Browser-Game: Helicopter-flying, voxel-based

Markus_Persson · August 26, 2009, 1:33pm

Niiiice, I love voxels.

I got like 5.1 fps on my MacBook, and it was a bit difficult to control, but that’s a very nice voxel engine!

/ Markus

JL235 · August 27, 2009, 7:07am

My track ball doesn’t have a mouse wheel, and although I found an accelerator key it wasn’t labelled. It was fairly smooth until I went up high where it became unplayable. Literally 1 or 2 frames per second.

I’ve always been interested in voxel graphics, so I’d really like to see more of this when it’s more mature.

pjt33 · August 27, 2009, 8:27am

Very very pretty.

Are keyboard-only controls on the TODO list?

Abuse · August 27, 2009, 11:36am

It seems that if you press ‘Y’, followed by ‘T’ a few dozen times, then ‘Q’ to come to a stop, you can tear a hole in reality =)

With a large enough vertical screen, you can also fly upside down! (and do a loop-the-loop!)

xxzulu92 · August 27, 2009, 9:27pm

Hi lads and guys,

first of all: thanks again for all the input. I know now lots of open
issues and will work on them. sooner or later.

A configurable Version (Screensize, Quality) of the alpha-Preview is
now available. I am not that fit in PHP, so i hope there are no
additional errors

Adress is still

www.helicopter-fun.com

Carpe diem
Thor

Abuse · August 27, 2009, 11:28pm

Where is 1920x1080? ;D

Incidentally, where is the fps counter?

SimonH · August 28, 2009, 12:42am

At 800x600 this plays really well - good framerate (where is the fps counter though?) and it looks beautiful! BUT those controls are hard to manage - why not also the arrow keys?
I really admire the way this renders (I tried something similar myself a while back but I never got anything this good!) so if you can make me feel like I’m actually flying the helicopter (& it doesn’t look like a duck to me) you’ll have a winning game!

xxzulu92 · August 28, 2009, 7:46am

Ok,

next thing in my todo list is the keyboard controls… I think about
using ASDW like in the Egoshooter-Genre.

Enjoy the weekend!
Thor

swpalmer · August 29, 2009, 1:18am

Abuse:

Worked for the 1st run, but refreshing the page gave this exception


java.lang.NullPointerException
	at V.a(Unknown Source)
	at ai.c_(Unknown Source)
	at V.f(Unknown Source)
	at MainApplet.init(Unknown Source)
	at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager$AppletExecutionRunnable.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

I had the same problem - obfuscation gave different symbols but it looks like the same stack trace… I would have pasted it but apparently it didn’t make it to the clipboard before the Java Console went away…

gouessej · August 29, 2009, 10:07am

Excellent job! ;D I find it really nice and smooth. Keep it up.

xxzulu92 · August 29, 2009, 6:03pm

Hi people,

keyboard support and different modes of control have been added:

free mouse flight
fixed mouse flight (with pressing left mouse button)
keyboard flight

www.helicopter-fun.com

Have a nice sunday!
Thor

Hansdampf · August 29, 2009, 6:26pm

[quote]Because of some Caching and Initilisation Issues,
the refresh function of the Browser causes problems.
Instead of refreshing, you should close and start the
browser again. Sorry!
[/quote]
put

in your applet tag.

Smooth 50 fps here (Q6600, high, 1024)

xxzulu92 · August 29, 2009, 7:29pm

Thanks to Hansdampf!

Where the hack do you know THAT from???

Greetings to Hans
Thor

kingaschi · August 29, 2009, 10:45pm

Looks & plays great ;D

phu004 · August 29, 2009, 10:47pm

Hi xxzulu92, really sweet voxel engine you got there! It runs at ~47fps on my E8400 most of the time. (1280x1024, high)

The terrain looks impressive, it reminds me of the land scape in Delta force. But I think you did a much better job here.

Some suggestions:

Technical part:

It would be nice to have “look up”/“look down” option. Sometimes the player will be curious to see what is below them when in high altitude.
You could combine some of the polygon rendering with voxel-based rendering maybe? The Helicopter would look much nicer with texture mapping on it.

Game play:
3. I am quite comfortable with the control right now. But some times I was unable to turn left/right after flying for a while.

I think you need to make the rocket guided. It is so damn hard to hit those balls with the rockets that only fly in straight line.

Abuse · August 29, 2009, 11:33pm

I bet that’ll be fun to implement =>

Hansdampf · August 30, 2009, 7:59am

[quote]Where the hack do you know THAT from???
[/quote]
I read it… (somewhere on this forum?)

Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors();

works fine and reliable, too

xxzulu92 · September 1, 2009, 3:11am

Thanks to Hansdampf again

For whom is interested: the missions have now a Top-Ten list
with the best mission results.

Have a good week!
Thor

DzzD · September 1, 2009, 6:45am

wow, very nice, good works !

DzzD · September 14, 2009, 10:23pm

I notice you got some perspective error, it is especially visible on the start platform : platform edges become curved

but still excelent, I love it