Programmers' Discussion Thread

Okay, I think we're in a need for some discussion how the game will be programmed. Here are some questions that popped into my mind:

1) Movement:

-Should we move the characters by adding/reducing variables x and y, or use vspeed and hspeed?

-Jumping with gravity? Y/N? it might be a bit glitchy.

-How about solids? (I prefer not)



2) Shooting

-In Nrage's level 1 beta there were shootable barrels and boxes. Should these be only background stuff and when you shoot directly on them, they explode/break? Otherwise the bullets just pass them, so the boxes wont be in the way. OR, should these boxes be blocking objects and one could hide behind them?

-When the player aims, its obvious that the gun should point towards mouse. How could we EFFICIENTLY rotate the body so that his arms dont rotate too much and it would look smooth? I mean that his arms won't be the only part moving.

-How high speeds should we use for bullets? I somewhat figured a way to fix the fact that very fast moving instances sometimes skip solids and other objects, by checking:
if place_meeting(x+lengthdir_x(hspeed,direction),y+lengthdir_y(vspeed,direction),enemy_parent)
What are your opinions, would that code work?

-Guns. We need to make the system very easy to use and smooth, no glitches that is. Remember, there will be guns which you can put attachments on and some guns you can't. There will be nearly 100 different possibilities I think so we have to make it as good as we can.



3) Changing between areas

-We should create an efficient script to let the player travel between places. However, should we use multiple rooms and make some instances persistent, or just move the view in a huge room, and deactivating instances who shouldn't do a thing in the current area?



4) Enemy AI

- How intelligent AI should we have? More clever = More work. But we can't make hte enemies just run towards you when you are within some x range and shoot you.


Feel free to post your own ideas and start discussing on others'.

1) I think we should use a physics DLL/GEX, and do what is needed for it to work.

2) Obstacles are kind of important, just walking in a corridor, shooting straight forward is no fun.
I have no idea about how the body is going to follow the aiming, I guess we'll have to talk it over with the graphics "department".
Are the bullets to be seen at all? It's not realistic being able to duck a bullet when it already has been shot...

3) I vote for one single room for the playing (and other rooms for main menus and stuff) and deactivating instances, because I think that when you re-enter a room, it should look the same as you left it, one option is that we save all coordinates and stuff to a file and opens it again when we need it.
Will we use the built-in level editor or make one ourselves, I vote for making one ourselves.

4) I guess we'll work on it as much as we want to, until we're satisfied with the result.

Thanks,

1) okay to me...
2) We can make the shots instant except for rockets and grenades.
3) Hmm... it is quite frustrating to use the GM room editor, but to make one our own? is it even possible? OFC we can use our own files to load the maps...

I agree with crates and other such objects being able to interact with the gameplay. For the bullets, you should at least be able to see something.

we can make a light line to "follow" the bullet for a short time so you see where it hit, or if your aim sucks, didnt hit and we can check a collision_line for hits.

Sounds great. BTW: Thanks for making this topic. It will really help us progress.

But that can as well just be a line (in fact, I think that would be better).

3) I have made built-in level editors for a couple of my games and that's worked great. It isn't that much work and it's quite popular building own levels so that's another benefit.

But the thing is, that should we allow people to make their own levels? Okay, it's fun, but whats the usage of those levels? Good idea, but I haven't seen many shooting games have level editors, anyways if majority wants it, lets do it.
In the first post, I meant that should the main story game be in a one single room.

A level editor is something we can work on after we get the storyline started...

I really hate using physics DLLs/GEXs

If bullets are at real speed, how are we going to have our character avoid them? Right now it seems as an accuracy engine will decide if you live or die along with AI intelligence on non-intelligence.

Hitting the enemies also becomes a "how-good-is-your-gun" thing. As far as I see it you point at the enemy, click a button, and a luck-based engine decides if you hit or not.

Xeno Daphron wrote:

If bullets are at real speed, how are we going to have our character avoid them? Right now it seems as an accuracy engine will decide if you live or die along with AI intelligence on non-intelligence.

Hitting the enemies also becomes a "how-good-is-your-gun" thing. As far as I see it you point at the enemy, click a button, and a luck-based engine decides if you hit or not.

So, you think it's bad?

I don't see how it will work very well from a gameplay prospective. So, yes, I think its bad. I haven't tried a game like that, but it doesn't seem to work well.

Okay.

But the bullets can't go too slow either... readonable speeds in GM would be 25+, so we'll just have to calculate if its gonna hit something with my piece of code... And we can still have the light drawn line there...

Why can't the bullets go too slow? In most shooters the bullets go slow, it makes it more challenging. (and more fun most likely)

Well, the bullet can't be in the air more than few seconds though. 1-2.

Yea, just slow enough so you can see the bullet and have time to dodge it if you are far enough away.

Which opens up a new question. How wide should the view be? I mean, 30*players width or what?

That is a VERY good question. Screen sizes are problematic. How wide is the character?

Lets say he is x pixels wide. There has to be a nice constant for this kind of things... and no, i dont mean golden ratio, but we can use a multiple of it

I'll make some concepts on paint and post here if i find out something decent...

Ok, having a model for the character will help. Even if it's a very rough one.

Okay, i made this:

https://2img.net/h/i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn102/hegemege/viewwidthtest.jpg

It's 772x525

whatdoya think?

Ummm... I'm REALLY hoping your joking right now...

I don't think you know what this all was about?

The stickmen and all are just a joke, but I tried to find a nice view measures... like, how wide should the player be compared to view width, so that you can aim far enough?

It's not meant to be a game concept of any level or anything

lol!!!

We can make a Documentary of how this game was created and include that "concept art" and underneath reads "The first game concept art of world-wide known Destruction Productions' hit game 'Biolab 4'."