Fire-Ant

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curtis
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Oct 28, 2004 9:09 am

Fire-Ant

Post by curtis »

Image
^
updated march 13
I wish it looked this good inside irrlicht...

I have a thing for games like: Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, etc.

So I'm gonna create a game called Fire-Ant. Basic Third Person view behind the character, this project is gonna be for education on my part. I haven't made a lot of things with irrlicht but I have fooled with earlier versions. Since there is not much going on in my life at this time, I figured I would take the opportunity to do something educational and interesting. Any suggestions for enemies, bosses and such would be great, or maybe recomendations for other libraries. I was thinking along the lines of Newton for physics.

Thats about it.

Also I was going to make the world huge, through the eyes of an Ant...

Huge flowers he could climb, battle bees and worms...

so on an so forth...
Last edited by curtis on Sun Mar 13, 2005 7:08 pm, edited 4 times in total.
asdf
Philly Millyq

Post by Philly Millyq »

Takes the idea and throws it away...Make the ant evil seriously...Dude good guy games suck no adays
Guest

Post by Guest »

Sounds great to me. As far as enemies goes maybe spiders? Or maybe some evil kids with a magnifying glass. :wink:
eXodus
Posts: 320
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Post by eXodus »

Nice idea! I'd like to call upon an army of ants to kill a kid!
Phenix
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Post by Phenix »

eh eh I've played the three episodes of both Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank,and Crash Bandicoot from the first episode to Crash:Twinsanity.
Have you ever seen a game called "Zapper"?
It's similar to your game, maybe you can take some ideas from it.

http://www.cheatheaven.co.uk/reviews/pl ... zapper.htm
curtis
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Oct 28, 2004 9:09 am

nice

Post by curtis »

I haven't herd of zapper, this could be a good source for some ideas. I don't think the ant has to be necessarily evil, maybe lethal... Give him like a wide range of weapons, hah, a lethal ant..
asdf
curtis
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Oct 28, 2004 9:09 am

Post by curtis »

Oh man, and the army of ants gave me a great idea...

How about I pop a helmet on the ant, and give him some machine guns...?

by the way... I'll probably end up renaming the game to something more original down the road... I mean cause "Fire-Ant" just doesn't do it for me.
asdf
curtis
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Oct 28, 2004 9:09 am

Worlds

Post by curtis »

I was thinking about using quake bsp format, I mean isn't that a lot easier then going through all this other stuff...?
asdf
Murphy
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Re: Worlds

Post by Murphy »

curtis wrote:I was thinking about using quake bsp format, I mean isn't that a lot easier then going through all this other stuff...?
Maybe yes, maybe no?

One consideration is that there are some restrictions with a lot of the tools used with BSP (particularly, the lightmappers). I think it really boils down to you not being able to sell the levels if you used any Id or Id-derived tools.

And a lot of the things which might make BSP considerably easier (like Quake-engine "movers" and other entities) and more attractive (procedural textures, AKA "Quake 3 shaders") aren't implemented in Irrlicht anyway.

If you're good with Blender, you can use Blender, FSRad, and my OCT exporter for Blender and OCT loader for Irrlicht to get an easy and free lightmapped workflow.

If you do want to use a MAP/BSP based editor, though (like Quark), the OpenBSP tools should provide a way to use them for free (coupled with my OBSP to MIM converter and MIM loader for Irrlicht). Though OBSP isn't even feature-stable yet.

You may just want to consider what tools you want to use. With my OCTTools and MIMTools, and the new DeleD and CShop loaders, a lot of tools can be used pretty easily. I'm planning to do a B3D to MIM converter, which will open up some more options.

Using an external mesh format loader is only a couple lines of code and a little while to set up and get used to the tools. A drop in the bucket of making a worthwhile game.


BTW, your ant model is looking good.
curtis
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Oct 28, 2004 9:09 am

thanks

Post by curtis »

Thanks man, Ill look into your tools, I'm not much of a DeleD lover though, I like making levels in gmax...
asdf
vermeer
Posts: 2017
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2004 3:22 pm
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Post by vermeer »

You can make the level in Gmax, export it as OBJ twice (once with a texture applied to it, a scond one with the lightmap tga asigned to the difusse slot. As Gmax does not generate lightmaps, you may generate that tga somewhere else....)

The proba has allways been that the available -rarely known- obj exporter, u can grab on the depot, down in my signature, does not do anything with OBJ vertex normals.

The fact is I was curious this mourning, and found a new one that does support them.Sadly, when I set the smooth groups, seems vertex normals are not generated from them, instead, it produces and unwelded obj (it's trivial to do a "weld model" in Lithunwrap(also in the Tool depot) but normals, while are written (you can look there it says "vn" among the coords: vertex normals are exported. Just some error in that tiny code. Some coder feel free to produce and updated revision...The author is unknown, it seems...) )

I'm posting here the code of the script. I have saved as ms and run the maxscript (tip, is important to do how it says in the script comments...clear all listener. )

VERY,VERY,VERY important, with any maxscript exporter...read the mouse genial trick... (or u'll get your whirst ill of so much copy and paste....) It'd be ideal if u had a 3 mouse buttons mouse. As explained in the trick :

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... 7147#27147


I don't know what's happening with smooth groups there, but if u can use an external tool to apply that(wings3d comes to mind, if no isolated faces are there, or iverted faces...or some other weirdness ), or just do a weld model, weld equal points, however it's called in ur tool.

BTW, someone brave enough (or not, maybe the error is just trivial) may fix the code bellow to actually export smooth groups out of gmax instead of an unwelded thing...
Yet though, the script seem to export UVs, (and tries to export Vertex normals) , but does not make an mtl file. Again, you may use Wings3d for this. If ur export can be imported nto wings, there's pretty easy to add some materials, add some hard egdes (easier than gmax smooth groups) , export as OBJ. It generates vertex normals correct output, and good MTL files with the OBJ. Murphy and I have checked it.

So u could use Gmax to build ur levels if you prefer, and do this final fix in Wings3d. Till someone fixes this code, and/or add an mtl generation routine to it, I dunno.



The maxscript.(actually starts where it says "global...")

-- Load your scene
-- Open the MaxScript Listener (MaxScript: Maxscript Listener)
-- In the Maxscript Listener's menu Choose menu item Edit:Clear All
-- Run this script (MaxScript:Run Script)
-- Copy and paste the output from the Maxscript Listener window into a text file.
-- (For large scenes you will have to copy-and-paste in chunks)
--
global baseVertex = 0
global baseTVertex = 0
global baseNVertex = 0
function toDec f = (
local i = f as integer
return i
)

function outputHeader =(
format "\n"
format "Copy and paste the following lines into a\n"
format "a new MXScript file, and save them as a .obj file.\n"
format "\n"
format "# -----------------\n"
format "# Start of obj file\n"
flushStringStream
)
function outputFooter =(
format "# end of obj file\n"
format "# ---------------\n"
format "\n"
flushStringStream
)
function outputNode node = (
format "o %\n" node.name
local m = snapshotAsMesh node
for v = 1 to m.numVerts do (
local vert = m.verts[v]
format "v % % %\n" vert.pos.x vert.pos.y vert.pos.z
flushStringStream
)
format "\n"

if m.numtverts > 0 do (
-- Texture coordinates

for vt = 1 to m.numtverts do (
local tvert = getTVert m vt
format "vt % % %\n" tvert.x tvert.y tvert.z
)
format "\n"

-- Also print out the normals, because some importers
-- can't handle faces with textures but not normals

for f =1 to m.numFaces do (
local vn = getFaceNormal m f
format "vn % % %\n" vn.x vn.y vn.z
flushStringStream
)
format "\n"
)

local mv = m.verts
for f =1 to m.numFaces do (
local vface =getface m f
local x = baseVertex + toDec(vface.x)
local y = baseVertex + toDec(vface.y)
local z = baseVertex + toDec(vface.z)

if m.numtverts > 0 then
(
local tvface = gettvface m f
local tx = baseTVertex + toDec(tvface.x)
local ty = baseTVertex + toDec(tvface.y)
local tz = baseTVertex + toDec(tvface.z)
local n = baseNVertex + f
format "f %/%/% %/%/% %/%/%\n" x tx n y ty n z tz n
flushStringStream
)
else (
format "f % % %\n" x y z
)
)
format "\n"
baseVertex = baseVertex + m.numVerts
baseTVertex = baseTVertex + m.numtverts
baseNVertex = baseNVertex + m.numFaces
)
function PrintObj = (
outputHeader()
for c in rootNode.children do outputNode c
outputFooter()
)

PrintObj()
Finally making games again!
http://www.konekogames.com
Electron
Posts: 874
Joined: Sun Mar 14, 2004 12:05 am
Location: Massachusetts USA

Post by Electron »

Does anyone here know maxscript? I'd dearly love a gmax obj exporter that exported texture filenames (mtl file). I've never really coded maxscript before and I can't seem to get the material from the node. I get weird undefined errors.

In function outputNode

Code: Select all

local mat=node.material
Then if I try to do anything with that mat variable, which should have the material in it, I get weird undefinined errors. I really don't know maxscript at all though, so I must be doing something wrong. I also need a way to know if the material is a multi-material, and if so, I need to be able to know which vertices in the node go with which sub material.
You do a lot of programming? Really? I try to get some in, but the debugging keeps me pretty busy.

Crucible of Stars
vermeer
Posts: 2017
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2004 3:22 pm
Contact:

Post by vermeer »

..I can't code, but in general, maybe for a start , it'd be enough with just standard materials...specially as if in case you wanna load with MIM tools, those only take channel 1 of UV, with just a tga applied. In gmax/max, that is an standard material :)
Finally making games again!
http://www.konekogames.com
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