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[nitz]

nitz

[DEMO (Beta)] Critical System

Check out the most recent post for updated information!

Original post contents:

http://thegroupofthey.com/

There's a group of five of us, and we've got the remainder of this month, and the next 4 to design, code, polish, and ship a game. We don't have a title, as of yet, but just a genre, and style we're going for. Here's basically what we're looking at.

A 2D game play performer, similar in play style to old school Sonic The Hedgehog or Super Mario Brothers, as well as Super Smash Brothers. Game play will take place only in the "X" and "Y" dimensions, where as the graphics will be fully 3D (Figure, SSB, or New Super Mario Brothers). The style of the game will have an industry, machinist, steampunk feel, sort of that of the "Metropolis" level from Sonic The Hedgehog 2. The game world, ideally, will be a static over world, a la a Metroid game, where as more parts of the level become open as you complete tasks. Our 'robotic' hero (Who ideally will be somewhat of a cross between IG-88 and a Battle Droid, or something of that nature.) is attempting to re-assemble the machine that he's running around inside of. (Which may end up being the final boss.)

Regardless, we're always open for help, if you're interested in doing some texturing, modeling, animation, etc, feel free to get in touch.

Again, our website is http://thegroupofthey.com/, and I'm going to be keeping it up to date with progress of our project as it goes along. There's currently a pdf that is a representation of the slides we used in our pitch to get the game green lighted, that has some more details about the game.

A quick thing on the technical side; We will be using C/C++ for the game code. Tools or extensions will likely be done in C#, should there be any. We haven't yet decided what sort of graphics API, audio API, that we're going to use just yet, though we're leaning towards Direct3D 9 for drawing. Most of us are very familiar with OpenGL, so we'd like to experiment and attempt to learn D3D (Which could make a port to XNA easier in the future.).

Also, if you'd like to toss an idea in for a title, that'd be pretty cool too.

Thoughts, questions?

Thanks!

-nitz
http://thegroupofthey.com/

http://thegroupofthey.com/

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[Sophist]

Sophist

Re: [WIP] Working title

i wish you good luck, and from what ive read i think you will do a great job
keep us updated so we can give you reprisals

My Child Is Student of The Month at Neverland Ranch!

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[nitz]

nitz

Re: [WIP] Working title

i wish you good luck, and from what ive read i think you will do a great job
keep us updated so we can give you reprisals

Thanks!

So, we've started fleshing out some of the more core concepts of the game. What we'd like to see in gameplay, style, and such. We spent a lot of time looking at the "Metropolis" level from Sonic 2, and we're definitely going to go for that sort of feel, but not as bright-green. Hopefully something a little dirtier, and more 'used'. We've strayed away from the idea of melee attacks (at least at first. Projectiles are a much easier thing to code.) and opted to give our main character a welding gun that he can use to fire 'laser-esque bolts'. We've decided to use more of a health bar, which as it lowers, the physical appearance of our guy will change. Other than concept drawings for enemies, weapons, power-ups and bosses, the biggest thing I think we did today was actually name our character: "General Engineering Mechanized Intelligent Nano Interface", or just "Gemini" for short.

Again, we're still looking for ideas for the title. When we pitched two game ideas, we didn't have titles for either. The first one was dropped, and this was the go-ahead. After a little joking around, we now affectionately call the game we're working on "Untitled: The Sequel", so any idea will be a improvement.

On the technical side, It's looking more like we're going to be using D3D for rendering. Idealistically, we'd like to write an abstracted rendering engine that would allow for the use of D3D, OGL, or any other drawing system, but the less than 4 months we have left simply aren't enough. As for audio, we're likely going to be using XACT, as that won't take up our one allowed '3rd party' API (Where as FMOD or other would.) We haven't really started laying out our subsystems yet, but architecture is the big thing to come in the next month. We do have a quite functional 2D and 3D math library starting to take shape, as well as a few utilities. I'll be sure to post tasty snippets when there's something really worth looking at

Cheers

http://thegroupofthey.com/

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[.Syko]

.Syko

Re: [WIP] Working title

I like his name, a nice long acronym for a name.  I wish i was at least that talented at writing to somewhat come up with sweet names for people in my meager games.

I havent looked at the site, but thats the next thing on my list of 'to-dos'

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[Theforeshadower]

Theforeshadower

Re: [WIP] Working title

Interesting...wish you luck.

NOTICE:You also need four screenshots to post in this section I'll give you a few days to upload some or I will move this to Ideas and Concepts.

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[nitz]

nitz

Re: [WIP] Working title

Interesting...wish you luck.

NOTICE:You also need four screenshots to post in this section I'll give you a few days to upload some or I will move this to Ideas and Concepts.

Edit: Well, here's me playing around with D3D. I'm likely going to scrap this and start with something more structured once I get a better feel for what's going on. Regardless, here's a couple of screens to satisfy the requirements. The first is just trying to mess with some lighting, a quick draw test. The last three are playing with some billboarded sprites, and a particle system. Since our game play will take place in only two dimensions,  2D sprites for particles should work pretty nicely.

[these screens removed, as they reflect -nothing-]

http://thegroupofthey.com/

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[Zero Beat]

Zero Beat

Re: [WIP] Working title

We spent a lot of time looking at the "Metropolis" level from Sonic 2, and we're definitely going to go for that sort of feel, but not as bright-green. Hopefully something a little dirtier, and more 'used'.

You should look into Genocide City. It's a discarded sonic level concept done by the same guy who designed Metropolis. It has the same feel, but is more silver, and electrical. If you look hard enough you can find a fan made concept (That isn't a actuall city) of what It would have looked like.

So give me you're code and add mine:
Code: 4296-2644-3642

Sorry guys.  I just don't have the time anymore for the CP.  Working two jobs and just having a couple hours to play my Wii and continue learning programming just is not leaving me free time to focus on the CP.  I feel that it's my obligation to step aside as Level Director.  It's just a time issue.  Since I am also a global mod that also takes some of my focus from the CP.  So, it's nothing against anybody or what not, I'm just out of time anymore it seems.  Sorry again.

wtf, i remember posts that used to have content explaining reasons rather than ways to get rises out of users with a youtube video and no reason as to why!

How to post maturely:

epic intolerance, I caught aids from the stupidity in your post

why not issue everyone 5 opinion tokens for each year, if they voice their opinion without presenting a token- they can be legally murdered

Make sure every post you make is mature like these two (and there's many more). You just can't beat ZFGC's friendliness and maturity!

[nitz]

nitz

Re: [WIP] Working title

We spent a lot of time looking at the "Metropolis" level from Sonic 2, and we're definitely going to go for that sort of feel, but not as bright-green. Hopefully something a little dirtier, and more 'used'.

You should look into Genocide City. It's a discarded sonic level concept done by the same guy who designed Metropolis. It has the same feel, but is more silver, and electrical. If you look hard enough you can find a fan made concept (That isn't a actuall city) of what It would have looked like.

Thanks for the tip. I did a little research, and it seems there's not much left over. Looks like someone did something here, but I don't feel like that's what you were trying to show me.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gLW9HNIaf4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gLW9HNIaf4</a>

The other thing I found was I think a heck that someone finished (below). It seems however, that that's just the tile set from chemical plant on a different background. Got any screens or other for me to look at? Though the idea of the chemical plant feel might help quite considerably. Thanks!

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6rUe2Ugvmc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6rUe2Ugvmc</a>

http://thegroupofthey.com/

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[therabidwombat]

therabidwombat

Re: [WIP] Working title

If you're still looking for an audio API, I'd recommend FMod. It's free if you're distributing your game for free, and it's dirt easy to use. You can have a sound manager running within an hour of downloading the API. It's super easy.

Anyways, the game sounds cool and I am interested in seeing how it'll look. Working with 3D in 2D could make collision calculations and the like easier. Is this for a class? What access to external tools (engines, etc.) do you have?

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[nitz]

nitz

Re: [WIP] Working title

If you're still looking for an audio API, I'd recommend FMod. It's free if you're distributing your game for free, and it's dirt easy to use. You can have a sound manager running within an hour of downloading the API. It's super easy.

Anyways, the game sounds cool and I am interested in seeing how it'll look. Working with 3D in 2D could make collision calculations and the like easier. Is this for a class? What access to external tools (engines, etc.) do you have?

We thought about FMOD, but our 'requirements' allow us only a single 'third party' API. Everything else we are doing has to be by us, from the ground up. So yeah, it's all us.

That was the theory for all the 2D calculations. It gives a load more clock cycles to use on rendering and pretty.

As far as tools, we have anything any of us have written before, and that's just about it.

And yes, it's a final project at school. =]

http://thegroupofthey.com/

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[nitz]

nitz

Re: [WIP] Working title

Content time!

With shifts in the main character ideas, menu concepts, and other things happening, things are starting to take shape. I bring to you, concept art!

Initially, we had a robotic hero, Gemini:

Gemini then progressed into a male character, resembling a cross between Jak and Link:

We weren't too keen on him, but we did like the idea of using a humanoid character. The next step in the progression of our main character took them female, and sort of a megaman route:

Everyone on the team agreed they liked that design, but wanted something a bit more 'technical', so our Art Director did a little revision, and we feel we're getting closer to the final design for our heroine, Vice:

Among other concepts, enemies were discussed, with potential styles as so:

And last but not least, I did a mock up of the way I think I'd like the menu to look. (Though, imagine it 3D, and when you change which menu option is selected, the gear will rotate. When you make a selection, the button will depress.)

Thoughts?

http://thegroupofthey.com/

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[nitz]

nitz

Re: [WIP] Working title

Code time! I've been writing up a few utility functions and classes, and I'd like to share them with you all. All the code I post in this thread is distributed under the zlib License, so should you decide to use this code, or modify it in any way, you must take the license along with it!

Sorry, gotta get the legal mumbo jumbo out of the way, the license:

/*
  Copyright (C) 2008 Chris "Nitz" Dailey and The Group of They
  http://thegroupofthey.com

  This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
  warranty.  In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
  arising from the use of this software.

  Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose,
  including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it
  freely, subject to the following restrictions:

  1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not
     claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software
     in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be
     appreciated but is not required.
  2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
     misrepresented as being the original software.
  3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.
*/

And now, some code!

Here's a very simple high resolution timer for windows. Providing an easy to use interface to QueryPerformanceCounter, time based updating is a breeze!

Code: Text

1. /********************************************************************
2.         created:        2008/04/30
3.         created:        30:4:2008   11:34
4.         modified:       2008/04/30
5.         filename:       .\Utilities\timer\timer.h
6.         file base:      timer
7.         file ext:       h
8.         author:         Nitz
9.        
10.         purpose:        A high resolution timer, based on concept by
11.                                 Richard S. Wright Jr. This file also contains
12.                                 a global typedef of &#39;timeslice&#39;, as a float.
13.        
14.         notes:          Uses Win32 functions.
15. *********************************************************************/
16.  
17. #pragma once
18.  
19. #define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
20. #include <windows.h>
21.  
22. typedef float timeslice;
23.  
24. namespace util
25. {
26.         class Timer
27.         {
28.         public:
29.                 Timer(void);
30.                 void Reset(void);
31.                 timeslice GetElapsedSeconds(void);
32.  
33.         protected:
34.                 LARGE_INTEGER m_CounterFrequency;
35.                 LARGE_INTEGER m_LastCount;
36.         };
37. }
38.  

Code: Text

1. /********************************************************************
2.         created:        2008/04/30
3.         created:        30:4:2008   11:34
4.         modified:       2008/04/30
5.         filename:       .\Utilities\timer\timer.cpp
6.         file base:      timer
7.         file ext:       cpp
8.         author:         Nitz
9.  
10.         purpose:        timer&#39;s implementation.
11. *********************************************************************/
12.  
13. #include "timer.h"
14.  
15. util::Timer::Timer( void )
16. {
17.         QueryPerformanceFrequency(&m_CounterFrequency);
18.         QueryPerformanceCounter(&m_LastCount);
19. }
20.  
21. void util::Timer::Reset( void )
22. {
23.         QueryPerformanceCounter(&m_LastCount);
24. }
25.  
26. timeslice util::Timer::GetElapsedSeconds( void )
27. {
28.         LARGE_INTEGER lCurrent;
29.         QueryPerformanceCounter(&lCurrent);
30.  
31.         return timeslice((lCurrent.QuadPart - m_LastCount.QuadPart) /
32.                 double(m_CounterFrequency.QuadPart));
33. }
34.  

And here's a quick example of how to use it!

Code: Text

1. #include <iostream>
2. #include "timer.h"
3.  
4. using namespace util;
5.  
6. int main(int argc, char ** argv)
7. {
8.         Timer t;
9.         t.Reset();
10.  
11.         while (t.GetElapsedSeconds() <= 3.0f); //Let&#39;s wait 3 seconds.
12.  
13.         std::cout << "Elapsed time: " << t.GetElapsedSeconds() << std::endl;
14.  
15.         return 0;
16. }
17.  

More to come! Let me know what you think!

In other news, got a bit more concept art coming soon, as well as a rendering engine starting to shape up. Will post scans/screens as soon as there's something worth seeing!

http://thegroupofthey.com/

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[nitz]

nitz

Re: [WIP] Critical System (Working Title)

Update!
We've got a proof of concept due pretty soon in the future. I'll be able to give a more solid date once it gets a little closer. required for the proof, is basic game play. Means there should be something to show soon!

In the meantime, our heroine, Vice, got a nice coloring job. Whatcha think:

http://thegroupofthey.com/

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[TheDarkJay]

TheDarkJay

Re: [WIP] Critical System (Working Title)

Hang on, I remember seeing that high-res timer in either Game Programming Gems or Game Coding

Out of curiosity, are you writing your own random number generator object as well?

[Infinitus]

Infinitus

Re: [WIP] Critical System (Working Title)

Hang on, I remember seeing that high-res timer in either Game Programming Gems or Game Coding

I wouldn't be suprised, the code is very generic, 90% of game programmers will proberly have their own version somewhere or other.

[nitz]

nitz

Re: [WIP] Critical System (Working Title)

Hang on, I remember seeing that high-res timer in either Game Programming Gems or Game Coding

I wouldn't be suprised, the code is very generic, 90% of game programmers will proberly have their own version somewhere or other.

Yep. Simply because, QueryPerformanceCounter has a very very high resolution. The original source (that I credited Richard for, taught a class at my school, co-authored the OpenGL Super Bible [source here: http://www.starstonesoftware.com/OpenGL]) that I used for inspiration was platform independent. Alternative to the win32 calls, he had 'GetTimeOfDay' for Mac.

http://thegroupofthey.com/

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[nitz]

nitz

Re: [WIP] Critical System (Working Title)

Progress! We've made a lot of headway as far as technology goes.

Technologies we're sure we're going to be using:

Rendering: OpenGL 2.1
Audio: XACT (Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool)
Input: Direct Input
Math: We've already written a SIMD optimized 2D and 3D math library.
Animation: Created in Maya, we've written our own exporter to do smooth skinning.
Other resources: Lua, Windows Registry, more...

And as a tasty treat, here's the alpha way we think we're going to lay out our systems, as far as communication between them goes:



Thoughts, questions?

http://thegroupofthey.com/

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[nitz]

nitz

Re: [WIP] Critical System (Working Title)

Well, our proof of concept build is due tomorrow. We don't have too much right now, but I'll be sure to put a few screens (or maybe the build if it's stable enough) up here so you can see our progress the next few months.

For our proof, we've got a penguin model loading. (Because our Art Director gave it to us, so it's somewhat representative of how he builds his models. We wrote our loader based on that.) We haven't bothered doing animations yet. The penguin is going to slide left and right along a platform, and collide with 'walls' on either side. There may be some sort of 'jump' depending on how much we can get working tonight.

Also, I saw a rough copy of Vice the other day, and she looks good in 3D.

Oh one of the coolest parts about our game, is that there is no game loop in C++. Our game loop is in Lua. While it's simple and silly right now, it's going to become a lot fancier. Right now, all we've got running in lua (besides loading some settings) is an Initilization func, Run Game func, and Shutdown. Like so:

Code: [Select]

-- main.lua

RunGame = true

function init()
initGame()
RunGame = true
end

function run()
repeat
renderFrame()
checkMessagePump()
until not RunGame
end

function kill()
RunGame = false
endGame()
end


http://thegroupofthey.com/

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[pichuscute]

pichuscute

Re: [WIP] Critical System (Working Title)

this looks kool, ive always wanted to make a 3d 2d platformer but im lazy. cant wait to see it finished

[nitz]

nitz

Re: [WIP] Critical System (Working Title)

Well, here's an early build! (Dubbed 'pre proof of concept')

(Link in lower post)

Keys:
A, D: Move left, right.
Space: Jump
Arrow keys: Camera movement
Hold TAB, move mouse: Free look camera movement

Don't really need any 'this is wrong' feedback from this (though toss it at me if you feel like it!), though I am looking for specific issues.

Particularly: Do you get an error like this when you try to run:


If so, does installing this fix it? http://thegroupofthey.com/exe/vcredist/vcredist_x86_2005.exe

Things I know are wrong: Jumping is crazy. Gravity is floaty. Collision is -not- done in the slightest. Sound's aren't synced.
The point of this build was just to get some tech going to prove we can do it. (This is about 4 days of work, we just got the penguin placeholder drawing yesterday.)

Other than that, lemme know what you think!

http://thegroupofthey.com/

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