What we are up to right now (read this or die).

[Hipshot]

Ok, so I haven't posted in a while and we have been kinda passive when it comes to HW the last few weeks, haven't even looked at the horde of released HW-videos on YT =(

That's because we are doing the following:



We haven't been able to talk about it, cause we needed to have all papers signed and ready, however, it's a game in the Serious Sam-series and it features our brand new engine.
I'll write more details about this in the coming week.

I'm sure a lot of you had been expecting some fancy HW news or such, sorry, not this time! 



Edit: Stickied

[miniluigi008]

I think it's great that you are working on a new game, but it's a little disheartening for me to see that, since you probably won't be putting in as much effort towards Hammerwatch. I signed up for the forums today to say the mac version of the game needs an update badly, especially with the release of Yosemite, this game is running super-slow and I can't fix it.

I'm stuck in the menu, the music plays full speed but the graphic output is lagging and has a terrible frame-rate (probably 1 frame per 20 seconds.) Any suggestions? It ran fine when I first got it, and I already re-installed it to see if that would fix any problems. Unfortunately, it did not.

[Phantom]

Ahhh, Serious Sam, I had a great time playing that with friends on split screen. Good luck on your project

[Dai Tou Zai]

This looks serious

[Heretic]

This is truly exciting!

[Hathunter]

Well, this certainly sounds interesting, having liked both the Serious Sam series and Hammerwatch. Looking forward to it

[Hipshot]

This is going to be a SciFi shooter game, with mixed contemporary weapons like Miniguns and pistols to laserweapons and grenades. We will have a limited leveling up system, that gives you perks, just like in Gradius, or Call of Duty if you so like, here some of them:



I'm sure a lot of people that like hammerwatch for being an fantasy game and so won't like this as much, but for those that like modding this should be much much better - but more complicated.
Trying to move as much as possible away from being hardcoded into the engine itself, into Angelscripts that's placed just like xmls outside the exe should help a lot. For example, how weapons actually work and behave, script elements, weather effects, player behaviour etc. But that's not all, if you have some knowledge in real scripting and coding, you can use the angelscript system to do a lot more than just mod what's already in the game, you could add completely new systems too, I guess you can potentially mod in a hammerwatch into this if you want and have the knowledge.

This is also the engine that will power a Hammerwatch 2 in the future, whenever that will happen. It had to take a backseat when we develop this one, since we are only three people, might add another level designer to the ranks this spring though.

@ miniluigi008, I'm sorry to hear that, I can't really answer that question, if the game ran fine, then something must have happend afterwards, I must assume.

[dingoZero]

One question, it sounds like I will be able to actually write scripts and use them?

Is this true?

[Hipshot]

Myran can answer this better than me, but from what I've heard, he should probably add to this discussion.

[dingoZero]

One of the most frustrating things about the current editor is the sheer number of script nodes it takes to do something which could be done with a few lines of code.

I'm excited to learn more about this.

[Dai Tou Zai]

One of the most frustrating things about the current editor is the sheer number of script nodes it takes to do something which could be done with a few lines of code.

I'm excited to learn more about this.

+5000

[Hipshot]

Yea, I'm aware =) But when we developed HW, it was about getting everything to work and make a game, not much else. I hope we can have fewer entities with more options in them instead!

[Myran]

So a big reason why I'm rewriting the engine from scratch is to get a much more robust system for modding. The plan is for pretty much anything game-specific to be done in scripts, and all those scripts should be possible to modify. We don't yet have the script system in the editor that we had in Hammerwatch, but when we do I plan to implement all the script nodes as modifiable code.


Since I've mostly worked on the engine I don't have a lot of scripts to show, but as an example here is a hit-scan skill used both by player weapons and by some of our enemies:

Code: [Select]

class Hitscan : IAction
{
array<IEffect@>@ m_effects;

int m_rays;

int m_rangeMin;
int m_rangeMax;

float m_spread;
float m_spreadMin;
float m_spreadMax;
int m_spreadTime;
int m_spreadTimeC;
int m_spreadCooldown;

string m_shootFx;
string m_hitFx;
string m_missFx;


Hitscan(SValue& params)
{
@m_effects = LoadEffects(this, params);
m_rays = GetParami(this, params, "rays", false, 1);

SValue@ spread = GetParamd(this, params, "spread", false);
if (spread !is null)
{
m_spreadMin = GetParami(this, spread, "min") * PI / 180.0;
m_spreadMax = GetParami(this, spread, "max") * PI / 180.0;
m_spreadTime = GetParami(this, spread, "time");
m_spreadCooldown = GetParami(this, params, "cooldown", false, 100);
}
else
m_spread = GetParami(this, params, "spread", false) * PI / 180.0;

SValue@ range = GetParamd(this, params, "range", false);
if (range !is null)
{
m_rangeMin = GetParami(this, range, "min");
m_rangeMax = GetParami(this, range, "max");
}
else
{
m_rangeMin = GetParami(this, params, "range");
m_rangeMax = -1;
}

m_shootFx = GetParams(this, params, "shoot-fx", false);
m_hitFx = GetParams(this, params, "hit-fx", false);
m_missFx = GetParams(this, params, "miss-fx", false);
}

bool DoAction(Actor@ owner, vec2 pos, vec2 dir)
{
if (m_spreadTime > 0)
{
m_spread = lerp(m_spreadMin, m_spreadMax, min(1.0, m_spreadTimeC / float(m_spreadTime)));
m_spreadTimeC = min(m_spreadTime, m_spreadTimeC + m_spreadCooldown);
}

if (m_shootFx != "")
PlayEffect(m_shootFx, pos);

dir = normalize(dir);

for (int i = 0; i < m_rays; i++)
{
vec2 shootPos = dir;
if (m_spread > 0)
{
float ang = atan(shootPos.y, shootPos.x) + (randf() - 0.5) * m_spread;
shootPos = vec2(cos(ang), sin(ang));
}

if (m_rangeMin < m_rangeMax)
shootPos *= m_rangeMin + randi(m_rangeMax - m_rangeMin);
else
{
shootPos *= m_rangeMin;
}

shootPos += pos;

RaycastResult res = g_scene.RaycastClosest(pos, shootPos, ~0);
if (res.unit !is null)
{
Actor@ a = cast<Actor>(res.unit.GetScriptBehavior());
if (a !is null && a.Team != owner.Team)
ApplyEffects(m_effects, owner, a, xy(a.m_unit.GetPosition()), dir, 1.0);

if (m_hitFx != "")
PlayEffect(m_hitFx, res.point);
}
else if (m_missFx != "")
PlayEffect(m_missFx, shootPos);
}
return true;
}

void Update(int dt, int cooldown)
{
if (cooldown <= 0)
m_spreadTimeC = 0;
}
}

And here is how we use it in our enemy unit file xmls:

Code: [Select]

<array name="actions">
<dict>
<string name="class">Hitscan</string>

<int name="range">175</int>
<int name="rays">10</int>

<dict name="effect">
<string name="class">Damage</string>
<int name="dmg">8</int>
</dict>

<dict name="spread">
<int name="min">25</int>
<int name="max">50</int>
<int name="time">3000</int>
</dict>


<string name="hit-fx">units/hit_smoke.unit</string>
<string name="miss-fx">units/miss_smoke.unit</string>
</dict>
</array>

It's still early in the development, so this will of course change, but that's what we have right now.

I'm stuck in the menu, the music plays full speed but the graphic output is lagging and has a terrible frame-rate (probably 1 frame per 20 seconds.) Any suggestions? It ran fine when I first got it, and I already re-installed it to see if that would fix any problems. Unfortunately, it did not.

Have you tried turning off the steam overlay in Hammerwatch? It has caused problems for some people on Mac. And have you updated your graphics drivers?

[Heretic]

The modding of course I think is the most exciting aspect for myself I love serious sam too though, so that will be fun I know it!

Can't wait to see what the new editor and scripting is capable of!

[Dai Tou Zai]

I get that you're adding alot more customization but will you guys be simplifying stuff?

Example
Why not just have level change/teleporting as 1 script (Add in the All Players/AOE/LevelExit)? and just connect them with 1 number or ctrl alt