Exoterrestrial - Third Person Adventure Shooter, animators and scripters wanted

Hoi.
How big is your team so far?

I’m interested, the story is… somewhat oddly written but it’s got a marked air of quality and I like the premise. It reminds me of Mirror’s Edge.

If you need a coder/developer for the vehicles and their physics, I’m currently quite active in that field and having a practical goal to work towards would be nice.

Also, the usual plug for my FPS template:
http://www.gameblender.org/download/file.php?id=1595

If your project supports it I’d be really interested in having the magnetic walls feature used. I mean, with all the technology going around in your plot it wouldn’t be a large stretch of the imagination… :smiley:

Also, I have some character models that could be of use to you.

Based on the XM8 mind you, I made a couple of changes to the design. I still need to scan them and put them up, so hold tight :stuck_out_tongue:

No point making a website until I know that some people are going to help out. Modelling and scripting is good, feel free to have a bash at modelling any concept art I throw up here, and basic scripting needs to be done once the models are there.

Team size is, um, two right now :stuck_out_tongue: Coding and physics would be great! If you’re looking for a goal to work to, have a look at my ideas for destruction and chemistry systems. They haven’t been done before in Blender and are a rarity even in mainstream games (Red Faction and Bad Company being the main two in the field), so there would be the honour of being the first to do something like that with open source software as a motivation :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: As for the magnetic walls I think it would actually make sense to include it in some parts, such as exploring the wrecked ship. The ship would have used them to keep people on the ground in flight, so they would probably still be there.

Ridgidbody shattering (the process of splitting or cutting bits out of objects, often en mass to give explosions a strong destructive feel) is… hard. While we have one of the more important functions available (the one which recalculates the physics mesh of a convex hull polytope), ones for editing meshes are not yet there. I would advise waiting to see what becomes possible with mesh editing (I believe Ideasman42 is developing this).

The chemical interaction idea sounds possible, it mostly comes down to what you want representing the different materials. Acidic liquids might need to be lots of dynamic particles, but how to make those partake in reactions with solids which don’t require very intensive mesh cutout operations, I don’t know.

They’re a rarity because they are, to put it colloquially, “helluva complex” and not as rewarding (relative to how much work is required) as some other dynamics systems you can make.

That being said it’s your game, and they’re not impossible.

Er, what kinds of vehicles were you looking at having?
I can do suspension, aerodynamics, steering, gravity wells… tanks… helicopters.

Physically treaded tanks too, if you’re not afraid of requiring a bit more CPU from the user. I’ve only done that once but the results were good.

Given that destruction is a pretty complicated system, I think it might be an idea to leave them for a while, at least until the more basic systems are in place, and preferably until we see what mesh editing lets us do. The result will probably end up something more like Worms than the Geomod 2.0 engine, but it can be cut if needs be. Even if blowing stuff up is pretty fun when used creatively :stuck_out_tongue:

Chemistry can be simplified. While the particles repesenting the liquid are what the player sees, the game could deal with a “blast radius” - a solid shape that reacts with the other materials, and could even be the particle emitter, but is invisible to the player by using an alpha texture or something, or it could be shown as the puddle. Again, it was an idea, it’s not essential, if it’s too much work for too little gain it can be cut.

Vehicles I hadn’t put a lot of thought into yet, but I was thinking of having four main types lying around for the player to mess about with, of varying frequency: Squad cars which are light, speedy and maneouverable but have poor suspension and break fairly easily, Pickup trucks which are a bit slower and clunkier but take bumps better and are a bit tougher, Speeders which float in the air so bumps have no effect, and reach very high speeds, but are flimsy and hard to steer, and big clunky tanks/heavy vehicles that are slow, clunky and turn slowly, but take a good deal of effort to destroy and come with heavy weapons. Although physically treaded tanks would be cool, I want to prioritise smooth running over fancy graphics and effects, so if it’s too processor heavy then it can go.

EDIT:
I just had an idea for how destruction might work if mesh editing is too complicated. Indestructible objects would just be normal meshes. Destrucbile buildings would be composed of lots of different meshes - beams, chunks of wall, etc. - that when you find them they’re static, but when you hit them with melee attacks or they get caught in a blast radius from a rocket or grenade or get hit with a plasma rifle round, they become physical. They fall off, roll around and are basically physical objects. If we find that they keep getting in the way then put an auto-die thing in them that they disappear after a while, or after taking another hit.

Given that destruction is a pretty complicated system, I think it might be an idea to leave them for a while, at least until the more basic systems are in place, and preferably until we see what mesh editing lets us do. The result will probably end up something more like Worms than the Geomod 2.0 engine, but it can be cut if needs be. Even if blowing stuff up is pretty fun when used creatively :stuck_out_tongue:

Chemistry can be simplified. While the particles repesenting the liquid are what the player sees, the game could deal with a “blast radius” - a solid shape that reacts with the other materials, and could even be the particle emitter, but is invisible to the player by using an alpha texture or something, or it could be shown as the puddle. Again, it was an idea, it’s not essential, if it’s too much work for too little gain it can be cut.

Vehicles I hadn’t put a lot of thought into yet, but I was thinking of having four main types lying around for the player to mess about with, of varying frequency: Squad cars which are light, speedy and maneouverable but have poor suspension and break fairly easily, Pickup trucks which are a bit slower and clunkier but take bumps better and are a bit tougher, Speeders which float in the air so bumps have no effect, and reach very high speeds, but are flimsy and hard to steer, and big clunky tanks/heavy vehicles that are slow, clunky and turn slowly, but take a good deal of effort to destroy and come with heavy weapons. Although physically treaded tanks would be cool, I want to prioritise smooth running over fancy graphics and effects, so if it’s too processor heavy then it can go.

Hello!

Your modified XM8 sounds really cool! Looking forward to the sketch. Last night and today I made some sketches from the XM8. Some accurate, and some using artistic license. I will for sure use your sketch for modelling, but just wanted to share my doodles.

But I’ve been having computer problems (I ran out of space on my disk go figure) and I’m just resolving that now. I’ll probably upload the sketches in a few minutes.

EDIT: Computer problems solved! Uploading in a few minutes.

Here’s my sketches:

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I like number 6, if the stock was a bit shorter. See how that looks modelled.

Great! I’ll get to work on that :smiley:

Oh and what am I aiming for as far as a poly count?

I haven’t got a number in my head, but try and keep it fairly low poly to run smoothly on a modern entry-level computer. It’s not just the guns that applies to, it’s all the models.

Is there anything you would like me to do?

Hmm… modelling the characters is a fairly important thing that needs doing, but I need to post some more art before it can really get underway. What you could do is make a start at a working player character (model based on the drawings posted) which runs around the place and is controlled from a third person perspective. Also, I took into consideration making a webpage, I don’t have time to build a site yet but I have taken the addess www.exoterrestrial-game.webs.com .

Sweet site! Would you mind if I added a post to my blog (http://robo3d.wordpress.com) about this game project?

And the gun is coming along really well. I’m just finishing it up now.

Lol, I’d better start putting some actual semblance of content up there, but yeah, go right ahead and spread teh word :smiley:

Here’s the gun. Crits pls :smiley:

How would you like to texture the guns?

Oh and a rather big question, are you going to use GLSL in this game?

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AR.wpon.blend (101 KB)

I have to say that gun is pretty awesome. :smiley: Just a few things to note, the guard issue guns - like the AR - have a bit of a weight at the end of the handle to help balance the gun, to see what I mean look at the sketches I’m going to upload as soon as I get hold of the scanner again. Also, I would prefer that the models are set to solid rather than smooth to go for the look of PS1, N64 era 3D games, unless that all turns out to look crap. As for GLSL, it depends how taxing it is on the system. If we can throw it in a late stage then we will if we find it still runs smoothly.

Alright! I anticipate those sketches but take your time lol

In order to use GLSL, your graphics accelerator has to support it. All modern cards nowadays have this feature but those of us who have an older machine can’t use GLSL materials. My knowledge in this field is very limited but if your card supports GLSL, the game will run very nice. No lagging. But yes as you said, we could throw that in at the last stage.

If you would like to put up some more detailed character sketches, I will get to work on them.

http://robo3d.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/new-bge-game-exoterrestrial/

http://www.exoterrestrial-game.webs.com/ The website now looks like it belongs to us, has a blog, a forum and members can join up :smiley: Come on down cos now we’ve got our own little private discussion forum for development :stuck_out_tongue:

As for development itself, I have more sketches! Includes detailed drawings of the main character and more detail on some of the weapons. As for me, I’ve started work on the level design.

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