[WIP] Cyclone

[reepblue]

Cyclone is a first-person puzzler in which players solve a series of challenge by freely placing cyclonic vortices within the environment. The game is currently in development and will hopefully be released soon.

I've been doing a lot of research/tinkering over the years (The very first concept was done in 2017!) but I think I figured out all the really hard parts out and I'm ready to finish this. The goal is to make a very small game with the Leadwerks engine and see what happens.

Here's a video of the prototype from last year.

I restructured the code so it's less of a rat's nest and sounds now properly get deleted as I just tell the entity to emit my needed sounds and the engine takes care of the objects for me.

Here's a video of the current build with the base functionality of the cyclones in. (In the previous build, the wall bouncing didn't 100% work)

I decided to make a new thread here as I feel the game pages get no attention. Plus, the community has not been as active with projects since the announcement of UltraEngine so hopefully this inspires more people here.

Here's some of my notes:

• To help with performance, I'll be mostly using CSG brushes whenever possible as those are free during runtime. A scene with 1000 CSG brushes will run much faster than a scene with 1000 models.
• I plan on only shipping 10 or so maps. Game will start with a fade in, and will end with a fade out.
• I think I want to go for a dark warm style something like the image below. This will also help with performance and limit point lights popping in and out due to AABB tests. 
• 
• I was gonna add a VR mode but it's weird, slow and buggy.
• I think I still have a crash issue with changing scenes but it throws me to the newton_d library. I'll worry about it later.
• Plan is to get this shippable by the end of the year. I'll do all my updates on this thread. 

Cyclone – The Happenings (reepsoftworks.com)

[Thirsty Panther]

Looks good.

Is this with Leadwerks 4 or UltraEngine?

[reepblue]

I was gonna start this on Ultra but it seemed like everytime I got something implemented, Josh would change the api around and I'd be going through fixing things. Besides, the concept is simple enough to be on Leadwerks and  I got wla bunch of code I can reuse.

[Marcousik]

Quote

A scene with 1000 CSG brushes will run much faster than a scene with 1000 models.

 

Uh? ?

[Josh]

Brushes get merged into chunks of geometry in the scene, so 1000 brushes turns into maybe 20 different models. In Leadwerks the number of limbs tends to be a bottleneck but you can reduce this with the collapse feature in the model editor. In Ultra Engine merged geometry is still theoretically faster but in practice I don't know if you will ever see a difference except in special extreme cases.

[reepblue]

I recall doing a test in which I've created a bunch of brushes and seeing I was still getting > 200fps. Then I did the same test with box models and it was unplayable. Granted, It was just models placed in the editor but that is what I wanted a test. Even if the scene is split up, 20 models is still better than the full 1000.

The thing I'm mostly worried about to be honest is lights. I have my game capped at 120fps so if that doesn't dip, I should be fine.

[Josh]

From a paper comparing LE4 and Ultra performance:

[reepblue]

Again, I was gonna wait until the new engine but I kind of wanted to get something out the door.  Also a great way to flex my Leadwerks 4 skills.

[Josh]

Yeah, I did not mean to imply anything other than to show what progress is being made.

[reepblue]

Finished Teleportation. Doing these flash chambers for fast and easy transitions.

 

[reepblue]

Got logic gates working. They all use the same model and actor for each. (Minus the door state, it uses a different actor) and I just create a new plane in code and map it's signage to it.

[reepblue]

Was editing my signature until I was reminded of this thread. It's crazy to see I started this thread over a year ago and now I'm weeks away from releasing it on Steam.

Cyclone on Steam (steampowered.com)