UGAC –Handheld Environment– shoot-em-up – SHEPEIRO

#1

Name: SHEPEIRO
[color=white]Genre: Shoot-em-up
System: DS Handheld
Concept: Super Mushroom Tankshot - Strategic artillery shoot-em-up - giant lumbering tanks, take pot shots at each other across the wild expanses of mushroom land.[/color]

designed as a wifi multiplayer, in the same lines as worms or that old banana firing gorilla game. trundle across the landscape, aim, adjust height, adjust power, and fire ! then watch as the shell arks across the landscape and desimates the giant toadstoll that your enemy is hiding under.

#2

interesting good luck !

#3

Great Concept Idea.
Look forward to seeing how this works out.
:thumbsup:

#4

ok made a start on the concepting while its quiet here at work, forgive the colouring, done with a mouse.

right just check the coast is clear.

heres the concept for the level.

the wwo platforms at each end are the start/spawn points.

think i might add more levels of ground at each end, probably sloping up towards each base to add a little advantage to the defending side.

heres a concept of the tanks

the idea for the top left hand tank is that each section is a panel that can be hit damaging the tank. a bit like a target, even thought about colouring it like one.

each half of the outer ring corresponds to the tracks, the more sections damaged the slower you turn in each direction, until you cant move no more when they are all hit, or if you only have one side you can only spin.

the 4 sections on the gun correspond to gun reload speed, slowing with more section gone until, you can no longer fire and have to try for a draw by holding out(running away)

the top (nipple) is where the driver sits and is there for the bullseye. one hit and your out.

heres some concepts for the vegetation, yay giant mushrooms.

the mushrooms are going to have simple damage models with the top gone so they nolonger provide cover.

another idea i had is Puff balls, remember chucking those at people they explode in clouds of spores. they could either provide means for escape (Small cloud of dust) if the DS is up to it??? or behave like a barrel of explosives in so many games creating an area of damahge.

#5

heres a quick concept for the puff balls,

im getting away with murder here, but hey its friday, and im gonna get a new job soon anway (always think positive)

#6

wow I can imagine myself playing that level :thumbsup:

#7

wow i cant beleive it but i made major head way on the level this weekend.

ok first built the tanks, cos i wanted to and needed them to fit etc etc so here goes.

250 tris each (exactly)

the red tank

the green tank

and the texture sheet for them

2x64* (8col) map for the base and turret of each tank plus a seperate 32* (8col) map for the tracks.

i need to know about what the best way to set up maps with alphas is, currently im using BMP’s but max doesnt seem to read the alpha so ive got them on sepperate sheets at mo.

should i just use gifs?

oh and you can see alot of the nearly complete level in the background???
yeah had a busy weeekend. also went to see GoGol Bordello which was brilliant. see if i can get more gypsy punk in my level.

#8

well here we go most of the level done just got to add the bridges between the islands, then create some damage models (ground blasts, blown up mushrooms, damage maps for tanks and castles), and the puff balls.

currently im at 3200 tris for the entire scene (not including tanks), is this ok? i want to be able see nearly from one end to the other, not quite so that if you have one castle in view then the other is beyond clipping plane, as at 550 tris each they are the heaviest model in the scene.

could someone who devs for the DS tell me if this is OK can i add more, there are a few bits that i can optimise a little further, but not that much, pos 500 tris at most.

ok here we go

birds eye

from one end

red tank scale

green tank scale

fog test

not completely happy with the fog as it fogs the sky dome and the cloud planes, is there anyway to get around this?

#9

fast work
im not very keen on the graphics if youre gonna use it this close up.
Use bigger textures to make it look less pixely

#10

this is designed for the DS i think 64* textures is the limit with this machine, not tooo sure about that need to make sure. cos if i can use 128* then i will replace a few textures, like the tops of the mushrooms, and the tops of the mushroom walls, these are gonna be redone anyway so that they look less like one huhmungus shroom and more like a forrest of shrooms.

views in the game will generally be like image 2 and three.

also looking at it probably will re-do the mushroom stalk texture with 16 colours, as its a little too pixelly as well.

by the way each “base” (green team and red team) is a castle with 4 entrances which you can choose to spawn from to avoid being pinned down.

#11

thought i would show more of my textures.

heres the red castle (might swap the colours over on the models though)

and finally here is the entire levels textures so far.

#12

Looking sick!! You are making great progress. Very nice work on that forest texture! Its cool to see that you are putting thought into the game play as well. Maybe you could put something up in the sky to block the long view to the other end to prevent players from lobbing shells across the map?

#13

the way im playing the game in my head, i quite like the idea of shooting from a distance. more like artillery than upcloseandpersonnel.

one idea i had for a control scheme is that using the lower screen as a birds eye map view, you would use the stylus to draw a path for the tank to follow, which it would trundle along, while the directional buttons would control the view port. going into “fire” mode would change the top screen to a first person view (gonna construct this aswell, with a little instruments for angle compas wind speed etc) while you could still set paths useing the bottom screen. this would lend the game a much more strategic bent rather than speedy upclose battle.

but with your idea of placing something to block long shots, i quite like it, but perhaps not completely block it just make it skillfull, like a few of those barrage balloons.mmm yeah good idea

#14

ok added some blimbs that willl circle above the centre of the level, makeing super long shots that bit harder.

added some more effects to the water in the river

heres the entire level

and i had realised that i haddnt really shown the castles off so here they are


what do you think?

im not to pleased with the texture work on the blimbs yet, needs a tad more something.

#15

no posts today, because ive done sommit real stupid, i was muck ing around with the scene converting everything to toon shading to see what it would look like and it updated the autoback as i was messing, it crashed and now when i reopen the file everything is really slow. so im in the process of exporting all the updated meshes as OBJ and reimporting into older version. seems to be working.

nearly cried:cry:

#16

That sucks :sad:
I think we all know how that feels. Good thing it’s not completely lost.
Looking forward to updates as soon as you’re back on track.

#17

yeah ive retreived 80% of the meshes from the mucked up file, just need to get the rest and re-apply the materials/textures, i was lucky this time, shouldn’t cause to much hassle.

one time, i isolated the head of a character to work on that by itself(pretty high res) and when it came to saving late that night saved the head over the nearly finished model. instant regret.
one lesson learnt the hard way (save multiple sequential files***1,***2,***3etc) never just a master.

i wonder how many solid gold peices have been lost in similar circumstances.

#18

yay complete fix, wont bother updating today as all ive doen is make a few optimisations.

#19

shep start showing your screens at DS screen size so we get the feel of what it would look like.

#20

good point ive been meaning to ask WHAT iS THE DS’S SCREEN RESOLOUTION.