Übergame FPS

[Duion]

Übergame is a project I just started myself, since I always wanted a free and a little more realistic first person shooter and something where I can live out my passion for level design. I did not want a fixed storyline, my plan was more to add more gamemodes from time to time.

Collaboration: What is mostly missing is character related things, character system, animations, weapons and sounds in general, otherwise my idea was to create a variety of artwork, so others can use the editor to easily create new levels by just drag and drop objects. In general my idea was to have on person for each discipline, because I do not like interfering so much, because this can make things complicated.

License: Art will all be released as CC0 and the code/scripts will stay MIT license.

More can be found on moddb: http://www.moddb.com/games/uebergame
Übergame is now available on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/391780

Game Github repository: https://github.com/Duion/Uebergame
Engine Github repository: https://github.com/Duion/Torque3D

Artwork base material and source files can be found under: http://www.duion.com/art/main

My old trailers of my first steps can still be found on my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Duionium
But I scraped them and started from scratch, since I was not satisfied with the quality of my first design.

[farcodev]

Great Job

[qubodup]

Hello, I like the video too.

It feels weird to see a git repo being used for binary distribution.

I hope you create a source code repository soon. Without the source being available, there's no sense for the project to be on this forum.

Where can I find credits and/or licensing information for sounds (and music, if there is any)?

[Julius]

Yes, that media which comes with the Tourque3D examples, is it also licensed MIT?

[Duion]

The source is the same as original Torque3D, I could upload it again, but this would not make much sense also. Another solution would be to upload the whole thing, but it is 1,6gb at the moment and will grow later. The game itself can be changed through the script files, they could be compiled also, but it is easier to work with them. I will think about a solution, but I am all new to these things. Problem is, the guy who does the scripts cannot handle such large repos with git, cause of unstable internet and I don't want to lock him out.

There is not much media that comes with Torque, just some example files for everything, you cannot do anything real with it. I deleted most of them in my project and added mine. Media is done by me and license is in the repo, CC-BY-SA 3.0.

[charlie]

Just to extend Qubodup's point, I think you should probably add a paragraph at the top just explaining that this is a project built using Torque3D, which itself is MIT licensed (link to Torque3D). At the moment, this won't be clear to somebody unless they read the entire thread.

[Duion]

Ok did this, but I try to find a better update system, just in case the source is needed some time.

[CruzR]

@Duion:
I'd probably create two git repos: One fork of the main Torque3D repo without your project and one repo with only your project. I'd then add your project's repo as a submodule to the Torque3D repo. This way, one can either check out only your project or all of Torque3D including your project.

[Duion]

Sounds good and now explain it for the dummies...

I should have added, that I need help with working with github, because the documentation is horrible.

Initially I tried something similar, check out the main folder without the project and then checkout the project only again, but git gave me an error and refused me to do that, since it is part of the other full project and the full project he thinks is identical to the original Torque3D. Disadvantage would have been that I would need to update my project with the newest changes locally manually.

So if here is anyone who knows how to work with git and wants to take time to explain it to a newbie, then contact me please.

[Evropi]

Sounds good and now explain it for the dummies...

I should have added, that I need help with working with github, because the documentation is horrible.

Initially I tried something similar, check out the main folder without the project and then checkout the project only again, but git gave me an error and refused me to do that, since it is part of the other full project and the full project he thinks is identical to the original Torque3D. Disadvantage would have been that I would need to update my project with the newest changes locally manually.

So if here is anyone who knows how to work with git and wants to take time to explain it to a newbie, then contact me please.

Git is awful. I wish Mercurial was more popular than git, but we'll probably never see that day.

Are you using the Windows client for GitHub? That is, not the standard git one, the Windows-specific GUI? If you're using that, it's completely broken. It didn't even let me commit to my local repository.

Also, I don't know the commands, but basically git automatically checks for identical files. If an identical file is used across several branches for instance, then it will just make a pointer to the identical file without creating a copy. That's one of its conveniences actually. Now you just need to find out how to override it.

[Duion]

Yes, I am using this Windows-specific-GUI from the Github website. So this one is broken? Maybe that's why there are almost no tutorials out there for that one. OK, cloning, syncing and pushing goes very easy with this, but after that you are on your own...
So what to use then?

[CruzR]

You can find the IMHO best git documentation at http://git-scm.com. The man pages aren't too bad either.

Basicly, git lets you add other repos as submodules. The files in these submodules are not kept in your repo; only the url of the submodule and a reference to the commit you've checked out is kept. You can add a submodule with

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

git submodule add <url> <path>

I'd suggest that you just take the subdirectory in your Torque3D directory tree where your project files are located, e.g 'My Projects/Übergame', and create a new repo from scratch for this directory. Then you fork the official Torque3D repo (you can just use the github web interface for this) and use the aforementioned command to add your project's repo to the Torque repo as a submodule. Be sure to use the correct path so that the submodule resides in the same place where you'd expect the project directory, e.g. 'My Projects/Übergame'.

The only thing you'll have to remember is that whenever you create a fresh clone of your Torque repo, you'll have to execute

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

git submodule init

and

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

git submodule update

.

You can find are more detailed explanation of git submodules here: http://git-scm.org/book/Git-Tools-Submodules

EDIT: This explanation is for the standard git commandline program. You'll need to see if the Github Windows client allows you to directly execute git commands; if not, you'll have to download standard git.

[Duion]

Yes, you can open a shell in the Windows Git client.

For now I forked the official Torque3D and cloned it to my computer, my "Übergame" repo is already a new independend repo. To add my "Üebergame" to official Torque3D cloned fork, I would have to do what? Move it to "My Projects" on my harddrive or straight with "gib submodule add C:\Übergame" ?
The thing is it needs to be under /My Projects because the compiler output will go there.

[CruzR]

From the Torque repo, running

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

git submodule add git://github.com/Duion/Uebergame.git 'My Projects/Übergame'

should do the job.

[Duion]

It seems to be much simpler, no need for submodules and stuff, just had to use the console and it worked, it was the windows-git-client, that refused me to check out my folder from within another repo as an own repo.
But I had to delete the old and create a new, because I missed a folder with the project files needed for compiling.
So workflow should now be: Get "Torque3D", get "Uebergame" and place "Uebergame" into the "My Projects" folder and for compiling you load the Uebergame.sln file from the build files/visualstudio directory. But it is not necessary, at the moment engine changes are not very likely to happen.

I hope all works now.

[Duion]

I'm thinking of moving the thing to sourceforge, since you have more storage and you can make releasebuilds there for others to download, that's what I initially wanted. Github seams not to be suited for that and hosting large amounts of media files.

[Duion]

Things seemed to be simple until I tried to put them under git, now I noticed that git overrides all the file creation dates to the date the file is copied from git, this messes up Torque, because he thinks new date=new file and he reloads it into the engine, this results in having different files and wanting git to commit them all every time.
Will have to find a solution for this first to be able to work with this on git.

[Evropi]

Things seemed to be simple until I tried to put them under git, now I noticed that git overrides all the file creation dates to the date the file is copied from git, this messes up Torque, because he thinks new date=new file and he reloads it into the engine, this results in having different files and wanting git to commit them all every time.
Will have to find a solution for this first to be able to work with this on git.

Interesting. This is probably one of the reasons so many IDEs have git plugins (apart from the convenience). You should definitely submit a feature request for git integration with Torque.

[Duion]

This solution would likely take some time to realise, if someone would do that. I'm impatient, I want a fast solution, so maybe a repo just for code and I merge the artwork in by hand for an alpha release.

Torque automatically updates the files if they have been touched by another program, for example you model something, hit save and load in into the engine, then while in the engine you change the model and hit save again, it gets updated the same time ingame, resulting in changed files and the same seems to happen if github touches them, maybe I will give the files write protection.

[Julius]

Quick question: You seem to have made great progress on the level art side of things, how confident are you in regards to the script/code side? E.g. is the basic gameplay already there and you can easily expand on it yourself?

P.S.: Do you have a working Blender -> Collada -> Torque3d DTS exporting pipeline working, and could give me some tips regarding that?
Edit: Ok found this:
http://youtu.be/CYGfzPxlMAY
http://youtu.be/k04FvCWP-q0
What are you using for your art pipeline?

Also: that existing playermodel (and HUD_hands) that comes with Torque3D, what license is it under and could the animations be re-used somehow (e.g. importing a collada file or so)?
Edit2: At least the playermodel and rig seems to import fine with the DAE in Blender... I am getting importing errors on the anims and hud_hands though, and the anims for the hud_hands might be missing from the repo. But I guess that is a good start as the animations seem to be quite nice and by retargeting them to a nice Blender rig they could be a great staring point for FPS animations for many other games too.

[Duion]

Since my initially planned way of working on this did not turn out so well, I decided to pack up my artwork so far into packs and release it under a more liberal license for the public use, I think I will also change to CC-BY license totally, CC-BY-SA is just too complicated and I don't want restrictions also, if I use others work.

I uploaded it to opengameart, if you are interested:

http://opengameart.org/content/uberpack-1 and http://opengameart.org/content/konserian-highlands-set

[Duion]

Short update, in the meantime I have trashed the project and recently I have restarted it, redoing it from scratch.

If you want to stay up to date you can visit the project page on moddb: http://www.moddb.com/games/uebergame

Also I hope to get an alpha version out soon.

[DGMurdockIII]

look at the Grit Game Engine it would be a good fit for your game http://www.gritengine.com/

The Grit Game Engine is a community project to build a free game engine (and pipeline tool-chain) for implementing open world 3D games, such as the those in the GTA series, Saints Row, Crysis, Fallout 3, Just Cause 2, Mafia 2, Burnout, etc. Anyone can use the engine as a foundation for their game, and anyone can read / modify / integrate the source code.

While there are many open source game engines, ours is the only one that is being optimized for open world games. We support large maps (e.g. more than 30 square km, 50000 objects) with considerable diversity in geometry and textures, because game objects and scenery consume negligible memory / CPU resources when out of visual range. We also use deferred shading, which is essential for rendering the abundance of light sources that are needed in open world scenes.

[Duion]

I spend quite a lot of time and effort into this project and the engine now, so I will likely not change it now. I also knew about the gritengine for some time now.

[Duion]

Some things have happened, I released a first alpha test version and I started a funding campaign using Patreon and Gratipay, check out http://www.moddb.com/games/uebergame for that.

Currently I'm trying to find a way to fund the game as a free open source project, so it can become more then a small hobby project. Many open source projects fail because of lack of people and time, so I think there needs to be another way of handling it than people doing it in their free time, since developing a realistic 3D-game is far too time and cost intensive for that.
I know this community is not very big, but maybe there are some people who want to support such a project, everything helps.