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OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2012 11:57 pm
by polylux
Disclaimer: The screenshots you are about to see are not yet an eye candy, they're rather to be seen as a 'proof of concept' with lots of crappy placeholders. Work so far has mainly been done on the internal mechanics of game handling such as object interaction (player can carry gun which again can 'carry' a mag and the like), realistic calculation of trajectories, hit testing and so on.

Dear fellow Irrlichters,
it's about time to show a bit of my work. Back about 2 years I began to work on an idea that's been floating around in my mind for quite some time. It's the idea to create a game that relies on the principles Bohemia Interactive's "Operation Flashpoint" is built upon - hence the name.
This means:
  • Vast, credible and appealing countryside
  • Simulation rather than arcade game (without sacrificing fun)
  • In the first step infantry only, then including vehicles and aircrafts
  • Multiplayer only
  • Current platforms: mainly linux, win supported (MinGW, MSVC), mac maybe (maybe not cause of my personal disliking)
Current status:
The current setup consists of a hilly countryside with two schematic villages serving as spawns for each of the two teams. Some forests cover the space between them. The players can pick up weaponry and equipment (for now, mags for the available guns). Current weaponry consists of SMGs, (assault) rifles and machine guns. New guns can easily be specified by extending the weapon def config file. The game does not feature HUD-crosshairs, every weapon has to be aimed using the available sight, see screenshots.
What's available up to now is fully implemented as a networked setup.
Thanks to cobra's irrWeatherManager, the game aleo features a realistic day and night cycle.

Next steps:
  • use devsh's FWGrass to handle foliage
  • integrate irrBullet (thanks to cobra, again)
  • bother gfx and modeler co-workers to help out with visual stuff ;)
  • generally find more time to work on the project (atm I get my hands on it every couple of months)
Expected outcome:
Being a one-man-show: none. An important expectation of such a project is to not expect anything. If I lose interest someday it's been at least for the fun and experience in graphics programming. If it gets somewhere, dunno, likely keep it opensource.

Thanks go out to these community projects:
  • irrWeatherManager (cobra)
  • irrBullet (cobra)
  • cAudio (wildrj et al)
  • tree model (ent1ty)
  • irrNetLite
'Nuff said, get out the screenies:

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Screenshot 1: Soldier guarding alongside the biggest forest, equipped with a MP5 sticking out of his stomach. In the background blueville with another player to its right.

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Screenshot 2: View from the position of the 2nd soldier using a M4 (slightly out of scale (and textures)).

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Screenshot 3: Pressing some key brings up the interaction menu. It shows game objects available for interaction in the player's surroundings on the left, stuff being carried by the player to the right. The buttons in between obviously allow to take / dispose objects. The available mags can be seen as highpoly super-cool cubes on the ground. The sexy sphere in the left part of the image is for debugging purposes.

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Screenshot 4: The intro screen. Shows a cam pan over the scenery. Screens were taken a couple of hours later - in the evening. Hence sunset.

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Screenshot 5: Aiming is activated holding down the right mouse button. As for the MP5, this activates the iron sights. Works quite well. Again sunset atmosphere. Btw, Redville is pretty much in aiming direction somewhere behind the hills. If you look closely you can see some chimneys to the left of the gun.

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Screenshot 6: This shows the inital map I plan to realize. I just took a detail of some countryside right next to my home town (Austria) so don't be scared by the naming of the villages. Freely cut out to make it look like an island.


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Screenshot 7: New in OFL: a small lit path between red- and blueville. You can see some more lamps in the background. Should find some time to actually pave that street.

Note: Ignore the FPS, screens taken on a 5yr old computer.

Comments welcome, thanks for your attention,
p.

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2012 6:04 am
by d3jake
Sounds great to me. I loved playing OFP2, though there were many corners cut. Good luck!

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2012 11:58 am
by ACE247
Hi Polylux, great to see your work. I'm actually amazed to see how similar it is to a project of mine (OpenWar) which onfortunatley was never released and likely isn't really going to be. Now knowing this will be open source, I would really be willing to help out. I'm primarily a Graphics Artist and side job hobby programmer. I'm sure you'd appreciate it If I help out with the Mesh work and some programming, truth is, for some reason I just love to work on these projects. PM me and we can work something out ;)

PS: I already have alot of Vision and Ideas for the Future of this project. This could possibly even be turned into almost a AAA title with some work... I guess you're surprised about my Enthusiam :)

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 8:15 pm
by devsh
I'm honored by someone wanting to use my FWGrass

Are you going to be using the generator???

++ Use my Atmospheric Scattering for the skydome maybe?

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2012 6:37 pm
by polylux
Thanks for you comments!
@ACE247, we stay in touch!
@devsh: Yea, your grass is by far the best foliage addon to Irrlicht. I hope I can start play around with the generator quite soon. Gonna look for your atmo-scattering, guess it's somewhere in the forums and I just haven't seen it yet.
For now it's important to integrate physics and finally populate the scenery a bit. My modeling abilities suffice to create sume buildings but I totally lack knowledge of animating stuff.

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 9:50 am
by Cube_
seems nice *subscribes to the topic*

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 8:14 pm
by nutmmm
I quite like the look of your game...
what are you using for engines?
and what are you using for networking an engine? or self made with UDP or TCP?

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 10:03 am
by polylux
Hey nutmmm!

All irrlicht-related community projects I use are listed just above the screenshots. As for the networking I use "irrNetLite", you'll find it on the forums.

Cheers,
p.

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:46 am
by mikero
fascinating stuff. i am intimately familiar with (most of) the flashpoint file formats having worked on them and with them since the very first beta release.

I'd be quite happy to provide support in 'translating' flashpoint missions, wrps, and models into open source. I could *probably* supply some tools for others to run with.

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 12:07 pm
by polylux
Hey mikero and thanks for your input!
In the current stage it'd be of great help to get going with models as you can see the whole scenery is still pretty empty. You can catch me on quite some IMs, just check out my profile, I'd be happy to hear from you!

Cheers,
p.

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 4:39 pm
by rubenwardy
What is the license for the components?

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 7:31 pm
by polylux
Hey Ruben!
I don't know what you mean by "components". If you talk about the community projects used in the game, they're all zlib afaik. As for the game I haven't yet decided but like I said, quite likely I keep it OS.

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Fri May 03, 2013 7:03 pm
by polylux
Thanks to a big side-project of mine - called work - I haven't found much time to work on it recently.
But still, today I added some lamps to light up the dark nights in OFL plus the ability to plant some nice bushes thoughout the countryside.
Up next: Pave a road between Red- and BlueVille these lamps could enlighten.

Cheers!

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Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 10:36 am
by rubenwardy
polylux wrote:Hey Ruben!
I don't know what you mean by "components". If you talk about the community projects used in the game, they're all zlib afaik. As for the game I haven't yet decided but like I said, quite likely I keep it OS.
The reason I ask is that I would like to use your map as a test map for my game.

(also opensource)

Re: OpenFLASHPOINT (wip title) - Introduction

Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 5:12 pm
by poVoq
Ahh, lovely programmers art so far ;)

Looks like a cool project though, any chance you can make a test release (for linux) so that I can try it?

I might be interested in updating those graphics a bit... ok a lot ;) (only if it really is an FLOSS game however).

I am however a bit sceptical when it comes to the tools... Irrlicht's features are quite impressive... but there seems to be a distinct lack of good model formats etc.
What are you using right now? .iqm would be perfect as that is what I was already experimenting with to export some high quality weapon models into the Cube2 engine.

Also, what kind of level editor are you using? Some cool userfriendly IrrRPG like stuff would be great for a game like this also I guess.