New game: Top down city!

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JernejL
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New game: Top down city!

Post by JernejL »

I've been working on this for ages, but recently i found some time to resurrect it and get it up to some useable standards.

My own game.. Top down city!

Shitty pic following:
Image

I hope that this appeals the classics gta community, and hopefully gives you something to chew in the future, because while similar in appearace there's simply no comparing gta1/gta2 engines to this.

- Full physics engine - meaning all map block shapes behave correctly as you would expect, no strange behaviors of being stuck on partial blocks, engine also has and supports trucks with trailers.
- No limit on sprite dimensions: delta sets will be probably scrapped in the future, but for now you can have any texture resolution for map tiles, objects, and vehicles, game looks great in high resolution.
- Graphics: map shadows,sprite shadows, modern particle system.
- Client/server Networking - Not gta tick based sync which limits amout of max players and causes severe lag
- Editors: All editors will be released with the game once it's complete (texture packs, maps, vehicle deltas), if anyone wants to try, i will make a pre-release and can get your hands on some tools, but they are already shown how they work in youtube channel.
- No real limit or penalty on amout of different vehicle, object, particle types that can be added (the only limits are on map size, amout of map tiles and amout of live vehicles,actors in active game world).

Still in progress: scripting (integrating a modern javascript scripting engine) and more AI - police forces - once this is done, most of main tasks in engine are complete.

I hope to have some helps from you guys, i'm welcoming if anyone wishes to join the project - map makers, ideas, story for single player.. i need help to make this happen.
And of course I will need testers, a lot of testing, i hope to make some pre-releases where we could also do a massive online test with more than just a few players.

Youtube channel with some videos:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxGfOh ... ic3KEMB6iA

I've been doing sa-mp for past 10 years and top down city intermittently, but now that i quit sa-mp i have time to return back to my classical roots :)
This is happening, the game will be made complete hopefully this or next year.

I know you guys have put a whole ton of work into modding gta2, i'm impressed about what you made when i was afk and am not trying to discourage continued development of your gta2 mods, but i believe that with a more modern classical gta-like engine, we could do even more together without being bound by gta2's 20 year legacy limits.

ALPHA DEMO DOWNLOAD:

https://gtamp.com/tdc/tdc_demo.rar

DISCORD Channel:
https://discord.gg/UXmDPzS
Last edited by JernejL on 08 Sep 2020, 07:58, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

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I love that you resumed working on this. I'm excited to try online tests with low and high ping players.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

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You need to run an open (or closed, if there is something to work) beta test. Some screenshots and form are not enough to attract the interest of a potential player. For the same feedback in the form of feedback, you will be motivated to work.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

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Logofero wrote:You need to run an open (or closed, if there is something to work) beta test. Some screenshots and form are not enough to attract the interest of a potential player. For the same feedback in the form of feedback, you will be motivated to work.

I absolutely agree, this is why i'm currently polishing the game to a useable state, cleaning up the mess and making it player-friendly, this not only applies to the game, but also its editors that should enable people to experiment with the beta and see how it's put together and start to mod it.

A lot of things were still missing since i restarted the work on project, for example i only added key controls configuration this week - kinda a essential feature.
I wanted to introduce this project in advance so that word about it can spread - so that when time for open beta comes, i can reach to a small community of people and actually get a fair number of people online in the game at same time :) I know that videos don't give enough about game feel, but i hope that i can get a public beta test out somewhere in june.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

Post by elypter »

that sounds cool. i hope i have a computer capable or running any games again by then.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

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elypter wrote:that sounds cool. i hope i have a computer capable or running any games again by then.

What happened to computer?

This game should run fine on ancient computers btw, it's not very graphically intensive and scales effects down well more or less, shaders are only used in a small way, and last time i tested, it still ran ok on intel "extreme" graphics.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

Post by elypter »

i have a 15 year old laptop currently with i945 integrated intel graphics and the drivers for linux dont work like they used to do. i cannot run gta2 with wine anymore. i havent just figured out what is wrong yet but i should be having better parts lying around somewhere anyway
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Re: New game: Top down city!

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elypter wrote:i have a 15 year old laptop currently with i945 integrated intel graphics and the drivers for linux dont work like they used to do. i cannot run gta2 with wine anymore. i havent just figured out what is wrong yet but i should be having better parts lying around somewhere anyway

The game is not super demanding.. it might work just fine, probably only slightly more demand for cpu than gta2 due to physics engine used.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

Post by JernejL »

Some progress:

Weapon pickups:


Destructible map objects


Bloody skidmarks


And final object crates with pickups made after destroying them:
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Re: New game: Top down city!

Post by elypter »

nice to have the crates from gta1 too. i hope you are planning to include motor cycles as well :)
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Re: New game: Top down city!

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elypter wrote:nice to have the crates from gta1 too. i hope you are planning to include motor cycles as well :)

Already got them :) fully working, proper sprite rendering, proper skidmarks and even nearly as same amout of lack of controls during high speed driving :)
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Re: New game: Top down city!

Post by Logofero »

Progress is good. But the lack of a rocket of the bazooka (also need other bullets) and something must be done with the particles now looks like a bust of sloths flashes.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

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Logofero wrote:Progress is good. But the lack of a rocket of the bazooka (also need other bullets) and something must be done with the particles now looks like a bust of sloths flashes.

You mean lack of fire that would follow the bazooka rocket?

I'll make a video covering the weapons as they are currently in the game, ill welcome help in designing the weapon sprites :)
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Re: New game: Top down city!

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JernejL wrote:
Logofero wrote:Progress is good. But the lack of a rocket of the bazooka (also need other bullets) and something must be done with the particles now looks like a bust of sloths flashes.

You mean lack of fire that would follow the bazooka rocket?

I'll make a video covering the weapons as they are currently in the game, ill welcome help in designing the weapon sprites :)
Yea. A trace is needed for all weapons. And improving the quality of sprites fire (explosion). I understand that this is a indi project, but it's very conspicuous.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

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Logofero wrote:
JernejL wrote:
Logofero wrote:Progress is good. But the lack of a rocket of the bazooka (also need other bullets) and something must be done with the particles now looks like a bust of sloths flashes.

You mean lack of fire that would follow the bazooka rocket?

I'll make a video covering the weapons as they are currently in the game, ill welcome help in designing the weapon sprites :)
Yea. A trace is needed for all weapons. And improving the quality of sprites fire (explosion). I understand that this is a indi project, but it's very conspicuous.

Thanks, a good analysis will help me a lot, i'm hoping a more or less working demo of top down city could help you, so i'll try to get one working for next week that i can publish here (a lot of work to be done to get this more stable, netcode is currently buggy as hell).

Explosion looks good tho? surely better than what gta2 had since it has alpha channel - all textures in game have alpha channel - It was rendered via some explosion making plugin for 3d studio max.
Fire looks crappy - admittedly, it's a placeholder graphic and needs to be replaced, it is difficult for me to find sprites that look good and are rendered in top down perspective.
How should trace on all weapons would look? unless it was sort of like in gta vice city - tracer lines?

I think i need to show how particles look like more closeup, most of them don't look as bad as they do on the videos due to zoom.

Does any of you use discord? I've made a channel: https://discord.gg/UXmDPzS - open #bridge channel.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

Post by Logofero »

> Explosion looks good tho?
Look at how a similar explosion (with a ring) is made in GTA 2. In your explosion, the ring too soon disappears but it should expand. You also need to add more randomness to the flash. And mabe more add transparency

> How should trace on all weapons would look? unless it was sort of like in gta vice city - tracer lines?
Yes maby as Vice City or GTA 2, to draw each bullet.

> Does any of you use discord?
I'll try to create and connect a bit later.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

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Logofero wrote:> Explosion looks good tho?
Look at how a similar explosion (with a ring) is made in GTA 2. In your explosion, the ring too soon disappears but it should expand. You also need to add more randomness to the flash. And mabe more add transparency

> How should trace on all weapons would look? unless it was sort of like in gta vice city - tracer lines?
Yes maby as Vice City or GTA 2, to draw each bullet.

> Does any of you use discord?
I'll try to create and connect a bit later.

I can change the ring to expand more, and to last longer, not a big issue, particle system is very extendable.

gta2 has no traces for bullets, i'm confused or did i forgot something?

I've implemented several types of weapons, and it's basically down to throwable weapons (grenades), particle weapons (similar to gta, a moving bullet) and beam weapons (scifi space phasers)

I'm planning to implement using these for use on vehicles too, i think throwing grenades from cars would be a cool feature.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

Post by Logofero »

> gta2 has no traces for bullets, i'm confused or did i forgot something?
So I suggested 2 options:

1) As Vice City with the tracer
2) A bullet is visible (without a trace)

It will be convenient for the player to see where he shoots. This will convey the feeling of distance

> I'm planning to implement using these for use on vehicles too, i think throwing grenades from cars would be a cool feature.
Yep, mayby but do not get involved with this. Otherwise it complicates the feelings of a 2D game. For a high level of detail, there is 3D.
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Re: New game: Top down city!

Post by Razor »

how many online players will it upports
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Re: New game: Top down city!

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Based on current cpu usage and bandwitdh tests it should be able to support easily minimum 100 players (+ some sensible amout of random traffic & pedesterians per player) - traffic is synced from server.
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