Doing 3D games on the Oric ?

Want to talks about games you like, would like to see developed on the Oric, it's here.
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Chema
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Post by Chema »

Thanks for your comments :)

From now on, I will work on several small details that will be added to the final version only. I would like to add some small surprises here and there as well as tweak some issues.

For instance, I noticed a bug on the rear view, so I changed the way it is done completely. It is now correct and more efficient.

Rotation of ships at the game start screen has been altered too, so now it is more dynamic and looks much better.

I also added Rock Hermits (some say there are pilots who make a living inside asteroids, mining them from the interior and hiding away from the society, but little have seen them...).

And I have some more things on my mind... let's see how far I can go, as I am running out of memory!
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Symoon
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Post by Symoon »

Only had time to play the 1st tutorial mission, it seems like an excellent way to get in the game. Very good idea from Dbug IIRC, and fantastic work Chema :)
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Chema
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Post by Chema »

Great to know at least somebody is playing with the beta :)

Thanks indeed Symoon, it seems you are to be nominated as the official New Oric Productions Tester :P

If you only played the first tutorial, then you still have not seen much of the game. Let me know anything you think of, from bugs to any consideration.

For those out there which are not so keen on Elite, remember 1337 simply resembles Elite, as it uses the same universe, commerce engine and ship models, but that is all. IMHO the gaming experience is quite different, with a much smoother learning curve (thanks to the way you control your ship and other game internals).

But that should not upset Elite fans, as I think the atmosphere is kept intact, but that is my oppinion.

Cheers
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ibisum
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Post by ibisum »

I've been playing it but I'm too busy to report anything, and besides .. I've been *playing* it and not really noticing any bugs or anything yet.

I *LOVE* it! :) Where were you in 1984 when I sat in front of my Oric-1 many nights, in despair at my neighbors growing software collection for his Speccie, in comparison to my few tapes of type-ins .. ;)
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Chema
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Post by Chema »

Great ibisum! Let me know whatever you may find or any ideas...
ibisum wrote: I *LOVE* it! :) Where were you in 1984 when I sat in front of my Oric-1 many nights, in despair at my neighbors growing software collection for his Speccie, in comparison to my few tapes of type-ins .. ;)
mmmm... probably sitting in front of my Oric in despair at my friends growing software collection for their spectrums, in comparison to my... one sec, I have heard this before...

:)
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ibisum
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Post by ibisum »

Okay .. one thing I've noticed in last nights testing was that it appears that occasionally I would shoot a ship and it would just disappear! This happened twice in one game .. I wasn't able to work out what was going on, however, it just seems like as soon as I started to shoot, the ship disappeared. Is that normal? I'm guessing it could be normal - i.e. they hyperspace outta here when I'm shooting at them - but .. something else I should look at? That was very puzzling.

Other than that, very fun to play on the Pandora with oricutron .. I love having a portable Oric! :)
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Chema
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Post by Chema »

Yep, that is exactly what is occuring. They are attacked, they choose to flee away, as they are not near a mass, they hyper out.

Mmmm could think about something to indicate this is happening...

Thanks for the feedback.
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Post by Antiriad2097 »

With that in mind, how about a Hyperspace Blocker upgrade to buy for your ship? (assuming that's not already in there). Make it a short usage item, perhaps draining energy, so that you have to trigger it just as there's an indication your adversary is about to hyperspace out of there. You might keep him around and win the fight, but the energy drain might just level the playing field so he takes you out instead. Could be a workable risk/reward.
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Post by Dbug »

Then would be kind of fair that some other enemies can also block your own hyperspace engine :)

But yeah, the core of the issue is feedback; need to find some way to indicate that the enemy is about to jump, either by simply displaying a text, or some other kind of visual effect, possibly distortion/zoom on the ship, or distortion of the star-field, or possibly drawing some kind of circles around the ship to show some kind of forcefield/tunnel getting created when the hyperspace engine distort the time-space fabric :)
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ibisum
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Post by ibisum »

What about adding an audible indicator that a ship has hyperspaced - so it could be used to indicate hyperspace wherever it happens, even under non-battle conditions .. ?
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Chema
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Post by Chema »

Hi all.

Sorry to take so long to answer this. I have a minor family crisis here :/

Anyway I am reading and pondering the possibilities. Very good ideas have been risen here.

I would like to come up with a simple solution for this, as I am quite low on memory now. It is not so simple as it seems, though.

Accelerating the ship quickly could do, but if he takes a collision course with you, well, you will collide. Bear in mind that I don't take into account collisions from ships that are not the player's, or it will eat up a lot of CPU, so no way to compute if there is a free path or not. Could hack this, but won't be too easy.

Drawing any effect could be a good option, but whatever is done should be simple and also should scale with distance, so difficultt to find a simple solution. It is possible to change the ship model on the fly, and use something to resemble hyperspace jumping, but it is not simple (need to hack the model depending on flags and such nasty things). In addition I don't come up with something that could be eye candy.

Drawing circles is another good option, but the problem here is that I don't have the projected ship center. I only project vertices that are needed (plus the vertex which the laser is fired from). Adding extra points to project is CPU demanding and we are quite low on CPU already.

Circles can be drawn using the vertex which the laser is fired from as center and the distance in Z to determine the radius, but not sure how this would look like... will test. However, I will need a counter or something to draw first 1 circle, then 2 with increasing radius, then 3... and this all taking care of the fact that several ships may decide to jump in the same set of frames...

If I come up with a good sfx, I might use it too.

The new item idea is indeed very good. Like interdictors in StarWars. To ease things, it could drain energy and keep active in the ship's surroundings for some time, preventing any hyperjump. Another thing is how to manage with ships that have started jumping, so when the effect above is started (they decide this on their AI turn and I am not sure if it is easy to abort this process, but could try).

All the solutions need nasty dealing with the lowest level of the 3D engine (changing the way ships are drawn or adding new things to the pic --circles, that grow--), so it is not automatic, but will have a look.

Notice that this game is probably one of the most complex ever written for the Oric, so any change that might seem innoccent, could affect other areas and have nasty lateral effects.

Thanks for your input!
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Chema
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Post by Chema »

I have added, as a first test, the concentric circles (3, appearing 1 per frame before the ship goes hyper) as an indication of a ship entering hyperspace.

Got mixed feelings about it. It is nice to see such thing, and it is also useful, but it is a bit dull, I think. Maybe I am too used to something like that or simply I would like to have had a much more impressive effect, but anyway it is working...

Need to test, though... I guess there are ocassions in which it does not work as expected :)

Gimme some more time to do tests and we will see..
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Chema
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Post by Chema »

Ok done some more work.

The hyper effect for other ships is working (I hink -- I saw no glitches) and seems quite nice now.

I also tweaked some other things and added the "Right on, Commander!" message which appears at every 256 kill points. Those players of classic Elite would surely miss it, otherwise :)

Remember 1337 has different killpoints depending on ships, such as the c64 version and not 1 killpoint per ship, as other versions.

I also spotted another bug. When galactic hyperspacing I made the player enter the next galaxy at the same system internal id number as he was on the previous galaxy (not the same position, same id). This created some uncertainity about where you would end up when jumping to another galaxy.

The classic Elite, however, always made you appear at the system closest to position (96,96). I changed this, to resemble the original behaviour, but this means I need to recheck all missions (the Constrictor one is heavily affected by this). I may keep my original implementation... not sure what to do.

Also added random slightly variations to the spot where your lasers are drawn to, as the original game. It looks more dynamic, and I like it.

I am considering other add-ons for the final release... but my free memory is low... very low now.
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Chema
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Post by Chema »

I forgot a couple of screenshots:

Image
Image

In both you can see the 3 circles, although they appear one by one.
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Post by Antiriad2097 »

That looks great, should do the trick just fine, its very clear. Really want to play this after seeing those.
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