https://vimeo.com/195177937

Little something I've been messing around with to show off what you can do with quaternions, note that the AI slider shows that all the heavy math going on doesn't really have much of an impact on performance!.

The quaternion library is available over on the script forum if anyone wants to play around with it.

That's pretty awesome given the calcs it must be doing ...

Cheers.

Nice work on that.

Dave

woo AmenMose
way cool example for sure
of the engines abilities.
sweet !

UNIRD12B

Wow, nice work!

Nice looking stuff. I've found rotation with objects somewhat difficult in GG to date. This looks very interesting As a long term GG user this is good stuff, probably won't be appreciated by all of course. Anyone who's played about with this level of interaction will be aware of how nice this is

@DVader, tell me about it!

Took me ages to figure out the math involved but now we have a basic quaternion library it is a good starting point to all sorts of cool stuff.

Pity we don't have proper particle generators yet, I assume they once existed because there are Lua commands for them, presumably the big C++ re-write didn't include them.

Unrelated to the rotation, how did you make the steam decal look so 3d? Did you use a cross-section of 4?

Two of them at 90 degrees offset. What would be nice is an 'end on' decal that could be superimposed when the players view angle matches the jet angle to hide the X you get in that case.

In fact what would be nice is a lot more decals period, they can't be that hard to make can they?

Update:

https://vimeo.com/195877458

that's very cool and the fact that it completely spins out of control just makes it better

Probably explains why I wasn't considered for the Apollo program. (that and the fact I was only 7 years old I suppose)

Very cool! at the time Lunar Lander was my favorite arcade game. I sucked at it (still do), but I spent a lot of money on it.

very cool, quaternions very useful

Could you 'attach' small entities that have the particle emitter switched on to the nozzles? Might look good too?

I might try that if that's ok. Looking for a workaround to get smoke out of steampunked chimneys on moving ships and vehicles.

Cheers.

Very cool this has soo many possible applications its making my head bubble lol deployable auto miner, space stations, smaller craft thrusters, jet bike exhausts, laser rifle beams lol omg!!!!

@cybernescence, please do try out any ideas you have and report back, I haven't played with particle emitters because I didn't know we had them.

I've promised Lee a whole demo level to include with GG based around this LEM model (or I might try getting the 'official' model from the NASA website to work in GG) so I'm going to be busy for a bit. I'll probably have different levels of difficulty selectable because it's too hard to fly as it is.

I have an idea on how to get 3rd person astronaut to work so we can walk up to the LEM then transition to flying the LEM and then land and resume 3rd person again, if it works I'll post back with the details.

the only "particle" emitter we have for now is smoke (from the rpg) which can be called with
StartParticleEmitter(e)
and
StopParticleEmitter(e)
it basically just causes smoke to appear at the models origin (there's no way to change anything about it via lua though)

I did wonder what those commands did.

The astronaut was a lot easier than I expected:

https://vimeo.com/196005782

Pity I can't alter the animations to be more 'low gravity' style.

https://vimeo.com/196010181

Particle emitters added, interesting effect but I think I prefer it without.

Progress video

https://vimeo.com/196121836

Now that looks special .. Excellent Work !!
That has potential for a full Lunar Lander style game ( and their addictive )

On the first vid I thought .. Ok that looks very cool .... But this vid is a whole new ballgame ...
I'm just a little jealous you mastered that .... 10/10 ... You make it and il buy it

@synchromesh, you won't need to buy anything. My intention is for this to become GGs first non-violent adultish game demo, a complete mini-game like the Big Escape.

As such I will be giving the scripts away at certain points for forum members who have the entities needed to play with (the Sci-Fi Pack and Mega Pack 2 currently).

I plan to include all the various game parts as fully functional as possible, for example I will include custom HUD sprites for the flying around phase, coherent story elements, mission giving characters with sensible and (hopefully engaging) objectives, health managing aspects such as fuel use, battery charge, player energy (collecting food and drink) and possibly even damage aspect for those hard landings.

As I have a couple of weeks off real work coming up I may even get this done in time for the new year.

If anyone out there would like to join in and help out let me know, I already have most of it planned out storyline wise and think I've broken the back of the main difficult parts, the HUD display elements may be one place someone could contribute if they have any cool sprites. Audio is something I haven't even contemplated yet, should I go for text only approach or have voice overs for the story telling and mission giving aspects? TBE level definitely gains a lot of polish from the few but effective vocal elements but I don't want to overdo it with the sound effects side as you can't actually hear anything in space!

Maybe some of the lighting experts can help out getting the look right, maybe someone good at skies could contribute one with the Earth in it, lots of areas where people could contribute.

So this has become far too much fun to keep to myself.

Zip file attached with .fpm file, lua scripts (just drag the whole moon_lander directory into the scriptbank) and an ini file because this needs to have vsync enabled to get smooth movements (without it GG appears to try and interpolate and makes a complete hash of things).

I made a stand alone with this and it reverts to grass for some reason, which looks a bit weird, but apart from that works fine. If anyone knows how to fix this please chime in, also tried to turn off jump and run in the ini file but this doesn't appear to work so again if anyone knows how to do that please let me know.

I have not implemented the simpler flight dynamics yet because I wanted you all to have the fun version to play with first (first person who masters it and shows a video of smooth flight to the other side of the map gets an iou for a peanut).

Feedback welcome unless it is in the form of "Add some zombies" or similar.

Excellent !!

Great work AmenMoses ... Just to let others know you have to create an " astronaut " using the character creator which then saves him to the correct folder otherwise the map log says hes missing ...

Really great controls ... Easy to get used to quite quickly ...Also I created as a standalone without problems ?
The terrain for me was fine .....

this looks awesome, thanks very much Amenmoses and well done

Oops, yep forgot about the astronaut character bit, it's easy to make though.

I tried this out in my laptop and created a stand alone without the grass so its obviously something wrong on my development machine.

This looks sweet. Brilliant!

Might be better with some zombies though

LOL, I just downloaded it and I didn't read about the astronaut missing and it crashed. My computer is about 7% into what will be about a 2-3 hour 3D print. I was lucky I was able to recover without crashing the printer app as well! Anyway, I'll make an astronaut and try it out once the print is done. Thank you so much, it's very generous of you to share this! Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Wow that's brave, I don't run anything else when using GG on Windows 10, found out the hard way that can lead to a great deal of grief.

Actually even 3D printing on its own is pretty brave, all I ever end up with is a puddle of ABS, I could paint em brown and sell them as fake poo I suppose.

Funnily enough I'd assumed that the first thing everyone would do with the character creator is create an astronaut so it didn't even occur to me that I should include it!

Anyone out there got custom fonts working with GG? I noticed a thread back in April that seems to indicate that the SetFont command is yet another non-working 'feature', suppose I'll have to doit with sprites (actually not all that hard to do btw, just a bit fiddly).

LOL ye .... I may skip the 3d printing era and wait for the STNG Replicator

I've become pretty adept at it, actually. My first printer was a kit (PrintrBot Plus, no longer made or supported by PrintrBot; mostly wood construction), so I learned from the beginning how each component works and what it does, so when I had a failure (pile of abs) I had a pretty good idea of what failed. I got into it initially when I realized I already had some basic 3D modelling skills (thanks to TGC forums and others over the years) and that was pretty much all I had to know! My new printer is a cheap Chinese made knock-off of the FlashForge Creator Pro (dual extruder!). It has turned out surprisingly to be a very good printer, and well worth the price. (QIDI TECHNOLOGY 3DP-QDA16-01 in case anyone is interested/curious). I am printing a Christmas ornament for my mother in honor of my father, who passed away this past March.



I WANT STNG NOW, damn it; I won't be alive to see the actual thing! Aside from being a gadget-obsessed freak, I have the replicator (3D printer), holodeck (Oculus Rift), and "Computer" (Amazon Alexa).
(I also have a "laser" (complete with Dr. Evil's finger quotes) cutter!)


EDIT: My printer just stopped for no apparent reason at 10%, lol.

I have a cheap CTC printer £250 if i remember,printing now.Great fun.

Dave

https://vimeo.com/196353350

Update video, stage 1 of the HUD elements (it won't be green btw ), simply re-purposed my terrain doodad.

Brilliant Work ... Really coming together well ..

There, that looks better

Latest version for people to play with and hopefully comment on, this one includes the terrain viewer thingy and 'improved' flight model.

I have introduced thrust limiters and slightly increased the gravity component, I think the next version will also include some 'down' thrusters. I've also limited both the top speed and maximum height you can fly.

I'm working on the other HUD components and need to somehow represent the various velocities in a graphical way, the fuel and battery charge displays will be circular and I'm toying with the idea of an on screen joystick so it can be flown under mouse control.

Anyone any good at making 2d graphics? I need a control panel bezel to contain the various HUD elements and would like it to match the texture of the moonlander itself. Could even have a power switch so the player has to power up before flight and power down before leaving the LEM to go walk about.

At some point I need to sort out the terrain, I'd like the impression that the play area is contained within a very large crater, possibly with the skybox (or sphere) matching so that the edges blend with it, as part of the storyline I figure on having a number of boundary markers which the player cannot fly past, if you attempt it the LEM will simply take control and fly back to the boundary. This will be explained to the player in the 'moonbase' brief on starting the level explaining that this is a safety feature in case the LEM pilot becomes incapacitated.

Game scenario: Player is part of phase 2 of a permanent Lunar settlement project, phase 1 had automated systems installed on the surface to produce electricity, fuel and water. Phase 2 consists of support staff and construction teams, the construction teams are setting up surface living facilities and workshops, support staff are there to ferry materials around and provide life support including a medical team. Players role is as LEM pilot on support team with several 'missions' including a medical rescue and a supply drop, maybe a construction worker 'shift change'. In addition to the missions the player will be responsible for finding food and water for themselves, keeping the LEM fuelled and charged and maintenance tasks on various automated plants around the map.

PS, this time I've included the astronaut character.

My attempt at a sky box

Second attempt, Earths a bit big in this one I think. Plus I have to move the 'sun' position and change it's colour to be bluer and less intense.

I do like that look.

Dave

I think it's a bit small to be honest.

Well it looks good so I'll stick with it for now, got the image from the NASA Visible Earth website so I assume I'm allowed to use it.

(Notice it is centred on good old blighty!)

I've also sorted out the 'sun' position so the scene is lit by the Earth, which it would be if you think about where the real sun is situated (i.e. the oither side of the moon).

This is what it looks like when flying around.

Notice the dropship in the background, I'll have that flying around soon as well, in this case it will simply take off turn and fly off towards the Earth.

Just did a backup of the GG files directory, 20.3 GB! Good job I just got a bigger memory stick.

Anyone got any terrain textures suitable for a Lunar landscape? My craters are looking a little bland.

Looks ok,watched a documentary on how they made the lander last night.Very interesting .

Dave

I tried using the real LEM model from the NASA website but couldn't figure out how to get it into GG.

@Belidos, does this do justice to the drop_ship?

Oh, and what do you think the main engines should look like? some sort of ION drive or should I stick with rocket power.

How about this:

I just tried it out. It's made of separate objects, and combined it's WAY too many polygons. over 100k! With that in mind, yours is very nice!

Hey, come back , don't leave me up here all on my own!

Progress report, now I'm stuffed full of turkey and mince pies I'm working on the sprite and mouse handling code. Once that is done I'll be tackling a scrolling "radio message" display which I intend to pop up and give mission instructions to the player. I've also story boarded all the cut scenes. I've decided against any audio for now but might be looking for budding voice actors later on.

In other news I've also managed, for the very first time, to download a model from the NASA website and get it into GG! Don't get too excited it's only an electric wrench but the fact that I managed to get it to work at all surprised the heck out of me!