Sooo beautiful!

I hope this is not discontinued?

Thanks Ertlov!

@Wolf, yes still in business , haven't updated this thread for a while though so here's a little bit of progress -

I've been pushing random procedural level experiments further as I think these might have merit and serve as a reasonable part of a level. I've now got procedural placement of secret doors, lava pits, floor void traps, floor spikes, 5 different kinds of NPC, long winding corridors, open ranged battle areas, collectables, 4 labyrinth tiers of huge width and depth with auto placement of stairs to reach the levels. FPS is starting to suffer now though, dropping to 20, but I was surprised at how large I can get these random procedural levels with GG (albeit mainly using low poly blocks) - can get seriously lost in the maze and the tricky part is procedurally balancing the rewards, action and consumables required and to sustain player interest across a vast and always different level (if the AI would follow up/down the stairs that would be a great help too). Also experimenting with cel shaders (a little like Borderlands) ... not sure if I'll keep this aspect though ... what do you think?



Cheers.

This is definitely one of--if not the--most impressive projects on these forums. The procedural work is awesome and entirely unprecedented in GG. I also like the aesthetic the cartoon shader adds. Although if you choose that route, I would look at optimizing some of the textures for use with the shader.

@Cyberscience, just a suggestion... instead of using perfect square textured blocks, could you use "cave segments" which contain more detailed passage ways. So each block would be substituted with a more uneven mesh and perhaps vertical columns. I've attached a screenshot from a game I'm working on and you'll get what I mean:

Thanks darimc - hope I can get it to live up to those words . You're correct about needing to change the entity textures and not rely on post process entirely ... still not sure of the look/feel for this - I've got some other fx veneers undergoing test and I really like filmic/ACES.

@Landman - it did cross my mind that I could maybe construct from some lovely looking cave/dungeon pieces from the store, though the FPS is struggling with low poly cubes (even with LOD applied within the cubes!) and I was thinking higher poly segments might drive it down way too far. I do 100% agree it would be much better the way you suggest and much less mine-crafty. Guess I should give it a try and see what happens Thanks for the suggestion.

EDIT: Using higher poly 'blocks' effectively kills GG given the volume used, HOWEVER, you did put me on to a way of achieving this still - I use the entity cubes as the collision framework but 'Hide' them - and as these are collisionmode = 0, the engine can build and procedurally arrange them OK in the thousands, and then place the higher poly 'blocks' based on the same origin point as the cubes in the same position, these are collisionmode = 11 so engine can cope with thousands of these as long as it isn't trying to calculate collision (it seems). So end up with a cube based collision framework for the labyrinth but it looks like a much higher poly a bit like your WIP photo. So a big thank you for making me go the extra mile on this one - it looks a lot better!! Cheers.

I haven't posted here for a while ... lost heart a fair bit with the lack of updates to GG. Below are some videos of work in progress levels: airships, skies, procedural labyrinths, AI at height and such ...

Following on from the rolfy approach with the new sky shaders and spheres, a work in progress day/night cycle (sky and moon images from NASA):



Some moonlit airship flying, using same sky sphere and 'endless sea' approach:



And final video is an update of the completely procedural labyrinth/dungeon level - the mazes created are huge and take some time to get through (still working on getting AI to move smoothly up as well as down through the maze - for those interested all of these AI are operating way above the GG terrain):



Here's a sneak preview of an as yet unnamed NPC (with a slight tilt shift effect):



And finally, we'll all recognise this fella - re-sized, slightly re-textured, with added hat, and we have the Victorian Hulk ...

I understand that its beyond frustrating how we are kept in the dark currently, but I also find that you do exceptionally well with what we currently have.
Please keep us posted. Remember that you can hit me up if you need anything in terms of static architecture and so forth. Not saying that you couldn't do it yourself or anything...I just like to help out good devs.



-Wolf

Thanks Wolf - appreciate the comment! Cheers.


I've been searching for a while for an environment or an idea for a lair for Tesla (resident genius character - evil or not - to be discovered). Maybe underground or a building lab, airship or something though have settled on an ocean outcrop domain - only reachable by sea or air.

Next weeks' challenge is to get something like this into GG for the last level (some others still to finish though) - to make 'Tesla Towers' :

Loving the look of that ,very cool .

Dave

I often miss good WIP, as it can be quite the long read (the threads get huge). I've seen some of this in the main threads, but not sure if I've posted here or not. Very nice indeed. It's good to see so many WIPS that look good, considering what some of the released games are like these days. Shows GG has potential to be a great product and also what a serious dev can do with it

Looking extremely well made.

Reminds me a lot of the myst games, just that this right here is realtime 3d

Please keep us posted!



-Wolf

At first i really didn't like the looks of this, like aesthetically it was going all over the place, but you've really tightened it up. the scripting is something out of any gameguru user's wettest dreams. the models are all custom and tailored to the universe, and they just keep getting better. I like that you sketch out what you make on a blueprint before you make it. I don't like the idea of a procedural dungeon, since it simply will never look as nice as classic level design, which you already have talent for in spades my friend. I might say those guns could use some cooler animations though

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Yes you are right there - taking a long while to mature, hopefully something not too hideous will emerge eventually - 2030 maybe

I was quite proud of getting these guns into GG many months ago, but when I see what others like yourself can do, they look a bit tired.

So on the bringing it all together front (in theory) I've been searching for a set of the right filters to try and unify and make this a little different from other games. Some experiments are below (using the Tesla Towers as the models to illustrate). Which do you like best?









Also managed to get the post process to change based on health, so if you get below a certain HP level, the player vision goes extreme fish-eye and monochrome until HP recovers (bit different to red screen).



Last one just for fun - MadWorld style (kind of):



Cheers.

I like the colour grading in the first picture best. it seems like all those other ones will just be too intensive for users with a crappy PC (in my reshade experience anyway), and not worth the graphical "improvement" they provide

Liking the first and forth pics.

Dave

Of the pictures of the Domed building from outside, I prefer the first. The second looks too dark for the backdrop and the third looks like a negative style effect, cool, but not sure how it would play like if the entire game looked like that Have no clue what the pic in-between is :0

Your art style is having a lot going for it. I feel like you are ruining tasteful scenes with overbearing weird postprocessing.


Its okay Bugsy, we don't always have to cater to the lower end Bugsy, thirty FPS Bugsy....THIRTY!

Is this an enemy?



-Wolf

Thanks guys, think I'll re-think the post processing.

This is a screenshot of what happens when the player health points drop below a certain point, the post processing switches to a monochrome fish-eye view until health recovers (a bit like uncharted 4, but the fish-eye effect also kicks in).



Here's a fly past video of the level so far:

Looks fantastic!! Really impressive.

If you want my recommendation: Use AA, Bloom and a few mild colourgrading and correcting effects rather than something that full blown alters all your work. Its really good.

How did you control the camera like this for the video? Is that a script??



-Wolf

Thanks Wolf. Yes a script based on AmenMoses cutscene.lua.

Looking for unifying post process that is also light weight on resources but is also distinctive without being tiring to the eyes or ugly. Thought it would be easier than it is

BTW - happy to have a go at those redacted guns for you. I might be able to do it without the textures as long as I haven't screwed up the UVs.

Cheers.

A wip view of Cogsbody - who is inspired by BB8 and Codsworth.

For some levels I wanted the player to have a companion that could help fight off enemies, be a vehicle for providing information and also add some humor.

AIGetEntityIsMoving is a useful AI command that seems to work - it reports if an AI is moving (surprise!) so I used it to make sure Cogsbody only attacks an enemy entity that is moving. I tried AIGetEntityCanSee and AIGetEntityCanFire without any luck though - perhaps I'm not implementing these commands correctly.

Cogsbody's super heat attack is furnished by using lua to affect a variable read by entity shaders that then use the spare _O texture as an alternative texture when required. The uncharted4 inspired "hurt view" (black & white with extreme fish-eye lens) is created in a similar way, but the variable changed by lua is used in the post-process shaders rather than entity. Hopefully these approaches can soon come out of the box without needing to be 'hacked' in as now.

Cheers.

WOW! Well done cybernescence! This is fantastic, I'm pretty speechless!

you without a doubt have the most competent game around here. I want to play this, but all I see is tests. you have already created something with systems and content making mostly everything else look like asset flips and childs play. I really hope we start seeing some more levels with gameplay implemented soon. I must pick your brain about getting custom characters imported and from there getting them scripted.

Anyways, fantastic job. Thanks for the help on wetwork. Keep it up!

Wonderful work, by far the best I´ve seen around here!

Thanks for the comments guys, appreciate it.

Bugsy - don't think this is your normal style of game (not a fast paced shooter), but it would be great if you felt like taking a few of the levels for a whirl when they are ready

Starting on some of the loading screens and other extra info needed:

love ya loading screen.

Stunning works .... A very unique Game ...

I agree!! (this loading sreen would also work great if it'd look like a blueprint )

Thanks for the comments SB, Synchro & Wolf, appreciate them

So things are moving at a very rapid rate for Cogwheel (on the level design, asset and scripting fronts), but I almost can't keep up with the engine releases now .... had a year where hardly anything changed and now it changes every week it seems. Re-testing across the engine and shader releases takes a long time (and resolving the issues found even longer), so I know I'm going to have to freeze the engine version I'm working with ... problem is all the new features makes the game look and operate much better. And if, for example, volumetric particles stays towards the top of the voting horizon and gets implemented soon, it's a kind of must have for a steampunk game ...

I've been playing some Horizon Zero Dawn and I loved the callable machines you could ride on ... so got side-tracked developing that capability for Cogwheel too, but then of course you need huge wide open spaces to explore, so that lead to developing endless terrain levels, which then highlighted performance problems, which then made me develop an NPC swarming and co-location transport - to minimise numbers of character entities in play, but still make the level seem full(ish). So really should have left all that for 'volume 2'.

And now, the brilliant Preben has opened up height map imports (using AGK and his GGLoader), and the leap in terrain quality is amazing (compared to what I can do with the native GG tools) ... and lots more textures can now be used thanks to Lee ... so can't really ignore this .... or can I? Volume 2? But what if Volume 1 is a failure there will be no Volume 2. Gah!

There are many core levels in CC and you can approach them in a non-linear way (and go back to them if you want to). Which is all good but then I start to lose track of which way you can visit these levels and where you appear on the level and why depending on the story arch you take ... and of course this needs to be designed and recorded for reference. White board session got this started, haven't fully transcribed to the documentation yet, but this is the start of that (I know boring stuff):



Here's the 'strider' you can ride all over the place (and call to your side thanks to the new AI commands if you get lost):



Here's a new level using height map import, may end up having to use something like this as it's so much better than hand crafting (well with my terrain sculpting skills it is:



And this one has some WIP mechs .... oh and a wolf!



All comments welcome . Cheers.

I realy like checking out your updates ,allways good to look at.great work again.

Dave

really a great project!

Oh! You shouldn't have...! I'm flattered

But seriously, those robots look brilliant. Pretty scary too the way they stand in the fog there.

A while since an update, so some progress news:

I prefer a third person view to create a strong character appreciation for the player and it kind of directs the players attention like in a film, however I can't spend the time to build all of the animations needed for different weapons, riding horses, flying and driving vehicles, nor is GG particularly smooth with the third person view at the moment (there is no way to switch the weapon held by the third person character). I also think first person view does bring some more immersion for the player and actually looks and feels way better in some scenarios than third person.

So as with nearly all projects compromises have to be made and this is to be the Cogwheel player mechanic:

For walking, running, jumping, special defence and swimming the view will be third person (still considering ladder climbing as a possibility)
For fighting (melee or ranged), crouching, horse riding, jet-pack, airship/flight vehicles, cars, the view is auto switched to first person.
Where player has been switched to first person, then after vehicle exit or last fire event then third person view is reverted to after 10 seconds

I think differing combinations of first-person for weapons/aiming and third-person for other actions has been used in other games reasonably successfully and I quite like the way it flows in GG (after days and days of tweaking the gameplayercontrol.lua). But will also include an option so it can be all first person if preferred by player.

Cathodia Callan & Isaac Illmar are the two main third person view characters - still working on various apparel for these two, but for the main adventure mode levels, screen shots below.

Isaac's main weapon is the 'boomhilda', Cathodia has a special weapon that is both gun and axe in one (when she has no ammo the gun auto switches to axe mode for some robot head smashing fun).

Still some polishing to do, but have third to first, first to third, third person ladder climbing, swimming, diving, in game character switch and special moves. I still have one very frustrating bug that I can't crack yet and I'm starting to suspect the engine is holding on to or not resetting some values on death of player character. Maybe 10 hours of chicken attack and I'll get it fixed and this controller complete

Any thoughts on first to third game play switching or on anything else welcome of course.

@cybernescence this is such a huge leap forward in what has been done in GG so far!

Switching between 3rd and 1st person view, swimming, climbing ladders. You are certainly skilled.

The character models are excellent too, they're persistent and look as though the belong to the same game. And the gun/axe combo!! I can't wait to see that in use. Love it! Love all of it! Well done!

Great work cybernescence,I can't even emagine how many hours work you have put into this project.

Dave

Great looking update!

I would say that you be best to slow the walking speed of the character, as he seems to gliding along the floor as he walks. It's less noticeable with the run animation.

Really cool looking game!

Ciber: I follow his work where I find it ... I do not like to comment a lot, because the majority in the forum are of English origin and as you know our countries do not love much ... but I think that governments generally do not faithfully represent The way of thinking of its people ... (excuse for the thought that maybe should not have included here ...) As I said, Ciber: I love his work, I find exceptional his conceptual art, the aesthetic line, the approach given to That world, the characters, the "bad guys", the dynamics developed to carry out the player's experience ... There he mentions that "it is not a dizzying action game", but the mechanics is like that ... slow But relentless. The only thing that could lead to failure is to abandon it, "The Cogwheel Chronicles" has to get to fruition and I think it probably has the support of the entire GG community. A big hug!
Warlock

Ciber: Sigo su trabajo donde lo encuentro... No me gusta comentar mucho, pues la mayoría en el foro son de origen inglés y como se sabe nuestro paises no se aman mucho... pero creo que generalmente los gobiernos no representan fielmente a la forma de pensar de su gente... (disculpen por el pensamiento que quizá no debería haber incluído aquí...) Como decía, Ciber: Amo su trabajo, me parece excepcional su arte conceptual, la línea estética, el enfoque entregado a ése mundo, los personajes, los "malos de la película", la dinámica desarrollada para llevar adelante la experiencia del jugador... Por allí menciona que "no es un juego de acción vertiginosa", pero la mecánica es así... lenta pero implacable. Lo unico que podría llevarlo al fracaso es abandonarlo, "The Cogwheel Chronicles" tiene que llegar a buen puerto y creo que seguramente cuenta con el apoyo de toda la comunidad de GG. Un gran abrazo!
Warlock

Thanks Landman, I'll post a video of the gun-axe in use (but don't look too hard at the hands ... they are not very female looking yet - I'm struggling to find a female arm rig that I like!)

@Granada, thanks & way more than 3,000 hours now on this

@unfamilia - yes I see what you mean , I have a different walk anim that may look better, think I'll try that instead. Would you be OK if I used your gas mask in this game? I've lightly re-textured and added to Isaac, but completely understand if not, no worries (picture below).

@warlock12 - thanks for the motivating words, appreciate those .

Some more work completed on background/lore (probably for those long loading screens):

About the bug you mentioned; I also found that on player death GG seems to lose track of certain things, sounds that were playing are stopped and some Lua variables seem to get cleared. What I did was store the number of player lives in a separate variable then compare it every so often with the current player lives value, if it changes I trigger some code to restart sounds that should be playing and recalculate the effected Lua variables.

Thanks Amen - so it's not just me then - I've got so many code changes everywhere I was wondering

I've had to do exactly as you say, I was getting strange animation glitches on death and game restarts, some NPC and player TP animations getting stuck in a range that couldn't be changed by any usual method. I had to resort to trapping when the anim range starts to happen and respawn the entity - only way to clear it - but not ideal.

Steampunk horse riding demo video coming soon ... need to think of a suitable name for it too

Cheers.

This project is a great example of why the WIP section needs to be higher up on the forums...

Steambiscuit, surely.

AE

Oh dear

Anywaysies! This is a superb project. I like how you keep working on it against all odds and how you seem to not lose faith and determintation in it. I know too well how these long standing projects can knaw on you.

Your warm mahagony colour pallette is well chosen and I like how it evolves visually. I'm also proud to see my own models here and there in this project but... well, I'm not the biggest fan of the youthful pretty-boy look of the protagonists. They look more like modern highschool kids than youngsters from the late 19th century. I guess this is a matter of taste, but if I where to make a steampunk game, my protagonist would look like a young Bismarck.


Make sure to sync camera and movment speed for the third person view of possible.

Now, my personal nagging aside, this is one of the best GG projects and has been so for a long time. I keep hoping for something playable!! That being said: Godspeed and happy developing. Feel free to add me in skype if you need someone to talk about models and so forth.



-Wolf

@ Ciber
GG is a very nice tool to work out the box, and your project is proof of it. GG in the accurate hands like yours, can be great.
Awesome game you are doing here, a lot lo work well organized and well done!.

Love the theme, keep up mate!

3com

This is great, it reminds me a bit of the Syberia games.

Thanks for the comments and feedback, it's much appreciated .

AE: Not sure I'll use steambiscuit for the horse name, but it made me smile!

Wolf: re you not being a fan of in this game context. I get your point totally. I got a fair bit of feedback away from this forum that I was pandering to the teenage boy market too much with the female protagonists having short skirts and being somewhat attractive . I was specifically asked if there would be equivalent male 'eye candy' , so this was kind of in response to that. Maybe I can age him up a little and/or add a hat.

So I've recently been focussing on consolidating and testing the re-written player mechanics and adding a right-click / left-hand hooking system (bit like BioShock Infinite), which is working well now. Also the inventory and money/vending system graphics were place-holders only and looked pretty bad, so I've redone these, they are still not amazing but hopefully OK for initial early access/beta releases.

I saw that a lot of people were having standalone build issues on the forum and as I hadn't done a build for a while gave it a go and sure enough got a blue screen of inactivity with first pass. There's one thing to keep in mind, if the level works in editor mode, it will work in standalone as long as all the same assets are available in the correct folder structure location, it's just some times a tedious mission to track these things down .. so I got there in the end (was a missing weapon and some image files).

I then decided I wasn't happy with the look of the menu buttons and their placement so have changed all these (again). The title screens etc are placeholders for the beta but I have some nice artwork coming for later releases.

So instead of continuing with this wall of text, some screenshots of the revamped inventory and auto vend system and some more chronicle background.








Cheers.

This may be of interest to you:

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218470#msg2584479

222