DINOSAUR GAME
by Thomas Murphy · 04/02/2009 (3:02 am) · 20 comments
Hello!
Have you ever wanted to encounter a real, live dinosaur?! Not some ridiculous toothy monster that charges as you mindlessly, not some crude and fictitious depiction of a dinosaur but a real dinosaur! I lieu of a real-life encounter, I bring you my first project!
THE TIMELESS PROJECT!
For 10 months now, I have been developing a game with the help of a freelance programmer. The working title of my project is "Timeless Hunt"
My game will deliver the most terrifying and realistic dinosaurs created. The dinosaurs are faithfully constructed with special attention to fossilized evidence and their behavior is true to popular scientific theory.
The game will drop you the player in an alien prehistoric landscape where you can experience these dinosaurs up close and personal. You will be able to photograph, capture and hunt them - of course you too will also be hunted.
Experience the pulse pounding fear of coming face to face with an Allosaur as you enter a clearing- capture the beauty and majesty of a gigantic Brachiosaur as it thunders across the open plains!
This is my first posting and news of any kind and I am very excited to now share my project with the garage games community. In truth I have been working on this project for far longer than ten months in secret... and now I have enough content to present to you all.
I will be faithfully updating this blog with DAILY updates and videos on my progress. I hope that you will all join me and offer me your feedback and encouragement!
-Murphy
Have you ever wanted to encounter a real, live dinosaur?! Not some ridiculous toothy monster that charges as you mindlessly, not some crude and fictitious depiction of a dinosaur but a real dinosaur! I lieu of a real-life encounter, I bring you my first project!
THE TIMELESS PROJECT!
For 10 months now, I have been developing a game with the help of a freelance programmer. The working title of my project is "Timeless Hunt"
My game will deliver the most terrifying and realistic dinosaurs created. The dinosaurs are faithfully constructed with special attention to fossilized evidence and their behavior is true to popular scientific theory.
The game will drop you the player in an alien prehistoric landscape where you can experience these dinosaurs up close and personal. You will be able to photograph, capture and hunt them - of course you too will also be hunted.
Experience the pulse pounding fear of coming face to face with an Allosaur as you enter a clearing- capture the beauty and majesty of a gigantic Brachiosaur as it thunders across the open plains!
This is my first posting and news of any kind and I am very excited to now share my project with the garage games community. In truth I have been working on this project for far longer than ten months in secret... and now I have enough content to present to you all.
I will be faithfully updating this blog with DAILY updates and videos on my progress. I hope that you will all join me and offer me your feedback and encouragement!
-Murphy
#3
04/02/2009 (3:11 am)
Sounds very interesting. Your photo link doesn't work. 
#4
04/02/2009 (3:12 am)
Thomas you cant externally link stuff on facebook youll have to upload the image somewhere else
#5
04/02/2009 (3:19 am)
OH no flickr doesn't work either?
#7
www.flickr.com/photos/28987355@N06/3406240060/
04/02/2009 (3:23 am)
Here is a link to the photos of the games development so far. I will begin uploading images to my website because all photo-sharing websites do not seem to function here.www.flickr.com/photos/28987355@N06/3406240060/
#9
04/02/2009 (3:32 am)
some of the texturing in those pics look fantastic 
#11
04/02/2009 (3:37 am)
The AI will be as accurate as possible.
#12
04/02/2009 (3:39 am)
Are you implementing nueral networks? What kind of behaviors are you implementing?
#13
04/02/2009 (5:20 am)
I am not one hundred percent sure yet. 
#14
04/02/2009 (9:34 am)
Cool, there aren't enough dinosaur games out there. Everybody loves dinosaurs and it is untapped market (game-wise). 
#15
I'm the programmer that Thomas has mentioned. As for the AI, it will NOT be using neural networks. I have used neural networks before (in Torque with the RTS kit funnily enough) and deemed them to be, well, pretty useless. :) That was also with a rather sophisticated "real-time evolving" method known as rtNEAT... so my experience of NNs wasn't exactly fantastic, heheh.
I'm currently leaning toward something behaviour/goal based, something "modern" as opposed to state machines etc. I'm also researching into linking animation and AI together (a-la FEAR) for some really nice and intelligent movement.
In regards to navigation, I'm also wanting to go for something more modern, in specific, nav meshes. Nav graphs are old tech, clumsy and produce many poor test cases - nav meshes are far superior and as such allow you to do far more superior work with them. However, nav meshes in open terrain with loads of trees could be problematic. I think a lot of work will go into the animation + local steering to get decent results.
I'm hoping Thomas will put up some videos of the Trex animations sometime soon. The work-in-progress still shots of the Trex above simply don't due it justice. The animations really are very skillful and bring it to life fantastically.
04/02/2009 (4:56 pm)
Hi all,I'm the programmer that Thomas has mentioned. As for the AI, it will NOT be using neural networks. I have used neural networks before (in Torque with the RTS kit funnily enough) and deemed them to be, well, pretty useless. :) That was also with a rather sophisticated "real-time evolving" method known as rtNEAT... so my experience of NNs wasn't exactly fantastic, heheh.
I'm currently leaning toward something behaviour/goal based, something "modern" as opposed to state machines etc. I'm also researching into linking animation and AI together (a-la FEAR) for some really nice and intelligent movement.
In regards to navigation, I'm also wanting to go for something more modern, in specific, nav meshes. Nav graphs are old tech, clumsy and produce many poor test cases - nav meshes are far superior and as such allow you to do far more superior work with them. However, nav meshes in open terrain with loads of trees could be problematic. I think a lot of work will go into the animation + local steering to get decent results.
I'm hoping Thomas will put up some videos of the Trex animations sometime soon. The work-in-progress still shots of the Trex above simply don't due it justice. The animations really are very skillful and bring it to life fantastically.
#16
@ Craig
You might have already seen this, but I made a post a while back on Dino AI for Be the Dinosaur. It seems like something right up your alley...
We used a navGrid for long distance / a* pathfinding but relied on steering behaviors for a whole lot of other things.
A navMesh would have most likely been superior, but it also would have taken longer to implement. As you said, with a mission that is generally very open (not a lot of interiors, walls, or tight spaces in the Cretaceous) a grid just fine.
04/02/2009 (6:08 pm)
Sounds pretty cool, wishing you both luck on this project.@ Craig
You might have already seen this, but I made a post a while back on Dino AI for Be the Dinosaur. It seems like something right up your alley...
We used a navGrid for long distance / a* pathfinding but relied on steering behaviors for a whole lot of other things.
A navMesh would have most likely been superior, but it also would have taken longer to implement. As you said, with a mission that is generally very open (not a lot of interiors, walls, or tight spaces in the Cretaceous) a grid just fine.
#17
04/02/2009 (6:28 pm)
Hey, nice work! You're using Blender, too! Very nice. I would be very interested to know how the Blender-to-TGE process goes (especially when dealing with animated objects). Keep updating!
#18
Yes I've seen the Be the Dinosaur stuff. Very impressive in all aspects (especially visually). I'll probably be referring to a large amount of your work during this project as it shares a lot of common factors.
In regards to navigation, I'm just worried about search time for the nav graph as opposed to meshes (which typically have a LOT less elements to search through). Thinking of which, I might look into time spliced searches, never tried that before alas. A learning experience to be had :D
04/02/2009 (9:19 pm)
James,Yes I've seen the Be the Dinosaur stuff. Very impressive in all aspects (especially visually). I'll probably be referring to a large amount of your work during this project as it shares a lot of common factors.
In regards to navigation, I'm just worried about search time for the nav graph as opposed to meshes (which typically have a LOT less elements to search through). Thinking of which, I might look into time spliced searches, never tried that before alas. A learning experience to be had :D
#19
It's great to see the chatter about the AI. Here is a fun preliminary animation of the T-rex, this was the 1st pass at the dinosaur I made about 4 months ago.
Each dinosaur has gone through at least 3 revisions as I make corrections trying to get the most accurate models around. Again this is a preliminary animation not the final so the nuances in movement are not yet evident here.
If you are hungry for more production videos feel free to subscribe to the official youtube channel for TIMELESS!
------->
www.youtube.com/user/TIMELESSTHEGAME
04/02/2009 (11:44 pm)
Hi GuysIt's great to see the chatter about the AI. Here is a fun preliminary animation of the T-rex, this was the 1st pass at the dinosaur I made about 4 months ago.
Each dinosaur has gone through at least 3 revisions as I make corrections trying to get the most accurate models around. Again this is a preliminary animation not the final so the nuances in movement are not yet evident here.
If you are hungry for more production videos feel free to subscribe to the official youtube channel for TIMELESS!
------->
www.youtube.com/user/TIMELESSTHEGAME
#20
www.youtube.com/user/TIMELESSTHEGAME
04/04/2009 (11:15 pm)
New vidoes are now posted at the you tube channelwww.youtube.com/user/TIMELESSTHEGAME
Torque 3D Owner Tek0