Titan Network

Plan Z: General => Plan Z: General Discussion => Topic started by: Joshex on May 26, 2014, 04:53:12 AM

Title: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on May 26, 2014, 04:53:12 AM
I have been away for a while, during that time I started my own MMO project. It's been rough and I really have no graphics to show yet as I decided to start with programming and placeholders.

I prefer to do things by hand, so you wont see any models from MakeHuman or Daz.

The project does have an official name, however right now until it's released the code name is Project Bane.

It is intended to be a superhero MMO, however it has no intended basis on CoX, anything similar is purely coincidental or has forced-my-hand due to limitations of the english language and/or 3D space.

It's a one person project, so far in the last 2-3 months since it began I have a file system and updater, a server, a map loader, and now I'm working on the login/account client. - next is the character designer and then, gameplay (I really want to get to the character designer and gameplay soon I'm super hyped to begin these 2 aspects, especially seeing as they'll be easier that the stuff I've been doing)

I've had to program alot on my own, even my own text rasterizer for those who knows what that means, well right now it's a 252 line script and will get longer. Text rasterization isn't the only core aspect I've had to program, even had to program my own mouse and kick the system mouse to the curb.

This means I have total control over every aspect of the game.  Though, techncally it's hard to call it a "game" at the moment as there is little interaction besides a few clickable buttons and a text box.

I also managed to procure a host, as he is an old friend.

Update: bug circumvented. text writer is finished, text reader is next.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: SerialBeggar on May 26, 2014, 01:46:25 PM
Good luck with your endeavor!  :D
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on May 30, 2014, 01:15:55 AM
Good luck with your endeavor!  :D


Thanks. will keep working at it. sorry for the belated reply havn't been able to get on titan for long these past few days, seems my ISP is perma banned, TonyV is taking a look at it.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Styrj on May 30, 2014, 11:29:01 AM
Same here!  When it comes time for pre-Alpha/Alpha testing you sure wont have to look far! :D  Good luck with your project.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: JaguarX on May 31, 2014, 02:16:06 AM
good stuff. I aint been around as much as I like either. Two kids (stepkids but mine all the same) and change of career to follow a dream tends to do that it seems. But stopping by to say good stuff, good luck and "may the odds forever be in your favor. "
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on June 19, 2014, 02:07:24 AM
Indeed, I know alot of people will want to try it when it's in Beta right now It's in κ (kappa stage) I skipped λ (lambda) but will get to it very soon.

Update, I had some problems with the text reader but managed to work around the bugs. I have not tested my text reader in game yet because I got it to work in a new file for ease. heres to hoping.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Alpha Series on June 25, 2014, 02:22:29 AM
Wow,Joshex! That's Incredible! Congrats and best of luck, skill and resources to your efforts! Go,man,GO! I wish you much success and will keep you in my thoughts as one who deserves power flowed in his direction! Best Wishes!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 05, 2014, 02:48:45 PM
love your signiture Alpha Series, Ace Rimmer has always been one of my favorite dwarfies.

Update; I had some problems with the text renderer, namely the reader, I re-did it 3 separate ways then finally the last one (albeit the most complicated one) worked, the login account name field now works, next is the password field (really simple) and registration fields, they are all simple I bassically just have to copy a bunch of objects and relink the logic.

alas the hard work is done, meanwhile i have studied servers more in depth and am ready fo the firt log-in attempt, after that is the character designer.

quickly before VPN runs out, I learned somehting as a programmer, 1 is a singularity, 2 is a bool, 3 of anything that works is dynamic. oh well thats just something I work by each part of the costume designer will have 3 selections.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: DragonCommando on July 06, 2014, 05:59:08 PM
Good luck with the project!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 10, 2014, 11:01:30 AM
Update on the game: progress on the login server has been made, not tested but according to the way python works it should run (will test it later today after I make a DIR for the main game server and a game server to communicate with and update the account client to send a login request).

I have decided on psuedo-kerberos security for the server, wont get much into it but I know what I'm doing. Packets so far are not encrypted but sensitive info will be (need to research python network supported encryption keys).


Partially related:
The game and my motivation to complete it (plus a few features I havn't made public yet) have gotten me admitted to a reputable university for a 1 year masters study (even without showing anything, and no prior bachelor).

Though the game itself will be relatively free-to-run due to my friend with his own server (and the fact I can actually run the server on my own computer too as I made it 'light wieght' [a benefit of not using Game Engines built for specific game types]) there is the fact that college costs dough. I'm not necessarily asking titan to donate (I hate asking friends) so if people here could help spread the indiegogo page to other online social networking sources I'd be greatful.

Remember the donations are for my masters degree, not the game, I have opted to "rent my self out" in 3D perks to donors (projects completed after my master's is finished and hopefully an alpha release or 2nd issue).

The game and my master's are combined now, so they will take priority over 3D perks but donors have been notified about that in story and perk texts.

Anyways I will be publishing the indiegogo page later today/tomorrow, heres a quick look at it: http://www.indiegogo.com/project/preview/594e56b0

suggestions are welcomed.

In addition my girlfriend has also been accepted for study at the same college, and her family can't cover her tuition or dorm fees so, yeah, I'm going to try and help cover it with the indiegogo page.

As for my work in China, I went through several jobs getting bumped to part time and then not getting called, I barely have any savings. My billionaire friend has decided not to continue the business for which he'd need my help so I haven't been in contact with him for a while. So I'm not able to afford the masters course as of now. will edit again or post later with the published indiegogo page, if you don't see it I haven't published it, so feel free to comment on changes.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Relitner on July 10, 2014, 12:09:25 PM
love your signiture Alpha Series, Ace Rimmer has always been one of my favorite dwarfies.

Update; I had some problems with the text renderer, namely the reader, I re-did it 3 separate ways then finally the last one (albeit the most complicated one) worked, the login account name field now works, next is the password field (really simple) and registration fields, they are all simple I bassically just have to copy a bunch of objects and relink the logic.

alas the hard work is done, meanwhile i have studied servers more in depth and am ready fo the firt log-in attempt, after that is the character designer.

quickly before VPN runs out, I learned somehting as a programmer, 1 is a singularity, 2 is a bool, 3 of anything that works is dynamic. oh well thats just something I work by each part of the costume designer will have 3 selections.

eh ...I think you mean singleton (http://www.oodesign.com/singleton-pattern.html)? Not many black holes in programming. Not that I've seen at least  ;D
I wish you luck on your one-man MMO quest.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 10, 2014, 02:02:29 PM
eh ...I think you mean singleton (http://www.oodesign.com/singleton-pattern.html)? Not many black holes in programming. Not that I've seen at least  ;D
I wish you luck on your one-man MMO quest.

singularity means more than just the usage concerning black holes, my intended usage is to outline the often undynamic and possibly non-applicable-to-other-numbers-of-similar-operations nature of a program that works dealing with one entry, trigger or output.

In definition; singularity: something that only works in one instance or of random origin or only happens one time, often unable to be reproduced easily or to the same effect especially with the number of recorded occurences for it to be defined by the scientific method as a "law" (3).

Spoiler for Hidden:
sadly most of the scientists now days are "mad scientists" meaning they don't follow the 3 consecutive times rule (Replicability), a recent "possible" (used loosely) pancake-up in science was the discovery of the higgs boson particle; scientists were quick to rally around what could be a singular occurrence (a singularity) caused by degraded old equipment/ faulty new equipment outputing the wrong information or even faulty/hopeful math or code that produced a singular bug in the reading software in the specific situation presented.

Even pro-coders make pancake-ups and don't realize it till later sometimes, you can do pages and pages of code have one incorrect argument that is technically acceptable, therefore it yields no errors and the program runs as desired but that one argument could come back and do something unexpected when a freak change you didn't forsee happens. I have run into that already with the MMO several times, we call these bugs, they look OK until they do something wrong, then it's a pain to find them and thats dependant on if you want to notice them or want to use thier output.

For example the higgs boson was found by reading sub atomic particle charges over the course of the step by step explosion of colliding particles, there are innumerable possibilities that could prove that the particles behavior and mass are attributed to "forced conditions" and that it really was a different type of particle that was being forced to behave as scientists wanted and was registering a strange mass due to energy bleed from outside sources, another rule of the scientific method other than Replicability is Falsifiability(can someone propose why it might not be true logically and prove it 3 times?) and Ruling out rival hypotheses (if you look too hard for something then thats all you'll see, AKA observational bias.). The higgs boson though confirmed by the scientific community has not passed any of these 3 tests.

Finally to quote myself when asked what is "faulty/hopeful math", many scientists are mathematicians first rather than logical scientists first, they use math to come up with ideas and possibilities and then use math to prove it. Did you know, it's possible to write an equasion to prove that a chicken sandwich in a KFC in kentucky is the center of the universe and if consumed will cause our universe to collapse, wobble or become unstable. the math would be sound, no flaws and even work according to the proposed (coincidence) and yet be false.

Update: computer crashed! bad_pool_caller must be that driver the mechanic installed, it'll be a pain to replace it, it's the peer to peer driver.

oh well computer runs I just probably shouldn't use it for long periods of time as I have been.

I lost the work I did on the server before I could test it because I forgot to save, it's simple to remake.

Edit: remade!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 16, 2014, 02:28:09 PM
Update:

Lots of work done, however it's all over the place. I fixed a few bugs in the login window (still a few more but nothing serious.) the text now scrolls when the cursor hits the ends of the text box, however I'm going to have to parent the cursor to the active typing position or it doesn't follow this motion (which looks ... odd.. ) any bugs right now are topical bugs, not functionality bugs.

Server, Login server - check.
Client login Script - check.
Game Server handling of account stuff - partial (this is why I've been all over the place), I really need to define what terms will be sent to the gameserver and how as I make the character designer/ selector and gameplay. right now I have IP logging working so the server can route game information to whom ever needs it.

I should be able to have the Iota (sounds like "I ought to") test in august, then follow that with the Zeta test - key members who I can trust will be given a client to run and play the game for it's first time.

after that any bugs or suggestions will be delt with and the Beta will be opened. It's not far off in programming, artistically speaking there is still alot of work to do (which i plan to do during the course of my master's degree.

Side note, my current text writer is perfect for heavily controlled text fields such as account name and password fields, but it would be a massive mega pain in the donkey to program it for things like character background text, chat text or mail, so I have used some new found python skills to develop a MUCH more DYNAMIC text writer. The reader is still similar to the current set-up.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Alpha Series on July 17, 2014, 12:19:36 AM
Wow..sounds like great progress...Keep up the great work! I read your updates, best of luck! And thanx for the note about Ace Rimmer! You're the only one to say anything about it!


 "Of course there's a silicon heaven. Where would all the toasters and calculators go?"
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on August 03, 2014, 10:13:42 AM
Wow..sounds like great progress...Keep up the great work! I read your updates, best of luck! And thanx for the note about Ace Rimmer! You're the only one to say anything about it!


 "Of course there's a silicon heaven. Where would all the toasters and calculators go?"

Lyster " how come you didn't over load like he did?"
Kryten " because I knew something he didn't, I was Lying! No silicon heaven?! rediculous! where would all the calculators go?"

Update;

Certain net problems have limited my abilities to test the server files, however I have checked and rechecked the code cleaning up any possible unclear sections and adding in any necessary checks and balances, I'm 99.9999% sure they'll work or be easy to fix if they don't. I have currently bypassed the server login and finally left the login screen!

everything is set-up to be sent as a network message however it's just currently saved to an in-game dictionary until my main computer's net is fixed.

the server and character selection screen was "buttoned" saving all art for later there are placeholders for any such content. The character designer has been started! at the current point I am merely going through adding buttons, drop down menus, spawn points and slider bars and seting up information relays which will eventually output to the server.

After I'm finished (or possibly during the character designer) I will begin finalizing gameplay.

things just got alot easier and funner, the only problem is restraining myself from doing artistic aspects rather than finishing the various menus and windows. That and adjusting to the lack of programming complexity at this point.

I might be able to have a zeta test here in august providing there aren't many IRL interruptions. The beta test probably wont be till later in the fall.

Naturally the game is still not worthy to be shown, a bunch of buttons and windows panels with a little text is not the first graphics I'd like to present people with.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Alpha Series on August 07, 2014, 12:12:10 AM
Thanx for the update, Joshex! Also, thanx for correcting that line of dialogue... I was going from memory and thought I had it right. I'm glad you knew that episode! some of the seriously most funny stuff I've ever seen was on that show! Anyway, thanx again for all your hard work! Best of luck to you!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on August 16, 2014, 03:58:24 AM
So,

I shouldn't make mentions like this:

Quote
I might be able to have a zeta test here in august providing there aren't many IRL interruptions.

I had a major IRL interruption since I said that, I have had close to no time to work on the project, my GF lost our wallet at the small post office near here (think mom and pop shop) anyways someone stole it.

 So we have been cancelling our bank cards and getting them and I.D. cards re-issued, it's been a royal mess, coupled with helping my girlfriend and myself apply for UK student visas and teaching english classes early in the morning and late at night, and cooking for us, it's been rough.

patience and over all day dreaming have been my best allies these few weeks during many long waits away from home without a computer.

I still have yet to get my replacement bank card or I.D. card as I will have to go back to the USA to get them during which time I'll be strapped for time trying to go for my visa appointment in New York.

looks like the august Zeta test won't be possible. and trust me that bums me out more than most people. It even adds to my developer's block disorder, I never knew there was such a thing but it has to do with how the subconscious interprets us telling it that we can't do something right now even when we want to and have a strong drive to do it. the outcome is the subconscious starts to interpret this delay with intensity or difficulty of the project, then we become hessitant or feel hopeless about the project, the cure is Nike's old slogan "just do it", problem is I may not have time for around 4 - 6 days.

sigh, oh well I've had time to finish thinking out some of the specifics for the stories of the main NPC's even some which will not debut in the first release. Just need to write them down.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on September 26, 2014, 12:22:58 PM
Hi titan, well after a really chaotic 2 months of getting everything in order for my masters programme, I am finally settled to a schedule and have a strong case of developer fever that I can't shake.

I am going to finally work on graphical aspects so there will be something to show soon at least of a city environment (zeta).

zeta means it's just going to be a basic environment, the layout may change a lot later.

Update: A new steel texture has been made!, slow progress is not no progress.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i61.tinypic.com%2F2q9j1ms.png) and one steel girder, a building block of a city. Construction begins.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on October 29, 2014, 12:51:55 PM
Finally found some time amidst school work to continue building the game, I made a streets test map, no buildings yet and the streets need textures plus this isn't a final layout it's just to help me build the layout of the first city zone map. and yes I'm aware of the holes, my sidewalks still need end blocks for the street side.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i62.tinypic.com%2F33066fk.jpg)
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on November 08, 2014, 04:46:22 PM
AI work has been done and tested, I now know quite a lot about methods used to create simple video game character AI's! in other news I have picked up work on the server again finally getting back in my developer's groove after a few months of getting settled into programs.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: JaguarX on November 09, 2014, 02:15:45 AM
looks like you are coming right along there.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on November 09, 2014, 05:11:03 PM
looks like you are coming right along there.

Thanks for the encouragement, I have a lot to do still but indeed it is coming along.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on November 23, 2014, 11:52:27 AM
Plan Z will continue developments after december 11th

essays and such for the masters program still need to be finished, and  still need at least 5 replies to my survey for data collection.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on December 09, 2014, 08:17:07 PM
I am almost done with my masters program for this semester, I'll have till mid January to work on this, also, I'm willing to help any of the phoenix projects with assets if needed.

Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on December 17, 2014, 02:26:58 PM
Update;

Today I finally threw out my fears of failure and fears of the scripts not working due to some inability of python or something (believe you me, there have been a few instances already in the past).

Anyways, I ran the server and client today to check and make sure messages were being sent, received and processed correctly.

the result was a success. *wipes sweat from worry off head*

naturally there were a few errors but nothing serious just misplaced ' or " or the wrong type of brackets. I'll skim through and fix them.

I also worked out a dynamic player allocation/recognition system, it runs during log-in and assigns each player a session number which is then referenced to a file by the same name in the server directory, the file contains the account name, IP, and port. there is also a reset for these so when a player is logged off the same port can be reused for another player's login.

COMPLICATED STUFF - not really just a whole bunch of dynamic entries and whatdos but it could be confusing to a reader.

the game still has no characters though, and the scenery is limited, I'll work on fixing such things over the holiday break. progress has slowed down due to school and now work interfering with my active time.

Edit; I also started a side project game to test my game texturing skills, so far it's looking really good. though texture sizes will have to be increased to compensate for more randomness of details such as gum splats on the sidewalks (this is because blender's GE doesn't seem to like multiple UVs for the same texture area to be used for different images. I will test this again today to see if I can better define the multiple UVs but if not, the back-up plan just requires more memory usage..
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: KennonGL on December 17, 2014, 09:21:31 PM
You go there Joshex.   ;D

Sounds like you're making some nice progress.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Blackout on December 17, 2014, 09:39:00 PM
Its great that your making so much progress, good luck with the rest of the project :).
I do have a bit of a question though, more because of the other successor projects than for any other reason; How difficult is it to create an mmo with a one man team? I know that there have been some great games out there that have come from one man development teams like Cave story and Dust and Elysian Tale, but an mmo takes a massive amount of effort to manage, let alone create. Just wondering, anyway great work and good luck.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: KennonGL on December 18, 2014, 02:32:30 AM
Several metric tons of effort.

When I (in my spare time) built a reverse engineered server for UO, built/populated my game maps, etc
it took me nearly a full year. 

And that was just for the game engine, I didn't have to worry about creating graphics and animations.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on December 18, 2014, 07:05:16 PM
Its great that your making so much progress, good luck with the rest of the project :).
I do have a bit of a question though, more because of the other successor projects than for any other reason; How difficult is it to create an mmo with a one man team? I know that there have been some great games out there that have come from one man development teams like Cave story and Dust and Elysian Tale, but an mmo takes a massive amount of effort to manage, let alone create. Just wondering, anyway great work and good luck.

heh yeah, Kennon pretty much got it right, it takes a lot of effort, the best I can do is to keep pecking away at it, if some day I can take a serious bite versus a peck, I have avoid shock, calm down and let myself know I'm still along way from done and should keep at it.

If, by chance you have already dealt with a specific instance and are confident in it, production can get rather fast, if however you have never done it before it can take months or at least a full day's work to make a little progress, luckily I think I got the serious "months" out of the way, still 30 days is one month so 30 smaller features could take a month.

What I can tell you, is it's valuable to have generalized side projects as the assets you create for them can often be reused. speaking of which I have a good start at a male character model base thanks to a previous project, still needs feet and hands and a head but other than that, it looks pretty super that's for sure. no picture yet, not at least till it's skinned and such.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on December 25, 2014, 09:03:16 PM
Finally I semi-finished one of the base models, I still need to rig it which will be a challenge, its a high resolution model, I'm hesitant to show it as it needs some proportion fixes. At least till I fix the proportions and rig it, and put a speedo or something on it. it just looks odd, like an action man figure painted completely flesh tone but without even a trademark insignia, just a bulge.

edit;

proportion problems 99% fixed, rigging commences!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: healix on December 27, 2014, 09:28:38 PM
GO Joshex! GO Joshex!

(https://i.imgur.com/zTkdelW.gif)
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on December 30, 2014, 12:02:29 AM
GO Joshex! GO Joshex!

(https://i.imgur.com/zTkdelW.gif)

Thanks for the cheering Healix, been trying to think how to reply all day.

I suppose an Update will do, I've rigged the head except the mouth (I'm contemplating a spawn point in there). I will make spawn points for eyebrows and for eyelashes, I stole the eyeballs from the Zone-tan model, but will eventually have eyeballs spawned from a spawn point as well, I'm running at 2672 polygons for the high resolution model with no clothes or hair.

Spawn points will be used to spawn in things that can't easily be done using shape-keys or have far too much variation to expect one model to suffice.

The model has Individual fingers and toes, however only the fingers will be animated (it was to save polygons and processing power), as of now there are no knuckles on the fingers, if after all is said and done and the budget still has room I'll add them in.

To set the stage; This model came from a previous project I abandoned due to inability to get a license from Konami, the body was originally based off the body of Christopher Belmont from the Gameboy box art of Castlevania 2: belmont's revenge. Many changes have been made since then. Been watching a lot of Ultimate Muscle lately to try and get some of the muscle definitions right.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i62.tinypic.com%2F6ye6pi.jpg)

please let me know what you think of it so far, the final rigging will include abilities to morph into any physic from skinny to muscly to fat in various body areas, after this is a sleek version of the same model, then female fit and sleek versions.

Edit;

Made teeth and tongue, added knuckles, rigged most of face except mouth, will make spawn points in mouth for teeth and tongue. will separate top teeth from bottom, then rig mouth.

After this my vacation time will be over until I get my next essay done (should be done in a week).

Also did a flight power test today. managed to get a toggle flight on a moveable cube which is a placeholder for the character.

the model stands at 2980 polygons without clothes, 10k with clothes is the max point I'm shooting for with max resolution.

the resolution models, later I will adapt the game models for different computer strengths, they will be as follows;

Character Resolution (poly count) goals:
Max Res: 10k+
High Res: 4k - 6k
Mid Res: 2k -3k
Low Res: 1k - 1.5k (blocky stage 2 -ish, for thoseof you who know what 'blocky' stage 2 looks like)
Least Res: 500 - 750 (blocky-ish) because some players will be on extremely low end computers.

well, the face is rigged except for the tongue and can change size and such to make different face from it, it animates nicely.

The Upper teeth and lower teeth (set 1) are made, tongue 1 is made, eyes (set 1) is made. next will be working my way down the neck, still need to make Hair 1 and a default underwear texture skin but other than that it looks good, at least to me it does (let me know if there's anything you'd prefer.

Edit: tongue rigged, I thought it could be useful for emotes or such.

Almost forgot to rig the eyes lol, that's easy though will find time today, I at least want to get this part done. There are several more rigging challenges, such as the abs and arms the added muscle geometry will make for some pretty (and time consuming) weight painting.

I Also can't forget they need to be rigged to expand too. then texturing begins, I may need to make a second overlay model for secondary texture colors on the various parts.

Edit2: eyes1 is rigged, all bones are named.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on January 07, 2015, 08:17:54 PM
not feeling well, haven't even played games today. gosh that's bad. I have some sort of stomach thing, I don't feel hungry and when I do just a tiny little food can make me feel full. if it's not better tomorrow I'll go to the doctor.

anyways, I opened up the game design doc for some figuring today, wrote out the XP scales, Item drop percents (based on rarity) and game currency scales, so now all that is math ready to be input to the game once it's at that stage. I also worked out a profit making basis that's not annoying for players who don't want to spend and wrote out some Power Set descriptions for melee units.

don't know I just feel dull and weak. probably just a stomach bug or a basic cold, but not eating and feeling like I have to make several runs to the toilet when I do is not good.

Edit;

Also if you find I am redoing something I've already done then it's because I came up with a better idea. for example I'm redoing the battle statistics, the economy, profit ideas and other things, simply because I came up with better systems that will be more agreeable and fair.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Alpha Series on January 10, 2015, 01:51:16 AM
Sorry to hear you're feeling a bit under the weather, I wish you well and hope you're feeling better very fast! That is just fantastic news on your stellar progress! I'm constantly amazed to read your updates and see the amount of production you've achieved already! I wish you the best and may all your work go smoothly and exactly the way you want it to proceed! Best of luck to you, Joshex! You certainly know how to rock!

Quite Sincerely, Alpha.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on January 11, 2015, 12:22:22 PM
Sorry to hear you're feeling a bit under the weather, I wish you well and hope you're feeling better very fast! That is just fantastic news on your stellar progress! I'm constantly amazed to read your updates and see the amount of production you've achieved already! I wish you the best and may all your work go smoothly and exactly the way you want it to proceed! Best of luck to you, Joshex! You certainly know how to rock!

Quite Sincerely, Alpha.

Thanks!, I am eating again (albeit one or 2 meals), but Its still not digesting properly, so i have limited energy, I went to a doctor they said it should right itself with-in a week. almost done with my essay, just need to summarize my research and add a bibliography.

classes start again on Monday and I work a bit, but I will make time to work on this (it's a hobby and fun to me).

yesterday I added in rigging to widen or shorten the shoulders. I Might be able to get this presentable/beta testable by summer what with school and work.

edit, aaaand my neck lost several inches of thickness.. I look like a cartoon castaway that's been stuck on a deserted island. I'm gonna have to go back to the doctor, stomach still hurts and such too.. it's only been a few days, to loose that much thickness of my neck means something is seriously wrong.. fix it self in a week they said..

i find myself with no energy and no mental drive to do anything. I wish i could do everything myself lol but even if I feed myself my body isn't doing it's part.. my diet is good, lots of vitamins, ETC... stomach no worky..

edit2, I must be getting better, today i crossed the line of  "no energy or drive and are bored | LINE | no energy not bored want to work on projects"  and was very thankful for it, sadly I had to work lol, but now I look forwards to free time tomorrow.

bad update, I've got a fever, might be a cold I hurt all over and taste blood when I breathe, didn't have this problem till a one of the tenants decided to smoke all night and flooded the whole place with it. setbacks, setbacks. I'll get better eventually, just a string of bad luck lol..

24 hour cold, I don't think I'm sick any more, I feel much better, body recovering from any physical damages the sickness did. will work on the project today.

Quote
Joshex -
Known power sets; Willpower,
Statistics; toxic defense low, toxic resistance moderate, regeneration High
lol sorry just had to do that.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on January 18, 2015, 04:05:19 PM
I knew that hefty text system would come back to bite me eventually, there's no problem with it, it's just too big to figure out whats what after not looking at it for months. I will be attempting to make a simplified version that functions off less objects and only 1 to 2 scripts it needs to work for the chat system.

the updater could use some revisions, the plan with it previously was to merely recieve data from the updated files on server side via message and write them into files on player side, that will work for some files but not all, it gives errors when attempting to do so with binary files, I'm attempting to find a fix, seems I might have to consider using more than just python.

I mean, it's /SUPPOSED/ to work in python with
Code: [Select]
open('filename', 'wb') where wb means 'write binary', but the only way to tell it what to write is to do Open('filename', 'wb').write() and .write() only accepts a string or buffer, not a file's contents or a list (which many of the binary files are seen as).

I've also looked into ftplib in python, it should work but I'd have to enable some sort of FTPserver on the updater to send the files to. might end up having to do that.

EDIT: will not need an FTP server, I got it to save the file using the previous method. updater just needs files to update now.


Edit2: the male model needs to have the eyes smoothed a bit, this will add a few polygons, I only need to add 2 to 3 rings. at worst it will double the eyes poly count but I don't think it will be that bad.

New question; What do you think When I say "Basic Superpowers"?
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on February 03, 2015, 08:03:33 PM
Well, in a strange turn of events I found time to finish rigging the muscle man model! (except the hands for now) he is very flexible! which is good considering what superheroes go through.

Now for the fun part, Animations!

Edit: 2/9/2015

finding time to work on it is hard what with work, school and daily life as previously stated. But I made some progress, an overhead double arm smash animation has been made, it was actually pretty easy and took about 10 minutes with distractions.

after the foreseeable animations are done more customization options will be made. Customization will be a key of this project as will animations.

pictures/ videos of the character-base model in action will be available on request.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: ValianceOnline on March 02, 2015, 05:31:48 PM
pictures/ videos of the character-base model in action will be available on request.

/request

;)
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Drauger9 on March 04, 2015, 09:32:23 AM
/request

;)

Seconded! Request please.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on March 06, 2015, 01:12:31 PM
Seconded! Request please.
/request

;)

OK then! sorry for the late reply, been busy lately with my courses. a couple videos coming up later today, got class in 2 hours, and an hour walk both ways. videos should be up in 6 hours or so!

Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on March 06, 2015, 09:19:46 PM
Sadly I'm back late will get to the videos ASAp, had to meet with one of my course groups to discuss a group project, then other distractions including food shopping intervened.

I guess I should stop putting deadlines on thing and just release it when able ;)

will record the game animations tomorrow, day was too long.

Edit:

Lol so up until now I hadn't rigged the hands, and this was intentional to save time as it could be done later, I decided later might as well be now so I can do hand anims too. I began making the bones and then realized one thumb was shorter than another, sure enough the right hand didn't undergo the same effects I did to the left hand when building it, so I'm gonna have to put in the knuckles and make the vertices symmetrical to the finished hand. EDIT: FIXED

I was planning to make more animations than I currently have before showing, (have 3 at the moment 2 idle anims and one power anim.), but my schedule seems eaten up by school and work.

YAY Sunday is free! I'm sure I can get the videos up today!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Alpha Series on March 08, 2015, 08:41:55 PM
Well done,Joshex! Amazing you find time to do any work on this project with all you have going on! I wish you the best with all your projects and work!  Rock on, you super hero!

Sincerely, Alpha
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on March 09, 2015, 12:05:10 AM
Well done,Joshex! Amazing you find time to do any work on this project with all you have going on! I wish you the best with all your projects and work!  Rock on, you super hero!

Sincerely, Alpha

Thanks!

And as promised I ade a short video of some of the current animations, including one I added in tonight to honor Leonard Nemoy.

going to have to make a few adjustments here and there but at least he's moving. the hands can make a nice fist too, I'll make another video just showing the fist close up so people can see clearly. Took lots of work the hands especially, but that's normal.

http://youtu.be/kFPmJz2KHfQ

Emote/ attack Animation requests? If I know what I'm aiming for I can typically pump simple anims out in 10 minutes to half an hour depending on the amount of frames.

Maybe a picture of the fist is better:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i61.tinypic.com%2F2dbndw1.png)
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Drauger9 on March 09, 2015, 06:54:12 AM
Nice, thanks for the video.

I was just interested to see what the animations would look like LOL!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on March 16, 2015, 12:18:07 AM
Essays, Essays and graphical work and more graphical work lol. I get to use the character model for something this term, he will be getting some outfits and hair selections over the next few weeks.

I'm monkeying with shapekeys too, I've gotten them to work in the Game engine before but I tried last night to no avail, I think I know what went wrong though.

I hope to have a character designer, set-up for next term along with basic game-play examples. For speed I will be making it offline for the time being, I can just punch things into server messages later and switch the statistical calcs to the server side. easy to say it than do it though lol...
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on March 24, 2015, 11:13:41 PM
Re-tested shapekeys, I had obviously forgotten a few steps, works wonderfully now. just need to apply these skills to the model when I get a chance.

I used shapekeys to make a test for a resizable 3D window in the game, works great, but I'll have to set boundaries for stuff in the window, pictures will have to scale with it as I have no ability at present to do cut-offs for anything other than text.

limitations, so far the only real limitations are ;
1: you can't use 2 shapekeys at the same time if they use the same verticies. (can't blend shapes, it will always start with the basis shape)
2: you can't add verticies to a shape later on in the shape animation or it's ignored (shapekeys don't control added or deleted verticies!)

what this means, non-muscular body possible? yes. male to female slider possible? No (at least not without adding in the extra points from the start, but that might make some male parts look funny), individual body part control? yes using vertex groups.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on March 30, 2015, 09:39:09 PM
Delay encountered;

I just spent the last 2 days doing all-nighters to produce enough graphical assets to make a presentation for my masters degree, to be honest some of the stuff can be used for the game but some is way too high poly, I'm sure I can adapt it later but for now it's irrelevant to the game.

procrastination on schoolwork is bad, yes I got it done in time but it was rough and I wish I had given myself more time.

end result is I have 3 months till my final presentation I also have 1 essay to write in the next 2 days, and one to rewrite over the next 7 days, then 2 to proofread over the same period, I will be focusing 100% of my work on getting it done so there may be no decent updates here for a while.

The end result is; I will be unable to meet the august deadline I made for the beta. too much to do, too little time. I will have nothing to do come September onwards so I look forwards to something serious this fall or winter.

For the purpose of making myself do less effort, the game will need encryption, I've gone over several communication and bot-testing methods to largely do-without encryption however log-ins and other sensitive data will need to be encrypted, for that reason if someone here knows a good encryption system (I know codewalker seems to know a lot about blowfish) please do explain it here and I'll pick which method seems the easiest to do while yielding the strongest encryption.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on April 14, 2015, 07:28:55 PM
Working on my own encryption key style, I suppose it's similar to blowfish (did some research on it) I just want to know if anyone can read this:

Ic9dp73tN201li6428Ex12345
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Felderburg on April 15, 2015, 02:07:27 PM
Working on my own encryption key style, I suppose it's similar to blowfish (did some research on it) I just want to know if anyone can read this:

Ic9dp73tN201li6428Ex12345

Sure. It says: "I see 90 pee, 's even t' nitro one. Lithium 64, 28 ex." And then... hey, that's my luggage combination!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on April 15, 2015, 05:52:39 PM
Sure. It says: "I see 90 pee, 's even t' nitro one. Lithium 64, 28 ex." And then... hey, that's my luggage combination!

thanks! the feedback helps! looks like the encryption key works.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Felderburg on April 15, 2015, 08:24:13 PM
thanks! the feedback helps! looks like the encryption key works.

Just gonna throw it out there that I was joking, and have no knowledge of how to do anything with encryption keys. So I would not base any judgement of it "working" on my post, since I just used phonetics to make stuff up.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on April 15, 2015, 10:52:01 PM
Just gonna throw it out there that I was joking, and have no knowledge of how to do anything with encryption keys. So I would not base any judgement of it "working" on my post, since I just used phonetics to make stuff up.

I know, I was trying to taunt some of the code breakers here to have a go to prove me wrong after I said my model works.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on April 18, 2015, 07:46:43 AM
So, back to making the environment for now, working on sky box stuff, so far so good. I plan to make it so the player almost never sees the same sky unless it's a clear blue sky.

I'm satisfied with the initial clouds made, albeit digitally generated textures.

next I need buildings to go with my roads.

drawing out building part silhouettes, got a few. will play city/icon to see if there's any basic designs I missed.

missed a few basic attributes but now have a full list.

half the list has geometry, working on the rest of the list.

making building bases 3D. to clarify this is just the bottom portion of buildings connecting to the ground. what I wouldn't give to have my kick-ass brick texture off my linux hard drive, I foresaw this day and saved it to a zip-drive, but to no avail I accidentally left it in the USA during the rush to get my belongings into the car before heading to the airport. oh well, I'll have to remake it.

of course, the smarter thing to do would have been to take some pictures of the shape's usages in the game.... going back in for round 2.

screenshots folder... sad. deceased friends' SG base on Freedom. Got the pictures in right before SG rent was due for the last time.

Main building exterior parts Done. Texture time, time to remake those bricks!.

Went out and got some texture references from IRL. will also search photobucket for a picture of my old brick map, failed not on photobucket. oh well, those bricks had a very distinctive texture. just have to search for something similar.


Well, I decided I just can't do without that specific brick texture (it's one of those things I just can't let go) so I will ask family to send it to me. Next I have decided to test out battle stuff in the Game engine, it's a really simple set-up and could realistically become the meat of the server representation of characters and enemies.

I am nearly finished programming movement and status effects for the battle system, after that Defense and Res and other (New) stats.

Last step was to add in a typing movement lock, so when the player is typing arrow keys and w,a,s,d,x and SPACE will not cause motion.

now to make the hit and damage doc.

Listing out value holders and stat boxes. the goal will be to keep stats in live memory rather than burn out a hard-drive with excessive read write operations.

many more stat boxes to go, I might decide to do them on separate objects the list is longer than 1 screen length, gonna make it hard to link the bricks.

funny thing noticed from mids, CoX had no Status Effect Defense...... it had protection based on magnitude but that's a different system, defense is percent based, I suppose they deemed that would make it too hard for the effects to hit unless the attack was pure/primarily [hold] etc.

the question is, I have a system with BOTH status defense and status protection, is this too much? I suppose that's why I'm making the battle system to test the ability to hit with various things. so I guess I'll just keep making it my way and see if it's a fair system.

4:35pm 4/29/15: in order to begin I've had to finish listing out all possible statistics and effects and now move on to programming targeting ETC. after that i should be able to tie it all together and give it a go, but ti may be a longer process than said.

for ease I have begun timing my edits, though edits before this one have not been timed.

12:05pm 4/30/15 : I redid the stat boxes, separating them out onto different objects by group so that each is less than a page long (more manageable).

Began programming the targeting. there will be around 6 or 7 different Tab targeting types.

1:10 pm 5/2/15: I don't know why but for some reason I end up working all over the place, I made an Icon for an item and started working on making better tutorial mission texts. I decided rather than try to tell a story just introduce the player to the game environment.

5:00 pm 5/3/15: after a few days of doing other things because I kept looking at the character control cube and the stat boxes and going "??? what now.." I think I finally get it, in fact I wish I had gotten this back when I wrote the server, this will be A LOT easier to handle. Well no rush eh? might as well redo the server in this simplified method.

Ok being less cryptic the new method does all the player handles on a player specific control cube, the only question left is how to import each player's control cube with logic from the already present control cubes already linked to it.

the obvious answer is to create a router object on each map which takes name data from objects that send a request to it's controllers and uses that to route info to and from player/enemy objects. there in are some problems that I'll have to figure out.

11:14 5/5/15: today my goal is to create the start of this chain in the new server model, the logon to character spawn for character identification, so long as the router can identify what character is doing what then we have a functioning multi-player environment.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on May 11, 2015, 10:34:24 PM
So, I have a few minor interruptions, writing a pHD proposal for someone.. that is mind numbingly hard.

I wrote out a definitive list of things I need to accomplish to get the game playable for august, albeit in single player mode without the networking for a degree show.

Fun hectic times. I figured out how CoX did their power levels, each power level can be split into a certain number of points, these points are spent on things like Damage intensity, effects, distribution types (DoT AoE ETC.) and cast/recharge speed. using that same system I was able to develop a system to make fair 'power-sets'. Though my game doesn't adhere strictly to this concept. I suppose that's the only hint I'll give so far as to how it differs from CoX.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on May 13, 2015, 08:58:54 AM
not so fun times now. no idea what to say, depressed. at least I don't have to work on the persons PhD proposal any more, they aren't talking to me.

but at least for today I have no mood to work on anything.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Blackout on May 13, 2015, 01:07:55 PM
My condolences about your depression, and good luck with the rest of project Bane when you get back to working on it :)
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on May 14, 2015, 10:09:59 AM
My condolences about your depression, and good luck with the rest of project Bane when you get back to working on it :)

thanks, it means a lot.  yesterday I got through the worst of it I think, might be rough time to time but I gotta finish this project if I want the time and money spent on this masters degree to not go to waste.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on May 15, 2015, 06:14:37 PM
Tutorial Text Finished, I'm quite happy with it, is 9 missions too much? should I round it to 10?

For my degree show the game will only have the tutorial area. and I'm going to avoid Text importation for mission text and use images instead (saves time and headaches).

gotta ignore life's downs and just keep working, if I pick the easy road I can do this.

My degree show will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland sometime in August-ish , as my programme is a research programme the professor has decided it's best to wait till everyone is ready before putting a final date or location on the degree show. There is a possibility that it will only take place for 1 day, I will keep people informed as much ahead of time as possible.

However for anyone wishing to play the game tutorial who cannot make it on that day; I am considering putting it on display at "Games Hub" in Edinburgh for a few more days depending on how many requests there are to play it, how many people can make it, and peoples schedules, and pending Games Hub's agreement to let me operate the tutorial there (I have not even asked yet and they have no clue unless they are reading this).

I will keep people informed, and again thankyou for your support, in many ways!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on May 18, 2015, 10:28:18 PM
Actually getting in a good enough mood to do anything other than write out powers for sets seems hard. then again I do need sets written out so I'm not stumped in the game.

Still thinking how I'll do the powers and power sets physically in the game, even if I leave them as an external list to be referenced their values still need to sit in a box somewhere for reference during game play. The only thing I can think of is something I don't want to do (Make each power it's own object), the other alternative is to make the Power Bar slots store this data for the powers connected to them, I suppose that's the best way. I better write it down so I don't have to rethink it and come to the same answer again later.

I've only written out 3 power sets (and not fully at that, most are just filled out to what players can achieve in the tutorial, or maybe a bit more than that).

only one set sparked my curiosity to see what I would use to fill it out, so one set is written out completely. so far it's just melee and armor sets, I need to focus on ranged now.

Complex game lol, I hope people don't find the character design too time consuming.

Side note, gotta remove a character reference from the tutorial and replace them, I just noticed that I didn't include the character I spent last semester designing, I should at least show this character as a main character to link my degree together.


6:48 pm 5/19/2015: Reworking the def and res numbers, seems they follow a more complex point system not as straight forwards as attacks. (I'm getting inspiration from mids numbers, problem is unlike attacks there seems to be less rules to what goes on, for example one set will have Lv 1 Smash lethal (30/30) where as others will have (10/10), and others will have Smash Lethal psionic (22.5/22.5/20) Confusing if you're trying to tier up some 'points' that various def power components are worth. I've already established that Click type def powers are free and toggles are +1 cost, and auto are +2 cost I'll just have to work out the rest slowly.

Seems to be the concept of "hallmarking" certain sets have their hallmarks and that effects the point distribution, now to figure out a method to reproduce this point distribution.

11:09 AM 5/20/2015: Study concludes: CoH Attacks balance out on a level basis, CoH Armor balances out on a whole power-set basis!

that makes the job hard, gonna have to get a full tally of the whole set and split and tier it out by level to find some sort of common ground I can use as a rule to distribute res and def.

9:12 pm 5/20/2015: screw attack that. gonna just get the highest yield use that and use the extra points to add set specific hallmarks.

11:59 AM 5/21/2015: New day: New Strategy.

I think I finally figured out the rules used to balance the armor powers in CoH, 8 points per power, click -0, toggle -1, auto -2, split(3 damage types) +0.6, Split(4 DTs) +?.?? [figuring this one out now], Effects Share original 8 points, could be (res, 4) (effect, 4) could be (res 5) (def 3)

each point corresponds to a set value on a value grid, so far this system can reproduce CoH Res power rules. the def values in the grid still need adjusting as does the Magnitude values

12:39 pm: OK got a fully working res power balancing system.

according to the numbers in Mids, using a points grid to determine values; if res is split into less than 3 damage types it adds nothing to the purchasing points, if it's split in 3 it adds 0.6 (making the total points 8.6), it seems they award more points for splitting by 3's so next is splitting the res by 6 which gives +1.2 (9.2).

the grid I'm using attributes so many points to different levels of damage/res/HP/heal ETC. 1 point is Weak, 2 points is minor, 3 points is moderate, 5 points is high (I decided to skip 4 cause it made it too easy to get high damage ETC) 6 points Very High, 7 points Extreme ETC.

Now to finish these sets and list them all out in a database for reference, then I can spend time fixing the tutorial text, then... next is between making all these power animations OR Finish programming the stat system in-game OR make textures and finish buildings then make Tutorial Area OR Finish the windows and add text spawn spots and rules.

so much to do, 3 months to do it! mega cram time.

11:45 5/22/2015: I need to stop posting things when I'm A: tired, or B: bored, and C: Not fully done with my calculations.

I woke up today and the rules doesn't work fully, gonna have to redo it but I have a method for it to work, cap is 90 so unenhanced res powers shouldn't total more than 50% excluding MoG, which damage types add up to 50 depends on the set, it could be 2 types, could be 3, could be 4 ETC. depends on the hallmark of the set.

This means it's not in direct relation to a points system, so I can scratch def and res off the grid and do them manually.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on May 26, 2015, 10:35:18 AM
Fixed the tutorial text! I'm happy with it.

Finished one armor set, got ranged sets and a few more melee sets to go that and manipulation.

once I'm done with that I'll be ready to stat plugging things in and finishing the programing of stat calcs.

I will be taking a trip to venice tomorrow for school, kinda like a field-trip. will only be there for a week, hopefully I can get some work done in the off hours.

I will work again in the afternoon when I return from a short list of errands in town. hopefully I can finish the sets today!

Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on May 26, 2015, 10:44:39 PM
Any resources on Video Game Theory or Theories would be great, I also have a thesis due in august. I'll probably have to end up searching the library here anyways.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on June 03, 2015, 01:31:43 PM
back to work on this today, had a bit of an interruption with a trip to venice.

got some things settled even on the trip but not as much as I wanted. gonna finish the interface design today cause I'm in the mood to do it.

Edit 6:51 6/3/2015: observed CoX window geometry, stair geometry, and fence geometry via icon.

power bar window collision geometry is a typical rectangular plane, the ovular edges shown are just a texture, the texture is transparent white to default, the color is changed by object color.

Stair geometry the visible geometry varies, the collision geometry seems sloped with flat regions.

fence geometry, interestingly enough they used 7 to 9 polygons on each metal fence pole, the chain links are a high res texture of one link set to repeat.

wooden fence geometry, I had expected the use of a single plane with two 6 poly crossbar supports or 3 6 polygon objects total to cut polygons, instead wooden fences use 1 6 polygon object for each wooden panel and support beam.

kinda expensive on the poly budget but it looks nice.

collision geometry for fences is a typical slim box.

fun research.

now for the fun modeling.

Edit: 4:41 PM 6/5/2015:
Got the power bar in the workings might need to make a few edits later to replace some empty meshes with planes that can hold a material for collision object name purposes.

began 3 new core scripts, Writing the player power set database reader now.am also in the middle of the power click/drag/activate script, started the window mover script.

Also imported the mouse script from a test file, there is now a functional 3D mouse object to interact with buttons etc. I will have to set some screen bounds or modify the script to match the object position to the actual mouse position rather than just inherit the motion of the mouse.

I think screen bounds will be the answer as I believe I already tried matching the mouse position to the 3D object position, the problem is the mouse position is in pixels originating from the top left and the 3D object is on a different grid with positive and negative axis ETC.

I wish I could use the system mouse but there is a problem with blender's 'mouseover' sensor, I forget what but made a note to avoid it, I think it works but only works once on one object, there probably is a way to make it work but then we'd have to use the silly OS mouse and it's looks, I know there are ways to replace it in blender with a texture but I prefer a 3D object cause it can do 3D stuff like rotate.

long note on the mouse.

I hope to get the combat system functioning soon.

6:20: just hit a small wall, figuring out whether to climb over it or walk around.. I made a Power Button and gave it 5 damage/effect type statistic value slots, the problem is it doesn't have enough statistic value slots for all def power applications, especially not MoG powers.

*checks Powerset logs* hmmmm level 0 defense set power +Res 7.5% (all) I could program an 'all' option in the reader and store that as one entry, but then what about 'all except psionic' ? add a negative buff to follow? or make a series of 'all except [power type]'s in the reader.

I think I'll go with the last one wont be as much work as writing in more statistic value holders.

6:49:

And then after finishing the definitions for reading one power from a set from a database I realize this is going to be a VERY LONG script full of definitions before I even get to the programming. I've got to think and see if I can come up with a less time consuming method.

7:01:

Of course, I was doing it the hard way!, I had ALL the power information being stored in player specific databases... so silly, all I needed was to store the power names. the numbers can be in the game on a pre-built object that can be spawned when necessary.

That will significantly lower the amount of definitions in the database reader.

still I'll keep the current work for later, may be useful for something that can't be stored in game.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on June 08, 2015, 01:53:20 PM
Finished a database reader for the power info that needs to be saved externally, with a note "#NEEDS LEVEL CHOSEN, NEEDS NUMBER OF SLOTS and LEVELS PLACED, NEEDS MORE POWERSETS, NEEDS 1FULL POWERSET, CAN BE ADDED LATER#"

needs more powersets; Only added 1 primary and 1 secondary so far.

needs 1 full powerset; I have tiered the powers, right now I haven't finished and attack sets past level 10 (the end of tier 1). at least one attack set is necessary for the NPCs who will fight in the tutorial, so I'll have to.

I figure I can add it all later. right now I'll just test the current stuff.

I also started on what CoX would call pool powers, I've got pool 4 sets each with 3 powers just to make it easy, the database has definitions for up to 5 powers a pool set. but those will be above level 10. I decided to start with transportation type pool powers as that will help build an atmosphere of what we all miss.

the sets differ from CoX, though there are some similar values such as names here and there.

The first two defense sets will be Invul and WP.

The first melee set is Super Strength. there will be at least 3 to 4 more melee sets (depending on how much time I find.)

Ranged sets and manipulation sets... have yet to get to those I need to, I'm hoping to have a selection of 4 to 5 sets (hopefully I find time.)

that's the status of current works.

Class today, will work more when I return.

Still have to make a proper female muscle build, but I really wanted to finish the animations first so they can automatically be on the female model as they are on the male.

lets see how far I can get.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on June 10, 2015, 04:15:47 PM
Oh lol, and just when I thought my python coding abilities were sound, ERROR.. I was like WTFmate?
Script1:
cont = GameLogic.getCurrentController()
own = cont.owner
actu = cont.actuators['actu']
actu.setProperty(own.name)

Script2:
actu2 = cont.actuators['actu1']
actu2.setProperty(scene.object[actu.getProperty()].actuators['actu'])
print actu2.getProperty()

it was like KeyError "CList [Key]: "" key not in list"

I was like WTFMATE!!!?

then I changed 'Property' to 'Value' and it works lol for some reason I remembered incorrectly, I though I could modify property name fields in the property actuators from in-game, that's a negative. I can only edit the value fields!

this sets more work for me, I will need to modify the database reader/writer and add some more actuators to the list for entries I placed in property fields. I could make the value fields a list [entry1, entry2] to hold more data ... let me test that now,  not sure it will work. I must keep in mind the value field has a text character limit of 31 characters.

not a major problem just a small pain, got some tedious work to do.

EDIT: 6:40 PM 6/10/2015:

OK I can put multiple entries in one value field so long as I either use space as a separator or define a character as the separator such as ','

string.split() will work, saves extra efforts.

Edit 7:48:

Heh statistical math is the easiest part to program, can get blender to do math homework for you lol. did a test of percentization , division, multiplication and addition, I already know subtraction works.


EDIT: 3:17 PM 6/11/2015:

Things are winding down!!!

BATTLE SYSTEM LOGIC EXPLANATION PARAGRAPHS COMPLETE. I already have the battle calcs complete since a while back. All that's left is to build this final step in the game based on whats written in these explanation paragraphs (basically just follow the list, it's all doable without a second though except sys.time() operations, will have to think about that for effect duration.), and build the target selectors and range sensors.

then I have a complete battle system.

If I really push it and don't procrastinate and keep putting in 16 hour days as I have been I can get the battle system done by monday! then it's pure graphical stuff, spawn points and menu options ETC. from there.

There has been a request by classmates to at least make it 2 player. so I may add in the server communications after all and keep one client as the MASTER DEV CLIENT and the other just uses that as a server.

I also have another SPECIAL SPECIAL SECRET project which is part of project bane I hope to include which will help players deal with tough missions.

I will definitely be able to release a client by November/December. If even just an online client with a tutorial zone.

I feel it's time to confirm/reconfirm some things about this project;

The Tentative title is "Project Bane"
the client will be Open Source (With a Custom license!!!)
it will be made and played in Blender3D 2.49b (if you can't find a copy I can supply it when the time comes)
it will be programmed in Python Application Programming Language 2.6.2 (again, if you can't find a copy I can supply it when the time comes)

I will post links to both Blender 2.49b installers for Windows, Mac and Linux at least 1 month before release, I will post python 2.62 installer links for Windows, Mac and Linux at least 1 month before release.

If anyone with a legal background/qualifications wants to help write the license, it would be appreciated. I will be attempting to register IP rights to the Project Bane engine as well as the game it outputs, if there is a delay in release date it's probably due to that or procrastination.

A non-official summary of the license as I want to make it;
Spoiler for Hidden:
1: The game I create (not giving a name yet) and the official Non-Player characters, stories and other unique features including game-play therein are intellectual properties owned by me. Users do not have any rights to claim ownership to these aspects. Users may not use any official Non-player characters outside the game without due permissions except as covered by articles of Fair Use, even so use of official Non-player characters under articles of fair use must also include a visual reference to Project Bane and the owner (me) as the owner of those properties and include a copy of this license unless otherwise stated in a direct agreement with me (the owner) and my legal representative(s).

2: Users own and are to be held responsible for their character, context, text and any other creations, except in the case where the User creates a character, context, text or any other creations deemed by courts of law to encroach on Intellectual Properties owned by other entities. At which point the user is held liable and I (the owner) and Project Bane wave all liability, however we reserve the right to reset encroaching or offensive characters to default in aspects of: Appearance, Name, Background Story, and including any texts or aspects created by the player deemed to be encroaching or offensive.

3: The Project Bane Files are intellectual properties owned by me. Users do not have any rights to claim ownership to these aspects or their content or any file deemed by courts of law to be a modified copy of the Project Bane Files.

4: Users may use, copy, modify or distribute the Project Bane files to play any game made with project bane, create their own games or animations/movies, and to take screenshots under the explicit conditions that: 1; the users do not claim ownership of any aspects of project bane. 2; the users do not use any aspects they do not have permission to use. 3; All references to Project Bane inside it's files must be left in place. 4; people who modify any parts of project bane must include a visible reference to Project Bane and me (the owner) as the owner of all attributes covered in this article, as well as include a copy of this license. 5; Games Made which use the Project Bane Files can charge users for any game-based commodity they include as long as they recompense Me (the owner) $1 2015 USD (or the equivalent in any other currency and or year) per paying player, per year the player(s) pay(s). 6; Games Made which use the Project Bane Files may operate freely without paying anything to Me (the owner) Under the explicit conditions that; Neither the game nor the entities in charge of (or in relation to) the game in any way, make any profits; whether direct or indirect, monetary or non-monetary; in relation to the game made which uses the Project Bane Files.   

Profits are to be defined as; a Trade or Donation of any legal commodity or representation of value either for the development or support of projects which use Project Bane Files or their creator(s) or any entities associated with them directly or indirectly, AND/OR a legal commodity or representation of value which allows any user(s) to gain anything that at the end of it's trade chain can be 1; exchanged for game functions, game digital objects, subscriptions, or values, and/or 2; exchanged for a Token or Receipt/Claim that can be exchanged for game functions, game digital objects, subscriptions or values, and/or 3: Exchanged directly or indirectly for a chance to obtain game functions, game digital objects, subscriptions, or values, and/or 4: exchanged for a token or receipt/claim that can be exchanged for a chance to obtain game functions, game digital objects, subscriptions, or values.

5: I (the owner) reserve all rights to modify this document for inclusion in future updates to be in effect for all versions whether previous or future of the Project Bane Files as deemed necessary to stop harmful (whether financially or otherwise) use of the files.

6: I (the Owner) reserve all rights to make exclusive licenses concerning the Project Bane Files which do or do not include any or all of these articles for specific entities with or without time limitations at any time for personal or other benefit as seen fit.

7: I (the owner) reserve all rights to modify any exclusive licenses concerning the Project Bane Files, at any time as deemed necessary to stop harmful (whether financially or otherwise) use of the files.

8: Project Bane is distributed in source code in various formats such as .blend and non-compiled .py documents, I the owner of Project Bane did not compile these documents, if they are compiled by users; the aspects I claimed ownership of in this document are still covered by this license and I still retain all ownerships of aspects expressed in this document including copies of them extracted from compiled versions.

9: project bane does not claim ownership of Blender 3D or any of it's components in any of it's revisions. if Blender was supplied with Project bane it was supplied directly from official Blender.org links including a copy of the respective license(s) as included by the Blender.org teams.

10: project bane does not claim ownership of Python Application Programing Language or any of it's properties in any of it's revisions. if Python was supplied with Project bane it was supplied directly from official python.org links including a copy of any respective licenses as included by the Python.org teams.

Edit 9:55 PM:

sys.time() would be very unruly it would work properly the first time but I'd have to call it right at the beginning of the first timed power, then call it again after so many seconds... not really the best.

sys.sleep() however can be used to set a function to sleep for a specific number of miliseconds before activating or deactivating something so;

if trigger.positive:
[tab]activate effect
[tab]sys.sleep(effect duration in miliseconds):
[tab][tab]deactivate effect

this is the simplest way to do it, another way to do it in blender is to activate the effect then trigger a state actuator in the second state have a delay actuator after the specified delay trigger a deactivation and reload state 1.

I.. Rarely use states, I only use them for glitchy things like for example opening a .blend game inside a .blend game, that can be done entirely in python as well but it typically crashes the game so it needs a combination of logic bricks and python, most of the time however I'd honestly prefer to save the mind numbing logic brick maze and program it directly with python.

playing around with blender and python is fun, try loading an exterior object in game then saving the file in game then loading the file you just saved still in game! warning, only do it once though! the second time it will crash (most likely because of a file name and data conflict)

anyways everything is in order now. just have to make it.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on June 13, 2015, 01:03:42 PM
Click target acquisition almost done, just need to add a character selection outline object to toggle visible or invisible on each target enabled object.

I took the concerns of this forum into account and remembered that when selecting a HERO or FRIENDLY target;
Friendly.setValue(TargetName)
ENEMY.setValue(Target.actuators['ENEMY TARGET'].getValue())

it's dynamic so the loop could be infinite and span through as many HERO or friendly targets as are on the map at any given time given they all target each other in a chain. however at the moment it only works at target acquisition so I'll have to make an 'always update target' script [.......] there's lot of ways to do it, for best effect I'll use an always sensor strapped to a document with a silly and obvious trigger followed by a purposed trigger:

Code: [Select]
if own.name == cont.actuators['OWN NAME'].getValue():
[tab]if Friendly.getValue() =/= "":
[tab][tab]ENEMY.setValue(scene.objects[friendly.getValue()].actuators['ENEMY TARGET'].getValue())

it helps that I'm setting object names to become character names then using the object names as the OWN NAME value and target values.

but then again, that would be an always function which would eat up processor power...... it would be better to have a proper trigger that activates once like say, when the friendly target you are selecting changes their target. for that I'd have to do something more complicated like:

record info of what friendly target is targeting you (and give it 40 slots (max for 1 zone) and a few NPC slots to record in, checking for an empty "" slot and having the targeting character enter their own name into a slot) then when the player switches their target have that trigger a bool operator on the characters targeting through them which activates a script like:

if boolsensor.positive:
[tab]ENEMY.setValue(scene.objects[friendly.getValue()].actuators['ENEMY TARGET'].getValue())
[tab]scene.objects[WhoTargetsMe1].controllers['ReTarget'].activate(TargetChangedTrue)
to
[tab]scene.objects[WhoTargetsMe40].controllers['ReTarget'].activate(TargetChangedTrue)
[tab]scene.objects[WhatNPCTargetsMe1].controllers['ReTarget'].activate(TargetChangedTrue)
to
[tab]scene.objects[WhatNPCTargetsMe7].controllers['ReTarget'].activate(TargetChangedTrue)
[tab]cont.deactivate(TargetChangedTrue)
[tab]cont.activate(TargetChangedFalse)

yeah, it's a more complicated set-up but I think it'll work better in the long run cause it only activates when the leading player switches their target versus being a nag on the processor all the time. the part in red is something I've never seen done before and I'll have to double check that it's possible and works.

there's only 1 fault to this whole set-up that I can already see; right now if you have an enemy target and select a player and they have no enemy target it will set your enemy target to "". the obvious answer is to edit my targeting script's trigger to include:

and Target.actuators['ENEMY TARGET'].getValue() =/= ""

actually it would be better as a subfunction before setting the player's ENEMY TARGET to your own ENEMY TARGET.

and this is why I spend 16 hour days at this project and barely complete anything. haven't even gotten onto the tab selection part of the script and that will have like 12 or more different selection methods: Closest first:Clockwise, counter, compass clockwise then corners, compass counter then corners, zigzag right then left, zigzag left then right. ranged first:Clockwise, counter, compass clockwise then corners, compass counter then corners, zigzag right then left, zigzag left then right.

and random
TargetList = getHitObjects()
ENEMY = TargetList[Random(0, int(Numberofenemiesinrange))]

gonna take a bit of work.

I trust there will be no complaints if I only do tab selection for enemy and destructible targets? I could do for player targets too but... that means another huge section of code.


Edit: 4:04pm AAHHHHHHHHHHH 404!!!! 6/13/15:

http://www.blender.org/api/249PythonDoc/GE/GameTypes.KX_GameObject-class.html#controllers

the red part above will in fact work. the only reason I have to use it is because an error will be raised if you attempt to activate an actuator that is not presently connected to the current controller via logic.




11:43 pm 6/14/15:

worked till my headache was sore. not sure what I got done headache just looking at fine text, hate being sick and hate underskin pimples in the center of the forehead. hate sinus headaches hate coughing up green stuff and hate the dizzyness that encouraged me to lacerate the side of my thumb on a can lid cause I have no proper can opener... my can opener is missing most of the bottom handle... and when engaged the gears wont spin the blade so you gotta rock it back and forth around the edge to puncture the lid or bend it out then when you've done that as much as possible use something to pry the lid open.. and that's when things can be dangerous.. Dang can of mushy peas hurt mah pride, not that pride is a good thing anyways, lesson learned.

2:45 AM 6/16/15:
after a long monday out at uni, I'm still up coding, decided to tackle the camera, nearly done, just need to counter the sudden jerk when engaging the camera's rotation. zoom works, but I need to set max an min locations or it will zoom out or in FOREVER as long as the player keeps scrolling.

I actually killed all my mice so I tested the script with buttons then set the mouse wheel motion as the sensor when working.

nothing else works yet because though I coded a lot I haven't actually finished tying it all together. but I will shortly.

8:28 PM 6/16/15:

slept till around 7 pm late nights are not a good idea lol, I only stayed up to keep someone company so they wouldn't fall asleep till they got their work done. In the end I got quite a bit done last night so it wasn't a total loss sleeping in till this late. And it's Scotland so I don't have to worry about waking up at 7pm and getting depressed from vitamin D withdrawals cause the sun isn't out, because the sun is typically out till around 11pm here.

10:47 am 6/17/15:

Will work on stuff today for a few hours before going out, Gonna fix the camera jerk, the main problem with it is it's rotating on the visual y axis  I have to test and make sure it's actually Y cause sometimes things are spawned with their axis rotated 90 degrees or more. as we will almost never have to rotate the camera on the  local Y axis (except for camera shake) I can just put in a y-axis reset for every time the player activates camera rotation.

sounds like a lot more work than it is, just need to make an IPO, make an actuator to activate it and enter a line of code to activate it in the CamRot script.

for min and max zoom I just need to make 2 panels in line with the camera and make a collision sensor specific to each, when colliding one of the zoom keys will stop working till it no longer collides.

I needed the camera working for targeting purposes., I also need to remember to set the windows on screen to not receive or cast shadows.

once that's done I can add the final touches which string everything together for the targeting system and the battle calc system. then we have a game, mostly at least.

12:12 pm:

seems there is a slight script reading delay to get the y axis reset it works but players should give it a few seconds after the game loads before activating it. if it messes up there's always the full reset 'Shift' +'r' so don't worry too much.


11:11 PM:

heh I broke the mous script before I left this morning and just got to fixing it now. I figured out what was causing the delay, mouse motion needed to trigger the script, not really, anything could trigger it so long as something triggers it before it's used.

the part that needs to trigger is the reset, if that's not triggered first then the whole thing jumps to a very odd angle the moment you right click (set it to right click at the moment cause I have no middle mouse button on my laptop).

regardless the jump there is still some unwanted rotation on the Y axis, I will need to find the source, it's probably something simple.

right, I need to start making more progress each day.

7:51 pm 6/18/15:

I fully and complete understand the mouse motion script, and from that I was able to find out where the Y axis rotation was coming from when you 'Right-click' + 'circle motions' with the mouse. mouse motion is recorded on X and Y screen axis then translated to motion for the object in 3D space. left and right motions are sensed separately from up and down motions so the amount of motion can be sensed accurately. Each motion is then plugged into a simple motion actuator and activated.

anyways the visual Y axis rotation was coming from both axis being activated as Local motion, the same is true if both are activated as global motion, but local motion is the worst.

allow me to explain, if you rotate locally on y, then rotate locally on x, then rotate on y again; then y's axis has just been skewed by x's rotation in degrees.

so the fix is one of them has to be local while the other is global. Global means it will be the exact same axis rotation no matter how the direction or placement of your character has changed. Local means  the axis rotation is relative to how you have changed angle or position.

thinking it out:

 if Axis Z camera rotation was Local then any changes to any other axis rotation would skew it at odd angles. so Axis Z rotation should be Global.
if Axis X Camera rotation was Global then it would only yield Up and Down rotation when facing directly parallel to the X axis. if faced in the same direction as the X axis Global rotation would yield a camera roll. Not what we want. So Axis X rotation should be Local in this case so it can adapt to the instances.

if both were global you still have the problem with the X Axis, if both were local then you still have the problem with the Y axis because of the X axis. so there is no other way than; Up Down = Local, Left Right = Global.

8:21 ;

Of course you should always check your object's default Axis, sometimes they don't match 3D space... in that case the objects Up and down might be left and right and vice versa.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on June 19, 2015, 10:47:36 AM
11:45 am 6/19/15:

Today I go out so I will work on this before and after as usual. with all the camera controls working nice, I can get back to target acquisition, power activation and battle calcs.

12:18 :

set stats to default values so I wont get errors like "type error for + invalid types: 'str' and 'float'" which is what happens if you try to add a number to "" I could always add in an If blah == "": line but that's just more work, might as well zero everything so there's a number to be worked with.

8:46 PM :

Back to working on the targeting script, I found a few irregularities, own.getName() was used in places it should have said Player.getName(), after fixing that, I went to make an enemy to target and thats when I found what I believe to be lord nemesis's handwork:

Code: [Select]
if TargetType == "ENEMY TARGET":
if Target.actuators['ENEMY TARGET'].getValue() != "": #hmmm? wait a minute, something fishy is going on here!!!
ENEMY.setValue(Target.actuators['ENEMY TARGET'].getValue())

I instantly wrote the comment to mark it so I wouldn't loose track of it. to explain what that would accomplish I will spell it out;

TargetType retrieves a set string from the object which collided with the cursor which can contains a variety of things from "HERO TARGET" for heroes "VILLAIN TARGET" for villains and "ENEMY TARGET" for NPC enemies which are generally just enemies for everyone (like nemesis).

if the target is an enemy then Target.actuators['ENEMY TARGET'].getValue() will yield a string containing the object name of their valid enemy target!! (which would be "HERO TARGET", "VILLAIN TARGET" or "") the script then goes on to say != (not equal to) "" (a blank string of text). In total this means you can't select them as a target unless they've selected a target themselves!!! I would expect this of Lord Nemesis, to give the CPU enemies a distinct advantage!

Not only that it goes on t say to set your own enemy target to the ENEMY's Enemy TARGET!!!! Definitely LN!!!

I will remove it. I think removing is what I need to do, I will just double check that I didn't mean to crosscheck for something else.

10:23 pm:

Python script error from controller "cont#CONTR#1":
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "ClickTargeting", Line 66, in <Module>
File "ClickTargeting", Line 19, in MouseTarg
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'name'

but whats funny is it's still passing the info onwards, the object name will be OBCharacter.001 or OBCube at this time (later it will be the player name or enemy name) and that info is being passed on in a readable and recordable format so..... YOU LIE ERROR!!!

So when the game is released and you see this error in the console window just ignore it.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on June 20, 2015, 05:38:34 PM
6:24 PM 6/20/15:

NOTES; the targeting cursor (around a character or object when you click them) in City of heroes is comprised of 4 visual objects (corners) which are 'bumped' out of their standard location by motions of the character selected, to be clear they expand and contract with the bounding box(es) of the character's many parts.

now to think how to code that. I can always omit it for now. but later it will be necessary.

the physical setup would require some sort of soft or collision sensitive object to be linked to the corners. Moving the corners will have to be done with 2 constraints which tell the object to follow the movements of the soft/collision panels.

seems simple enough but will come with a lot more complexity as I get into it I'm sure..

hmm, I think I need to go observe the interactions in icon again just to be sure

one problem may be setting the softbody panels to 0 gravity. if i remember correctly there's a trick to it.

Reobserved it, character motions even effect it when it's diagonal like a diamond shape. so what I said should work.

9:42 pm :

Naturally curiosity got the better of me, I tried the above. it's a fail.

so over dinner I thought out a new method, it should have the desired effect and can be applied to numerous enemy instances.

simply put; the collision panels will be dynamic objects (parented to a static object type empty mesh, so they don't fall) set to follow a curve (line) the curve will have only 2 points, 1 point will follow the cube the other will follow another empty at the default position. I'll put static cubes around all the joints so when they hit the dynamic panels, the panels will be pushed back. After the push they will follow the line back to where they belong.

That /will/ work for that portion. However the fact that the corners will be controlled by the motion of 2 separate objects will be quite troublesome, typically it would cause a scale deform, I wish there were a way to tell the object to follow the Local X of one object and the Local Y of another, that would be great I'll look into that but chances are, no. I'll have to find another way.

Ah yes constraints, nearly forgot I can add constraints to...... wait a minute can constrains follow local motion? Well by gum they can! Ok I can solve that problem with the copy location constraint. providing this particular constraint works in the ge... Hey, it has Sho in IPO window and add Key. very nice, so if it doesn't work natively I can make an influence IPO Key. (NO j00, not that type of influence!!)

well even though it's all figured out, it will be a job and a bit to make that so... I'll save that for another time. for now I will have a lazy non animated non interactive character selection cursor that does little more than always angle towards the camera, re-parent itself to the current target and get the targets location, set itself to that location and toggle it's own visibility. then on selecting a target the first operation will toggle visibility off, reset the parent to the mouse, reset the location to the mouse location then begin finding the new target and so on and so forth.

again, I really appreciate the work the Cryptic and Paragon devs did to make CoX even more so every time I think of the complicated stuff they've had to program in much more complicated languages and without a nice pre-made gui with all sorts of tools ready to go.

so, finish this script then I can see what I'm targeting in real time so there's no guessing or checking the console window for print outs.

I so badly want to throw everything together and stop doing these temporarily optional side projects so I can play and get to putting missions together. but, we'll see.

5:16PM 6/21/15:

After some finesse I got a red plane to parent to and go to an enemy target and become visible, the red plane's "follow camera rotation" constraint isn't working so I'll have to find out what my options are after I get back from the store.

drat how hard can it be to do this lol. I'll have to do a
Code: [Select]
getOrientation() setOrientation() script  :roll: go figure none of the stuff that is supposed to work for this operation works, so I'll have to do it manually using the code above.

I also finally put an object for the mouse pointer and noticed that in perspective rendering mode where the mouse pointer is; is not where it's pointing! the two only overlap in orthographic mode. but orthographic mode would be silly for a 3D game like this. the fix is to leave the invisible cursor sensor object and such necessary for interactions in the current layer in perspective rendering and make the visible portion in another visible layer rendered in orthographic.

so many things to do if I want to do it right. I thought I was gonna throw it all together this week and show it to my professor tomorrow,  :roll: 8rolls eyes at self* well I'll just have to tell her the truth I hit some unexpected snags that slowed it down and was unable to get it ready for monday.

11:03 pm :

this is really starting to get to me, the code is running but not doing anything in the game..... Ah True level triggering and Level must be used, I was using 'Tap'

finally got it running! one more small step done.

10:09 am 6/22/15:

Note to other blender users, visibility actuators don't like to be run in the same state or closely after eachother, so doing so will cause the first one to run and the second one to ignore the request. It's better to do it manually in code KX_GameObject.setVisible(0=invisible 1=visible, 0= doesn't effect children 1=does effect children)

just shored that up cause the cursor needs a reset to invisible before being reparented or moved to another object. otherwise it could look a bit strange to see it racing to the next target or could block the view of the camera.

8:25 pm:

tired, long day. meh I'll try to get in the mood to work.

4:14 pm 6/23/15:

Todays lesson comes from the set-up for battle calcs;

So long as the information you are looking for is stored somewhere between you and the main parent object or on the main parent object it's easy to retrieve. any information stored outside this chain of parented objects has to either be obtained by the object's name from a collision sensor, or be entered into the parent chain.

for example: Parent -> Child1_1 -> Child1_2
to get the info from parent on Child1_2 all you have to do is '.getParent().getParent().whateverinfoyouwanted'.

for a second example:
Code: [Select]
Parent ->Child1_1 -> Child1_2
                                            -> Child2_1

to get the info from Child2_1 onto Child1_2, first Child2_1 should pass either its name or the info somewhere in the parent/child1_# chain.

for stuff that's not even connected like:
Object1
Object2

it's best to use a collision sensor or some rules for one object to pass it's name into the parenting chain of the other object then set the other object to look for this name.

and that's the foundation of battle.

1:37 am :

actually got the hit calc in-place and programmed in, next I need to import the character and trigger the animation, then the damage calc. then I can do the other calcs for effects, DoT etc.

nearly there, nearly there.

4:15pm 6/24/15:

the more I do the less logic bricks I tend to use, I find it more controllable to just program it.

10:45 am 6/25/15: not an update really.

Sure. It says, "You can't read this! Ha ha, I win!"


Actually, it says yet another programmer thinks they can invent a block cipher.  I have yet to meet the programmer capable of even equaling Enigma, but they keep trying.

The message also exhibits a lot of structure, but its probably too short to evaluate with conventional cryptanalysis.  In other words, its not long enough to expose the weaknesses in its encryption algorithm (at a glance it seems to have barely 120 bits of message content), unless you get lucky and guess the algorithm directly.

Also, this is way off topic, even for me.

heh, there are many methods of encrypting, I watched the documentary that talked about the encryption methods they used to try and decrypt the second half of Enigma, fail lol. they didn't even try possibly millions of other complex methematical coding methods that no one seems to use.

pictoral encryption is a nice one, use the bits in your favorite image as a per character offset and optional use the rest of the image as fluff arranged in accordance with a bit stream of some sort in relation to the image or something more personal., IMPOSSIBLE to decrypt. it's probably similar to Enigma, it's well documented that the second half doesn't use 1 encryption method..

sine encryption is when you change the character offset per character based on the whole number increments on a large sine curve.

the whole problem needing to be addressed is; you will need a keypair of some sort to decrypt it, this keypair may only be sent to the client shortly but must remain in memory, unless you use a different one with each message, but that means sacrificing bandwidth and time. from what I remember codewalker saying, CoX used something similar to that system, every short while the encryption key is changed, so by the time your computer decrypts one message it's too late to use it for the next one which stops a lot of hacking problems.

meh, to give a hint, mine is non-standard, yes the key will change but only on certain actions like login, character creation, character deletion, name change, trade, consignments and store operations.

right now the key /is/ the message (heh, sly one there), so yes as arcana said you can't know what it says unless you know what it says. There is a second key used in the same message but it's nigh undecipherable, might as well be garblety-gook. trying to find the e's wont help. the message is used to decipher the key to the garbletygook and the key will not always be the same (in different messages). And that's why I felt confidant to put it out in the open like that, however I'm still working with it. I want to eventually get it to the point where the client makes a random cypher with a certain keyphrase and confirms with the server then sends a unique message declaring a new cypher unique to that particular client, which the server then stores in a hidden zone along with player data. then communications continue with the new cipher and no keyphrase at all, making it impossible for players to hack another player or mimic them to the server or even make heads or tails of messages intercepted unless they catch the original cipher relay and manage to decrypt it in-time to catch the next one. The only way to do that is to 'listen' to their line traffic, which in itself can be detected by multiple methods, I want to eventually raise a warning in those cases on the client side and one on the server side that tells the server to ignore and not reply and tells the client's user "someone may be attempting to intercept your messages, please restart your internet connection or contact your ISP if it persists". may even get the IP of the interceptor and forward that to the client so they can tell that to their ISP or set to block communications with it if they know how.

so many nice things I want to do, so much time it takes to plan them.

Game Work Progress Update:

Today, is thursday the 25th, I told myself yesterday was the last day to work on the battle system for a bit or at least till I can get a reasonable amount of graphics done before the 10th of july (when I have to show a picture that I feel captures the essence of what my research is about.)

yeah... so today graphical work, with any luck I can get a whole slew of it done and go back to coding in a couple days.

10:20 AM 6/26/15:

I have started on some new textures, I was unable to get my first brick texture so I'm making like 9 more, got a whole list of assets to make might take a week.

today I go out, really don't want to, but have to.

plus side at least I now remembered how I made the last brick texture and why it looked so good.

1:52 am 7/2/15:

finally got one set of brick textures done bricks-long-smooth 2x2 and 4x4 are finished from here i can do simple UV face stretching for multiplication purposes.

road textures next, then maybe concrete walls if I find time. and windows of course.

then any bits and bobbles such as streetlamps. gonna put together a few images for show.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 02, 2015, 09:24:12 PM
Streets updated with a texture, made it easy that I already did the street models, could just open it and start working.

this is what the street models look like now:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i58.tinypic.com%2F15rdsna.png)

the color map is actually extremely lightwieght, 64x64. the normal map is 1024x1024 but can be used for any street section so, yeah cut mah memory costs. just thinking if the normal map is possibly too large or if I should scale the UV to a smaller section of it width-wise and make the color map smaller to fit.

I'd show the bricks but they are just normals at the moment, not satisfied showing till I make their color map. again a 64x64 pixel image should do the job.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Felderburg on July 02, 2015, 09:58:44 PM
That's a mighty shiny street.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 02, 2015, 10:03:22 PM
That's a mighty shiny street.

heh, yeah I noticed that, looks like it's wet after rain or something, I'll need to work on that. thanks for confirming what I thought!

OK made it less reflective and set the reflectivity to cover more area. looks almost right now.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i58.tinypic.com%2F214ozzp.jpg)
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 03, 2015, 11:50:56 AM
Brix:

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i60.tinypic.com%2Fjztjy9.png)

just need windows, doors, drains and curbs. then I can finish the mock zone.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Blackout on July 03, 2015, 12:20:17 PM
Textures are starting to come across very, very nicely so far! Can't wait to see what comes next (also love a bit of bare brickwork, reminds me of Kings Row ^^)
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 04, 2015, 11:31:18 AM
Textures are starting to come across very, very nicely so far! Can't wait to see what comes next (also love a bit of bare brickwork, reminds me of Kings Row ^^)

Thanks! and yes exactly, kingsrow was always one of my favorite zones ever since I walked in there on my lowbie blaster when I first started playing and decided to pick a fight with the Paladin, P.S. he will not stop chasing you till defeat = you. I tried hightailing it from one end of the map to the other, yeah it took him a while to find me again but.. "I think I lost him, OhF-.".

heh brings back memories, back when I thought enemies had 0 regen. "I'll wear him down slowly, dang he sure has a lot of health, gave it 20 goes..."

Work update:

I did the windows and brick sections with windows, I took a note from CoX for the windows; they used a blue and white cloud texture that follows the camera for window effect (because true reflections are costly memorywise) blender has a way to do true reflections as well, but that is also costly (have a camera at each window and do a live render in game using that camera, then use the render output as the texture for the window).

I changed it a bit, I decided to remove the blue and just keep the white clouds using transparency so the windows can actually be see-through(Cox had see-through windows in a few places, but all tall buildings were just a cloud texture. for the most part I will just put blinds or a black-drop behind them but it opens the possibility for other things.

working on residential style doors now, then if I have time shop doors after that and shop windows (CoX had transparency on their shop windows)

I also must write some of my thesis today. so we'll see how much I can get done.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 08, 2015, 10:36:34 PM
Well, finally I have mock zone. it's a bit like kings row indeed because I only made one building type so far. it's still not finished either, I need to make a billboard. and plop a character in there for the picture I need to submit in a day and a bit.

anyways, I'm aware of some backside transparency problems in this picture, I can fix them by duplicating walls and flipping their normals.

this scene has 1314 polygons.

(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i59.tinypic.com%2F2nb7cyb.png)

12:55 am 7/12/15:
Got the image done and handed in on time. spent time doing some work on my thesis. And decided to redo the hair textures, they look much better now. no pictures of that yet. will work more on stuff tomorrow, I have a moderate list of things to complete in this last month.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 14, 2015, 03:31:03 PM
Working on windows, in specific contact text/mission windows, thanks to leandro for recently posting Null the Gull's window on twitter, it's just what I needed as an inspiration.

right, the state of the window at this moment is a plane and an empty object. for speed this window will only be closable, not moveable or size adjustable. Empties will spawn pictures and or... Blender Text. yes, for speed and memory requirements I have decided to use the blender text function. I will tell you again right now why that's a bad thing, 1: there is no word/letter wrap ability!, 2: the only way to use this function is to convert a .ttf font file into a .tga glyph map, sounds simple right? except making a custom .ttf font is tedious murder. so problem #2 is I will need to use a font already made by someone else, luckily I've got a buddy which made one no strings attached (could wreak havoc if I use something like TimesNewRoman the owners would be all over the game for usage fees).

if you were to try and make a glyph map .tga in an image manipulation program you will find that it doesn't work, blender has no clue where the glyph grid is. this is because the glyph map needs to have a specific file header, and it's based on image content so its different for each image.

anyways, this text is fine for stuff like say Stat Numbers, Contact Names, story titles, and short contextual option buttons.

it is not fine for: paragraphs, long sentences, new line markers, chat Etc. I've seen some people use it in chat boxes, but things get odd when what you are typing flows off the screen.

hopefully by the end of the day I can have this done and spawnable on NPC click and have it spawn text dynamically based on contact name and whether they are present in your contact list. I'm also getting ready to import the HP and Endurance bars into the gameplay file from their test file, they will need a few edits to link up to the actual numbers I'm using in the gameplay. after that I can import the mock map and have a somewhat playable game even though the contacts and enemies will just be visible control cubes (If i have time I will change that).

it looks like I will not have time to get the character designer finished for august, several things are the reason why, no time to modify the base model into sleek form or female forms. no time to make lots of costume objects. lets face it one month is not a lot of time especially with the kind of distractions IRL brings me..

There will be a default hero or selection of heroes to play as for the degree show. I was hoping to let people design their own but there's no time. the beta release sometime this fall will have all of this stuff finished/included.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 16, 2015, 06:27:21 PM
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i57.tinypic.com%2Fmt2cg5.png)

window is semi acceptable.

I have yet to test if the spawned letters can be set to collision for link clicking and or word wrap.

the colored letters can definitely be made into buttons/links. the picture is a place holder.

no page borders yet. page size cannot be changed at this time.

Have not included player text input using this function but it's possible.

Edit; No. the bounding boxes are the collision object, they do not extend to cover the spawned text. Word Wrap is not possible this way without using my custom system which I don't have time for.

I will have to make invisible objects to cover the text which can be clicked (the real buttons/links)

Edit: 6:13  PM 7/17/15:

Target Acquired! both friendly and Enemy targets names and data are retrievable and the selection cursors can be set on click!

Additionally the selection cursors are now more like CoH in design, but they still don't move with the objects animations. they do follow camera rotation so that's not a problem, you'll always be able to see where your target is. Now to do the local range sensor thing for spawning the window. and set the character's names to appear above their heads.

the text shown on the window can be changed, manually or from file or other messages.

I also completed the dynamic text system allowing users to type things in certain places, /SOME/ of this info will be savable. I say some with the following rules:

1: The Character Name Text Field will only save your character's name as a max of 25 characters regardless what you can type or what appears in the game the first time you play. Please count the text characters and use no more than 25 for the name field for your own benefit. Please note there is no copy or paste option for this text box.

2: For character background story text; you are limited to 20 lines of text at around 58 characters a line (One page). Anything greater than 58 characters will flow off the window to the right (it's up to you to keep it neat and legible!), anything greater than 20 lines of text will not be saved.  Please note there is no copy or paste option yet for this text box either.

At this time chat is not fully enabled, no one besides the game's virtual memory will see what you typed. In addition to this; chat logs are not currently recorded.

Again for those who haven't followed everything here, the game is currently in a stand-alone state (not for release)for the purpose of showing it for the final project for my masters degree. AFTER that, I will split the server functions from it and enable all online message handling for some time in November/December but again, that's only when I hope to be releasing it, IRL gives huge distractions so.. I'll keep you informed.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 19, 2015, 12:08:09 AM
Visibility bug encountered! bug report submitted.

going to have to code around yet another bug. should be simple but still hours are running short.

it's a bug caused by layer visibility and object-parent/child relationships. Setting an object to parent or child of another object then sending one of them to an invisible layer will cause the one in the invisible layer to refuse to toggle it's visibility flag by any means even after spawned into the visible layer during game-play.

if there is no parenting relationship doing this yields expected results. so I will have to dynamically parent the object after spawning it. this does however create the problem that all objects imported this way will have the same name durign the game instance causing possible parenting or data problems. the fix is to only call the parenting ONCE and have objects only reference the DATA ONCE.

edit: 9:32pm 7/20/15:

window stuff was finished yesterday, worked my way around the bugs with collision sensors and dynamic parenting based off that., the script only runs once and runs from the imported object so data bleed will not be possible. data-bleed is when other objects with the same name suddenly get data intended for another object that has the same name.

content.. so yeah the contact name is passed to the window and the.. wait, oh also: proximity programming has been completed, so now range is completely dynamic and has the possibility to receive enhancement. right where was I , oh year the contact name is passed to the window and I'm debating what else to send, the player name might be one option or maybe just directly get the sys.exists(//ContactList/ContactName.txt) to determine whether the player has that contact. one way or the other, the text will change based on both instances. obviously because this is the first NPC I'll have to auto place it into the contact list on game start.

edit: 11:44 PM 7/25/15:

Doing work thats not worth reporting, buttons, textfields, buttons and more buttons, virtual memory stores and data storage and checking. plus side is when it's done and all the account files are writable I can finally have a realistic basis for giving characters stats. the character designer for this release is bare bones and basic, I'd call it a account designer it's so basic. options will include archetype, powers, name. not a big list, time has put a few restrictions as to the content for this version.

the next version should be better.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on July 26, 2015, 11:01:16 PM
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on August 01, 2015, 09:36:48 PM
OK... too many attack powers.

I was going to do 10 powers (10 primary, 10 secondary) to level 10 then cut it down... but thats waaay too much.

this is cutting it close for such a major change to the game design. only got 2 weeks before the exhibition......

it'll be a miracle if I get this done in time.. I'm gonna have to skip even more stuff... not proud of it. my supervisor says the thesis is all that really counts. so maybe I'm pushing myself too hard on this.

I'm having to design some ranged powersets on the fly because I actually forgot to do those.

Edit 9:42 PM 8/2/15;

so I reworked all the powersets, good thing too, looks like I forgot to update some damage numbers.

I now have 3 ranged sets, 3 melee/manipulation sets and 3 armor sets. some of these will take a bit of modelling.. BUT for this game they might be invisible lol.. for example I promised Whip Melee, but haven't done the whip model or animations to a satisfactory level yet.

the statistical math will still compute so the powers work, just aren't visible.

I am this [    ] close to finishing the character designer 0.01b  i modelled it's layout to resemble CoX's old layout, although many things are different.

11:03 PM 8/3/15:

Bad Update of sorts. no bugs or anything, just my supervisor was not happy with what I showed her today. she said the character designer is "Unrefined" as in it looks unfinished, because it has no graphics except flat planes with text.

She has given me a deadline of this wednesday at noon to show a graphical game environment. (less than 2 days to do it) the graphics are done, they just need importing. I will have to remake the mockmap rather than painstakingly import each piece over again but thats a matter of copy pasta and arranging so it's not a problem.

if push comes to shove she has suggested that the character creator be excluded from the game for now... yet another reduction from what I wanted to show.

well I finished up the scripting for the character designer through to the end where character files are written gamelogic saves the info to the globaldictionary and it switches to the actual game. so, that's done just need to make a few items and copy a few lines of code. so the character designer may yet make it into this variation of the game.

10:07 AM 8/4/15:
Ok awake and time to work, I imported one of each scenery piece last night. I've got an idea for the map layout. today I need to finish the map (Pictures will be shown later) import the character model and clothes, give the player some default clothes, import the NPC model and do a little graphical fixing to him.

import the health bars, make spawn points for Enemies, make some thuggish clothes and strap a copy of that to the enemy control cube.

ok let me list it out in order:

1; build map
2: make New character spawn point
3: Import character model and do basic movements.
4: import HP and Endurence bars and string them to the player's HP.
5: finalize the first NPC text and make one mission goal.
6: import the NPC model.
7: do the unique aspect of my research (it has to do with tutorial help)
8: make enemy model.
9: import enemy
10: make enemy spawn points.
11: apply enemy AI.
12: make 3 insp like items.

lol a 12 step program. wish me luck! only got a day!

Edit 4:39 pm:

Roads and sidewalks done for more than half the map.  character movements enabled.

Need to make the buildings and import the character model then 2 steps are finished.

building take a long time it would seem!

Edit 8:13 AM 8/5/15:

under the wire, I got a lot done yesterday gameplay wise.

I fixed up the player character, did a few attack animations and a walk cycle, imported the character to the game got him moving with his control cube and got him resized. made a whole bunch of streets and sidewalks but only a few buildings. and I imported the health and endurence bars,

I think I'll do #5 and #7 next, only have a few hours to get something to show before I go in today.

Edit: 12:50 PM:

Main game content is playable! #5 and #7 are done, I showed it to my supervisor and they were happy with what I got done. I should be able to finish the current set-up this week and need to hand it and a documentary video of it in to my professor next Tuesday for final review before submission.

so right now there's a zone map, the area has no name at the moment. there are health and endurance bars for the player, the player has attack animations, the first contact has a picture in the mission window, the mission text is in the window and the "accept" button is set to give the player a simple task. there is a player model (sorry but no customization yet, just merely cause I didn't have time to code it) it has a walk animation (which needs a bit of work, I wont lie it it looks smooth but funny) and has 5 attack animations, including taunt which is very CoXey and one of the better animations I did yesterday.

yes the default Archetype is Tanker. and the default secondary powerset is similar to Super Strength, the default primary powerset is like invul.

Just my luck though, the HP and Stamina bars were refilling properly at home but when I went to show it to my supervisor the HP bar decided to glitch and not refill, been having a lot of glitching bugs lately where the game suddenly reverts one of the code documents to an earlier form or forgets to save the document properly possibly leaving strange characters in the code causing it to fail to execute. anyways it's a simple fix, I've memorized each part of the code by now.

will figure out why the HP bar isn't refilling when I get home.

Edit 4:51 PM:

silly me, I extended it to 1500 HP but told it to only add 1 point a second if HP was below 1000. no wonder it didn't refill.

I'll make it more dynamic in the future.

Edit 9:10 PM:

mission text set to objectives window!, still need to record this to an exterior file so it can be compared against for text generation purposes.

for some reasons the "Accept" mission button's collision type isn't working right. I'll resolve that too.

Edit: 10:10 AM 8/6/15:

 forgot to center the mesh of the accept button, that's why the collision with the mouse was off. fixed.

Today I work on the research bit of game play.

for those who read this, I'm evaluating the use of new methods than just text or sound for giving players instructions on the basis of the fact presented in the first part of this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCPcn-Q5nKE that players often don't want to read text. and the players who need it the most are most likely to rapid click through it and learn nothing then end up bugging GMs devs or other players for information they were supposed to have learned in the tutorial anyways.

11:53 Am 8/8/15:

winding this up, got all the item graphics and mouse pointers and other such elements made yesterday.

the NPC is almost done, technically he's done right now, but I want to fix his cape's rigging and add in some other necessary features.

just NPC graphics to work on today. a small bit of coding needs to take place as well. not much though. definitely not ore than a days worth.

3:01 AM 8/9/15:

Done with all the graphics for now. all I need to focus on now is a few animations such as a defeat anim and maybe a impact/hit anim or so if I find time, finishing the battle system, finishing the mission system and adding items and spawns..

thats it. got 2 days unless I run into trouble I should be fine. most of the stuff is well more than started and wont take long to finish.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on August 09, 2015, 11:40:07 PM
got the main aspect of my MSc research programmed and tested. feels good to have that in place and out of the way.

However. While testing the game the past few days I encountered a nigh game breaking glitch in blender 2.49b's physics engine. there are 2 work arounds one better than the other but I have no time to program them. I suppose I'll try. the problem is with internal corners, it doesn't handle them /AT ALL/. external corners?, yeah, sure fine. but internal ones? NO WAY. this even presents a problem that I will be unable to make a map bounds that restricts the player from leaving the intended area.

I tried separating and combining objects to make the internal corners, i tried every combination of all physics settings, the closest I got (With help) was setting the player to rigidbody and setting a whole bunch of movement damping and friction and a lot of mass, and yet even with that if you try hard enough you can get the player through wall corners.

sigh... I have requested a build of 2.49b with newer GE physics here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?378372-windows-Blender-Compile-with-newer-GE-physics-version-request

the physics in blender 2.69 work without all the excessive physics settings. but blender 2.69 and higher uses python 3.0 not 2.6.2 and has removed many blender specific python modules, I /HAVE/ tried the new blender and python extensively, between codes returning data differently and a lack of documentation on the new modules such as bpy.render poses problems for core things like mouse movement scripts.

so in my mind having a copy of 2.49b with better GE physics is worth a bit of cash. anyone here willing and able to build it from source would be great! I have no time at this time. crunching the last few parts of the game together will take these last 4 days.

Edit 3:11 PM 8/10/15:

the physics bug is still quite the problem, but I have one-sided battle simulation! the player can now attack the enemies, the enemy's HP will go down and endurance is used.  it's not perfect or final but it's a quick job to get things ready for the exhibition.

next I need to make the mission objectives count down with each enemy defeat. and make the enemy despawn, and yes I still have to get to doing those darn enemy spawn points, until the enemy is fully coded I wont be able to do the spawn points cause the enemy needs to be in an invisible layer to be spawned.

so, list of to do:
make the objective number count down upon enemy defeat.
tell it what to do when it's "0"
Finish the enemy's side of the battle calc
activate the AI when the player gets close. (already tested, was fun to have the enemy chase me around., need to make their motion slower so the player can get away though.)
make defeated animation.

and thats all.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on August 11, 2015, 12:53:49 AM
Well my tutor wants to see the finished thing tomorrow. I got everything working. I set map bounds with location constraints, I could hard code a Location stop around the buildings inner corners too, but don't have time.

tomorrow I need to make the inspirations, and if I find time finish the enemy's AI.

if I can't finish it there will be only one enemy for the exhibition but that's fine for now.

After the exhibition is done I will begin work to make the game more acceptable for us here at titan and begin the work needed to make it online again..

I will post a video of gameplay in a few days, I do apologize for some of the animations but what with my professor/supervisor demanding to see progress each monday and setting deadlines I had to rush it.

Due to collision problems having slowed me down there are only 5 buildings in the actual game at this moment. seems a very barren city.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Blackout on August 11, 2015, 09:41:06 PM
Awesome work, and good luck with your deadline. Looking forward to seeing some of the gameplay :)
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on August 13, 2015, 12:59:46 PM
Awesome work, and good luck with your deadline. Looking forward to seeing some of the gameplay :)

Thanks!, just recorded the video, I need to go set it up in the exhibition space. but I'll upload it later.

notes, while I was recording the video I found out some of my code for the log-in system is broken now. seems silly as I haven't touched it recently, it might be due to how I saved the game so I could port it to the exhibition computer.

oh well I've got some bug fixing to do, murphey's law you know, if something can go wrong it will especially at the last second when you need things to work to show other people.

found the error, I forgot an "and" in one of the triggers in the code. should I fix it and re-record?....  yeah let me do that.

it was literally just 1 "and" missing, i think blender forgot to save it  last time cause I always copypasta code and edit, so the and should have been there.

regardless, I'll re-record.

edit: meh, I'll re record for titan later, the character designer wasn't necessary for my degree program anyways,
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: ValianceOnline on August 13, 2015, 06:46:36 PM
Looking forward to seeing more of your work!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on August 14, 2015, 11:36:20 PM
Looking forward to seeing more of your work!

thanks!,

I've been busy these last few days running around edinburgh to get the exhibiton space setup properly, today the exhibition finally too place, the computer the school gave me however does windows updates every day at 3 am so I have to get in touch with the administrator as they've locked that feature. in the mean time I need to trudge into town every morning to get the game open again. I will try to find some time this week to show a video of current game-play possibilities.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on August 28, 2015, 08:22:56 AM
the hold-up on the video is lack of time due to having to write a thesis, I thought I was almost done but last tuesday my supervisor said it needs more references so that people who don't understand anything about video games can understand it. it's rough, I'm literally looking at 2 to 3 references per sentence that way.

I'll post the a video after I finish the thesis on the 31st.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Cheesy on August 28, 2015, 08:42:46 AM
Thanks for the update  :)
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on August 31, 2015, 10:08:27 PM
Thanks for the update  :)

you're welcome! ok now then with university completely out of the way, I had better get to that video.

For the school I did an audio narrated video of game play explaining the point of my research for Titan I suppose I can explain some different things.

question is audio narrated or not?
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on September 03, 2015, 12:48:36 PM
Ok no one has a preference for narration or not? I'll just record a video without sound then.

will post either today or tomorrow.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on September 04, 2015, 10:31:24 AM
I will still post a video today, but I have an update as well.

it really feels good to be able to work on test files again and not feel guilty about wasting time when there's a deadline ahead.

no deadlines means I can make as many test files as I like. When i do test files it's for the purpose of making new features, rather than building them into an already large game and chancing all sorts of bugs, I just make them in a separate file and test them till they work.

right, so what have I done? Dynamic color change.

we all know CoX had a whole palette of colors to choose from when designing costume parts, this was the first test; to check if blender could change an object's color to a variety of preset colors in-game. the outcome, yes, yes it can.

the next test done was to determine if I could manipulate a preset color in game by number. CoX didn't have this feature, I'm talking about Red Green Blue Color sliders and number input boxes for color change control. and for that matter not many MMOs do have it. in order to do it you need to be able to set the RGB values on a couple frames to a user given number. initially the test was a failure but I figured out a way to make it work.

this means we will have choices for how we do colors!

Edit; I want to eventually do something like F-Zero GX, where in our case we could make our own small images (50x50 or something) in-game for like SG symbols and chest symbols etc. and be able to drag them around the character's body/costume and leave them where we will. but that's a ways off.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on September 04, 2015, 03:04:05 PM
Ok what you've all been waiting for! a video of gameplay!

https://youtu.be/a0PZEt1ZZGw (https://youtu.be/a0PZEt1ZZGw)

check it out, I hope to get it multi-player by november/december with actual costume choices and powers (most of which is already set-up it's just a question of tying it into place).

also need to make a female model and fix some sloppy animations. Oh well lots of work to do yet still.

some things you'll notice;
Spoiler for Hidden:
the enemy has Absolutely no AI, well, that's not true he has AI but I disabled it cause he just runs at you at nearly the same speed as your run following you move for move unless you get far enough away (kinda a pain) I need to work on the AI.

the word Stamina is used to replace Endurance; to me Endurance is how much strain you can take, stamina is how much you can do before getting tired. for that reason I found stamina to be a better fitting word.

Inspirations are pick-ups!: yeah, I decided it would be neat to include some collectibles. don't worry though I will make 3 or 4 settings for them

1: "Touch", you have to touch it to pick-it-up
2: "Proximity", you have to get with-in melee range or hold power range (requires use of a power) to collect it.
3: "Click", you need to click it with the mouse pointer.
4: "Automatic", doesn't matter the range if it drops anywhere you get it in your inventory. (CoX style)


Timeout considerations; Items will not disappear until a mission is complete and you leave the map. if on a city map the items become public when you leave. Hint, Drops are only normally visible to the players who earned them, so no one can steal it or complain or know what you got.

you can get 3 powers from the start, your choice: 1 primary and 1 secondary and 1 travel, Or 2 primary, 1 secondary, OR 2 secondary 1 primary, yes that means players will be allowed to have more than 1 primary or secondary set.

The first NPC, his name is "The Nameless Hero" kinda a joke, yet at the same time I have a story for it. I don't reveal much here.
Spoilers beware.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on September 11, 2015, 01:39:41 PM
Comments and criticisms on what people think of things so far would be greatly appreciated!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: JoshexProxy on October 10, 2015, 01:59:54 PM
I really didn't want to have to post updates on this account, but I'm not handing my original account info over to a web proxy so this is my only option.

Ok I've been busy but haven't posted in a while due to travels and spam servers etc. I was hoping that I would cycle off the spam server like I did the first few weeks I encountered this problem, but that didn't happen for long enough to become a burden.

I've been wanting to give this update for weeks before I could feel good moving on; I have started the MMO-killer aspects of project bane one of these is functional just needs to be slightly more dynamic in the way it assigns things.

I can't say much (due to google bots reselling information they read to bidders) and that makes this update hard to give, all I can say is that this update means game-play itself is starting to get some key features.

Delays; This thing isn't going to be out by November/December, this whole trip I'm on was entirely unexpected and has eaten a lot of time and plans to eat more. I will be working 3 jobs even though each job is only 1 to 2 hours on average (excluding one job on week ends for 6 hours a day) this still presents yet more things to tire me out.  To be honest I procrastinated for about a week or two because I couldn't get on here to give this update, just left me feeling unsettled.

I should have copied the pm Arcana sent me in my main account to an offline source, she gives great critiques! helps me figure out what needs to be worked on next. Same with any critiques! please do let me know lol.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: JoshexProxy on October 13, 2015, 06:12:30 AM
well things are chaotic, I'll have more time because I'll only have 2 jobs after today, they thought I would stay longer so they wont sign a contract when they found out I'll be leaving china in November. more dev time is good, loss of job is bad.

got lots of drive to work on bane now. lots of small simple test files I can make which will be importable to the main file directly. It will feel good to enable the Holds/Effects code.

Edit 10/23/2015:

I figured I should give an update, no progress lately. Good news is I have free time again as the jobs all said they want me to contact them when I'm here for a good while rather than 2 months. so, no work, this was supposed to be a vacation after my studies anyways, my GF wanted me to get jobs here though after money concerns, I kept saying it was too late but she wouldn't listen. recently I worked on her PhD proposal, had to write a 500 word one, sentence merging is a brain buster, I can do it but trying to figure out rules for it could be tiresome.

oh well all the time I'm not working I'm planning, so we'll see what comes of it.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on February 07, 2016, 04:23:45 AM
A long time has passed, this project is not dead however, I'm always pondering things for it, if anything the time off let me think it through better.

lately I've been trying to restore the battle calc and stat system, after I gave it a look though the previous one had no User Instancing, that would have been a problem (players simultaneously attacking a target would all subtract their damages simultaneously making the end outcome that only the last attack in the chain would subtract from HP.)

I fixed that, I put in some basic user instancing, but went to bed last night and realized what I had done wrong, the now current user instancing system put's users and their attacks on a list from which the enemy sends an activation message and subtracts each outcome individually waiting for one player to finish before activating another player's attack. There may be user instancing, but there was no activation time sequencing! I have activation time in the attack list but didn't use it for user instancing (that was stupid).

right now only one user can access the battle calc script at a time too, I'm thinking of changing that if possible by having each battle object perform their own outgoing battle calc then merely send the outcome to the target's user instancing script. (right now I have each target performing incoming battle calcs)

So, what I'll need is one battle calc script and one user instancing script on each object, one Outgoing Battle Calc Script, and one Incoming User Instancing Script, that way nothing is ever tied up, and multiple attacks coming in at once can be cross-compared by activation time and sequenced accordingly, activating them as little as "however long it takes the script to complete the HP reduction on average+ a little bit of timing error consideration" apart from each other, or if it comes to two or more identical timing entries in the list sequentially activate them simultaneously and subtract them combined as one total damage.

I make it sound like a simple fix here but with IRL distractions as usual it may take a few days just to write out the logic (I've found writing it out first helps me think more completely about the functionality). then after that comes the bore of actually editing this into the server scripts. but the outcome will be worth it.

After fixing this set-up, I have like 4 or 5 more things with this level of work to do before I can release a beta client for testing.

2; finish the character designer; I actually need to add in a costume designer screen (I also need to make a Female Model Base from the male one to save rigging time, and I need to make the UV layouts) and a shard screen (this part of the client handles login, authentication, and encryption as well, and needs to be split into server and client operations) I also need to finish adding in the various powers and sets and make the window/button graphics more interesting than blank rectangles. I might also profit to redo the mouse script as a ratio comparing game screen width and height  to visible game world width and height (right now it's just a mouse motion to object motion translator).

on note of the costume designer, if anyone is reading this please give me the names of any Hair styles and faces from City of X that you would like to see from the start and I'll see what I can do to translate (because they will be more graphical etc.) them onto the character models. (I'll probably only do 3 faces and 3 hair styles from the start, tights or bare (with underwear) will be the only actual costume options)

ALSO send me emote names from City you would like to see for role-play/dance-offs!!

"2" may take a few months.

3; Finish the tutorial Zone, I plan for it to be more than just a tutorial zone in that people can revisit it as and when they like so it will be a main zone.

On this note BUILDINGS, got any interesting architecture that you would like to be a part of the tutorial zone? send me a picture or address and building name to look at. I need to redo some aspects of the Tutorial zone's graphics as they were rushed and add in some more.

I also need to finish looping the mission and make a few other missions for testing.

I'll need to make a few more NPCs and a hospital, and definitely make more enemies, I'm thinking street-thugs style. I have a story for the thug group and a name and insignia but I need to start designing their looks (obviously I can't rip-off the hellions looks).

Also I need to add in the window designs here too.

*IRL interruption while typing not sure if I said everything I needed to say that needs to get done*

3 may take a couple months work on it's own.

4; Chat system
enough said, I need to make it from scratch. I already have the logic written out and I'm satisfied with it.

I'm not sure how long this will take, maybe 4 will take 1 to 5 months?

5; Items, Items, Items, I need to get some basic items made to test things like the Inspiration system(already partly done just needs a partial fix), recipe and salvage system, and basic enhancement system (as well as a few other Items I will be including).

5 I give it 1 to 2 months on it's own.

total estimated time till it's ready; 10 to 20 months.

In all reality I hope I can finish it faster.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Alpha Series on February 20, 2016, 09:17:58 PM
I haven't posted anything in a long time. Have been looking from time to time to see if any news. Josh, your work is impressive! You certainly have created a major piece of work along with a ton of things going on in your life simultaneously! I look forward to seeing more of your creation as you go on. I sure wish you much success in all your pursuits! You certainly deserve a pat on the back and a tall glass of something enjoyable! The best to you!

Quite Sincerely, Alpha.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: JoshexProxy on February 22, 2016, 08:30:15 AM
I haven't posted anything in a long time. Have been looking from time to time to see if any news. Josh, your work is impressive! You certainly have created a major piece of work along with a ton of things going on in your life simultaneously! I look forward to seeing more of your creation as you go on. I sure wish you much success in all your pursuits! You certainly deserve a pat on the back and a tall glass of something enjoyable! The best to you!

Quite Sincerely, Alpha.

Thanks!, this means a lot to me!
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: JoshexProxy on March 06, 2016, 01:31:15 AM
again I was forced to do "the impossible" in quotes because that's what everyone including blender devs has said.

A map veil, that black image over the map that gets erased as the player travels through the area.

blender people say "blender has no dynamic texture editing abilities"

LibPNG disagrees, a python module that when combined with blender's videotexture module can indeed produce the desired effect. what other work does it take? a space conversion from the total zone area, to the approximate image canvas space in pixels and the conversion of this information into a script that finds and changes those exact pixels of the png image. seeing as libpng treats the image as a large array of lists where each line of pixels can be it's own list that is an easy conversion.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: JoshexProxy on April 14, 2016, 04:01:15 AM
getting off my lazy streak, well not entirely lazy I did some figuring and modelling while avoiding the big picture.

but today, I'm going to try my hand at cracking into the mouse script again, I know what I have to do and how to code it, it's just the conversion of 3D space to screen width/height given that they may change based on user settings, that's the rough bit. but I'll figure it out.

probably best to start with a square screen with a 3d space to screen space ratio of 1:1 or something to count by then merely divide and multiply to get the changed space.

Edit:
so, a square screen. I did 500x500 pixels, half of which (for grid space) is 250, and that is equal to 23.259 blender units when viewing from the camera. What I found is that the 3D scene width does not change when expanding width or height of the screen from square, instead the height reduces incrementally. Where as for a width that's less than square the height stays the same (23.259 blender units) while the width changes incrementally.

I'm onto something here I need to find that increment of change. once found I can complete the script.

Edit:
I had work yesterday so I had little time to actually work on it.

but today I found some free time I found the magic number which is a change of 0.03575 per pixel change, with that known I'm moving forwards to finish it.

Edit:

and now it works, but the X axis is somehow reversed, but the fact that it works smoothly means I can forget about the nasty glitch that causes the mouse to jump off the screen and never return, and the other glitch which causes the mouse to jump off the screen at the start and need to be reset.

Mouse Script 1.0 merely translated mouse motion to game object motion, Mouse Script 2.0 translates Mouse Screen Position to 3D game Space positions on the X and Y axis.

with that I can cross one thing off the list of ToDos.

fixed the X axis reversal but there's a blind spot at the top of the game space, a distance the 3D object wont follow the mouse past. this means there's a problem with the calculations I'll have to figure it out.

Edit:

ok, this is not good, when approaching full screen suddenly the Y axis flips.

I have another way to do this script which means I'll have to look into doing a 2.1 version. also the blinds zones are different based on screen size. a tall screen to a slightly wide screen has 0 problems, but when going to a normal wide screen there are worse and worse blind spots.

Found out whats wrong with the current script, I was multiplying the difference between width and height by the magic number 0.03575, there came a point when the difference was naturally much larger than the proposed area and went negative, when it went negative we had a reversed Y axis.

so.. the fix is to use a proportion scale to correct the situation. It could be that the current magic number is wrong, it may be scaling down slowly until it hits some sort of magic minimum number. I'll check that out.

the answer to the question is, the magic number is wrong because it forgets about one key factor; Aspect Ratio.

So I googled aspect ratios and found the most lopsided aspect ratio is 16:9 with a difference of 43.75%, the fix is to use an aspect ratio setting as a trigger instead of lessthan or greaterthan arguments to drive the 3D space conversion and treat it as a percent change versus a pixel by pixel change.

Edit; that was completely unnecessary, the magic number here is just a conversion 'change rate' so in effect in this case it's the speed/accuracy of the 3D mouse object, do we really need to make it so accurate that you can click on each and every pixel? the answer is no, that would be uselessly smooth.

I did a simple trial and error with rounding and found that a change rate of 0.01 works just fine it looks visibly just as smooth.

Script finished, 1 monkey off my back.

Next I'm going to monkey with a costume editor test file.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Joshex on April 17, 2016, 02:51:43 PM
So netfilter was routing my connection through a spam server. wonderful.

I have to be careful where I login to this account from, at work the wifi yields the spam server ban message, but at home it doesn't.

Right so what became of the costume designer test file?

Costume Designer test file (texture swap via VideoTexture):
test result; Partial success:
was able to switch images by material in game.

Parts of test needing more testing:
swapping a specific texture channel of a specific material (on a multi-texture material) such as switching a normal map, color map, mask or reflection without effecting the others.

Need to Learn the code system for the VideoTexture module (limited documentation)

I'm basically flying blind here without documentation, usually I have a nice code library I can just reference, but for some reason the videotexture module has no such library instead even the newest blender/python library merely gives a half-assed tutorial. they supply test files of their own though so I'm monkeying with those. and I might butt heads with the devs to see if I can get them to write or notice there is no blender/python library on the topic and fix it.

The thought did occur to me though that I may be pushing my luck here. I mean overloading the material count is not something I'd like to do, I learned that's bad during my very first day with blender, strange things start to happen when the material count or object count goes too high (though that was when working with blender 2.42, which is ancient).
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Serena on May 14, 2016, 12:23:31 AM
Is this a solo project?
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Mister Hassenpheffer on May 14, 2016, 08:30:42 PM
Looks like it.
Title: Re: Project Bane
Post by: Nyx Nought Nothing on December 08, 2016, 11:21:48 PM
Now it looks like i'll never see the majesty of an MMO... ish... thing... coded from the ground up.