Messages

16

Extensions / Re: Colyseus Extension [Public Beta]

« on: November 08, 2020, 10:35:22 pm »

Hosting server from your computer can be done.
But you have to be able to adjust your router you got from your service provider to redirect ports to your computer.
This depends on the provider and the brand of the router,  so I'm not able to help you much with that.
You should have enough networking experience to make that adjustment.
If you are able and capable of port forward from your router to your computer, then you should start with this:
http://photoquesting.com/colyseus/Colyseus_Server.pdf

17

Extensions / Re: Multiplayer Extension - call for BetaTesters

« on: November 08, 2020, 11:43:22 am »

Hello Catinas,

The extension is made public : http://community.stencyl.com/index.php?topic=61150.0

18

Journals / Re: Merrak's Non-Isometric Adventures -- Planar Programming

« on: November 06, 2020, 11:22:45 pm »

Wow those resources in the dashboard are immense.

I never thought that the game had so much depth and things going on.

Again: very interesting.

The Unique Identifier thing is nice. I am more of a puzzle designer so I don't use the scene editor of Stencyl much. I use text files for levels. Actor creation is dynamic and every actor/object has its own unique number. A range defines which actor type.

The persistent-npc-death and achievement system is nice!  I like the fact that you can revisit a level to get every item. But I would show the possible achievements graphically and an option to do'nt advance to the next level but go back.
That is : if you can go back instead of starting the level over. Going back would be a much better immersive feeling.
(Allthough the game looks too dificult for my skill-level )


The book-mechanism is a bit confusing to me. Do you get the powerup AFTER you read the book. Or do you get the power up when you have earned enough XP ?
From your design document:  "Books. Reading has always been the main avenue to advance the player character."
If in fact you only get power up after you read and especially when you regard it kind of as a tutorial it should be better brought to the player. From what I understand now : you have to access it through menu system?!?


You state that refactoring code is a bad feeling because nothing visually changes.
I usually get a good feeling about refactoring. Just like what you describe: hours lost on debugging a strange system. Not sure in what part of your code is actually involved in states/mechanism.
Also working on simplifying stuff feels good.
But I do realize that it depends on the project. For a game jam  for instance you just try to do things as fast as possible even if it relies on copying a bunch of stuff that could better be grouped together.
Your current project has a scope that is much broader and you , indeed, need to keep your eye on complexity.

Keep up the great work with these developers VLOGs. Excellent stuff!

19

Extensions / Re: Colyseus Extension [Public Beta]

« on: November 01, 2020, 12:30:54 am »

Finished the example on Endless runner:

The demo can be played and downloaded from here: http://photoquesting.com/colyseus

20

Extensions / Re: Colyseus Extension [Public Beta]

« on: October 29, 2020, 09:41:40 am »

Thank you LIBERADO for the nice words.

Currently working on Endless Runner where you have to click on obstacles to keep going. You see other players transparent to get a feeling of how well you are doing.

And I'm planning more physics/collision based example games.

21

Extensions / Re: Colyseus Extension [Public Beta]

« on: October 27, 2020, 06:47:46 am »

More examples.


Template for online fighter/shooter

RPG :

The RPG works with the lock-based system. It has consumable inventory objects. And objects that are 'private' to your game session. So the key for example can be taken by everyone, the loot from the chest by just one player.

22

Journals / Re: Online Multiplayer 3D ( was: Ludum Dare 47 : Sial = Get stuck with your friends)

« on: October 26, 2020, 04:33:03 am »

Last week I've worked on the LudumDare entry.

I thought the animation system wouldn't be a problem but as always when you think that it is not a problem it becomes one.

Turns out that I'm not the only one : http://community.stencyl.com/index.php?topic=45985.0

Maybe merrak can show his technique in an upcoming dev blog


Anyhow, I hacked an animation manager. It isn't programmed, it is glue and sticks.

Play the game: http://photoquesting.com/ludumdare/47/part4

The source : http://photoquesting.com/ludumdare/47/md5_col_v88.stencyl


Maybe I will work on a propper animation system for future use, because I think I will need it again.


Now moving on to other multiplayer stuff.

23

Journals / Re: Online Multiplayer 3D ( was: Ludum Dare 47 : Sial = Get stuck with your friends)

« on: October 17, 2020, 04:51:04 am »

Since I have more time now:  I started over and will propably change a few things so it does not rely on the LD47 theme.

Last week I've worked on a new 2D version of the network play. So there is a new demo on the colyseus page:

http://photoquesting.com/colyseus/

You can download the Colyseus extension and the .stencyl file to experiment on your own.

This week I'm going to try to add the 3D stuff with the Away3D Extension. (using the MD5 animation file format)

Current state:

Due to the smaller md5 format I can add more enemies on a larger scene but I'm not sure if I'm going for that at this time.

24

Journals / Re: Online Multiplayer 3D ( was: Ludum Dare 47 : Sial = Get stuck with your friends)

« on: October 08, 2020, 04:11:16 am »

Because I couldn't let the MD2 go, I made the same approach using the MD2 files.

This gives a bigger memory consumption:



More than 2GB on HTML5.

Strangely enough I couldn't get the Windows executable even load the 12 animations : MEMORY EXHAUST at runtime.

Also a run on Android crashed the game during the load of the MD2 files.


Running the MD5 on Android works OK!

Allthough the meshes are more cleanly on MD2 it is best to focus on MD5.

This leads to the conclusion that MD5 is the way forward.

25

Journals / Re: Ludum Dare 47 : Sial = Get stuck with your friends

« on: October 07, 2020, 11:35:44 am »

This evening I made some progress.

Turns out that the MD5 models take way less memory. Allthough the quality is slightly worse than the MD2 stuff.
But performance over quality in this case.

I still have to redo a lot of code on the ludum dare project, but made a proof of concept with 120 actors.

Random 12 animations on three different type of actors.  (the 3 actors have idle,run,walk and attack animations)

What you see here is that I move all 120 actors at the same time using the keyboard controls (4 way movement).
As well as moving the mouse on the Y-coordinate that zooms-in and out.
On the Left is the HTML5 version and on the right is the Windows version.


Do not confuse this output with previous images in this thread because those are multiplayer things. This is just showing the
performance and memory consumption of both versions running at the same time.


Maybe you can still see the number of memory consumption of these 120 actors??

Chrome consumes about 1 GB.
The windows version about 200MB.

I must say that the previous versions I had on the ludumdare did a load of the MD2 for EACH actor.
This method uses a preload of the assets and I found that I could CLONE the assets.
The LudumDare entry did load the assets FOR EACH actor and animation. I didn't know at that time that I could use
.clone on the animated meshes.

I did a quick test with the MD2 stuff but that didn't give me these drastic improvements as seen by the MD5 stuff.

This all seems way better to go forward and implement the same in the Ludum Dare entry. Because I did do something so differently it will take however a lot of changes to the current project to be on the same path as I left it on Monday 

But ... I have way more time; like a half year; before next Ludum Dare    HaHaHa

26

Journals / Re: Ludum Dare 47 : Sial = Get stuck with your friends

« on: October 06, 2020, 08:31:48 pm »

Hi Mineat,

Thanks for reaching out.
-D canvas turns off 3D          So it does not help at all   

Thanks for your kind words.

27

Journals / Re: Ludum Dare 47 : Sial = Get stuck with your friends

« on: October 06, 2020, 12:13:25 pm »

Found the pink - bug!!!

In the Away3D engine I set a name of a material that has been loaded to:

'name of the asset'+'Material'  and the default material is a ColorMaterial!

While debugging my dynamic load code I found that I got a ColorMaterial back instead of the TextureMaterial.

In the stencyl code I dynamically created the animation like this:

Create [ [asset name] & Material ] type [ TextureMaterial ]

That is exactly the same as the default 'asset'+'Material'.

To prevent this mistake in the future I made the default name a bit more obscure in the Extension : MD2*Material

Now on to creating the objects on the fly using the pre-loaded data.

28

Journals / Re: Ludum Dare 47 : Sial = Get stuck with your friends

« on: October 05, 2020, 07:57:52 am »

This was not a good day.

Refactored twice to get better resource loading. Also on Windows build things got crazy!
So these bugs aren't a result of HTML5.



I tried to pre-load stuff and to optimize for switching animations.
It turned out PINK !!!


When I copy the original code from the original behavior to the new behavior and call the old code
it works!!
After four hours of finding the differences between the two code blocks I am really frustrated.

I could go back to the code from last night and try to hack a version for the entry together but
honestly I'm  not motivated to do that now.
Maybe another time.

So, again, for the xth time : I do not enter anything into LD!!!!!




BUT :

I did enjoy using Mixamo and MagicaVoxel for asset building.

Also the Colyseus Engine is handling things quite nicely. Apart from not always creating a room.
That was already some known bug but that I can't seem to find. It happens occasionally and those
are the most difficult bugs to track.

I will propably work on this another time. As always I want to learn things. So this is again
a nice thing to track down.

At least it worked fine with a couple of animations   

29

Journals / Re: Ludum Dare 47 : Sial = Get stuck with your friends

« on: October 05, 2020, 01:01:08 am »

After some hours debugging I found that HTML5 memory consumption is really the issue.
Windows executable is far better.

This is propably due to this issue:  http://community.stencyl.com/index.php?issue=1532.0

For Stencyl assets I can avoid using the draw routine. But Away3D uses draw routines as well.
I tried to work-out in what part it relies but time is running out and I need to do other things.
So I might be publishing to Windows / Android instead of HTML5.




And with 10 actors:

30

Journals / Re: Ludum Dare 47 : Sial = Get stuck with your friends

« on: October 04, 2020, 03:06:40 pm »

End of COMPO time and I don't have it ready.
At 21:00 I thought that I could make it. But what I suspected: The dynamic load of the animations is taking a toll on the experience.

Tomorrow I try to work on pre-loading the stuff and re-using enemies that are killed off....

I did manage to make a better starting screen  than the green empty one