73 replies to this topic

[DIGI_Byte]

After messign around with BFME for some time and lack of interest from certain people who I needed, i pulled out of the BFME engine and its confusing mess

I've been goign to college and keeping busy with life, and now finding an interest in game making again
I currently have a job offering for a indy game studio by a friend of mine, on regard that i develop a full and complete set of spaceships, and i wanted to learn how to do unity, im doign MAVE as a project that gets 2 birds and one stone


this is more of a tech demo at the moment, its about 3 days of learning and stuffing about. I'm happy with most of it

I want to change the way the ship turns, im aiming for 2 modes,
Mode 1 - free mouse, that it would follow the mouse like jet games for the smaller ships
(camera settigns will change too)
Mode 2 - A point/double click system just like EVE online but only for the larger ships


Anyway, for the Tech demo on what iv'e done so far, download here, and let me know what you think
http://www.mediafire...rn70drbk0wc71k8
Controls: WASD
Slider at bottom: Modifies Speed

Edited by DIGI_Byte, 01 April 2012 - 03:10 AM.

[DIGI_Byte]

Im working on a Minimap system, But im lost, this part is alil deeper then most tutorials offer and i need some help, i know this probably isnt the best place
however im about to go to bed.

I'm tryign to create a Dynamic 2D Minimap that searches the scene for objects with a tag, collects their XYZ and renders a texture in the GUI relative to the center of the scene and GUI


here is what i have, i edited an existing script, however i beleive its tryign to edit 3D space, and not GUI space...

it all works fine, until i want to check for tags and render

#DELETED

Edited by DIGI_Byte, 06 April 2012 - 07:14 AM.

[duke_Qa]

Awesome seeing some activity on the unity forums, good show!

Can't you put the projects in your public dropbox folder and get the embedded html link from that? should be a very easy solution for showing off things. I could have opened that zip-file, but embedded files feel so much better and I'm trying to get some work done.

[DIGI_Byte]

Due to a point precision limit, accuracy is having issues at large scale, but ill be working around solutions for it at a later date.
For now the minimap is on hold until i work more things out, right now I'm dedicated to getting the flight controls and camera working great

so i need to create a follow script for the camera and an orbit zoom script set to an if statement which will probably be set to a tick box for testing purposes.
I'm also setting up the libraries to set global settings that it can call on for what ship and storing data, but stuck because I'm not sure how i should handle long lists of values, and don't want to use to many Variables


One thing is for sure, once i get every thing done, or mostly nearly finished, ill definitely write scripts and cut out sections for others to analyses and incorporate into their unity games and ill explain how to compile and set things up so you can have an on the fly system so you don't feel overwhelmed by unity

what makes unity great, is its a light weight powerful plug and play system that matches even Unreal 3 (standard)
its plug and play makes it questionable on its power and limitations because it doesnt have a set or dedicated file format time, it can handle everything from dds to png and jpg on the fly

[duke_Qa]

Singletons are good for storing global settings. Or static variables stored in a specific class that is never instanced.

Unity is a beast since you don't have to worry about adding all the latest technological stuff yourself. Just design a game with the tools they've made and hey presto. I'll most likely buy a license or two this summer if I'm lucky, so we'll see if that motivates me to do something more fancy with it.

[DIGI_Byte]

its not worth the license, all you get are a few extra features more for visual appeal like bloom, better water shaders etc
I don't have a license either and would love to have one, but its not necessary.

[Nertea]

Digi, why not try doing a minimap using a separate camera system? Did this a while ago and it worked well:

Essentially every object on the map gets a child object which has a Layer setting as "minimap". Then you place a camera 'above' the player ship and use a script to have it follow it. Or the camera gets placed in the center of the scene... however you want it to work. The camera gets set to render only the minimap layer. Problem is that for each object on the map you have another draw call (you can solve this by combining meshes before rendering), effectively doubling draw calls which are major overhead in unity.

I'm also setting up the libraries to set global settings that it can call on for what ship and storing data, but stuck because I'm not sure how i should handle long lists of values, and don't want to use to many Variables

Are you running in JS or C#? JS builtin arrays are really fast in there (I think the benchmark is processing 1 million vertex positions per second), so you can store a lot of data rather easily. Probably better to store that data as a file though and read in at load so you can keep only what you need.

[duke_Qa]

its not worth the license, all you get are a few extra features more for visual appeal like bloom, better water shaders etc
I don't have a license either and would love to have one, but its not necessary.

It would be budgeted and its okay to have access to shadows and the likes. yeah, most of those things can be done with open source versions. But a lot of the functionality is locked up to that license. Anyway. $1500 isn't the end of the world, I spent four times that last year on adobe and maya.

Edited by duke_Qa, 11 April 2012 - 09:49 AM.

[DIGI_Byte]

I went back to basics and got a radar script and modified it completly, its fully working too and so i modified it, but now I'm facing a small complication.

I'm using Js
now, the idea is, i would put everything in a tag layer (which i have) and attaching a IdentLib.js script, which would have isTrue booleans,
the radar map would read each object and look for that script with 'isTrue' and render the corresponding blip
now the issue is... how to i access that script property from a gameObject?
since its boolean, all i need is a direct link to it in an if statement since i don't need " == true"

this is from the radar script when setting the blip type

for (var go : GameObject in gos)  {
	   var blipChoice : Texture = miniDefaultBlip;
	  
  
  // This line stumps me
var checkIdentityLibrary : IdentLib = go.GetComponent("IdentLib");

  // Also, how do i call the isTrue type?
   if(go.IdentLib.isSun){
	blipChoice = miniSunBlip;
	}
  
   if(go.IdentLib.isPlanet)
	   blipChoice = miniPlanetBlip;
  
	  if(IdentLib.isStation)
	blipChoice = miniStationBlip;
  
   if(IdentLib.isPlayer)
	blipChoice = miniPlayerBlip;
  
  
  drawBlip(go,blipChoice);
	}

and as for 3D, i would LOVE to go 3D, however, without Pro, i cant render camera onto mesh, I can set a Z depth and pop it ontop my normal camera, but appears to use 0.0 as a %, so unless someone gets some math formula that get s the screen size and adds a pixel offset by the width, i'll stick with 2D
Another thing i'd liek to do in 3D map, is to have the user able to rotate and spin it around freely, but that might not be possible to my knowledge... but then again, this is Unity and i have access to java and C#


another thing is i would like the user able to click on the buttons and click on a few buttons like "show info" and "warp too"

Once thats done..
to do list
new flight system (double click to align ship)
camera system (click and move to rotate)
warp system (works with radar system?)
Player variables (current ship, modules equipped, stats upgrades, currency and name)
main Menu
Save and Load states
Load menu
Jump System (warp from scene to scene and remember last spawn location)
NPC's
Quest system (get and manage quests and goals)
Mission System (pulls mission from library and loads basic stats and spawn group location inside mission area)
Weapon/Turret System (pulls data from current modules and renders them on the ship at null sub-gameObjects)
Death/Game over System (if Ai Dies, and if Player Dies)


all Scripts should be done in JavaScript for ease of use but not mandatory, and all scripts should be isolated for a module based plug and play system utilizing prefabs

Edited by DIGI_Byte, 11 April 2012 - 01:35 PM.

[Nertea]

and as for 3D, i would LOVE to go 3D, however, without Pro, i cant render camera onto mesh, I can set a Z depth and pop it ontop my normal camera, but appears to use 0.0 as a %, so unless someone gets some math formula that get s the screen size and adds a pixel offset by the width, i'll stick with 2D

The math isn't too tough, you just need to have something that checks Screen.width and Screen.height to make sure you set the aspect ratio correctly.

Another thing i'd liek to do in 3D map, is to have the user able to rotate and spin it around freely, but that might not be possible to my knowledge... but then again, this is Unity and i have access to java and C#

You can ideed do this.

So as to your question:

var checkIdentityLibrary : IdentLib = go.GetComponent("IdentLib");

This says get a reference to the script object IdentLib attached to go. You can get rid of the quotation marks as long as IdentLib is a JS class. It's faster.
Your variable name here might get confusing. I'll go with goIdent.

var goIdent : IdentLib = go.GetComponent("IdentLib");/CODE]

I assume that in your IdentLib class you have something like this:

[CODE]function isSun() 
{
 if (objectType == 'sun')
return true;
}[/CODE]
That's easier to use enums to track, but for now basically you have a function that returns true if the object is of whatever class.

Now we access the IdentLib component and call the isSun function...
[CODE]
if (goIdent.isSun() ) {
 blipChoice = sunBlip;
}[/CODE]

Repeat for each category. Does that make sense? Basically when you use GetComponent, it gets you a reference to that particular component. To access it you just then access the reference.

[CODE]go.GetComponent(IdentLib).isSun()

is a condensed version.

[duke_Qa]

Another thing i'd liek to do in 3D map, is to have the user able to rotate and spin it around freely, but that might not be possible to my knowledge... but then again, this is Unity and i have access to java and C#

make another view in the gui where you want the minimap. UnityAnswers post for just this problem. You can have multiple cameras in a scene after all, and I guess you can make one camera only show certain elements or with different shaders, giving you an okay minimap-feeling.

[DIGI_Byte]

the problem with camera as minimap without render to texture, its hard to keep it to size, say 220x220px, the camera uses aspect ratio with a % offset from the hieght and width, meaning it will maintain aspect ratio, but be skewed and not displayed correctly within the bounds of a say 220x220 GUI.window

Edited by DIGI_Byte, 11 April 2012 - 11:52 PM.

[Nertea]

Err, no.

You just need to do a bit of calculation. Say you want a 200 px viewport for your camera.

So,

sX = 200.0/Screen.width;
sY = 200/Screen.height;

That will give you the correct percentages. Dynamically assign these to Camera.main's rect property, and you'll have a 200x200px area. You would calculate the offsets in an identical way.

[DIGI_Byte]

why divide?
HAHA. oh good one! thanks man i wasn't aware of screen as a class
http://unity3d.com/s...nce/Screen.html

I was looking at the camera settings to control the aspect, sadly it goes from 0-1 and doesn't give the desired effect.

Thanks, i can work with this

Edited by DIGI_Byte, 12 April 2012 - 01:23 PM.

[DIGI_Byte]

UPDATE 0.1
I figured I'd give the community something to post for news other then the CnC units

So, I present to you, Space...
SPAAAAAACE!





Bonus Photoshop for eye candy-ness



These, apart from the bottom 2, which are more concept/theme inspiring, they are skyboxes that will be used and seen in the final product

(Warning: Lens flare not included.)

Edited by DIGI_Byte, 12 April 2012 - 08:51 PM.

[Phil]

Nice! Do you also have them in high resolution (like 2600px wide)? I could imagine using one or two as desktop backgrounds on my machine.

[DIGI_Byte]

haha sure, what one would you like?
I can change colours and do a request
ps, what resolutions?
I can render upto... 4096x4096 and that's per image on a 6 image skybox
there is another skybox too, the one in the demo, i can render that one out too

Edited by DIGI_Byte, 13 April 2012 - 04:09 PM.

[Phil]

My resolution is 2560 x 1440 px, so something along those lines. Actually I'd like to try out the first three (yes, all three) and possibly one like #1 or #2 with a reddish hue (if possible). Thanks, that'd be a blast.

Edit: You should totally make a wallpaper topic in the Graphics section and post up some of those. If you make a few more I can make a news article for the front page.

Edited by Phil, 13 April 2012 - 04:20 PM.

[DIGI_Byte]

Maybe i should put some product placement
http://forums.revora...ave-wallpapers/

Edited by DIGI_Byte, 14 April 2012 - 09:13 PM.

[DIGI_Byte]

Welp, im stuck, I'm trying to play with this script and using enum on the other script, then callign its value in another script and checking what its value is.
maybe someone knows how to call enum's properly from another script?
i set it to public hoping that wold fix it... but no..

ideas?

IdentLib.js

enum typeIdValues {id_null, id_Player, id_Sun, id_Planet, id_Station, id_WarpGate, id_Mission, id_Anomaly, id_Marker}
public var typeIdV : typeIdValues = typeIdValues.id_null;

SystemMap.js

function DrawBlipsForEnemies(){
//You will need to replace isChasing with a variable from your AI script that is true when	   the enemy is chasing the player, or doing watever you want it to be doing when it is red on	the radar.

//You will need to replace "EnemyAINew with the name of your AI script

	// Find all game objects tagged Enemy
	var gos : GameObject[];
	gos = GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag("ShowSystemMap");

	var distance = Mathf.Infinity;
	var position = transform.position;

	// Iterate through them and call drawBlip function
	for (var go : GameObject in gos)  {
		   var blipChoice : Texture = defaultBlip;
			// Get value from typeIdV in IdentLib.js attached to object
		   var goIdent : IdentLib = go.GetComponent("Ident Lib");
		  if (miniMapUpdate == true) {
				// What is typeIdV?
				  if (typeIdV == typeIdValues.id_Sun)
					  lipChoice = miniSunBlip;
					  
				   if(typeIdV == typeIdValues.id_Planet)
					blipChoice = miniPlanetBlip;
			
				   if(typeIdV == typeIdValues.id_Station)
					blipChoice = miniStationBlip;
  }
  drawBlip(go,blipChoice);
}

EDIT, I think i may have it with

if (IdentLib.typeIdV == typeIdValues.id_Sun)

however, i cannot change the valie because i changed the enum variable to static
meaning i cant change it...
maybe i should have another variable that reads it and is static?

Edited by DIGI_Byte, 22 April 2012 - 07:24 PM.