Finally Releasing a Map

Gyro Battle version Alpha 1
Download Here

Full physics engine based dogfight game. Not much else to say. This is a protected version of the map, feel free to host it as much as you want if you enjoy it.

Comments are welcome, as always.

If enough people like it, and you think you'll be able to maintain it, I'll give you your own section for comments/suggestions/bug reports etc. Basically what I did with Zync's Metal & Magic.

We'll see how people respond.

P.S. I have no time to play it now, hopefully I'll be able to later on.

Is that the Kobold map you were working on before? Like in a real map form?

Sortof, the ground unit physics are still in place, but there are no ground units. I could come up with some intricate gameplay mechanic to use both ground and flying units, but I wanted to finally get something playable out. Its very simple with a kill/death multiboard and just a deathmatch mode.

Its basically the kobold map upgraded.

I already have plans for an item system and a few extra projectile weapon types. As well as a few possible ideas for gameplay objectives/alternate modes

Already played this yesterday, and it's pretty amazing.

I will play it eventually.

Great, kobolds had a lot of potential, I will play this as soon as my IP Ban ends, wich is in 3 weeks, I think.

Play it offline in single player mode if you have to. Trust me this system pyth built here has many applications. Its cool to look at when you have ascended up into the air.

the aquisition and homing system also worked very well, especially considering the differences in altitude.

Well yeah, its just the arc-cosine of the unitized dot products of facing vectors and vectors between objects. I'm working more on the homing system because its a little different because I use it to find the BEST target with the lowest distance and angle difference. But I would like to be able to send a max angle difference along for the ride so I can tweak different homing missile types to require more accuracy to get them to lock on and do more damage or move faster etc in the future.

Pythagoras wrote:

Well yeah, its just the arc-cosine of the unitized dot products of facing vectors and vectors between objects. I'm working more on the homing system because its a little different because I use it to find the BEST target with the lowest distance and angle difference. But I would like to be able to send a max angle difference along for the ride so I can tweak different homing missile types to require more accuracy to get them to lock on and do more damage or move faster etc in the future.

You know you're a nerd when: You understand the first sentence of Pyth's post. I am a nerd (btw, being a programmer doesn't count)

I understood the basic ideea of the 1s sentence, and i fully understood the rest. does that make me a nerd? because i don't enjoy school such as the sterotype would lead you to belive.

That is very cool. Very original, potential for great gameplay, simply amazing.

I do have 2 questions:
1) When you order your unit to move to a location, it overshoots it and turns around, and wobbles back and forth. I think the idea is great! However, if you then Ascend or Descend, you halt your horizontal movement. Is that on purpose? Or an oversight?
2) How are you going to control the camera? I just fooled around with it by myself, not with anyone else, but I already found it hard to keep a good sight on my unit, so I was just wondering.

Overall though, fantastic!

Thanks

The way I manage movement is by applying acceleration based on the unit's current orders as of the time of engine iteration. The magnitude of the force applied is equal to the "speed" quantity that the object is assigned. With flying units I also chose to allow 1% of gravity to apply at all times. I don't necessarily stop horizontal movement, your horizontal velocity only deteriorates due to a friction factor while ascending and descending. Since you stopped applying a horizontal force, this deterioration is far more notable.

In short, I felt it would give more control to the player if movement, ascent and descent were completely separate because it is difficult to arbitrarily decide to keep the player moving in their current facing direction while moving vertically, but it is an option I could consider.

For ground units I have them move towards the location you clicked regardless of their facing angle, for flying I chose to use their facing angle to apply the movement direction which allows it to control more like a vehicle.

I've considered locking the camera to the player's gyrocopter. Personally when i first implemented the cam system i found it difficult to keep track of my unit, but I didn't want to lock the camera to a unit because in maps I've played in the past where that occurs it felt very restrictive. After playing with it and testing it over a period of a couple weeks, I've grown more used to the camera and it doesn't bother me as much anymore. I hope this experience translates to the audience as well.

You could always enable multiple camera options.

Sweet game Pyth. It does need the mana costs implemented to reduce spamfestness though.

I was thinking about doing an ammunition system separate from mana, with mana being used as gyrocopter fuel, with two teams trying to bomb the enemy's base or some such objective.

I just played the game a few hours ago, and if when I played kobolds I tought it was awesome and you were a great coder, now I bow before your skills at coding.

Keep it up, the whole project's quality deserves it.

P.S.: Good luck and Have fun on your cruise, Pyth.