Announcing '*Phobia'

*Phobia is a FPS that three other people and myself have created for a school project. We started in early September, and since then, the game has progressed tremendously. The game, originally, was to be based off of “Ender’s Game”, but we quickly realize that we were not going to be able to make a game that stayed true to the material in that book.



Our “alpha release” is tomorrow, so I am not going to put a link to the game files on this post yet, but I would like to share some pictures with you. Once I make the game available, I’ll give instructions and requirements for running.



I would like to thank all the developers on this board. You all have been tremendously helpful and encouraging throughout the process. When my semester ends (early-December), I am going to write some documentation that I hope will prove useful to jME new comers. This is the least I could do for you guys. Thank you again so much.



On to the pictures:



This actually a Flash front-end. One of my team members is fairly adept with Flash and he was able to find a Java plug-in that allows for Flash-Java communication.





Spawn Point in the ‘Blue Base’:





The main battle area (some of the HUD graphics have changed since this shot):





This is trying to illustrate the particle trail that comes out of the Freeze projectiles:





In this image, we see the charge bar just below the crosshairs charging up. This is for the other weapon in the game: the sonic gun. The idea is that you freeze your opponents, which does no direct damage, and then you smash them with the sonic blast:





The release of a sonic blast. The size of the blast is proportional to the charge, as is the damage inflicted:





The blast traveling away:





This is the upper control room in the map. Visible is the ‘Super Jetpack’ power-up which allows for unlimited jetpack use:





The power generator and another power-up:





Again, I will be posting the game in a few days, and improvements will continue to come over the next month. I will likely make a webpage for the game and updates will be there. Thanks again to everyone on this board for helping to make this possible.



P.S. Every other group (and I mean EVERY) is using C++ for their projects. They were amazed to see what Java and jME could do. That alone has gotten my group some ‘Wow’ points :slight_smile:

Looks good. How do you sort your levels? BSP? portals? What format do you use?

No sorting right now. :frowning: Unfortunately, we’ve had to move so quickly with this game because this is only 1 of 4-5 classes for each of us. There should be some culling taking place with the Oriented Bounding Box’s, but that is utilizing jME’s built in code; in other words, nothing proprietary.



I don’t know how much I’ll actually add to this game after the project is due. This was more of a learning project than anything. Over the holiday’s, I’ll start on my own personal, hobby game for which I will have more time, no deadlines, and supreme executive power. :smiley: Those things, combined with the experience of this project, hopefully, will produce something I will be more proud of.



I’m hoping to do a RTT (real time tactical): sort of like C&C meets Close Combat. Set in WWII. Emphasis on realism.

Looks very promising ! Can’t wait to test it :wink:



I’m also designing a little adventure game with an fps view (1st person) which will use some of the big features of jME and some others great visual effects (parallax mapping…) to show what can be done with jME… I think it won’t be a game, but just a big level where you’ll be able to move and visit differents rooms showing differents features…



Well, anyway, very nice work !



Chman

Fantastic screen shots, I can’t wait to see this in action. This is the kind of stuff that makes me keep pushing on. :slight_smile:

Impressive screenies, looks very promising! If this is done under time pressure, what might we expect from you if you have plenty of "headroom"?

:slight_smile:

yeah, looks really really good! How have you built the maps? In a 3d-modeling program like 3d-studio max or what?

Just to put in my own 2 cents, I think this looks great! Nice use of particles. How’s the framerate?

Well, are you sure it went as bad as you seem to think? Depending on the course, getting a game concept designed and implemented in any form is usually a big accomplishment. From the screenshots, you put a lot of work into the feel and layout of the levels. I have a feeling a lot of this is noticed by the professor and will be taken into consideration. The crashes and performance (of the network code?) will be but a small blip, if the prof is worth anything.

If I was running the class, I would grade that way. Unfortunately, the professor’s emphasis seems to be on getting a small idea working well rather than a big idea working alright. I also don’t think he is aware of, let alone appreciates, the fact that jME is a work in progress. In some ways, I understand his reasoning, but am an ambitious and hard-working person; I didn’t want to program something I could have done my freshman or sophomore year. I wanted something that would blow people away.



I agree with you though. For the amount of time we had, we got a hell of a lot done. I worked my butt off on this project. I am dissapointed it didn’t turn out as I had hoped, but I will be very dissapointed if the professor doesn’t look at the big picture.



If you’re wondering about the network code, it was some proprietary stuff that that member worked on. It is a seperate thread, and we had a hell of a time working around the fact that neither the graphics or network code were thread-safe. I had proposed a solution about a month ago that the other members didn’t like, but in the end we decided to go for it (and it worked)…too bad we didn’t really design around it or start coding it seriously until last Saturday :? Anyway, I don’t want to be negative about it…I’m hoping that the solution to the thread issue will be one of the things that makes the project valuable to others on this site and to my future projects.

I’d feel pretty proud of what you accomplished regardless of what grade he doles out. It looks great and hard work is always something to commend.

I appreciate that. Thanks. :slight_smile:

"captK" wrote:
Anyway, I export them to MD3 and then import them into Milkshape 3d for texturing, finally exporting to ms3d format.
MD3 is quake 3 model format, maps are bsp ;)

1.5 GB of dual-channel, DDR

Just a totally off-topic question, but how can you have 1,5Gb of DDR in Dual Channel/Twinbank mode ? Do you you have 2x768Mo DDR (I ask this because I never seen single slot 768Mo DDR...) ? If not, the dual channel feature is not used :?

Chman

couldn’t you have 2 x 256 and 2 x 512 ?

hmf, you’re true… I really must go on and sleep a lot…

couldn't you have 2 x 256 and 2 x 512 ?


You could. :D

indeed, I may be wrong, but quake 3 maps are *.map files as they are saved in the editor.



usually, you will compile that into a BSP file, proccess in which the lightmaps are built. (depending on how u set the lights in the editor.)



The fact is there’s no real way to make it for comercial projects for license issues.





I rather prefer *.x files with 2 UV channels so that I can generate and export my lightmaps. Is more modern and less limited than BSP convex geometry.



The md3 file export from mojo.gmaxsupport.com is an old but somewhat working way to do levels with gmax. Some ppl do as u did, some ppl export to an old version that was free to use of 3d Exploration, and there export as x.



md3 have the issue of shared UVs. It does not support a vertex having two UVs, so it breaks there and generates two vertices. Adding mor everts count, and worst, making geometry seams where an UV seam exist…it’s seen quite ugly.



Also, md3 have a limit of 8,192 tris, per format design. Ppl just weld chunks of geometry of 8k tris, ones in another modeller which is out of gmax…



yet though, stuff can be done, and gmax is very powerful free tool :slight_smile:



I think you deserve a high grade :slight_smile:

You mentioned that this is a Flash application with a java backend. Does that mean you could have your application integrated into a web browser that supports flash?

I think he just said the first screen (intro/start screen) was flash and then it passes the baton over to Java.

aaah, that would have been soooooooooo cool…



Still cool how you could execute a java program from flash tho :slight_smile: