Dicta Boelcke
polycounter lvl 13
Some might remember some of my low res planes from ages ago.
This is what they are for.
A relatively slow-moving project (though totally noncommercial, and in fact the first openGL project the programmer has ever done... and second game he's ever worked on, so from my perspective, a pretty good achievement) which is developing on PC, and i guess we have plans to port it to some handheld stuff. Originally psp homebrew but that might prove futile by the time it's ready, so I guess we'll see how it goes.
The team is comprised of myself, doing all the art and tooling, and an astrophysicist friend of mine, Hernan, doing the programming.
Basically, it's a lightweight ww1 air combat pseudo-sim (realistic flight physics and damage model, but quick jump-in action and easy controls)
You can follow us on moddb:
VIDEOS WILL BE POSTED THERE BTW.
http://www.moddb.com/games/dicta-boelcke
It's thus far unreleased. I know it's lame but seriously, it's not far off. We're both studying and this isn't an assignment, so progress is (understandably?) not all full steam ahead and more like sporadic bursts when we both happen to have a couple of days to dedicate.
The engine is scratchbuilt. We use openGL for graphics, SDL for window rendering, openAL for audio and devIL to load textures (though an objective of ours is removing devIL dependancy)
Basically your standard setup for a simple scratchbuilt portable engine.
Because i know some of you love the lowpoly hybrid pixel texture art stuff, i'll start by posting a few of the plane assets.
All the planes in the game are on a single 256x256 texture map, and around 800 tris each.
The reason for the apparently high tri count, is that we are representing the control lines with thin quads rather than masked textures, and because we have some fancy stuff - that is, every plane can have its wings and tail shot off to expose the underlying wooden rib structure. It's kind of really fun to shoot peoples' wings off actually
As for the technical info...
AUDIO: We have our sound system more or less good. This was largely handled by open AL, so positional audio and doppler and everything work just fine. Our sounds are just WAVs.
NETCODE: Hernan i think must surely be autistic, because he's coded from scratch a working multiplayer netcode. It runs smoothly even over hamachi and our first couple of combat tests have surprisingly fun and accessible - as far as flight sims go.
GRAPHICS: There's a lot of optimisation to be done in the graphics department, but we have a few nifty things like fake volumetric clouds (inspired by, but implemented in a simpler way than, the shadow of the collossus smoke volumes) and a very simple animation system/model format.
A first person cockpit is planned, and some art tests done - but this isn't yet implemented and won't be in the first beta. A few tricks are up our sleeves when it comes to first person, so if you are interested be sure to look out for news regarding that.
TOOLS: This is possibly my favourite part. Totally custom planes (with user defined layouts and capabilities) will be possible. So far the only plane is a "scout" (ww1 terminology for "single seat biplane with a machinegun") and only the appearance is altered.
All the plane setups will be done through maxscripts. You could potentially make custom aircraft in other programs, but youd have to do a bunch of manual .txt editing... and let's be honest, that's lame. The max tools will export a max file into a rather clumsy but functional format used by the game engine. All the user has to do is name the parts appropriately and position a few dummy components. We also aim to support custom paintjobs (as all aircraft paint was in those days) which are fetched from a URL when playing multiplayer. The provided textures are factory paint - or as standardised as possible.
GAMEPLAY: So far it's just team deathmatch. We have a few ideas for game modes, such as balloon defense (which was inspired by real-life ww1 operations... but Rise of Flight unfortunately beat us to the punch and now we'll appear to be ripping gamemodes from them) and would love any suggestions people have to add variation to the gameplay. Seeing as it's all set in the sky, the style of the maps really doesn't matter much and almost any concievable gameplay mode could theoretically be implemented without seeming too weird.
Another thing we are very keen on implementing eventually is co-operative flying of observation aircraft (ww1 terminology for two seated planes where the pilot has some small hand-dropped bombs and the passenger has a ring mounted machinegun) as this is something seldom portrayed in ww1 air combat games, but very often requested.
Sorry for the massive TL;DR, but hopefully it wasnt too hard to find the things you wanted to know and ignore the shit you didnt care about. I sincerely hope you may find something of interest here.
Now to finish with some screenshots. No combat shots as of yet, next time we do a combat test, we will be making some videos and releasing those as our first public showcase of dicta's combat. For now, just flying, and just the two beta planes. Sorry
Once again, feel free to show your support on moddb-
http://www.moddb.com/games/dicta-boelcke
This is what they are for.
A relatively slow-moving project (though totally noncommercial, and in fact the first openGL project the programmer has ever done... and second game he's ever worked on, so from my perspective, a pretty good achievement) which is developing on PC, and i guess we have plans to port it to some handheld stuff. Originally psp homebrew but that might prove futile by the time it's ready, so I guess we'll see how it goes.
The team is comprised of myself, doing all the art and tooling, and an astrophysicist friend of mine, Hernan, doing the programming.
Basically, it's a lightweight ww1 air combat pseudo-sim (realistic flight physics and damage model, but quick jump-in action and easy controls)
You can follow us on moddb:
VIDEOS WILL BE POSTED THERE BTW.
http://www.moddb.com/games/dicta-boelcke
It's thus far unreleased. I know it's lame but seriously, it's not far off. We're both studying and this isn't an assignment, so progress is (understandably?) not all full steam ahead and more like sporadic bursts when we both happen to have a couple of days to dedicate.
The engine is scratchbuilt. We use openGL for graphics, SDL for window rendering, openAL for audio and devIL to load textures (though an objective of ours is removing devIL dependancy)
Basically your standard setup for a simple scratchbuilt portable engine.
Because i know some of you love the lowpoly hybrid pixel texture art stuff, i'll start by posting a few of the plane assets.
All the planes in the game are on a single 256x256 texture map, and around 800 tris each.
The reason for the apparently high tri count, is that we are representing the control lines with thin quads rather than masked textures, and because we have some fancy stuff - that is, every plane can have its wings and tail shot off to expose the underlying wooden rib structure. It's kind of really fun to shoot peoples' wings off actually
As for the technical info...
AUDIO: We have our sound system more or less good. This was largely handled by open AL, so positional audio and doppler and everything work just fine. Our sounds are just WAVs.
NETCODE: Hernan i think must surely be autistic, because he's coded from scratch a working multiplayer netcode. It runs smoothly even over hamachi and our first couple of combat tests have surprisingly fun and accessible - as far as flight sims go.
GRAPHICS: There's a lot of optimisation to be done in the graphics department, but we have a few nifty things like fake volumetric clouds (inspired by, but implemented in a simpler way than, the shadow of the collossus smoke volumes) and a very simple animation system/model format.
A first person cockpit is planned, and some art tests done - but this isn't yet implemented and won't be in the first beta. A few tricks are up our sleeves when it comes to first person, so if you are interested be sure to look out for news regarding that.
TOOLS: This is possibly my favourite part. Totally custom planes (with user defined layouts and capabilities) will be possible. So far the only plane is a "scout" (ww1 terminology for "single seat biplane with a machinegun") and only the appearance is altered.
All the plane setups will be done through maxscripts. You could potentially make custom aircraft in other programs, but youd have to do a bunch of manual .txt editing... and let's be honest, that's lame. The max tools will export a max file into a rather clumsy but functional format used by the game engine. All the user has to do is name the parts appropriately and position a few dummy components. We also aim to support custom paintjobs (as all aircraft paint was in those days) which are fetched from a URL when playing multiplayer. The provided textures are factory paint - or as standardised as possible.
GAMEPLAY: So far it's just team deathmatch. We have a few ideas for game modes, such as balloon defense (which was inspired by real-life ww1 operations... but Rise of Flight unfortunately beat us to the punch and now we'll appear to be ripping gamemodes from them) and would love any suggestions people have to add variation to the gameplay. Seeing as it's all set in the sky, the style of the maps really doesn't matter much and almost any concievable gameplay mode could theoretically be implemented without seeming too weird.
Another thing we are very keen on implementing eventually is co-operative flying of observation aircraft (ww1 terminology for two seated planes where the pilot has some small hand-dropped bombs and the passenger has a ring mounted machinegun) as this is something seldom portrayed in ww1 air combat games, but very often requested.
Sorry for the massive TL;DR, but hopefully it wasnt too hard to find the things you wanted to know and ignore the shit you didnt care about. I sincerely hope you may find something of interest here.
Now to finish with some screenshots. No combat shots as of yet, next time we do a combat test, we will be making some videos and releasing those as our first public showcase of dicta's combat. For now, just flying, and just the two beta planes. Sorry
Once again, feel free to show your support on moddb-
http://www.moddb.com/games/dicta-boelcke
Replies
And custom textures via url sounds really cool, too.
How does that work? will it need jpegs or sumthing?
[ame]
Will the damage have an inpact on the steering or something?
Of course. So far if you loose wing sections, that part of the wing will no longer contribute to your lift, so that side will generally drop.
Engine damage can also make your engine fuck up and either have to glide to an emergency landing[1] or crash
Eventually (this is a part we are implementing right now), when the wings break they will slowly peel off, and also apply stress to any other wings they're attached to by struts. We will also add the ability to shoot off just the elevators or sever the control lines for them so that the target can't manouver them anymore.
[1](when scoring stuff is added players can have 3 settings, chivalric, standard, or total war. Chivalric awards 2 points for forcing the enemy to land and 1 for killing/crashing them. Standard awards 1 point for either, and total war awards 2 points to a kill and 1 to a forced landing. This is to reflect the earlier period of the war where sportsmanship was prized, compared to later when they were getting desparate. And still have an option for people who want plain deathmatch stuff.)
What happens when you are forced to land?
I have one Idea for a gametype:
I personally love games where I can blow shit up with my friends.
A team of players could fight coop against waves of enemies.
Kind of like the classic shoot em ups back on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive with the enemies getting bigger and harder to kill with time.
You could work with multiplicators so the game doesn´t get too easy when there are more players.
Limited lives, maybe more health to even out the odds.
Maybe even boss fights with the red baron or something :P
That is of course if you plan to include bots and if it fits the theme of your game.
Not sure how crazy you guys are about power ups and stuff.
For first beta any contact with the ground will cause a respawn. if the player lands at a safe speed and gear-first it will be considered a forced landing (as the only reason to land atm is for too much damage) and anything too fast or wing first etc will be considered a crash. Ebventually we will have some better physics for that kind of thing though.
It could be interesting to have a kind of gauntlet mode where at first, balloons will go up and you have to shoot those, then armed balloons, then some observation craft, eventually one or two fighters, then two-seaters (with tailgunner) and some fighter escorts, and a zeppelins for bosses. We'd have to think it all through but its a good idea i've never thought of to have a kind of "see how far you can get" gamemode.
Some good news for polycounters is that modding will be very easy, even adding all new planes and stuff. All the setup is done in max and the exporting is done with maxscripts i have written (renderhjs stuff is a big inspiration here and i owe the whole philosophy to him)
A video is currently uploading too, but it will probably be a while to authorise or whatever.
Good job both of ya!
I suppose it's cause i called all the images "dick" - short for dicta, with a pinch of lulz. Never seen an imageshack image get overwritten like that.
Anyhow, here's our very first experiments with first person.
We also globally switched from DDS to TGA because the compression of DDS was giving us muddy, washed out colours. The results are pleasing, mostly in cockpit views (Which I won't be showing right now because the WIP shadows make them look very weird.