Very impressed by the work you guys have done in Unity. Still think you're nuts for not wanting to sell this. If you could cram it down onto mobile devices it would make you some very nice cash on the side - the work certainly deserves it!
You may have mentioned this at some point - but what software are you using to create the cockpit display animations?
Daemoria: Thanks! Yeah, we've got a Devlog, a Website, a Twitter, and we're posting up all the time!
Comco: Thanks! There's no way to cram this one onto mobile. There's just too much sprite.
I've been meaning for a while to answer in more detail about how we make our cockpits - namely, how we do all our cockpit displays/graphics/effects. To do so, I'm also going to show some work in progress of our latest human fighter, the Diamondback. It's very unfinshed.
Here's what it looks like so far:
This cockpit belongs to the most advanced, cutting edge human fighter in the game. As such, the instruments and displays are slightly different from other ships. There's only one screen, for instance, and all the wiring is run through flex tubes for easy access and re-routing.
To do the displays for this (and any fighter) we rely on a simple trick - objects and parts of the display are moved from behind the cockpit sprite to infront of the cockpit sprite. This means that the major shapes of the cockpit must be geo. Like so:
We simply move the display elements out along the Z towards the camera. To do a growing fuel bar, for instance, We'd create the geo flat/planar, and then angle it slightly.
whichever side is closer to the camera will appear first, so you can have the fuel bar follow a path. We use max for all our 3d-work.
All the cockpit displays are made of these little animations. Each one is exported separately, and then driven by code to display the proper sequence. When it's all put together, it will look very much like this:
Anyhow, hope you enjoyed this glimpse into how we do cockpits in WOSN. I'd love to answer any questions you might have, or clarify anything confusing.
I completely missed your last post regarding the cockpit design, Howard. Apologies. If I understand correctly, the orange and light blue shaded bars are what you are angling? Are they a single object? I think I'm being dense as while I can see how angling the horizontal blue bars would allow them to gradually appear as they are moved towards the camera on the z-axis, but I can't see how you could use that technique to have the orange bars animate vertically and then the blue ones to animate horizontally...I feel I'm missing something important here.
I'm quite interested on your implementations as a colleague and I released a Unity-based 3d aviation app recently (A.C.E. Tomcat). It's nowhere near up to the standard you guys are hitting and it's not a game - more of an interactive encyclopaedia sort of deal, but having to do the cockpit, with interactive dials etc has me interested in seeing all the different ways you can attack these sorts of problems.
I absolutely love what you've come up with. I'd really like to get effects in there similar to your excellent cockpit canopy shaders with the grime and the reflection etc, but I just don't think we'll be able to get that level of fidelity on a mobile device.
BTW - looking at the way your cockpits are built as an example, I can certainly see why you're saying mobile is out of the question. The resolution you need your sprites at would exceed memory specs of any device out there for at least a few more years yet - and that's without even contemplating all the action going on beyond the cockpit glass.
But, for the record, I still think you're all nuts not selling this. At least on Steam, Windows Store, Mac's store etc. The quality available here is far beyond that of almost any space sim commercially released in the last few years. You may have mentioned it a few years ago(!!) when this thread started, but what was your primary motivation for this? Was it for portfolio-building reasons? Or just a labour of love?
your cockpits on here are fantastic, it makes me wish i had thought more about cockpit placement on my own designs. just to ask, in the actual game is everything being realtime 3d rendered or are things like the cockpit replaced with 2d images layered over everything else.
Yea, a page or so he gives a breakdown for the layering used in Unity. Very cool tech, I imagine it's incredibly light-weight, perfect for mobile, if that is among the intended destinations.
Comco: Each guage is it's own object, with it's own animation. Some are bent horizontally, some are bent vertically. To do a curve, we angle it down around the corner like a banked racecar track. The cockpit glass shader is actually pretty cheap - you might be able to throw that on a mobile device! Let me know if you want it. Also, we could pretty easily put this game on mobile - we'd need to drop the resolution of some of the textures, but almost everything is already on texture atlases which is the most effective way for textures to be stored on mobile (I'm sure you ran into that).
Also, Yeah, this is going to remain free for now - I'm in a position professionally that I can't sell the game without quitting my job first, and with a kid on the way, I'm *really* unwilling to do that.
Sorry.
spacefighter: the only things real-time 3d rendered are the capital ships. I'm glad you like it!
TALON_UK: Yup, exactly.
Daemoria: Yep, and it's pretty close to mobile-spec... not quite, but once we're finished with the game play it shouldn't be more than a month or two to get everything playing on iOS and Android.
Hey guys! Last night I got the logic for the ship selection screen all working. I've still got to add effects and more stuff on deck in each shot, but the basics are there!
We're going to be working on getting this polished up for you, and the next big Alpha update will let you fly 3 of the 5 different ships!
Hey everyone! After a ton of polishing we've got the Ship Selection interface just about exactly where we want it to be.
Enjoy that short glimpse of sweet, sweet background information.
Now, the only thing remaining is to clear up some minor gameplay bugs and integrate Daniel's new "Choose your ship, pilot!" hangar music.
If all goes well, we'll have a new update on Saturday!
Hello! While I wait for some lingering updates to go into the Alpha that's coming out next, (so soon!) I thought I'd work on one of the parts of the Next Alpha release - the ability to land your fighter.
We're actually trying to put together the complete game loop on the next release... Choose your ship, launch, fly through several NAV points, and return to your carrier and land.
Since this is something I can work on by myself, and requires a fair bit of new artwork, I thought I'd tackle it right now.
Here's where I got last night:
It already knows which ship you're flying and shows the correct sprite, and it's very small in memory, so it's very fast to load.
The next part of this is adding the shot from inside the St Nazaire's hangar that shows your ship floating in and touching down. It's a bit more complex than this part, since there's so much more art I need to make. The front of the hangar near the landing strips hasn't been touched much, and really doesn't hold up from close range. I have all the ships with landing gear already, I just need to animate them in the correct positions.
Did I imagine it, or did the original X-Wing show the damage you sustained when you landed? I.e., the hull looked more beat up if you came back with zero shields and a red-lining hull. I'm not saying you should do that, but it would be a fun little touch to have an engineer chide your ass for coming home with too much damage.
Armondikov: Yeah, that's the eventual plan!
So, I thought you might like to see the current progress on the second part of the hangar landing. It starts with the original version that shows in the distant background of the ship selection screen - it's obviously undetailed, and I slowly fill it in over a couple of evening of time.
As of last night:
While I was working on that, I also worked on getting the landing sprites for a fighter - starting with the Boomslang.
A simple loop:
I still need to finish detailing the background, adding parallaxing foreground elements, and work on combining the ship and the background.
I should have 3-4 more nights of work on this, before I can pop it into the engine, and hook it up with the first scene... Then it's just a matter of doing the other 4 ships.
Thanks for taking a look!
Hello, again! Tonight I've got a bit more of the Landing cinematic to show - still not done, but good enough to show. Still on the To-Do list:
Add the shadow under the fighter.
Add a shield effect when the fighter passes through the atmospheric boundary.
Add cooldown and landing jet effects to the fighter.
Hopefully the rest will be done tomorrow or Tuesday. In the meantime - more news on the alpha! We're getting very close - as far as I know, only 2 issues remain to fix before everything is made public.
Thanks for taking a look!
Nice work, liking the gas/smoke effects you've got going on there. The image quality on the interior shots looks a little degraded when compared with the rest of the sequence though. Really looking forward to the alpha, this is looking great.
Posts
:thumb:
Is there a blog that you post to for this game project, or is it all here on scifi-meshes?
Very impressed by the work you guys have done in Unity. Still think you're nuts for not wanting to sell this. If you could cram it down onto mobile devices it would make you some very nice cash on the side - the work certainly deserves it!
You may have mentioned this at some point - but what software are you using to create the cockpit display animations?
Comco: Thanks! There's no way to cram this one onto mobile. There's just too much sprite.
I've been meaning for a while to answer in more detail about how we make our cockpits - namely, how we do all our cockpit displays/graphics/effects. To do so, I'm also going to show some work in progress of our latest human fighter, the Diamondback. It's very unfinshed.
Here's what it looks like so far:
This cockpit belongs to the most advanced, cutting edge human fighter in the game. As such, the instruments and displays are slightly different from other ships. There's only one screen, for instance, and all the wiring is run through flex tubes for easy access and re-routing.
To do the displays for this (and any fighter) we rely on a simple trick - objects and parts of the display are moved from behind the cockpit sprite to infront of the cockpit sprite. This means that the major shapes of the cockpit must be geo. Like so:
We simply move the display elements out along the Z towards the camera. To do a growing fuel bar, for instance, We'd create the geo flat/planar, and then angle it slightly.
whichever side is closer to the camera will appear first, so you can have the fuel bar follow a path. We use max for all our 3d-work.
All the cockpit displays are made of these little animations. Each one is exported separately, and then driven by code to display the proper sequence. When it's all put together, it will look very much like this:
Anyhow, hope you enjoyed this glimpse into how we do cockpits in WOSN. I'd love to answer any questions you might have, or clarify anything confusing.
I also have been working on the Human ship selection screens:
Enjoy!
I'm quite interested on your implementations as a colleague and I released a Unity-based 3d aviation app recently (A.C.E. Tomcat). It's nowhere near up to the standard you guys are hitting and it's not a game - more of an interactive encyclopaedia sort of deal, but having to do the cockpit, with interactive dials etc has me interested in seeing all the different ways you can attack these sorts of problems.
I absolutely love what you've come up with. I'd really like to get effects in there similar to your excellent cockpit canopy shaders with the grime and the reflection etc, but I just don't think we'll be able to get that level of fidelity on a mobile device.
BTW - looking at the way your cockpits are built as an example, I can certainly see why you're saying mobile is out of the question. The resolution you need your sprites at would exceed memory specs of any device out there for at least a few more years yet - and that's without even contemplating all the action going on beyond the cockpit glass.
But, for the record, I still think you're all nuts not selling this. At least on Steam, Windows Store, Mac's store etc. The quality available here is far beyond that of almost any space sim commercially released in the last few years. You may have mentioned it a few years ago(!!) when this thread started, but what was your primary motivation for this? Was it for portfolio-building reasons? Or just a labour of love?
Also, Yeah, this is going to remain free for now - I'm in a position professionally that I can't sell the game without quitting my job first, and with a kid on the way, I'm *really* unwilling to do that.
Sorry.
spacefighter: the only things real-time 3d rendered are the capital ships. I'm glad you like it!
TALON_UK: Yup, exactly.
Daemoria: Yep, and it's pretty close to mobile-spec... not quite, but once we're finished with the game play it shouldn't be more than a month or two to get everything playing on iOS and Android.
Hey guys! Last night I got the logic for the ship selection screen all working. I've still got to add effects and more stuff on deck in each shot, but the basics are there!
We're going to be working on getting this polished up for you, and the next big Alpha update will let you fly 3 of the 5 different ships!
:thumb:
Hey everyone! After a ton of polishing we've got the Ship Selection interface just about exactly where we want it to be.
Enjoy that short glimpse of sweet, sweet background information.
Now, the only thing remaining is to clear up some minor gameplay bugs and integrate Daniel's new "Choose your ship, pilot!" hangar music.
If all goes well, we'll have a new update on Saturday!
We're actually trying to put together the complete game loop on the next release... Choose your ship, launch, fly through several NAV points, and return to your carrier and land.
Since this is something I can work on by myself, and requires a fair bit of new artwork, I thought I'd tackle it right now.
Here's where I got last night:
It already knows which ship you're flying and shows the correct sprite, and it's very small in memory, so it's very fast to load.
The next part of this is adding the shot from inside the St Nazaire's hangar that shows your ship floating in and touching down. It's a bit more complex than this part, since there's so much more art I need to make. The front of the hangar near the landing strips hasn't been touched much, and really doesn't hold up from close range. I have all the ships with landing gear already, I just need to animate them in the correct positions.
Thanks for taking a look!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADzTkPqCOU8#t=281
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrRSUPlr0iQ#t=14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrRSUPlr0iQ#t=2031
mixed in. Same shots as the WC1 version, but with more of X-Wing's movement, animation and...panache.
So, I thought you might like to see the current progress on the second part of the hangar landing. It starts with the original version that shows in the distant background of the ship selection screen - it's obviously undetailed, and I slowly fill it in over a couple of evening of time.
As of last night:
While I was working on that, I also worked on getting the landing sprites for a fighter - starting with the Boomslang.
A simple loop:
I still need to finish detailing the background, adding parallaxing foreground elements, and work on combining the ship and the background.
I should have 3-4 more nights of work on this, before I can pop it into the engine, and hook it up with the first scene... Then it's just a matter of doing the other 4 ships.
Thanks for taking a look!
Still on the To-Do list:
Add the shadow under the fighter.
Add a shield effect when the fighter passes through the atmospheric boundary.
Add cooldown and landing jet effects to the fighter.
Hopefully the rest will be done tomorrow or Tuesday.
In the meantime - more news on the alpha! We're getting very close - as far as I know, only 2 issues remain to fix before everything is made public.
Thanks for taking a look!
:thumb: