I make games.

[Arsanthania]

yup. i happen to be an independent game developer.

while people might say that Game Maker can't make good 3d games, or well thought out 3d games, i beg to differ.
while my graphics are "simplistic" they have their own style, and the game has it's own odd gimmicks.


i'll update the thread when i get a WIP release.

those screenshots are old, but i'll update it in a short bit with more recent screen shots.

and if i can find a good screen+audio recording software, i might upload a video.

[Cykotitan]

Hey, who would've thought That game looks interesting tbh.
I for one do not care about graphics as long as gameplay is decent.

[Arsanthania]

Hey, who would've thought That game looks interesting tbh.

thanks!

I for one do not care about graphics as long as gameplay is decent.

same with the community i'm on/making it "for."

i just noticed that the top screenshot isn't very old, but the bottom one is ~2 months old.
i need to take and upload new screen shots O.o

[Weylin]

Game makers rendering engine is kinda shit, I was looking into using Ogre3D's renderer with GM. The package for it basically gives you a bunch of scripts that make calls to the ogre.dlls, assigns some constants with values that are recognized by the dll, but the names of them making sense to the programmer.

[Arsanthania]

Game makers rendering engine is kinda shit, I was looking into using Ogre3D's renderer with GM. The package for it basically gives you a bunch of scripts that make calls to the ogre.dlls, assigns some constants with values that are recognized by the dll, but the names of them making sense to the programmer.

i am probably going to leave GM and move to something more powerful after this game.
i don't like the render engine, but i've found ways around it. (at least i can have some decent particles effects. kinda)

i might use GMOgre3D, but it is arguably more impressive to make a game like i am without using a dll, though i still want dynamic reflections (think Tron Legacy reflections)

EDIT:
also, this game is set up with, instead of using graphics made of polygons (most modern games), it uses polygons as it's graphics. and now instead of saying "millions of polys is cool!" it's saying "fewer polys actually might look better!"
this doesn't detract from the gameplay, and may very add a great deal to it in the future.

[Weylin]

Speaking of making games, would you mind helping me out with one?

I'm trying to piece together a vector graphic space shooter that allows users to design their own ship hull, weapon systems, and possibly special devices such as cloaks, shields, dispensers, you name it.

Balance would be achieved by giving stats a linear, or possibly non-linear influence on overall available 'points'.
This means you could have, say, a slow firing gun with powerful bullets, or a rapid fire gun with weaker bullets.
The type of weapon would have an influence on points too, for example, a missile type weapon would have more stats that would need adjusted, like acceleration, launch speed, turn rate, tracking strength, CM resistance, all this leaving less available for more damage or rate of fire.


Anyhow, I'm having difficulty working out how collisions should be done. Impact collisions could be done by checking for a line intercept between a ship vector and the line spanning the current and previous location of a projectile.

I've never really tried, or needed, to write collision code from scratch, I hate reinventing the wheel, I just know this has been done a thousand times before, just can't figure out how to apply to to a GM8 game...

[Arsanthania]

in GM8 you can use for() statements to check for an object's position, or you can use the built-in collision_line. however, you have to have a ship shaped mask for the ship object.

i don't know how, but if you want to have a truly customizable ship, you'd have to be able to set up a collision matrix for that image.

however, you could have pre-setup ship modules that you can "slap" together, allowing for some more diversity.
i'm actually going to do this^ for a different game.

i'm not sure exactly what you need help with, but I've done my best with the given information, i think. O.o

[Weylin]

Well, the ships are drawn manually as a polygon, not a sprite, that's the whole problem, I can't use the default collision detection.

I know a few games that already use building blocks, but those tend to be more limited than I care for... I want users to have as much freedom on their designs as possible, while still having a system in place to keep it balanced. Everything down to the projectiles you shoot I plan on having a means of customizing them, and tweaking their stats for a desired effect.

If such a game already exists, I'd love to hear about it, I've just not been able to find one.
Beyond Protocol has the custom units, weapons, and systems - But you can only choose from existing hulls.
Some other game, well two, I can't remember the name of them... They let you design your own vector ship and place where the weapons, lights, engines are, but they had no effect on ship performance.
One of the games above had something that let you put points into 3 stats, firepower, speed, and durability.


Imagine a game such as this going further... turning into a massive online conquest game like Shores of Hazeron, where you can join or start your own empire, with your own fully custom designed spacecraft.

[Arsanthania]

hey, i thought of that a long time ago!
mine will be different though. it's like the combined gameplay of star trek: Conquest and SF

your's will be different from mine, but we can help each other.

i would recommend using a disk shaped sprite that scales to fit the size of the ship. collisions look kinda if-y with GM8 anyway, so precise collisions could be an issue with that.
(i know that there is a way to do this, but i don't know how)

[Weylin]

Well, I thought about just settling with a collision ellipse, that would do well for a shield bubble, but if people make something like a triangular ship, they'll be getting hit where they wouldn't expect it.

[Arsanthania]

if you're moving around fast enough you won't be able to tell. it might seem odd, but try making the ellipse or mask a bit smaller than the ship's extreme points, it'll seem a bit more...realistic.

[Weylin]

What would you suggest as a data structure for saving/rendering/editing ship designs? Each vertex would have 2 lines leading to their neighbor, and the smallest possible shape would be a triangle. No intersecting lines, ship must be a full loop.

[Arsanthania]

a list?
idk, i know how to do something like that with 3d, but it should work in 2d.

you have to make a list with each vertex, and then have the game dynamically sense how many vertices there are. then it draws it depending on the vertex info.

[Weylin]

I'm not sure how lists are used, I've never messed with them. I understand arrays though