Project: Hydra

[skwisdemon666]

Project: Hydra is what I am calling my current WIP because I haven't officially titled it yet. One game-play aspect is that the player's health and stamina will recharge slowly on their own. Stamina is expended during sprinting and melee combat. The player's limbs can be shot off and stamina can be used to regenerate health and missing limbs. If an arm is shot off the player will hold the weapon in the other hand and attempt to use it one handed with decreased accuracy and no ability to reload. A missing leg forces the player to crawl...you get the idea. My character is made of layers of meshes and uses opacity to show the limbs being blown off or regenerated. Basically there is an outer layer, a muscle layer, a bone layer, and an organ layer.




Let me know what you think.

[skwisdemon666]

More texturing work. Custom pawn is working in UDK. Today I integrated the foot placement code from this page http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Using...ntrollers.html. If you use that code make sure you remember to set TranslationZOffset in your default properties. This is how much the origin of your mesh is adjusted after import (so that the origin is in the center, not by the feet). It took me a while to figure this out. I added a line that resets the mesh translation to zero if neither foot touches anything. Strangely it messed with my camera some.

simulated event Vector GetPawnViewLocation()
{
local vector NewView;

    Mesh.GetSocketWorldLocationAndRotation(EyeSocket, NewView);
	
	viewLoc=NewView-Mesh.translation;


    return viewLoc;
}

If you use true first person like me you need to tell it to adjust when the mesh offsets even though in theory you shouldn't need to... Took me a while to figure it out...







So basically the hilt docks into the left side of the chest. When drawn the blade materializes from the hilt like a T-1000 terminator. Its default form is a combat knife but you can equip different modifiers that can make it have a different form when drawn.

[skwisdemon666]

Still working on some bugs with the mesh offset, started coding inventory manager and items from scratch, extending from actor class. Started work on the HUD.

[skwisdemon666]

Working on some more inventory code, its hard working straight from the actor class but the result will end up much better. Finished modelling the Auto-Pistol, one of the games sidearm weapons. Had a strange issue with camera controls being inverted when switching from 1st and 3rd person view modes but it is fixed now. Melee weapons will force 3rd person and firearms will force 1st.

Started work on some of the melee animations. Worked on another character skin, #1 Maximillion Kills. You can see the fiber texture better in this skin because it is tinted red.

The hexagon components of the armor glow when ever stamina is being expended; from sprinting, regenerating, or creating a barrier. Maintaining a barrier consumes stamina and hits taken to the barrier drain stamina even more quickly. You cannot move while using a barrier and if your stamina hits 0 you collapse and loose consciousness for a few moments. So basically, you could try using the barrier to block a tank shell or sniper bullets, but you would leave your self pinned in the open and risk being incapacitated; the barrier also doesn't raise instantly.

Finished roughing out the HUD's borders. In the top section will be the health and stamina bars. Bottom left will have the weapon select and damage indicator. Bottom right will have ammunition count.

Basically the outer layer aside from the cast metal and overlapping hexagon tiles is a muscle-like material with a few places where a ligament-cartilage type of tissue has grown through; throat, elbow, knees.

[skwisdemon666]

Razor Hydras came in yesterday evening and my dll bind input script is officially working. I have now achieved the ability to move my character using the left joystick! More updates to come.

[Obsidiaguy]

Very awesome! Keep them updates coming!

[skwisdemon666]

Thanks, Ill put out a tutorial on how to dll bind to the Hydras when I get it fully working. Getting aim to work off of the rotation of the right controller is proving to be a little difficult at the moment.

[skwisdemon666]

Gtx 560 came in so now I have all the cool DX11 features at my disposal. My conclusion about programming an inventory system is that its hard. That is what I have been spending most of my time on and I still don't have it up and running yet. No inventory=no weapons so it will still be a while before I can put up a gameplay vid.

[skwisdemon666]

Pointer controls are working now. Inventory system is starting to get operational. I can now switch between weapons; I just need to program the weapons to do weaponish things (shooting and reloading, etc.).

[skwisdemon666]

Well, YouTube is being embarrassingly slow.



When it finishes uploading..

Since I started uploading that video I have added a working compass to the HUD as well as some other widgets.

[skwisdemon666]

I think I need to set the items' light environment's to the characters' while they are being carried rather than their own.


Yup, that worked.

I am pretty pleased with the progress I have made in the last few days. Next up is working on melee combat and creating more weapons.

[skwisdemon666]

Just finished modeling an Everian soldier.







Next up, UVs, Textures, and Rigging

[skwisdemon666]

Everian Soldier with commander helmet and cape. Gonna go back to expanding arsenal and player abilities for a while.



Grunt helmet with cape. I know you can't seen anything since the render background is black...

[skwisdemon666]

New video up, I have been working on melee controls and fine tuning the inventory system. There are some new widgets on the hud but I haven't added functionality to most of them yet. I need to make it scale correctly with screen size too...

[skwisdemon666]

Update: I have fixed the problem with apply roll to the rotation of the hand, it now mirrors the movement of your own hand perfectly. Some weapons are under construction. I have begun doing serious material work on the main character, as well as adding different skins for the Everian soldiers.

[skwisdemon666]

In case anyone is curious on the material setup :P


Here you can see the different material effects for being burned, frozen, and having limbs torn off. Each is controlled by a scalar parameter in the code (6 total). The burn material still needs some work but the ice one looks really cool in motion. So now I just need to apply the same limb effects to the materials for the muscle and bone layers, then link it up to the code and it will look pretty awesome. Let me know what you think.

[skwisdemon666]

Pretty cool huh?

How come I never gets no comments?

[skwisdemon666]

Started work on the AI and improving the melee system. (There are now 12 directions for the slashes instead of four. There is also the forward thrust move.)

[skwisdemon666]

Added ADS and Zoom functionality to the weapons. I've been putting off making the HUD scale correctly so that seems like a task for today. You will notice items picked up, like clips, no longer remain visible after pickup. In FPS mode clicking he right stick zooms and pushing it forward/backward lets you adjust zoom.

EDIT: Hud scales correctly now, wasn't hard to implement.

[Derp]

This is a great project, hoping to see more updates!

[DanBrigido]

Cool project, loved the material set up keep it up

[skwisdemon666]

Hey, I got some comments since last time I checked. I appreciate it.
Since I had to turn some of the setting ridiculously high and low to keep the thing from collapsing and I haven't made any heavy weapons, I just tried to drive on it / through it with a UT Scorpion for testing purposes.




That is an experiment with the D3D11 tessellation.

Cool project, loved the material set up keep it up

Thank you, I think the camo skins for the Everian turned out nice. The Hydra materials are one uber-material so complex I'm surprised my computer doesn't explode every time I make changes to it.

[skwisdemon666]

Improvements on the AI and another weapon is almost finished. I've also played with the FOV some.

[skwisdemon666]

didn't even try to use fraps while using the drone :P

[skwisdemon666]

I've been doing a lot of AI work, with a couple of bugs still. They can now switch smoothly between using melee and ranged weapons. They have and adjustable accuracy factor, so they are not super-deadly insta-killers. And at the end I show the camera drone functionality.

[BullyModder123]

Really cool stuff, keep it up

[skwisdemon666]

Here is a sneak preview of the great remodel of doom. (I'm remodelling my hydra soldier's outer mesh.)
This is an old leg on the left and new on the right.

[skwisdemon666]

Finished modelling, just started texturing.

[skwisdemon666]

Almost done with the diffuse texture...

[Hellclown]

This looks fantastic, I'm not totally sold on the opaque HUD though.

[skwisdemon666]

Yeah, I haven't updated the HUD for a while because I deleted the flash file by accident. I'll start a new one from scratch soon.

[skwisdemon666]

The new model and textures have been swapped in. I think I am very satisfied with this version... for now... Started on a new HUD.