SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

hi  :)

i am currently working on a 3d helicopter game ( with arcade controls / movements / gameplay ), a remake / modified version of a game of the 80's.

i am going to share some of my progress / thoughts here.



2023.10.01 :

around 112s to travel from one side of the map to the other side, in helicopter, at 330km per h, with 1 blitz3d unit = 1 meter.

the heightmap is 1024*1024 scaled *10 on the xz axises and *25.5 on the y axis, therefore 10 240m * 10 240m in width and depth, and 25.5m in height.

the time it should take to travel from one side of the map to the other side should theoricaly be :
10240 / 330 000 * 60 * 60 = 111.709s

the helicopter movement speed seems correct. 8)

incredible what we can achieve with blitz3d ! :D

@RemiD

Hehe very true, it is really good what can be achieved, but as good as Blitz3D is... unfortunately it didn't invent basic algebra   ;D

Looking forward to seeing and playing your helicopter game. Hmm, what could it be? Zeewolf?  8)

a mix of 'cyclone' (1984) on spectrum for the possibilities and graphics style,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=umoy06tZVS0

and of 'seek and destroy' (1993) on dos for the controls / movements (arcade), perspective (but in 3d with a better view range).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD9dhD-2Sck

but i may add my own helicopter controls / movements with some physics...

one step at a time...

2023.10.03 :

-added bullets and collision detection using linepick and pickables (for bullets).
-added damage particles depending on material damaged (by bullet).


i have decided to make a game with possibilities similar to 'cyclone' (1984), where the goals are to avoid a cyclone and to explore different islands to go save humans and to collect crates.

but i want to add some physics for the helicopter and variable wind direction and force depending on if the helicopter is near / far from the cyclone.

i also want the cyclone to destroy the environment like trees, houses, ships, crates, humans, and this would produce flying debris in the cyclone.

i also want these flying debris to be a threat for the helicopter (causes damage).

so the helicopter movements would be affected by the wind and the flying debris (if a collision happen).

i also want to add some combat so i have added some air elementals.


i have noticed that when a rigged skinned mesh is animated, linepick detects the collision with the Tpose, not with the animated pose...
http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231003-1150-linepick-on-rigged-skinned-meshes.png
i will probably have to have an empty rigg (skeleton with bones) and attach cubes on it, as a pickable mesh. not tested yet...

2023.10.04 :

-added impacts (of bullets) depending on material damaged (by bullets).

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231004-1405-impacts-of-bullets.png

2023.10.07 :
- improved the color map generator and the lightshade map generator ('lightmap')

i draw the heightmap in an image editor.

the stairs look is wanted.

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231007-1411-terrain-heightsmap-colorsmap-lightshademap.png

i may use 'impostors' (textured flat mesh with 4 vertices / 2 triangles) for far away trees, because there are a lot of triangles to render for barely visible shapes, it is not good. :-[

Looking good.
You may want to look into the normals of the vetices on the slopes as they definitely look inconsistent. Unless this is deliberate artifact of course.

I used to Love Cyclone and TLL 8)

QuoteYou may want to look into the normals of the vetices on the slopes as they definitely look inconsistent.

what do you mean ?

if you mean that the sand color should not bleed on the rock color when the slope is vertical (cliff),  yes i have noticed that, this is because i use a texel size of 1texel for 1unit but then scaled by 10 on the xz axises so this produces 'bleeding' from on texel to another especially when the terrain goes from a low height to a high height... but i can surely improve the color map generator procedure...


not urgent, i want to improve the gameplay in priority.

Yeah as you say, not really a priority and you could easy pass it off as an authentic 80s artifact 8)

An example of what I was referring to is that the shading has formed an X shape in the centre of the attached pic.

ok thanks for the clarification.


i think this is due to texel distortion of the colormap and of the lightshademap where the terrain goes from a low height to a high height (on cliffs).

a simple fix would be to have a colormap and  a lightshademap with a bigger size than the heightmap.

for example 2048x2048 for the 1024x1024 map.

i will experiment with this later...

after some experiments, it seems that the issue comes from how the terrain ROAM algorithm (of Blitz3d) builds the mesh and this stretches some texels which are positionned between low heights and high heights (on cliffs).

using a bigger color map (and a bigger lightshade map ) does not fix the issue...

i don't want to spend more time on that. so i am going to keep it as it is...

2023.10.09 :

- helicopter can over near land and save humans which are on land.
- humans go towards helicopter only if helicopter is near enough, and is over land (not over a cliff :P), and has a low move speed.

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231010-1103-over-land-and-save-human.gif

controling the helicopter with physics is very fun 8)


for the moment i focus on the essentials for the gameplay (like what is in the game 'cyclone'), but then i have some ideas to cause damage to the environment or to the helicopter (propeler or shell), depending on the collisions which happen. ;D

2023.10.10 :

-helicopter can over near a boat (on water) and save humans on the boat (with a cable).
-humans who are on a boat can grab the cable and be saved by the helicopter.

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231011-1138-over-boat-and-save-human.gif

;D

Will the Helicopter be collecting/finding Fuel to pickup as well.

Baggey

QuoteWill the Helicopter be collecting/finding Fuel to pickup as well.

yes like in the game 'cyclone', the goals will be to save humans, to collect crates, and to avoid the cyclone.
and there will be areas to refill the fuel.

however i want to add some 'improvements', to add some variations in the gameplay :
- save humans on land (land near the human).
- save humans on boats (over near the human with a cable).
- carry a crate from a random position to a target position (over near it with a cable).
- collect items (land near it).
- shoot and destroy monsters (air elementals) who threatens the humans.
- the monsters (air elementals) will throw tornado projectiles at the helicopters, and this may damage the helicopter.
- the cyclone (wind direction and force) will alter the helicopter movements and this may cause collisions with the environment, and this will damage the helicopter.
- there will be areas to repair the helicopter.

that is all my ideas of gameplay for now. :)

Cool, it reminds me of SimCopter which was too buggy to play really...Raid over Moscow comes to mind too for some reason and Raid on Bungeling Bay, which I loved in my youth. I had the idea to remake Bungeling Bay for some time.

2023.10.13 :

-there are crates on lands and on water.
-helicopter can grab, carry, drop, a crate (with a cable).

each crate must be carried to a specific place on each island.

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231013-1430-grab-carry-drop-crate.gif

:)

piling up crates on the top of a building, for fun ;D 
http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231014-1230-piling-up-crates.png

however sometimes linepick fails to detect a pickable surface/triangle and i don't know why, and this is really annoying (i have already noticed this in the past).

maybe this is due to scaled entities ?

no problem, linepick works well, this was a logic issue in my code... 

Are you making this game for the competition, or just putting it together at your own pace, RemiD?

Suggestion: if you can pick up crates and stack them on top of buildings then you could extent that ability to be able to actually drop them on structures, or enemies.

One of my favoruite gameplay moments from GTA Online was flying a cargo bob and picking up an AFK player in his shiny sports car and then dropping him out at sea. Bet he got a nice surprise when he got back to his TV and saw he was drowned at sea, and the car had a serious corrosion issue :)

QuoteAre you making this game for the competition, or just putting it together at your own pace

yes it is for the competition. :)

it is a remake of the game cyclone (1985) on spectrum, but in my own way, with better gameplay / possibilities (imo).

your suggestion is interesting, why not, but later. a lot of things remaining to do !

2023.10.15 :

-a carried crate (by the helicopter) can now detect a future collision with the water, the terrain ground, and if it will collide, it will drop (on air) and will fall until it reaches a below surface (water or terrain)

this is a good example on the usefulness of tformpoint() :
comparing the future x,y,z position of a moving entity, with the level of water or of terrain ( terrainy() ), if the future position will be below the level of the water / terrain, this means that it will collide (without using blitz3d collision system and without using linepick and pickables)

however, to detect obstacles on the sides or obstacles which are not water or terrain, i will need to use linepick and pickables (in the direction and length of the translation vector)

:)

Quote from: RemiD on October 16, 2023, 11:10:492023.10.15 :

-a carried crate (by the helicopter) can now detect a future collision with the water, the terrain ground, and if it will collide, it will drop (on air) and will fall until it reaches a below surface (water or terrain)

this is a good example on the usefulness of tformpoint() :
comparing the future x,y,z position of a moving entity, with the level of water or of terrain ( terrainy() ), if the future position will be below the level of the water / terrain, this means that it will collide (without using blitz3d collision system and without using linepick and pickables)

however, to detect obstacles on the sides or obstacles which are not water or terrain, i will need to use linepick and pickables (in the direction and length of the translation vector)

:)

ooo i cannot think of the practical applications of that right now.. and i dont know why. but i was wondering how i could learn to do that in an efficient manner i mean i think linepicking so much may be expensive (processing bots from both server and client) hmm..what is tformpoint are you using openb3d or b3d ng, that a openb3d function?



a eta estimate would be valuable for my application (bots mining resources, scouting, attacking etcetera.) i will need to design intelligent ai and efficiently aheh.. i wanted something like 100 bots a kingdom as the villages may need protection, farming etcetera.. 500 bots a game but that i doubt openb3d may support that many in one scene i mean its not using other threads on the gpu. i may need to be inventive scaling, i were considering lod/tile system, zones and low line of sight.

linepick is not 'expensive' if it is done only on near enough meshes, and only on meshes which are low details (surfaces with only a few triangles).

a simple way is to do a distance2d check between the point which will throw the linepick (a 3d vector) and the others entities, before setting only the entities near enough, as pickable.

i use blitz3d.

but openb3d should have a similar function...

a good example of the usefulness of tformvector() :

tformvector() can be used to calculate the properties of a 3d vector (with world coordinates) coming from an entity which is oriented in a specific way after having been turned / rotated.

this is useful to calculate the properties of a 3d vector to detect a future collision with an obstacle, before moving the entity, and then reposition and stop or rebound.

for example to detect collisions for a turning moving entity like a bullet, or an helicopter, or a carried crate, in my case. ( with the water, with the terrain, with a building, with a boat, with a tree, with a crate, with a human, with a monster ).

2023.10.17 :

-testing to implement a tornado / waterspout in the world. (with an approximate realistic size)
(i will improve the appearance with particles of clouds / water dust / dirt dust, later...)

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231017-1402-tornado.png

:o


edit 2023.10.18 :
the tornado is now textured and colored with vertices color :
at high height, with cloud color
at low height, with water color or dirt color or sand color (depending on where it will be on the map)

but now there is no vertices lighting shading anymore on the tornado :'(

While your are at LOD's introduce hit-meshes/boxes as well. Just a hidden lower poly which hangs on the pivot on the main object but only that interacts with collisions.

Quoteintroduce hit-meshes/boxes as well. Just a hidden lower poly which hangs on the pivot on the main object but only that interacts with collisions.

of course, i already do that.
for each entity, a renderer (more details, for rendering), and a collider (low details, for collisions).

but my renderers are already low details. :))

2023.10.18 :

-the low level of the tornado has the color of the material below it (water or sand or grass).
-the tornado damages the terrain and this changes the colormap.

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231018-1402-tornado-damages-terrain-changes-colormap.gif
;D

now i want to make it damages the buildings, docks, boats, trees, crates, humans.

and then this will create parts on the ground and debris around the tornado.

and i need to figure out a way for the tornado to affect the movements of the helicopter when it goes near it. ???

2023.10.19 :

-experimenting a tornado made of parts which are pulled from the ground.

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231019-2211-tornado-with-parts.gif

but i should probably replace the cube by quads with a dust / cloud texture...

;D

Cracking Tornado, love the way it 'rips' up the terrain and leaves brown mud, great visualization.

And..... in Blitz3D no less - cracking stuff.

it is a good start but an incorrect behavior. just for testing.

apparently it is the clouds that go down at the center of the tornado and then the parts / dust (from the ground) are 'ripped' and go up at the outside of the tornado. 

some good amateurs videos on youtube... impressive... 

2023.10.22 :

-new tornado structure / behavior :
the tornado is made of clouds going from up (the sky) to down (the ground).
-the tornado is made of textured quads.

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231022-2314-tornado-with-clouds.gif

now i want the tornado to 'rip' and destroy the terrain and the buildings / boats / (cars ?) / trees / crates / ( humans ? ::) )

this will spread dust and parts in the air around the tornado.

some of the heavy parts which are projected far enough from the tornado will fall on the ground and stay static.


and then the helicopter will have to go save / help the humans (on land, below destroyed buildings / trees, fallen in the water), and carry essential things for emergency surgery / foods and drink / tools to repair stuff.

2023.10.23 :

-added far away horizon fog
-added clouds above the tornado

clouds with blend 2 (multiply 1) :
http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231023-1316-horizon-clouds-tornado-blend2.gif

clouds with blend 5 (multiply 2) :
http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231023-1413-horizon-clouds-tornado-blend5.gif

i have to make the texture of the cloud more bright / white, it is not easy to blend textured quads to get the appearance that i want...

i will probably have to code a single surface system for the above clouds, and for the tornado clouds, but for now they are separate entities (copies of one mesh using copyentity()).

2023.10.24 :

-improved the colors of the clouds and of the tornado to appear more correctly lighted shaded.
-added dusts of the color of the below material (water or sand or dirt) which are created after the tornado has 'damaged' the water / terrain.

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231024-2245-clouds-tornado-dusts.gif

now i have to find a way to have the tornado damages the buildings / (cars) / boats / trees / crates (humans) and this will produces debris and parts.

and this will also produces missions for the helicopter... 8)

that is neat. i have wondered how torque3d did it so seamlessly.

well, i think you would need a physics lib and quick fade the building away spawning pieces at the same time that are in motion. so with gravity. well, is that possible in b3d?

a lot is possible if you have a good enough understanding of the langage and of maths and of physics and of 2d/3d graphics...
(except shaders which are not possible with Blitz3d, because it uses the old directx7)


there are several physics libs for Blitz3d, but i don't plan to use one...

i have some ideas on how the tornado could create damages and pull some parts in the air temporarily, then the parts would fall with the gravity. i have to do some experiments...

Dont use squareroots too often, I mean in how you pick your tornado targets, Manhatten-distance should be sufficent fot that :D In all your projexts, think to make it fast! If one person spots it within a year...do things fast, not physical accurate as possible...as possible fast!!!!!!!!! Thats the core of all demo makers! Sry but I have a whole bunch of demos from the 90's... there is always the struggle between to make it look good or as fast as possible...in a game, i want to make it fast as posdsible so it gives me spaces later to make it look  good as well :D Dont b e afraid to change things later on.... its just a function you can come back to ^^ sometimes you change the whole system...but even then its quicker to change ! Or code it so, in the future you can change it, without much trouble. I did even code a  somple program that take my code so i can do more comiler directives like so:
macro aha x0.y0
  drawimage someimage,x0,y0
endmacro

local xx#=320,yy#=200
aha xx,yythe coder of this never thought of this:All good ^^
Something like this was even cool in the 90's but then they thought: Oh what if a program needs all that "after" compiling like load a dll....so they decided NOT to use macros anymore...but its so powerful!!!! I made my own program that compiles before Blitz...it takes care of all macros and declares?  i added something like:
define DEBUG
ifdef debug
print "aha"
elsedef
print "not in debug mode"
enddef
'usual thingsbut you see how powerful it is in debugging :D
dont feel bad, feel free:
https://www.udrop.com/L2n5/PreCompiler.7z

Plus no compiler LOOK for usage any more...in the past it was so great: if you declare a variable like: LOCAL a%
but you never use it, it never compiled!!! thats how good was the past...today they all compile it, no matter, you might use it in some dll lol as its the BEST to use! They took all out the "intelligent" checks that a compiler can do! i wont mind to add some code or to exclude it or include...why was it discarded AT ALL? the more we get to the future the less compilers do check :D  and the more ppl say: the compiler does it as fast as poccible...if you ever envountered  ASM as a language to code, you quickly see its not intelligent at all!!!!!!!! YOU CAN ALWAYS MAKE THINGS FASTER IN ASM!!!!!!!!! a compiler is good! but no AI is happening nor it performs better at all! YOU are the MIND! not the compiler!
And if one compiler need another...how fast would it be? if you can use ASM!...all I know thats impossible to write a REAL compiler from scratch!
The year is 2245, the computer starts to check if its 1980!!!! Thats fine...but NOTHING from that time is reused. better the compiler starts NOW, from our time...but is it???ow did the compuer itselfs develpope???ot that far :D but....in this our tiome...why is there no company that does run a whole NEW computer!!!!!!!!! that disregards all the past? we will be stuck here even its 2300 of a year!  oh: my program might be run in the 90's :D
If your progrma runs or not: it takes...200 minutes hahaha omg!
If you install windows....it takes hours maybe...b ut it checks all the time... might be you are in the 80s! or 2000's but all the time all OS have to check what year it is.... OMG
I kinda understand that but to install windows on a virtual machine that has its toors in apple :D still what ppl do today is super slow! And ever version of our OS, is getting slower...they all promise theor OS will be faster but ONLY bc computers get faster....in reality it all gets slower!!!! more coder the salower it is! naturally...i just want a new computer!!!!!!!! which can handle all the past(evber computer does since virutal machines)  but FASTER! WAYYY FASTER!!!!!! you wont believe in asm!

@Sinjin
You've either had too much to drink or eaten too many disco biscuits.
Either way you seem to be having fun  :P

@RemiD
Still looking really cool 😎

Quotedo things fast, not physical accurate as possible...as possible fast!!!!!!!!!

Quotethere is always the struggle between to make it look good or as fast as possible...in a game, i want to make it fast as posdsible so it gives me spaces later to make it look  good as well

yes i agree.


the only thing i may want to optimize here, would be to use a single surface for the clouds, a single surface for the tornado, a single surface for the dusts.

but the others things should be quite fast to update / render...

2023.11.01 :

-new heightmap with islands in the shapes of B L I T Z B A S I C 2 D 3 D

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231101-1155-blitzbasic2d3d-heightmap.png
;D

2023.11.04 :

-helicopter is turned pushed more and more down, the nearer it is from the interior / core of the tornado.
-helicopter is turned pushed more and more outwards and up, the nearer it is from the exterior of the tornado.
-helicopter shakes more and more, the nearer it is from the tornado.
-helicopter shakes less and less, the farer it is from the tornado.

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231104-1454-tornado-wind-pushes-helicopter.gif
???

Love the way this is coming along, RemiD. What's the game going to be about? A kind of Choplifter rescue the island people kind of thing?

Quote from: Xerra on November 04, 2023, 15:34:50What's the game going to be about? A kind of Choplifter rescue the island people kind of thing?

same scenario than the game "cyclone" (1985), but more elaborated.

the tornado will damage the buildings / docks / cars / boats / trees / crates and this will produces debris and flying parts which will cause damages to the humans.

and this will produce different missions for the helicopter... ( help save the humans in different situations, bring foods / drinks / essential things, transport some humans to the hospital, transports some technicians / materials to repair the infrastructures )

may some lost items to find.

and the goal is to complete the more missions before your helicopter is too damaged ( by the tornado and by collisions with the environments, and by collisions with flying parts )

2023.11.05 :

-the tornado damages the environments (buildings, docks, furnitures, cars, boats, trees, crates), and this creates parts pulled pushed in the air by the tornado, first up and outwards, then when far enough from the tornado, down, until they reaches the land / water.

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231105-2355-tornado-dust-parts.gif

but all these parts causes slowdowns... so i have to experiment with one mesh one surface per island (for all the parts), and i will remove some parts progressively ( as if the emergencies / firefighters would remove them )

I have trouble to load the gifs... is it me or..I see one frame and it sais its loading... And thanks for agreeing with me, partially, I know old and new coders and they all complain about something different...I mean in general ^^

here is a similar video capture in .mp4 (also lighter, only 5.9mo for 35s).

http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231105-2355-tornado-dust-parts.mp4

mp4 seems 10 times lighter in size than animated gif (for the same resolution and frames per second), so i will use this now.

The debris looks very well done.

for now the debris are all cubes scaled randomly. so not much effort :))


i plan to create parts to structure each entity, then create a low details textured version of the full entity, and when destroyed by the tornado, it will be separated into its different parts.

and to limit the numbers of separated entities / meshes / surfaces, i plan to merge all parts which have fallen on an island, into one mesh, one surface, one texture, (per island).

but all of this is theory, to do it in practice takes time...

2023.11.10 :

i have re-written my TODO list to keep it simple, because, often, i want to add many things / gameplay possibilities / effects, and then i feel this is too much work and i give up. ^-^

so i will put only 6 kinds of buildings :
-appartments buildings (with several levels)
-hospitals (to repair humans)
-garages (to repair cars)
-docks (to repair boats)
-fuel stations (to fill up the tank of cars / boats / helicopter)
-shops

to keep it simple, all these buildings will be the same except the appartments buildings which will have several levels.



first attempt to model a low details appartments building / the parts composing this appartments building :
http://rd-stuff.fr/blitz3d/3d-helicopter-game-20231110-2146-appartments-lowdetails-parts.png

'Sinjin', mentionned the game 'SimCopter', so i take a look at it (on youtube), and indeed i like the gameplay / possibilites, i may create a similar game later, but not now, i focus on making a game similar to 'Cyclone', but more elaborated.

but what is funny to know about 'SimCopter' is that apparently it was possible to load the maps of 'SimCity' (2000) and fly in them. very interesting idea. ;D

2023.11.20 :

i have decided to only make a game similar to the game 'cyclone' (1985), in term of possibilities, but in 3d and with some physics movements.

because this is becoming a never ending project, and i am less and less motivated to work on that. ???