Star Dancer Youtube Video (gameplay as well)
Community Forums/Graphic Chat/Star Dancer Youtube Video (gameplay as well)
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| Slideshow(edit - updated - contains gameplay as well) of images taken from my latest game, available on google play here: Link |
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| dude why not the actual gameplay videos? put it on SlideTube, it's defeating the purpose there |
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| Actual gameplay is there now...... |
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| Actual gameplay is there now...... OK great now I see it! good game |
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| Umm....the third one is exactly that? |
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| mm....the third one is exactly that? Yea I see it now. It would have been a better first impression to see just the video. Who cares about slideshows in youtube anyway? Unless you're posting a Karaoke song collection.. nice game btw, sorry for ruining your intro Matty |
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| No probs....I might change it around in that case....good points you raised. |
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| yea if this has the same AI you demoed months ago, it should be good. I tried it first hand so I'm not BS-ing. I dont do BS anyway.. |
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| Yep it does have the same style AI - I'm pretty happy with it actually. Very simple in practice....if I had to describe it with a few words the AI I would say this: (from an email I sent some people earlier) "Its just an automated weighted ai system that targets objects based on a ranking of potential targets using a number of different mathematical metrics involving simple vector operations. But it is quite effective." During my stay in hospital someone pointed out to me that my game is in some ways an analogy of life itself in terms of how the same basic rules of the game can result in a wide variety of actions and behaviours that are all acceptable within the basic framework we are given to play around in. At the time I was thinking about ethics. |
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| Hi While I like (very much!) the 'cinematic battle'... I would cut-off from the first video the 'please wait' / preparing for Jump etc... it takes quite a minute and ruins the gameplay (IMO). I don't know why it takes so much (if intended or not, or due to the client-server connection) but on mobile 'waiting' for something (in this case so long!) is not a great thing. |
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| Thanks degac. Yes that part is a little variable but I need to optimise the replay generation a fair bit. Not easy though since it generates the entire simulation. |
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| So the 'cinematic' thingy is just a re-play of things pre-calculated on the server? |
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| Mostly. Similar to an old ww2 game called combat mission. |
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| This reminds to ask, is this made with Blitz? if not then why are you posting your game on this forum? |
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| Many of the tools are made with blitz (I wrote them). Also blitz has been my online home away from home for many many years and I do owe a lot of my game programming skill to the blitz family of languages. I put it in graphics showcase rather than blitz showcase for that reason. The explosions use my code archives explosion generator and the target tracking uses my other code in the archives as well. The game itself is java, glsl, php and postgresql but as I said a lot of blitz knowledge was involved. I cut my teeth on blitz when it comes to game programming. |
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| Whatever the case, it is still not related to blitz3d. you already said it, it is a java game. Also blitz has been my online home away from home for many many years and I do owe a lot of my game programming skill to the blitz family of languages. I don't think this is a valid reason.. it's just your personal sentiment. IF IT IS, then anyone can just make a "tool" in blitz, learn a bit of blitz3d then post the actual game in UnrealEngine or CryEngine and try to impress everybody with a game. You're setting a bad example dude.. don't you think? You have to move on and post this on Gamedev, Java, LWJGL forums or something and get some real feedback.. it will be good for you. don't get me wrong, I'm also appreciative that I have learned a lot from a coding community that got me started, but I don't go back to their forums and post unrelated stuff just to let others know how good I have become and outgrown the tools I once use. Go have a check on who else is posting other games made by other languages into this category, besides the 3DFoin and other discount offerings here.. you'll see a couple or that you're the only one doing this. I don't mean to offend you, I'm just saying it straight, cause no one here does obviously. I guess they're too busy blowing smoke up your ass anyway.. Still anything that is related to b3d, i don't have an issue with that.. Just saying.. I'm out, good day. |
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| Bad example? Quite the opposite. I dont forget my friends and I like to share the love so to speak. This is more about community than anything else - its nice to celebrate a persons growth and success - there are many here who have learned during their time on these forums. When I can give back I try to often. It is who I am. This place is friendly and familiar. |
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| Bad example? Quite the opposite. I dont forget my friends and I like to share the love so to speak. This is more about community than anything else - its nice to celebrate a persons growth and success - there are many here who have learned during their time on these forums. When I can give back I try to often. It is who I am. This place is friendly and familiar. Your response sounded like this is a Life Lessons Forum and avoiding the issue just like posting a slideshow on youtube for a first impression trailer, but let me spell it out for you again: You're setting a bad example, this is a blitz showcase and you're posting a java game. get it? or it sounded you have an exception because.. "hey, I'm friends with old timers here, even the moderators, so I can post whatever the hell I want, even this new cool java game that I made, because blitz don't quite cut it anymore and I'm too good to code in blitz".. You need some serious help or therapy dude with that reply. No wonder you posted this nonsense: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=104887 (smh) |
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| I see your point. I will shut up. |
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| I don't mind if this is 'genuine' BRL-derived product. I more interested to know how Matty handled the logic behind client-server on mobile, what the costs/benefits etc. ...with the same logic Brucey's BMK-NG is not 'genuine' as it uses alien solutions. |
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| Degac - because it is kind of turn based it just uses http via php and a database backend. The benefit is harder to cheat but also I can adjust balance issues from the server. The downside is it is a little slower. |
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| So you use PHP (+Mysql&co I suppose) to handle the date. As you mentioned some sort of AI, PHP is used to make the calculation, or you are using other things? PHP (if I remember corretly) is interpreted, so is not the best solution for fast calcs. |
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| postgresql for the data. The calculation is done in java....basically it calculates up to 8000 frames (2 minutes worth) of battle (usually less if the battle is won earlier). The main reason for the length of the calculation step is simply the length of the simulation. The AI itself is very simple in principle ... like this: eg Ship has 16 settings from -5 to +5 for things like "Target Enemy within close range", "Target Enemy behind us" etc which the value is then totalled up at regular intervals when a ship chooses a new target and the ship chooses to target/attack the enemy ship which has the highest value of these. It's a very simple but effective method. Something that I haven't done but which I intended to do a while ago was have AI bot players that choose to use the AI settings of the best human player on the database for that faction and give it a tweak randomly every so often (a bit like a genetic algorithm of sorts). That way the machine learns by copying effective human players. |
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| Thanks. So you simulate ship movement,fire and so on in a determinated time-frame. I'm not very expert, I suppose it uses a sort of multithreading to speed up things. And then everything is send back to each users to 'play' the simulation. Making this in real-time on mobile with multiple users I think is not so easy (time lag could break things and get wrong results I suspect). You give me something to think on... question: if ships are far from each other, the simulation calcs the movements step-by-step, or it 'try' to move 'forward' until they are close to each on to react? Just this could save some time. |
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| Ships are usually only far apart at the beginning. Not easily multithreaded because they are all interconnected in their behaviour...too many dependencies. Ive solved the issues with timing by making the server authoritative. The easiest way to address the optimization in the simulation may have to be reworking the memory usage. Basically it behaves as a real time game would but saves the simulation to keyframes which are interpreted by the replay viewer. Loading an existing simulation is quick. Interestingly different mobile devices find some parts slower than others. My samsung is quick to process the frames but slow to read from disk whereas my lg is the opposite. Both typically arrive at the same time. |
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| Additional. For all videz negativity he/she has gotten me curious about doing a blitz3d version. If it werent for the fact that the media is paid for and licensed to me id be very tempted to open source it or do a community project to release a blitz3d version. Good learning experience for folks here. |
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| Interesting. How many ships are involved in a battle? Just to have an idea of the total possible combinations (I exclude missiles etc)! |
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| Looks nice, well done :) |
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| Maximum is 32 ships. 16 per side. It can be less when ships are destroyed in a previous battle and not fully repaired. 4 classes of ships. Thanks RemiD. I used your download method or a variant of it for sharing the replay files. |
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| In response to user feedback (and it was a damn good idea too) I've finally implemented a basic single player mode called "training" - you can play against the machine now in both the lite and full versions...bots don't attack you (not going to work in this system) but they will alter their ai settings and research making it a challenge for you to defeat them. |
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| Nice replay.... |
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| Very lengthy playthrough.... |
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| 3 second clip - can't help but be proud of moments like these - ship flips to fit through gap looking quite cinematic while doing so... (no audio) |
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| Same battle with flip at end of battle and audio this time...full length (still rotating on youtube as I speak) |
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| Short clip with pilot chatter, sound effects muted instead for now.. |
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| Pretty cool Matty! |
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| Chatter seems to come from a group of people in the same room watching the game. Do you need help with radio static, etc? Just some EQ stuff will fix it. |
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| Thanks stayne its just because of the way i mixed the audio for the clip. Sounds different in game. Unfortunately i cant capture audio yet with my phone screen capture. |
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| Screenshots from a very cheap 7" tablet bought in July last year (under 100 dollars, Android 4.2, 512MB RAM, quadcore though - but very low spec and quite crappy - good for testing) I've moved the camera around while the game was paused. The nebula and textures are much lower quality because the game auto detects the grunt of the device its on and downscales things to keep running well.            |
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| One of my favourite space battle moments - Earth Hope cruiser being torn asunder by an AioSenti beam cruiser.....there are some great looking scenes in the game. |
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| Im thinking of porting a part of the game to blitz3d.....more for my own enjoyment than anything else...a cut down version in some respects. |
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| facebook In case you like space battles like me here is a link to my facebook page. I'm just sharing it because i like it. |
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| Your game looks interesting, Matty. Is it avail for Windows ? |
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| Sorry no- it is Android only (currently). Should I get the programming bug in me again I might sit down and code it for desktop.....but it would require a fairly large effort from me to do so. |
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| Here is a link to a battle I really enjoyed. You will need a copy of the full version to watch it on your Android device as it uses a fleet from the full version. The Aiosenti fleet loses a heap of ships early but goes on to effectively win the battle. My AI settings were set as follows: Fighters engage larger enemy at long range. Bombers engage smaller enemy at long range. Cruisers engage enemy at close range to their front. Capital uses default settings. It was quite exciting. Link to Star Dancer battle replay: http://mattiesgames.com/convergence/battle_replays/replay_5736f2524d105.php |
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