Yet Untitled Platforming Game

[Dandi8]

Hey guys!
This thread is to keep track of my yet untitled platforming game. I came across a lot (a lot!) of problems in UnrealScript, as there is no proper documentation for it (I don't consider UDK.com documentation-ish enough) but thanks to the great help by Blaguuu I was able to solve many of them and here I am now.

Features:
-Quite complex 2.5D camera (you can notice it zoom in at the end of the vid, for example)
-Shooting actually works and it's done Metroid-style (6 directions)
-No dodging and higher double jump (wow, what a feature XD)
-I'm pretty sure there was something else but I can't quite remember

Still gotta work on a lot of stuff but at least you can see it shaping up. If all else fails, it will be a great UScript lesson.

Oh, the fracture-able rock model and map brush textures are mine

Link to vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0VlF2x2wxM

Comment!

[McTavish]

Awesome man !

[Dandi8]

Oh and if you've got suggestions, post 'em. When I finish it'll hopefully be a sci-fi shooter with ancient elements and steering similar to that of Metroid and similar games, as I think there's not enough of those around these days

I gotta rewrite a bit of the aiming system as it's not as responsive as I'd hoped it would be. Right now for example when the up button is pressed it checks if the player is currently moving and if he is, it aims up diagonally, if he isn't, it aims straight up.
I have to figure out a way to register the keys (probably through a custom variable like bIsUpPressed).

[mikeypoorogers]

This is very cool Dandi8. I think games like this are going to become pretty popular with the success of Shadow Complex. I hope to work on someting in the side scrolling style once I learn UDK a bit more. I may have to hit you up on some tips for the camera, etc.

[Piranhi]

Good work mate.

[HideInLight]

Dang, looks fun to play with...Any chance of sharing the source code for the camera?


Nice work btw.

[Eildalior]

NIce job. This type of games is more and more famous. Essentialy in several MMO RPG like Dragonica.
You can play with the deph :P :P I remember Duke Nuken : Manhattan Project !!!

[LordsWarrior]

Nice onw!! I like

[Dandi8]

Dang, looks fun to play with...Any chance of sharing the source code for the camera?


Nice work btw.

My current code is a bit of a mess atm. but I had a bare-bones camera code backup lying around somewhere. I can upload it if you want it but it just a camera following the player, without all the fancy effects. It's easy to add them in, though

@Eildalior:
DN:MP was pretty fun although it lacked depth IMO A lot of my inspiration is from Metroid as I think that's the most atmospheric series (at least the 2D ones). For some reason I like Metroid: Fusion the best.

Right now my biggest concern is that I suck at modelling organics and I have to model the player and enemies somehow XD

[Eildalior]

Yeah I have understood you like some ''old school'' games ^^
Contrat, Metal Slug, Metroid, and other...

About the deph, I think about Lomax... when you want to go to the background.

[Lord Banshee]

I like the camera and the control of the character with weapon aim. I am going to assume that is all UnrealScript any tips on how to get control like that, maybe a tutorial of sorts..

[Dandi8]

Quick update:
I just finished rewriting the shooting code and it looks like it works just the way I wanted it to Might need some playtesting and I definetely need to play some older platformers now to get the feel of how they did it. As for checking for keypresses, I did it in a little bit hacky way involving OnRelease in UTInput and variables like bIsUpPressed or bIsLeftPressed. Wish I could do it in some other way but hey, at least it works :P

@Eildalior:
Lomax, as in Adventures of Lomax? Haven't played it, but I've seen it on YouTube. You mean the swapping between two level layers? IMO it kills the gameplay a bit.

@LordBanshee:
Here's an old backup of the game code:
http://uploading.com/files/f9631de4/...me_Backup.rar/

It has all the basic camera + walking done. As for aiming, I made some functions like aimUp() and aimDown() which registered keypresses and then checked aiming like this:

function CheckAiming()
{
local rotator tempRot;
tempRot = getViewRotation();
if (bIsLeftPressed || bIsRightPressed)
{
if (bIsUpPressed)
{
//Aim Diagonally
tempRot.Pitch=16384;
} else
if (bIsDownPressed)
{
tempRot.Pitch=-16384;
} else
{
//Aim Normal
tempRot.Pitch=0;
}
} else
if (bIsUpPressed)
{
//Aim Straight Up
tempRot.Pitch=32768;
} else
if (bIsDownPressed)
{
tempRot.Pitch=-32768;
} else
{
//Aim Normal
tempRot.Pitch=0;
}
setViewRotation(tempRot);
}

For shooting, I hijacked GetBaseAimRotation() in Pawn.uc. I made my own local byte ViewPitch in there, to replace RemoteViewPitch in the code. This accepts anything from 0 to 255 AFAIK. So 255 would be 360 degrees. I had a lot of trouble with this one and eventually did it this way:

simulated singular event Rotator GetBaseAimRotation()
{
local rotator POVRot;
local byte ViewPitch;
POVRot = Rotation;

// If our Pitch is 0, then use RemoveViewPitch
if( POVRot.Pitch == 0 )
{

if (RemoteViewPitch == 0)
ViewPitch = 0;
else if (RemoteViewPitch == 64)
ViewPitch = 32;
else if (RemoteViewPitch == 448)
ViewPitch = 224;
else if (RemoteViewPitch == 128)
{
if(bIsUpPressed)
ViewPitch = 64;
else
ViewPitch = 192;
}

POVRot.Pitch = ViewPitch << 8;
}

if (POVRot.Pitch < 0)
POVRot.Pitch = -POVRot.Pitch;

return POVRot;
}

Hopefully it will at least be of some help. I got the RemoteViewPitch value by logging its state with the `log function.

Oh and you might notice that RemoteViewPitch = 128 both for Up and Down. I have no idea why it is so, I've found nothing on RemoteViewPitch in the internet but it works XD

EDIT:
I did some more little improvements to the game code and decided to work on the visual aspect a bit, hopefully you guys will tell me if you think I'm going in the right direction with this :P

New vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NXJ9UWXNkM

Pics:




Comment on everything - textures, lights, map is WIP ofc but you can comment on that too if you want


exec function Do()
{
thisPost.Length = Epic;
}

[DELTATHUND3R]

looking good...But textures need work...Would be nice too see some pipes and so forth running down ya walls.Metal vents.Wire connections.Some extra lights,particle effects..Would make it more appealing..other than that..Its really good.

[Eildalior]

Yeah I spoke about The Adventure of Lomax.

[Dandi8]

@Deltathund3r:
I think pipes etc. would look bad on the texture, it's something that should be done with static meshes.
Extra lights, sure, but the main light needs to be there and kills most of additional light that would come from other light sources :-(
Particle effects - a tad too early for that :P

[KillerYeh]

Textures and lighting looks veeery nice. And yep, why wont you try addin some leaves meshes? Maybe make some jungles?
Dani8, ghm... Can you tell me how to use your backup files?I'm new to UDK...

[Dandi8]

Well the thing you should be most interested in are the .uc files in the Development/src/Platformer folder as they contain the actual code. The only thing I changed in the other folder is the UTInput.ini - that's for key assignment.
As for how to use it, I suggest you go here:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Devel...ogramming.html

and when you're finished, go here:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UDKProgrammingHome.html

These will teach you the basics of UnrealScript. If you don't know those, you're gonna have a hard time understanding my code. If you knew any other programming language before, it should be fairly easy to learn UScript (it was for me :P), if you don't, no worries, just take your time and make sure you read everything

[REDxFROG]

as there is no proper documentation for it (I don't consider UDK.com documentation-ish enough) but thanks to the great help by Blaguuu I was able to solve many of them and here I am now.

erm http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/
The site you'll need.

[Dandi8]

The wiki did help me a lot, that I must admit, but I've found it lacking in many aspects
If only there were some people willing to update it, it would've been a great resource for newcomers like me.
Still, it does have a lot of useful information.

[Lord Banshee]

Thanks Dandi8,

And the game is looking better and better.

[Blackblood]

I thought it was great :P, however enemies would be cool.

[Dandi8]

Enemies would certainly be awesome if I only knew how to code them in XD I've got a few rip-off ideas but I've no idea how to code them. I think my next coding exercise will be to try and add a pickup. Then I'll either work on it some more or look for some experienced coder to help me realise my vision (I consider myself more of a 3D artist than a programmer).

Before that, however, expect some props and new textures

[Dn2]

Dude real good job so far...

I wouldn't worry too much about the look of the game for now..when you're done with heavy coding and the textures, meshes and little details come together its gonna look great..

[Fallen667]

I like it.. i know its about the gameplay and stuff at this stage.. but since you asked about the textures, you need more variation, break them up a little with some trims etc.. and im missing some foreground elements

other than that.. really great!

[Dandi8]

Heh, well, so far I've modelled one prop for the game and it was more of a test than anything else so yeah, early stages
I experimented a bit with background elements though (actually, I just detailed the background brushes), which I'll hopefully show soon
I'm actually a bit stuck trying to bake seamless normal maps which apparently is impossible as XSI refuses to cooperate with every step.

[JeJones]

okay lets say, for fun, i wanna add a scorpion to USE, middle level. ive made this and it fits really well ingame. but still when i enter the vehicle the cameras return to default UT. which script would fix this? and how?
it would be nice to have some basic vehicle fun during some stage of the level....i remembered little big planet...

[Dandi8]

You'd have to override the vehicle cam the same way you override the player cam, I suppose.

Since quite a few people asked me how I did this and that, I decided to post the most recent source code of my platformer, which has now been put on hold:
http://uploading.com/files/2dfcccm9/PlatformGame.rar

Hopefully it'll help someone

EDIT:
Btw. I just installed Win7 x64 and the newest UDK. Anyone have any idea why it crashes my gfx driver at startup and then freezes my whole PC at a random point in time? I have a GTX295.

[mkandersson]

Thanks! I'll download it

[JeJones]

nice!!
will try right away!

[HRuivo]

Thanks a lot!!!

Will be a great help.

About the Win7 prob, are you sure you got the right gfx drivers?

[Dandi8]

Yeah, I just reinstalled the system so I'm 100% sure - I downloaded them straight from nVidia's website, made sure they're for x64 etc. etc.

[JeJones]

try changing compatibility properties on udk.exe.
just guessing...

[Danbanna]

So is this not going to work in versions after Decembers version? I tried it with the new (February) update and I keep getting an error for line 1783, error with "If". tried a few differant things and I still get the same error? Is it something I am doing wrong or are people getting this same error ever

[Jaggedge]

Since quite a few people asked me how I did this and that, I decided to post the most recent source code of my platformer, which has now been put on hold:
http://uploading.com/files/2dfcccm9/PlatformGame.rar

Hopefully it'll help someone

Hi Dandi8, great job on the platformer so far and it's very generous of you to share the code!

I tried to run it on my machine, recompiled the scripts and ran it with
SimpleMap.udk?game=PlatformGame.MyGameInfo

Everything works great except my mouse doesn't seem to be responding. So I can't control the aiming or turning the character. Is there an extra step I missed?

[Dandi8]

@JeJones:
AFAIK the compatibility options are for compatibility with older systems, not older platforms (or whatever they're called).

@DanBanna:
Which file has the error? The build should work with the newest build - it's just code after all.

@Jaggedge:
The mouse isn't supposed to be working - controls are supposed to work the same way as in the Metroid games - go right to shoot right, go left to shoot left, press up to shoot at an angle, jump while pressing up to shoot straight up etc. etc.

I reccomend that you play the game windowed because there's some sort of a bug that occasionaly prevents you from aiming while the camera is close to the character which seems to be partially solved by playing windowed.

If you, however, want to make Abuse-style controls, it should be just a matter of recoding a few things. The aim would have to be set to the mouse (using something like the Deproject function) and then you'd have to draw a crosshair at the mouse's position and you're done I think

[Jaggedge]

Hi Dandi8! Thanks for such a prompt reply!

I see, then there's definitely something wrong with the way I set it up, because it's my Up arrow key ( and "W" ) that moves the character forward/right..! And my Down arrow key ( and "S" ) does not turn the character around to face the left.

[eAlex79]

Yeah, I just reinstalled the system so I'm 100% sure - I downloaded them straight from nVidia's website, made sure they're for x64 etc. etc.

There are at least 4 threads stating that the latest nVidia WHQL and the latest nVidia beta drivers are broken.... could it be you use one of those drivers?

[Dandi8]

Jaggedge, you need to configure the input file. I'll upload mine in a sec.

@eAlex79:
It could be... damnit!
Thanks, dude Didn't notice those threads.

EDIT:
Here's the UTInput file:
http://uploading.com/files/7dc9edbc/UTInput.ini/
I forgot I added a command or two on my own that get executed there.

[Jaggedge]

I took your UTInput.ini and overwrote the one existing in my C:\UDK\UDK-2010-02\UTGame\Config\ folder, but nothing changed?

I see the changes that you made:
Bindings=(Name="W",Command="aimUp | OnRelease aimNormal")
;Bindings=(Name="S",Command="GBA_Backward")
Bindings=(Name="S",Command="aimDown | OnRelease aimNormal")
Bindings=(Name="A",Command="GBA_StrafeLeft")
Bindings=(Name="D",Command="GBA_StrafeRight")

So I'm not sure why it still isn't registering your controls?

*Edit: Hmm, it seems that each time I launch the map, your UTInput.ini gets overwritten again by the default one..

**Edit2: I checked the ReadOnly property and everything runs great now, thanks Dandi8! I really like the controls, the camera zoom is a nice touch!

[nvisiongameco]

nice dude keep up the good work