(SSGX Origins) Let's make a Wipeout game! This time for real!

[vaakneri]

The demo has no airbrake buttons set for the keyboard by default, they have to be set manually.

[Dusk118]

They are the same buttons as the Sideshift buttons. They've just been labelled differently.

[vaakneri]

There were no sideshift buttons set when I first played it, I had to edit the input settings for sideshift and airbrakes to work.

[TypeProton]

Trying not to forget WipeoutZone folks over here after we've moved to Facebook.
Not completed yet! Still missing Alphard. I'll have to ask Zero for more inspiration. P: Also Docfo4r needs to decide which Nacza logo to use.


edit: Welp, I forgot Draco Cavernae (Raptor 1 did the logo himself) and Shukoto. I haven't think of that yet.

[docfo4r]

Awesome logos so far. Especially like Hubian since that blue object somehow resembles the track for me, which is almost too big for the whole scene since it has these difficult corners^^

And now it's already decided to take the bird logo for Nazca Remains. Can't wait to see Alphard, too

[Darkdrium777]

Hope you're ready for some feedback.

1. Logos should be the same size, or very nearly.
This will help with UI design later on as you won't have a jigsaw puzzle of logos to try and make fit in a uniform grid without losing details. I can already say with certainty that if you go for a typical square layout in the UI, you will lose detail on 4 of those as they're either taller than wide or the opposite.

2. Some of them have a lot going on, while others have nothing at all.
I'd say Cassandra seems to be the best out of the lot. The color choice is a little cliche (orange/purple) however it's still representative of something. The name isn't but the logo invokes a specific section of the track, so that's good.
Porto Kora is a little iffy. The bird I remember (I assume that's a bird of course), but the orange stripe as the track seems a little bland. Perhaps a better representation of a setpiece of the track could be made. If it's supposed to be the jump, see how SL did it with Chengou Project (hint, the star at the end of the tip).
I haven't seen Basin so I can't comment, but Park looks like building/biosphere/building to me. Hill is a giant arrow poiting up so I guess the perspective is a little wrong on that. It also seems for Hill that the buildings from the Park logo are reused though shown at a different angle, so this looks like they are setpieces but I have no idea.
Bay has mountains and a sort of typhoon thing? It doesn't really look like a bay IMO, and the thing jutting out is too tall as said in 1 and I don't get what it's supposed to be.
Hubian I'm guessing will be with Asian traditional architecture, so if that's the case that part is working. I don't really like the horrible gradient oval though.
Nazca, nothing goes on here. It's a line drawing and it's kind of boring. Sure that immediately says Nazca to me, but that's it. Involve some of the background architecture in the logo to make it a bit more interesting.

Here I'll go through the WipEout HD logos in comparison:
Vineta - Obviously the numerous hotel buildings right by the sides of the track.
Moa Therma - Waves of the sea, as it's the only track going that far over it.
Anulpha - I can't quite place that one, looks as if it's a sort of tower going up in the sky with a dome around it. There is one on the track but you don't quite get to see it in it's entirety during normal gameplay.
Sebenco - Mountains. Snow. Enough said.
Chengou - As I said, the last jump on forward before the last chicane. The half sphere looks to be used as the sky there. The star is for emphasis on a trajectory.
Sol - Looks to be like a solar eclipse. Solar/Sol, the connection is made there but reinforced through the fact that from the ground the track itself eclipses a part of the sunlight.
Metropia - Very tall buildings seen from ground level. The sphere is again the sky.
Ubermall - This is a representation of the huge arches there are over the track. First, arches over the start/finish lines, also the gigantic archways leading to the outside/inside of the different buildings.
Modesto - The cable bridge.
Amphiseum - I have no idea.
Tech de Ra - I think it's supposed to be a cross section of the track with the void around it (ie going through the canyon where the walls open up) but I don't have any other ideas.
Talons Junction - The loop.
Syncopia - Seems to be about the four quick jumps.
Corridon 12 - The butterfly structure. The explosion is telling you that you explode there if you keep going straight.
Pro Tozo - Beats me.
Mallavol - Same.

3. Fonts.
God, the fonts, some of them are just straight up bad. Legibility is something you want here. Fix the font kerning too where it needs it, like the k in kealakekua, park hill and hubian.
I can't read kekalekua whatever it is at a glance.
Porto Kora I know starts with a P but it may as well start with a stylized N for some.
Basin shouldn't be inconsistent. Park and Hills bothers me when it's side by side like that. You guys thought of naming one Park and one Hill? As in Basin Park and Basin Hill? Even then, a little unoriginal IMO :/
Nazca Remains is straight up misaligned (look at the ending of the words) and the fonts don't match each other well, you have a very square font for Nazca and a round font for Remains, so it looks weird.
I feel that Cassandra is leaning to the left by quite a bit.
Hubian is a little plain, for something I'd say should fit with the Asian theme. I like the dot on the i though. I'd like to see at least a version where u, i and n get the little tail like the a does right now, to give it a more calligraphic impression while still being an obviously printed character.

4. Spell check your stuff. Amatuer should not pass.

5. On the UI I'd just remove all of those custom fonts anyways, have just the logo and the track name show up with whatever general purpose UI font you have selected.

[TypeProton]

Wow. Thank you for your feedback!

- The orange stripe in Porto Kora is supposed to resemble a crane (one that move stuff) at the port near starting line if I remember correctly.
- The oval in Hubian's logo means the huge lake in the middle of the track.
- As for the K-Bay, Dreadofmondays requested something representing a sweeping curve which present on track to be added into the logo. Looks like I didn't do good enough in this case. In my original idea it was thunder striking down the mountains seeing that it is a combat-friendly track as stated in backstory. Also I use mountain because I looked up Kealakekua Bay in Wikipedia. Might fix that.
- Nazca still WIP. Me and Docfo4r are thinking about adding some more color into it.

For other things I'll see what I can do with them.
PS: Did anyone have Wipeout HD/Fury tracks logo picture for references?

[docfo4r]

Wow, now that was a feedback, Darkdrium.

I agree with you in certain things. Maybe the Basin Park logo looks somehow like a helmet with horns for me due to the round shape of the ground layers. And K-Bay looks like it has an colorized tornado^^ But Bay's can also have a huge cliff and I think dreads is aiming for that on his track, so the hills are ok with me in the logo.
Yeah, NR is still the first concept. And I know not all track logos are done anyways. Alphard is missing, for example.

Did you see the menu before? As far as I know, the track logo get's displayed over the blue hologram of the track. So it doesn't need to have an exact square. In fact, making every logo exactly the same size and shape would make it a little boring to look at and limits the design progress. You were referring to the WO logos in the cell itself, right? Well I don't think we would even use that for track selection. More likely there will be the name of the track displayed like you can see in the first official demo. I think squeezing these logos down to fit a tiny cell would look like a mess regarding the logos have color while the WO looks are just white.

Oh by the way...

Moa Therma - Waves of the sea, as it's the only track going that far over it.

I always thought about that magstrip-wave-section when looking at the logo

[dreadofmondays]

EDIT - Link removed, build not intended for release

[Xpand]

Nope, don't download that one, it's lacking a crapload of things... Please wait a bit.

[docfo4r]

The physics system is not right on that one. This build was meant to be a short test to continue working on physics, it's not well configurated to represent SSGX gameplay. zero3growlithe is working on a new build already which should be done soon, so please wait and download the upcoming one instead.

[zero3growlithe]

Newest version of SSGX for testing purposes: (no menu, one ship, one track, no AI)
http://www.mediafire.com/?xqqt2dd0e758rg5

Includes:
- lightmap affecting
- airbreaks animation and independent work
- physics tweaks
- new smoother camera
- cannon and bullet holes
- updated Draco Cavernae track
- some other fixes and bug fixes
Controls: "d"f" - airbreaks/sideshift/break, "c" - change camera, "x" - accelerate, "v" - shot cannon, "b" - boost, "n" - rockets. (works with PS3 controller using DS3Tool, other controllers not tested)
Enjoy.

[Rotational_aspect]

Looks very, very polished! The movement of the ship is spot on, but the weapons need work.

The cannon shots sometimes do not register on walls (do you use a ray to see what the bullets hit, or is it based on physical contact? If its the latter, then the bullets may be travelling too fast to register. But I have to ask, going at Phantom speed, do you need to see bullet holes?)

The rocket trails look at bit odd. I would expect something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CRF53SNzHA (about 1:09) and smoke trails....but this is more personal opinion so you can have it like you want!

But great job! I just wish my project looks as good when I finish it!

[SaturnReturn]

I downloaded it and have to say, it's really addictive. >.< I really like sideshifting off the top of the jump and then barrel rolling and almost landing it properly. Much fun. The only thing I didn't like was the sound effects when pressing and lifting off the accelerator. They were a bit grating. But overall this is really cool.

[Hellfire_WZ]

This is starting to look the bollocks, seriously! The physics are really coming together nicely, it only took me a couple of laps before I got the hang of things. Great job!

[Darkdrium777]

- The orange stripe in Porto Kora is supposed to resemble a crane (one that move stuff) at the port near starting line if I remember correctly.

Oh okay. Maybe add something to make it look a bit more like a crane, maybe the cabin? (just a small rectangle at the bottom or something)

- The oval in Hubian's logo means the huge lake in the middle of the track.

The oval is okay, I was talking about the gradient. That's a bit basic and bad IMO. If you compare with pretty much all the other gradients you have, this one looks a bit worse with the origin point being centered right in the middle of the oval. The left and right end points are especially bad because they are much darker than the rest.

- As for the K-Bay, Dreadofmondays requested something representing a sweeping curve which present on track to be added into the logo. Looks like I didn't do good enough in this case. In my original idea it was thunder striking down the mountains seeing that it is a combat-friendly track as stated in backstory. Also I use mountain because I looked up Kealakekua Bay in Wikipedia. Might fix that.

By all means if there's supposed to be mountains keep them. I have no idea what the track looks like. But yeah the thunder or tornado needs a bit of work IMO.

PS: Did anyone have Wipeout HD/Fury tracks logo picture for references?

They are all on the website, under tracks.

You were referring to the WO logos in the cell itself, right? Well I don't think we would even use that for track selection.

Yea, thought you were going for something similar. I still think it will be a bit of an idea to make the tall logos a bit less tall since we use widescreen monitors now which may allow for wider logos. Taller ones are a bit weird though it of course depends on how the UI looks. I haven't seen it so I was just commenting on the logo.

I always thought about that magstrip-wave-section when looking at the logo

Yes that's probably it.

[JABBERJAW]

Where is the latest download?

A couple questions

1) is pitch control in yet, meaning nose up down when the ship is on the track, and up down control in the air?

2) is there analog, or joystick control for the ships. I really want to test my negcon on this ( element 42s design).

3). Also, at a later date, maybe putting in control options such as
A) steering sensitivity on analog sticks
B) dead zone adjustments
C) custom controls ( you may have this already?)

[Darkdrium777]

I tried recording a video of me playing the game to give some feedback but my voice really sucks and doesn't come out with the microphone I have. All will be in text because damnit.

First things first, the launcher. There are a couple of issues with it, the first one being that there's absolutely zero documentation with regards to what the graphics presets do and the controls are not explained either. I had some troubles setting up controls specifically because what's the difference between Horizontal +, Horizontal -, Horizontal? I think it should be more clearly explained. I didn't have issues with the graphics because I know my GPU's awesome (so I run on the Awesome! level) but what about lower end folks? I think you need to provide more granular control over each option like texture resolution, antialiasing, anisotropy, etc. or at least provide some documentation on the presets and what they do.

Next up is lighting. It's really bland so far, and the reason is I think you're using something like Ambient Brightness (Using UE3 knowledge here, don't know what Unity calls it) to light up the track. This completely obliterates shadows and other light effects. I think you should lower that, and use the emissive surfaces (glowing surfaces) you have like at the starting grid and place some around the track as lighting points, either point lights or spot lights. We're in a sunset situation right now and the whole tunnel is lit up like it's midday basically, however with what appears to be zero light emitting points nearby. You could use the texture on there as light placement reference or something. Also add some color to the light, since it's a sunset.

Trees. They are bad, let's just put that out of the way. They remind me of PS1 games. There needs to be some work put into those especially since you're gonna have that many of them around. First of all the model and texture are really not detailed enough for this generation of graphics. Second, you can fly through them, that's just weird. Third is that tree sheet thing on the border of the track. Man that's ugly. What I would do in it's place is make the trees progressively denser and tightly packed together, have that behind them but you know, hidden. You shouldn't be able to get that close to it. Put a respawn point before it. Also depending on how punishing you want this to be, bring the trees closer or push them back further from the track, but add collisions to them.

Overall texture work needs a bit of love. Some textures are quite low resolution (I don't know if there's a limitation with Unity Free) and also need a bit more detailing. Track texture is for example orange throughout, whereas in games like HD, Pulse, there were varied markings all along of it, especially in turns and such. Building texturing also needs a bit of work, now it's just lines. You could put vents, pipes, doors, windows, lights, different types of bricks, metal, etc. Also some detailed is lost in the very bright lighting. Rock texture is the same everywhere too, you could have different colors or strata for the arch thing.

The terrain is bad. Is that a 3D mesh? I'm thinking it is and that's why it's bad. You should really use the terrain tool. From what I've seen of it and if it's any way similar to the UE3 terrain tool, it will give you a higher poly, more smooth, better looking result. As a bonus you'll be able to paint stuff on it, that stuff being different textures (instead of the unique lower resolution one) or 3D meshes (ie trees, grass, fern, rocks, etc.) so you'll get a much nicer result. It will also light better due to the higher amount of polygons. You can also mold and remold it however you wish without using a 3D modeling program. You should definitely try remaking it with that, both the track and the terrain around it.

The view of the water needs some love. Right now there's a couple of buildings, a black mass (again, due to lighting all the detail is lost there) and a couple of immobile boats. Maybe make boats move, have boats of different sizes (a cruise ship hanging near the track with some spectators like Vineta K maybe), etc. Also the lens flare of the sun doesn't show up here. It only appears on the jump, which is weird.

Vegetation needs some work. I talked about the trees, but I mean vines too. Right now they're all pretty uniform along the cliff edges and just a sheet over the track before the tunnel. I'm thinking you could have some dangling low, and I don't know if that's possible (Physics?) but have them react to ships passing by eventually.

Coding wise, I think the collisions need a bit of work. Right now scrapes are very punishing, the game sometimes detects scrapes as thumps, which is weird, and thumps just send you straight on flying with basically zero punishment. I think scrapes should be less punishing than thumps, unless you scrape for a very long while. There's also some issues with the bumps on either side of the terrain part of the track, gravity tends to act weirdly around there and it does cause some issues when going over these fast. The airbrakes also appear to be hooked up wrongly with respect to the animations. When pressing one brake, nothing happens to the ship. You have to press both for them to lift up. Also unlike the WipEout games pressing an airbrake doesn't cause the ship to lean. Finally the airbrakes open during normal steering operations.

EDIT: some logs:

Failed to find fonts for font asset 'HUD_Font_Wide_Blue'

(Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d9c061b1c154f5ae/Runtime/Filters/Misc/DynamicFontWindowsNative.cpp Line: 199)

The referenced script on this Behaviour is missing!

(Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/d9c061b1c154f5ae/Runtime/Mono/MonoBehaviour.cpp Line: 1592)

IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
at (wrapper stelemref) object:stelemref (object,intptr,object)

at WepS_PlasmaBall.GetEnemies () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at WepS_PlasmaBall.Start () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

(Filename: Line: -1)

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
at CameraScript.Update () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

(Filename: Line: -1)

NullReferenceException
at (wrapper managed-to-native) UnityEngine.Transform:INTERNAL_get_position (UnityEngine.Vector3&)

at UnityEngine.Transform.get_position () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at YourDeathCounter.Update () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

(Filename: Line: -1)

Those repeat a lot.

[zero3growlithe]

1. As for launcher, ok, I'll write a brief documentation on graphic presets and setting up controls.
2. No, there is no ambient brightness options and i wish there was glow effect in Unity Free, there is ambient color with which i can manipuate brightness but that is not that. Because i suppose that track's surface is shiny and reflective I've set the occlusion contrast to value of 0.3 because light can get to the tunnel by bouncing back off the track, i could just make lightmap to do this but i don't want to use dual lightmaps. (final lightmap size)
3. Trees texture is not my matter but about collisions, well, open sections are fun to race on and this is the only one on this track and it would be not cool to hit a tree when avoiding something on track or just flying throught this "Forest" so imo it should stay like this even if it is strange.
4. Not my business.
5. Not my business.
6. I can make boats move, ok. About this sun flare, it disappears cos there is a collider on its way, it is high cos it needs to be (though with new physics it may be not needed) but i just realised that i can change its layer cos its detection is based on tag.
7. Hanging physics affected wines? I can do that, though i don't know why should they move cos no one will notice their movement anyway.
8. About physics, I'll think later bout that, about airbreaks, they affect flying when ship is moving, as they should in real world cos they can't turn ship on their own when there is no air blow.
And they make ship lean in WOHD, also, airbreaks are used for normal turning too like in jets though they have separate spoilers for breaking and turning if i'm not wrong.
Logs: I know about those errors, but they don't affect gameplay and also i don't need to fix them anyway.

[Xpand]

I have to admit the trees look rather simple, but that's more of a texture problem. It's very hard to find good tree textures with transparency, not to mention making your own.

About the mesh terrain: I'd rather make everything in a 3DCad and export to unity than to depend completely on unity based assets. It helps me to keep the polycount under control and optimize it. I think you mean that the terrain is made up of only one texture. Don't worry about that, it will be improved once I know how to do that perfectly. Same thing with the track textures. I usually leave those details to last...

But I seem to be under the impression that you expect something like Wipeout HD from us. You have to keep in mind that we are a bunch of amateurs with almost no resources and time, unlike SL, for example... You gotta think to yourself what you would expect from a hobby based free indie game... I would aim around an enhanced Wipeout Pure...