Flying Vehicle Class
by Tim Heldna · in Torque Game Engine · 04/22/2005 (12:08 am) · 45 replies
Don't know how successful i'm going to be but here's what i plan to do...
We need helicopters in our game, and the stock vehicle classes in torque don't meet our requirements for this.
We do not want ultra realistic helicopter flight control like in battlefield 1942. What we want is something like ut2004 onslaught mode. If you haven't played this basically it works like this. You mount a flying vehicle, if you want to move up you press 'space'. If you want to move down you press 'shift'. If you want to move forward you press 'w', left 'a', right 'd', backwards 's'. All the mouse does is let you shoot and rotate 360 degrees on the spot.
To get a better understanding of the control we're trying to achieve play beaver patrol and get the jetpack. The only difference being in our control you will be able to hover in the air wihout dropping.
Once this is finished we plan to release a resource that will add a basic helicopter flying class to Torque. We will include a fully working helicopter model with all textures, sounds and particle effects for you to test in your game.
Before we do this we just wanna know if this would be something people are intersted in. If so expect to see the resource by mid next week.
We need helicopters in our game, and the stock vehicle classes in torque don't meet our requirements for this.
We do not want ultra realistic helicopter flight control like in battlefield 1942. What we want is something like ut2004 onslaught mode. If you haven't played this basically it works like this. You mount a flying vehicle, if you want to move up you press 'space'. If you want to move down you press 'shift'. If you want to move forward you press 'w', left 'a', right 'd', backwards 's'. All the mouse does is let you shoot and rotate 360 degrees on the spot.
To get a better understanding of the control we're trying to achieve play beaver patrol and get the jetpack. The only difference being in our control you will be able to hover in the air wihout dropping.
Once this is finished we plan to release a resource that will add a basic helicopter flying class to Torque. We will include a fully working helicopter model with all textures, sounds and particle effects for you to test in your game.
Before we do this we just wanna know if this would be something people are intersted in. If so expect to see the resource by mid next week.
About the author
#23
My Bell 47 is flying quite nicely. I went a long way down the route of using wheeledvehicle style landing gear which would have been good for larger wheeled heli's, but it's definitely not the solution for skids. So I'm back to using rigid body collisions for ground contact, which involved overriding some of Vehicle.cc's collision handling to get a usable result.
The collective control is modelled properly, so it requires automation to be playable. I've been working on a GUI to display the some variables to help with that, but I'm not really sure of the best way to update the the GUI controls. How do people usually do this? Does Torquescript support callbacks?
05/04/2005 (8:11 pm)
Hmmm, I've kinda been holding back since Brett mentioned his pack above.My Bell 47 is flying quite nicely. I went a long way down the route of using wheeledvehicle style landing gear which would have been good for larger wheeled heli's, but it's definitely not the solution for skids. So I'm back to using rigid body collisions for ground contact, which involved overriding some of Vehicle.cc's collision handling to get a usable result.
The collective control is modelled properly, so it requires automation to be playable. I've been working on a GUI to display the some variables to help with that, but I'm not really sure of the best way to update the the GUI controls. How do people usually do this? Does Torquescript support callbacks?
#24
Our helicopter class is just about finished. Still making some minor adjustments and final tweaks before we release it as a free resource though.
We planned to have this done ages ago, but as usual we got held up. Just been so busy doing heaps of other stuff. Rest assured the free resource is coming, soon.
We too have reworked the collision code so it's much better now. Not perfect but about 1000 times better then Torque's standard collision code for flying vehicles.
We are taking a little longer on this then originally anticipated cos everyday we come up with another improvement. Here's a brief list of what the resource will include:
- A helicopter model in *.dts, max5 and ms3d formats
- All the textures, sounds, and particle effects to make it pretty
- All the scripts to make it work. Namely "heliVehicle.cc", "heliVehicle.h", "vehicle.cc", "vehicle.h", "helicopter.cs",and "explosion.cs".
Once mounted, you can take off and land, hover in mid air, and fly around to your hearts content. We haven't gone for ultra realistic physics instead we made it fun and easy to fly.
We will also include some simple code that allows it to be destroyed on impact, or on getting shot, and explode into a nice fireball killing the pilot, any passengers and any player unlucky enough to be nearby.
05/05/2005 (10:57 am)
@David Russell & Ian RoachOur helicopter class is just about finished. Still making some minor adjustments and final tweaks before we release it as a free resource though.
We planned to have this done ages ago, but as usual we got held up. Just been so busy doing heaps of other stuff. Rest assured the free resource is coming, soon.
We too have reworked the collision code so it's much better now. Not perfect but about 1000 times better then Torque's standard collision code for flying vehicles.
We are taking a little longer on this then originally anticipated cos everyday we come up with another improvement. Here's a brief list of what the resource will include:
- A helicopter model in *.dts, max5 and ms3d formats
- All the textures, sounds, and particle effects to make it pretty
- All the scripts to make it work. Namely "heliVehicle.cc", "heliVehicle.h", "vehicle.cc", "vehicle.h", "helicopter.cs",and "explosion.cs".
Once mounted, you can take off and land, hover in mid air, and fly around to your hearts content. We haven't gone for ultra realistic physics instead we made it fun and easy to fly.
We will also include some simple code that allows it to be destroyed on impact, or on getting shot, and explode into a nice fireball killing the pilot, any passengers and any player unlucky enough to be nearby.
#25
05/05/2005 (11:08 am)
Tim, that is great! Can't wait to see your work.
#27
Guys. I have been trying to contact each of you regarding your respective helicopter classes, but without success (why doesn't this forum have PM?!). I am working on a commercial project which will include a player controllled helicopter. However, we have a tight schedule, and we would very much like to talk to each of you about getting our hands on the work you have done, even if it is unfinished at this time.
Please contact me on my profile email address or at drussell AT visualjazz DOT com DOT au.
Regards,
Dave.
05/17/2005 (5:34 pm)
@ Brett, Tim, AdamGuys. I have been trying to contact each of you regarding your respective helicopter classes, but without success (why doesn't this forum have PM?!). I am working on a commercial project which will include a player controllled helicopter. However, we have a tight schedule, and we would very much like to talk to each of you about getting our hands on the work you have done, even if it is unfinished at this time.
Please contact me on my profile email address or at drussell AT visualjazz DOT com DOT au.
Regards,
Dave.
#28
This implies to me that government agents have kidnapped everyone who had started work on these resources. My condolences. We'll try to free you as soon as possible my brothers.
06/09/2005 (2:37 pm)
I would very much like to get my hands on a helicopter resource. I've read at least six different threads today promising helicopter resources, and none of them have yet delivered. Very strange.This implies to me that government agents have kidnapped everyone who had started work on these resources. My condolences. We'll try to free you as soon as possible my brothers.
#29
P.S.
Just in case anyone misinterprets this post, no we are not condemning the TGE or Garage Games in any way, we just found an engine which was more suited to our needs and style of game creation. Any posts related to the above subject will be ignored as quite frankly we have more important things to do with our time and so should you.
11/03/2005 (2:13 pm)
Unfortunatly the torque game engine just didn't meet our needs and we have ported our project to a different engine which we are having a much better time with. We apologise for making broken promises and hereby announce we will not be releasing our code for the helicopter class. We wish you all the best of luck in your own developments and once again apologise for any inconvenience.P.S.
Just in case anyone misinterprets this post, no we are not condemning the TGE or Garage Games in any way, we just found an engine which was more suited to our needs and style of game creation. Any posts related to the above subject will be ignored as quite frankly we have more important things to do with our time and so should you.
#30
I for one would love to try it out.
11/03/2005 (4:05 pm)
Tim why not just release what you have ? it seems to me it was a semi working resource anyway ?I for one would love to try it out.
#31
11/04/2005 (9:53 am)
If you want we'll release it but bear in mind it's not fully functional and still quite buggy in some areas. We won't have time to offer support or help so don't expect any. Give it about week or two and i'll tidy it up a little and post a quick resource.
#33
11/24/2005 (2:44 am)
I would love to see your helicopter class too, if you can release it that would be great.
#34
Also after recently testing the resource it's painfully clear for this to be useful someone will have to come up with a fix for collision involving flying vehicles.
11/24/2005 (9:56 pm)
OK, it's almost done. Cos im not using tge right now i had to go through piles of backup cd's to find what i need, re-compiling issues also slowed me down and just finding all the information within the scripting (*.cs) files was a slow process but it's pretty much done now. I've dedicated some time on sunday to sit down and post the resource so pending approval it should be availiable by mid next week. Bear in mind i've designed it to drop straight into a clean build of 1.3, ie copy & paste overwriting files when prompted, recompile and you're done. If you end up liking & wanting to use this resource and need to merge it into your own modified torque project, you're on your own. Shouldn't be hard though, most of the changes are in the default.bind.cs script & commands.cs script. The remainder are new scripts which can be copied over and initiated within game.cs and init.cs.Also after recently testing the resource it's painfully clear for this to be useful someone will have to come up with a fix for collision involving flying vehicles.
#35
11/24/2005 (10:52 pm)
Looking forward to it tim. this should work very well for our flying vehicles.
#36
11/27/2005 (7:29 am)
Ok it's done. Just submitted the resource, you'll have to wait for Garage Games to approve it then it's all yours. Everything should be explained within the resource but i'll quickly point out if you're new to Torque or unfamiliar with the vehicle code in torque you may find this resource a little overwhelming.
#38
At the time of writing that post i was very much fond of Torque & just wanted to inform others of a new engine i thought had serious potential. After reading the responses it got (some suggestion was made that i was an employee of Terathon Software trying to steal customers, oh and that Eric stole code from Torque to make C4) my respect for the Torque Engine & it's community dropped. Oh and those comments mentioned earlier were made by Garage Games staff, not very professional or businesslike in my opinion.
Anyhow, please don't start another forum war on this subject. It was beaten to death already in the above linked post.
11/27/2005 (6:57 pm)
We are using the C4 engine. I say this hesitantly because there seems to be a large number of people within the Garage Games community with very closed minds who take any mention of a competitors engine as an insult. If you want to see what i mean check out this forum post. At the time of writing that post i was very much fond of Torque & just wanted to inform others of a new engine i thought had serious potential. After reading the responses it got (some suggestion was made that i was an employee of Terathon Software trying to steal customers, oh and that Eric stole code from Torque to make C4) my respect for the Torque Engine & it's community dropped. Oh and those comments mentioned earlier were made by Garage Games staff, not very professional or businesslike in my opinion.
Anyhow, please don't start another forum war on this subject. It was beaten to death already in the above linked post.
#39
As long as you have tools that let you make a good game, I don't think any of us really care. We think Torque is a good solution, but there are other solutions out there.
We can be a bit touchy on game engine businesses that model on us. You should have seen some of the comments around the Cipher engine - the initial cut of their website bore more than a passing resemblance to ours. And to be fair, there are some similarities between C4's licensing and our own. That said, some of the comments there were a bit over the top. You'll have to forgive Stephen, it was his third day as an employee. ;)
I guess my point here is that, most of the time, you're not going to get jumped on for mentioning that you use other engines.
11/27/2005 (7:50 pm)
Onoez, competition!As long as you have tools that let you make a good game, I don't think any of us really care. We think Torque is a good solution, but there are other solutions out there.
We can be a bit touchy on game engine businesses that model on us. You should have seen some of the comments around the Cipher engine - the initial cut of their website bore more than a passing resemblance to ours. And to be fair, there are some similarities between C4's licensing and our own. That said, some of the comments there were a bit over the top. You'll have to forgive Stephen, it was his third day as an employee. ;)
I guess my point here is that, most of the time, you're not going to get jumped on for mentioning that you use other engines.
#40
11/27/2005 (8:27 pm)
But, you might get jumped on by somebody trying to fish that helicopter code out of your pockets. Give it up and nobody has to get hurt! =)
Torque Owner David Russell