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What exactly am I doing?


Mumbles

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A good question, one that it seems several people have now asked me. The answer is, I'm doing quite a few things, and multi-tasking them. Of course this causes a problem in that it can appear to take much longer to get any visible results down, but I remain faithful. During my last year at uni I was tasked with making a simple multiplayer game, and only in the final two months before submission could you really see any evidence of the game itself. But once the first sign of life had emerged from the project it made huge progress in a short time. So I'm not yet worried that my Leadwerks projects are not really in any playable state. But people will be asking, "just what are these projects that you are working on?" I'll explain:

 

The first project, which currently gets most of my attention is a multiplayer arena style game, think Quake 3 but with different maps, powerups and weapons. The idea is that this game will provide a foundation to build a more complex FPS game. For the second one, think Mafia and GTA: Admittedly, more like Mafia than GTA, more of a linear story as is the case with the first mafia game (although the upcoming release of mafia 2 might provide some interesting inspirations). Should be quite an interesting project since I don't really know too much about that style of life. Hopefully it will provide some comical stereotypes, but so early on, it's too early to make such a promise. Those are the brief abstracts, more about the second game when the first is ready.

 

So, this Arena game of mine (or id software's, which may be more appropriate), what exactly is it going to involve? Well anyone who's played Quake 3 probably knows that deep down, the game is not actually that complicated. There are nine unique weapons which all have their own strengths and weaknesses. And the simple objective would be to score the most number of frags within a specified timeframe. During that time, you would decide which weapon is most suitable to use for that task at any given time, whilst making sure that you are strong enough to survive an attack from another like-minded player. Powerups occasionally appear in the arena to make your job a little bit easier, again, they all help you in their own way.

 

Well, I don't see too much change in any of those mechanics, but implementing those are some of the core elements of any shooter game, so getting them down once would make a larger-scale game much easier to develop, or at least that's the idea. The biggest difficulty is going to be controlling the players. I could not decide whether it would be easier to code the network side of the game first, or the single player bots, and each have their own set of challenges to the developer:

 

Networking involves:

Tracking the connections and disconnections

Handling the client input, and ensuring all other clients update the associated player model accordingly

Attempting to hide any network delays, because, best intentions in the world, problems do happen, and warping clients to old positions is annoying. More so when it happens frequently

Attempting to keep the client's view smooth. It may be great if you don't get warped around all the time, but try aiming at another player who is experiencing this problem. Also, keeping prediction reasonable. Attempting to remove any over-predictions, which cause many (visible) corrections to be made

And I'm sure there are more that I'll experience during development

 

Single player bots involve:

Knowing the arena, and where to stand. isn't is just silly if a bot walks somewhere it shouldn't (Like Q3's red mist, or the void of space). Sometimes the most direct route is not always the best, so this involves pathfinding in some way

Being able to 'think'. Walking around randomly may be enough to start out with, but really, wouldn't it be so much more interesting if the bot knew to run for some health when it was weak (instead of perhaps running to grab a railgun)?

Being able to 'lead-aim'. We all know that rocket launchers sterotypically do not hit instantly. To prevent their explosive blast being over powered, they take a while to reach the target. This allows an observant player to attempt evasive action. But the bot has to take this projectile speed into account as well, as simply firing where the target was is unlikely to work. For the case of grenade launcher, the influence of gravity must also be taken into consideration when using the weapon offensively (unless the bot chooses to use another weapon that is)

And possibly, if I really feel like it, attempting to predict the player's movement over somewhat long periods. Example: the bot has done a tremendous amount of damage to another player. It's likely that this other player will be going to the megahealth spawn, and praying it's there. Does this bot know a faster way there? Simply chasing will guarantee the player will get the mega health (if it's available), whereas taking a faster route may deny the player the health (and it's even possible that the bot can grab it instead). That's a difficult one, and so will be attempted much later.

 

 

 

Eventually, I decided I would go with the network side first. After all, at least then people could play the game with each other and have longer lasting fun that with poorly programmed bots. Also, the bot's play style could be influenced by watching people playing the game.

 

Building the bots will require a pathfinding system. I know most people here all seem to have taken a liking to A-star, but I won't be going for that, instead, think of a breadth-first search system, but with some minor changes, giving some features of a uniform cost search. When I've actually built this system, I will explain just how it works. All I will say is that unless I've really got something very badly wrong, it should -always- find the fastest path from start to destination. without being too slow, but of course, time will tell...

 

Closer to time, I may be asking for some media input from the community, models in particular. But I will not be asking for such input until the programming is close to finished, and will be using my own (sub-par) milkshape efforts until then.

 

Once the game is finally finished, I'll walkthrough exactly how I created the game so that others can have something to learn from if they're not quite sure how to build such a game. I'm now definately committed, this game will -not- be using 2.3 or newer. That does not mean that it would be of no use to read through the source code though. The mafia-like game will probably be an LE 3.0 game.

 

 

So like I said early on, there's no signs of life yet, but when screenshots come up, you may be surprised how quickly it all takes shape

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You ask what you are doing, and you write a roman. That's what you are doing. You are thinking, and there's nothing more valuable in life. Thinking is the most powerful tool given to us, to spread godspark's beautiful idea of happiness.

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Very interesting...though I had thought that girls only cared about edutainment games and tetris clones :D

:D

 

Just kidding. :P

 

But as far as you plan is concerned it's a great plan. But I have one question. Is it reinventing the wheel to make the networking side from "scratch"? I don't know anything about this stuff really I was just asking.

 

Couldn't you use someone else's networking library and then focus your programming skills on the gameplay systems? Now of course I don't really understand what I just typed but I vaguely recall someone saying something along those lines on a forum somewhere. Ha!

 

GL Have fun mumbles!

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to spread godspark's beautiful idea of happiness.

 

Or to destroy the world. Depends on how you see it I guess :D

 

Pancakes, usually a networking library is kind of setup like the LE library. It gives you the commands and such, but you still have to fit the piece together for your game.

 

Nice Mumbles. Here I just thought you were hanging around all depressed and such, but you are kicking butt in development.

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Very interesting...though I had thought that girls only cared about edutainment games and tetris clones :D

:D

 

I'm wondering if you have ever heard of the frag dolls, although I'm also thinking, everyone knows of them... Maybe most girls are into that sort of game, but I can say I never really played with dolls when I grew up. The ZX speccy was my growing up toy, so you might wonder: Just how girly am I? Answer is, not very...

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@ Rick Why did you think mumbles was all depressed?

 

@Mumbles I wish my parents had encouraged my inherent nerdiness so much that they had gotten me a ZX speccy too! But no, I just had a nintendo but we did play Oregon Trail on our Apples at school. So...kind of close...but not really I guess.

 

Frag Dolls... isn't that kind of sexist? Can't they just call themselves the Frag Persons instead?

 

AAAANYWAYZ :D A girl who likes first person shooters makes a great friend. But I want to marry a Final Fantasy fan :D A Breath of Fire III player? I would worship the ground she walks on.

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I wish my parents had encouraged my inherent nerdiness so much that they had gotten me a ZX speccy too! But no, I just had a nintendo but we did play Oregon Trail on our Apples at school. So...kind of close...but not really I guess.

 

Frag Dolls... isn't that kind of sexist? Can't they just call themselves the Frag Persons instead?

 

AAAANYWAYZ :D A girl who likes first person shooters makes a great friend. But I want to marry a Final Fantasy fan :D A Breath of Fire III player? I would worship the ground she walks on.

 

As a gaming machine, the British speccy was almost entirely inferior to the American Commodore 64. Speccy had a 3.5 MHz processor (instead of the C64's 1 MHz), and 16K of memory (C64 had ... 64K). Later speccies had 48K and 128K (I, well, 'we' had a 128K machine). Other than that, the C64 totally outclassed it. Better graphics, better sounds, and for games, that's what you want.

 

Frag Dolls: Most of them are console gamers, and none of them really stand a chance of winning at QuakeCon (that said, neither do I). A few of them venture on to the PC, But that's only to play WoW... I could slap them for not using their computers to their full potential.

 

Halo and MW2 are both FPS games, but you would not catch me playing either of them. You would also never catch me playing Final Fantasy. I watch my brother play the new one, 13 is it? At this point I'm already thinking "Money grab, number 12". The combat looks boring, the story sounds boring. The story is also clearly very poorly thought out, If you can make 12 sequels from one game, I think that says it all... Breath of Fire III - please don't say it's about dragons. Never been one for mythical, fantasy or magic (spells) - Paul Daniels' magic tricks do not count as magic, but I wouldn't want to see them in a game either

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lol mumbles you sound opinionated - so am I :P

 

Let me say this about final fantasy. The final fantasys that are "true" final fantasy games are the ones on super nes and playstation one.

 

So if you ever get bored enough to give one a try, try either final fantasy 2, 3, 7, or Tactics. If you want a story that will blow your mind I suggest going to Final Fantasy Tactics right away, then work your way backwards. I suggest tactics first because it's story presented more like a Shakespearean play than the others which are presented more like an interactive manga or anime series. Which to me is great but to you, maybe not so great. Also the combat system takes center stage and is very different than the other Final Fantasy games. I think a programmer like yourself might appreciate how involved the combat system is.

 

As for the legendary majesty that is Breath of Fire III, the game is about dragons yes. But Dragons are a symbol used to represent power and truth. The story is extremely deep, but only if you are receptive to it. Never once in the game does "drama" or "cinematics" hit you over the head with a stick. I, for one thought it was a dumb game when I first played it. The second time I like it. The third time I loved it. The fourth time it was my favorite game ever. Because the more you pay attention to it, the more you can see the symbolism that is used in the storylines. It's a genius game. It's a masterpiece. So if you ever get around to it, after you've played final fantasy tactics, stroll on over to breath of fire 3 :D

 

If not for the final fantasy and breath of fire series there is a possibility I would have quit gaming long ago. That's how big of an influence they are to me.

 

Do you have a masterpiece game to suggest for me to try? :D

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Do you have a masterpiece game to suggest for me to try? :D

 

Not really, I'm a PC player, and PC gaming is pretty much dead. I blame the frag dolls... :D

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PC gaming is not dead, it's just that PC games are for people of over 6 years age (they need the motoristic muscle and brain skills to operate a keyboard with 105 keys and a mouse), and consoles are for people of 0-6 years age. Some people still don't follow this rule, I don't know why, because it's so simple.

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