Subsonic - Testing Limits
by Martin Schultz · 09/02/2006 (3:03 am) · 8 comments
I'd like to show off with 2 videos some of my recent work I did for my second Torque game called Subsonic. The game is about instant airborne multiplayer-only dogfights with space ships taking place somewhere on earth in a couple of hundred years. A major "design feature" of the game was always since prototyping, that it doesn't have a big story behind nor a single-player mode. I only want to create with this game a good multiplayer experience and as I'm developing this more or less alone, I would never have the time to create a full-featured single-player mode AND a multiplayer mode so I'm focussing on what *I* want to play - the multiplayer mode... :-)
I prototyped the rough game idea for Subsonic already back in 2003 using TGE. Now, some months ago, I decided to restart working on this game and finish it. As TSE was already available at that time for early adopters, I ported this game over to TSE because I thought it perfectly matches to all the new features TSE offers like shaders, large terrains and the beautiful water.
Regarding the videos I need to excuse ahead that they were recorded only with 15 fps on my notebook and the video hangs some times. This is because my notebook reached it's limits with playing Subsonic and simultaneously recording the video with Fraps. :-)
The first MPEG video called "Testing Limits" (around 48 MByte) shows some experiments with 64 bots flying randomized around. I wanted to test how it "feels" to have such an amount of flying vehicles around - if it "feels" to much or to less or if it just makes sense for the game play this way. By the way: I was impressed about TSE itself (using MS 3 atm). The ship model has absolutly no LOD in it and is around 1200 polys and the frame rate kept stable. Kudos to Ben and Brian!
The second video, AI Control (around 56 MByte), shows some of my latest improvements to my bot code. I tweaked my flying vehicle code (both C++ and script) so that the vehicles now follow very precise the commands I tell them. This was a prerequisite for my next big step - implementing some good AI. I recently bought a book from Mat Buckland called "Programming Game AI by Example" and hope to archive some good results with it.
The music that plays in the background of both videos will be part of the Subsonic soundtrack by the way.
Well, that's it for the moment - I hope you enjoyed the videos and had some fun. Hope to see you back in my next blog about Subsonic.
Take care!
Martin
I prototyped the rough game idea for Subsonic already back in 2003 using TGE. Now, some months ago, I decided to restart working on this game and finish it. As TSE was already available at that time for early adopters, I ported this game over to TSE because I thought it perfectly matches to all the new features TSE offers like shaders, large terrains and the beautiful water.
Regarding the videos I need to excuse ahead that they were recorded only with 15 fps on my notebook and the video hangs some times. This is because my notebook reached it's limits with playing Subsonic and simultaneously recording the video with Fraps. :-)
The first MPEG video called "Testing Limits" (around 48 MByte) shows some experiments with 64 bots flying randomized around. I wanted to test how it "feels" to have such an amount of flying vehicles around - if it "feels" to much or to less or if it just makes sense for the game play this way. By the way: I was impressed about TSE itself (using MS 3 atm). The ship model has absolutly no LOD in it and is around 1200 polys and the frame rate kept stable. Kudos to Ben and Brian!
The second video, AI Control (around 56 MByte), shows some of my latest improvements to my bot code. I tweaked my flying vehicle code (both C++ and script) so that the vehicles now follow very precise the commands I tell them. This was a prerequisite for my next big step - implementing some good AI. I recently bought a book from Mat Buckland called "Programming Game AI by Example" and hope to archive some good results with it.
The music that plays in the background of both videos will be part of the Subsonic soundtrack by the way.
Well, that's it for the moment - I hope you enjoyed the videos and had some fun. Hope to see you back in my next blog about Subsonic.
Take care!
Martin
#2
09/02/2006 (5:11 am)
cool looking game... kinda reminds me of yager on the xbox 
#3
09/02/2006 (7:22 am)
Looks really cool Martin. Keep it up! :D 
#4
09/02/2006 (7:25 am)
Looks good, I like it :-)!
#5
@Phil: Yes, problematic when there are vehicle-2-vehicle collisions or vehicle-2-ground collisions. I'm running at the moment an integration rate of 3 and it works more or less good. There might be some tweaking necessary later on, but for the moment it seems ok.
I'm really keen on having this one running with MS 4 with full shadows of the vehicles on the Atlas terrain.
09/02/2006 (11:48 am)
Thanks guys for the nice comments. @Phil: Yes, problematic when there are vehicle-2-vehicle collisions or vehicle-2-ground collisions. I'm running at the moment an integration rate of 3 and it works more or less good. There might be some tweaking necessary later on, but for the moment it seems ok.
I'm really keen on having this one running with MS 4 with full shadows of the vehicles on the Atlas terrain.
#6
09/06/2006 (8:04 am)
Martin... That really looks like a lot of fun... Terminal Velocity jumps to mind...
#7
09/06/2006 (11:34 am)
@James: He he, right. TV (and Forsaken) is what I have in mind when I started this project... :-)
#8
09/06/2006 (5:47 pm)
Yeah when I saw this I was thinking of the sequel to Terminal Velocity - Fury3 which I liked more. 
Torque 3D Owner Phil Carlisle
Watch out for the rigid body in the flying vehicles though, as it generally doesnt quite work.. If you up the integration rate you may be ok though. Certainly looks kinda fun!