This thread is for the development of the combat system for the games we are developing on star-trek-games.com. It is our intention to develop a combat system that can be converted into a variety of programming languages, so that it may be used in any of the games.

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NOTE: THIS COMBAT SYSTEM IS NO LONGER UNDER DEVELOPMENT

The primary combat system is being created by Cdrwolfe. Here's a screenshot from the latest version:




Some demo videos are up on Youtube.

Demo #1
Demo #2
Demo #3
Demo #4
Pulse Weapon Effect - Part Of The Latest Update
Shield Impact Effect - Part Of The Latest Update

Once the download has completed, open the file with an archiving program such as Winzip (Free trial only) or Winrar (Free). Extract the contents of the downloaded file into a new folder called Demo directly on your "C" Drive. (C:/Demo)


DO NOT UNZIP THE CONTENTS INTO ANY OTHER FOLDER, LOCATION, OR HARD DRIVE AS THE COMBAT SYSTEM WILL NOT WORK.

For example, C:/Program Files/Demo is NOT a valid location. The Demo is also case-sensitive - for example, the game will not recognise the folder if it is put it into C:/demo or C:/DEMO. It MUST be called Demo.

As with Supremacy, no actual game installation is necessary to play the game. So once you've unzipped the demo, open the Demo folder, and click on the filed called "Click me to run Demo" to run the game.

Up-to-date controls for playing the demo are contained in a manual that comes with the game. Look for it in the Demo folder.

• Ship movement is initially very slow. It may take a few minutes before the ships are actually in firing range, so you will need patience!
• The collision detection system is still a work-in-progress. Ships still sometimes fly through each other, or, more often, instead of listening to your orders, they will end up flying in all directions when they get too close to each other!
• The shield and ship explosion effects are new additions and are still under development; the game may occisionally crash when a weapon hits another ships shields or when a ship explodes. These are known issues and we are working on solving them.
• The demo unfortunately suffers from a BOTF-style memory leak - the longer combat lasts for, the slower it will perform. Don't worry, unlike Microprose, we WILL fix this bug!
• The demo doesn't always close correctly. After combat is complete, bring up your task manager (Press Ctrl+Alt+Del) and look for "BOTF2 Demo v2.exe". If the program is still there, you will need to forcibly close it.

It doesn't seem much less developed to me MoE, cdrwolfe's demo .

As i pm'd MOE i'll try and upload a more recent example today, i managed to get into contact with the guy who gave the beam effects textures for the the battlestations star trek demo, the borg cutting beam looks cool

Regards Wolfe

wolfe FTW it seems .

I didn't mean it in that way Mal, I just meant that in Strings' one you control the ship, while in Wolfe's one you control the camera. They both have their own positives and negatives.

okay, it's a more direct control in strings demo, that's right. I'm really curious as to how his first prerelease turns out control-wise. The defiant game was more a testbed game like mstrobel already pointed out .

The recent update the majority was back end stuff, essentially removing any hardcoded elements which shouldn't be hardcoded, i.e you can now set the number of ships, load your own meshes and textures, load your own sounds, load your own effects textures, specify certain rules for these textures, ie whether they are animated, loop etc.
Also set your own environments, suns planets and light positions.

That was a b*tch to do luckily i had 75% of the code able to handle multiple numbers of ships however the resource loader part wasn't there yet.

Added some better effects textures and sounds, some experimental particle effects.

Next comes the boring stuff i'am afraid, first getting true 3D movement, then simple commands, such as follow, circle, patrol, avoid, stand down, defensive, offensive etc

Regards Wolfe

I drool for his shaders, i saw someone post an example of one in another forum and about nearly had a stroke at the code involved .

Regards Wolfe

Anyone know the proper procedure to produce the release candidate using MS Visual Studio C#?

Regards Wolfe

I usually publish Debug builds for pre-releases, as you need the debug symbols in order to get a complete stack trace from any exceptions.

Link to Demo II: Uploading please wait

Download to C:\ as before, i.e c:\Demo\

There is a setup file, double click that and run, should work apparently, not sure if you need to uninstall any previus iterations.

You can try multiple ships, it loads with two nebs, but for some reason while trying out two spheres i kept getting stackoverflow errors and i'am not sure why, though when i tested it with 8 spheres and 6 nebs it ran fine go figure.

Regards Wolfe

p.s Particle damage is a test

Just checked, you've got to uninstall the old version first - simply deleting the folder isn't enough. If you try to install the new version it just tells you that "You cannot start BOTFII Demo from this location because it is already installed from a different location".

The installation crashed the same as it did last time, but the program still works lol.

I noticed a few things, Wolfe:

• The textures on the Nebula are backwards. The registry on the side of the ship are back-to-front.
• There's no info in either of the readme files on how exactly you change the ships.
• The sphere is still missing some sections.

There are some positive points though:

• Weapons - especially beams - no longer fire through the ships.
• Lighting from weapons effects seems to be improved.

Good work, Wolfe. I've updated the original download link and hosted it on sharepoint instead of rapidshare. I made a folder especially for your demos, and we can do the ame for Strings.

I can't get it to work. it doesn't create me any exe in the release folder and I get the same error like MoE. What did you do to make it run anyway?

Ok, I downloaded the file, opened it with Winrar, then clicked on the file called "Setup.exe". (I did NOT unzip it - it unzips itself during file extraction/installation. Set it to show the files in the archive rarher than let the extraction wizard run)

This started the installation process, and some files were extracted. It then started checking the files, and after a minute or so a black MS-DOS type screen came up with irrlicht on it and the version number. After about 30 seconds I got the "An error has occured. Please tell Microsoft" screen, just like it did last time. But I didn't bother sending the error report, I just opened up the Demo folder (C:/Demo), then opened the Release folder (C:/Demo/Release), then clicked on the file called BOTFII Demo.exe and it loaded.

doesn't work with me. Program quits right after finishing setup.exe. And there is no exe in the release folder. wolfe, could you give me a step-by-step instruction? btw. the setup.exe I didn't launch inthe first demo anyway. I just started the exe and it worked. The NERV->...ms start menu entry doesn't help either. Once it led to a weird scrambling of my whole display while trying to load something. but that wasn't reproducable.

What do you mean by "it quits after finishing setup.exe"? Do you mean that there is no folder called Demo? Or the game won't load?

It's odd that there's nothing in your release folder. This is what my folder looks like:



Are ALL of the files missing, or specific ones? I've checked the sharepoint link and there's nothing wrong there, so it must be crashing before the installation is complete.

all of them are missing. it still says *.deploy in the folders just as in the rar archive. setup.exe runs for 2 seconds and quits leaving no file.

could you zip your files up for download moe? maybe they work with my computer too.

I am just happy to see work on the combat engines is finally taking place.

Can't get it working here either. Wolfe, I recommend not using ClickOnce deployment if you can avoid it for now. It installs into an application cache, and if your demo is path dependent, that will cause some problems. I recommend just zipping up the build output folder (bin\Debug or bin\Release).

Uploading now, sorry for any confusion, has anyone who has got it to run seen it crash at all?

Regards Wolfe

Link to uploaded demo with bin/debug folder and a shortcut to run

http://rapidshare.com/files/84294333/DemoII.rar.html

Sorry for it being rapidshare if anyone can't download it due to restrictions do tell me.

Regards Wolfe

works now.

2 bugs:



and if you have the route selection ("Z") pressed and then close your window by clicking on the "X" up right, then XP crashes irrevocably .

rest looks outstanding! well the sun could be a little shinier and I noticed, my ships seem to get dark randomly so there must be something still wrong with the lighting.

Wierd very wierd, do the beams just fire offset from the actual ships?

I'll try and replicate the z move and xp die now bug

Regards Wolfe

they always fire from above (z + 10 meters I guess ).

Works for me now, but any of the mouse input operations cause an AccessViolationException. Probably has something to do with the fact that I'm running it on my laptop at work. I imagine it will work fine on my desktop.

Would you stop using Rapidshare, Wolfe?! I told you, I Made A Folder For You on sharepoint!

I uploaded the latest version to sharepoint for you - but I renamed it to DemoIII.rar so that people know it's a new version. I also updated the download link in my original post.

I uninstalled the last version, and found it hadn't actually deleted the files from the previous installation, so I manually deleted those. I then loaded up the rar...and was confused - and pleased - that there was no installation file this time. I just unzipped it, loaded the game...and WOAH!

This is one hell of an improvement, Wolfe! I'm not getting any of the problems that the other guys have mentioned so far - the weapons are working perfectly, the ships are showing damage...just WOAH!

I noticed that the texture problem is still there though - and it's the entire ship now. I'm not sure if it was like this previously, but the registry on the top of the ship is also back-to-front. I'm pretty sure it's the model itself though - I've seen this happen plenty of times on models, irrelevant of the combat engine, so it is definitely the model that is at fault.

After looking closely, I did notice the weapons were a bit off, but that's the same issue as with the first version, (Hardpoints starting above the hull instead of in/on the hull) not the completely-away-from-the-ship issue that Mal is suffering from. I'm also having trouble controlling two ships - sometimes, double-clicking on a ship does nothing, especially if the models are too far apart. It also seems that pressing X doesn't always stop you controlling the movement of the ship currently selected - a few time when I tried selecting another ship I ended up issuing movement orders to the current ship instead.

Overall though, major improvement. Now Matress can have fun with tactics. Double broadside!

strange. me and flocke from our german forum still get these weird "phantom firings" . anyway wolfe, do you plan to make a dedicated selfrotating botf ship viewer too? Might be able to directly integrate it into the game if that tutorial you linked is also working with mfc..

If you could make one, it would be really useful if Mike could integrate it into the trekpedia, so the ships would rotate like they did in BOTF. It would also mean we wouldn't need to make images of every one of the ships and stations either then, which in the long run may mean fewer files to load, and a faster game - not to mention a game with even more eye-candy to boot.

looking at that screenie i see only 29 fps, given there are only 3 ships on screen and the plane for the nebula i have to ask why is it running so slowly? have you locked it in at 29fps? or are those meshs 50k polys apiece? think about it, if those models are only a few thousand polys, imagine how slowly your engine will go with a few dozen, or a few hundred ships on the go.

If you need any phaser or torp textures let me know, btw im not sure direct control of the defiant is very botf as basically you shouldnt be able to move or fire urself but have manouvers that go over in turns like in botf, which is a big like to me i like botf as its not direct control lol. Its more trek that way.

Very nice lookin demos tho, i remember jig having massive problems getting the phasers not to go through ships. Actually jig how is your game coming along, iirc you had a nice demo last time i played which was ages ago and am keep to see how you have been getting along.

Btw 1 thing i crave that is implimented, battle damage i.e phaser burns, also illuminated lights and flickering nacelle glows.

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Hmm i just dled the demo III and it runs but nothing works no keys no mouse stuff nowt, any help?

Nvm i restarted and it worked. Very nice there wolfe, apart from some flickering shadows probs and the phasers kinda go into the hull instead of on the surface and produce some hit effects its rather good.

Wouldnt mind seeing the ships use the arrow keys or somit tho for movement.

About fps jig, runs great on my comp