Naith

Some of you may remember the discussion from some time ago where it was proposed to make an ‘awesome game’ - see the thread https://discourse.panda3d.org/viewtopic.php?t=6140. From this discussion a number of us, specifically me, rdb and aurilliance went off to create such an entity, but unfortunately the effort stalled, primarily because of time.

Despite it having stalled there is still a fps, from which the only major omission is enemies (Ok, that is quite the omission, but still!). It has been lying dormant waiting for 1.7.0 to come out, as it is dependent on this. Now that 1.7.0 is out it is time to release it - firstly you may find it running in your webbrowser at the below link:

http://thaines.net/content/naith/naith.html

Secondly, you may find the project, including the .p3d file, source, art assets and a few wiki pages below:

http://code.google.com/p/naith/

I suspect most of you will be able to guess the keys, but the wiki section contains a keymap page - might be worth looking at anyway as there are some ‘interesting’ key presses;-) Also, a warnings - it uses ode, and so requires the latest release that rdb just made if you are running 64 bit Ubuntu Linux. Its in the ppa, so a simple update should do.

Obviously its a long way from complete, but it would be a waste to leave it to rot. Also, I appear to have a bit more time now, so I am hoping that some kind of momentum on this project can be reignited. That is where you lot, the community, come in - I don’t have the time to do all, or even a significant chunk, of this myself. The purpose of this endeavour is to create a game that demonstrates pandas capabilities - as in really shows them off, for which the code is available and neat enough for people to learn from (Current code base is not that!). The license has been chosen so people can fork the project and make there own fps-s (And potentially other genres) from it, though this is a secondary goal. You will note then that this is not intended to be a complete game, more like a very feature complete demo (Ideal really - biases the project towards programming rather than art, and there are defiantly more programmers around than artists!).

One thing I need to be clear about here is that this is not really a newbie project - I’ll accept worthwhile patches from anyone, but before I give anyone direct repository access they need to show a certain amount of competence! Don’t let that stop anyone playing with it or attempting to modify it though - I’m just trying to avoid spending all of what little time I have cleaning up other peoples work. Also, part of the goal is for this to be highly readable, so any feedback in that regard is welcome. Of course, I’ll beg for real artists, or even half way competent artists - programmer art mostly sucks.

nice demo-app:) if you polish it up a little you could easily turn it into a 1st person puzzle game. i sorta like the unconventional level design for beeing quite confusing which makes things a bit more challanging

Neat!
Nice physics, awesome sea shader and great textures. Also I’ve thrown an eye on the code and it’s amazing how much you can archieve with so little number of lines, and you don’t even use all of the code in the samples.

Shooting seems to be a performance bottleneck, but as for this state, without any optimizations, it’s awesome already.
There still are some bugs and glitches, but as for only ~3 people and the little time you had this is very impressive.

For everybody just looking at this: start with the last menu point: core level without sun. The sun darkens the whole level (what an irony) and slows down things.

ThomasEgi: I hadn’t considered making a puzzle game - its always been about making something that looks good, which pushes you towards a traditional fps style game. Now that you mention it I might consider a quick diversion in that direction if I can think up of a good set of puzzles! I’m wondering how hard a gravity gun would be to make, and what kind of puzzles could then follow:-)

As for the level design - the original test level is not meant to be like a normal level, just a number of environments with a central hub, in which to test things. The cove level is basically a traditional ‘opening’ level - it makes you navigate, jump, crouch and explore. Its missing a lot of detail of course - I was intending it to have far more green, and various ‘interest’ points. If you climb up behind the boulder you can find the exit, though it currently drops you into the sea.

Nemesis#13: Yeah, its got more glitches than you can shake a stick at. The one that is annoying me the most is the character - try turning and moving at the same time whilst watching an edge. I just can’t work out why. I’m thinking of just writing a new plugin to control the character to be honest - current one isn’t so well designed anyway. Technically, the sun makes everything brighter - the problem is the tone mapping then makes everything really dark relatively speaking. I can’t decide which I prefer myself - but yes, try out a cove variant first - the test level is boring except for some funky physics and the technically interesting use of portals, which you can’t see unless you switch to wireframe (f7). Also, try f1 - brings up a developers console into which you can type arbitrary python commands, and access all the plugins.

btw - any of you get it working in Windows? My graphic card went screwy when I tried, though it technically did run - just took out the computer when I entered a level!

The p3d file from google code doesn’t work for me.
All I get is 3 buttons for levels and a black background. When clicking one, the program exits (well I do see a logo for a milisecond)

i tried it in windows 7 (32bit) twice: in firefox the plugin’s window turns black when clicking on any level button after showing the load-screen and in standalone it just terminates after the load-screen

^ uh, same, XP

Looks very nice! I want to wander out into the water and look for sea life to shoot at in the cove level.

I suspect players who are reporting problems at startup are having trouble with the shaders. The p3dsession.log file from the Panda3D/log directory would confirm this.

David

Just had a closer look at windows - yeah, it don’t run, and for a really stupid reason. Its using os.path.join… which creates windows style paths, which Panda of course doesn’t like. Gaaar. Will fix and upload a new version shortly.

Ok - just uploaded a new version - have confirmed that, at least for me, it works under Windows. (Well, every now and again my graphics drivers fail, sometimes badly, but I think that is just them. Its funny really - I’ve never previously found a computer where the Linux driver is more stable than the windows one!)

Anyway, could some other Windows people confirm that it now works?

so nice - looking forward for better artwork,here my insightful contribute to the project - maybe one day we could have a revenue fee out of Spam company, who knows

you may grab it here

keep up the nice work

now it kinda works in standalone mode (didnt try in firefox) i could run around and stuff but then i got an error:
(i did the eraser)

btw: you could get textures from http://www.tellim.com/texture_cd/

Downloading the new one now, I’ll let you know how it works on XP.
from the screenshot looks like it could use a better gun as well (might make one myself…)

Like the can of spam - I’m sure it will be of use:-)

The ODE error is almost invariably caused by the rotation quaternion vector of a body getting zeroed out, due to an object spinning too fast. Based on the screenshot I would guess one of those cans of spam is responsible:-) Thing is there are dampening terms and a hard cap on how fast they can spin, to stop this happening - somehow that system must of failed. Only happens due to ODE being compiled in debug mode though - compile it in release mode and it quietly ignores it (I only wrote the hard limit fix this morning, when I discovered that, unlike the Linux SDK, the runtime has ODE in debug mode. Its hard to see how I could of screwed up a hard limit though.).

Thanks for the texture link - I’ve seen that one before, but not sure how much use it will be - they are all far too clean for my liking. (And I live in a real grimy city, and own an SLR.)

Made the current gun myself, and yes, it is terrible, but then I didn’t work off any actual guns or spend very long. Programmer art basically… Art offers will of course never be refused - rather pleased that so far both offers of help have revolved around art:-)

I’m making a very lowpoly gun now:
EDIT:
Okay, maybe it didn’t end up very lowpoly: 1446 triangles and 722 vertices. What do you think?
EDIT2:

Not bad - better than mine certainly. I wouldn’t worry about poly count - ramp it up, get all the detail in and then it can be normal mapped if need be. Could easily take it to 10k before I’ld consider doing that though. It does need detail however - there is no shell eject, the clip doesn’t look like it can detach (And ideally we would ultimately want a hand with a reloading animation in there.), you have a built in sight on the front with no matching bit on the back, and the grip and stock both need smoothing out - a bevel would probably be enough. It could also do with a safety catch and clip release, maybe even a shell ejection direction selector, plus some kind of manufacturer markings. A better texture would also help, with the inclusion of normal mapping and a gloss map. Dirt is a must - guns are not known for being used in clean places!

Yeah, I know that is quite the list - I’ld accept it as it is now, but if your up for doing more then please do:-) (I can always add to it myself - I’m fairly decent when it comes to texturing, if I put my mind to it. Plus other people could also come along and make improvements.)

Well this is a wip, so I’ll add those.

I’m not good at making a texture from scratch:

for example this is what I came up when trying to make a wood texture

I have been modeling for about a year now, but never tried to make a bumpmap myself. Maybe you could link me to a tutorial or make it yourself after I finish the model…

Probably best I do the texturing then, including bump and gloss mapping - that is one thing I can do well:-) (Though you rarely ever start from scratch - first step is always about finding the right images to work from.) Looking forward to it:-)

I’m sorry to tell you I can’t finish the model. There are a number of reasons, lack of free time and reference (lol) being some of them.
Here is the model so far: mediafire.com/?jzzxyhmdaqe
The model lacks detail and is just wrong.There is no real texturing.
I hope it will be of some use, though I think you will end up remaking it

Oh well - I shall have a look. Thanks for trying at least:-)