Site where you can download the most recent releases is at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake/ (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sc2-remake/) You can also get information to access to the CVS there. |