So I started messing around in Unity
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT7wJq50n1Q
I decided to have a go at some simple AI today.
I think people don’t give the Freelancer AI the credit it deserves. It’s one of those things that you don’t really think about because there’s nothing wrong with it. There are a lot of little things that to this day amaze me about both Freelancer’s autopilot system and the way the AI flies. It’s so fluid, smart and precise.
In addition to the player flown Rhino frigate, there are now 4 Defenders that fly around. I spent half of my time working on some formation flying AI, and I got it working half decent, but nowhere near as solid as Freelancer’s. It’s good enough for now though. If I were to ever make this into a real game I’d love to give proper autopilot another go.
Davis wrote:
Amazing work Why!I checked out the Unity’s website and found several tutorials. Which one did you use besides the basics?
I did the car tutorial a very long time ago, but that’s about it. Most of what I did I figured out through Googling for specific things. Another thing worth noting is that although I took a day to set up and code the entire scene, I had spent some of the previous day getting the model imported and looking correctly.
Thank you all for the positive comments!
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fantastic work. it really looks promising.
as I remember, some Russian guy also started to make one similar, just dunno was it with a same engine.
rly wanted to see work being finished and test the feel of flying / shooting!
fingers crossed 4 u to succeed, even with freeware version (if it is as “must”)
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I take it you’ve tried Black Prophecy Why? That’s Unity, and although not a popular game, it’s visually impressive and the AI is just fine.
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Hey Why, nice looking so far.
Have you thought of trying Torque 3d? A little bit more involved than Unity, but if you want buy it it is only $150 USD , you get access to full engine source code, and 2 programming seats on the license. It also comes with browser plugins that you can compile specific to your project for FireFox and Internet Explorer to allow playing via the browser. It is a modern Triple A rated game engine with one of the best Networking code bases available.
EA, Bioware, Microsoft, and NASA all use a version of the Torque engine. With the Cost of Full Source at only $150 USD it is way more affordable the a License to Unity at $1500 USD.
Just a suggestion. check it out at: http://www.garagegames.com if you want to have a look.
It is what i am using currently.
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Why…… Why did you have to use that particular music. ;~;
DAMN YOU FRIENDLYFIRE DAMN YOU.Jokes aside, looks awesome, love to see what you do with it if you continue.
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Tonight I started writing turret scripts. Unlike pretty much everything else I’ve written for this little prototype, I’m actually trying to do the turrets right. Meaning, writing the script so that it is robust enough to handle all sorts of arbitrary turrets.(Provided the models were setup correctly.)
As of tonight I have them tracking arbitrary targets. They also can be given limits in elevation and azimuth. A good example of azimuth limiting is the front turret on the Rhino. It can’t turn past a certain point or else it would end up hitting the ship. Elevation limits prevent the barrels from elevating to impossible extremes.
Next up is to write an actual turret controller. This means something that will actually assign targets to turrets. Right now I’m only doing it in a sort of developer/debug way. There’s no way right now for a player to assign targets.
No video for tonight. Turrets aren’t _that_ exciting.
sumanuti wrote:
fantastic work. it really looks promising.
as I remember, some Russian guy also started to make one similar, just dunno was it with a same engine.
rly wanted to see work being finished and test the feel of flying / shooting!
fingers crossed 4 u to succeed, even with freeware version (if it is as “must”)Yeah I remember it. It is the same engine. I haven’t actually looked at their code beyond just a glance. I wanted to start from scratch anyway. Another thing to keep in mind is that if I was to ever make this into an actual game, I would have to rewrite nearly all of this from scratch. I didn’t really build any of this in any supportable way. I just wanted a proof of concept demo that looked really impressive beyond all else.
Timmy51m wrote:
I take it you’ve tried Black Prophecy Why? That’s Unity, and although not a popular game, it’s visually impressive and the AI is just fine.I tried it a long time ago. I had no idea it was Unity. It was a very visually impressive game, but I never actually got into it because of how bad the lag was. The game also felt kind of clunky. It’s too bad really, because it looked fantastic.
J.Walker wrote:
Hey Why, nice looking so far.Have you thought of trying Torque 3d? A little bit more involved than Unity, but if you want buy it it is only $150 USD , you get access to full engine source code, and 2 programming seats on the license. It also comes with browser plugins that you can compile specific to your project for FireFox and Internet Explorer to allow playing via the browser. It is a modern Triple A rated game engine with one of the best Networking code bases available.
EA, Bioware, Microsoft, and NASA all use a version of the Torque engine. With the Cost of Full Source at only $150 USD it is way more affordable the a License to Unity at $1500 USD.
Just a suggestion. check it out at: http://www.garagegames.com if you want to have a look.
It is what i am using currently.
Unity license does suck for being so expensive. I haven’t looked at Torque but I think it’s pretty funny to use the Tribes 2 engine for a space sim.
I did at one point use the Ogre 3D graphics library to try something similar. I got much further along in that project than I did this one. I had integrated an open source physics engine and my own ship managers and spawners. It was far more robust than this hard coded, but pretty, demo. I’m not to keen on switching engines. Not at least until my pro trial runs out anyway.
What are you using Torque for anyway?
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It does now wOdk4, things have changed now the battleships are coming.
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Not bad
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Perhaps the new RTS portion will use Unity, but I have serious doubts they’d rewrite the entire game engine to use Unity when their initial solution was more than capable of rendering pretty space vistas.
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Have you tried to maneuver thrusters, like in Nexus TJI. It could be cool to see that.
This is awesome, amazing to see how it works fine!
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This looks very promising indeed. I had a look at the Unity engine but have to say the $1500 price tag put me off. Saying that, there’s probably a torrent for it available by now somewhere. Quite a few browser games utilise it, thinking of Battlestar Galactica as one of the more popular ones.
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You don’t want to crack Unity. That’d be slightly problematic when, you know, you try to publish your game.
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Like i have the time to write my own game. It may or may not be an issue tbh, i know more people with cracked versions of Windows that all work and update fine. Would it be the same with Unity? Don’t know or care as i refuse to pay $1500 for it so it’s a moot point. There are a few who would pay for it and fair play to them if they do. It’s only worth doing if you have the time and skill to do something with it which clearly Why seems to have
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You do realize Unity has a free version right? You pay for advanced features.
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Freestalker.fr wrote:
Have you tried to maneuver thrusters, like in Nexus TJI. It could be cool to see that.This is awesome, amazing to see how it works fine!
As it is right now all those effects are not easy to change. If I were to take this beyond just a fun little prototype/demo then I would re-write the engine effect code from scratch, and definitely add the little maneuvering thrusters. It shouldn’t be that difficult to do given the proper planning. I’ve already a couple ideas how to do it in a simple and dynamic way.
As for the $1500 for Unity Pro, as FF already said, you’re only paying for extra stuff. Right now the only extra stuff that I’m using is post processing effects like bloom and blur. Without them the game would look a little more like Freelancer. You also lose some really cool features like Render to Target, but it’s all stuff you could build a fully functional game without. The biggest hit for free people is the loss of dynamic shadows.
Quick screenshot without any of the post processing effects. It’s a lot more noticeable in motion, but it’s not like it looks terrible without it.
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Good new! I’m eager to see FL ships with realistic movements!
