space game

[gooncorp]

started on a space game a few months back with a friend

here is my latest video

 

[the asinine cretin]

Interesting. I just googled "Unity Scripting" as mentioned in the video title. How does that work? I have some background with game development so I'm curious. Actually, the last game project I worked on was a space game - but I never finished it (just a hobby).

 

The games I've done on my spare time (which was years ago when I was a bachelor), involved building out a rendering engine using C++ and a graphics library (last game engine I developed used DirectX 9.0c) as well as writing shaders (HLSL was hot at the time), and then creating, rigging, and to some extent animating meshes in a tool like 3ds Max. I used Photoshop for textures and things. I wrote custom software (rough software that wouldn't win any awards, to say the least) for integrating assets into scenes and "levels." Finally, what might be called scripting in my game was entirely proprietary and bare-bones. The scripting language was syntactically reminiscent of JavaScript but minimal and executed with an interpreter/engine of my own design. Oh, and then the rest of what goes into a game engine, the physics, audio, user input, et cetera. Not the most feasible solo project, especially considering the scale of the games I wanted.

 

I've only glanced at the site, but Unity seems to be an IDE Of sorts that integrates a full-featured game engine, asset editor, world builder, and "store" for purchasing ready-made assets. If my impression is correct, wow. Maybe the old game development hobby is something I could pick up again. What do you think of Unity? Have you used other game dev technologies/approaches? Does it have good APIs that let you really hack things? Well, rather than bombard you with questions I suppose I could click around their site more and use Google.

 

Having said all that, what is your game going to be like? Do you have it planned out in detail? Just curious. Peace.

Edited May 26, 2012 by the asinine cretin

[khaled]

If you are interested in building 3D games, it's better to go with Unity as the asinine cretin said

 

But if you only want to make 2D games, Flixel is an easy option

[gooncorp]

hey thanks for the interest and response. i am fairly new to game design, but i have been scripting for games like operation flashpoint, armed assault, armed assault 2, vbs, vbs2 for 10 years.

 

the unity engine makes things easy in a cartesian environment.

 

unity's api is tricky to learn but makes sense in the long run; there is a certain paradigm that one must learn eg how scripts access the game objects.

 

you can code in shaders, modify engine code and much more if you have the pro version of unity; i still dont have this.

 

it sounds like you have a lot of experience and unity would probably be very easy for you to learn.

 

the direction i have received has been from friends in the scientific field and youtube tutorials.

 

 

while unity is easier than some of the api's in the past, it is still a time consuming process.

 

i enjoy learning new things and this game engine has been a good fit for me.

 

 

 

the project i am working on is a space game, but i would like it to be more of a simulator.

 

i will be coding in real light speed among other things. the idea is to have a completely explorable universe.

 

it is a huge project and im afraid in a lot of respects im in over my head.

 

i make a little progress every day and that is what keeps me going.

 

 

 

 

 

 

espen skaar aka gooncorp

Edited May 26, 2012 by gooncorp

[khaled]

Unity is an engine to build 3D games ,, it's tricky to learn

 

But just like most 3D game engines, it's Object-Oriented .. meaning you write the algorithm for every object in the game

 

and not a single-flow programming ,, 3D games have critical concurrency control issues

[Xittenn]

The games I've done on my spare time (which was years ago when I was a bachelor), involved building out a rendering engine using C++ and a graphics library (last game engine I developed used DirectX 9.0c) as well as writing shaders (HLSL was hot at the time), and then creating, rigging, and to some extent animating meshes in a tool like 3ds Max. I used Photoshop for textures and things. I wrote custom software (rough software that wouldn't win any awards, to say the least) for integrating assets into scenes and "levels." Finally, what might be called scripting in my game was entirely proprietary and bare-bones. The scripting language was syntactically reminiscent of JavaScript but minimal and executed with an interpreter/engine of my own design. Oh, and then the rest of what goes into a game engine, the physics, audio, user input, et cetera. Not the most feasible solo project, especially considering the scale of the games I wanted.

 

I've only glanced at the site, but Unity seems to be an IDE Of sorts that integrates a full-featured game engine, asset editor, world builder, and "store" for purchasing ready-made assets. If my impression is correct, wow. Maybe the old game development hobby is something I could pick up again. What do you think of Unity? Have you used other game dev technologies/approaches? Does it have good APIs that let you really hack things? Well, rather than bombard you with questions I suppose I could click around their site more and use Google.

 

It's DirectX 11 now and Shader Model 5.0 using HLSL, so nothing has really changed. 3D Gaming engines with integrated game editors have been publicly available since the late 90's, commercially available since the early 90's, and pretty much since the advent of DirectX.

 

I am personally a fan of the Source Engine. I would have dug deeper into Cry but they hadn't made their newest engine publicly accessible when I had last looked--this has changed. I don't see having a built in asset editor, aside from world map editor, as being beneficial. XSI is an amazing product and most game engines will not release anything even remotely as competent.

 

I will probably have the opportunity to Co-Op with EA Blackbox, EA Burnaby, or Vivendi's Radical while I am completing my bachelors degree. I already have a game design diploma from VFS and a previous portfolio, which I should update. I am rather curious what sort of feedback the OP was looking for?

[the asinine cretin]

It's DirectX 11 now and Shader Model 5.0 using HLSL, so nothing has really changed. 3D Gaming engines with integrated game editors have been publicly available since the late 90's, commercially available since the early 90's, and pretty much since the advent of DirectX.

 

I am personally a fan of the Source Engine. I would have dug deeper into Cry but they hadn't made their newest engine publicly accessible when I had last looked--this has changed. I don't see having a built in asset editor, aside from world map editor, as being beneficial. XSI is an amazing product and most game engines will not release anything even remotely as competent.

 

I will probably have the opportunity to Co-Op with EA Blackbox, EA Burnaby, or Vivendi's Radical while I am completing my bachelors degree. I already have a game design diploma from VFS and a previous portfolio, which I should update. I am rather curious what sort of feedback the OP was looking for?

 

Wow, thanks for posting. You're clearly much more into it than I ever was. I had Frank Luna's book, a book from some place called The Game Institute, some AI books, and the DirectX SDK. Other than that I was just making shit up as I went. Funny that I reinvented the wheel on the world editor side instead of researching what was out there. But of course I was only in it for fun, and perhaps such an exercise was my idea of fun.

I give you props and I must say that I wish that I had your education and experience. These days I write pretty tedious medical software that leaves relatively little room for creativity and all that. Congrats on those opportunities!

 

Thanks again for the info.

 

Peace.

Edited May 28, 2012 by the asinine cretin

[khaled]

It's DirectX 11 now and Shader Model 5.0 using HLSL, so nothing has really changed. 3D Gaming engines with integrated game editors have been publicly available since the late 90's, commercially available since the early 90's, and pretty much since the advent of DirectX.

 

I am personally a fan of the Source Engine. I would have dug deeper into Cry but they hadn't made their newest engine publicly accessible when I had last looked--this has changed. I don't see having a built in asset editor, aside from world map editor, as being beneficial. XSI is an amazing product and most game engines will not release anything even remotely as competent.

 

I will probably have the opportunity to Co-Op with EA Blackbox, EA Burnaby, or Vivendi's Radical while I am completing my bachelors degree. I already have a game design diploma from VFS and a previous portfolio, which I should update. I am rather curious what sort of feedback the OP was looking for?

 

You can build XBox games using XNA with DirectX

[Xittenn]

CryENGINE 3 is very powerful and state of the art! It also ports quickly to both XBox as well as PS3 . . . . . the editor is quite different from others:

[the asinine cretin]

CryENGINE 3 is very powerful and state of the art! It also ports quickly to both XBox as well as PS3 . . . . . the editor is quite different from others:

 

Neat. I'll have to look into that. I can remember learning of some engines and things that were popular in the industry but far too expensive for me.

[Xittenn]

I guess the big thing with having this kind of power in terms of engine is that it can require an equal amount of power from your computer. When opening a new level the terrain is set well below sea level and a sea is actually automagically added. The sea is using normal mapping and reflection algorithms, much of which is optimized or specifically for a DX11 GFX card. In the thumb I posted, if you blow it up you will notice the poly count. I had simply used a terrain brush to render a flat island with sheer cliffs, followed by a height brush to pull up some spiked mountainous formations. I dropped a big rock on the island and added a ton of vegetation. The terrain hadn't been textured yet and hence the large black line on it. But, the poly count is 1.3Million because I plopped down a considerable number of 3D rendered vegetation, as opposed to trying to fill it in with a terrain texture. I'm still running 56FPS, something that most will not achieve on their computers, especially in an editor. But at the same time, by applying proper techniques, CryENGINE 3 presents to users a rapid game development strategy that will significantly reduce time spent on redundant tasks like adding in a sky box manually.

[Xittenn]

I resurrected my portfolio from film school, I thought it might be interesting to someone who is interested in this sort of thing--Game Design. It's mostly concepts(presentations/documents) and levels, Roz: New Mexico was my final project concept demo. It might not be the best example of this, I was apparently not a team player, which is bullshit, bullshit I tell you! *rage-face* At any rate I worked solo where most were working in groups of five. I was still praised by my classmates for my odds defying feat, having done all the artwork, presentation/concept work, programming(Source), etc. The source code is probably in the zip package . . . .

 

http://vfs.entangled-logic.com/

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPd7_oBub1w

Edited May 31, 2012 by Xittenn

[Ben Banana]

Unity is an engine to build 3D games ,, it's tricky to learn

 

But just like most 3D game engines, it's Object-Oriented .. meaning you write the algorithm for every object in the game

 

and not a single-flow programming ,, 3D games have critical concurrency control issues

Action failed: You have reached your quota of negative votes for the day

 

Dangit!