Classic RPG: Zeron is hiring for car system

[HerrChris]

Zeron is hiring!

Job market

Currently we are hiring: NAT/scripter and GFX for the car-system.

Work to do: NATS: Script a simple driveability-system for acceleration, braking and steering. The tires rotating speed is synchronous to the speed of the car. Another thing is that the car is decelerated while driving on gras or sand (tile detection), in addition it shouldn't be possible to drive on water
That includes a collision detection for the car. It shouldn't be too strictly so the player crashes at every edge, but it shouldn't got the scale of the acutal player ().

Also (but i dont know if its possible) a scripted sound system would be very neat so if the engine speed is very high, the sound of the motor is loud and bright.

Additional sprites change the appearance of the car through a scripted system e.g. if you hit a tree with the car boot at low speed nothing will happend, but if you crash-in with 50 mph you'll have a pick-up.

GFX: Thats quite a challenge: The car must be done in some kind of a pixel art-style, one sprite (including tires, interior, extras etc.) for each of the 8 angels. Please stick to the following allocation:



The transparency-value of the car shadow is 77/255 (30,2%). The "top of the tire" is necessary because of the depth effect.

So dry your noodles and send us a pm or an e-mail! Our addies are at the bottom of the post.
Please be patient if we don't reply immediately. We plan to start the project next week

Video


(click while playing to open in a new window)
Thats it - Here is a sneak preview of the upcoming car system for Zeron. Done in real graal-perspective with some nice physics-effcts (could be done by scripted areas or tile-detection). Realized by ganis, scripted light- and (of course) some particle-effects.

Contact

Chris Jasra (Server-Owner/-Admin, GFX Chief) - Forum-PM
Jack Jasra (Server-Owner/-Admin, LAT Chief) - Forum-PM, E-Mail: [email protected]

Additional information

http://forums.graalonline.com/forums...ad.php?t=78885 Hiring-thread with information about the server

Zeron Administrations-Präsidium

[xXziroXx]

Awesome preview.

[Shards-Of-Fate]

Sweet car. I might have a go at it - Freelance-wise, that is.

[cbk1994]

Looks great. Good luck!

[Luda]

Cool

[LordSquirt]

This looks really good! Good luck to you and I hope you find the help you're looking for

[Fulg0reSama]

I loved when you crashed into the tree, I lol'd pretty good.

Best of luck to you guys and hope you get what you need.

[Dnegel]

Lmao this was badass.

So.. there will be car radioes?

[Elk]

schaut cool aus, viel glück
würd mich interessieren ein eigenes auto zu machen gibts ein template?

[DeCeaseD]

Lmao, that looks seriously epic man. Gj, and hope you find what you're looking for also.

[HerrChris]

Thanks a lot folks

Lets see if we can start this project next Monday.

car radios... uhm? Simply a question of having hosters and stations or not.
And of course having scripters who are able to implement that

@ Elk: Jo, gibt es hier als Anhang.
Ist erstmal die vorläufige Aufteilung in Spiralenform. Lichter und Schadensmodell sind separat ausgelagert.

@ Shards-Of-Fate: Do I have this right? You are interested in scripting it?

[Fulg0reSama]

I liked the song in the beginning of the preview vid.

Could ya tell me the name of the song? I'm thinking Stevie Nicks but dont know the name.

P.S:Hope you got insurance on that car.

[Shards-Of-Fate]

Nah, graphics-wise.

[HerrChris]

Guessed right, its Edge Of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks

@ Shards-Of-Fate: Just as well, you can use the template of the Cadillac.
The car should have (if it is a normal car and not a bus or tank or whatever) similar dimensions.

It should be noted that the car should have more an unusual style (thats why the template is just a Cadillac that will never find the way into the game: Its just for imagination of how big the vehicle should be), having elements of the early 20th century merged with outlines of modern cars.

Zerons world is set in a parallel universe. That is why familiar things like buildings, war material, cars etc. look unusual, dated or completely different and forms of society we are used to do not exist and were replaced by totaly odd ones. Apart from that are many things anon we know and use every day.

That means in a nutshell: The cars should not just be variations of Tin Lizzies, but they could have parts and elements of it.

[Crow]

The four diagonal car sprites don't seem to be drawn at a 45° angle, which makes it look somewhat awkward.

[HerrChris]

I had drawn a jeep long time ago for Zone at 45° in the diagonal sprites - and it sucks pretty much because it looks compressed and unproportional.

Actually we had to draw the baselines at a 33.75°-angle in the diagonal sprites. That would best fit with Graals orthographic parallel projection.
But its much easier to draw the one line at 45° and the other at 27.5° especially when having curves

Edit: And because of that there are no longer big questions of what direction of the player should be chosen in the gani since we had no diagonal chars

[Crow]

You've got a pretty decent point there, but I thought it might look strange when actually driving around with this.

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by HerrChris

I had drawn a jeep long time ago for Zone at 45° in the diagonal sprites - and it sucks pretty much because it looks compressed and unproportional.

Actually we had to draw the baselines at a 33.75°-angle in the diagonal sprites. That would best fit with Graals orthographic parallel projection.
But its much easier to draw the one line at 45° and the other at 27.5° especially when having curves

Mind = Blown

[Fulg0reSama]

Originally Posted by HerrChris

I had drawn a jeep long time ago for Zone at 45° in the diagonal sprites - and it sucks pretty much because it looks compressed and unproportional.

Actually we had to draw the baselines at a 33.75°-angle in the diagonal sprites. That would best fit with Graals orthographic parallel projection.
But its much easier to draw the one line at 45° and the other at 27.5° especially when having curves

Edit: And because of that there are no longer big questions of what direction of the player should be chosen in the gani since we had no diagonal chars

You guys definitely seem to know what you are planning, Best of luck to you guys.

P.S: Thanks for the song title. I am happy now since I couldn't figure it out when myself heard it on the radio going down the highway haha.

[Liberated]

Originally Posted by HerrChris

I had drawn a jeep long time ago for Zone at 45° in the diagonal sprites - and it sucks pretty much because it looks compressed and unproportional.

Actually we had to draw the baselines at a 33.75°-angle in the diagonal sprites. That would best fit with Graals orthographic parallel projection.
But its much easier to draw the one line at 45° and the other at 27.5° especially when having curves

Edit: And because of that there are no longer big questions of what direction of the player should be chosen in the gani since we had no diagonal chars

I've encountered the same problems when working on diagonal car sprites of my own. Although i haven't really done the math, i also came to the conclusion of keeping one line 45 degrees, and changing the other, because it looks wrong and "compressed" like you said.

Thanks for the angle though, i hope you don't mind it if i use it in the future.

[HerrChris]

Originally Posted by Fulg0reSama

P.S: Thanks for the song title. I am happy now since I couldn't figure it out when myself heard it on the radio going down the highway haha.

you lucky things! wish to had radio stations with just that music style

Originally Posted by Liberated

Thanks for the angle though, i hope you don't mind it if i use it in the future.

have fun with it

And I am proud to announce Downsider aka 12171217 will script the carsystem

[Fulg0reSama]

Originally Posted by HerrChris

you lucky things! wish to had radio stations with just that music style


have fun with it

And I am proud to announce Downsider aka 12171217 will script the carsystem

Good choice scripter, a lil silly at times but good choice.

[firefighter]

Please take a look on my server: Fusion. I already scripted a car class that works (but at the moment only with 4 directions - 8 directions and more shouldn't be a problem) with fluent movement. Example cars are on the overworld.

Also multiple players can go by one and the same car (but the first player that enters/or the owner - if set - is the driver).

At the moment I try to rotate a (single direction) car image by setting its angle Clientside so that it isn't rotating jerkily anymore. The rest like movement and triggering an event to the specific car - e.g. if a direction key and/or acelerate/decelerate-key was pressed by the driver - is serverside (for security reasons).

[TheJames]

DUDE! This server looks badass! Keep up the work!

[HerrChris]

thanks a lot

now... eeerm we have a serious problem - or to put it another way: We are looking for NATs once again, who are able to finish Zerons car system.

We have already an unfinished car system, so its up to you if you want to start at the bottom or not

edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwT3_BzqQxc
Who has the balls to script that? hehe

[Soala]

Originally Posted by HerrChris

thanks a lot

now... eeerm we have a serious problem - or to put it another way: We are looking for NATs once again, who are able to finish Zerons car system.

We have already an unfinished car system, so its up to you if you want to start at the bottom or not

edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwT3_BzqQxc
Who has the balls to script that? hehe

Very nice lol

[xXziroXx]

Awesome!

[Crono]

really cool

[kia345]

Why am I so intrigued by something as base as killing a man with a car?

[Cloven]

Originally Posted by kia345

Why am I so intrigued by something as base as killing a man with a car?

It's like a classic song, or movie... some things just make us happy.

[12171217]

I love the quality control on this server. Really quite nice. Unfortunately, I pretty much quit Graal, and especially development, at this point and I had hardly accomplished anything with the car movement at all; I had merely translated the angle into a position on a sprite sheet with 32 directions and written a script for 3DS Max to build and output a sprite sheet from a 3D model. It looked okay, and most of my time was spent making it look decent, but as you can imagine, it's quite difficult to do that with 3D models and Graal's extremely obscure perspective.

[Rufus]

That "dummy crash" video looks really great. I'm a little confused by the mix between modern and fantasy though.

[HerrChris]

thank you folks

now it is just how downsider said and that is why we wont use sprites of a 3d-modell anymore. Using sprites of the 3D-jeep was just for testing purpose, so we retain the 2D-sprite-system,

Mh but it seems that 8 sprites per angle aren't just good enough, so I am going to do 8 additional sprites but - what the heck who cares?

What we need is some NAT who is able to script that once more.

@Rufus: The design of the cars isn't finished. Just like I said they'll look more "zeronish" when I have redone the concept.
Gotoxy (she's a very brilliant GFX) will support me

[DustyPorViva]

Prerender a celshaded model at various angles and touch it up as a sprite. Best of both worlds.

[Elk]

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

Prerender a celshaded model at various angles and touch it up as a sprite. Best of both worlds.

Best solution, +rep next time

[HerrChris]

Yeah that would be very neat, because you dont have to think about the scale when drawing the next angle of a car (which is always different in length and width except the height in pixel, as measured by some fixed point). But I think I cant do that with SketchUp or something so I had to use some kind of a special render software.

But thats not the point now - we just NEED a NAT to bring the cars into being
Anyone there...?