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Old 19th July 2007, 08:27 AM   #1
Cynic
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Default I'm new and learning. My WIP.

I used to use AC3D something on the order of a decade ago, but let me subscription lapse due to a fading dream. Well, I'm back and I'm still trying to accomplish what I set out to do 10 years ago...start up my own game development company.

The problem is, I'm a programmer, not really an artist. I picked up both gamespace and AC3D. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Thankfully, they can speak back and forth in dxf speak.

First up, a game of space battles. It's first person, pilot or captain's seat. Imagine sitting the captain's chair of the Enterprise, or the Promethius (for you Stargate SG-1 fans). Imagine also the game has two play modes: Newtonian or hollywood. Furthermore, two command modes: co-op (bridge crew) and solo.

But. this is deviating from my WIP, which requires some additional deviation to lead up to it.

I'm a child of the 70s, but I continued playing throughout the 80s. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the 80s in the US. Disco was dead. new wave was growing (Blondie, B-52s, Talking Heads. The Cars, etc), hair was exploding and everyone was wearing leg warmers, even in the summertime. It was a dorky period.

MS-DOS ruled the desktop. Bill Gates was in the process of stealing Apple's windows idea. 640K RAM was all you needed, etc.

The games were cool, but they weren't the graphical masterpieces of today. We still played tabletop games. That's when people came together at the table, they brought rulebooks, paper, pencils/pens, polyhedral dice.

The 80s was also the age of the RPG. Everyone was putting out an RPG.

Star Trek had a nice one by FASA, with a pretty sweet star ship combat system. It was based off 2d10 to make it a percentile role.

There was Traveler, another space game, based on 2d6.

Twilight 2000, another 2d6. The concept of this one was post-WWIII. You were part of what was left of the military, scattered para-military that were fighting for survival and control of some little territory.

TSR was the king of the RPG. They had two version of Dungeons and Dragons, a boxed and the hard cover book. They also produced Gamma World, another post apocalyptic world, based on d20.

They also produced another fav of mine, Star Frontiers. It was based on percentile, 2d10, had a sweet array of weapons, vehicles and space craft. One of the more desirable was the Assault Scout. A 5-7 crew ship, the smallest capable of interstellar travel, ideal for a group of 5-6 at the table.

Here is the cover off the campaign book, you'll see three of them (one is dying) attacking a light cruiser:



My first project is to complete one Assault Scout and several larger capital ships, for use in designing the first stage of my game. I've got a few pieces laid down, but it's going slow (I'm not the artist, I'm the programmer).

Last edited by Cynic; 19th July 2007 at 02:58 PM.
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Old 19th July 2007, 10:19 AM   #2
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Default Re: I'm new and learning. My WIP.

I'm looking forward to this. Hope you will post some (read many ) pics of your progress.
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Old 20th July 2007, 02:06 AM   #3
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Default Re: I'm new and learning. My WIP.

neat, so your a game programmer huh?

I have some background in Java, what would you recommend for learning how to program games?
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Old 20th July 2007, 03:17 AM   #4
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Default Re: I'm new and learning. My WIP.

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Originally Posted by Wiggles View Post
neat, so your a game programmer huh?

I have some background in Java, what would you recommend for learning how to program games?
I'm using C/C++. It's where my knowledge lies and is an immediate interface to Direct3D.

Use what you're comfortable with, but C++ and Java are nearly identical.
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Old 20th July 2007, 11:10 AM   #5
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Default Re: I'm new and learning. My WIP.

what I mean is, how did you learn the game programming aspect.

I only know console programming. with very little gui programming.
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Old 20th July 2007, 04:42 PM   #6
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Default Re: I'm new and learning. My WIP.

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what I mean is, how did you learn the game programming aspect.
Oh, I taught myself. Learning a new language is easy.

The really hard part is the algorithms and APIs.

It took a course in advanced computer programming for me to learn searching and sorting. I still don't quite grasp the tree algorithms though.
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Old 21st July 2007, 01:31 AM   #7
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Default Re: I'm new and learning. My WIP.

This is actually a simple start, but it took a lot. It's the engine. I figure I can use bump mapping to give it some more detail later on.

I may be a geek. I so wanted proportion and accuracy, that I took the time to find the parabolic equation for the curvature of the engine head, plotting every 1/10th point along the x axis to find the y. I made a simple parabolic cone this way, modified the x parameters to make it look a but more appropriate (an ever increasing slope on the parabolic leading to an undefined vertical), then scaled z down by 60%. I intend to do similar for the nosecone of the fuselage. I'm tempted to ask for teh SDK to create some parabolic functionality.


Last edited by Cynic; 21st July 2007 at 01:51 AM.
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Old 21st July 2007, 02:25 AM   #8
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Default Re: I'm new and learning. My WIP.

Cool

Are you talking about the stuff on this page

http://www.inivis.com/resources.html

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Old 21st July 2007, 08:20 AM   #9
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Default Re: I'm new and learning. My WIP.

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Originally Posted by Wiggles View Post

Are you talking about the stuff on this page

http://www.inivis.com/resources.html

No, a parabolic function is a second order equation of the form:

y = ax^2+bx+c

Where a describes the slope, b describes the phase and c describes the amplitude. I had forgotten all of this but picked it back up pretty quick as a matter of necessity.

The order (x^2) tells you how many times it crosses, or potentially crosses, the x axis. An order three crosses three times.

I use them to get a nice rounding of a nosecone or some other similar type feature.

I'd probably want to program it as a plug-in.
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Old 21st July 2007, 10:56 AM   #10
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lol, no, I meant isn't that the sdk stuff your looking for on that page.
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