Not sure if this is limited to the Alpha, but two other great things I discovered are that debris fields now seem to remain (maybe density will even influence sensor quality in the later game) and if you blow up a target that's between you and something bright (e.g., the engines of a capital ship), the released micro debris during the initial blast will actually blur the background.
Simply awesome, as always!!!
Talon_UK: Thanks! I'm going to start making alien weapons fire here very soon.
Armondikov: Wow, that's awesome! Thanks for spotting those, they've both been fixed. I also increased the brightness and contrast on the ship names, so they're easier to read. I also added alien explosions in there too, random spheres have them.
stonky: Thanks! Glad your nostalgia bone is tickled.
lennier1: The bigger the debris the longer it stays. the small stuff sticks around 20-50 seconds, and the big stuff up to 3 minutes. Glad you noticed the blurring. Thanks!
Just wondering if you changed anything about the underlying engine recently? It's crawling and fairly unresponsive on my home computer and was producing errors in the console to the effect of "Argument exception: thingy you want to instantiate is null". That's the case on both Opera and Firefox, with Unity player reinstalled and updated. Still works as good as ever on my work computer running Waterfox, so it may just mean your system requirements have jumped ahead of me.
Not a massive priority (now I'm no longer a student again, I'm getting a new PC, it's going to happen, no excuses this time!), it just seems strange that it runs mostly smoothly and then jumped so suddenly on a single update.
If you need anything in exchange for me being a pain in the arse with all this, let me know!
Stopped showing the errors but still lagging and shooting up the memory in use to way above what it usually operates at (adds about 800MB or so to the browser). It's strange, but maybe it's just gone above what the hardware can handle.
Okay! I'm not sure exactly what the memory increase is, that seems really odd and off to me. I did, however, find the two culprits that were slowing things down - the engine lensflares and the gunfire sound effects. It was trying to decompress the sound effects every time you fired, and was flailing a bit. The Lens flares were doing a bunch of complicated distance and visibility calculations for every frame, even if they weren't visible. I set that right. I'm getting a constant 100fps on my year and a half old rig. You should be okay, now! http://www.hedfiles.net/WOSN_Alpha/WOSN_Alpha.html
Let me know if it's still wonky!
Works fine for me, good solid framerate across the board. The alien explosions look spot on too, going to be nice to see that sort of variety in the pyrotechnics when the space battle finally kicks off.
Rekkert: Thanks!
TALON_UK: Glad you like them! You made the musicians day/week with that comment.
oldmangreg: That's definitely coming soon. It's what's being worked on now, if I'm not mistaken.
Armondikov: Thanks.
So we've got a nice solid update! I did some work on the damage system on the ships - they now have front and back shields, with frton, side, rear, top and bottom armor. Once you get through all that, you hit the core damage. do enough of that, the ship explodes.
The Billboarding and Sprite behaviour now works on the fighters, as well! http://www.hedfiles.net/WOSN_Alpha/WOSN_Alpha.html
Enjoy!
lennier1: Yep! they're even more moving now!
Armondikov: Then you should enjoy the latest update!
So, there's been a bunch of updates - Jan and I have been hard at work making functional systems. the radar and targeting are now mostly functional - the targeting still needs to have some work done, and the radar doesn't quite flash as we want, but other than that, the game is looking great! There are a couple of new additions to the gameplay. Hit "space" to spawn a random enemy fighter infront of your fighter. these fighters have a rough AI, that will try, generally, to find you.
you can select the closest ship by hitting "r" the radar moves too quickly through the details of your target, but you can see at least that part working.
There are new explosions, new flareFX, and new shieldFX. Also added are player-ship collisions. These are still being tweaked. http://www.hedfiles.net/WOSN_Alpha/WOSN_Alpha.html
Definitely a great addition! I must've abused that space key more than most Maya users.
Is there any way to force the game into fullscreen mode and capture the mouse pointer? The most annoying thing right now is how the mouse is allowed to escape the viewport, causing all kinds of unwanted interactions with the OS.
lennier1: Yes! Restricting the users cursor is something we'll get working soon.
Armondikov: NOOOO! I think you might have caught me in the middle of an upload. If you try again, is it still broken? If it is, are you using Waterfox? And/or the 64 bit version of the unity plugin? If so, Jan was also seeing a very similar problem, but we're re-uploaded and it shouldn't be broken anymore.
So, slight quicky update on the human ship selection screen.
Lemme know what you think...it's still being tweaked.
Now I've had time to think about it, here's a bit of an pseudo-artistic critique on the last image.
It's good and well-rendered, as always, but I don't think the feel matches the in-game visuals. What you've ended up producing is quite a dark and atmospheric feel, where there's a stark contrast between the shadows and the light - think of how the star's lens flare hits you then flashes away again, or how the newer explosion FX looks far grittier and less cartoonish than before. So, while the well-lit hanger bay is a sensible suggestion as far as actual maintenance of spacecraft is concerned, it doesn't really fit in with some of the other visuals. This has a bit of a further knock-on effect in that the whole thing looks very uniform and washed-out, which is fine, but does provide an issue for "ship selection" because the ship itself doesn't actually jump out at you. You're blinded by the floodlights and nothing else.
So, for ship selection I would change track slightly and have the camera look down, as if you're on a gantry going across the top of the hanger. This would mean you're looking away from the massive floodlights, and therefore could get away with more "creative" lighting to pick out the ships without it looking as if you have an horrifically unrealistic and impractical light rig in the actual hanger bay itself. That does have the trade-off that you'll make the craft look less imposing and spectacular because you're above rather than under them, however.
That said, discussing the actual practicalities of "ship selection" when you only have the one ship in the image isn't easy and probably not too constructive . I'd be dead keen to see a more functional mock-up to see what you plan on doing with it.
So, slight quicky update on the human ship selection screen.
Lemme know what you think...it's still being tweaked.
great scene howard, i think the glowing ceiling lighting is a bit overwhelming though... maybe just turn the thick glow down a little so its not so 'blobby' - i'd get rid of the blobby glow entirely infact. and also perhaps reduce the opacity of the more widely spread glow... I'm sure the intensity of that glow should reduce as the scene recedes too... as it is, is making the lights all merge together toward the back of the scene.
perhaps also consider some shift of lighting colour, like if the far end of the bay had red lighting or something.. or a different type of light spilling out of an alcove, something so the outline of the ship can be more clearly distinguished, and will add depth.
finally maybe some more 'human scale' features, if not actual deck hands and crew maybe more more railings, some visible scale doorways, maybe something like a wheeled APU start cart or weapons trolley, overhead gantry crane etc - anything that you might see people working with on a real deck.
Not to derail the bandwagon or anything, but I think the blob lighting is working great. Not quite photoreal, but that's really not what you're going for. So many people expect the inside of a space craft to be dark and poorly lit, I find the bright overheads a nice change of pace, and a good balance between grittiness and the spotlessness of Trek sets . Kind of makes me jealous, actually, having spent too much of my life working in hangars wishing for more light. Given what we know about the St. Nazaire, maybe the animation could have one or two flickering overheads to make up the difference?
Armondikov: Glad that it works! We'll have to figure out that x64 bug...though I suspect it's an error in unity's dist not with our code.
Talon_UK: More tweakable controls are coming - we're still trying to figure out how we'll do it, but once we do, it is a priority.
Armondikov: Excellent points, all! So, there is a slight alteration, and something to be made aware of - this is a 1024x1024 render - the screen will only ever display 640x480 of that. So, the end result is something like this:
Which is slightly less overwhelming. The camera will not be static, however - it will move about, and more will be visible as it does.
Coolhand: Also excellent critique! And my thanks. So, I did tint the distance more towards blue - as that's the color of those forcefield thingies. I also darkened the bay behind the ship, and brightened the ship itself. A couple other random lighting bugs were also addressed. Added some windows, and more human-scale stuff is on its way, soon.
Klavs81: Thanks! I did tone it down a bit, but just to get back some of the crispness that had been overwhelmed. and I dig the idea of a couple flickering lights. Nice callback to the Tigers' Claw bunk room.
And an update:
Trying to make the ship more readable against the background, and make the whole thing more consistent with the rest of the art style of the game.
EDIT:
As a fun example, here's what the two current layers look like when they're rendered raw...
Thoughts?
Posts
Yeah, I'm spending too much time playing this...
Simply awesome, as always!!!
Armondikov: Wow, that's awesome! Thanks for spotting those, they've both been fixed. I also increased the brightness and contrast on the ship names, so they're easier to read. I also added alien explosions in there too, random spheres have them.
stonky: Thanks! Glad your nostalgia bone is tickled.
lennier1: The bigger the debris the longer it stays. the small stuff sticks around 20-50 seconds, and the big stuff up to 3 minutes. Glad you noticed the blurring. Thanks!
Updated! I fixed the third tanker name, there were two Milne Bays.. Now there's one and a Monte Castelo, as well.
http://www.hedfiles.net/WOSN_Alpha/WOSN_Alpha.html
Enjoy!
Just wondering if you changed anything about the underlying engine recently? It's crawling and fairly unresponsive on my home computer and was producing errors in the console to the effect of "Argument exception: thingy you want to instantiate is null". That's the case on both Opera and Firefox, with Unity player reinstalled and updated. Still works as good as ever on my work computer running Waterfox, so it may just mean your system requirements have jumped ahead of me.
Not a massive priority (now I'm no longer a student again, I'm getting a new PC, it's going to happen, no excuses this time!), it just seems strange that it runs mostly smoothly and then jumped so suddenly on a single update.
If you need anything in exchange for me being a pain in the arse with all this, let me know!
http://www.hedfiles.net/WOSN_Alpha/WOSN_Alpha.html
Let me know if it's still wonky!
Yes, pink explosions look nifty!
http://www.hedfiles.net/WOSN_Alpha/WOSN_Alpha.html
Enjoy!
Also, I'm now taking up Unity. It's like magic!
TALON_UK: Glad you like them! You made the musicians day/week with that comment.
oldmangreg: That's definitely coming soon. It's what's being worked on now, if I'm not mistaken.
Armondikov: Thanks.
So we've got a nice solid update! I did some work on the damage system on the ships - they now have front and back shields, with frton, side, rear, top and bottom armor. Once you get through all that, you hit the core damage. do enough of that, the ship explodes.
The Billboarding and Sprite behaviour now works on the fighters, as well!
http://www.hedfiles.net/WOSN_Alpha/WOSN_Alpha.html
Enjoy!
Armondikov: Then you should enjoy the latest update!
So, there's been a bunch of updates - Jan and I have been hard at work making functional systems. the radar and targeting are now mostly functional - the targeting still needs to have some work done, and the radar doesn't quite flash as we want, but other than that, the game is looking great! There are a couple of new additions to the gameplay. Hit "space" to spawn a random enemy fighter infront of your fighter. these fighters have a rough AI, that will try, generally, to find you.
you can select the closest ship by hitting "r" the radar moves too quickly through the details of your target, but you can see at least that part working.
There are new explosions, new flareFX, and new shieldFX. Also added are player-ship collisions. These are still being tweaked.
http://www.hedfiles.net/WOSN_Alpha/WOSN_Alpha.html
Enjoy!
Definitely a great addition! I must've abused that space key more than most Maya users.
Is there any way to force the game into fullscreen mode and capture the mouse pointer? The most annoying thing right now is how the mouse is allowed to escape the viewport, causing all kinds of unwanted interactions with the OS.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Armondikov: NOOOO! I think you might have caught me in the middle of an upload. If you try again, is it still broken? If it is, are you using Waterfox? And/or the 64 bit version of the unity plugin? If so, Jan was also seeing a very similar problem, but we're re-uploaded and it shouldn't be broken anymore.
So, slight quicky update on the human ship selection screen.
Lemme know what you think...it's still being tweaked.
Oh and that selection screen looks sweet, has a really good atmospheric feeling about it. Nice work.
It's good and well-rendered, as always, but I don't think the feel matches the in-game visuals. What you've ended up producing is quite a dark and atmospheric feel, where there's a stark contrast between the shadows and the light - think of how the star's lens flare hits you then flashes away again, or how the newer explosion FX looks far grittier and less cartoonish than before. So, while the well-lit hanger bay is a sensible suggestion as far as actual maintenance of spacecraft is concerned, it doesn't really fit in with some of the other visuals. This has a bit of a further knock-on effect in that the whole thing looks very uniform and washed-out, which is fine, but does provide an issue for "ship selection" because the ship itself doesn't actually jump out at you. You're blinded by the floodlights and nothing else.
So, for ship selection I would change track slightly and have the camera look down, as if you're on a gantry going across the top of the hanger. This would mean you're looking away from the massive floodlights, and therefore could get away with more "creative" lighting to pick out the ships without it looking as if you have an horrifically unrealistic and impractical light rig in the actual hanger bay itself. That does have the trade-off that you'll make the craft look less imposing and spectacular because you're above rather than under them, however.
That said, discussing the actual practicalities of "ship selection" when you only have the one ship in the image isn't easy and probably not too constructive
great scene howard, i think the glowing ceiling lighting is a bit overwhelming though... maybe just turn the thick glow down a little so its not so 'blobby' - i'd get rid of the blobby glow entirely infact. and also perhaps reduce the opacity of the more widely spread glow... I'm sure the intensity of that glow should reduce as the scene recedes too... as it is, is making the lights all merge together toward the back of the scene.
perhaps also consider some shift of lighting colour, like if the far end of the bay had red lighting or something.. or a different type of light spilling out of an alcove, something so the outline of the ship can be more clearly distinguished, and will add depth.
finally maybe some more 'human scale' features, if not actual deck hands and crew maybe more more railings, some visible scale doorways, maybe something like a wheeled APU start cart or weapons trolley, overhead gantry crane etc - anything that you might see people working with on a real deck.
Talon_UK: More tweakable controls are coming - we're still trying to figure out how we'll do it, but once we do, it is a priority.
Armondikov: Excellent points, all! So, there is a slight alteration, and something to be made aware of - this is a 1024x1024 render - the screen will only ever display 640x480 of that. So, the end result is something like this:
Which is slightly less overwhelming. The camera will not be static, however - it will move about, and more will be visible as it does.
Coolhand: Also excellent critique! And my thanks. So, I did tint the distance more towards blue - as that's the color of those forcefield thingies. I also darkened the bay behind the ship, and brightened the ship itself. A couple other random lighting bugs were also addressed. Added some windows, and more human-scale stuff is on its way, soon.
Klavs81: Thanks! I did tone it down a bit, but just to get back some of the crispness that had been overwhelmed. and I dig the idea of a couple flickering lights. Nice callback to the Tigers' Claw bunk room.
And an update:
Trying to make the ship more readable against the background, and make the whole thing more consistent with the rest of the art style of the game.
EDIT:
As a fun example, here's what the two current layers look like when they're rendered raw...
Thoughts?
Though one thing you might need to keep in mind when you talk about moving around with a mouse is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation