Help me with my game - 2D (3D models topdown)
 

Hey
I've been reading these forums for a long time now but have only just recently had access to Maya and have found it to be incredibly hard to learn and stuff, this is a great community though


Anyway, I'm making an arcade-style space shooter game and thought I'd post and see if anyone would be interested in helping with some modeling/texturing of some stuff

The game is being coded soley by me, and will be completed within a few months.
Currently it's in quite early stages but I can tell you that it's a 2D space shooter game in which two players fight "head to head" using a variety of weapons to destroy each others spaceships.

As I said, it's only 2D, but I would like to use 3D models which have been created and rendered with a "top down" perspective in mind, so that they're nice to look at :)

I can provide more details about the sorts of models I'm after, but I thought I'd just see if anyone's interested first, because there are so many really tallented people here and I think it could be fun to see art meet application - even if it is a bit of a crummy game :p

When it's finished it will be available for download free of charge, and any artwork used will be acknowledged in all documentation and credits within the game.


Thnx
PappaSmurf

I could suply some artwork if you wish.... I am also experienced with bryc, a very good scenery renderer.

Sounds great :)

I was going to make the background just plain black but just recently decided to use (a) starfield/space background/s, as I have just added translucency :)

In order to be used, any final renders of objects will need an alpha map for translucency - the alpha map can be saved as a seperate bitmap - like a greyscale image.
White indicates areas of the bitmap to be drawn with no translucency, black indicates that the area will not be visible (completely transperent), and all shades of grey inbetween indicate varying ranges of translucency.

I can probably make these alpha maps if you dont want to, but you can get some great effects (smoke, plasma blobs etc. :p ) by having a good alpha map with the image.


Anyway, if anyone else is interested please post

if i was at my computer right now i could show you a pretty nice space image if made... but im not there. it might be on my old server. one sec.

http://netfirms.com/twistedsite.com/Space.jpg
hope it worked.
maybe this is it
http://netfirms.com/twistedsite.com/Space3.jpg

heres a space image i made. i could go more or less detail:)

Nope, neither of them worked in ur previous post....

but this one worked... didnt it?

Dont worry. the other 2 attampts were trying for this.

Looks good twisteddragon

I could use one or two scenes like that for the background or for other stuff (credits page, or other pages in the game).

BUMP
You guys still there?

Do you want me to give you more specifics or anything?

i'd be interested in helpin, altho i'm working on a few projects, i have a lotta free time = )

Vectorman

Nice to see someone from my area. I just noticed you are only about 25 min from me:beer:

Somebody posted a space pick. Heres one I did.

HERE

Mabey I could be of help.

*cries*

Well mines better!

*runs off with streaming tears.


Yeah some specifics would be great. like woudl you want planets and lots of stars.. and so on:)

LOL :)

Ultragames - I cant see your image
EDIT: it's working now, wow it looks great

I drew this ages ago when I was, really, really, bored.
http://users.bigpond.net.au/pappasmu...een-design.jpg

As you can see, things got a bit silly :p
but you get the general idea - just significantly less crap ;)

I've been working on a little logo

Comments/critisism/suggestions?

http://users.bigpond.net.au/pappasmurf/logotest1.jpg

Hey pappasmurf.. that logo is looking good :D.. just it needs some serious painting and density! Well, basically a lot of work before it could be the final logo. I like the general design though. About the 3d work, are you looking for 3d low poly characters, or just images to put as an enviroment bg? Just curious.. i havent made any scene yet.. i definately do have to.. im thinking of modelling a castle on a small island, something quite big so that i can put most of my creatures in it in a certain spot :). Let me know if your looking for just renders :).

Hey M, thnx for the comments, I'd like to make the logo 3D, erm, in Maya or something and then render it with some nice lights, that would be so cool :)


In terms of art for the game, I mostly need some low poly models of things like projectiles (different types of "stuff to shoot"), mabey a couple of badies (a UFO or something would be nice I think :) ) and some simple images to use as "pickups" (health, shields, and mabey a "super" pickup)


So other than that, I just need two or three backgrounds (one for the menu and one for "ingame"), and thats about it

As I said earlier I'm going to keep it pretty simple so it doesn't take me ages to finish

Cheers

Ok I've been drawing the logo in Maya but I've run into some difficulties with the text, I've never tried using text before...

I created the text, and it gets inserted as a "curve", and I then extruded it and converted the extruded object to polys..
The problem is, it has no TOP and BOTTOM surfaces... as you would expect.

What can I do?

Here's the project file

Hey man, i have to actually go.. but i wil view it tommorow :). Um, as for your stuff... when you say you need models of things like projectiles etc.. do you mean you need the .mb files? Or you just need images of them? If you need the mb files, then do you have an exporter for this game you are making that we can get a hold of? I would be happy to maybe whip you up some ammo and stuff if it is in a game :D. As for the logo... i think it would be better if you left it 2d and made it nice in photoshop..i will see what you have though tommorow :).

Ok thnx M

If you want to have a play with what I've done with the logo so far, I have Illustrator vector files which can be saved as high res PSP files and then converted to anything.


In terms of the models, because it's a 2D game, all images are just loaded from .bmp files

Here's an "ingame" screenshot I just took

http://users.bigpond.net.au/pappasmu...reenshot01.jpg

I've loaded the image provided by Ultragames as the environment bg, the only reason being that he provided a high res version of it

The images used for the spaceship and the projectiles are probably just temp


That projectile probably wasn't the best image to choose, but you will notice the translucency I have managed to achieve using alphamaps, I'm quite proud of getting that working so well :)

Thats all for now

Hmm, this seems interesting now. I don´t have much time as of this week ... but I´ll surely see what I can do when I have more free time.

Excellent proyect.

Hey, I've been thinking about the logo

An animation for the logo would be really nice

The JKII logo animation on this site - http://www.lucasarts.com/products/outcast/
is pretty cool, and something similar could be done with the logo I've made so far and I think it could look really good


Whats the best way to go about making a nice animation?
I know Flash is really good, anyone here good at simple animation? Either in Flash or Maya?

The two planes could fly in, and the ring could spin around and the words "space impact" appear, and then the two vertical lines could fly inwards, seperating the two planes

Ahh dreaming is fun :)

No news, except I just wanted to say that I've changed my development environment, I'm now developing in Windows, and things are running much more smoothly for now, which means I'll probably be able to run higher resolutions and more graphics :banana:

:)

If you guys are still there, I've thought of another piece of art which would be of great use - graphics to use as console images.

This is hard to explain but in the game, there's the big area where the gameplay takes place, and then on the top and bottom of the screen, there's a small area where the players info will be displayed.

This includes the players health, their score, their weapon information (selected weapon, ammo left)...

An example of what I'm talking about is in the game StarCraft, at the bottom of the screen is a sort of a console of sorts, and depending upon what race you are it looks different (the terran is all robotic, the zerg is all alien etc.)

Does that make sense?

EDIT: here's a reference image
http://www.supremestarcraft.com/mu/s...gameplay11.jpg

The zerg one
http://goinside.com/98/4/sc8.gif

I would only need one type of course (prefererably one which looks all robotic)

Here's a screenshot which shows where the "console" will be.

Although, it will be bigger than that, you get the idea
http://users.bigpond.net.au/pappasmu...reenshot02.jpg

Okay i'd love to start helping with this wen i lose tomorrow in the critter tournament.

Cool :)

Hey, good luck in the tournament, and you too M :beer:


Another thing I need is some nice images to use as mouse pointers.

The mouse pointer in the game Unreal 2 is cool, something like that would be really nice.

Cheers

i might be able to squeeze out a console. you need it to take up the whole right side of the screen? and will there be subdevisions of it or just the main boarder andyoull take care of the rest?

Starcraft KICKS ASS! :D

Yah, i love that game! Used to spend hours making and testing maps lol. I remeber a soccer game, and god vs satan. That was my favorite.

Okay so i'm pretty sure I lost the tourny. So could you make a quick small list of things you need and i'll pick one. I think twisted got one already.

Twisted - no, the reason the background doesn't fill the whole screen in that picture is because I didn't resize it :p

The "consoles" will go top and bottom (where the blue rectangles are)

The area will be bigger, I'll upload a new screenshot in a sec.

Re: subdivisons, I haven't really planned out the layout of the areas, just know what is going inside them, so it's not really important.
I'm not really fussed, whatever you feel like doing bud

Hybrid - yeah it's such a mad game hey :)


Ok here's a list of the things which I can think of at the moment:

*) Images for projectiles - about 3 or 4 different types (one for each weapon) - images can be transperent/translucent.

Translucency is done with an alpha-map image.

(You probably already know this but), alpha-maps are the same size as the image, but they are greyscale only.
Areas on the alpha map which are pure white are drawn, and areas which are solid black are completely transperent. Regions in-between are varying in transperency.

The alpha maps can/should be made as a seperate bitmap/image.

*) "Pickups". Health, ammo, and a "special" pickup.
These are images which float around and if the user picks them up they get whatever the pickup was...

As above, transperency is controlled with an alpha-map.

*) Weapon images - the images which will appear in the weapons console (top/bottom of screen).
This is not that important as I can just use the projectile images above if noone makes any.

*) An image to use as a mouse cursor - I'm using the standard arrow but I just figued out how to change it, so that could be cool

*) Some image/s to use for the console (see the starcraft pictures)

*) If anyone wants to make (or already has) some pictures to use as images in the menu or background - again not really important

Ohh also, if anyone feels like giving me a hand with spicing up the logo I've made I'd be much appreciative.

I'm not great with colours, although I (think) I have good taste, I can never make up my mind lol :p

2 questions, you asked for low-poly models of the missles and things earlies, and now you want images? Which one?

#2 is did you already decide the weaps? If you did we'd kinda need to know that in order to determine the type of projectile.

Sorry for the confusion :o

I just need images for everything in the game, as there's no 3D engine (as I said earlier it's only a very simple 2D game)

In terms of the weapons, I haven't really planned them out, so anything will go :p

* missiles
* bullets
* fire/ice-ball of some description
* ball of plasma/electricity? (mabey like the "whisps" in Warcraft3)?
* slow moving mines
* wierd projectiles with stuff orbiting them

Whatever :p

EDIT: I *think* I'll be able to animate the projectiles, if you guys give me several images (ie: snapshots, just like animated gif's), then it should be doable

Okay, sounds good. Would you rather images in TGA, or PSD format? They have built in Alpha channels, and would probably make it easier if you could support them. Other than that i support JGP if the game is getting memory hungry, although i dobt it would cause its 2d. Also i can do all of the formats that photoshop can write to (pretty much everything). If you're not sure what you're using, you probably wanna go with an uncompressed format like BMP.

I can make these have caps (notice you can see through them :eek: ) But i think after i model the rest of the logo it might be nice to have them see through.

I just started painting some HUD (heads up display)screens. I know twisted said he would, but i haven't seen or heard from him about it since. Plus it would be better if you had 2 to choose from. Do you want it right ontop of what you got? What i mean is do you want the health bar to be in the exact place as it is in the pic? I brought the one you posted into photoshop and thats just what I started doing, because it is a good jumping point, and the space provides some nice inspiration. But i figure it couldn't be that hard to make it custom to my image.

Cool, sounds good

Bitmap is fine, it makes it easy to read into the program and since it's uncompressed also leaves options open.


But, I *can* read TGA files as well, which might make the alpha business easier..

So umm, yeah we should give TGA a go, but make sure you save it in PSD or other formats incase it doesn't work because I haven't tried it.

I've got a font which I've been using so far within the game, which I think looks ok.
I haven't looked at many fonts, this was just the best looking futuristic font which I saw on a particular site.

http://mickeyavenue.com/fonts/download/SpaceAge.zip

You guys are much better at graphics and stuff than me though so if you are onto something better thats great

Cheers
:beer:

Not really.
The health bar rectangle was just for my purposes (I was just making sure I could draw to the consoles, because I've defined them as seperate regions of the screen so they can be updated seperately)...

Also, I think the area for the console is a fair bit too small at the moment? It's deffinately too small at higher resolutions, so keep that in mind - I can make it whatever size you want.. as long as there's still plenty of "battle room" in the middle :p

Hmm, wow, when i got into doing graphics, i was under the impression that people seeking CG Arstist help knew EXACTLY what they wany. But so far its been the opposite. So much freedom. I guess I should take advantage of it, before i start getting real jobs.

So i guess i'll just make whatever and you can adapt. Thats what you get !