scion [official thread]

[size:9pt]hey guys, my name is tahir and i'm from jamaica, a small little country in the caribbean i've been designing scion for over 6 years, studying gameplay elements and what drives a player, what makes game A better than game B and i've come up with some pretty solid elements, gameplay-wise.[/color]

the original idea behind scion was to be a campaign mode with several levels and intriguing looking worlds, however, lack of resources/skill/etc has reduced this aim to a 16 player online game boasting popular modes such as deathmatch, capture the flag and others, hopefully you've all seen the work done so far, this was when scion was changed to a third person shooter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlxHrAEz-...&playnext=1

we however noticed that there was no way we could pull off the immersion we needed by sticking to this view and thus, the switch back to an fps..

from now on, i'll be using this thread to post updates in art and game mechanics as we develop what we hope to be a sucessful project:

the aim[technics]:
-a totally unscripted world we're anything can happen, replayabilty doesnt come in the form of collectables but in the total unexpected events that can take place on each play through
-every non-static entity in the world is a physics entity and this is for the reason of unpredictability, not for eye candy effects

the aim[graphics]:
-we'll be aiming at using baked light map levels, this is for perfomance reasons, 3dgs isnt the most powerful engine but instead of complain we'll do what we feel can bring acceptable quality
-the style of the game is a totally re created world, where we'll have our own versions to most things you would see in reality

the aim[gameplay]:
-gameplay will be slightly old school, we want the players to concentrate on 3 things, movement, shooting and balancing of weaponry, we will not over crowd this with unecessary items and effects

THE TEAM [ we already have a few members and anyone willing to help should know it will be voluntary, a demo update will be released hopefully every two weeks which we will use as internal demos to test the game]:
-currently we're seeking a few persons to help out in terms of:
-particle effects
-physics, including vehicles
-modeling
-texture artists
-concept artists [we have artists willing to work so this is a great need at the moment]
-a few coders would help [am not the best coder however ^^]
-shader artists
-and level designers [whether concept or actual modelor]
-2d artist[menus, icons, achievment icons]

with that said, i'd like to introduce a few items:

the assault rifle [work in progress]


this is the default weapon for most matches and is designed for medium ranged combat, alot of time will go into balancing this weapon as it can make/break the game based on how its balanced.



the model is already finished and will post its update as soon as its properly textured.

currently all the models in the game are placeholders and we will hold off any gameplay videos until we start replacing them....

first character armor draft [UNTEXTURED]

i'm not a fan of showing rendered models but wanted to show the character style we'll ba aiming for, there will be minor armor customizations in game and i'll update as it comes in

Looks great, are you gonna release this game someday?

Great, the character looks like Halo´s^^ - I really like it

BTW: These idiots on Youtube with their comments !

yeah it looks great.

PS. I hope i get the AI demo to work soon. I got a response from Larry

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c--dyDNn5gE[/video]
pistol work in progress

damn good work on that! i really like the arms model, too.

DarkInferno :
The character is great, it is an ennemy ? caus in FPS you don't see your character !
a few coders would help [am not the best coder however ^^]
Wel lwhat you've done so far in coding, is already very good ; i couldn't code half of what you've done !

If you need some help : model assets with UV and simple textures color (i'm not good at making textures them) , just send a message.

Will it be aliens , or creatures on your game ?
And will you use normal maps ? and baked normal map ind diffuse texture look great also and can be used if you don't plan ot use a normal map shader !

Well done very quickly a wall building seamless texture :
diff, normal, and spec :



Perhaps you could try to integrate it in your level with the right shader ,test it i engine and tell if it fits right.
Just quick done to test.

For the characters : you could use this one :
3D Heroine
It's 10 000 polys , not sure A7 could handle it

whats t

whats the purpose of this? PM me about stuff like this, i dont want this thread to become like the last one, i wanna keep it focused at the game...

awesome looking. i like the arms too, it really looks great

i thought i'd share the to do list for scion for this month,
TO DO LIST [September 2009]:

-implement standard animations for each player [walking running jumping]
-implement secondary animations to be added to standard [reload, weapon selection]
-implement server side physics movement
-implement server side shooting
-implement ragdolls
-implement bullet tracers and varying hit surfaces effects
-implement respawning and third person viewing of other players
-implement basic weapon functions [firing, animating]
-implement items
-rework ALL nuzzle flashes and bullet impact effects
-get above features ready by 31st of september for alpha testing [4 player deathmatch]

over all goal completion for september 2009: 71/100

local four player test, local on one pc, low fps:

stability test [right-click and view image for full image]:



test result: succesful

So when we re trying it online(31st?)?

update, particle cannon model [work in progress]

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ER8mzIF8w[/video]

the particle cannon is a one hit kill weapon with a significant charge time, theres also a significant recharge time after each shot so its not a weapon that a player can rely on 100 percent especially in close combat

Ahhh, my first post hopefully I'll be active on this forum, as I'm a member of Dark's team. So hi all
I'm the one with the water gun and the particle. As I was going through the comments I saw some that did help with modeling a better weapon, I hope you'll keep the comments as we make progress

[multiplayer build 0.0.1]
this is the first playtest of SCION in its FPS form, the official playtest date was to be the 31st but as things seemed to have moved somewhat smoothly, we had a playable version on the 30th, this is a bugfree build, this was just a test to find the bugs and see what could/should be improved/removed, it was a fun test however... we will continue updating you with more information and we are still seeking modelers, concept artists, 2d artists, musicians [unpaid at the moment ofcourse] but we're working on it...

enough chatter, scion alpha build 0.0.1
[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmOSGd1008A[/video]

I LIKE it.^^
Looks like a prototype by now, but already looks good.
And from what I have seen so far, its gonna look even better soon....

nice job

you seem to have problems with pan tilt and roll ^^
how much traffic do you have per player?

Some art-work done by me, combining the character model and the Gauss Gun:
Note: The character model is done by another artist of our team.

Looks great, Michael!
The character modelel is really high quality, good work by the other artist (Konstantin I guess?), and the gauss gun fits very well, good work by you, too.
I like the style.

Great model !
good look , like Fear game characters !

Some personnal things :
For the gun : the white thing square with yellow is not integrated in the overall texture of the gun : it cacthes the eye more than other parts !

And for the white parts of the gun , put more dirt they seem to be not damaged or dirt compared to the rest of the gun.

Just my opinion only !
Keep up impressing us !

I'd really like to see more screens of that character, before I comment.
I think the texture on his right leg looks a little weird (compression? streching? I can't tell...)
It really fits well.
even the Background's great.
Can't wait to see this in game.

Thanks for the comments, yes, the character is modelled by Constantine.
The gun looks really whiote cause of the specular map I believe, its pretty dirty trust me

I can only respect this great modeling art and hope that the code will perfectly bring these really beautiful design to life. I know - as most of the serious developers here too - good code and good art work are different things.
So only the best wishes for dark.

just wanted to share my intent with this project, yes i do intend to make it commercial but what i want to do is finish the key features then release it in a beta to this and other communities..

i'm sure it'll be fun enough to keep you guys playing, then use the feedback i receive to complete the game, i will also continually update the beta based on feedback, now hopefully we can get a professional shooter out of this engine

especially since we have so many guys working on it, ofcourse, the main thing to keep this demo from being released is the artwork, but you should have it all soon

Hi, we kinda changed direction for now cause of our small team and lack of resources, so we now plan on currenttime weapons.

What do you think about the AK modedl I created, esspecially the "down the sights" view.

Looks quite good. And that character looks really awesome...

except you still posted the version with the inaccurate iron sights, i dont know why you did that since you fixed it.. but oh well, i do hope no discussions about that starts in this thread however..

Wow darkinferno nice work
I have one question
How to make that vehicle enter and go out code pls
tell me it.I need it for myproects
THX
Programmierboy

@ Progger: thats out of topic, use PMs for requests.

@Mike: Very nice work again.

Here's the Desert Eagle model update:

looks good, only 2 things that looks off in first sight:

Well, I modelled it off a real picture...
Takew a look:

Well that "too long" right part of the pistol looks good. But that "too thin" part of the pistol should be little larger.

that doesn't look like a real desert eagle, it could be an older mk but there is no branding on it and from the trigger and other parts i marked on previous pic i can say that this is not the current original desert eagle.

http://www.magnumresearch.com/docs/Magnum_catalog_2009.pdf on third page it the original magnum research desert eagle.
you can find better pics on google.

http://www.impactguns.com/store/SS-49466.html

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&um=1&sa=1&q=magnum+research+desert+eagle&btnG=G%F6rselleri+ara&aq=f&oq=&start=0

anyway, it's still a great model.

also the angle of the gun is throwing off the appearance of the height of the gun.

yes am aware and i've told him about it, will be changed soon

This could speed up your work...
weapons with arms


more full animated stuff
Regards
AS

3DRT have very solid package , personnaly i would put 249$ only if i would plan to sell a game.

I do like the Desert Eagle but somehow the muzzle seems too long.
Wow, 249$? I can have my own Comm version with that

ok, so am working towards a 16 player online FPS with 3dgs and one thing i wanna say, this is VERY possible, am using Anet pro and the 3dgs comm edition and so far things are smooth and there have been alot of online playtests, now...

am working towards a public preBETA test, but we have custom game models that i dont want to release, does anyone know of a way we can encrypt these files and still have the game run, i know 3dgs PRO version can do it, but we dont have the cash for that yet..

..sorry guys, wont upload a video atm but i can assure its alot better then anything i've done before

yes you can do that, check ventilator's super simple filepacker.

http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=19086&Number=161374

it's basically about shifting bits according to a numeric password, and zipping things with zlib. and doing things reverse when opening files, and adding to the 3dgs's file system.
(file doesnt need to be actually exist on hdd to use with 3dgs, you can directly land your decrypted files on ram and add this to 3dgs file system. see add_buffer from manual)

you can always change the cyripting algorithm(though imo you dont even need to that) of ventilators filepacker, or add headers/more info to your pack files. since no one knows your file structure/password and cyripting algorithm, it's virtiually impossible to extract your files from there.

link: http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=19086&Number=161374

i played it around with such thing alot, if you need help about that just ask me.

yes, i'd like some help in that department,so send me a PM when u have the time

i'd love to help, pm sent.

[first i want to apologize for the choppy movement, i turned a setting off during the test and only after i received the video was i aware, its actually alot smoother but also far from completion ]

ok, well here we are presenting the artwork and coding done so far by a very awesome collaboration of people we're striving to bring something "new" to the market, we're also aiming to be one of the better games to come from the 3d gamestudio engine, what will seperate us from the majority isnt shown in this video however, the vid only shows the work done so far and doesnt reflect the quality of the game concept in any way, we mostly did it because of we're in need of assistance, any 2d artist that can handle menus, logos, emblems, so on and so forth, has a friendly personality and knows that creating a good game as alot to do with passion for the industry and not the rush for cash, feel free to contact us, we also need help from 3d artists, the list goes on, we however do have limited space and this is because, if the game succeeds, then we plan to pay everyone for their time and as you can imagine, increasing the team size too much would place a damper on that.

no i know ya'll are tired of hearing that and just wanna see videos, so here's our wip, proof of concept video, build 0.0.5:
[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZNo51EIG8M[/video]

we are indeed working towards a public playtest but we cant do that at the moment without risking sending our custom content all over then internet, so i'm also working towards getting a pro version, the .WRS combined with a few other techniques should be sufficient for what we want

thanks for reading:
tahir G - lead design, scripter
michael - 3d artist/animator
kostantine - 3d artist/animator
matt - 3d artist/animator
-[VoidTech]-

man, thats incredeble!
Do you have a team or do you work alon?

i dont take credit for all of it, i did most of the coding, its powered by, 3dgs, Anet and shade-c, we are 3 artists and myself, 4 members so far but we're really in need of a 2d artist, hence the video..

we've also received alot of help from some members, especially germanunkol

Movement looks great, weapons look cool, everything very promising so far.
I noticed you dont hide the crosshair when aiming down sights, but that's minor.
Good work.

already told you: great looking work, keep it up! the weapons look like they are a lot of fun, but I'd really like to see a smoother version of the video

what's with the music... is it official game music? or is it just from somewhere else for now?

Edit: the red hit-image on the hud (the red overlay that comes when you're hit) should disapear faster, in my opinion.

Great work Dark_Inferno
I could not achieve what you've done even in a year and more !

Great incoming gameplay , i like the points when killed an ennemy , reminds me Modern Warfare :
RPG System ?

Now i'm gonna be a bad guy and talk dirty , not to say i don't like the actual state, is progressing incredibly well
Perhaps to help improve design ? or give you ideas ?

- The Bloom effect perhaps takes some frames/Second, and i really don't see the necessity for it : I would prefer a lot weapons with a good normal and specular map indeed !

- wall with a simple grey textures are too simple , need some shapes on them , actually the textures make the game look like old A6 or A5 levels.

- Lightening on level looks old, some specular or normal maps even baked normal maps would bring up all your VERY FLAT FLOOR And WALL textures
Uncharted 2 game on PS3 , i've rotated camear on some parts of floor , the shadow on stones didn't mode : BAKED NORMAL MAP ON TEXTURE FLOOR : But it works very great (other parts used real normal/specular maps)
Works great caus by playing the game , the baked are good , you even not notice it, caus you won't stop , zoom , rotate your character to see if little baked shadow moves
They have even baked textures on walls not only floors.
Just my advice : With baked textures you will really bring volume !

Don't take all that bad, just my opinion.
We can't compare even old AAA games , made with an armada of 3D artists that work 5 days a week from years on 3D , and
a good 3D indie team already doing an excellent job in indie domain.


Keep up the great work Dark_Inferno
Keep up impressing us.

theres nothing in your comment to take badly, as stated, nothing shown is near final quality, that wasnt the purpose of the video

No, caus i always talk bad points, and never good points !!
And i know how people hate me for that !
Even on some personnal game, if a day i will really make one ? i would not like bad critics, that's natural for any work we do with passion in any domain.
My critics are for ideas, and construcives ones , i hope !
Just wanted to give you some personnal ideas.

no its not the official music and am not very sure of the source i got it from either

Hey, I sent you an email along the line of the music subject. If your not interested, that's cool. Just tell me. Regardless, good work on the game. I'm no expert, but from the test video, the game seems worked out very well, and if that's just a glimpse then i know I would be impressed with the final product.

It's great to see indie (you guys are indie right?) developers jumping to the initiative to make a great product.

Thanks!

Colburn B. Hayden

lol, well we are indie but we're striving to be much more, i think what really seperates indies from mainstream isnt so much the tools but our willingness, passion and ability to work, hopefully we can accomplish all that we want but based on tests, am sure the engine can handle

...chill on the bloom. little too much.

its perfect actually.. keep in mind that the model and textures here are all placeholders, we'll take advantage of the bloom when doing our own textures, maybe somewhat difficult to explain the style, most i can say is, in time it'll become apparent

Yeah. One thing I havce always believed is that indie developers are often VERY qualified, but most of my experience with indie teams has been tragic because the developers end up losing interest or just have lives that are to busy (which is not a BAD thing). I am always thrilled to see a team getting good progress while striving for the best.

[update: lighting and shader test]
ok, just posting 2 screens to show that the game is still in development, this is just with some more artwork added:

-the weapons and their shaders are after days of work, self-made textures, several shaders applied.
-the level however is a downloaded model and the texturing was ok but not exactly top class, so what you see of the level is just after about (1) day of tweaking so its not great
-the post-processing isnt 100 percent doing what it should either

basicaly what am saying is that these screens DO NOT in any way display the final quality or even the concept of the game but it does give a basic idea of what to expect

the HANDS are NOT textured

this test was mostly to test lighting levels in 3dgs and we now have a solid idea of how to handle decent level designs.

btw we are still looking for someone that can assist with doing decent menus...



scion.2010.lighting test.[work_in_progress]
-dark_inferno-
shaders: boh_havoc

Well, the fingers glow which looks very stupid xD

the level looks low poly... but the weapons are nice

Great work darkinferno! It looks like you gonna make a finished game.....

Good luck for your project!

That looks really nice, darkinferno!

Keep up the excellent work.

Excellente work, friend. MY congratulations.
There is a lot of work to create a pro game.

did you lighted the model with dynamic light??
and do you use the standart 3dgs normal map shader??
how many dynamic lights can you or the shader handle?

It looks nice but I find it way more interesting how it feels when you play the game. The video seems promising, movement and weapon handling, too.

i think it looks fantastic.

whats the story behind it?

looking great but you need to make a video now

need some snapshots of enemies but it looks great

Its multiplayer...

Dark, that already looks great, so I expect fantastic things to come.

the hands are untextured hence that result
this is a free level model that doesnt reflect our work, am sure alot of 3dgs users have it on their harddrives, it was just for testing purposes and the model accomplished what i wanted it to

its a multiplayer oriented game, yes there is a back story but that wont be revealed for now..

well, sad to say, the last video uploaded will be the last video seen from this game for quite some time, next video will be shown when the game is in a 'acceptable' state

@alibaba
no i didnt, these are static lights, the level is a model that was converted to blocks via the import function, every surface in the screenshot has a shader applied, ground, walls, pipes and so on..
the shader handles the full 8 dynamic lights and full support for WED lights with no great fps lossno, these were shaders written by boh_havoc, i dont know if he wants me to say much on it yet so i wont give more details, all i can say that it certainly increases visual quality alot, am just sorry that these screens dont do it justice but as the game develops, am sure we'll see the true power of what they can do...

hr hr... did you see that? no one said anything bad about the HUD

So I'll start: It's boring, there's too many scratches in it that don't make sense and "break" the general "flow" of it, make the lines unclear. There's not enough color (there should be at least slight variation).

And the currently selected weapon image overlaps the inactive one.


Other than that, great progress!!

i'll be sure to mention all of that to the creator of the HUD -winks-

The game even with not final levels looks very great with shaders and lightening

You just have to smooth the polygons on pipes !
And the shader on hands could be great for a special power.

Keep it up !

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w82mMi1XVpc[/video]

just a video to show that the project isnt cancelled but going through a rigorous planning phase, feel free to set high expectations for our team

and my youtube page with some of my work so far: http://www.youtube.com/user/darkInferno360#p/u

posted a ? on the video.

there are several 3d artists actually, the one that did the character isnt a member of this forum however

[this was originally written on the team forum but i dont see a problem sharing it here, this is all multiplayer btw]

well its about time i started a post to show my daily progress in terms of coding, here i will list changes in the code structure and changes in gameplay elements:

-items are no longer individual weapons, meaning, you can carry a primary weapon, secondary weapon plus additional items

-scion now automatically handles the particle creation on different surfaces except multimesh entities which need more than one effect type.. -[restricted to team viewing]

-[restricted to team viewing]

-a psuedo lag compensation has been implemented, this will rewind players on the server to past positions in an attempt to reduce lag

-the trace for shooting is no longer done in a single frame

-muzzle flashes now make use of the ent_morph function

-[restricted to team viewing]

-the spectator mode now only uses an over the shoulder view

-a psuedo extrapolation is now done on clients, meaning, clients will now try and guess where a players next position update will arrive

-[restricted to team viewing]

-shooting is now done with client side effects while the server inflicts the actual damages

-ragdolls now blend to the "down" animation

-implemented minor deathmatch scoring

i've decided to start uploading regular videos of development progress, this was mainly for team motivation, i'll upload two today which was the WIP particle effects and the WIP 'injured' state...

particle effects show reel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pEgNcdlSoI

inhured state vid doc:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOrZBBBITYY

progress is fast so should be more videos soon

It's a bit unrealistic, that if you shoot against wood, sparks are emitted.
But apart from that it looks really great!

He isn't finished, it's all a WIP. There is still allot of tweaking to do. And also keep in mind things like the Uncanny Vally

great, very great game.

Great particles effects.
Perhaps you could find a shader doing soft particles where you don't see the plane throught the ground.
It could be an option caus it's GPU power eating !

Now you just need splatter effects !

Keep up the good work !

JUST A NOTE:

i'll be removing all videos from the youtube page shorty as they dont reflect the quality we're aiming for, new videos will replace them shortly

this is an update to show that scion IS FAR FROM being another failed project, we've been hard at work, as you all know multiplayer isnt easy but we're doing it and we've requested help from you guys before, anyways, i just wanted to show a video of a VERY OLD play test that we did, remember this is an old vid and should be criticized as such, also... here is the video of facebook... we'd love for you guys to add us, rate, comment and subscribe and help our project rise, so watch the vid, check out the facebook page, add us and leave crits, heres the facebook link:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2212041&op=1&o=global&view=global&subj=610165050&id=682706328#!/video/video.php?v=1545461513369&ref=mf

check out my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=72571&id=1139950023&l=33a03ef93d

ADD ME WITH THE MESSAGE "SCION" ONLY WAY I WILL ACCEPT, looking forward to see you guys there

oh and the youtube video:
just uploaded, quality will improve soon: [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4isYeoyw9c[/video]

Gameplay looks really solid o.O.

How do you sync the Bulletshots?

In the past i thought about sending the position and direction of a bullet from the client to the server, server executes the shot and sends the result.
BIggest problem ha sbeen the shotgun with multiple bullets(more bandwidth).

MAybe...you can give me a hint?

EDIT: Gimme da punk...XD(remember the APB beta^^)

GReets
Rackscha(and the Memnarch on the YT video is me...posted the wrong nick, thought of another forum^^)

The level is too dark ! it is night ? why not making a day level instead ?

this is quality in weapon menu , and floatting things in the wind are really cool , but they fly too much, it distract us too much ! or because it's lot lot of wind ?

Something to improve the first full screen blood effect when player is hit at beginning, i don't like it ! why not to be inspired by Geras Of Wars ? COD4 ? Blur the effect sprite perhaps ? and put blood only on screen borders ?


Keep improving the level by adding some objects later, to make it more life like !
Well already great job indeed, keep up improving it !

Where did you get the Ground texture?

@Darkinferno:
MAybe you can add some screenshots of ACTUAL gameplay?

wow!
looks very professional now!
Keep it up!

regards

Rackscha: watch the video?
Gameplay screens are always difficult to make in a multiplayer game, since you always need to get all those people around the world (I think Scion's team is spread accross the world) to join in. So why not just watch the video which shows more of the gameplay anyways?

This game is really progressing nicely. Keep it up! The multiplayer-code looks nice and solid. Cool!
And start replacing those Placeholder-levels

i wont be replying to critics about any visual element because as i stated this is an alpha test filled with placeholder stuff, instead of spending 10 hours on great blood, spend 2, then atleast you have alot more elements done then we can pretty things up later...

@racksha: we really dont wannt place screenshots of gameplay that we currently have because the visuals have doubled since the last test, however, there are shots on the facebook page, also for your synching bullets thing, for me, each client sends the start and end position of each shot... each pc then redoes the shot, as simple as it gets.. this was the best method for us

check out the facebook for pics: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?created&&suggest&note_id=138077872887230#!/album.php?aid=72571&id=1139950023&comments

remember to send the word "scion" with your friend request to be added

@Darkinferno:
I thought i could live without Facebook XD
OK, give me 2 minutes and you'll have a request^^.
Thanks for the thing with the bullets.

EDIT: screenshots are looking great. Hope to see a Beta 2011

GReets
Rackscha