B.U.R.N Development - New iOS game!

[Lamont]

http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/BannerLarge.jpg

Here I am at it again and I brought a friend along for the ride who is helping a lot by building the mechs for my second and his first indie game using Unity!

So what is B.U.R.N? Burn is an action/mech battle game that puts you in the seat of a B.U.R.N unit. Members of B.U.R.N take on other mechs be that they are autonomous or driven by another human. The story and other details will be revealed as we go along. Hopefully it will get everyone excited enough to want to check out more!

The design for this game was to keep it simple and keep it fun. Before I asked Yung to join in I went and developed most of the movement system. I then went on to add a basic firing abilities and other controls. From there I designed the damage and health system as this is important. Then I did the weapons system and started placing in dummy effects. So after that, I asked Yung to join in and I was lucky he said yes. Most every system is already coded/scripted (whatever you want to call what someone does in Unity).

After a few days Yung had a few concepts for the project and already I can tell it is going to be awesome. Based of the concepts he had, I began to think about the levels that each one would inhabit and began coming up with ideas.

So to kick things off, here's some shots of our concepts and models. From here on out it's adding content and playing the hell out of it. Play testers are already signed up and will get the droid training level soon :). Along the way I'll share my discoveries and other bits of information I hope you'll find useful.


I'll keep everything in this thread so people don't have to sign up for needless websites.

http://media.indiedb.com/images/global/indiedb_468x60.png (http://www.indiedb.com/members/cgbylg)


http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/icon_robot02.jpg (http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/robot02.jpg)

http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/icon_robot03.jpg (http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/robot03.jpg)

http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/icon_robot04.jpg (http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/robot04.jpg)

http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/icon_robot05.jpg (http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/robot05.jpg)

http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/icon_ScreenShot_001.jpg (http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/ScreenShot_001.jpg)

http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/icon_ScreenShot_002.jpg (http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/ScreenShot_002.jpg)

http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/icon_ScreenShot_004.jpg (http://www.cgbylg.com/burn/burnpromo12082010/ScreenShot_004.jpg)

[Lamont]

So outside of the hours spent today geo-referencing a *.xyz terrain file and it's corresponding color map (and fixing projections...) I ran a test using what we will be using for in-game graphics, and with my hardware and GUI running 3 animated stat-bars (no radar map yet), it was a steady 28fps. I am very happy because I over-blew the poly budget for the test as a worse, worse case (15,000 tris in the scene). There is some slow-down with the shotgun (because of the hit effects), but other than that, it's really nice. Will be posting video as soon as we get the first mech and level done.

When I started this project, my goal was " have it play awesome and look good on old hardware". I don't have the latest iPhone/iTouch. It's a couple generations behind. And this is one of the things I love about handheld game development: optimizing. No skinned meshes, I am killing needless items ASAP (including GUI things). I made a manager for the GUI. So if the GUI element isn't needed, the item it's attached to is killed, not just turning off the GUI. There are only three materials used at any one time: sparks, mech texture and world texture.

At first I was going to have the level and mech share a texture, till I saw how much/little memory I was actually using. So we are now using one texture for the world, and one for the mechs. Yung is happy about this.

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About scripting...

So Toaster Kun was made all in one script file. It was VERY hard to manage at times. I didn't get into messaging and referencing other scripts. If it's one thing to learn about how Unity works is doing things like this. It has made Burn SO MUCH EASIER. It made it easy to fix and tweak things. I wanted to work on just the health, open the health file. I wanted to make a weapon, just flick a setting.

My weapon script is actually one file. It has settings so I can make almost any kind of weapon needed for this game. From machine guns, to shotguns to a rocket launcher. Then my weapons manager looks for the null objects that I have attached to it, and I can swap between them any time. Want 8 weapons, fill the array with 8 objects. I was thinking of just having a button change values in the script, but it could get hairy. Next time...

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Discovery....

I found a way to do side-scroller beat-em ups. And animated jointed (not skinned) objects with physics will break and still play the animation. Add a command to stop the animation and cool things can happen. Like a rock gollum crumbling as it walked type stuff.

[SubDProxy]

Looks like great stuff! Its amazing what the Unity Engine can do compared to Torque Game Engine. I wish you the best of luck with the game and look forward to its development. We just switched ourselves from Torque to Unity. Good luck.
Glen

[warmiak]

So outside of the hours spent today geo-referencing a *.xyz terrain file and it's corresponding color map (and fixing projections...) I ran a test using what we will be using for in-game graphics, and with my hardware and GUI running 3 animated stat-bars (no radar map yet), it was a steady 28fps.

The main problem with sub-30 fps games on iOS is not with visuals or animations (which still look good even at 20 fps) but rather with jerky input.

[Lamont]

The main problem with sub-30 fps games on iOS is not with visuals or animations (which still look good even at 20 fps) but rather with jerky input.Yes, input was designed around that issue. Ran into it with my first app.

[jasonwestmas]

That looks very fun and challenging, thanks for sharing! Very motivational for my own game dev.

[softdistortion]

This is soo cool. Love the mech concepts.
What is the status on this game?

[Lamont]

Yung finished the training bot animations and I'm lighting the level. We will have something for you all soon :)

[Heldure]

really nice work you have here. what was the concept art created in?

[Lamont]

Yung is using Photoshop.

[Heldure]

looks great, cant wait to see more. reminds me of armored core

[Lamont]

Both Yung and I landed un-related contract gigs. We've been busy :P... but didn't stop me from getting some more lighting done while the other machines were rendering :D!! Yung also got animations done on the first mech. I need to get him to show you guys and gals.

Viewport shot, unlit and using one texture. Still need to do some more touchup on the texture to bring out the edges on the mesh, but it's close to 100%. But should look kick-arse on the iThing. And need to color adjust for the iThing texture compression.

http://www.digitalweaponx.net/burn/burnpromo12162010/icon_traininglevel_01.jpg (http://www.digitalweaponx.net/burn/burnpromo12162010/traininglevel_01.jpg)

Stay tuned. More to come!

[Lamont]

Re-did the textures. The way it looked on the iPhone all splotchy because of compression. And the mechs pop out more against the background.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvfcA-wdw0c

[Tzan]

Looks good!

[jasonwestmas]

Needs some specular attention imo but not bad at all.

[MentalFish]

This is looking good, I like :thumbsup:

[Lamont]

Still going. We moved to UDK since I feel much more comfortable with it, performance is higher and works well with how we are doing the mech damage system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBXJ1A85JmI

[Lamont]

Below is a screenshot from UDK. I WISH the alpha's looked this good on mobile...

http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/14/13834/thumb_620x2000/ScreenShot_025.jpg

Some concepts from Yung. Boss mechs.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94/Velsthinez/sketches12.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94/Velsthinez/sketches13-1.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94/Velsthinez/sketches11.jpg

[Lamont]

Today I got my iTouch 32GB. Holy. Crap. The texture work is really sharp and the screen is awesome, although there is a slight blue tint to everything, where on the iPad it was kinda blown out. The texture compression on the lightmaps are kinda bummer, but I am going to muck with UDK's settings to get the quality up... next week I start the abandoned subway... much larger environment... same amount of texture usage.

Speed-wise, we are just going at a slow pace. We both work (both as teachers and contracting from home), and I got the kids at home with me when I am not working, so development is in between naps, drop-offs, feedings, diapers, when the kids don't want to play, or when they are down for bed. All in all, I am happy with the progress we are making.

So I made a screenshot from the iTouch and made a second so you can see what it looks like in your hands:

iPhone/iTouch "view":

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2851501/iTouchScreen002.jpg

Actual pixels:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2851501/iTouchScreen001.jpg

One thing that sucks is that I can't get true "performance" stats as UDK is pulling power to draw the text. At least I can get a ballpark with the timings.

[Lamont]

Needs some specular attention imo but not bad at all.PP Spec (spec in general) is very expensive on mobile devices. We're thinking of reserving it for special case, like the mechs. When hud, effects and skinned meshes are on screen, we'll need all the milliseconds we can get.

[jasonwestmas]

PP Spec (spec in general) is very expensive on mobile devices. We're thinking of reserving it for special case, like the mechs. When hud, effects and skinned meshes are on screen, we'll need all the milliseconds we can get.

That's an interesting tid-bit. :)

[warmiak]

PP Spec (spec in general) is very expensive on mobile devices. We're thinking of reserving it for special case, like the mechs. When hud, effects and skinned meshes are on screen, we'll need all the milliseconds we can get.

I have clocked my iPad shader pefrormance at about 1/500th that of my desktop graphic card ( Radeon HD 5800) while the Cortex CPU is running only about 1/10th of my desktop CPU .. so yeah, iOS devices, especially at higher resolutions are very underpowered in terms of their GPU fill-rate.

[Lamont]

I wish there was an option to run at 1/2 res sometimes, I'd like to do it and turn on AA and other bells and whistles. The iTouch display makes it almost no need for AA. iPad2 is going to be killer (and must own one when it comes out... wife is going to freak...).

[jasonwestmas]

I personally would develop for a pad device but that's just a matter of taste on my part. I have no idea how many more or less players that would generate for this game.

[Lamont]

I personally would develop for a pad device but that's just a matter of taste on my part. I have no idea how many more or less players that would generate for this game.Yeah, we're doing Pad/Pod/Phone. Everything up until yesterday was tested and viewed on the iPad.

[SubDProxy]

Great stuff! Looks like UDK is working for you. Look forward to seeing the final game.

[darkmatter]

Nice work Lamont!
The big thing I see is that these FPS type games do not play well on the IPhone touch screens and alike. The simpler the game for the touch screen, the more people will enjoy without frustration.

[Lamont]

Nice work Lamont!
The big thing I see is that these FPS type games do not play well on the IPone touch screens and alike. The simpler the game for the touch screen, the more people will enjoy without frustration.I agree, I hope the way I've set up controls will take care of that. FPS's controls on iOS are a pain.

[SubDProxy]

Lamont-my prayers are with you and everyone else in Japan!