WIP: Fragfist - UPDATE 04: GC DEMO FINAL -- Demo playable!

[Jens_K]

Hi everybody,
My name is Jens Kortboyer I am a student of Art & Animation at the GAMES ACADEMY Berlin. My team and I are working on a Multiplayer 3D Action Shooter with vehicles. The name's FRAGFIST !
Currently we are working on a playable Demo for the GAMES CONVENTION '05 in Leipzig.
The setting for this demo is a dirttrack where you will be driving the Tomahawk-buggy, knocking over every prop that comes in your way and performing crazy jumps.

THIS THREAD: used to live on my 'to do'-list for a long time, now finally checked off. I will be updating this thread constantly as we are spitting out new content to show off and we are very curious about your feedback.

THE TEAM: consists of five members.
Jens Kortboyer - Teamleader - Artist - Games Academy
Stephan Unverwerth - Lead Programmer - CS Student - TU Berlin
Marcel Schaika - Artist - Games Academy
Cornelius Hölz - Artist - Games Academy
Felix Schulz - Music & SFX Engineer

OGRE3D:
We really enjoy working with the Ogre, it's power, comprehensive structure, the features and most important the large and kind community makes it the best choice for our project.
So far Stephan has developed a very comfortable meshviewer where we can check our models in.
Lately he implemented the Tomahawk-buggy into Nogredex and did some pretty cool vehicle physics stuff.
Currently we are working on implementing the dirttrack and props with accurate collisionmeshes.

the next steps will be to do particle effects, advanced shaders and sound.

Here are some shots of the physics demo:
They show the Tomahawk with normalmap and being affected by physics forcing the suspension to contract. ---> very cool looking.




Allez hop! Fullpipes are easy to ride for a Tomahawk!... actually a little too easy at the moment, but that's left to tweak.




This shot is captured from the Meshviewer it shows the very basic Dirttrack we are testing with.



Here are some Maya Renderings. The Dirttrack filled with our props and a little fake-action-sequence. As you can see we are going for a real stunt-show appeal.





Well that's it for now, I hope you guys get an impression of what the GC Demo of Fragfist will be all about. (shooting and multiplayer will be implemented during third semester )
I keep you updated.

BTW:
maybe you want to throw around some Tomahawks youself:
Feel free to download: fragfist_physicsdemo

Comments and crits are most welcome.

[johnhpus]

I haven't downloaded the demo yet but those screenshots look great. Very nice art also.

[walaber]

wow! looks like Stunt Playground on steriods

I've downloaded the demo, will give it a try at home and post back later, but from a graphics perspective your project is looking absolutely fantastic! I really do need to get off my butt and learn shaders.

good luck on your project, it's looking very impressive so far.

[DWORD]

Looks awesome! You have some very nice artwork there.

Tried the physics demo. It works very well, and looks cool with the suspension! Are you using some Novodex vehicle primitive, or is it made with joints?

Good luck with the project!

[MadHed]

Hi all, I'm Stephan Unverwerth from the fragfist team.
Thanks for all your nice replies. They are really appreciated.

@DWORD: We don't use any joints. The vehicle uses the raycasting approach. Suspension is moved with bones. Tyres are seperate SceneNodes. Problem with this: You gotta spin the tyres yourself....

cyall

[DWORD]

Tyres are seperate SceneNodes. Problem with this: You gotta spin the tyres yourself....

Yeah, I noticed they didn't rotate. Apart from that I really like the feel of the vehicle.

[sinbad]

Very nice You've got some great art there too which really helps. Best of luck, keep us posted.

[skullfire]

Looking way awesome.. gotta love the maya render... ill download when i have cable teeheee

[Jens_K]

thank you guys very much for the kind words.
And especially in the name of the art-department, thanks for the praise!

gotta love the maya render

Rendering in maya is still a pain in the ass for me, it takes ages, it's very unstabable, and tricky to figure out what setup works best. Therefore I'm most grateful you enjoy'em.
(man i love 3Dsmax's quick scanline renderer)
Since everything you see in the shots AND the demo is heavily WIP, we'd really appreciate if you guys could help us point out bugs and things that look off.
in technological as well as in artistic ways.
again thanks for your support.

cu soon.
Jens.

[walaber]

I gave the physics demo a quick try, you seem to be on the right track. Right now the car is very "slidy", I think you need to work on the friction system a bit more, but I understand this is an early demo. I thought that Novodex provided a system for creating vehicles, it this not accurate?

however the suspension looks gorgeous! the moving parts really add a sense of realism which i know is missing in my Stunt Playground game.

good luck, and I look forward to more updates!

[Horizon]

Physics demo looks great alright. I like the car model. I guess I have to second walaber's remark about the sliding, also your gravitational model seems to be a bit off to me, although I couldn't quantify it.

Overall it feels pretty good though.

I can't wait to see the next stage of your project.

[bugshake]

It runs kinda slow: only 20fps on my p4@2Ghz with 1.25GB memory. I get the same performance in high-resolution and AA so it's not the graphics, it's the physics or maybe a debug build? Maybe you have set the "physics resolution" (or whatever it's named) too high.

[MadHed]

Big thanks to all of you who have spent their precious time testing the demo.

At this point I'd like to ask all of you who have tested the demo
to post your system specs and fps so we can compare, spot errors, ...
Problem for example is that we only had the chance to test the "game" on ATI cards yet.
I'd like to hear feedback from NVIDIA users.

@bugshake:
hm strange...
My Specs:
- AMD Athlon64 3200+
- 512MB RAM
- ATI Radeon9800 Pro
FPS: Between 40 and 70 , average: 60, depending on resolution etc...

As for Novodex exposing a vehicle primitive:
I have heard rumors about it, maybe I have missed the release of a new version or something.
In the current doc. (well the one I have) They suggest using raycast vehicles for good performance or realistically modeled rigid body structures.
I tried the latter but it just didn't work as I expected. Using raycasting was just easier to set up and tweak.

Walaber, could you share your experiences with the sdk you used?

See yall soon.

[Horizon]

Pentium 4 2.8Ghz
512 MB RAM
ATI Radeon9800 Pro

FPS: roughly 50 with the camera positioned right where it starts.

This, btw, is running windowed at 1024x768 with no AA using D3D.

[Chris Jones]

this isnt my computer, its a friend of mines, i sent him the demo, and he got a problem, his specs are:

P4 2.8Ghz
256MB RAM
Nvidia GeForce4 MX440

running at 800x600, with no AA, using D3D 9 (i think)

this is a screenshot of his problem, he says it comes from the buggy, not sure if it does this anywhere else



also, you can see the fps etc from the image

any ideas? its probably just cos his gfx card is old/not very good, but still, surely it shouldnt do that anyway

on my computer, the specs are

AMD athlon 2400 running at 2Ghz
512MB of RAM
Nvidia Geforce FX 5200

runs at about 30 fps (i think)

no bugs that i found

altho the buggy does flip over/slide very easily

good work tho

[MadHed]

well I don't know whether Jens uploaded a release or a debug version...
The artifacts you show also happened here once in a while.
They have to do something with releaseOGRE/debugOGRE/debugDX/releaseDX constellations... I don't know.
That's also something I'd like to address after our show at the GamesConvention. Since we can bring our presentation system, that's not a primary task right now... sorry.

Since nobody else encountered any problems, I'm assuming it has to do something with his installed dx version.

If anybody can help... feel free to contact us/post the solution here.

cyall

[Chris Jones]

well im pretty sure hes using the newest version, he plays the latest games (obviously not that great settings tho)

ill ask him, and post back later

[Noiprox]

This looks highly impressive! Well done!

[walaber]

obviously I used Newton Game Dynamics, which comes with a very advanced vehicle system. it uses rigid bodies for the tires, but has a complex friction system to represent real tire behavior. it's very easy to use by setting up the suspension, and then adjusting the tire behavior through a callback. of course you must create your own gearbox / torque curve code, as the system simply asks for the torque to the tires. A raycast vehicle would definately be more complex, as you would need to implement the tire equations yourself.

one of the users on the Newton forums has implemented a raycast car with newton however, as it's faster than the built-in system because there are less rigid bodies involved.

[Jens_K]

@walaber: Thank you for your insights, guess we'll take a closer look into Newton after the Convention.
@Noiprox: thx man!
@Chris Jones: Interesting bug report, although we don't have time to look into this currently, we'll keep that in mind.
@all: check out the update

[Jens_K]

Stephan has implemented the Dirttrack into Nogredex.

Now you can ride a Tomahawk over bumpy roads. Fasten your seatbelt, and take it easy in the curves
Please download here:DIRTTRACK(aprox. 7MB)
-The Track is a common .mesh file, it works as a ground object with collision, because nogredex generates a heightmap for it. Heightmap generation works because there are no faces overlapping each other.
(As an artist, I hope this explanation is correct AND makes sence.^^ Stephan can you affirm that?)
-We tried to use a normalmap for grounddetails, but it killed fps with a vengance... greyscale detailmap should do the trick in the future.
-Thanks for all the feedback, we increased gravity, the buggy behaves more stable now.
-Stephan turned the lights down low^^ There's a moody warm light now, which will support the setting we have planned for the track.

Coming up next:
(ETA Sunday June 26.)
Script files for modifying the physical attributes of the track AND the Tomahawk!!
We count on you to help us find the perfect setup
c'mon it'll be fun

thanks for your interest.
C&C are most welcome!
Jens.

[skullfire]

awesome! However.. the filesize is about 9.1 MBs XD

[DWORD]

Nice! Now we just need a chase camera.

Maybe you should move down the centre of gravity a bit, as the vehicle easily tilts.

[NightFire]

Tilting is an understantment. Unless I let is crawl foward I tip it over 10 time out of 10. Sometimes I get lucky and it lands on it's wheels but most of the time reset. But it is very nice. Can't wait to see more of it.

[jacmoe]

Fun and good looking!

Chase camera is needed - it's too cumbersome to try and make the camera follow the vehicle.
I like that you can grab the vehicle and put it back on its wheels when it rolls over - nice touch.

Looking forward to seeing more