Okay, looks like I probably won't finish this map after all. Sorry!
In the end, the map just didn't look as good as I had envisioned it. But I've decided to unlock the both the map and the mod file. The map name is "Starcruisers II Test", so if anyone wants to continue it, go ahead!
Small update in case the couple of you following this thread is wondering about the progress.
Progress has been stalled!!! Blame Stellaris and Total War Warhammer. :)
But its still going slowly and weapon systems are almost all finished. Just need to add missiles for the current build. Damage states are mostly in, the ship will blow apart piece by piece. Currently working on the terrain so the map won't be bland. Then need to add in a HUD and UI. Then it'll be ready for testing!
This was actually going to be just a quick project to see the capability of the sc2 editor. The sc2 editor is amazing! This map is mostly for myself to see. I don't think it'll work online due to lag. There's so much calculation to make the 3d aspect work. After the testing map is finished, hopefully other people will spend time trying to get a full group to see if it lags. It'll likely lag with 4+ players...but who knows. If it doesn't lag, maybe more stuffs will be added to it.
Shortly after the post announcing Skycruisers has been fully abandoned, I went back and continued it. And I can't believe the result!
Originally it was stopped after making the 3d model and a basic movement was put in. But honestly, it didn't really feel that great. Part of the reason for coming back to this map was the release of Dreadnought beta. That inspired me continued this map.
Now, 3d shots have been put in and a better movement system have been set up. Weapons now shoot in 3d space with range and collision detection in 3d. Originally, I was going to use the 'highlight unit' system to simulate 3d attacks. That's where the user highlight a unit with cursor and the ship will shoot at the highlighted unit. That way avoids the use of 3d collision. Now with 3d collision detection, the weapon attack system is so much better.
While moving, the ship will tilt up and down and roll sideways. That also changes the angle of each weapon, so when the ship is tilting down, weapon pitch also tilts down allowing it to shoot further downwards. Tilting the ship makes movement feel so much more fluid. It was an important step because originally, the ship movement was very stiff.
The next phase in map development is damage states. Each ship is covered with tons of invisible hit boxess which will determine the damage state of the ship. Once the ship is heavily damaged, it'll eventually get a chance to be destroy. Each hit box is also tied to a ship function such as engines and weapons. So a heavily damage ship isn't just a ship with low health bar, it'll actually be 'heavily' damaged!
After putting in damage states, the map will need a terrain system for ships to move and hide around in. That's a very important part of this map, but it could potentially lag the map to death... we'll see what happens...
Anyways, if you read all that and want to see the current progression, you can search for Starcruisers test map in NA to see it. Map is periodically uploaded to test for online latency. WASD for movement, right click to shoot. Space/Shift to move ship up and down.
1. It was done with "Turret Behavior" with the 3ds tools. Each of those turrets were given a look-at trigger call to make them look at the target. All turrets are custom models that has turret behavior so it actually look-at whatever its told to look at.
2. The game doesn't use starcraft 2 system. All weapons are manually done via triggers. This way, I can simulate 'misses' by making the weapon shoot at blank empty space too.
You have to manually calculate 3d range using math.
UPDATE
Here's the progress with sky/starcruisers, its been fully abandoned at this moment! But instead, a new map based on starcruisers has emerged!!!
battlenet://starcraft/map/1/243773
This go back to the original vision of space combat with capital ships. But instead of controlling one ship, the player controls a fleet for larger scale of battle.
Right now, it looks pretty amazing the way everything appears. For those who wants a sneak peak, the latest build of the map has been uploaded to the link above.
There's not much in the game except moving around. Press R/F to move up and down. Press O to spawn some mutalisks. Although there's not much right now, it looks pretty amazing!
The purpose of these mini-updates is to determine the viability of the skyrcruiser map. It needs:
a) a skycruiser model that actually looks like a skycruiser. Check!
b) 3d turrets that can track targets with pitch rotation. Check!
c) weapons that can fire in 3 dimension. Check!
With these requirements satisfied, skycruisers should be a go! However, the rest of the map will require a lot of coding and artwork. So going to stop here and take a break. And to see if the skycruiser model still looks good a few weeks from now. The previous starcruisers II actually looked pretty bad and was a big reason why that map was stopped.
Thanks! I'm amazed myself too, and every time I added something new to the map, i'm like, "WOW!' That's a huge reason why i'm still working on this map. Today, I just finally added in the movement UI and the height slider. I'm like wow, that worked and it looked very cool and user-friendly (to me at least!) ...I wonder if anyone else would find it intuitive and easy to use.
It actually didn't take very long to make, this new round of update was only started on sept29 or so. I just didn't feel like working on this map and the new 3d model all those months ago when you last posted then.
But I kinda work on osmosis. Little ideas drip in bit by bit. So the longer I wait, the more ideas I gather. And while making Time Wars map, I got some new ideas which this map would need later. (basically, this map will be very complicated, and it needs a good UI to function. In time wars, there's a section where UI pops up as needed. This map will utilize that idea.)
This map failed to work online! When online, the unit stutters and won't move smoothly. The map has been opened so you can see the problem...
map link: battlenet://starcraft/map/1/211848
Crisis Averted!!! Reverting to a clean earlier version seemed to fix the problem. No idea what caused the stuttering, but hopefully it won't appear again. Everything needs to be rebuild, but luckily, its still early.
The map link will remain up. There's nothing to do right now, but you can move the ship forward by press W once. A and D keys turn the ship, but the ship can only turn while moving forward. Q and E keys to rotate camera.
Other details to note, there's 3 main turret and a few point defense lasers next to the bridge. There are 4 hardpoint decks where 'buildings' are placed. There's a Hell Storm Missile Turret, Nuke Silo (won't launch nuke, but will launch artillery shells), and a Hercules dropship to drop marines on enemy ships. There's a special ops dropship at the back. It won't be used, but it'll serve as an escape ship/away team dropship.
Now that the crisis is solved, will continue to add to the skycruiser. Plans include exterior nuclear cruise missile, interior ship lighting, autocannons attached to bottom of the ship, broadside weapons, and forward cannons.
If the skycruiser is ever finished, other ships will include Skycarrier, Skydestroyer, Skydreadnought, and a Skysubmarine. All ships will be different in size and function.
Oops, forgot to publish it again. I blame youtube! The preview shouldn't work if its not published, it fools me everytime!
@KorvinGump: Go
The once a year update is a joke. :) This is actually not the same starcruiser that was released years ago. This is vastly different, built from the same idea. That's where the motivation comes from, each rebuild is very different and new.
The preview is just a day1 mockup, its start to look good. Likely, I'll get tired of it in a week or two and move to something else. :) So I'm just going to release these pre-alpha videos to see how much its progressing.
A tiny update, just finished a mock-up of the the latest rebuild!
This is a quick mock-up on what the latest version would look like. The map now takes place on the ground surface. Mar Sara is chosen as the terrain because it has a full sky-box.
After lots tinkering with lighting and material shader in the game, the visual is finally shaping up. The sky cruiser only has few details right now, and most of the body is just a placeholder. The rough shape would look like this, a center hull, 4 rotor blades, main turrets on top, a bridge section, and an engine section behind. There'll be more tiny details added later, include more weapon hard points and exterior (nuclear) missiles.
As mentioned earlier, the camera is zoomed in close to the ship. The free-form camera is removed. Instead, the player will have limited control of camera. The game will be more 'rpg-like' with all weapons calculated using 'stats' to hit or miss. Then the visual will be made to show the hit or miss.
Welp, that's it for the tiny update! May have more tiny updates to follow as the sky cruiser 3d model gets worked on.
Aww, this map got front paged. Sorry guys, thought this thread died and the new starcruisers 2014 shown in video was taken off-line due to no one playing. The next update will still happen in 2015! There's still 7 months left, so plenty of time. :) The next update planned is going to be awesome!
Also, originally the map was taken off-line to remake it into a smaller co-op game. It was basically impossible to get 6 to 8 players for a full game (the most players ever filled the lobby was 3). But then I realized, its too much work to make levels and monsters.. so the 2015 version is just going to be made as a 6-8 or 12 player pvp game. It probably won't be played so I won't really bother with balance and whatnot, it'll just be a vanity game to show off my vision.
My vision currently is as follow:
1) Larger and detailed view of your ship! Right now, the camera is pretty far and you can't really see details of the ship.
2) The game will be fully 3d! Thought of a new way to showcase this game in a full 3d world where ships can change its height while still able to shoot each other at different heights. This is the new awesome feature!
3) The world will shift down to the planet surface. The engines will be replaced by rotors, the inspiration is taken from captain america: winter soldiers. When those hover-carriers were shooting at each other, it looked so awesome.
4) The new combat mechanic will take into account heights and weapons built on the top/underside of the ship. And because there's gravity, weapons shooting down will do more damage, but it takes more power to maintain higher height.
5) The cruiser will have even more weapons built into its hull, and hopefully a better UI. The UI is really bad right now.
The startools release is instrumental in the update. Also finally got rid of that fog when viewing ships from underneath and made the ship metal actually appear metal. A lot of changes to gameplay too, for those who tried the 2013 test version.
Nebuli2, yup! Full custom UI is in! The goal is to make the UI have that spaceship simulator feel.
Seeing success of warships has inspired me to continue Starcruisers once again! I'm funny that way, seeing similar well made maps really helps me want to work on my own maps. A new video is uploaded showing the latest features. A lot was changed from the original test version. And way more has changed from the original starcruisers.
This game no longer has ship design as part of the battle. Instead, all players will enter battle with pre-built ships. Ship design will take place as a separate game to be played solo.
The battle itself will have more of that spaceship simulator feel. I never liked the RTS feel of the original map. It was cool to design custom ships, but I think gameplay-wise, its just a very complicated version of Star Battle which Star Battle still does better.
But beyond gameplay, the most important thing about Starcruisers is showcasing awesome visuals! That had always been the goal, visuals above gameplay first. Then gameplay can be improved later. I think visually, this new test version goes beyond older test versions. Even the UI has more of that natural spaceship feel with readout displays embedded in the map.
Another goal of this map is to have a more user-friendly interface. For example, a 'smart fire' button is added. Instead of pressing different buttons to activate abilities, players just swirl the camera and depending on camera angle vs starship facing, different abilities will be activated. Furthermore, for plans in the future, special direct ship to ship ability will be displayed as part of the ship readout. To board an enemy ship for example, just get close until the 'boarding icon' appears and press the hotkey on that boarding icon. This would work for tractoring ships, storming neutral space stations, or picking up special items and loots.
Ship design is still the main focus of the map. So far, the test version is just focusing on the battle portion of the map. Enough weapon systems and ship hulls have to be added before Ship Design can begin. Right now, only the default starting cruiser is made. The yamato battleship and space carriers will be made next. The base models for them are already completed.
This concludes the current starcruiser update. Depending on how much inspiration I have for Starcruisers and how much interest in this map, the next update may or may not ever happen. :)
edit: Wow, I just realized the last post was over a year ago! Didn't know starcruiser Test was that old. Probably should just let Starcruisers die... :p
Here's another preliminary look at a new spaceship, the space carrier. It's just a rough draft of the ship, the lights haven't been added. (the attachment points haven't been set for this model, and the lights all use attachement points) The bay doors will open and close to let out probes and scout crafts. Elevators will open up to let out fighter crafts and they'll launch on top of the carrier to quickly accelerate the fighters to combat speed. Likewise, the fighter crafts will land on the carrier and move to an elevator where they'll are lowered to the second deck.
Also not a gameplay video, but it shows the destructibiliy of the ship which is a big part of the game.
@wargirlwargirl: Go
Okay, looks like I probably won't finish this map after all. Sorry!
In the end, the map just didn't look as good as I had envisioned it. But I've decided to unlock the both the map and the mod file. The map name is "Starcruisers II Test", so if anyone wants to continue it, go ahead!
Pictures!
picture1: looking up at another sky cruiser targeted by the hud.
picture2: a fly by with the player cruiser rolling sideways for smooth motion.
picture3: explosion, fire and debris from a ship getting hit. Notice the upper-right hud displays the colored image of the damage state.
picture4: diving downwards looking at another ship.
Small update in case the couple of you following this thread is wondering about the progress.
Progress has been stalled!!! Blame Stellaris and Total War Warhammer. :)
But its still going slowly and weapon systems are almost all finished. Just need to add missiles for the current build. Damage states are mostly in, the ship will blow apart piece by piece. Currently working on the terrain so the map won't be bland. Then need to add in a HUD and UI. Then it'll be ready for testing!
This was actually going to be just a quick project to see the capability of the sc2 editor. The sc2 editor is amazing! This map is mostly for myself to see. I don't think it'll work online due to lag. There's so much calculation to make the 3d aspect work. After the testing map is finished, hopefully other people will spend time trying to get a full group to see if it lags. It'll likely lag with 4+ players...but who knows. If it doesn't lag, maybe more stuffs will be added to it.
Hey guys, guess what!
Shortly after the post announcing Skycruisers has been fully abandoned, I went back and continued it. And I can't believe the result!
Originally it was stopped after making the 3d model and a basic movement was put in. But honestly, it didn't really feel that great. Part of the reason for coming back to this map was the release of Dreadnought beta. That inspired me continued this map.
Now, 3d shots have been put in and a better movement system have been set up. Weapons now shoot in 3d space with range and collision detection in 3d. Originally, I was going to use the 'highlight unit' system to simulate 3d attacks. That's where the user highlight a unit with cursor and the ship will shoot at the highlighted unit. That way avoids the use of 3d collision. Now with 3d collision detection, the weapon attack system is so much better.
While moving, the ship will tilt up and down and roll sideways. That also changes the angle of each weapon, so when the ship is tilting down, weapon pitch also tilts down allowing it to shoot further downwards. Tilting the ship makes movement feel so much more fluid. It was an important step because originally, the ship movement was very stiff.
The next phase in map development is damage states. Each ship is covered with tons of invisible hit boxess which will determine the damage state of the ship. Once the ship is heavily damaged, it'll eventually get a chance to be destroy. Each hit box is also tied to a ship function such as engines and weapons. So a heavily damage ship isn't just a ship with low health bar, it'll actually be 'heavily' damaged!
After putting in damage states, the map will need a terrain system for ships to move and hide around in. That's a very important part of this map, but it could potentially lag the map to death... we'll see what happens...
Anyways, if you read all that and want to see the current progression, you can search for Starcruisers test map in NA to see it. Map is periodically uploaded to test for online latency. WASD for movement, right click to shoot. Space/Shift to move ship up and down.
1. It was done with "Turret Behavior" with the 3ds tools. Each of those turrets were given a look-at trigger call to make them look at the target. All turrets are custom models that has turret behavior so it actually look-at whatever its told to look at.
2. The game doesn't use starcraft 2 system. All weapons are manually done via triggers. This way, I can simulate 'misses' by making the weapon shoot at blank empty space too.
You have to manually calculate 3d range using math.
UPDATE
Here's the progress with sky/starcruisers, its been fully abandoned at this moment! But instead, a new map based on starcruisers has emerged!!! battlenet://starcraft/map/1/243773
This go back to the original vision of space combat with capital ships. But instead of controlling one ship, the player controls a fleet for larger scale of battle.
Right now, it looks pretty amazing the way everything appears. For those who wants a sneak peak, the latest build of the map has been uploaded to the link above.
There's not much in the game except moving around. Press R/F to move up and down. Press O to spawn some mutalisks. Although there's not much right now, it looks pretty amazing!
The last of the mini-updates!
The purpose of these mini-updates is to determine the viability of the skyrcruiser map. It needs:
a) a skycruiser model that actually looks like a skycruiser. Check!
b) 3d turrets that can track targets with pitch rotation. Check!
c) weapons that can fire in 3 dimension. Check!
With these requirements satisfied, skycruisers should be a go! However, the rest of the map will require a lot of coding and artwork. So going to stop here and take a break. And to see if the skycruiser model still looks good a few weeks from now. The previous starcruisers II actually looked pretty bad and was a big reason why that map was stopped.
@wargirlwargirl: Go
Thanks! I'm amazed myself too, and every time I added something new to the map, i'm like, "WOW!' That's a huge reason why i'm still working on this map. Today, I just finally added in the movement UI and the height slider. I'm like wow, that worked and it looked very cool and user-friendly (to me at least!) ...I wonder if anyone else would find it intuitive and easy to use.
It actually didn't take very long to make, this new round of update was only started on sept29 or so. I just didn't feel like working on this map and the new 3d model all those months ago when you last posted then.
But I kinda work on osmosis. Little ideas drip in bit by bit. So the longer I wait, the more ideas I gather. And while making Time Wars map, I got some new ideas which this map would need later. (basically, this map will be very complicated, and it needs a good UI to function. In time wars, there's a section where UI pops up as needed. This map will utilize that idea.)
The 3d model is now complete.
TERRIBLE TERRIBLE NEWS !!!This map failed to work online! When online, the unit stutters and won't move smoothly. The map has been opened so you can see the problem...map link: battlenet://starcraft/map/1/211848Crisis Averted!!! Reverting to a clean earlier version seemed to fix the problem. No idea what caused the stuttering, but hopefully it won't appear again. Everything needs to be rebuild, but luckily, its still early.
The map link will remain up. There's nothing to do right now, but you can move the ship forward by press W once. A and D keys turn the ship, but the ship can only turn while moving forward. Q and E keys to rotate camera.
Other details to note, there's 3 main turret and a few point defense lasers next to the bridge. There are 4 hardpoint decks where 'buildings' are placed. There's a Hell Storm Missile Turret, Nuke Silo (won't launch nuke, but will launch artillery shells), and a Hercules dropship to drop marines on enemy ships. There's a special ops dropship at the back. It won't be used, but it'll serve as an escape ship/away team dropship.
Now that the crisis is solved, will continue to add to the skycruiser. Plans include exterior nuclear cruise missile, interior ship lighting, autocannons attached to bottom of the ship, broadside weapons, and forward cannons.
If the skycruiser is ever finished, other ships will include Skycarrier, Skydestroyer, Skydreadnought, and a Skysubmarine. All ships will be different in size and function.
Oops, forgot to publish it again. I blame youtube! The preview shouldn't work if its not published, it fools me everytime!
@KorvinGump: Go The once a year update is a joke. :) This is actually not the same starcruiser that was released years ago. This is vastly different, built from the same idea. That's where the motivation comes from, each rebuild is very different and new.
The preview is just a day1 mockup, its start to look good. Likely, I'll get tired of it in a week or two and move to something else. :) So I'm just going to release these pre-alpha videos to see how much its progressing.
A tiny update, just finished a mock-up of the the latest rebuild!
This is a quick mock-up on what the latest version would look like. The map now takes place on the ground surface. Mar Sara is chosen as the terrain because it has a full sky-box.
After lots tinkering with lighting and material shader in the game, the visual is finally shaping up. The sky cruiser only has few details right now, and most of the body is just a placeholder. The rough shape would look like this, a center hull, 4 rotor blades, main turrets on top, a bridge section, and an engine section behind. There'll be more tiny details added later, include more weapon hard points and exterior (nuclear) missiles.
As mentioned earlier, the camera is zoomed in close to the ship. The free-form camera is removed. Instead, the player will have limited control of camera. The game will be more 'rpg-like' with all weapons calculated using 'stats' to hit or miss. Then the visual will be made to show the hit or miss.
Welp, that's it for the tiny update! May have more tiny updates to follow as the sky cruiser 3d model gets worked on.
Aww, this map got front paged. Sorry guys, thought this thread died and the new starcruisers 2014 shown in video was taken off-line due to no one playing. The next update will still happen in 2015! There's still 7 months left, so plenty of time. :) The next update planned is going to be awesome!
Also, originally the map was taken off-line to remake it into a smaller co-op game. It was basically impossible to get 6 to 8 players for a full game (the most players ever filled the lobby was 3). But then I realized, its too much work to make levels and monsters.. so the 2015 version is just going to be made as a 6-8 or 12 player pvp game. It probably won't be played so I won't really bother with balance and whatnot, it'll just be a vanity game to show off my vision.
My vision currently is as follow:
1) Larger and detailed view of your ship! Right now, the camera is pretty far and you can't really see details of the ship.
2) The game will be fully 3d! Thought of a new way to showcase this game in a full 3d world where ships can change its height while still able to shoot each other at different heights. This is the new awesome feature!
3) The world will shift down to the planet surface. The engines will be replaced by rotors, the inspiration is taken from captain america: winter soldiers. When those hover-carriers were shooting at each other, it looked so awesome.
4) The new combat mechanic will take into account heights and weapons built on the top/underside of the ship. And because there's gravity, weapons shooting down will do more damage, but it takes more power to maintain higher height.
5) The cruiser will have even more weapons built into its hull, and hopefully a better UI. The UI is really bad right now.
Its another year, so here's another update!
The startools release is instrumental in the update. Also finally got rid of that fog when viewing ships from underneath and made the ship metal actually appear metal. A lot of changes to gameplay too, for those who tried the 2013 test version.
Next update, 2015, stay tuned!
Starcruiser update! New video:
@Nebuli2: Go
Nebuli2, yup! Full custom UI is in! The goal is to make the UI have that spaceship simulator feel.
Seeing success of warships has inspired me to continue Starcruisers once again! I'm funny that way, seeing similar well made maps really helps me want to work on my own maps. A new video is uploaded showing the latest features. A lot was changed from the original test version. And way more has changed from the original starcruisers.
This game no longer has ship design as part of the battle. Instead, all players will enter battle with pre-built ships. Ship design will take place as a separate game to be played solo.
The battle itself will have more of that spaceship simulator feel. I never liked the RTS feel of the original map. It was cool to design custom ships, but I think gameplay-wise, its just a very complicated version of Star Battle which Star Battle still does better.
But beyond gameplay, the most important thing about Starcruisers is showcasing awesome visuals! That had always been the goal, visuals above gameplay first. Then gameplay can be improved later. I think visually, this new test version goes beyond older test versions. Even the UI has more of that natural spaceship feel with readout displays embedded in the map.
Another goal of this map is to have a more user-friendly interface. For example, a 'smart fire' button is added. Instead of pressing different buttons to activate abilities, players just swirl the camera and depending on camera angle vs starship facing, different abilities will be activated. Furthermore, for plans in the future, special direct ship to ship ability will be displayed as part of the ship readout. To board an enemy ship for example, just get close until the 'boarding icon' appears and press the hotkey on that boarding icon. This would work for tractoring ships, storming neutral space stations, or picking up special items and loots.
Ship design is still the main focus of the map. So far, the test version is just focusing on the battle portion of the map. Enough weapon systems and ship hulls have to be added before Ship Design can begin. Right now, only the default starting cruiser is made. The yamato battleship and space carriers will be made next. The base models for them are already completed.
This concludes the current starcruiser update. Depending on how much inspiration I have for Starcruisers and how much interest in this map, the next update may or may not ever happen. :)
edit: Wow, I just realized the last post was over a year ago! Didn't know starcruiser Test was that old. Probably should just let Starcruisers die... :p
Here's another preliminary look at a new spaceship, the space carrier. It's just a rough draft of the ship, the lights haven't been added. (the attachment points haven't been set for this model, and the lights all use attachement points) The bay doors will open and close to let out probes and scout crafts. Elevators will open up to let out fighter crafts and they'll launch on top of the carrier to quickly accelerate the fighters to combat speed. Likewise, the fighter crafts will land on the carrier and move to an elevator where they'll are lowered to the second deck.
Also not a gameplay video, but it shows the destructibiliy of the ship which is a big part of the game.