Cloudburst - Another preview video
by Fenrir Wolf · in Torque Game Builder · 08/29/2005 (1:20 am) · 9 replies
It's been a busy last few months here, but I have been working on Cloudburst, on and off.
I wanted to create this video back when I posted my last .plan, but due to the sync timing issues I've talked about in General Discussion, I wasn't able to use FRAPS to nab it. But here it is!
Preview movie (high quality, QuickTime 7 format, 11 megs)
Preview movie (low quality, AVI format, 9 megs)
Keep in mind that a lot of the art is still temporary, and the GUI hasn't been ironed out yet. The character dialog is also incorrect. :) The spread cannon is seen in this video, along with the secondary weapon (charge-cannon). This is not the only weapon combination that will be present in the game, as you will be able to acquire newer, better weapon systems.
Mainly what is demonstrated in this video is the new bullet system, which allows me to create fairly complicated patterns.
Everything is very rough and unpolished, expect a lot of the enemies to change or even be replaced outright, including their behaviors, firing patterns, etc.
Anyway, enjoy. :)
I wanted to create this video back when I posted my last .plan, but due to the sync timing issues I've talked about in General Discussion, I wasn't able to use FRAPS to nab it. But here it is!
Preview movie (high quality, QuickTime 7 format, 11 megs)
Preview movie (low quality, AVI format, 9 megs)
Keep in mind that a lot of the art is still temporary, and the GUI hasn't been ironed out yet. The character dialog is also incorrect. :) The spread cannon is seen in this video, along with the secondary weapon (charge-cannon). This is not the only weapon combination that will be present in the game, as you will be able to acquire newer, better weapon systems.
Mainly what is demonstrated in this video is the new bullet system, which allows me to create fairly complicated patterns.
Everything is very rough and unpolished, expect a lot of the enemies to change or even be replaced outright, including their behaviors, firing patterns, etc.
Anyway, enjoy. :)
#3
08/29/2005 (11:50 am)
The new bullet stuff rocks. I particularly loved the spread gun fired by the enemy fighters. Very spiffy. :)
#4
08/29/2005 (11:02 pm)
Could you perhaps zip those files ? Web Marshall is giving me grief. 
#5
-Peter
08/30/2005 (3:00 pm)
Just out of curiosity, what kind of system specs are you running with? I'd also like to see your code for the text boxes. I'll probably spend several weeks making versital text boxes. It would be great for someone else to make their code a resource. I'm sure there's a number of people who could use it. Also, are your bullets a particle effect or just sprites? Sorry for asking so many question. It's just that the movie looks so good. Nice work.-Peter
#6
Looks great, seems like a lot of fun (I'm a big fan of the old Gradius/R-type style shooting games). Keep on it, looks like it'll be a blast!
08/30/2005 (9:46 pm)
Wow. Watching that movie was just so inspring! The colors and saturation of the graphics are just yummy! Definitely a great display of how to use particle effects for a really cool effect. Looks great, seems like a lot of fun (I'm a big fan of the old Gradius/R-type style shooting games). Keep on it, looks like it'll be a blast!
#7
Anyway, back to Cloudburst. It's going to be a different game from the demo, though. I don't want to go too much into it at such an early stage, but there'll be RPG elements in the game too -- so it's not all mindless button mashing. Also, the gameplay system will be much refined, as I have learned a lot from Adagio.
It will, of course, feature a detailed storyline that GWS games are known for. :)
@Erick: Ack! Okay, I will do that and then update this reply with the new links.
@Peter: The system I develop on is a dual 1.4 GHz AMD system (1600 MPs) with 1G of RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro video card. I have, however, tested CB on a low end system (850MHz Duron, 384 MB of RAM and a SiS built-in 3D video card) and it ran fine. (If a little sluggish at certain times when the screen is covered with bullets.)
The particles are just fxStaticSprite/fxAnimatedSprite objects, as I use the built-in collision system on T2D. Currently, it's impossible for particles to collide with ingame objects so that precludes their use as anything but visual. T2D is however fast, so I haven't had any trouble with literally hundreds of fx______Sprite objects onscreen.
The character text boxes are just standard GUI elements which are set visible or not, depending on when they are needed. They are simply temporary, and will be replaced with actual T2D scenegraph objects that will be animated. I have modified the fxTextObject2D class that was posted in resources and added a bunch of stuff, like multi-line support with word breaks, auto-size scaling for different resolutions and variable width fonts. If I can get time for it, I plan on cleaning it up and posting it as a resource.
One new change is that the ingame dialog will be completely skippable. I know some of you just want to blow stuff up, and don't care about the plot. So, unlike my prior games (Adagio comes to mind), the dialog will be skippable and will not cause you to wait.
@Jacob: Me too, that's why I'm making YASTG. (Yet another shooting game!) It's a genre that is sorely lacking quality. There are a ton of awesome shooters out there, but they just don't seem to get that much publicity.
Thanks for the comments. I am glad to inspire others to make great T2D games. :)
09/08/2005 (8:53 pm)
@Gregory: Yes, I know I said that I wasn't going to continue work on Cloudburst, but I was simply mobbed with responses to the game. Seems that people wanted to see more, so I am giving it to them. I will say this will be the last scrolling shooter sort of game that I shall do for a while, though. To be frank, even though I love that class of game to death, I want to work on something different. Just haven't entirely figured out yet what it will be. ;)Anyway, back to Cloudburst. It's going to be a different game from the demo, though. I don't want to go too much into it at such an early stage, but there'll be RPG elements in the game too -- so it's not all mindless button mashing. Also, the gameplay system will be much refined, as I have learned a lot from Adagio.
It will, of course, feature a detailed storyline that GWS games are known for. :)
@Erick: Ack! Okay, I will do that and then update this reply with the new links.
@Peter: The system I develop on is a dual 1.4 GHz AMD system (1600 MPs) with 1G of RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro video card. I have, however, tested CB on a low end system (850MHz Duron, 384 MB of RAM and a SiS built-in 3D video card) and it ran fine. (If a little sluggish at certain times when the screen is covered with bullets.)
The particles are just fxStaticSprite/fxAnimatedSprite objects, as I use the built-in collision system on T2D. Currently, it's impossible for particles to collide with ingame objects so that precludes their use as anything but visual. T2D is however fast, so I haven't had any trouble with literally hundreds of fx______Sprite objects onscreen.
The character text boxes are just standard GUI elements which are set visible or not, depending on when they are needed. They are simply temporary, and will be replaced with actual T2D scenegraph objects that will be animated. I have modified the fxTextObject2D class that was posted in resources and added a bunch of stuff, like multi-line support with word breaks, auto-size scaling for different resolutions and variable width fonts. If I can get time for it, I plan on cleaning it up and posting it as a resource.
One new change is that the ingame dialog will be completely skippable. I know some of you just want to blow stuff up, and don't care about the plot. So, unlike my prior games (Adagio comes to mind), the dialog will be skippable and will not cause you to wait.
@Jacob: Me too, that's why I'm making YASTG. (Yet another shooting game!) It's a genre that is sorely lacking quality. There are a ton of awesome shooters out there, but they just don't seem to get that much publicity.
Thanks for the comments. I am glad to inspire others to make great T2D games. :)
#8
-Peter
09/09/2005 (11:27 am)
GUI elements! Of course! My biggest problem with the GUI is that I don't own TGE and so am not allowed to know how to use the GUI (as some kind of twisted punishment I assume). Anyway, most of the stuff I do with the GUI is just guess work. I would be interested in that resource if you release it.-Peter
#9
If you want some hands-on example code for the GUI, I recommend downloading the TGE demo. It will have a lot of code in there for creating and manipulating GUI objects. It's how I learned to use the GUI, there was none of this fancy GUI tutorials around like there are now. ;)
Also I realized I said "particles" in my earlier post when I meant, "bullets." The bullets are sprites, not particles, in case there was any confusion. :)
09/13/2005 (2:17 pm)
@Peter: Yes, though as I stated I am moving away from GUI elements, as I want a much more dynamic system. You can animate GUIs, but it's a lot messier code-wise than manipulating sprite objects in T2D.If you want some hands-on example code for the GUI, I recommend downloading the TGE demo. It will have a lot of code in there for creating and manipulating GUI objects. It's how I learned to use the GUI, there was none of this fancy GUI tutorials around like there are now. ;)
Also I realized I said "particles" in my earlier post when I meant, "bullets." The bullets are sprites, not particles, in case there was any confusion. :)
Torque Owner Gregory Stewart
Keep up the good work!