Wooow!!! 
This is much more than a remake, it’s a giant project!!! 
Thanks for your answers!
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Hey @Domenec - I hear your concerns with stipple. Yes I was originally going for true Amiga replication, but then ran into some issues. I’ll try to clarify them so it makes some sense:
-
Stipple - Because of the extreme view distance, the view plane is clipped as a “frustum” so its a hard square line, and when you are 30,000 ft up, this looks harsh. On the original f18.. it was all line drawing to screen, and it didnt have this it had a fairly clean “curved looking” horizon. In much of reproducing this, I had to sort of make sacrifices (I really would have preferred to do a full software render like the old Amiga one, but thats even more work
). So.. the stipple exists, to mask some of that. Sorry.. and I agree with your assessment. -
Menu - I did have the original menu, but things changed. I wanted to make an engine, that allows for making F15 Strike Eagle, F16 Falcon, A-10 Tank Killer and even M1A1 Battle Tank. Some of my favourite sims from the Amiga. And after spending time in these games again (I have a pretty complete collection of original Amiga Microprose Amiga games) I wanted to have more of the feel of the old school “start in the office” type game setup and mission/progression. The ReadyRoom is a development of that. The stipple on the Menu, is intended to give a low res look and feel, while also having a slightly “modern” flowing interface - many of the older games are not great to navigate
Hope that makes sense. So its not a complete remake of the original, but the aim to have most of the look and feel. There will be significant gameplay additions too. Since the original had maybe a dozen missions tops (if you include the multi stages within a mission). Im hoping the old game ‘feel’ is still there, I think the flight is pretty close, and the art will still evolve over the coming months too.
I hope to get this to Steam over the coming year, into Early Access, so I can grow/develop some of these elements based on feedback from people like yourself and others.
The end goal, is to have a series of games with the same system, networked so you can play different games in the same world. Think of it like being able to play CounterStrike and Microsofts Flight Sim in the same world .. but retro Amiga style
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Still updating a little here as I get my new worldbuilder operational so I can complete the mission building side of things. Heres a little vid. Nearly all the capability that I had in the Defold version.. is now operational in my sokol-luajit version
Im hoping to start belting out mission content this weekend. And then look at integration of some new features Ive added to the data set into f18… and then … well.. bug fixes.. qa.. and so on.. and then hopefully Steam Early Access..
So I dont get too ahead of myself.. I expect this is a few months away still. Theres been too many gotchas each little step I take lately. If it comes sooner, great, but I wont expect that.
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This is really cool editor!
So you’ve built an editor in another engine to build your defold game?
I have a question: which platform do you target? Will it be only desktop or android or web too?
Because I really want to play that on my Anbernic console!!
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Its built from luajit + sokol. Here:
and I used an editor called lite to create a derivative called dim
The dim editor is all open source MIT.
The reason I did this is complicated, but I’ll summarize it so its not too long and dreary discussion:
- I ran into many issues with Defold as an application tool for something like a world editor. Ive been building apps with it for a while now, but there are window and ui features I really needed.
- I built pretty much all of the worldbuilder in luajit like code (just in case I needed to move to a diff app env) so it ported across pretty well.
- It used nuklear for the ui which Ive been using a fair bit in other apps so I can do reasonably complex ui layering and such.
- I wanted to also try out my sokol-luajit framework on a “real” application
- I wanted to be able to target Mac, Linux and Win desktop with minimal platform specific code
The editor itself for the worldbuilder has script editing, file management, 3d object preview, image preview and so on. This editor will be a deployable tool on Steam Workshop so people can make their own theaters and missions.
And because the whole editor is made in luajit - adding and adjusting the editor to suit your needs is pretty easy. Ive even leveraged lite plugins and themes in dim, and extended them. Also added background threading and more as well (this is in dim).
Theres still alot more to do, but its very usable and reasonably stable too.
If you do decide to use dim and want to do something like the worldbuilder tool, Id be happy to share some plugin work there
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Im still here. And still working on it… never ending story
So some updated. Not overly Defold related, but kinda (since Defold is still being used to run it all).
The editor is.. well.. hehe substantial now. Little vid:
- 3D Models (Go meshes, gltf, obj models all supported - this is going back into Dim as well)
- More editing facilities and plugin features
- Adding 3D testing features (for pathing and 3d obj placement)
- Road editing coming…
- scenarios.. building scenarios at last..
- missions: I hope to build possibly 50 missions per theatre (or thats the plan).
- character editing and profile updates
- Steam Deck support (And Steam OS support in general)
- Gamepad support
- main title updates (going to be rendered)
Lots incoming.. and initial demo to go up on Steam soon (a month atm - assuming I can move house and no other family things come up).
Will share a new demo on itch too.
Will also update Dim (the editor) to support the same 3D model viewing and editing.
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Well. Im officially out from Defold. Im not going to release this using Defold anymore. I keep coming back and seeing the SSDP spamming my logs (cant barely see my logs)
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Creating new socket on #00
DEBUG:DLIB: Skipping interface, unable to multicast (#00)
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Creating new socket on #01
DEBUG:DLIB: Skipping interface, unable to multicast (#01)
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Creating new socket on #02
DEBUG:DLIB: Skipping interface, unable to multicast (#02)
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Creating new socket on #03
DEBUG:DLIB: Skipping interface, unable to multicast (#03)
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Creating new socket on #04
INFO:DLIB: SSDP: Started on address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Announcing 'defold' on interface Ethernet
DEBUG:DLIB: Multicast SSDP message from XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:55718
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP new defold-XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:49352-::upnp:rootdevice (http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:49353/defold) (announce/search-response)
DEBUG:SCRIPT: Changing State to... MenuTitle
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Creating new socket on #00
DEBUG:DLIB: Skipping interface, unable to multicast (#00)
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Destroying socket previously on #00
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Creating new socket on #01
DEBUG:DLIB: Skipping interface, unable to multicast (#01)
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Destroying socket previously on #01
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Creating new socket on #02
DEBUG:DLIB: Skipping interface, unable to multicast (#02)
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Destroying socket previously on #02
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Creating new socket on #03
DEBUG:DLIB: Skipping interface, unable to multicast (#03)
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Destroying socket previously on #03
DEBUG:DLIB: SSDP Update: Keeping socket on #04, previously on #04
I raised this before, but its really quite a silly thing to be doing. Why not even just allow disabling it during dev? Its nuts. So… many other problems so Im switching to Flax or Godot.. will see. Its a pity, because as an engine its great, and has a great community.
Having built games in other engines before, this has taken far longer than I had really wanted (over 4 yrs now). Especially on the editor/modelling side of things - the problems I ran into numerous times (and still do) its just not a good dev pipeline for larger 3d games (imho).
I wish the Defold guys all the best with it. Its a great toolkit. Maybe I’ll come back when its more mature.
I wont be updating the blog here now, since its not fair to have a blog using a different engine here.
Thanks to all those who helped and supported and critiqued (I like you guys the most - it makes me get better at the things I do)…
Cheers.
Dave.
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SSDP has been fully replaced in 1.12.4.
I can’t do anything if you are using older Defold
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Two things:
- We are no longer using SSDP. We moved to mDNS in April (https://github.com/defold/defold/pull/12088). Which version of Defold are you using?!
- It is possible to change the log level of your project (see issue SSDP log spam and PR with log level added )
When you started 4 years ago Defold was definitely not a good engine for large 3D games. We are slowly getting better, but we are not quite there yet.
Good luck with the project! Where will you be posting updates?
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Good luck with your game! Let us know when/if this gets released!
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Ohh no! I hope this choice will not delay too much the game, as I was really happy to read your dev logs and am looking forward to test the game!
Please keep us updated when you release it / or give us a link to follow up.
You surely already afterthought it, but should you not give a try on updated version of Defold (1.13.1)? There was a lot feature added especially for user life… even if for 3d it is not UE.. clearly.
Anyway, it was already clear you are a really capable dev that can build complex tools, and I wish you all the best on this project
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Thanks for the kind words all. Little summary:
Moving defold versions was costing me a huge amount of time. I cant do any more steps, I dont do this fulltime, and have had alot of family issues over the last year so I barely get a couple of hours a week on this. I need something more stable over time and specifically something more suited to this sort of static work blocks I have to deal with. This is not a blight on Defold this is relevant to the circumstances Im in, and even Unity3D and Unreal has been considered recently (on a fixed version) just to get it out the door.
Glad you moved to mDNS.. good choice. Its a nice little toolkit that one. The SSDP wasnt the main prob it was just one of a series. And yes I did try newer versions, but yeah… the project is old, and dragging it forward is something I just cant do (too many moving parts). I have some 15 yrs exp with Unity and Unreal.. so its likely these will end up being the choice (I have my own luajit systems for them too, so easy enough to transfer). The asset management, editing, and so on becomes a significant pipeline issue in 3D once the scenarios grow to a decent size, and because of the large scale nature of my scenarios, its a problem for editors too.
Id say the biggest problem or.. not really problem, limitation for me, is the editor - where adding functionality specifically for my world building and simulation flight models would have helped greatly, but I found the Clojure project far too cumbersome to even do small changes that could help there. Same goes for various 3D features and pipeline components - I love Defolds flexibility here, and this is where it shines, but I ended up building alot of extensions, and then eventually moved all my world editing out because of ui limitations and so on. Now.. that might be better now, but thats kinda trying to put the horse back in after its bolted.
As I said.. will prob revisit in the future. For the time being I just want this done and published so I can get my other projects back into my dev scope. Again, if I had more time for all of this, then itd probably be a different end point. But I cant change how life turns out.. so c’est la vie.
Oh. I dunno where I will blog the progress. Dunno if I even will.. will see. Time is not something I have alot of these days.
All the best to the developers.. you guys are awesome. And the community too. I’ll still lurk around reading posts when I get time. Take care.
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