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DayOfWar

Name:	Bill Vee
Date Posted:	Aug 03, 2007
Rating:	5.0 out of 5
Public:	YES
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Blog post

Ok my first plan.
A member for almost 3 years and my first plan.

I made up my mind from the start of my game idea not to post anything about it until I had a game play model.
The name of my game is DayOfWar.
It is set in the near future when mankind starts to venture out into space. The best I can describe it is Quake meets Homeworld. A FPS with normal sized vehicles as well as large Capital class ships. The twist here is gravity. All units will be effected by large mass objects like planets , asteroids and moons.

Players can ride in a Capital class ship while having full freedom of movement and are not simply mounted to an object, in fact you can drive a vehicle while in another vehicle being piloted along by another player.

Small Moon test

In this video the first vehicle is a carrier type. The moon is a atlas terrain.
The carrier will level itself to the moon's center.
It is just a small test to demonstrate the wheeled vehicle's ability to keep its gravity pointed at the moon's center.

More videos will be released very soon.

The web site for DayOfWar is located at DayOfWar.
It is very basic and will be updated soon with a lot of content.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	05/31/08 - DayOfWar Six Degrees Of Freedom Camera System 05/26/08 - DayOfWar Player Controls 05/08/08 - DayOfWar more Asteroids 05/05/08 - DayOfWar Moons/Asteroids 04/28/08 - DayOfWar Oceans 04/07/08 - DayOfWar SixSidedSpheres 2nd try 04/07/08 - DayOfWar SixSidedSpheres 02/22/08 - DayOfWar is a Finalist.

Submit your own resources!

Trace Kern (Aug 03, 2007 at 05:13 GMT)

Ummmmm. Wow!

I may not work with TGE, but I already know that what you've accomlished so far is very impressive! You've just implemented a large-scale gravity system similar to that seen in Prey.

In any event, when I first read what you were trying to build, I was skeptical. The idea of having players be able to move around the interior of ships/vehicles while said vehicles are moving is not a new idea. It's been tried quite a few times in the past, usually to varying degrees of failure.

Basicly it's a collision nightmare. Keeping players standing in one spot while the 'ground' they're standing on is moving is tough. Even Battlefield 2142 had to limit the movement speed of titans to keep from getting collision and sync errors.

That said, after seeing what you've got already, I believe you might have a chance to pull it off!
Kudos and good luck in the rest of your endevour, I look forward to playing the finished game!

Ross Pawley (Aug 03, 2007 at 06:01 GMT)

I'm interested to know how you set up the gravity system and managed to map the Atlas terrain to your moon there. Care to share? I mean, in a basic sense it's pretty easy, since the mapping to spherical coordinates is rather simple.

In any case, very cool stuff :)

Matt Vitelli (Aug 03, 2007 at 06:26 GMT)

Really, really impressive. I'm eager to see this develop.

Surge (Aug 03, 2007 at 12:33 GMT)

That a really great Demo. Shows some great potential!

DodongoXP (Aug 03, 2007 at 14:14 GMT)

wow.. that was tripy hahahaa...

that was something interesting, that gravity with masses atraction not just basic everything that goes up goes down style of gravity

good luck

Cheers!!

Taylor Wiebe (Aug 03, 2007 at 14:38 GMT)

Great work! that is very impressive. When I first started watching the video I wasn't sure how big the player was compared to the moon (or how big the ship was) but once the player got out I was thinking wow! Great work!

Mike Pearson (Aug 03, 2007 at 14:43 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Wow! Pretty cool but that a small moon and really shouldn

Sean H. (Aug 03, 2007 at 21:51 GMT)

wow thats the coolest thing Ive ever seen in torque.

nice work!

Kevin James (Aug 04, 2007 at 14:02 GMT)

Astounding. I can't wait to see a playable game out of these gameplay mechanics.

Demone Amerson (Aug 07, 2007 at 03:37 GMT)

Hey Bill,
would you care to share? I asked if such a system could be implemented in torque a while back but didn't get much of a response. theres a guy who created his on engine from the ground up that can have ships seamlessly travel from space to the surface of a planet. I was wonder how to do this with torque or if it could be done. I guest you kind of answered that question Bill.

Anyway its looking way freak'in cool so far, can't wait to play the finished game.

www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/infinity_videos_1.php

video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8426566575107987989

video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3744650885934024232
Edited on Aug 07, 2007 03:45 GMT

Stefan Lundmark (Aug 10, 2007 at 12:39 GMT)

Quote:

In any event, when I first read what you were trying to build, I was skeptical. The idea of having players be able to move around the interior of ships/vehicles while said vehicles are moving is not a new idea. It's been tried quite a few times in the past, usually to varying degrees of failure.

Basicly it's a collision nightmare.

"Nightmare" is exagurating it a bit. I implemented this very feature for a game where interiors were moving, much like the Titans in BF2142. Basically, you check if the player is either inside an interior zone, or if it's colliding with an interior (in the case of an outside zone which does not belong to the interior) then you proceed normally with movement as you do now with the difference that you add the speed of the interior before you do another collision check.

The tricky part is getting this working smootly on the client - which is the problem Dice had with their Titans.
Edited on Aug 10, 2007 12:39 GMT

Trace Kern (Aug 11, 2007 at 05:07 GMT)

I still remember some of the issues we had with Titans when I was in the multiplayer beta for BF2142. When the titan started moving, anyone inside would feel like they had just hit lag-city as the player ghosts desynced with the movement of the titan.

I suppose that now the concept has been tried several times, maybe it'll start maturing to the point where we can see some good multiplayer games involving large ships with moveable interiors.

Now if we can combine this concept with PhysX enabled dynamic model deformation (IE Random holes and chunks), then just imagine being able to run around the interior of a capship, and having to watch out for hull breaches and explosive decompression!

NathanJHIS (Aug 11, 2007 at 20:14 GMT)

I dropped you an email about your sphere terrain did you get my email???

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