First Own Game

[LandsHeer]

Hello,

 

I'm new here and this is my first post in this forum though I was already readying a lot here heh.

 

Anyway, My name is Patrick and I come from Germany, I developing game mods for nearly 4 years now. I learned a lot about game development in those years and want to try my very own first game. I already have a good idea, that is not too complex and I always can build on with more experience. I learned 3D Modeling, 2D Drawing, simple Animation, Sound Design (SFX), Team Managment and did some scripting here and there. Since 1 Month now, I'm learning C++ (Got myself the beginner book from Bjarne Stroustrup and one book directly about game programming). Though I'm no expert or advanced coder (would go more in the direction of Beginner), I want to take this challenge now.

 

So, I was looking for the right engine for my first game. Let me say something about the game:

 

It will be a Terrain elevation game where all 4 elemts take part in. For now, I just want that the player can walk around on a map and he can manipulate the terrain. For example, he aims on a position on the ground presses (keep pressing) the left mouse button and moves the mouse upwards to lift the terrain ( a certain radius). This is the first goal I want to reach. I'm currently finishing of my design document.

 

Now I was looking for a engine that can handle such things pretty good, that can transform the terrain ingame, looks not out-dated, does not cost too much and is easy to use (since i'm just a beginner in c++ programming for now).

 

So I found Leadswerks engine 2 and Torque 3D. I downloaded both demos. But I'm still not sure which one will be the right one, though i Find Leadwerks engine pretty beautiful and the editor is quite simple to use, though i'm missing the undo and redo button.

 

You guys have some more experience in engines and know better what the engines are capable of.

 

I would much appreciate it if you could help me or give me any advice or suggestions ^^

 

Kind Regards

 

Patrick aka LandsHeer

[Laurens]

Leadwerks is perfectly capable of dynamically raising and lowering the terrain. It's what you're doing in the editor after all, although I wouldn't know the exact commands not having tried so myself.

[LandsHeer]

Thx for your quick answer.

 

That is good to know, but I have no clue how to do that yet as well . But I'm sure I can figure it out or someone here already did it and knows a good way of doing it

[Josh]

There is code in the forum from the editor that shows how to do this. It's not super easy, but it's definitely fast and doable.

[Canardia]

I have done a very simple routine for raising and lowering terrain. It can affect either a single point or a square area. Circular area would be easy to code too, just need to add a sin() and cos() function which call the point raising function.

[flachdrache]

Nice to see someone with a identical history. As far as i can tell is torque3D a little more basic but already got some more advanced addons (extra cost though) which youll have to code yourself (or team up with someone which aint easy neither).

 

Sind ein paar mehr deutsche hier - also würde ich mir einen anderen Namen zulegen. Mein politisches Interesse reicht nur für den Gedanke das weniger Mist in die Welt getragen werden sollte, aber du möchtest keine "Diktatur der Gutmenschen" heraufbeschwören.

 

... just a headsUp for us germans.

 

You might like to find "Thinking in C++", which is free to read online iirc.

 

hth

 

PS: here is mine ... well you know, one day i had to post a link.

[LandsHeer]

Ah thats awesome to know. this will be a lot helpfull since square and circles are exactly the forms i need ^^.

 

I will take a look at the forum later for those examples I guess this is the right engine to take. Nice work on it btw

 

oh and before i forget, is it possible to include a undo and redo function in the level editor ? I made some misstakes in the demo of the editor and didnt know how to undo them and had to reload a previews version of the map.

 

Kind Regards

 

Patrick

 

@flachdrache:

 

LandsHeer ist nicht auf den WII bezogen und auch nicht auf irgendwelche Politik. Mit dem namen wollte ich halt sagen: " Des Landes Heer". Also nichts wirklich militaerisch oder politisch bezogen . Ich bin gegen die NPD , bzw unterstuetze sie nicht oder interessiere mich dafuer

 

Btw flachdrache, what are your fields of expertise in game development ?

[flachdrache]

... nah dann schreib halt "Lehnsherr" ... done pretty much everything in gamedesign, i dislike weightpainting and my timing is too bad for hand made character animations + i dont draw but rather construct ... which is as slow as it sounds.

[LandsHeer]

... nah dann schreib halt "Lehnsherr" ... done pretty much everything in gamedesign, i dislike weightpainting and my timing is too bad for hand made character animations + i dont draw but rather construct ... which is as slow as it sounds.

 

Mein Pseudo bleibt , wer ein Problem mit hat solls behalten .

 

Yea I tried animating a character with a walk animation, it looked like the poor guy got shoot in the lag

 

I also have a graphics tablet but cant draw at all, lol. well everything else goes pretty good. But I rather program than do 3d modeling heh.

 

Anyway, I will try to get this first milestone done, to raise the terrain... . Btw is it also possible with the demo version of the engine since i dont have the money yet for the full license ^^

[LandsHeer]

bump

 

just one more question i have for now ^^

 

Am I able to write scripts and run them with the demo version of the Engine ? I used the tutorial of the character controls and wrote it into the script editor of the engine. But It always tells me that it does not know what comes after the "#"...

 

So I was wondering either if its the demo version or if I have to write such code with visual c++ instead of the script editor.

 

Kind Regards

 

Patrick

[Canardia]

The tutorials are in C++, and the demo has only Lua enabled. With the full version you can choose between 350 different languages, but of course only 5 have headers written by the community.

 

The official SDK has only BlitzMax, C/C++ and Lua, but C#, Java, Pascal have been made and Fortran is coming end of this month (written by me), and Monkey might also come later on (also written by me).

 

Basically everyone could write their own headers, by looking how the C headers are done. It took me only 2 days to learn Fortran, so a new language is also not hard to learn, especially if you have experience with various other langauges.

[LandsHeer]

ok cheers for the clarification. Atm, i'm learning c++, dont know much about lua yet (only can modify existing code ).

 

So I will need to get the full version to really start my project.

[Canardia]

I heard there will be also a new demo out soon, which allows limited programming with C++. That way you could already start writing your game, but to finish it you need of course to buy the full version, for technical and legal reasons.

 

Usually a decent part of the game is also written in Lua, while the main language does the CPU intensive stuff and controls the game flow.

In Lua for example often little model logics are done, like a spinning propeller, radar, or advertisement barrel/plate, but also switches, doors and physics joints are often done in Lua, because they need realtime programming to adjust the joints and pieces millimeter accurately.

[LandsHeer]

good to know, yea i think i will download this new demo version then and will try to get started with it, when i see that my progress is very good, then of course i will buy the engine . But I can't just spend 200$ here and there heh. So i need to be very sure that i can do it with this engine and am comfortable with it.

 

And it seems I need to look into lua scripting hehe.

 

thx for you help, really appreciate it

[LandsHeer]

will I also be able to do terrain elevation per lua/scripting ? or does it require c++ coding

 

kind regards

 

Patrick

[Canardia]

It works also in Lua.

[LandsHeer]

So I went through some lua tutorials and cheers for the help I got there

 

I thought about two ideas how I could get it done, so that the player can raise a hill or wall in front of him (where he is aiming).

 

This is just some rough concept hehe:

 

while MouseDown(1) == 1 do

    Terrain::SetHeight( int x, int y, flt height )

 

 

not much but would this be a good start concept, so that the idea is there ?

 

What I wanted to tell the program is, that when you press the left mouse button you can raise the terrain...

[Canardia]

That's the basic idea, additionally you also need to do a entitypick to get the position of the hit, and then you need some simple formula to match the terrain x,y position with the global coordinate position, which is done by multiplying the terrain resolution and dividing by the wanted grid size, so a range of coordinates matches exactly one x,y terrain pair.

[LandsHeer]

so for example when i want to test it ingame, how exactly do i do that? I would create a map and write the lua file that let the player change the terrain. But how exaclty do I link the lua to the players actions and such ?

 

Since I only have the demo version for now i only can use lua. I need to get some first small gameplay done to show the idea to some people to be able to get the license.

[Canardia]

You can use the FPSPlayer.lua script and expand it.

[LandsHeer]

well ok, so i found the lua where i have to write it in, though I dont know how i should start adding this piece of code now. I tried something silly, but saw really quickly that it was very silly, lol.

 

I just wanted to see what happens when I add this piece of code:

 

while mousedown(1) ==1 do
terrain: SetTerrainHeight(0,0.5,0)
end

 

but this just gives me a error message

 

WelL I think I need to learn some more before i get starting, since I dont know how to use entities yet and such other things

[Canardia]

y can't be 0.5, because it's an integer