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Game Mogul

Joined: 30 Jan 2005
Posts: 241
Location: Neenerneener Land

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 6:56 am Post subject: New member, new ideas

Hi! I just joined and wanted to throw some ideas at you. I am an aspiring game developer who knows a lot about all the involved subjects. I can model pretty well and mostly do character modeling; however, I'll force my self to make cool ships for an amazing game. Very Happy

I also love programming and am currently learning OpenGL. I'm a below average programmer with Javascript, but could easily learn a lot more and apply it to C/C++. I recommend Blender for modeling, The GIMP for texturing, Audacity for synthesizing and editing sound, and... well... I don't have any compilers to suggest for code, but they're out there!

Blender
The Gimp
Audacity

Here are some of my ideas I had for your game. For a 3D IFF have three ellipses which represent a sphere, have hollow dots for planets, colored dots for ships, and Up, Down, North, South, East, West at the different poles of the sphere. As the player rotates, the sphere rotates the opposite direction, thus showing the “3D-ness” of the navigation. The bigger the dot, the closer it is. Just like in EV, the other ships would be colored Red, Green, Grey, or Yellow depending on their hostility status.

I also have been thinking about a realistic cockpit. The electrical wires I'm adding to the the view (Nav Screens etc.) could float around, then sway with the inertia created by the thrust. I've looked it up in David Bourg's Physics for Game Developers, and it's quite easy to add this kind of physics to real-time rendering. Too, info-screens hanging from a vertical pole could wobble a little.

On the console, I provided a screen where text can appear and you can chat with other players easily. How it works is that there are three layers. The Object Layer, the Text Layer, and the Screen Layer. The Object Layer is the actual 3D object, the Text Layer is an invisible layer to which text is sent so that you could have chatting between players, and the Screen Layer is a layer which reacts to light so that it will look like a computer screen.

These are just a few of my wide-eyed Shocked

ideas for your game. I know they are all far-flung and wouldn't be accommodated for for a long time. I just wanted to see what you thought. As a last question, since Unix and Linux are similar, could there be any Linux release in the future? I like Macs and all, but I REALLY like Mandrakelinux. Don't take me wrong, Macs are great and Windows sucks, but I like to support Linux too.

-Mogul

P.S. I'll try to get some pictures to you later; I have an AVI animation of the rotating NavBall, but can't get it onto a domain just yet. I'll also try to put some other pictures with it.
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Paul

Joined: 17 Apr 2004
Posts: 447
Location: Chicago

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 10:41 pm Post subject:

Great to have you!

I have Blender, but I never learned it well enough to be good at it. So I use Wings3D, which I found very easy to learn and use. But you can use whatever you prefer, just make sure you are able to convert your final model to 3DS format.

Same thing for texturing: use whatever you like best. Anything file format that Preview can open should work just fine. I use a combination of GIMP and PhotoShop, and usually use PNG and JPG as my formats.

The 3D IFF thing is a good idea. I'll try to implement that as I enhance the 3D flight to work better.

Adding inertial elements to the cockpit wouldn't be too hard, but I'm not sure that it would benefit the game. But send me what you've got, and I'll be happy to take a look at it.

I'm working on a scripting language right now, at which point I will add a console.

As for Linux, I think that should be doable, but I want to get the Mac version finalized before I even start working on that. Since I'm largely using Cocoa architecture, which is NextStep, porting it to any OpenStep supported platform should be fairly quick.

If you don't have a host available, you can just email me your pics and AVI.

Thanks for your interest; that's what will make EH a better game.
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Differentiation is an integral part of calculus.

Gwynoid

Joined: 17 Apr 2004
Posts: 86
Location: MA

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 10:59 pm Post subject:

blender is meant to be a renderer, not a modeler. use Wings3D for that Cool

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BUILT FOR MAC OS X!!!

Game Mogul

Joined: 30 Jan 2005
Posts: 241
Location: Neenerneener Land

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 11:56 pm Post subject: w00t!

w00t! Replies! I've been reading your forums since you seriously started up a few months ago. I stumbled across your site through the Dawn of Infinity boards and started reading everything.

Quote:

If you don't have a host available, you can just email me your pics and AVI.

I have one, but I don't know when I'll be able to access it so I'll e-mail the AVI to you and a real rough concept sketch of the cockpit.

Quote:

blender is meant to be a renderer, not a modeler. use Wings3D for that Cool

While that was true of much older versions, Blender 2.36 is a highly developed polygon modeller with advanced animation and texturing capabilties which include an easy UV unwrapper and exporter, in-program texture-painting for seams, and weight painting for verts. It can also export in .obj, .ac, .lwo, .x, and whole slew of other formats. Besides, only REALLY cool people use Blender Cool

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Also, I hear Yafray is a good plug-in renderer for Blender

Quote:

make sure you are able to convert your final model to 3DS format.

got it.

EDIT:
Oh, and sorry for the cheesy title of the thread.

-Mogul
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"Never sneak up on a turtle while he's welding"

Game Mogul

Joined: 30 Jan 2005
Posts: 241
Location: Neenerneener Land

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 12:41 am Post subject:

Quote:

I use a combination of GIMP and PhotoShop, and usually use PNG and JPG as my formats.

I've heard that TGAs are the best and are what are normally used in games. Is there a reason you use PNGs or JPEGs?
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"Never sneak up on a turtle while he's welding"

Paul

Joined: 17 Apr 2004
Posts: 447
Location: Chicago

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 1:06 pm Post subject:

Paul wrote:

convert your final model to 3DS format.

I have no idea why I said that. Actually, you need to use Wavefront .obj format. Sorry about that. Smile

[quote = "Game Mogul"]I've heard that TGAs are the best and are what are normally used in games. Is there a reason you use PNGs or JPEGs?[/quote]

I haven't ever tried TGA. I use JPEG for planets, because they fit its profile quite nicely, getting great compression for next-to-zero observable lossiness. I usually use PNG for my model textures for much the same reasons. I suppose I could look at TGA, and you are certainly welcome to use TGA, as it is supported.
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Differentiation is an integral part of calculus.

Game Mogul

Joined: 30 Jan 2005
Posts: 241
Location: Neenerneener Land

Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 5:45 am Post subject:

w00t! Domain works. You can see it here. Pics and AVIs that explain what I've been talking about are there. I can't make any claim to the site graphics because I used siteBuilder by Verizon to make it. I hated every minute of it because I had my own site I wanted to upload, but they only let you use there services. My graphics were cool. Cool

After hours of trying to make my site work, I gave up and used their tools. I also had to make it in <whisper>Windows</whisper> because I haven't downloaded Internet Explorer for my Linux yet.

-Mogul

P.S. Most of the graphics I posted there suck, but that's because they are all prelim. I can model.
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"Never sneak up on a turtle while he's welding"

Gwynoid

Joined: 17 Apr 2004
Posts: 86
Location: MA

Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 8:33 pm Post subject:

Game Mogul wrote:

Quote:

I use a combination of GIMP and PhotoShop, and usually use PNG and JPG as my formats.

I've heard that TGAs are the best and are what are normally used in games. Is there a reason you use PNGs or JPEGs?

this is mainly because on macs, the only easily portable way of loading textures is to use tgas. Cocoa has PNG, JPG, BMP, TIFF, and other such formats built in.
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BUILT FOR MAC OS X!!!

Game Mogul

Joined: 30 Jan 2005
Posts: 241
Location: Neenerneener Land

Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 9:41 pm Post subject:

Gwynoid wrote:

Game Mogul wrote:

Quote:

I use a combination of GIMP and PhotoShop, and usually use PNG and JPG as my formats.

I've heard that TGAs are the best and are what are normally used in games. Is there a reason you use PNGs or JPEGs?

this is mainly because on macs, the only easily portable way of loading textures is to use tgas. Cocoa has PNG, JPG, BMP, TIFF, and other such formats built in.

JPEGs are compressed, but they have poor quality; PNGs may be compressed instorage size, but are slow to load (just look whenver anyone posts a link to a PNG); and BMPs have the same problem as PNGs. I thought that TGAs were fast loading, high quality, and compressed. Question

-Mogul
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"Never sneak up on a turtle while he's welding"

Paul

Joined: 17 Apr 2004
Posts: 447
Location: Chicago

Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2005 11:38 pm Post subject:

Game Mogul wrote:

I just tested a few textures in PNG, JPG, and TGA. For most of the spaceships, PNG and TGA came out about the same size. But for the planets, TGA was much larger than JPG.

I wouldn't use JPG for anything where exact detail is required, such as most spaceships, but it works very well for most planets. You can adjust the quality of a JPG when you're saving it, as well. I think organic-type textures such as for most planets is precisely the kind of image JPG compression was designed for. As such, you get great space savings for little loss in quality.

And loading time is not really relevant here, since all spaceship/weapon graphics are preloaded, and planet graphics are loaded every time you enter a system.

In conclusion, make your graphics in whatever format you like. Feel free to look at other formats, and compare quality/size tradeoffs. I'm happy with anything.
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Differentiation is an integral part of calculus.

Game Mogul

Joined: 30 Jan 2005
Posts: 241
Location: Neenerneener Land

Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 3:03 am Post subject:

Okay, I didn't know; I just thought I'd ask. Confused

-Mogul
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"Never sneak up on a turtle while he's welding"

Game Mogul

Joined: 30 Jan 2005
Posts: 241
Location: Neenerneener Land

Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 3:08 am Post subject:

Oh, and I have another idea. Paul talking about planets reminded me; I've been wanting to update planets to be more asthetically pleasing and to maybe have atmospheric effects and bumpmaps for mountains. I know this would increase load/render time, but it would also increase play experience.

Also, let me know if this is in an okay location or if I should move this discussion to another thread.

EDIT:
What is the UV format (i.e. shape) that you use for your planets?

Thanks,
-Mogul

P.S. Has anyone seen my site yet? As I said before, I couldn't upload my cool graphics (and code) and had to use their cruddy Site Builder. Here's something I'm proud of, though.
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aplasticspork

Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 136
Location: Seattle, Wa

Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 7:20 am Post subject:

i was just thinking, speaking of changing the graphics to make it more pretty Very Happy

perhaps now that we have so many people working on that department we should make a new forum for it. as for performance issues, i think it's safe to say that we could add a few hundred more polygons to ships and make planets and etc. more detailed. i think i mentioned quite a while back that i decided to do a test on my computer and put in a ship that was in excess of 20,000 polygons. when there were about 10 of them in a system i was never getting getting 20 fps, this is on my now lowly 800 mhz G4 imac. obviously we wont have any 20,000 polygon ships in the game Cool

but i think it could handle 500-750 on most ships even on a slower computer. that aside, im probably going to be jumping back into the 3d modeling department, and im going to teach myself to use blender hopefully this weekend. moving away from that department, im also going to be working on space stations to replace/orbit around planets these are probably going to end up with more polygons than the ships. last but not least, im not sure if im the only one, but i get the feeling that the game is a bit crowded, so perhaps the planets should be moved farther apart, and made bigger. that would spread out the ships too so you wouldnt be running into them all the time. ok, im done for the evening probably but i'll be back tomorrow *maniacal laughter*
--andrzej Smile

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Game Mogul

Joined: 30 Jan 2005
Posts: 241
Location: Neenerneener Land

Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 7:53 am Post subject:

w00t! Someone using Blender!

All you need for starters for controls are

F1 open saved project
F2 save project
F12 render
F11 hide/show previous render
F3 save render
LMB Don't do it because it'll move the 3D cursor
RMB (if you have it; Apple+Click I think)generally select stuff
+/- zoom (or roll wheel if you have it)
numpad 4 view rot. left
numpad 6 view rot. right
numpad 7 top view
numpad 8 rot. up
numpad 1 front
numpad 3 side
numpad 5 ortho/perspective

EDIT wrote:

numpad 2 view rot. down
numpad 0 camera view
numpad . fit selected into screen

space menu
s scale
r rotate
g grab (translate)
e extrude
b square select
b+b circle select
shift+d copy
alt+d clone (where if you do something to one, it happens to the other)
to reject an action is usually right click, to accept is left click
CTR+x is new
x brings up delete menu
CTR+Z universal undo
u undo in edit mode
I can't remember redo, look it up Rolling Eyes

Sorry, a rush. Better instructions latter.
Rendering sucks as default and you'll have to tweak it, but I'll explain that latter. Sorry for the bad instructions, you should look for tutorials on blender.org and blender3d.org
And check out my thread on planets, please.

-Mogul
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"Never sneak up on a turtle while he's welding"

Last edited by Game Mogul on Thu Feb 03, 2005 5:17 am; edited 3 times in total

Game Mogul

Joined: 30 Jan 2005
Posts: 241
Location: Neenerneener Land

Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 10:00 pm Post subject:

Okay, it's lunch time so I have a little more time to write. You have object mode, edit mode, UV face select, texture paint, and vertex paint. For right now, you only have to worry about object and edit mode, the the others involve animation and texturing.

Whenever you want to do an action to an object, make sure your mouse cursor is in the window in which you want that action to take place. By default Blender only has one window, but I'll show you how to make more views latter. Also by default, Blender is in orthographic view; press numpad 5 to get into perspective mode.

Object mode is where you can affect whole objects (with g, s, and r). Edit mode is where you can edit the submesh of an object. Currently, Blender cannot do spline modelling, but that desn't matter since we can't use splines. You can, however, use curves (space>add>curves><anything here>) for animation paths, camera paths, dupliverts (more on that latter), and other things.

To select things, right click them. If you don't have right clicking, use the Mac variant (I can't remeber what they all are for right and middle clicking). Have someone post what the variants on Mac are so that you can use them because they are extremely important. To select multiple things, either shift+RMB (Right Mouse Button), drag a marque around the objects you want (b), or press a to select/deselct all. To move or scale in a fixed direction, start moving the mouse in the desdired axis and then middle click. You can also, for more control, press x, y, or z after you invoke moving or scaling. When you snap your action to an axis in any way, it will be the gloabl axis to which it is snaped. If, however, you want to scale or move with the objects axis, press x+x, y+y, or z+z.

The object's axis will determined by how far it has been rotated from its original position in object mode. If you rotate the entire object in edit mode, then the axis will still be the same in object mode.

On to edit mode! Usually, you want to start with a cube. I know I'm covering stuff you already know, but I want you to learn the Blender controls for doing stuff for this easy stuff here. Back to the cube. spcae>add>mesh>cube (make sure you are in front, side, or top view). To enter edit mode, press tab. Possibly by default, Blender will have wire-frame mode enabled; press z to toggle wire-frame/solid mode. On the bar between the modelling window and the buttons window, there are four buttons. One with four dots forming a square, a line, a cube, and a triangle all by itself (not in that order). What these do is show the object which is endit mode either with verticies, edges, or faces. The cube button toggles if you can see (and select) verticies which are hidden behind faces.

For now, jsut use my post above this one as a guide for the different controls (like e for extrude). Speaking of which, e will bring up an extrude menu. Just extrude region for now, the others come latter. Well, I used up all my time, talk latter.

EDIT wrote:

I forgot, MMB can rotate the view if you hold it down.

-Mogul
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Last edited by Game Mogul on Thu Feb 03, 2005 5:15 am; edited 2 times in total

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