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Flight Game Example for TGE(A) - OUT NOW!
Flight Game Example for TGE(A) - OUT NOW!
| Name: | Martin Schultz |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Jun 21, 2007 | |
| Rating: |  5.0 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Martin Schultz |
Blog post
(continued from my previous blog)
After several months of development, improvement and bugfixing the Flight Game Example has been completed and is available for 30 US$ as electronic download. You can get it right here on the Decane website or from the Plimus store.
The Flight Game Example (FGE) shows how to make a flying game with Torque and includes the complete script sources and the source art in Photoshop and 3DS Max 7, .X and FBX format. Beside that it includes a detailed documentation with general explanations, a script walkthrough, a merger guide as well as tips & tricks. A set of custom C++ classes have been developed to enable AI flying vehicle movement. Those classes are published as public resource on the GarageGames site (to be conform with the TGE(A) EULA) and include a detailed walkthrough of all the necessary engine changes required to get the 2 space ship classes working. The first class is used for a fighter class space ship and the second class is used to steer a mothership kind of space ship and has in difference a trigger that can be sync'ed together with the space ship to allow script-side custom trigger operations (like healing other ships or re-arming). The FGE contains also a complete working demo with pre-compiled Windows binaries of TGE 1.4.2, TGE 1.5.2 and TGEA 1.0.1. Additionally a Mac TGE 1.4.2 universal binary is also included.
Please see here a list of features of the FGE:
- Complete flying game example with a "game" and "common" directory ready to be used.
- 3 different game modes supplied:
- Bot Carnage. Useful for debugging AI. Humans spawn as camera, bots as ships.
- Deathmatch. Classic deathmatch style dogfight game.
- Team Deathmatch inclusive different team skins and team score displays.
- Game-type aware end game screen.
- 2 primary weapons (Blaster, Pulsar) and 2 secondary weapons (MFRL, Sidewinder)
- Player spawns directly as vehicle and not as a player like Kork (so no need to mount a flying vehicle)
- Scout flying vehicle shape with all necessary nodes.
- Repairship flying vehicle shape with all necessary nodes.
- Seperate Scout and Repairship debris shape files provided when the ship blows up.
- Full set of datablocks for the flying vehicle with:
- forward/backward/downward afterburners (booster)
- 2-level damage smoke emitters
- contrails
- ship explosion with debris trails
- Water splash
- Complete source art except the palm tree. Shapes / debris are delivered as Max 7 files, HUD as Photohop PSD files. Please note (and excuse) that the art (except the palm tree) was made by a programmer, not by an artist! ;-)
- Client side HUD with displays for the selected weapons, ammo, afterburner status and ship health as well as a score displays and a radar screen. In team deathmatch mode additional team scores are displayed.
- Homing missile support. The patch for the projectile class allows to have homing missiles called Sidewinder in the demo game. Targets for the missiles can be set via script.
- Further enhancements like auto-explode for the projectile class after a given time is over without having hit something.
- Ability to let explode projectiles by script at any time.
- Direct support for the aiFlyingVehicle and aiRepairshipFlyingVehicle C++ classes from this resource on the GarageGames.com site. Put those files directly into the engine to archive simple AI flying vehicles like shown in the demo.
- An AI state machine purely in TorqueScript to apply some basic behaviour to the AI vehicles featuring:
- "Brains" for the bots. Features a dumb brain and a predator brain.
- Flying to a destination location.
- Randomly flying around.
- Hunt and shoot other flying vehicles.
- Automatic weapon selection with auto-switch over if ammo is empty.
- Automatically search and fly out to re-fill the weapons if they're empty.
- Can have multiple ammo boxes and ship will auto-pickup one of them for re-filling.
- Automatically fly out to pick up health patches if the health of the ship is below 20% or flying to one of the repairships to get healed by the "nano repair bots" the repairships spawn out when flying right behind.
- Auto-usage of the afterburner if target is too far away.
- State machine is easy to extend for your own actions.
- AI Control GUI dialog to have a control over the bots in-game (via CTRL+B). Mainly serves for debugging the bots in the game.
- Mission-area aware ships. Script is set up that ships get damage-over-time as long as they stay out of the mission area. Additionally a bitmap is displayed to human connected players and a warning sound is played back if the player is out of the mission area.
- Demo mission that shows a battle of the bots.
- Pre-compiled Windows and (universal) Mac binary executables to quickly test the complete kit (only need to apply the script changes, not the engine changes).
- 3+1 royalty-free techno-stlye music tracks (complete Decane Music Pack 3 from Decane Music) as 192 kbps Ogg Vorbis files.
- Detailed documentation
Well, I hope you guys like this pack. I put a lot of effort into it and hope to see now some decent flying vehicles in your games! :-)
I should further mention that all future updates to the FGE are free of charge. So if for example bugs are found or I develop new features for it, you will be notified automatically as soon as a new version is available for download. I created a question & answer thread in the TGE private discussions forum if you have any questions.
Finally I would like to thank very much the following people (in an unsorted order):
Thomas "Man of Ice" Lund, Andrew "Ando" McElvenny, Thomas "Alienforce" Alenfors, Tom Vogt, James "Burning" Laker, Thor Zollinger, Matt Webster, Chris "C2" Byars, Stefan Lundmark, Derk Adams, Robert Geiman, Sickhead Games, my wife, the GG community and for sure the guys at GarageGames: James Wiley, Tim Aste, Stephen Zepp & Joshua Dallmann.
Have fun with the FGE and thanks for reading.
Martin :-)
Here is a screenshot medley of the TGEA version of the Flight Game Example:
After several months of development, improvement and bugfixing the Flight Game Example has been completed and is available for 30 US$ as electronic download. You can get it right here on the Decane website or from the Plimus store.
The Flight Game Example (FGE) shows how to make a flying game with Torque and includes the complete script sources and the source art in Photoshop and 3DS Max 7, .X and FBX format. Beside that it includes a detailed documentation with general explanations, a script walkthrough, a merger guide as well as tips & tricks. A set of custom C++ classes have been developed to enable AI flying vehicle movement. Those classes are published as public resource on the GarageGames site (to be conform with the TGE(A) EULA) and include a detailed walkthrough of all the necessary engine changes required to get the 2 space ship classes working. The first class is used for a fighter class space ship and the second class is used to steer a mothership kind of space ship and has in difference a trigger that can be sync'ed together with the space ship to allow script-side custom trigger operations (like healing other ships or re-arming). The FGE contains also a complete working demo with pre-compiled Windows binaries of TGE 1.4.2, TGE 1.5.2 and TGEA 1.0.1. Additionally a Mac TGE 1.4.2 universal binary is also included.
Please see here a list of features of the FGE:
- Complete flying game example with a "game" and "common" directory ready to be used.
- 3 different game modes supplied:
- Bot Carnage. Useful for debugging AI. Humans spawn as camera, bots as ships.
- Deathmatch. Classic deathmatch style dogfight game.
- Team Deathmatch inclusive different team skins and team score displays.
- Game-type aware end game screen.
- 2 primary weapons (Blaster, Pulsar) and 2 secondary weapons (MFRL, Sidewinder)
- Player spawns directly as vehicle and not as a player like Kork (so no need to mount a flying vehicle)
- Scout flying vehicle shape with all necessary nodes.
- Repairship flying vehicle shape with all necessary nodes.
- Seperate Scout and Repairship debris shape files provided when the ship blows up.
- Full set of datablocks for the flying vehicle with:
- forward/backward/downward afterburners (booster)
- 2-level damage smoke emitters
- contrails
- ship explosion with debris trails
- Water splash
- Complete source art except the palm tree. Shapes / debris are delivered as Max 7 files, HUD as Photohop PSD files. Please note (and excuse) that the art (except the palm tree) was made by a programmer, not by an artist! ;-)
- Client side HUD with displays for the selected weapons, ammo, afterburner status and ship health as well as a score displays and a radar screen. In team deathmatch mode additional team scores are displayed.
- Homing missile support. The patch for the projectile class allows to have homing missiles called Sidewinder in the demo game. Targets for the missiles can be set via script.
- Further enhancements like auto-explode for the projectile class after a given time is over without having hit something.
- Ability to let explode projectiles by script at any time.
- Direct support for the aiFlyingVehicle and aiRepairshipFlyingVehicle C++ classes from this resource on the GarageGames.com site. Put those files directly into the engine to archive simple AI flying vehicles like shown in the demo.
- An AI state machine purely in TorqueScript to apply some basic behaviour to the AI vehicles featuring:
- "Brains" for the bots. Features a dumb brain and a predator brain.
- Flying to a destination location.
- Randomly flying around.
- Hunt and shoot other flying vehicles.
- Automatic weapon selection with auto-switch over if ammo is empty.
- Automatically search and fly out to re-fill the weapons if they're empty.
- Can have multiple ammo boxes and ship will auto-pickup one of them for re-filling.
- Automatically fly out to pick up health patches if the health of the ship is below 20% or flying to one of the repairships to get healed by the "nano repair bots" the repairships spawn out when flying right behind.
- Auto-usage of the afterburner if target is too far away.
- State machine is easy to extend for your own actions.
- AI Control GUI dialog to have a control over the bots in-game (via CTRL+B). Mainly serves for debugging the bots in the game.
- Mission-area aware ships. Script is set up that ships get damage-over-time as long as they stay out of the mission area. Additionally a bitmap is displayed to human connected players and a warning sound is played back if the player is out of the mission area.
- Demo mission that shows a battle of the bots.
- Pre-compiled Windows and (universal) Mac binary executables to quickly test the complete kit (only need to apply the script changes, not the engine changes).
- 3+1 royalty-free techno-stlye music tracks (complete Decane Music Pack 3 from Decane Music) as 192 kbps Ogg Vorbis files.
- Detailed documentation
Well, I hope you guys like this pack. I put a lot of effort into it and hope to see now some decent flying vehicles in your games! :-)
I should further mention that all future updates to the FGE are free of charge. So if for example bugs are found or I develop new features for it, you will be notified automatically as soon as a new version is available for download. I created a question & answer thread in the TGE private discussions forum if you have any questions.
Finally I would like to thank very much the following people (in an unsorted order):
Thomas "Man of Ice" Lund, Andrew "Ando" McElvenny, Thomas "Alienforce" Alenfors, Tom Vogt, James "Burning" Laker, Thor Zollinger, Matt Webster, Chris "C2" Byars, Stefan Lundmark, Derk Adams, Robert Geiman, Sickhead Games, my wife, the GG community and for sure the guys at GarageGames: James Wiley, Tim Aste, Stephen Zepp & Joshua Dallmann.
Have fun with the FGE and thanks for reading.
Martin :-)
Here is a screenshot medley of the TGEA version of the Flight Game Example:
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 05/23/08 - 20% discount for Flight Game Example (limited time) 03/27/08 - Development Diary: Balls of Steel 03/05/08 - New Game Out - Have fun playing! 02/03/08 - Meeting Thomas and Magnus in Copenhagen (and in sweden) 12/10/07 - FGE 20% Christmas Discount 11/03/07 - New Reticle HUD resource / FGE Update 10/09/07 - Flight Game Example - post mortem 06/21/07 - Flight Game Example for TGE(A) - OUT NOW! |
|---|
Submit your own resources!| Michael Perry (Jun 21, 2007 at 14:27 GMT) |
Congrats on getting FGE out the door!
| James Laker (BurNinG) (Jun 21, 2007 at 14:31 GMT) |
I'm sure you're very excited and proud!
EDIT: Create a snapshot of the day... Will get you moe hits :)
Edited on Jun 21, 2007 14:32 GMT
| Martin Schultz (Jun 21, 2007 at 14:32 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jun 21, 2007 at 14:34 GMT) |
| Stefan Lundmark (Jun 21, 2007 at 14:36 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
| Canon (Jun 21, 2007 at 14:36 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
Christophe
| Martin Schultz (Jun 21, 2007 at 14:41 GMT) |
@James: Will do that with the IOTD! :-)
| Leroy Frederick (Jun 21, 2007 at 14:46 GMT) |
| James Brad Barnette (Jun 21, 2007 at 14:51 GMT) |
| Leroy Frederick (Jun 21, 2007 at 14:55 GMT) |
Edited on Jun 21, 2007 14:56 GMT
| Jon Mitchell (Jun 21, 2007 at 15:05 GMT) |
And congrats on the project Martin!
Edited on Jun 21, 2007 15:06 GMT
| Joseph Helm (Jun 21, 2007 at 15:22 GMT) |
@Jon, I have the same problem.
| Scott Burns (Jun 21, 2007 at 15:31 GMT) |
Congrats on getting it out!
Edit:
Ironically, immediately after posting this the Decane site was back up. :)
Edited on Jun 21, 2007 15:32 GMT
| Martin Schultz (Jun 21, 2007 at 15:38 GMT) |
@James: They decided to not do so. I'm fine with that decision. For me both ways of publishing (through GG or selfpublishing) were fine so it was ok. But in general all the guys at GG did a fantastic job in supporting me and helping me getting the FGE out. Big thanks to James, Tim, Josh and Stephen.
@Scott: That's a pitty with Plimus - you cannot *not* have the extended download warranty. Impossible to remove from the product setup. Usually, like with all other e-commerce vendors that I know, it's always the same, the download links are only valid for some short time and then the download links are removed. So you should download it usually very quick (within some days).
But the good thing with Plimus is, that I can press a button to re-activate the downloads for the customers so that all customers get a new mail with a new download link. Useful for example when I update the FGE to version 1.1 and want to have all customers download it for free. And that is only possible with Plimus as far as I know. So don't worry, if you want to re-download, I could enable the download anytime again for you. :-)
Thanks guys for all the nice comments. :-)
Edited on Jun 21, 2007 15:40 GMT
| Leroy Frederick (Jun 21, 2007 at 15:48 GMT) |
I like Plimus, I'm considering using them too, only the process currently seems a little more technical then my previous provider...
| Gianfranco Barone (Jun 21, 2007 at 16:24 GMT) |
| Timothy Aste (Jun 21, 2007 at 16:31 GMT) |
| Matt Huston (Jun 21, 2007 at 16:54 GMT) |
| Phil Carlisle (Jun 21, 2007 at 17:09 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jun 21, 2007 at 18:04 GMT) |
@Leroy: Well, from a financial perspective the FGE will not be the super-duper best selling app ever I guess, but it will sell a bit at least. Hopefully at least so much that I could re-finance the costs I had for the FGE (my TGE status changed from indy to commercial... ;-)
@Tim: Yeeaahhh, thanks!!! And thanks again to you and your team for all the help. I still owe you 2 beers! ;-)
@Phil: Yes! Back to PA now! :-)
(explanation of that "insider joke": Phil, Thomas Lund, Ando and I are working on a game and now that FGE is completed I have now more time to work again on it. But I guess Phil will write someday something about it in more detail) :-)
| James Wiley (Jun 21, 2007 at 18:12 GMT) |
| Scott Burns (Jun 21, 2007 at 18:22 GMT) |
Thanks, that's good to know, and it alleviates my hesitance. Time to make with the buying and the tinkering!
Edit:
Doh! Looks like another problem with Plimus is they don't accept anonymous emails like Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail. Lucky for me I've got a secondary email that can be used.
Edited on Jun 21, 2007 18:28 GMT
| Steve Flowers (Jun 21, 2007 at 18:44 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jun 21, 2007 at 18:48 GMT) |
| Leroy Frederick (Jun 21, 2007 at 19:12 GMT) |
Edited on Jun 21, 2007 19:14 GMT
| James Brad Barnette (Jun 21, 2007 at 19:19 GMT) |
| ando (Jun 21, 2007 at 19:29 GMT) |
| Snowhill06 (Jun 21, 2007 at 21:01 GMT) |
| Dave Young (Jun 21, 2007 at 21:04 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jun 21, 2007 at 21:06 GMT) |
| James Laker (BurNinG) (Jun 21, 2007 at 21:44 GMT) |
Martin... It would be inspiring to see how you started, and give like a write-up about the your expectation, problems, and all that in a month... Since we're all indie's it would be nice to input about your success.
Im in the credits.... Thats a first... I almost good! Would've felt good if I did anything, hehe...
| Martin Schultz (Jun 21, 2007 at 21:55 GMT) |
And you did something James! The radar resource, do you remember? That's why you're in the credits... :-)
| James Laker (BurNinG) (Jun 21, 2007 at 22:09 GMT) |
Only thing I dont like about this resource is that it makes it easier for people to make space games... hehe... get on msn!
| Edward (Jun 22, 2007 at 00:13 GMT) |
| Ian Roach (Jun 22, 2007 at 00:32 GMT) |
| Mark (Jun 22, 2007 at 02:43 GMT) |
| Tom Bentz (Jun 22, 2007 at 05:04 GMT) |
| Goerkem Tuncay (Jun 22, 2007 at 13:12 GMT) |
| Michael Hense (Jun 22, 2007 at 14:29 GMT) |
second, a question about licensing and the eula...
Quote:
Yes, indie license is restricted to making games only. Anything else requires a commercial license.
from what i've read, my indie license allows me to sell whatever i make until i reach a gross of $200k... am i reading this wrong, or has the licensing changed...
--Mike
| James Brad Barnette (Jun 22, 2007 at 15:11 GMT) |
That is my understanding anyway
| Andy Hawkins (Jun 22, 2007 at 15:31 GMT) |
When's Subsonic coming out?
| Martin Schultz (Jun 22, 2007 at 15:33 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jun 22, 2007 at 15:34 GMT) |
@Andy: Hmm, good question with Subsonic. I mean a lot of stuff is there now that the FGE is out, but I somehow don't get that Subsonic beast completed. Working on that since 2003 and still not finished. Maybe one day... :-)
| Martin Schultz (Jun 22, 2007 at 18:59 GMT) |
Playing with the AI Control (~39.2 MByte)
(Video recorded with the TGE 1.5.2 version of the FGE)
| James Brad Barnette (Jun 22, 2007 at 20:03 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jun 22, 2007 at 20:27 GMT) |
| James Brad Barnette (Jun 22, 2007 at 20:42 GMT) |
| Andy Hawkins (Jun 23, 2007 at 02:08 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jun 23, 2007 at 08:29 GMT) |
| James Brady (Jun 23, 2007 at 17:29 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jun 23, 2007 at 21:51 GMT) |
That makes it also easier for me to offer additional downloads like for example .obj exports of the graphics like Andy Hawkins suggested.
| Martin Schultz (Jun 23, 2007 at 21:56 GMT) |
Edited on Jun 23, 2007 21:56 GMT
| Martin Schultz (Jun 23, 2007 at 22:22 GMT) |
| Andy Hawkins (Jun 24, 2007 at 00:12 GMT) |
The Definitive Pipeline Guide
| Gianfranco Barone (Jun 24, 2007 at 08:21 GMT) |
I have the same issue as James: TGEA version crash, while TGE work perfectly, maybe I do something wrong ?
And there is a forum where to post such bugs instead to bug spam this blog ?
Ohps... Forgot to comments TGE version:
Vote: 5 Stars
Edited on Jun 24, 2007 08:23 GMT
| Martin Schultz (Jun 24, 2007 at 08:52 GMT) |
Yes, there is a forum thread for this located here: Flight Game Example - Q & A.
| Andy Hawkins (Jun 24, 2007 at 10:40 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jun 24, 2007 at 11:00 GMT) |
| James Brad Barnette (Jun 24, 2007 at 16:01 GMT) |
I have access to the following at work.
Maya 8.5
Max 9
LW 9.2
blender 2.44
| Martin Schultz (Jun 24, 2007 at 17:42 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jun 24, 2007 at 21:31 GMT) |
Furthermore, the 1.1 version has now all art exported additionally as DirextX .X and FBX files to make it easier to modify the art in other content creation software. If you have any questions, please let me know.
| Andy Hawkins (Jun 25, 2007 at 00:07 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Jun 25, 2007 at 08:32 GMT) |
| Ken Downie (Aug 02, 2007 at 15:37 GMT) |
Horizontal Compass
do you plan to work on the flight model any more, or is it finished?
i ask, because with Atlas terrains, a whole new world is opening up for flight sim enthusiasts, and it
would be nice to implement more realistic physics. with "arcade flight" now in place, how hard would
it be to implement "real flight", and let the user choose which they prefer with a gui toggle? probably
VERY hard... but if you could point me in the right direction, i'd be grateful.
also, if you are considering updating the FGE, these are things i'd love to see...
(it would help noobs like me enormously and save many hours of forum trawling).
some more camera views... backwards, straight up, left, right, etc...
take off from ground.
thankyou once again.
much appreciated.
| Martin Schultz (Aug 02, 2007 at 20:00 GMT) |
Regarding the horizon and compass: Well, no, they won't be coming from my side. I have no planes to make those resources integrate into the FGE. I think they work pretty fine for TGE (don't know about their current TGEA status) so it's only a matter of taking the existing resources and integrate them into your codebase.
Flight model: No, no real physics base flight model planned because that is _really_ a huge amount of work getting that done and esp. also with networking, so the FGE flight model will stay arcarde-style.
Same with taking off from ground, that is more typical for flight sim style game types which the FGE is definately not - it's pure arcade ;-)
So, I think you'll search more for the base to create a flight sim, right? Well, that will be not an easy task to archive in Torque. Maybe I can give you one hint that one of my former bosses gave me once while I worked in a game engine company: It does not have to be real, it only has to look real... ;-)
Let me know if you have more questions.
| Andy Hawkins (Aug 02, 2007 at 22:58 GMT) |
I got the straff working in my game, but I don't know how to do the VTOL stuff.
| Martin Schultz (Aug 03, 2007 at 09:53 GMT) |
It's not 100% accurate if you compare it for example with a VOTL Sea Harrier airplane which has turnable jet turbine exits and the FGE ship has 3 static turbine imitations, so if you want Sea Harrier like VOTL feeling I would deny, but if something "close" and arcade style like the FGE is enough, then I would say yes.
| Andy Hawkins (Aug 03, 2007 at 10:34 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Aug 03, 2007 at 10:37 GMT) |
| Andy Hawkins (Aug 23, 2007 at 01:48 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Aug 23, 2007 at 06:42 GMT) |
======================================
EULA for the Flight Game Example (FGE)
======================================
1) You are allowed to build products out of and with the FGE.
2) You are allowed build as many products out of this as you like.
3) You are allowed to use the art and code in this pack in your own products.
4) You're NOT allowed to sell parts of this pack or the complete pack as product itself. This would immediately terminate your license.
5) Use this pack at your own risk. If it breaks something, it's your problem! You cannot hold me responsible for that.
6) Make backups before using this pack!
Regarding your second question: No, there's not a written part in the docs about the node setup. But as FGE customer you get full support from me! Means, you can ask me anything about the FGE and I try to help. In the past a lot of customers had special questions and until now I was able to help all of them. So if you need a special format for you digital content creation software, I'm sure we can find a way to work things out together. As I have access to 3DS Max, I'm able to export the art in any format Max can export.
(Btw: There is also a Collada FBX export version included)
And even if the export fails and none of the formats are working for you, in the very last possible case I could screenshot the node setup in Max for you so that you can transfer that information to your DCC software. So, I'm pretty sure we can find a solution. :-)
| Andy Hawkins (Aug 23, 2007 at 07:10 GMT) |
| Martin Schultz (Aug 23, 2007 at 07:40 GMT) |
| Cyberkada (Sep 13, 2007 at 00:39 GMT) |
Edited on Sep 13, 2007 00:51 GMT
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