the future and multi-player

[wooper]

Hi again
after a few yrs away I've decided
to come back to RF and give it another try.

in the mean time i have worked with unreal
now for over 10 yrs making over 100 levels --weapons
and creatures..and I still play it too.

I have worked with 3DGS also now for over 3 or 4 yrs
and have come to knows its good and bad points also.

BUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.............
Im so impressed with all the improvements
that the RF team has made in the past few yrs that...here i am again
and im gonna give it a FULL TRY-OUT.

So , first off a bit of a.....REALITY CHECK...( pun intended )

( 1 ) RF is at least as good as Unreal 1 engine and that was used
to make some amazing games..so im sure RF can be also...with a bit of work.

( 2 ) NO PRESENT game on the market that I know of that has had
huge popularity has been able to do that WITHOUT a MULTI-PLAYER MODE.
So that means,,IF we DONT get one...even if our game is pretty amazing
very few people would be willing to bet on it because of that lacking.
In fact...how many good games have you bought in the last few years
that DONT have multi-player modes ? Please respond and tell me.

( 3 ) Models and animation......we ALL need to work on this BADLY.
the level of animation that we see in the demos and in games made with
RF so far...has left a LOT wanting....and yet , with a bit of work..
im sure RF can do it and very well im sure.
IF your serious about making a good game with RF , well then...
invest in MILKSHAPE and USE it to animate your creatures
and then import them in to RF and off we go..to better games.

( 4 ) ok , now , my only reason for saying all the above ..
is that i REALLY want to put an all-out effort
in to using RF to make a REAL game...one that people WILL want to BUY.
In saying that , I am also willing to do all i can to be a part of this community
and to chip in all i can to help to.

( 5 ) I think that the develope team that has been doing
all the work here over the years has done an amzing job so far
and i KNOW better is yet to come.......IT WILL COME.

( 6 ) ok now , if you want to jump all over my back
for anything Ive said here so far..go ahead and get it out of your system
so we can get on with making great games ... WOO HOOO

Wooper

[Danimita92]

Here are my answers:

1. Yes, it is as good, maybe even better, I'm not sure if Unreal 1 has bump mapping for example.
2. Crysis, Final Fantasies (except XI), Silent Hills, Resident Evils, Metal Gears (except 4), tomb raiders, etc. Not all games are meant to be played in a multiplayer mode.
3. You try to model and animate every single thing that appears in the game. We do our best, and keep getting better, so lay off.
4. You seriously think someone would want to BUY a game that looks 4 years old? The engine has its limitations. Maybe with the future RF2 we could do this, but with RF...
5. Yeah, it's called RF2.
6. Ok, done.

[Jay]

Making a game with RF to sell it is crazy. Making a game as a single person with RF and selling it is even more crazier. When i buy a game i don't look at the graphics that much, but that's not how the average gamer thinks. Average gamers think 'looks like s*it - must be sh*t and 'looks cool - must be cool'.

On the other hand, you can use a polythrower to make the game flaming hot and forget its soul about that. That's not what i want, and not waht most people on the market want, but it's what most people base their buying-decisions on.

Don't get me wrong. I can clearly see the difference between art and and just using a lot of computer power to make it look good (also known as brute force). Also i think low poly modelling is the only real modelling. It all has to do with style. A game without style can look good but the player wil notl be feeling at home in it. Rule number one: If the player is remembered by something inside the game that he is just playing a game, it is a bad game. Especially if it is the lack of style or (even worse) fun. That's the real art: The player must have so much fun or must be so emerged in the game world/story that the graphics, the sound, all becomes unimportant (OF COURSE it does help greatly, but with style i also mean it must fit together, etc). And that's why Nintendo games are so good and popular.

You are right about the animation/modelling stuff. But you seem to forget that nearly everyone here is still a beginner in game development. People sadly (or is it a good thing????) have lives and not everyone here can work on their games/skills on an 8 hour per day / 6 days a week basis. Some of us aren't even artists. I am crappy at animation too, i can say that. That's the problem here - too many good level designers and too lesss modellers.

With RF2, i believe it will get different. We are then able to put nice effects in our games, and will maybe even have multiplayer, even if i disagree in the point that a game must be multiplayer to succeed. Take Zelda as an example. A game can be good (and popular!!!!) or not either if it is a multiplayer game/has a mulitplayer option or not. BUT i am sure that multiplayer will help greatly to make a game popular.

At least we aggree in the following:
We both want to make great games! Glad that we both see it this way!

My onw reality check:
-No Harware T&L. Bad point.
-No shaders. Bad point.
-No physics in the current version. Bad point.
-No functioning mulitplayer. Bad point.

But:
Keep in mind that an engine is a TOOL, just like it is a pen for an artist. Giving the artist the best tolls available does not make them the best artist, but allows them to go to their own limits as well to the limits of the pen. The greatest limit is always the own imagination.

[wooper]

ok thank you for your replies..
Im very glad to see people read the forums
and respond. and at least it seems JAY got the gist of what I was saying
and did his best to comprehend...THANK YOU JAY..
NOW..on with it we go.

i understand that animating can be daunting ...BUT
once you crack that learning curb...OMG
the results can be both fun and amazing too.

Question...does RF do BONES ANIMATION or is it just VERTEX ANIMATION ?

If it will accept bones animation it would NOT take long to learn how to
do some pretty cute stuff using MILKSHAPE and then just porting the
model;s and their animations right over into RF.

I have done a lot of that using MILKSHAPE to port stuff into the 3DGS engine and it was quite smooth and easy to do..i hope the same holds true for RF ..or...RF2

As i said in my first post , earlier , i am gonna try and give a full out effort
to use RF..or..RF2 to make a game...even if it takes a while.

I have played with it for 2 days now and just love the lighting and how smooth it works.
its way better and more reliable in what it gives than even
the so called..more modern 3DGS .

I have found it very easy to make levels using at least 3 different methods so far
and they all made nice levels of a fairly good size that gave good frame rates .

the ability to use staticbrushes and proxys makes it very flexible
as this will save me tons of time by porting over as ( act. ) files all of the geometry
that I have made already..so it shouldnt take long to add details to any level.

All this to say...I LIKE RF and was NOT meaning to critise it for BAD...
which is why i chose the FEATURE REQUEST Forum to say what I had to say...

is that NOT the idea of this part of the forum ?

I WANT TO HELP BUILD IT UP......NOT TEAR IT DOWN...
where I come from we call that CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM.

so lets have FUN and build some games..

Wooper

[paradoxnj]

Question...does RF do BONES ANIMATION or is it just VERTEX ANIMATION ?

Genesis has been using bones since 1996.

[wooper]

Thanks for the response PARA..

all the more reason to believe that RF can be used to
do a very good game with excellent animation.

thx


Wooper

[Danimita92]

The problem is, wooper, that in animations, the models aren't flexible with vertex weights, meaning if you make them bend their arms, part of the arm will go through the other part of the arm, or something similar, making it much harder.

[wooper]

Thank you Dan
i know that I have seen that happen when using VERTEX ANIMATION
But with what I've seen in Milkshape with BONES ANIMATION
I had no problem with that happening at all when the models
were ported over in to 3DGS and added in.

have you tried BONES Animation with RF and
did that problem arise ??

thx

Wooper

[Danimita92]

Bone animation?
I make the animations in milkshape, add them to the actor, and directly use it in the game.

[paradoxnj]

The only animation that RF supports is bone based animation (skinned meshes). I don't know where you get vertex animation from. All models made for RF must contain at least one bone.

What problems are you having with animation?

[Graywolf]

When it comes to animation, I used milkshape for about 3 weeks, and just couldn't stomach it... But, I've been using Blender for about 2 years, so I'm addicted to a feature-rich environment. That being said, I'm working on a Blender exporter(mesh and skeleton export is working, but I need to iron out some kinks in the animation.), which will give the average RF user(as in, can't afford 3DS Max user...) access to wonderful things like Inverse-Kinematics, easy high-to-low poly normal mapping, etc... And I'm hoping QoD has vertex-weighting on the list for G3D 2.0(Pheonix)... Should that feature appear, I'll add Blender export support for it as well.

Also, I definetely agree, that when it comes to graphics... Artistic ability and style are exponentially more effective than brute force... Heck, I still enjoy graphics from 16-bit era games, as long as they're quality art. Besides, I think the graphics race is running headlong into a brick wall. The human eye has it's limits...

And, isn't getting people to buy something is a matter of marketing? An RF-based game at $50 a pop on a Wal-Mart shelf, highly unlikely... But an RF-Based game touting excellent gameplay, with top-end graphics for "what the engine is capable of", should be marketable in the 5$-15$ range through internet outlets and the like. "Value is not what you put into your product. Value is what the customer gets out of the product, and is willing to pay for." Sadly, I can't recall who to quote on that one. He was an early 20th century journalist, if I remember correctly...

Multi-player support would be great, but... It seems to me that any generic form would be of little worth(well, a deathmatch mode wouldn't be a bad thing... But that only goes so far.), and any sort of interpreted interface for developing networked games would require a level of skill well beyond that of the average scripter, and might as well be done in hard-code on a per-game basis.

All that being said... In my opinion, something that's really holding RF back, is some of the basic tools needed for complete games are lacking. A GUI toolkit, better data save/load support, etc... It seems to me that some of the foundation is missing. And I think filling in that foundation would drastically improve RF's viability.

[Allanon]

And I'm hoping QoD has vertex-weighting on the list for G3D 2.0(Pheonix)...

This should be very easy to add to G3D because Jet3d supports it and Jet3d was based off of G3D. Jet3d's actor code is almost identical to G3D's actor code except it added weighted vertices. The code is so much alike I was able to build a G3D to Jet3d actor converter just by coping the G3D data structures to Jet3d data structures and filling in the missing weighted vertices information. A long time ago I transfered the Jet3d actor bone collision code to G3D just by changing the "je" that starts each Jet3d function to "ge" so it corresponds to the equivalent G3D function name, that's how compatible the actor code is.

[hgt_terry]

Graywolf

In answer to your question we are trying to improve the situation but it all takes time Equity is such one tool when finished it will be able to take in all the common formats and tern then into actors as well as editing then through the conversion process and show in detail things about the actor.

when Equity is finished we plan to move on to more tools to try and ease the process.

So while QOD concentrates on the Engine we will try to improve the interface to the engine with some good tools but as i said it all takes time.

But we will get there and reality factory will become one of the best no programing game making systems around and FREE.

Thanks
Terry

[Graywolf]

@hgt_terry:

Graywolf

In answer to your question

At risk of sounding terse...

And, isn't getting people to buy something is a matter of marketing?

That's the only question I asked. Is that the one you were referring to?

Me, I simply prefer Blender. It has a massive arsenal of features, and I'm working to tap them for the RF community(thus, the in-progress export script.)

Ahhh... You must mean my comment about the lacking foundation tools... In that, I'm referring to internal tools on the gameplay design and implementation end(scripting, entity management, etc...), not a lack of external tools and utilities.