I’ve recently been working on improving the quest system for my game titled The Afflicted Forests. Since I’ve shifted away from making a bunch of instanced wave survival scenarios, and am now planning to build a modest open world as the main source of content instead, my old quest system required a lot of refactoring.
I’ve been focused on improving the first quest in the first zone as much as possible before I start making anymore quests. Its a simple “slay 10 enemies” quest, but I want to iron out all of the details and ensure that its running as smooth as possible in a co-op world before I move on to make more quests, otherwise the refactoring will be a headache if I need to make any major changes to the quest system.
I also added some important features to my previously lacking dialogue system, and I also added some voice lines that play in sync with each dialogue. Not sure how many more voice lines I’ll attempt to do on my own, but the functionality is there to show that the game is able to have full audio support in the future when its a higher priority task. So until I actually have a player base or beta testers playing the game, I will probably only do voice lines for content I’m planning to feature in a demo like this.
And it was close haha, it got hidden in the time-lapse but the ice AOE spell I tried to quickly kill them with turned out to be broken, and I had to use some cheats to heal lol.
Earlier this month, I published the semi-public anniversary release of the new Mythruna test engine. The end of June was the 10 year anniversary of the last public release of the old game. It’s been a long road.
This is a semi-public release in that I’m limiting it to folks who actually request a link. It’s sort of a soft release. I’m waiting to do a full public release until networking is enabled.
If you would like access then just let me know. Or even if you would like to join the Simsilica discord, I can also provide an invite. (The link to the release is also pinned there.)
Here is the walk through video I just finally finished.
It’s my first video with actual voice over, captions, chapters, etc… so be gentle with any constructive feedback.
Consider liking and/or commenting on the video to feed the youtube algorithm.
I hope to have the fully public networked release ready in August. (It was supposed to be for my birthday at the end of July but I will be taking a trip in early August… and setting up a public game server right before leaving town is not the best idea.)
I was trying to think of how and where to make a comment and this feels right. I’ve been reading every single post in the forum on networking and now spidermonkey and I just wanted to say how cool it was to see - once you joined the team you responded to pretty much every single networking forum topic and in the spidermonkey area … I could feel your absence in the early 2010s as you were rewriting it. then once again you were in every topic sharing masterclass after masterclass on concepts. it’s really hard not to admire your dedication, attention to detail, and occasional sense of humor.
congratulations on your game and I look forward to seeing what’s next. And I mean you could just set it up and leave town … what’s the worst that could happen
Man, in those early days in April 2011 or so when I setup the public server for Mythruna it got crazy fast. I’d have people messaging me if the server was down for even 5 minutes.
With a constant stream of users (that first 6 months to a year, the public Mythruna server pretty much always had at least one person logged in and often a dozen) brought with it all kinds of additional pains like hacking, griefing, etc… The client hacking was mostly harmless but the griefing got pretty crazy and I spent a solid month just implementing antigrief stuff.
Given all of that, I know sort of why I might be in for… and anyway, it’s a bad look to publish a server far and wide and then have it die for 5 days with no one to kick it.
Started a new project , well but i think this is not totally a new project, it’s more like a supportive project for my game J-Pluto, i have cut the coding on this game for a long time to give myself sometime to learn basics of jMonkeyEngine and embedded engineering, and with your support here i can tell i am making a great progress .
My project will link 8-bit avr microcontrollers to the game world, this will enable the developer to interface sensors, joysticks, potentiometers and control units to a jMonkeyEngine over the UART protocol mainly, the project now has around 60 tech demos to do (provided as issues), next month i will try to interface a joystick module using the ADC on the UART to bring some life to a jMonkey game .
Those are the current available examples (jme test stills on the objectives for the next week):
Part of the initial project J-Pluto was requiring some 8-bit control interfacing, so that is why i am in a bad need of this new project, i learned that when starting any new project, i have to do some tech demos before the big jump.
Yeah, I have 14 unreleased open source libraries and 3 unreleased open source tools all in support of my main game… in addition to the already released open source libs.
(Fortunately most of that is very stable these days.)
Whatever way we can break the work up into something interesting, sustainable, and that moves things forward is a win.
Yeah, i am willing to build tech demos that interface different 8-bit projects with java first then i will move onto building a lib to interface a jme game with 8-bit microcontrollers, i haven’t decided yet on what to use with the USB UART, currently 3 choices are available including (jni with linux kernal, jSerialComm, java Runtime terminal process), i am trying to keep my hands clean of jni work as far as possible to avoid native building complexity…there are a lot of changes in which i need to test before any further move.
It’s more like personal preferences, all these microcontrollers feature the same protocols including the USB/UART with different code environments, the project was initially working on arduino UNO and arduino NANO and both of them have atmega microcontroller, besides you can apply raw boolean algebra on the atmega registers running out of the box (with just avr-gcc and avr-dude and some bash code).
Hi everyone,
here it is, another monthly effort to share and discuss with you.
I’ll probably take a break in August. The demos are inspired by the mechanics of The Last of Us part II. Any constructive feedback is always welcome. Obviously there are many things that can be improved. But time is short, and mine is just a hobby
1. Prototype:
The arrows attach to the body using a simple physics-based Hitboxes System. The upper limbs and head explode based on a simple probability algorithm for each body part.
Unfortunately I’m not good with visual effects. It would take a good artist to write a library with some cool effects like the free ones found on the Unity store. If there was a good volunteer in the community, that would be very welcome!
The two strangulation animations are available on the Mixamo website and of course they are paired. It is possible to perform the strangulation only if the enemy is within the expected range of action (see the blue circle) and only if the player is behind the enemy (see the dot product). Once the two previous conditions are met, the two characters line up like magnets based on simple configurable parameters (see slerp functions for movement and rotations). I modified the animations by removing the root bone translations and the audio file based on the number of frames and duration of the animations.
At the moment I don’t really know how to add strangling wire to the animation. Any suggestions?
Reference material:
Greetings
Edit:
Bow and arrow were modeled by @grizeldi who kindly provided me with the files.
I know the test environment isn’t cool. Is there any volunteer able to create a better one with PBR light and make it available to the community?
Edit 2:
Added example screenshots of the hitboxes system.
As someone who does (rather meh, but still) VFX for a living, I’ve sadly came to a conclusion that JME doesn’t come with a particle solution that wouldn’t be a pain to work with. Effekseer native comes the closest, but stil has plenty of questionable quirks. Until that changes, I don’t see any proper VFX artists touching JME sadly.
What kind of an environment were you thinking of? I may be able to find some time.
Sad truth. It is very disheartening when you realize it. We should try to improve this aspect of the engine. I hope that sooner or later this problem will be solved, which represents a big limitation.
Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it. I was thinking of a test environment with some general elements that can fit multiple scenarios. Here are some suggestions, but feel free to express your creativity however you like.
A better textured skybox.
PBR light.
Any filters?
Some natural elements like trees and bushes.
Some architectural elements with stepped stairs and ramps to test the movement of the characters in closed environments and inclined surfaces.
I’ve been making progress on implementing Minie’s DynamicAnimControl into my game for knockback and stagger physics, although the progress is mostly slow and spread over long periods of time.
I still have a handful of models that all need setup in the DACWizard before I can start making major changes to the combat system to actually use DAC, but I have been playing around with debug commands to see how a few different models behave in RagDoll mode, and so far the results using DynamicAnimControl are great.
Here’s a short video showing a few of the models I’ve set up in the DACWizard and have been testing with:
At the end of the video I accidentally get snuck up on by the big ogre and you get a glimpse at my old knockback system that I’m trying to replace. Its similar to the basic knockback effect you see in minecraft where the player just gets pushed away with no animation. Its super simple and was really easy to setup for multiplayer, but I think the more realistic ragdoll physics are better suited for my game’s style.
, well but i think this is not totally a new project, it’s more like a supportive project for my game 
.
