Sphere (working title)

[digitalmanifestation]

Hi my name is lee, i am new here and what a great resource this is.

I came here after watching your great lecture on physics based games, was interesting ^^ down hill uni cycling lmfao!! taking it to new levels hey? ^^

After watching your talk i thought to myself why not give this physics stuff a go and here is what i have come up with so far.

Sphere, kinda based on the classic marble madness, but kinda more modern (or will be when it's polished)

I'm using blitz3D and ODE to develop it in, and so far i have made a test level to add in new elements for testing before committing to level design.

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/2789/testpreviewlv8.th.jpg (http://img296.imageshack.us/my.php?image=testpreviewlv8.jpg) http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/2922/testpreview2vg1.th.jpg (http://img80.imageshack.us/my.php?image=testpreview2vg1.jpg) http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/2669/testpreview3rs6.th.jpg (http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=testpreview3rs6.jpg)

StartScreen, a turret and the loop the loop!

Need ideas, suggestions and stuff, if anyone wants to contribute some nice looking assets then i would be more than glad to accept. I am a good modeler but lack design skills, not bad at coding (at least in blitz anyway :rolleyes: ). So yah lemme know what u think guy (bearing in mind it's far from complete and i am aware of that)

Peace to all, Lee!

[razer]

Download link?
Also It looks REALLY GOOD!

[AquaGeneral]

I have always wanted to have brackable physics objects in a marble game. Earlier I tried this in the C4 Engine, I made serveral pieces that a plank can fracture into, I joint them using brekable joints.

Also I couple of funnels would be cool.

Plus you could try to add something like a meteor shower would be cool and crazy. As an example, imagine if you start in a brekable jointed house, you must quickly escape because a meteor will break te house, you must find cover before all the other meteors coming.

Just some ideas.

By the way, great game and welcome :)

[digitalmanifestation]

You could try to add something like a meteor shower would be cool and crazy. As an example, imagine if you start in a brekable jointed house, you must quickly escape because a meteor will break te house, you must find cover before all the other meteors coming.

Just some ideas.

By the way, great game and welcome :)

Hey that sounds like a really really cool idea ^^

Cheers guys, i'll post a demo of the test level soon, once i added in teleporters and bullet time.

What sort of themes do you think i should use for this? Some people i know said have multiple themes but i think that might a bit to much work at this stage, so i'm thinking of making it look tech or futuristic atm, but if someone can give me a reason to use another theme then i would take it into consideration.

Give me your feedback!!! ;)

[AquaGeneral]

Yeah, a modernised theme would be nice, everything looking shiny and everything smoothed to catch the modern theme.

[digitalmanifestation]

What sort of contraptions would you like to see?

So far there is as follows:

Booster - An tile with an arrow on it that boosts you in the direction the arrow is facing.

Blower - Tile on the floor that blows you in an upward direction.

Turret - A turret that aims at you if your within a certain radius of it, and if locked on for a certain period shoots at you.

Teleporter - Teleports you from one place to another.

Want to try and think of some more traps, how about a meteor shower trap Aqua? :D

[AquaGeneral]

How about a these;
- A cannon, just like in SwitchBall, you can aim where your going to be shot out.
- A floor trap - the weight of the marble puches a part of the floor down causing the marble to drop in.

A meteor button could work also.

I will give you some more ideas tommorow.

[digitalmanifestation]

Awsome nice ideas ^^

*edit*

I just checked out SwitchBall for the first time, not that i'm trying to compete with it or anything it's gonna be hard to match that game, i guess the only diference between tha game and mine is that SwitchBall has fixed camera positions and much better graphics, also seems more of a take your time puzzler. If it weren't for the fact i want Sphere to be a bit of a mix of puzzles, and speed i would give up seeing the quality of that game....damn...

[GreyMario]

Slip in some different ball materials with varying masses.

Then you could call it Swapball. *shot*

[digitalmanifestation]

Slip in some different ball materials with varying masses.

Then you could call it Swapball. *shot*

hehe

I sorted out the demo dudes, get it here (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=R5WN7GGX)

[Farbror Fazer]

Cool. the ball can get up to a little too high speeds if ya ask me :p

[AquaGeneral]

Wow, I got this error when I loaded up the .exe It said memory access violation.

I have got Vista, is there any way to fix this?

[GreyMario]

DEP? Try disabling it.

[digitalmanifestation]

About the speed, what FPS was u getting? i think the render tweening is a bit screwed :P If the fps is high the game runs faster i think :eek: i'll try to sort this, about the memory access violation, that normally happens if a file is missing but since it's working for other peeps it could be that DEP stuff grey mario was going on about but since i use XP it's uncharted territory.

I have been having problems with ODE, sometimes the sphere gos through walls if the speed is to high, i might try dampeneing the top speed maybe?

A friend told me the mouse speed is too sensitive, i'm guess he got mouse acceleration turned up high in windows, anyone else have same problem?

[AquaGeneral]

It was just the DEP as mentioned by GreyMario. I had a test of the first level and it was fun, though it would be nice if there where some physics objects placed in th level to make it a little bit more interesting. Plus the floor could be modified because it is hard to notice how fast you are moving it you are not currently looking at the rest of the level.

Though the device things work well :)

[digitalmanifestation]

It was just the DEP as mentioned by GreyMario. I had a test of the first level and it was fun, though it would be nice if there where some physics objects placed in th level to make it a little bit more interesting. Plus the floor could be modified because it is hard to notice how fast you are moving it you are not currently looking at the rest of the level.

Though the device things work well :)

Hehehe strobescopic effect xD i'll change the texture just for you ;)

About the objects i'll add some in, just have to change a bit of code to stop some errors caused by physics objects being static, something about a stack overflow but it's no biggie.

Hey if someone get's bored could you make a in game video for me? My computer is to crap to run capture software at the same time as the game. I got a 1.2 gig cpu, and a Gforce4 >< although i got a gig of ram it just can't handle it, my cpu should be running at higher speed but it shuts down all the time as it overheats.

[Treacle109]

How about a kind of toy story theme? like on different levels ur in different places with massive things around you, one level could be in a childs bedroom and another in a kitchen or bathroom

And as soon as ive downloaded the game ill try to record it for you...

[digitalmanifestation]

How about a kind of toy story theme? like on different levels ur in different places with massive things around you, one level could be in a childs bedroom and another in a kitchen or bathroom

And as soon as ive downloaded the game ill try to record it for you...

This could be a cool idea ^^ need to figure out what to do soon tho as i will need to start making levels soonish. Mmmm, thinking about it i guess the contraptions could be like kids toys left over the house, like the turret could be a toy tank maybe, i think this would be more appealing to a wider audience? Nice idea you have gotten the cogs in my head grinding away :D

If you could record it that would be sweet as...:cool:

What is everyone else's opinion on this?

[pengirules]

Not for me. Vista mucked itself again.

[digitalmanifestation]

It's that gay ass DEP stuff again, turn it off. People only need it on if they are noobs tbh... (no offence to you, as i can tell you're no noob)

[AquaGeneral]

I could make a video except Vista is mis-behaving, again.

Sony Vegas is not loading up normaly so I am unable to render the video.

[digitalmanifestation]

I could make a video except Vista is mis-behaving, again.

Sony Vegas is not loading up normaly so I am unable to render the video.

Damn, VISTA!!!!!!!!

Thnx for the effort anyway aqua :cool: , what are your ideas on house based levels? Would be cool to have a plate of food on a kitchen work surface and knock it off with all the peices of food being physics objects to :P

I started knocking up a bedroom level to test this out, will post a new demo soon as i get the level made.

[Dj Demetrius]

Ok, i've filmed a video in sphere, i'll just upload it for you.


EDIT - Here it is Lee: clickie here (http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=7eac9f41432ea53cde385df5c3eff3abfad6f04c c7314c8c)

[Treacle109]

Thanks for trying my idea :) and also i havent been able to download it because i could find the download button so i made an account and i still havent got activation.

I know that the toy story idea has been used in other games but none have really used physics and most had static images for most of the backgrounds...

[Treacle109]

Ok.... ive downloaded the game and i saw that u forgot to add in the H button that pressing space makes the physics objects fly in a direction... id also like to ask what program or programs u are using to make this

[razer]

"The file you are trying to access is temporarily unavailable."
AHH ****

[digitalmanifestation]

Ok, i've filmed a video in sphere, i'll just upload it for you.


EDIT - Here it is Lee: clickie here (http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=7eac9f41432ea53cde385df5c3eff3abfad6f04c c7314c8c)

Cheers mate appreciate it a lot, now downloading ^^.

Treacle i used blitz3D and the blitzODE function library for the physics.

Razer try getting it now, mega upload only allows 1 download at a time, it should be working now unless your unlucky enough to start downloading it while someone else has started it :P

[digitalmanifestation]

Just checked out the video and i must say it's awsome ^^ big thanks to Dj Demetrius that video was funny as hell :D I'll post it on youtube and get it on here at some point soon.

[GreyMario]

Might I suggest instead of adding velocity, you add rotation to the sphere? That would seem more natural...

[Dj Demetrius]

Just checked out the video and i must say it's awsome ^^ big thanks to Dj Demetrius that video was funny as hell :D I'll post it on youtube and get it on here at some point soon.

thx ^^ yeah i think i managed pretty well. good luck with your game!

[juju02]

that meteor thing would be cool for half life, in a house full of combine

also, a wooden theme, thats would i'd liek see

[digitalmanifestation]

Check the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65VaTYhUOEI) out by Dj Demetrius

[Dj Demetrius]

Check the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65VaTYhUOEI) out by Dj Demetrius

Woah the quality sucked, I'll upload the high-Q version to stage6.com when it gets back online.

[digitalmanifestation]

I uploaded the high quality one you sent me , but looks like you tube screwed it with it's gay compression :P. It looks good watching it straight from the source file :p

[Dj Demetrius]

Ah okay. Anyways, here it is: clickie clickie (http://stage6.divx.com/user/EvilHorseProductions/video/1777779/Sphere-Promo-Video)

[Treacle109]

Hmmmmm.... what language does it use and how easy would u say it is to learn?
Oh and do u have the full version or just trial version?

[digitalmanifestation]

I use blitz3D and yes i have a full version of it, it's not easy to start out with but once u get an understanding of how some things work, it becomes easier to see how you might turn a particular idea into actual working code. When i first started i did struggle a bit, but i just kept reading source code and stuff, changing code and seeing how it effected the program execution. If you already know the basics then you could easily apply that to blitz.

[Treacle109]

Kk thanks... at the moment im learning to use the blender game engine and im just trying to make a basic game...

@GreyMario: If blitz3D is anything like the blender game engine than the problem with making it with rotation is that it would be quite a bit harder to stop and turn

[digitalmanifestation]

I guess there as in switch ball have different balls for different things, i just added in bullet time so i guess there could be a "bullet time ball", "force ball" and maybe a "torque ball"?

Maybe tons more balls to :D post ideas on this plx ;)

[Treacle109]

Maybe a two player edition.... racing to the end but u can sabotage each over with like power ups such as Spawn shooter that shoots the other player that goes past and u could also knock each off by hitting them

[digitalmanifestation]

Maybe a two player edition.... racing to the end but u can sabotage each over with like power ups such as Spawn shooter that shoots the other player that goes past and u could also knock each off by hitting them

Yeah that would be cool, but for now only single player.

Check out the new Demo (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TWA15GVJ)

New stuff:

Bullet time
Spawn stars and collect them (will make them savable and loadable soon)
Spawn Meteor Shower Trigger
Make sphere smoke

A little bit more has been added to the level, a kinda bedroom area for testing out the idea that treacle had.

Hope you like :o