Sidescroller game (unnamed)

Demogorgon

I've been working on my sidescroller game for over a week now. This is the first bigish project I've ever taken on my own.

Currently right now I'm working as the lead level designer for OpenOutcast, so I'm putting in time on this game when I have the chance. Here is the link if anyone is intrested. http://www.openoutcast.org

For my sidescroller game I plan to create 3 or 4 levels. So far I've created 2 but they still have alot of work to do. I havn't written a story line as of yet but one is in the works.

Everything shown below has been created in Cryengine 3 free SDK.

The tutorial level is quite short but it is to get the player used to the game and how things work. As of yet I havn't placed my physical objects to interact with from exploding barrels that sort of thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XkkAkxeTzxA

My second level which is still in the makes is called "The River"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=G71doqxdaQw
Sorry for the music I didn't know untill it was too late, I would reupload but my upload is capped.





I hope you like what I'm trying to achive. I shall post more videos and pictures later next week.

Thanks,

Demo.

Joopson

This is beautiful so far. I'll be watching! Would love to see you posting some of your process, or tutorials along the way. Not much info out their on CryEngine, even yet.

I'm really enjoying this. Keep it up!

Demogorgon

Thanks buddy.

I could write and show pictures of how I set up the sidescoller camera and fixed the aiming to only aim up and down.

It has been quite hard doing this, as just like you said their isn't much on the internet for cryengine 3.

Thanks again I'll be sure to post some more pictures and info next week.

yodude87

wow, this is gorgeous sub'd, willing to see some progress ^^

Demomode

looks awesome. love sidescrolling games. keep it up.

njc6425

wow looking good man, cryengine ftw

Darkleopard

Really nice! Gotta learn cryengine sometime

Demogorgon

As per request, here is how I made my camera system for my game.


Place a player spawn somewhere on the map.

Make a Tagpoint and snap it to the terrain, at the level where the players feet would be.

Place a camera and move it to where you would like to the camera angle to be.

Link the camera to the tagpoint with the link tool.

Now using 2 x Entity:EntityPos nodes in FlowGraph, one that give you the position of the local player and the other that give you the position of the TagPoint.

Connect the pos and rotation output of the Entity:EntityPos of the local player to the Pos and rotation input node of the tagpoint Entity:EntityPos

Now your tagpoint is going to move with the player and because the camera is linked to the tagpoint the camera is also going to move as well. Another good reason we linked the camera to the tagpoint and that the camera is back from the tagpoint, is because when you rotate the player, the camera has to be pivoted from the tagpoint, otherwise the camera will always be looking forward even when you turn the player.

Now in track view, make a new SceneNode, then under that choose your camera. Note, this is NOT the trackview node used to move the camera as you would in a cutscene, but the other type that you use to switch cameras, so make sure you have the correct one.

Make the trackview animation 1 frame long and make it Loop.

Now back in the FlowGraph make a start node and make it trigger a PlaySequence node so when you start the game it will switch to the new camera.

This willl work, however yourstill gonna need to press F1 otherwise all your going to see is arms and legs. Currently i know no way of triggering the F1 3rd person view with any other method than actually pressing F1.

To help here is a screenshot of the flowgraph.






For the character to only aim up and down what i did was this. You need to disable the Yaw rotations - open Libs\Config\defaultProfile.xml and where it says
Code:
<action name="rotateyaw" keyboard="maxis_x" />


Change it to:
Code:
<!--<action name="rotateyaw" keyboard="maxis_x" />-->


This way the controls are commented out - doing it really properly would need some work on the C++ code but since I don't know anything about C++ this will do for now.

Make sure you restart the editor and it should work.

Snader

The environment itself looks okay (though rather noisy - you use a lot of alpha-to-coverage dither?) but the way the player is in it, doesn't.

First of all you seem to be walking in a straight line. 2D doesn't necessarily mean that - you can make the path curved and bendy. This will make the game feel less static.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BS0Fgi-RV0&quot;]Let's Play Klonoa Wii - Episode 2 - YouTube[/ame]
This also allows you to implement this trick to give players the feeling they're actually traversing a physical space.

Second, I'd recommend changing the character placement. Right now he's smack dab in the center, but there is never anything happening behind him. So move him down to the left, and give the player a further look ahead.

If you DO plan on having things happen behind the character, place him at 1/3rd (good old thirding) so you can still see if someone sneaks up/fires at you. But in any case have the largest visible area in front of the movement direction.

Lastly, why the black bars, why not just render at the full screen height?

Demogorgon

Thanks for the feedback, first question what do you mean by this "though rather noisy - you use a lot of alpha-to-coverage dither?"

I had thought about changing the camera postion, just now i've moved it move to the right of the character. I was about to post screens of my new character postion.

I like the idea of having the player move in a more 3d space other than a straight line. But as of this moment i'm not too sure how i would achive that. But I can take a look into it.

Thanks for the feedback.

Snader

Demogorgon wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback, first question what do you mean by this "though rather noisy - you use a lot of alpha-to-coverage dither?"

You have a lot of noise (particularly in the trees) that looks like dithering patterns. You'd ideally want the trees (especially in the distance with DOF) to be softer, like so:


I though you might be using alpha-to-coverage for the foiliage and that could cause the noise.

yodude87

check shadow complex for some inspiration:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CLvC5z5Ns4&amp;feature=relmfu&quot;]Let&#39;s Play: Shadow Complex [XBox360][HD] - Part 2: Rats in the Vents - YouTube[/ame]

Demogorgon

Thanks for all the feedback. But I've had to stop work on this as other Project's have taken all of my time. I'd like to restart this once I have a better understanding on how to code this into ce3.