Blog for James Laker (BurNinG) at GarageGames.com

Solar Battles Update (Video & Screenshots)

James Laker (BurNinG) — 2007-12-10T21:44:37+00:00

Just a fast update.

I quickly made a video for a friend of mine to show him the Scout Ship in Solar Battles, so I thought I'll share with you guys. The quality isnt great, but you'll get the idea.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iTzDjwkryw

I'll upload a video of the ships as I finish them, showing off what they do, and their roles.

Here are some screenshots I have of the game play. There is still alot to be done though, but I'm getting there.

The Interceptor, the second fastest ship after the Scout.

A Interceptor going through mid battle (stupid :P):

The Scout after locking its prey:

The next ship I'll be working on it the Drone ship... Look out for the screenshots :)

EDIT: I'm looking for people who feel comfortable with Contructor (in TGEA). Contact me for more information.

Solar Battles Progress (Screenshots)

James Laker (BurNinG) — 2007-10-11T19:51:29+00:00

Haven't blog in a while, since I never felt ready yet with the progress of Solar Battles. But since my progress has been stellar, to say the least. I felt I would show a screenshot or 2 of what is waiting around the corner.

First some progress and how I approach(ed) things.

Being only one person working on this (and being a programmer), I decided to first implement the basic art I bought. Start working on the features. While planning the game I decided that I would need the following things, before I start working on the Art side of things:
- Velocity hud (Showing your speed or a Targets Speed)
- More advanced Health/Energy gui with things like bitmaps, rotation, target health/energy, etc.
- Range hud (display your Radar/Targetting Range) which was simple
- Distance hud, to show you how far you are from your target.
- Updated fxShapeReplicator (which is a resource that needed to work in TGEA)
- Targetting hud, Have a target reticule (hope thats the correct term) on them.

- Commander map changes to allow Capture points and spawn at those points when your team captured them.

This was the results of the commandermap:

Just take note that the art has changed, (even in some screenshots below).

Now these things might not sound like a lot of work, but those weren't the only things. Stuff like LOD's needed to be done on ship. Backgrounds, Stars (which was a b1tch an still not 100% they way I'd like them to be), fixes to TGEA 1.0. It all adds up. I later had to port everything over to TGEA 1.0.2 with the awesome FGE pack by my friend Martin Schultz

Here is what the LODs look like for comparison, and this had to be done for 13 ships:

Being a programmer, I've always struggled with content. And I mean everything; from Models to music. But now that I have met up with a friend from Cape Town, it was quite a coincedence that he creates ambient music as a hobby. After listening to some of his tracks, it was obvious that I have found the perfect person to work with on Solar Battles, being a space game.

By now you'er probably wondering what the game looks like... If you're still interested go have a look at what it once was. A friend of mine and I was just thinking of how far I came in the past months since I started. Take a look at the screenshots at my MyDreamRPG Contest entry.

So here's a pic from a while back (still with FGE noticable):

And here's a screenshot with the latest GUI design (not all working though but implementing it now, and fixing old bugs):

And another one I think looks sweet:

The website will be up shortly, describing more about the game and ship roles/classes. There's a temporary forum up at www.solarbattles.net with some more images of ships. It hasnt't been made public, since it's going to be taken down and changed soon, but you can still go have a look if you're interested.

I'm planning on a beta demo in November to gather feedback, general impressions and maybe a competition. So watch this space!

Comments would be nice :)

Space Game Progress

James Laker (BurNinG) — 2006-07-31T12:39:39+00:00

Ola people.
Just a quick entry to tell everybody what I've been doing.

I have to admit that I have not been working on my game for 2 months. Not that I have lost interest or anything. I was in Europe & Dubai for 2 months. Just taking some time off; getting away from reality.

So what happened since the last update? Well, not as much as I hoped for, but it wasn't standing still either. I managed to get the teams (Alien/Human) and team specific ships in. This wasn't too hard either.
One problem I have is that my GUI's are slow... my mouse lags alot. But I'll look at that later.

I was able to get some extra cash. I sold my bike. The falling is becoming irretating, and I don't like scars which I have plenty of now. So no more of that. Anyway... With the money I decided to buy the Lightning pack, models, and get myself online at home.

Models
I bought the models from 3drt, and I have to admit that I'm very impressed with them. Included with the models are the bump and specular maps, so i'll have to give bumpmapping a shot soon. The one problem I have with the pack is that too little of the space ships look like human fighters. Tell me what you guys think should be human:

http://www.3drt.com/3dm/fighters-fleet/fight_fleet-shots.htm

Lightning Pack
Wow!!! I don't know how to express myself. This pack is a must have for anyone who is series about Torque. It didn't take me 30min to get it integrated into my project. And things that I thought was broken actually works now. Integration was really easy. I was actually affraid of it gonna be a hard/tedious task. I can honestly tell you, that it was a breeze. If you've seen my previous blog, you'll notice the difference in the screenshots. I'm really glad i invested in it. And I'm not even using half the stuph in there.

What's next?
Well, there's still lots of work. I'm thinking of just getting basic AI in, that attacks an enemy. Shouldn't be too hard. Then at least I can get shot too. There are lots of things that still need to change. I need to redo all my planets, as I thought I'll save some Polys by cutting them half. But you are able to see the cut off areas. Then I need props to float around in space.

Ordered the next 3D Game programming book. So getting that next week, so I can jump on the AI. Even typing this makes me realize how much I have to do.

Anyway. Hope I didn't bore you too much. If i did, have a cookie... or a screenshot or 3.

Everything looks better with the Lighning pack (even in space):

The laser lights up the asteroid as it passes:

This image you can see everything lighting up because of the explosion:

Next time I'll show you guys more ships. I'm still rigging them. Any comments welcome as always.

- James

Futher development on Space Sim (screenshots)

James Laker (BurNinG) — 2006-05-05T09:37:24+00:00

Everything has been moving along quite smoothly with my Space game. Been working hard lately due to new jobs and my contract work. The contract work is at least paying for some cool Torque goodies. Managed to finally buy the Advanced 3D Game Programming All in One book and now waiting for the delivery. Also managed to buy some cool explosion animations. Again waiting for the delivery of that too.

As I'm not using lots of particles to create explosions, I decided using professional looking explosions are worth it. With some (all really) of the 2d space games I've tested, the explosions just aren't rewarding enough.

When I kill someone, I want others too see (and feel) what I've accomplished. The explosion itself is rewarding enough now. It puts a smile on your face when you see other ships in the vicinity feeling the cause of your doing:

The explosions are done with Texturelist which is supported by default; just not used enough, if you ask me. I dunno if it will look good enough with 3d games. For my purpose it's perfect.

Next thing I have to start delving into is energy based shields. I haven't seen anything on it yet. I was thinking of actually adding the shield to the spaceship model as an animation...

When energy is sufficient, play shield animation (which will just be a transparent bubble). The nice thing about a round shield, is that it is concave, so I can use that as the collision box. Will see if it works.

Any comment, ideas welcome.

Cheers
James

Space Sim, Content Discussion and Resource Updates (Screenshot)

James Laker (BurNinG) — 2006-04-24T09:52:36+00:00

Goeie More (Good Morning)

It's been a while since I've actually created a plan/blog. The reason was that I never really had anything concrete or complete enough to show. I've had TGE for a while now, but never really got into the whole mindset of creating complete selling games with it. That might sound strange, I know.

Torque to me is a hobby. Something I play around with when I'm bored. Something I can talk about to my friends and make them go "Oooooo...." and "AAAAaaaaa....". I usually start prototyping an idea, and that's where it stops. So I've gone through resources, done some updates, created a resource or 2. Nothing spectacular. I usaully get to this one point... and I'm stuck. The evil word is called Content!

Now for me being a TGE hobbyist, it's hard to find content for all the ideas a person, like any of us here, have. Remember when you thought of the next biggest selling First Person Shooter. Or was it the coolest looking arcade racer that could apeal to everyone? Maybe the GTA remake... just better! For me the one problem keeps hitting me in the face with a 15 pound hammer; Content.

Everyone wants money for anything. Understandably so. And to make things even worse is the fact that I live here (South Africa) where our currency really sucks against the major currencies. So buying a addon like the lighting pack isn't really that cheap. Buying awesome models costs a good percentage of a persons salary around here... So content for a game for a hobbyiest like me, is a problem. Point made!

I thought about actually creating a small bike game after playing MX vs ATV, which I thought can easily be improved with TGE. Only content is some Trees/Bikes/Barriers/Players.... That's not much when you think about other genres (RTS/FPS). Got too a point where the bike physics just gotten too complicated for me, and lost interest. Not being english makes simple words like anglular and linear momentum a bitch, and those are the easy things.

What now... So after talking a good friend of mine about games and the industry. He asked me why not create a top down 2D space shooter... And it hit me. The only content will the Ships, asteroids, Planets, and Skyboxes. The rest will be particles/animated textures etc. Me and my friend then went to a this upmarket steakhouse we always go to, got drunk in the cigar lounge and started brainstorming (more like brainspilling with all the beer we had). Cool ideas came from it! I haven't been as excited about this game like any other idea before.

We went home and so I started implementing resource after resource. Updated some existing code. This was so cool actually seeing something coming together after every week... Progress never stopped. Floating trees became asteroids. Flying Car became Flying Fighter. Fighter started shooting and killing. Fighter got laser, Radar. Stage got planets. It all just falls into place. I know these are only the simple stuff. But it works, and it feels like I'm on a roll. Gr8 feeling!

And now after almost a month I finally have the basic framework in place to work from and start extending into a full fledged game. It all feels like it's in reach when I look at my Progress/To-do list. Sweeet.

Off course, I still have some problems here and there, but nothing too complicated I hope. I'm having a lot of problems with the Advanced Camera code working with other controls and breaking small things for me. Eg. TrailEmitters not showing up with Advanced Camera. The Laser resource also doens't work with the Advanced Cam. The Radar/Map/Compass resource doesn't work properly with the Advanced Cam. Things like that. Even though it's an awesome resource, these are things I'll have to consider. I wish I could just fix them all, but I'm not experienced enough.

I've updated some of the resources and posted them back as resources:
fxShapeReplicator
Radar/Map/Compass Gui Control (guiRadarCtrl)

And finally a screenshot:

Non Game related personal happenings
I've also started at a new job, and already loving it here... I'm sitting here at Microsoft (South Africa), which is basically an events branch of Microsoft. As Senior Web Developer, I'm part of the team doing their Partner and Events organisation sites. One awesome thing is that they have a gym here. Free Coffee bar... So I'm constantly high on Cappuccino :-D. Even the vending machines aren't coin operated: You press, you win. Microsoft really looks out for their employees... Very cool.

Please share your ideas, comments (or even code! ;-)

Later
James (BurNinG) Laker

* Hope my Engrish isn't letting me down too bad

Monday Feb 21 13:32

James Laker (BurNinG) — 2005-02-21T13:32:45+00:00

Melee sysytem happenings...

My last plan wasn't let go into the wild for some reason so I'm gonna do a shorter version now.

I've been working on extending the Melee resource into something more useful and
fun. I'm not quite sure what the plans are for Realm Wars for melee fighting so I started making changes to it to create a more flexible system for my own use.

So far I have competed:
- Specific attacks... By this I mean that you need to press a key with your primary
fire to attack. It's not random attacks (Animations) anymore.

- Simple blocking... To block the attackers attack the defender needs to press the
directional key (to choose the attack) and the block button (Secondary fire)

- Custom Speeds... Now uses the timescale in the Attack datablack. Also using
this for a simple (but fun) combo system. Every attack is faster until the attack is
blocked... This is incremental so... The more hits in the combo... the quicker the
attacker needs to be...

Still to do:
- Transistion between attacks needs to be flexible too as it is hardcoded. I've
done the basics here. Just need to apply the multiplyer to the transistion time
too now.

- Add more animations to Kork to present all this better (Help anybody?)
I believe is something fun is presented crappy, you'll get crappy responses. At
the moment the attack.

- DamageStart and DamageEnd (When to start/end applying damage timewise,
and need to do this using the Timescale)

- Attack queing... Just to challenge myself.

That's sort of my 1 milestone... I'm hoping to have a presentable resource before Apil. After that I have to go on with Level creating... This is a slow process for me
:( Hopefully other people will be interested in joining the team as soon as I have something to show... Game will be Manga-like melee fighting game.

If anyone is interested in helping... mail me (check addy in Profile)

L8er
James

Friday Dec 10 7:15

James Laker (BurNinG) — 2004-12-10T07:15:48+00:00

Headaches, Ideas, Reality of those ideas... Now here's my 'plan'...

1 Failure, 2 failure, 3 failure... GO!

That's what been going on here on my side... I'm so eager to make something with torque that I'm getting headaches of thinking what I can do. Saying that I know i can make anything, it's harder than I initially thought...

First was a dragon game... You the Dragon... People attack your cave...
You spit fireballs and kill all the bots. The bots linked to a counter and stage one would have 100 bots charging your base with sticks and stones 2000 years
ago. Stage 2... More bots.... say 125.... stronger bots... with swords and bows and arrows.... Stage 3... more bots... Better swords and crossbows... You get the idea... Again... it was too much work, and the guy that was suppose to do the moddeling started working on a Farm for his dad or something... So my dragon never changed from a Helicopter.... Was actually cool... Helicopter firing big fireballs while 100 bots ran in circles on the path... hehe... So that idea died when my modeller didn't deliver...

Second was a simple car game. Well, not that simple. I wanted a remake of the old classic Death Rally. That sounded easy enough. I prototyped it in a week. But the work involved are just waaaayyyy too much for a single indie like me. I'm a programmer... So making the art just kills me... I've downloaded a simple car... Played around with it. Got weapons mounted it fired... Spiked Bumpers mounted, it damaged other cars... Mines dropped, it killed... Gun Reload zones in the maps was working via triggers, Cardamage fix zones was working... All the basics was there... all the funky stuph needed for my remake.

Then when I started thinking about the how the games' single player mode would work it just got too complicated. I thought of making it a multiplayer only game, but will the fun factor really be such a "wow" that people would be buying it? I dunno. I just kinda lost interest myself which I think is the biggest problem. So i just shelved the project until one day the "Car games with guns" are my thing again.

The past month or so i've had plenty of time on my hands to start doing some game dev. But I had no idea what I wanted to do... A simple FPS came up... Where you're in the woods somewhere strange after you crashed your car and you need to fight your way to certain points in the game to get our... Simple stuph... You crash... Zombies (aka Resident Evil) chase you... Get to old hunting hut with arsenal... get bigger gun.... kill horrendous amounts of zombies... and eventually you get out of da forest... Don't know why I decided not to do it... but hey, just wasn't my kinda taste. And the art again, would be a problem... Not a big one though... a few different Zombies... few guns... main character... environment stuph like trees and rocks... and tada a quick and simple game.
So there was an idea... But somehow it still felt too big? What do you guys think?

Then I said to myself I need something simpler... Look at the games out there with TGE; It's really simple, so why can't I do something as simple. I brainstormed every day for a month a went to bed lying there thinking of simple things to a point where I actually had headaches... People would talk to me and I would think of game ideas and not listen... Arrrrghhh... it's killing me...

So now I have a new idea... And i'm sure with a little bit more money put into it, I might pull it off... It's not that simple... once again.... But the idea sounds cool, and I ran it past a few of my friends, and they like it... Now I want u to tell me if you think it's possible... Easy enough... etc...

Here goes:
A fighting game using the melee system (Search for 'Melee' in resources).
- Simple Stages (I forgot to mention that making Stages where easy enough for me from my Half-life modding days... AAa! I see my tutorial on Quake modding is still up on planetquake.com.)

- Have Different characters... but start of with only one of course...
- Fighting should be simple enough for anybody to get into, so i thought of this.
Hit = LMB (Left Mouse Button)
Block = RMB (Right... Yup u guessed it)
Then to alter the the Kind of attacks we use the movement keys...
So Pressing "a" and attack will Hit from left to right... here's a few examples:
w + lmb = Hit from top to bottom
s + lmb = Hit from Ground upwards
This can be extended later...

To block these the defending player needs to press the same key (w,a,s,d) + Rmb

The more blocks right after each other the faster you can hit back.
The single player mode can be just bots that are better with blocking which will make them faster when counterattacking... All this happens in the same arenas....

I decided I'll put in another $50 - $100 for someone to model me my first character and do the animations... So anyone out there interested? Then I can focus on mapping and Coding...

What do you guys think... Possible?... Still Too much work?... I reaaaaallllllyyy need you guys' help as I'm running out of ideas!

You friendly neighbourhood Burning ;)

Monday Sep 20 11:43

James Laker (BurNinG) — 2004-09-20T11:43:26+00:00

Working on Vehicles and combining all resources and cool things, with a few extras.

I've spent my whole weekend playing and tweaking the vehicle data block to get it as close as possible to Grand Theft Auto's handling... And I pat myself on the shoulder, as got quite close. I used a Chevy pickup truck available freely from Marlin Studios and used that as my Test model... Though i've never heard of them, I see they have an awesome customer base (Valve,M$,etc). I got the Chevy from this page. I'll post everything as soon as I'm happy with it.

Most people are frustrated with the Vehicle "code" and the datablock settings. But I'm (one of few) actually starting to get the hang of it. Some stuph are still confusing, but the basics are the only thing needed to get a suitable/drivable "version".

One thing that is a PAIN is the camera code. The camera 'mounts' to eye/cam node and it won't move!... This means if you roll a car, the camera reacts like a poodle on crack.

Now my first goal was to get satisfactory handling results... Check! The second was to get rid of that "mounted camera", check... I used the Advanced Camera resource which is absolutely awesome. I vote for this as a feature in the next HEAD.

The next things I'm gonna start working can mostly be found in resources scattered around the forums. So it's just putting it all 2gether. And the rest shouldn't be too hard. I will be giving it all back to the community (It's not mine anyway). And make a video... The video will show people what can be accomplished with information given by the community. I think a video of combined code will open the eyes of people who have given up... I know I did... *Kicks own ass*

I'll also try to toss in some of my own ideas (which shouldn't be too hard).

- When Reset, Reset at current position (flicker & Disable collision for 3 sec.)
- Update Dust (Atm cant really see it... It's there though)
- Drive with Keyboard (Got from Forums)
- Action Cam (A combination of the Advanced Camera resource and a bit of scripting)

- Damage to vehicle (Forums)
- Mount Guns so we can kill each other (how brutal...)
- Particle emmiter for damage (more Damage more smoke)
- Explosion when health < 1

- onCollision -> applyimpulse
- Mount Bumbers/Lights/Windows (Make Damagable)

- Infinite Cameras (Not just EYE and CAM) *Dunno how hard this is gonna be...*
- Fix ParticleEmmiter to compensate for direction of travel. When you Powerslide the
vehicle kicks up dust in correct direction.

Later:
- Gears
- Check dynamics of Vehicle.cc eg. When you're driving fwd and start reversing,
the friction should be more on the turning wheels. Liitle things like that.

Catch Ya later!
Burning