Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

New Video, just some new gfx fluff

cliffski

Today is a weekend day, so I don’t feel bad adding graphical fluff. I also fixed a few minor bugs in the UI. Amongst the stuff added was Level-Of-Detail particle emitters for explosions here and there, some new particle effects for minor things like shield impacts, and missiles flares fading out as they run out of fuel.

Particle LODS are interesting, because they only half solve the issue. Not drawing them at lower zooms is all well and good, but each particle still needs processing. Its not enough to assume they will remain off-screen when not being drawn either. I guess I could not update them, and just note the time elapsed, and ‘catch up’ when they are next on-screen, but because they may have moved on-screen during that time, you can get artifacts that way. You can maybe do it for ones clearly massively off-screen.

In any case, having LOD levels for some effects makes it easier to turn them off when the GPU is overloaded, or if we need the time to do other stuff.

This vid was knocked together in 10 mins, so it’s nothing special, but you might like it anyway.

24 thoughts on New Video, just some new gfx fluff

  1. Two suggestions, although I do not know how practical they are. Both are related to the ship that appears at 0:46

    1) If the ship is turning, why are both engines flaring at the same amount? Wouldnt that make it go straight?

    2) The turning on the ship is kind of jerky. First it is turning one direction, it stops suddenly, then it is turning the other direction. Are you using vector movement for ships?

    Also, Photon Torpedoes? Really? I mean, I guess you are an unapologetic star trek nerd, but…

  2. Cheers for the feedback. It hadn’t occured to me to think about engine balancing and turning. It’s doable, but it involves a little bit of fiddling around. The engines are purely graphical, their placement is irrelevant to the simulation.

    In terms of jerkiness, its just a matter of me fine tuning a few variables to do with stopping speeds, deceleration etc. I should revisit that

    And photons… Dude, its a space battle. whats a space battle without something thats a bit photony? :D

  3. Regarding the expanding shock waves (at 0:23), maybe it would look better if their radius expanded slower and slower (something like r+=dr; dr*=0.95;), and at the same time faded out.
    Something doesn’t feel totally right with them, but I love all the other effects.

  4. This is looking amazing Cliffski. I can’t wait to see it once it’s out of development.

    Keep up the good work; you’re inspiring me to keep pushing forward on my project which has been stalled for quite some time.

  5. Cliffski it’s really looking awesome. The only thing that stands out to me, which is actually not impossible to fix but would be a lot, is light sourcing on the ships. It would look really awesome if as the ships turned around, they were lit differently.

    You could accomplish this by:

    1- Only worry about it for big ships
    2- Render the ship with the light at a few different evenly spaced angles
    3- Alpha blend two of them together based on the ship’s rotation

    It would mean say x10 or x20 texture memory usage for big ships, but I think it would really add to the 3D-ness of them. Because you’d only be double-rendering the big ships, it shouldn’t really hurt your framerate (knock on wood).

    This game is really starting to look awesome! You definitely made the right decision in going 2D, in 3D this would definitely not be possible and even if it were, would not look as good.

  6. Bloody hell that looks fantastic.

    re: the expanding shock wave, agree with Jyaif, but it looks okay to me as it is too. However, it feels like it needs a big flash or something when it spawns. There’s a big flash just before it starts, but they seem like separate events to me – if theyre supposed to be part of the same explosion, then the timing seems out.

    @PsySal: x20 textutre usage? Is that all? :-)

  7. F me sideways! :) Cliff looks friggin amazing.

    Oh, I was wondering if you were going to add a few asteroids floating around the playfield. They might add some level of randomness when a missile collides with them and is deflected from the target. etc. etc.

    Well done.

  8. Also: loving the different impact effects from different weapons on the shields. Needs some kind of sheild failure animation though. Guessing the shields on the big ship fail at 1:05, but it’s not too obvious if that’s the case, they just disappear and weapons start hitting the ship instead of the shields.

    Maybe some kind of arcing/lightning/plasma effect for a couple of seconds as they fail? Something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkosbmunPZs

  9. Now I’m really excited about this game!!! When can we pre-order?
    I was going to mention atmospheric effects such as heat with explosions until I remembered this is in space (duh! No atmosphere).
    I like the asteroid idea. You could maybe have asteroid collisions with ships as well where the asteroid can knock ships off course.
    I don’t know how possible this is, but would it be possible like PsySal said to create light effects but also do the same with energy/light weapons? What I mean is get them to create a kind of light reflection on the hull of a ship? I know it’s 2D so that might not be possible.
    Great work Cliffski! :D

  11. Actually that music is from the game. Its not 100% finished yet though.
    I do need to do a shield collapsing effect, even if its just something quite basic

  12. Great vid.
    Two things i noticed:

    The beam weapons, like those red and yellow beams always come from turrets on the top side of the ship which is fine, but when they hit an enemy ship they always go underneath it and we dont see any impact effects. It would be nice if beam weapons had a chance to hit either underneath or on the upper part of the ship where they would create an impact effect.

    The second thing is shields collapsing. It would be nice to have an effect when shields are collapsing because now they just disapear.

  13. Beams should emit particles where they hit, both shields/hull, like sparks or something. This would help with distinguising direction of the beam and look much better.

    For lighting the ships maybe normalmapping the sprites would work well.

  14. Looking fantastic! My only critique is on the shields, along the lines of others’ concerns. The shields just aren’t very obvious at the moment, and I think if you can make them a little more dramatic that would be good – without, of course, making it so that they visually overpower everything going on around them.

    The photon torpoedoes were actually one of my favorite parts of the video; do you have plans for any more dramatic-looking weapons?

  15. Is the music the original game score? Because its fantastic!

    Graphics look good, too. But I’m missing details when a beam hits the shields. The beam seems to simply vanish into the shield without any sparks of energy, pulsing light etc. I guess its still work in progress?

  16. Hello cliffski,
    been following your blog for a while now.
    You’re doing absolutely fabulous work.. can’t wait to play this game!
    I never saw the big blue bugger before, looking great as well.
    How many factions/races are you going to include in the game?

    Greetings from Belgium,
    pundit

  17. The effects look as if they’re nearly or at release quality level. Any estimates on how much the game will cost?

  18. I’ve been following this blog for a while now, but haven’t posted yet. This video looks really awesome. I can’t wait for this game to come out. The only minor issues I have with this video were covered… the lighting, the shockwave, and the shield failure.

    Also, I second the comment about some random asteroids (sparingly placed, and not to big). It could explode after just a small amount of damage, so it wouldn’t really impact gameplay. I have no clue how much time that would take to code for the minor benefit though :/

  19. The videos keep getting better and better. The music sounds great and the battles look awesome. The others above noticed way more details than me; I just sat back and enjoyed what I saw.

    Can’t wait for GSB to be released!

  20. Hello !

    Great work on GSB, it looks really good ! My only critic is that it is not obvious, when firing with laser beams, which ship is the target and which ship is the firing one. Oh, and I don’t know Star Trek very well, so what is a photon torpedoe ?

  21. Hi,

    First, great job. Second, i’m looking forward to pre-order asap.

    I’ve been reading this blog for a while and as i’m not a hard core gamer or a game programmer, did not feel confortable to post but i can’t wait any more.
    Have you thought or non-lethal weapon like assault team that will try to reach vessel’s hull, break into and eventually take control of the ships ? Of course, if the vessel changes from one side to another it will be less effective but i can alter a battle dynamic dramatically. On the last resort, the vessel commander that is about to lose control of the ship can still blow the ship out.
    An other solution will be to send an anti-boarding squad if the vessel has one meanwhile a ship that has been boarded would be less effective.

    My 2 cents,
    Great job again.

    Heavy Fly.

  22. @Spirit_of_snagga

    The effects we’re calling photon torpedoes are the big red balls with a sort of flare effect around them – one of the ships fires them pretty early in the video.

    In Star Trek they’re some of the more powerful weapons available, and generally just look pretty cool!

  23. PsySal> Actually, what you are describing can be done with normal mapping, and requires only 2 textures (one for the colors, and one describing the angle at which the light is received). However normal mapping requires a graphic card with shaders, while your technique does not (and is much faster).

  24. Blimey. I love the wavy, light-intensifying shield impact effects.

    However, I think I didn’t see anything in particular when the shield gives way – have you thought of maybe some plasma-like, sizzling burnout effect when shield goes down to 0?

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