Capabilities of the engine

Capabilities of the engine

Postby Flascher » 14 Aug 2010, 22:08

Hello all! :) I'm (obviously) new here, and I loved the Cube 2 Engine. I saw someone on quadropolis.us point to this, I watched the video and I was instantly intrigued. Whoever knew the Cube 2 Engine had so much potential?

But that potential is something I'm also here to question about.

First, let me explain my idea for my game.

I plan to make a zombie survival game, complete with sandbox elements and (hopefully) randomly generated sections of map. In this game you will walk around during the day (less zombies present) and you can collect weapons, ammo, scrap metal for building, wood, and other building materials. Then, as it turns to night time, the zombies will converge upon your position and you must do your best to survive the horde.

You can choose anywhere to settle, with anyone you'd like. You can barricade up any old house you find, build walls around a few houses for a sort of village, etc. Walls will have HP all depending on what material they are built of, and will take damage according to the strength of the zombie (will explain a bit more later.) And will slowly degrade over time if not repaired with more of that material.

Zombie strength and mob sizes will vary according to amount of walls/civilization in that area. Along with the availability of other weapons, ammo, and building material. As you move farther away from the central spawn point, you will encounter stronger zombies in greater numbers.

Now, this is where my question comes in. With the Intensity Engine is it possible to:

- Generate a random map (with saved objects like houses, built in the games in-game editor, they would be pre-defined but would spawn in different orders down streets, if this makes sense) as you reach the edge of one map

- Place objects freely, for instance have a wooden framework for a wall, and place sheets of scrap metal across the framework. Click, and the scrap metal will be placed there until destroyed by a zombie.

- Incorporate a dynamic lighting system (for night and day)

I am serious about programming this (I know a basic amount of C++ and Java, but its just a matter of learning some Javascript syntax), but I do not know anyone who knows how to make 3D models or animate them. I have a friend that would be willing to texture though. School does start soon, so my time will start to be cut short between High School and a job, but I will do my best to keep up on this project. If at any time I feel I cannot complete this project, I will put the source up for others to hopefully finish my work.
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Re: Capabilities of the engine

Postby kripken » 15 Aug 2010, 04:00

Most of that can already be done, at least partially, except for dynamic lighting - which would be very hard to add. The other stuff is already partially implemented, but not necessarily polished or complete - might need additional work as well, depending on what specifically you want (for example, how realistic to make the physics for objects).

Btw, there seems to be more effort going into 'CubeCreate', a fork of this engine (mainly since they have more time to work on that than I do on Syntensity these days ;) ), so you might want to check that out as well.
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Re: Capabilities of the engine

Postby TheAncientGoat » 15 Aug 2010, 07:39

Hey Flashcer, welcome to the forums :) And whoa Kripken, nice to see you posting again :D

Anyhow, I've got some info for you

a) http://www.reddit.com/r/projectzombit/ : is a project to make a game very much like you're suggesting. I got a couple of people on there convinced that using syntensity is a good idea.

b) I've played around with "random generation" quite a bit, along with another coder from Team Cthulhu. Here's a few screens of the map importer Fur and I got running: http://blog.plubble.com/?p=241 The problem here is that it is really slow, but that might just be us not having looked at the editing process in enough detail.

c) Placing objects will be really easily done, the only problem would be orientation, but even that shouldn't be /too/ hard to get sorted out. We don't have a direct existing example to do something like that, but it shouldn't be really brain racking.

d) We already have a night and day system :D However, there isn't "real" dynamic lighting, which is a bit of a problem. Like kripken said, the CubeCreate team (forum and irc = #cubecreate on freenode.net) are working on things like that to a fork of Syntensity.

Hope this helps answer your questions and inspires you to get working!
c)
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Re: Capabilities of the engine

Postby Julius » 15 Aug 2010, 11:39

Not too sound overly pessimistic... but your idea is way too ambitious. Even with a engine like Valve's Source which already does more or less everything you want by default, it would take a skilled programmer and a team of artists to make the game you are imagining.
And if you are already now saying you might be short on time... forget about it.

Look for an existing project which you like and contribute a bit to that :)
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