Droid Soccer [WIP]

Hi to all 3dgs community,

First off all sorry for my poor English

I would like to present a personal project [WIP] that I am working on for some time ago, in my free time exploring specially the Artificial Intelligence, autonomous agents, team strategy and so on.

What I would like to do?

“When playing Droid Soccer in a mystic environment of the Greek mythology transposed to a distant future, you control the more powerful gods/robots in vigorous soccer games and tournaments that takes place in the Olimpus Mount Arena of the future, exploring myths, legends, puzzles and sequences in a unique and amusing game play.”

What I will probably do?

“A fast pacing soccer type game simulation played by droids where the speed and the player reaction skills are the central point, with good visual and sound effects.”

When? In a distant future. Where? In a futuristic top tower representing the Olimpus Mount Arena. Who? The ancient gods are represented by droids with different skills and powers, that play robust soccer with an iron/metal sphere and there are at least three tournaments:

• Mortals Tournament (where the player must begin)
• Gods Tournament
• Chaos Tournament

Game play:
The game pretends to be a soccer simulation but with other elements, because there is a possible story to tell, the greek mythology, so it will be introduced objects / items related to the story representing myths, legends, puzzles and sequences, which upon collected, will cause different plays. If those plays have success (the goal) then the player collects that item. In order to be able to play the higher tournaments the player needs to explore and collect those items and sequences.

There will be rewards like goals, score, power-ups in the field, maybe money that let you buy robot pieces or other robots, or…
Well, stop dreaming, just a very WIP screenshots, because I am a programmer and not a 2d or 3d artist, and because I spend most of the time trying to develop the AI.









Just some things already started or done :

Team strategy:
Team state machine(before kick off, defend and attack so far)
game situations
tactics
formations
player roles

Players behaviour:
Player state machine (wait, chase, dribble, pass, kick, goHomeRegion and left and right defense for the goalkeepers. More on the future)
Perception system, because the agents are autonomous they percept the environment using two scan cones, one bigger that scan every frame when its is the selected entity, and another one smaller just for the not selected entities, that scan with a timer.
Strategic positioning
Ball recovery
Ball possession
Player movement and blend animation
Steering behaviours (seek, arrive)

Communication:
A simple messaging system (needs improvements), maybe changing for a blackboard system in the future

Game Editor:
Edit tactics and formations

To do:

So many things that I will not even mention it right now (specially in 2D and 3D art), I will probably make another post here or in the Jobs Offered exposing those questions and maybe someone will be interested in this project and pretends to make part of it, sorry but no money, just credits.

I intend to release a trailer soon to show the game play implemented so far.
Well, feedback, considerations, critics, ideas are welcome, besides this single project will probably depends on it..
If you are interested in some way in the project you may contact me:
fjcarrega(at)gmail.com
Thanks for your time.
Cheers
Jorge.

looks interesting! darwinia style level looks solid. not a lot i can say im looking forward to the trailer

julz

Mabye it's on purpose (for the style), but the lightmapping is VERY obvious.

This is looking verry interesting. And I like the style, it fits your concept. But the levels so far are empty off course but you said indeed that you will fix that

Hi !!!

Good work so far !!!
It's nice to see some picture of what we were talking about.
Can you make a demo or a trailer? I want to see the AI in action.

Bye G.S.

Hello,
Thanks for your comments,

Its true that isnt much thing to show at the moment, but like i said those are earlier screenshots and my main concern had been the gameplay, animations and specially the AI.

I think you all have in mind that a game simulation like this one its not a trivial task, thats because we dont see PES or fifa´s games prototypes around here or in other engines / game development sites or forums.

@ Gordon_Shumway
Hi Gernot, thank you for your comments about my project.
The AI its in early stage but i will try to show in the next days a video showing the system in action, the one we have discussed allright.

Well, just about four replies so far, it seems this is not starting very well..

Very cool Idea.
You seem to made a nice AI for the bots.
I could give suggestions for the AI though only
when I see it in action.
But Iam shure it is already fun to see them play.

Yeah, I like it as well! cool models, seems like you got the code working pretty well.
"What I would like to do?"
I don't understand entirely what you're going for, but mostly, and it sure sound's like it's worth it and I'd really like you to reach that goal!

Good job

This looks like a goal already
Keep up the great work there

Cheers

Frazzle

Fantastic, nice screens !

Hope we can have a test demo soon, i'm already crazy to play it !

Just a few more screens showing the goalkeeper defense system (testing):







Thank you for all kind words, it gives some extra motivation because i will need it for sure.

Like i said i will try to release a video in the next days where it will be possible to see the game play at the moment.

Thanks again for all your comments.
Cheers.
Jorge

It looks great however the forward players need to move forward when the player tries to score a goal. There should have been someone on the other side for a good cross. But I am thinking to much of FIFA here heh. Keep up the good work, the AI will need a lot of work but it's looking good.

You´re right Hellcrypt, there´s a lot work to do, thought the problem you mentioned its easy to solve right now. You see, the AI its in a early stage but the team strategy is changing considering several game situations, and one of them its the team ball possession.

As you can see in the last pictures because the ball its now in the blue team possession, the blue team changed its state to attack and the grey one to defend, so the players received a message to go to forward positions.

Of course this need to be changed and there is a hard work to do, specially coding the players behavior at three levels: strategic positioning (when the players do not have an active role), ball recovery (trying to obtain the ball possession, intercept...) and ball possession (what they will do if they get the ball under control).

FYI the word "Droid" is the copyright of Mr.George Lucas, so if you were going to use it in a game you could easily be in trouble. Id call it BOT soccer or some other name.

Quote:

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George Lucas holds a trademark on the term "droid". The miniature mecha combat wargame BattleTech was originally released under the name BattleDroids, but was renamed due to trademark issues with Lucasfilm.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid

**The only reason I know this is because I was thinking of using the name in one of my projects.

The game looks really cool though, good luck with it.