So I started messing around in Unity
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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!
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Since the last update, turrets now have actually shoot and align with where the mouse is pointing. I also put in a lot of extra cool stuff like having the barrels fire separately. They have visible recoil. It’s a neat effect that you’ll see in the video when I post it. Another cool thing about the weapon firing is that as you zoom out, the effect gets slightly larger. Homeworld 2 did this and it really made distant battles pop. There were also some minor tweaks to how the lens flares work.
In addition I also imported the Dreadnought and added some more waypoints for the AI. The Dreadnought is scaled up from it’s vanilla size based on the size of the windows. It’s actually a pretty good size. It’s much bigger than the Rhino, and the Rhino was already much bigger than the Defenders.
I think is about as far as I’m willing to go with this. I’m not comfortable expanding on this prototype with the current systems in place. If I were to go further than this, I would want to re-write almost everything from scratch to make it far more robust and workable in the context of a game.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Xhjmg3Wf8
And that’s it. Sorry for the double post. This is probably the last video of this project there will ever be. It was a really fun learning experience and I hope to be able to apply it to something someday.
If nothing else it’s gotten me to really think about how a game like this would work. All the physics, some AI, and control issues that all arose were really interesting problems to try and tackle.
Edit: Post ate my video, should be back now.
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Good job 485, I’m trying to figure out how to make it work too.
So…. you are a expert here for Unity now… may i ask something?
The first, i want to know if my idea is good because i’m studying C++ for this:
How the network module work? I heard some rumour (not from the bar) about unity’s network is … suck… is that’s right?
If that’s true, i have to avoid this problem.
So I want to build my main server in C++ code and dynamically control all game contents (And i’ll try to make a structure that LS disdained LOL). And data structure may complicated.
The way i think is i have to build a inter layer server between player client and my server.
The unity engine will connect to the inter layer server which running in player’s client and keep exchanging data with my server.
Then the inter layer server will tells unity what objects there and what’s the status of that object.
And btw: If i can skillfully us unity like i did in Freelancer, ill try to make a whole game (OK, i think all people here with same mind).
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Liking the artillery!
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Very nice Why, very nice indeed!
