Space Rangers Ep. 8 - the Rouge Robot (game project)

[aicd99]

Hey there

So I tried the demo and I am stuck on the help page when I finished the 2nd convo. Every time I play this
When I play it for the 1st I did pressed h for help during a cutsscence

[Grok]

Hey there

So I tried the demo and I am stuck on the help page when I finished the 2nd convo. Every time I play this
When I play it for the 1st I did pressed h for help during a cutsscence

Are you saying that you have opened the help page and can not close it?

If so, you close it by clicking the x-button in the top right corner of the help page.


The help page is at this time only a page with some information on different key functions and it is only available on the space station level (from arriving to the station up to using the transporter to beam away).

Hints for the game play you will find in the tricorder that is available from the inventory bar. At this time there is only a reminder of what the mission is.


------------

Meanwhile

a video from testing some additions to the puzzle part of the game

https://youtu.be/Jw4s578P0Gk

[seppgirty]

Really cool grok.

[Grok]

Really cool grok.

Thanks.
I have had some free days so I've got some work done on the game.

[seppgirty]

I hope QOD see's this thread and sees such a cool game being made with RF.

[Grok]

I hope QOD see's this thread and sees such a cool game being made with RF.

You're being to kind.

Meanwhile continuing to add stuff to the game

https://youtu.be/JrftCghZHIs

[seppgirty]

You're being to kind

Not at all. You're doing a really nice job on this. I hope you see it through to the end. Really cool idea to have that 2d shooter view. Very creative.

[Grok]

I made a small mistake using SetEntityPosition to place the player character. Setting the Y-coordinate wrong the player ended up above and outside the level. I would have thought something like that would make the game shut down. Instead I got this.


https://youtu.be/J5XfqvNASwo

[Grok]

I have now basically added all the puzzle elements. Still some tweaking do do.

I'm now going to do dialogs with pawns in the space-station level.

I've just added a new pawn (model by Seppgirty). This is the first pawn in the game not moving on a set path.

In the clip below I'm testing if the pawn will handle colliding with walls and other stuff and not get stuck. Has worked out well this far.

Also a test of starting a dialog with the pawn.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v9KfaaThts




Stuff left to do.

Dialog with pawns in the space-station.
Changing one room to a sick bay. Seems there should be one.
Complete help page and hints function (tricorder).
Music and sound effects.
Movie cutscenes.

The main problem now is the movie format for the cutscenes. The movie format I can use in the game (old avi format) results in files that are enormous in size (gigabytes instead of megabytes) and I have a sync problem with the sound.

[Grok]

Started to add dialogue as the player bumps into different robot pawns in the space station.

My original plan was to do these dialogues against a 2D image of the two characters involved with a grey background (to make it work wherever the character meet). Then I thought maybe it will work without that image, so I tried that out, changing the script so I can turn the image on and off with key input.

In this movie I start out without the image and then adds it half way in the scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIzZJRFAWYc




There is a couple of problems with the non-image-background version.

The main one is that the player character keeps on running the walking animation.

Others are
- the camera angle doesn't work that well
- the characters are not facing each other.

Still it is somewhat appealing to use the actual moving in-game background.

Any thoughts on this? Any way to change the player character's animation to idle?
In other dialogue scenes I have used a look-alike pawn to substitute the player to be able to control the animations.

[Grok]

Adding another dialogue

https://youtu.be/23fqVyTwjZ8



Lost in translation

[Veleran]

If the background and images work and can soon add it,it would be fine.
If the conversation using cameras is not too buggy and is much faster to make,i suggest the camera because i prefer faster and easier methods.

Have you tried the animate entity command and it did not work?I do not know if you have to disable keyboard input as long as the dialog happens or not.
Projects that started as very simple and start to get complicated tire you easily,i would prefer it to be playable even if the player keeps walking as he talks.

[Grok]

If the background and images work and can soon add it,it would be fine.
If the conversation using cameras is not too buggy and is much faster to make,i suggest the camera because i prefer faster and easier methods.

Either way is about the same amount of work if I'm just let the camera run, as is, in the non-background-overlay version. Making a background to layover is of course extra work, but not very much. And I have already done all the backgrounds I need.

Between those two alternatives I think the overlay version works better visually. Fixing the non-overlay version to be better is a fair amount of work.

Have you tried the animate entity command and it did not work?

I have tried
AnimateEntity(string Animation, string szEntityName, bool Flag);
with szEntityName set as "Player". Nothing happened. I don't think that this command is intended to work with the player character.

I do not know if you have to disable keyboard input as long as the dialog happens or not.

I don't technical have to disable keyboard input for this dialog-system to work, but I do it to remove the ordinary player key input.
IsKeyDown(); works however.

Projects that started as very simple and start to get complicated tire you easily,i would prefer it to be playable even if the player keeps walking as he talks.

My first priority is to get a playable game finished. It seems like we might be in agreement on this.
I look at hunting for perfection as an almost certain way to fail getting anything finished.
"An alive dog is better than a dead lion!" Still I might go for a better dog within reasonable limits

I have some ideas on how to make the dialog over a moving 3D scene. The most doable I believe is to set up a neutral room (grey walls and floors) outside the labyrinth with a fixed camera and pawns to play the different participants in dialogs (including the player character). When a dialog starts the view would be switched to the fixed camera.

For now I will however use the background-overlays and work on finish the gameplay (first writing dialogs for 2 more characters.). Then we will see if I feel motivated to to something more with the dialogs.

I do have one big problem left that has nothing to do with the dialogs, and that is the video cut-scene format.

[Grok]

Ok. A quick status rapport

I have now added dialogs with the robots.

I've started working with the hint system.

I want to turn one room into a sick bay. Seemed to me there should be one. So I've made a model of a bed for the sickbay.

[seppgirty]

It is cold and flu season you know. They should come in handy. Nice job.