My name is Lukas and I am from Bavarya (Germany).
I have just signed up in this forum to share my projects and maybe even get some support from you.
Well, now I will come to my game project wich is going to be a first person shooter.
I havent done as much until now, because I always have to reserch things I dont know.
What it will feature:
-different weapons, change and pick up
-simple enemys (dont know yet wether I want them to shoot at the player)
-knife attack
-many weapon animations (shoot, zoom, reload w/ or w/o empty mag, jump…)
-HUD
so I will try to get all the thinks I like on my bought games to this one.
Now a little question:
Is there a way to export meshes with texture and armature?
I downloaded some really cool weapons and want to import them to my game and not to loose that great look.
Ok I have fixed that problem on my own.
I didn’t have much time to do much this week, but here is the first try of the arms you will see in game (skin will be textured soon):
Weapons I collectet by now:
-g 17
-hk 416
-l96
-ump 45
-m 416
-(m98b)
And I thought maybe to change the knife attack to a knukkle attack, but we will see…
Lukas, welcome to the world of game engineering!
I hope you are enjoying making your game!
I also hope you have a well structured and designed plan to finish your game! It’s very important to have some core functionality in order to see if your game will be fun or not.
Most things you mentioned in the first post require a certain level of programming, how’s this part coming along?
Using downloaded meshes, when you can model them yourself is a bit…how do I put it… less challenging ?! Blender is a complete suite for game and animation so you’ll earn more respect you you sweat doing your game!
Well, good luck, and remember the game needs to be conceived on paper first, before is born on screen…
Well, actually this game has been planned on paper
But my work is more impulsive than I use my plan.
But thanks for this advice!
Why Iam not modelling guns myself, I think because i dont like modelling as much, my guns wouldnt look nearly as much as the ones from others, I dont have the possibilities to get good textures and. last but not least because I wantet to get started the game and not just modeling all the time.
Maybe I will model my owen guns when the game finally works!
I knnow this is not an easy project and I am not very experienced, but I have time and the will to do this!
Well, can’t blame you! I did the same when I started!
Here’s a head’s up! Go ahead and follow your instincts and impulses, you’ll need to let that steam out…
However, later on, you’ll realise that models do nothing! They are graphical representations of your game. The game structure happens on the back!
When I started, I wanted to see enormous landscapes, ships flying about, so I went around building all that! It looked stunning and I was happy walking around my moon station. Later on I realized that doing that will make your game consist of models only. And very soon, I found myself modelling and placing every game object. Then the BGE couldn’t handle it, and the blend was over 60Mb, for a single level, also there was no game play what so ever. Lesson?
For even a simple game, it’s advised to plan and properly design your logical structure: How the BGE handles objects, where, when and why they appear, how do they interact, how’s data processed. The graphics, will be a result of that structure, then you can add pretty models. Besides, if you’re hesitating in modeling which for me is the easiest part, how will you handle programming (requires a lot more patience)?
So use this project as training ground, don’t go " I’ll finish this game and it will be awesome", but rather " I’ll go as far as I can with this game and hope to learn a lot from it". Then start another project, once this one is finished!
Good luck!
I didnt ever think this game would get awesome, I just wantet to make it as good as I can.
And you are right, it would probably be easyer with a written plan of the logic functions, but not in this game yet.
I will see wether it works and hopefully learn something!
Some great advice. I’m just past the stage of relying on models to ‘pad’ out my game, and have moved onto ‘glueing’ the models together with gameplay. It took me a while to see levels as gameplay catalysts and not just a space which happens to have models in it.
Sooo, a small update, I startet my logic work on the weapons.
And I added a small special funktion, you will be able to chenge the firemode from full-to-burst-to-semi with one key.
At first I didn`t want to do that but it was as easy and took me only something about 10 minutes.
Logic bricks of the hk416 so far (only fire and firemode):
I tried to make my muzzle flash to appear and disappear with an animation, so I set some keyframes on alpha transparancy.
Now the problem is that you just wont see it in game, it will be as visible as the alpha slider was the moment I started the game
Hope that made sense. You can tweak the Delay Sensor to make it last longer. :yes: Edit Animated Muzzle?.. Most games (I can think of) use a static Muzzle. Just making it flash…
Hmm logic brics would be an option, but some thinks like the hit marker have to get visible ‘slowly’ and not just appear.
But thanks for the advice, I will do it if it doesnt work with animations.
For muzzle flashes, most of the time, you can just get away with joining a couple of planes together that are textured properly. Then you can just addObject() for a couple of frames. The muzzle flash is not visible long enough to bother messing around with alpha channels and things. I have found that having muzzle flashes for longer than a couple of frames looks quite unnatural an just becomes a distraction for the player.
Here is a very simple muzzle flash that I am using for my current project.
As you can see it looks pretty nice in the game engine, and is very simple to setup (just setup 3 planes like above). So I would be tempted just to get something like this, then have an empty on your gun addObject() the muzzle flash for a couple of frames. Maybe about 3/4 frames or so.
Welcome Lukas. Have you thought about using an animated texture for your alpha effect along with the AddObject? I used that method for grenade explosions, and it worked quite well. You would only need about 4 frames or so.
Ok works quite nice so far!
But does an alpha trancparancy animation really not work in game engine?
The muzzle flash will be good like this, but thinks like the hit or the hurt marker would really look better if they would slowly appear and disappear.
In my experience of messing around with flashes, they honestly look best if they are only 2 or 3 frames in duration. I, like you, wanted some super-cool animated texture, but I found that looked completely unnatural. The best option would just mess around and see what you like.
Some updates I made today:
-first weapon animations
-you can change the weapon accessories by pressing the Q key
-new ammo system, the one like in the most commun games like battlefield, you dont have a number of clips to use, but a number of bullets (i hope you understand ;))
I think thats all for today, but i will go on tomorrow because working with the logic bricks I so much fun to me!
