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Re: Before spaceships we need... rockets!

#901
Victor Tombs wrote:Personally, I hate card games but I know they are popular inclusions in some video games so I can understand the reasons for your interest. As a result of my lack of interest I'm probably not your best hope for an appraisal of your ideas on this subject. :P
Obviously I can't say if you will like it or not, but if you read carefully you will notice that my "card game" is a game precisely for people who don't like card games (like myself). It may look complicated but that's because I took my time to describe possibles "special cards", which actually are not "cards" per se (there are no cards in the game) and you will rarely see more than one in any match, if any. But basically is a matter of letting the character play for you, and then see if you are lucky or not. (Duel games will be about getting a good hand, a bad hand or a regular one, and compare it with your rival's.)

Point & Click games are usually narrative games, not simulators, we in fact tell the character what to do (go there, take that, talk with that guy), instead of controlling the character directly like in other genres (not very differently to the way that things work in RTS games), so simulating a real game of cards may be a little out of place. (Or a nice contrast, but is not the case.)

You also should not worry about puzzles. I know that you don't like them much. But I don't think I will be putting many of them, if any. (I think most if not all my puzzles will let you find different ways of telling the story instead of being obstacles in your way, but is hard to say before actually start working in the game.)

I have also been writing the script, or at least certain scenes and conversations I don't want to forget, and I'm loving it. I really like the story and the characters, but is possible that this will not be my first game of this kind due to the scope of the story. I may do something smaller at first to test the waters.
Victor Tombs wrote:Obviously, my main interest in this thread is your space game, Etsu, but I don't mind reading whatever you decide to include. :angel:
Regarding SkyJunkers, I have been working in adapting my save system (developed separately as you may remember) to the game, and is very accurate so far. There are some problems, like trying to figure it out what HUD you should see or what camera is active (this placeholder spaceship I have been showing so far has three cameras), but that's due to the way I did things in the past (and I think those problems are already fixed). For future spaceships that shouldn't be a problem because I have better and cleaner ways of doing that stuff.

It supports Quit Save (my favorite), Quick Save, Manual Save and Auto Save pretty easily, and is as accurate to remember damage as well. (If you crash and lose a radiator but then quit the game, when you come back you will find that the missing radiator is exactly where it was before, probably spinning about a few meters away. And I did it in such a way that will be really easy to do the same with as many parts as I may want, because this spaceship at least has many. All without any freezes or waits whatsoever.) The same goes for the ship itself, so don't save if you are about to crash with an asteroid or something. :mrgreen:
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima
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Re: Before spaceships we need... rockets!

#902
I made this little gif of pixel "art", just for fun:
Image I imagine is some kind of fast sample gathering mission, maybe used as a way of publicity or for informative reasons by the mining company. It was made using Krita (for the "drawing") and Gimp (for fixing and animation), both open source software you can download for free.
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima
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Re: Before spaceships we need... rockets!

#904
Lum wrote:Love the retro look :ghost:
I was thinking, if Chris Roberts is proud of how many polygons (or triangles) his game characters and ships have, why can't I about how many pixels mine has? So here it goes:

My astronaut -I presume you have seen him (or her) doing some manual maintenance during his short stay in the asteroid- has 16 pixels.
My utilitarian spaceship has around 120 pixeles. (That's a lot!)
My main ship something close to 1171 pixeles! (Yeah. And all without relying on a publisher or any greedy company. :thumbup:)

Well, those are the numbers. We are surpassing Star Citizen... one pìxel at a time. (?)

:lol:
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima
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Re: Before spaceships we need... rockets!

#907
Silverware wrote:You know... that could make for a neat art style and is entirely plausible to create a game like that... :3
I'm even tempted to make some kind of preview with no graphics at all, only your instrumentation as your only help, maybe recounting the story of some maintenance guy carrying out repairs in some distant outpost when suddenly something weird* happens. (I really like immersive experiences like Capsule or Duskers where everything is about the mood and atmosphere and most of the game if not all is carried through the UI. However, I'm not sure how good I am for minimalism.)
Victor Tombs wrote:Nowhere near enough bling for me, Etsu, I've experienced the nirvana of SC and there's no going back. :lol:
I'm just sitting here waiting for Chris to call me and ask me how I did it. 8-)
Victor Tombs wrote:Actually I quite like it.
Glad to hear it.

* Fixed. :mrgreen:
Last edited by Etsu on Tue Mar 22, 2016 3:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima
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Re: Before spaceships we need... rockets!

#908
Etsu wrote:
I'm even tempted to make some kind of preview with no graphics at all, only your instrumentation as your only help, maybe recounting the story of some maintenance guy carrying out repairs in some distant outpost when suddenly something weir happens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weir
A weir is a barrier across a river designed to alter its flow characteristics. In most cases, weirs take the form of obstructions smaller than most conventional dams, pooling water behind them while also allowing it to flow steadily over their tops. Weirs are commonly used to alter the flow of rivers to prevent flooding, measure discharge, and help render rivers navigable. Weirs are also used in the study of returning salmonids.
:D :lol: :wave: :ghost:
YAY PYTHON \o/

In Josh We Trust
-=326.3827=-
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Re: Before spaceships we need... rockets!

#910
FormalMoss wrote:
A weir is a barrier across a river designed to alter its flow characteristics. In most cases, weirs take the form of obstructions smaller than most conventional dams, pooling water behind them while also allowing it to flow steadily over their tops. Weirs are commonly used to alter the flow of rivers to prevent flooding, measure discharge, and help render rivers navigable. Weirs are also used in the study of returning salmonids.
Curiously enough, my Google Translator doesn't recognize the word. :roll:
Lum wrote:WOT! While making repairs Elizabeth Weir appears at your side to cheer you up? Interesting...
I can imagine her giving you instructions via radio pretty easily. It seems, I don't know, "appropriate". 8-)
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima
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Re: Before spaceships we need... rockets!

#912
It may seem that I have disappeared, but sometimes that's due to the fact that I don't have infinite Internet anymore. (Due to the dirty management of my Internet provider. I will change my service hopefully soon.) I also lost more of my keyboard functionality and the power button of my screen. (I mean, this happened a few minutes ago.) Not everything is bad though: I managed to turn on my computer screen with a screwdriver (true story) and I recover my Internet connection the nine of every month, and today is nine so here I am. :D

Regarding SkyJunkers, I have been busy. I have installed Unreal 4.11 and ported the game there without incidents; cleaned the code to eliminate a lot of innocuous but unnecessary warnings (this for other projects as well); created my first custom sound effects (a collision alarm and a structural damage alarm), everything controllable through the main computer; made a slightly better version of my older space station (this one), nothing fancy, I will create a proper one in the future, one with real interiors; I recreated my system to eliminate the map size limit increasing the playable area to real astronomical numbers (a very simple formula this time); I made a real scale mini-solar system, a planet, a moon, and a moon for the moon, all of them in proper circular orbits (I can't do elliptical orbits for the moment); I improved my materials to be less expensive (I eliminated a previous mistake basically). I suppose there is more, but that's what I remember for now.

Regarding my Point & Click project, I have been trying to make some sprites, but I'm not a good draftsman yet. :angel: I also created a series of cursors for the game and implemented them with good results. Here are my first ridiculous attempts so far:

This was my first pixeleted cowboy; he has a poncho, like Clint Eastwood:
Spoiler:      SHOW
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You will need to click on the image if you want to see the animation.
This is a different version of the same guy; no pixelated, better colors:
Spoiler:      SHOW
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You will need to click on the image if you want to see the animation.
Here I changed the poncho for something closer to Freddy Krugger's sweater:
Spoiler:      SHOW
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This is the pixelated version, alongside his pixelated horse of which I have multiple versions:
Spoiler:      SHOW
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I also have been working (mentally) in a very crazy idea, but I will share this one later, if I find out that it makes any sense. 8-)
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima
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Re: Before spaceships we need... rockets!

#914
Lum wrote:So Victor was right: you're sidetracking again... :ghost: :D
If you are talking about creating a story and losing my time with the simulation part, then I am, and that bothers me but I don't think I could begin to build the story element without having the big simulation working around you because this is pretty much the story about you having to inhabit this hostile environment, and exploration is a big part of it. (By exploration I don't mean finding new places or traveling around. You certainly will discover places and travel to there, but by discovery I mean interacting with your surroundings and the ways you do so, which may involve traveling or not.) It is a hard problem. I would like to start creating a narrative and different ways for the player to move through the story, but I also need to create for the player vehicles to drive and places to go, and that requires a lot of effort and also modeling (which you may know I don't like to do). 8-)

I would like to have a magic button that brings me hundreds of 3D models and textures, but I don't have one of those. I would also like to have access to quality voice acting but it is also not the case. So basically I'm forced to make everything by myself with several technical limitations and time constrains, which may look sometimes like I'm stuck doing the same stuff over and over again due to the virtual lack of parallel development. (I can't work in the spaceships functionality while my friend Jeff works in the character animations and Brian creates the procedural algorithms to generate planetary resources. I have to choose in which aspect of the game I want to focus now and that means that the other elements will need to wait in the pipeline maybe for months.) :geek:

So my favorite aspect of the game is being postponed constantly while I build the necessary network within which the story of this characters is going to take place. That's why I sometimes need a break and focus in something different with more immediate rewards, like Point & Click adventures games, because I think that's the best narrative genre ever made. (I could take a break playing videogames or watching a movie, and I certainly do so, but I also think that nothing is better that resting from doing videogames like working in another videogame!) The important thing is that generally I'm not losing time from the development of my space game because I use the time I would be doing something else, like hanging out with friends or some boring stuff like that. :lol:

I have being thinking a lot lately about finding better ways to putt the player in the shoes of the character (or inside the spacesuit) sooner than later, and that has a lot to do with the crazy idea I had this morning, but is not time to talk about that quite yet. The thing is that I knew that this was to be a long ride, and we are still half to the process if even so, so a lot of hard work still needs to be done in order to get something nice in some point in the future. But I'm lazy and like to work in many things at the same time, sidetracking as you say, so I suppose I should have to look for ways to fix that problem and be more productive if I want to finish something anytime soon. :angel:
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"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima

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