Release 0.1 preparation

[aiaf]

We need to prepare the 0.1 release.

Maybe in the weekend to release this if all goes well.

 

Things that need to be done that i can think of:

• Make the csg dungeon the default map.
• At end of dungeon , go to the island in some way (portal, ramp ? mdgunn please please make the choice here)
• Use the island map from mdgunn with the artificial structures beneath.
• Integrate the third camera from Slas to the first island
• add wizard model (im a little confused here what wizard we use just add one to the map for now )
• create more models , populate island
• fade in/out logo for the game

Things that maybe will not go in this release:

• Menus, Rick any news with this ? , if you dont have the time at moment no problem , i could add just a start button with le gui
• meteor cutscene ?

If i missed something, or other issues do tell.

Most of the things are done we just need to make this release.

 

Please disscuss.

[mdgunn]

A good part of this relates to things I've been involved with so I will look at tying these together a bit more into something for a 'release'.   I haven't tried to get the 3rd person controller working in the dungeon.  Not sure it is ready to perform in that environment but I could give it a go, or if the map is loading up OK for Slas he could see how it performs there and we can establish the suitability for this FPS orientated environment for 3rd person.

I will aim to tie up what I can from my side for a 'release' version within a few days. Should be before the weekend. Maybe something by Wed/Thurs.

Unsure where gamecreator got to with any island work but I will continue to use mine for now. 

[gamecreator]

Just a heads-up that I'm not able to continue on this project right now.  I uploaded the preparation work I did on the island in fbx format.  The rightmost items just need a color assigned to them and then you can create islands and place vegetation.  Note the commit comment though that it uses resources from sketchfab.  They're free to use (even in commercial) but just need attribution.

[Thirsty Panther]

8 hours ago, mdgunn said:

 I haven't tried to get the 3rd person controller working in the dungeon.

I messed around with a small dungeon using your Modular Building Pack ( nice work btw ). I added the Third person player and tried to wander around.

It wasn't a pleasant experience. In tight areas the camera pops thru walls and jerks when going down steps. I'm not being critical of the script it just that it is not really suitable for use in a dungeon. Changing the offset may improve things but maybe we should stick with the first person camera for the dungeon and switch to 3rd person for the island.

[mdgunn]

Thanks.  Could be there are other things that can be done.  I think I saw some discussion recently about avoiding clipping with the cameras and the FPS has some code for smoothing out movement when you're falling jumping so maybe there are solutions.  Third person always seemed like it could be tricky to get working really well. We'll see.  Nice to have some options at the start.

 

[mdgunn]

4 hours ago, gamecreator said:

Just a heads-up that I'm not able to continue on this project right now. 

No problem. I might face the same thing later on. Maybe you'll have more time later when the path is also a little clearer but also some polishing to be done. In the mean-time, focus on what you need to do. 

Cheers!

[Slastraf]

The camera clips trough walls because it is not yet programmed. I tried to make the cam look and walk as smooth as possible for now. Also you guys are more or less building maps for an fps game, dungeons are really possible. For example if you look at some dark souls footage, there are always open spaces. When I looked at one video from us, the character ( in first person mode) jumped along a wall, and then trough a small hole ,on the opposite site of the street, while in the air or something. This is not possible to realize in a third person camera , if you don't specify it enough. (Stuff like in Assassins Creed is possible but there is probably a whole team writing hundred thousand lines of code from a design paper for just that char controller that is pages over pages long.)

[Slastraf]

guess I'm going to rewrite the player controller 

[aiaf]

Could stick to first person camera for first release.What you guys think ?

Guess we can put more effort into third person camera after,  to be honest i never seen a third camera working perfectly even in commercial games.

[Slastraf]

I think it would be better to push 0.1 further, and not at all go public with what we have right now. Maybe one month. Look what we did in ~2 weeks. What would another 4 weeks make our game look like ? I am currently working on the Third person control refurbished and it is already better because I had a really weird approach in the last one.

[aiaf]

i think is important to make this 0.1 tech demo, get it out of the way fast, figure out some things in the process

and continue to work for next more advanced release (0.2).

 

At the moment we dont even know what is our first island map we just have lots of tests , 0.1 will clear things out at least.

And bonus we could get more community attention , but with current active people (3, 4) we seem to be doing great.

 

mdgunn seem will have last say with this, im good with any choice is decided.

[mdgunn]

About Third Person Controller:

I don't really have a preference of First Person or Third Person though I see 3rd person as more of a risk which given the difficulties of getting ANY project successfully to the end has to be taken seriously.  There is a balance of things and too many things on one side of the scales and the project fails. To me it's kinda as simple as that. 

3rd person has some notorious issues that have plagued games for years and still do so I think we need to be quite sure as soon as possible that we are happy with our third person controller and the work required (character animations etc) if we are to pursue it.  If this may take some time then is it the best time spent of that person in getting the project closer to finished? It MAY be if we have a few people that have experience doing 3rd person camera then we are OK.

Even doing first person game  has quite large risk compared to something like a simple abstract arcade game that might have only one screen and a couple of mechanics but I think we decided FP or TP environment so that people could work on isolated maps.

I'd be really happy to see a super solid 3rd person controller for Leadwerks but I think we need to prove it's solid as soon as we can.

It's true the map looks FPS-centric in the end but I think you could probably move some things about and it not be. Partly I was trying to get some brushes together to help do other levels more quickly and I don't think they are particularly FPS centric (suppose I could be wrong).  

My experience is more first person when trying to do LW games so given that we needed something fairly quickly I try to do something passable in FP than something more unknown to me in 3rd person.  Maybe someone can do a more 3rd person map map then we can compare them both and move forwards from there . Maybe it's just a case of rearranging existing one, it's just brushes not 3D model, which of course is why I did it in brushes.  If someone is having problems with the map I can help. At the minute I'm assuming it loads OK but for all I know prefabs don't load cause I missed adding something to git or something. 

As I've said before I think we probably need to focus on determining some interesting game mechanics that drive the game and then that might suggest which controller we need.  

What might help me is if people can suggest some examples of good third person controller on a small project team (1 person of few person).  For me many console games with third person choose it for reasons which would be a DISASTER for us having excellent well animated characters within lush environments and strong story.  Maybe someone can suggest some games so I can see in my head that we can make a leap to having a 3ps controller like game X that you name.  

In case of Atlas Cube in my mind I could see that FP game as being something doable, as far as it's environments and presentations (at least in a simple form). 
 

[mdgunn]

Although I think having a milestone of trying to get something working 'released' is good I don't necessarily think this needs to be a public release and in the state that I would probably get things in the next few days I think this is probably not yet the way to go.  This is why I put it in commas usually when I say it. From my perspective I think I will not have the time to get it to the point that as an outsider I would want to spend much time investigating.   Need at least a version 0.2 or even a 0.3.    Best you could do for now might be some screen shots or show a few models but the value of that is probably limited.

If we had some good operational mechanics then that may be more engaging to play with then maybe it might be interesting to show but with maps people are on MUCH better completed maps every time they launch any other game. With mechanics at least it may be something they haven't seen before.

I have uploaded a slightly modified dungeon map with a teleport to an island with some props on it.  It's not the same island as before but it is much lighter in resources which is what I wanted to test out.   I would like to redo the other island as although it probably looked better it was words in other ways and am looking at ways still to produce islands in different shapes and balanced with resource usage.

Should be checked in now. dungeon map is set as start.map and it leads on to island1.map both in root of maps.  I will need to tidy up a few test maps soon I think.

NOTE:  I don't think the published EXE is working for me.  I'd kinda assume that might not be my stuff and I'm not sure whey the exe doesn't load. For now run start.map from editor I guess.

I also did a hack job on a FP hand to get a feel for maybe the start of having character weapon or item.  This could equally well be something a third person controller has but for now it is easier for me to start from FP controller where it can use some existing LW mechanisms and scripts.  It is totally not complete.

The idea thematically was that this device comes down with the cube and latches onto the hand of our character/guardian/whatever.  It can act like a wand or whatever or maybe augements to do different things, but I wanted to avoid the pure cliche of a classic wizard wand.  The thing on the hand wasn't modelled for this purpose so yes it probably looks really bad but hopefully the suggestion is there for a possible direction to pursue should we want to.

 

 

 

[gamecreator]

I have no vote in this any more but I would suggest you guys do hold off on releasing until you have as much to show as possible.  Assuming the goal is to wrap the project by the end of the year, you could release a fairly polished milestone version in about a month with at least two levels to show and some gameplay.  First impressions are important and they'll decide whether people have interest in your project or dismiss it.

Regarding the camera, when I was researching low-poly games/looks, I came across this game which gave me a lot of graphical inspiration: https://store.steampowered.com/app/298610/Ylands/
It's not well reviewed but the look was something I was personally shooting for if we wanted to keep things simple with low-poly assets.  It's also much more suitable for a third-person camera than a close-quarters dungeon with walls and ceilings.

[aiaf]

Ok so no public release yet.

Ill document we use a portal to get to the island , thats good.

Try put a portal in the dungeon too that will load island1.Portal should use some particles in later version.

Island looks great , but think we need a bit wider one , i liked the black artificial structures undearneath , maybe put that back.

 

I kind of agree third person is a risk i would have not seen any comercial third person game that it doesnt have problems with the camera in one way or another.

But Slas has put the work in , i think rewrite the camera again, so will use it if we prove it works ok.

That been said im in favor of first person.

 

We need to think about next steps start some discussions , put more tasks in etc

[Slastraf]

The new Tps controller will have fps , camera collision and a much less complicated camera movement. I already did the script yesterday but I have problems with git. We could make it like in Skyrim , and let the user switch tps / fps. Will be more work tough, for the hand animations.

[mdgunn]

5 hours ago, aiaf said:

Try put a portal in the dungeon too that will load island1

It should already be functional and do a map switch unless that is appearing to be broken in my check-in.

 

[mdgunn]

7 hours ago, gamecreator said:

Regarding the camera, when I was researching low-poly games/looks, I came across this game which gave me a lot of graphical inspiration: https://store.steampowered.com/app/298610/Ylands/
It's not well reviewed but the look was something I was personally shooting for if we wanted to keep things simple with low-poly assets.  It's also much more suitable for a third-person camera than a close-quarters dungeon with walls and ceilings.

Thanks for the reference.  I'd heard about it a little from way back.  I will add that to my mental picture.  It is interesting that I saw a disgruntled user saying they have been playing this early access game for almost 3 years now.   My worry is that we choose low poly to make graphics easier (isn't it?) but then we choose TPS which is often most often best displayed in multi-million dollar games with 3+ year time scale.  

[mdgunn]

I think I will have a go at either redoing the existing level into a TPS level and/or doing another level.   

I have never tried to do a TPS level so initially this is likely to be rubbish and need to be thrown away. 

If anyone else has any more references to games that they think are useful influences for what a TPS version of our game might borrow from then please let me know.