Ask the Developers

[Tinus]

Hey all!

If you have any burning questions for me or any other members of the development team (which will grow in size, I promise!), post them here! I'll do my best to get back to you.

Cheers

[Murcuseo]

Yo Tin Man,(does that nickname work, I dunno?)

I'll just get this out the way straight off the bat, no doubt someone else would if I didn't lol

You can be as vague as you like seeing as it won't be top of your priority list at the moment

What, if any are your plans for online multiplayer, do you see it as being a fully functional part of the official release or something you would work on and add later?

Right, now thats out the way lol

Do you have any aims in regards to a minimum system requirement for the game?

I run a fairly high end system but there will obviously be people that can't afford to upgrade their hardware as readily.

I've asked you this next one already but I'll do it again for everyones benefit...

What are your plans for control configuration, will there be a keyboard+mouse set up aswell as gamepad?

Also how much control will we have over the stabilizer and assist controls, what kind of customization level to you intend on giving the user?

3 should be enough to get the ball rolling I think

[Tinus]

@Murcuseo: Tin Man's fine.


My current plans for online multiplayer: ... Yeah, I would totally like online multiplayer! I realise it will be an essential part to get a real audience for the game, it would really allow it to grow. Besides, B.A.S.E jumping has never really been a solo activity, right? As for technology: Networking is either second or third on the roadmap. Physics are first, and the other big one is a solid replay system (which will probably depend on the networking tech.)

System requirements! I have no idea yet. I typically associate high system requirements with realistic graphics. Realistic graphics are out of the question for the moment since it requires an absolutely massive amount of manpower. You can count on any near-future releases to run pretty fast, since they'll be quite bare-bones graphically. As the game matures I hope to stay in close contact with the community, and that also means I'll get an idea of what people are running the game on so I can fine-tune things.

As for controllers: The current prototype is unplayable by keyboard and really requires a gamepad to give you enough fidelity. As I get the physics more robust and the assist systems and stabilisers worked out though, keyboard and mouse support will be back in the picture. Not everyone has a gamepad handy, so keyboard and mouse should be properly supported.

And finally difficulty: I want to handle that by turning on an off assists. I don’t even want to hide those settings under “easy, medium, hard, realistic” settings, instead I’ll just present options for each assist individually so you can influence how much they are involved. This is what Forza 3 (racing sim) does for example, and I think it is very elegant.

There you go!

[maxwell88]

Hello, All great idea's,

especially

And finally difficulty: I want to handle that by turning on an off assists. I don’t even want to hide those settings under “easy, medium, hard, realistic” settings, instead I’ll just present options for each assist individually so you can influence how much they are involved. This is what Forza 3 (racing sim) does for example, and I think it is very elegant.

As with most flight simulators too

[Murcuseo]

Next questions

What are the top 5 items on your priority list at the moment and what progress do you expect/hoping to have made with said items in the next couple of months?

How do you think you'll approach the exit system, by that I mean will you be adding some kind of mechanic that can make exits unstable in certain conditions or just randomly?

Even the pros don't always get their exit perfect and from what I've seen it can be something really subtle that gets them out of shape, a gust of wind or a mispalced foot...

Are you going to use your knowledge of game audio to make a more in depth and realistic audio experience?

Also, do you have plans to bring any of your ideas on Singularity into the game?

And finally a novelty question at the end

Do you have plans to animate the container once its open?

I'm not entirely sure of the difficulties of animating something like that so excuse my ignorance if it seems like a dumb question!

I'll have more for you tomorrow I'm sure, don't want to completely overwhelm you

[Tinus]

What are the top 5 items on your priority list at the moment and what progress do you expect/hoping to have made with said items in the next couple of months?

- Getting the physics system to a level that provides enough depth and realism. (what that is, is uhm... personal taste. I'll elaborate on this soon.)
- Building a control system that allows you to play with that physics system using various peripherals (gamepad, joystick, keyboard, mouse) at various levels of depth and difficulty.
- Basic multiplayer and networking.
- Some test levels and game modes for an early alpha release
- Animation system that is both driven by the physics system and premade animations.
- Procedural sound design using Singularity

(Yes, I suck at counting)

If there is one thing that I've learned in the development process so far it is this: You cannot plan even remotely accurately if you are threading unfamiliar ground. All of this is new ground for me (physics and aerodynamics, complex game programming, networking, game design, the list goes on), and so far every estimate I've made has been completely wrong. I want to give each of those areas the attention they deserve, which involves huge amounts of trial and error.

To deal with this iterative development process I think it is a good idea to release versions of the game early and often. This way people get to play the game, and provide meaningful feedback. The major goal for the coming months therefore is to produce a playable artefact. There's only so much I can do in a day, and I could easily (and happily) spend many years building this game. If I can find a business model that supports this, I will.

How do you think you'll approach the exit system, by that I mean will you be adding some kind of mechanic that can make exits unstable in certain conditions or just randomly?

Even the pros don't always get their exit perfect and from what I've seen it can be something really subtle that gets them out of shape, a gust of wind or a mispalced foot...

Gee, exits are a domain I haven't touched yet. I've been so focused on getting the flying right! Really, that is my first priority. Being consistent would mean I have to do procedural, physics-driven movement on the exit point too. It might happen, but not soon. I don't like resorting to randomness in a simulation. In fact, so far I've not resorted to random for anything except the air turbulence, and even that isn't even completely random. The first alpha versions will likely feature a pretty arcade exit system, which will hopefully be properly developed in the not-so-near future.

Are you going to use your knowledge of game audio to make a more in depth and realistic audio experience?

Yes, this is what my graduation project is all about. The complex noise you hear while shooting through the air at high speeds contains a huge amount of information that gives you a good idea of what is going on around you. There's so many factors involved though, making it very hard to simulate using only sample-based approaches. It'll be much easier to approach this problem with real-time synthesis and processing of the audio. I'll use the physics system to drive a synthesis model, something I haven't seen a lot of people do. This is complex stuff though, so again, don't expect to see this realised for quite a while.

Also, do you have plans to bring any of your ideas on Singularity into the game?

I've kind of answered this above.


Do you have plans to animate the container once its open?

I'm not entirely sure of the difficulties of animating something like that so excuse my ignorance if it seems like a dumb question!

Questions are rarely ever really dumb, some would say never. Anyway, haven't really thought about this one! Could you elaborate on what you think this would add to the game? If it is significant I'll have a think about how it could be done properly.

[Murcuseo]

My mathimatical talents aren't very astute either, seeing as I claimed to have asked 3 questions in my first post when it was actually 4... I was assuming the first one didn't count though lol

I'm very interested to see what happens in regards to Singularirty, I tend to just expect a certain level of depth when it comes to audio in games and your ideas(although I don't fully understand them) might shine a new light on the whole concept of game audio.

As for the question about animating the container once its open, that was just a novelty question as I said. It wouldn't add any real depth to the game but it would be a nice touch... add to the realism

[Murcuseo]

Sup Tin Man,

Hope you a good weekend mate, few more questions for you to ponder

Storyline: Have you had any thoughts about how you want the user to progress through the game, willl it be a simple arcade style play through or will there be a storyline and missions/achievements to keep you busy?

Having a storyline would be amazing, you could start out as a total novice, go through all the training and make friends to jump with along the way.

What locations have you considered and do any of them seem like a realistic locations to implement into the game?

Theres so many places I'd love to see in a game like this, but I do understand that some of them will be virtually impossible to implement... not unless you have a bigger team of developers working on it.

Has Jarno managed to make any progression in regards to the 3D modelling and animations?

I realise hes probably quite busy so I won't hold my breath

Hopefully you'll find some more time to post up on your blog this week, I'm looking forward to reading more about what you've been up to in the last 8 months and where you plan to be in the next 8

[Tinus]

Storyline: Have you had any thoughts about how you want the user to progress through the game, willl it be a simple arcade style play through or will there be a storyline and missions/achievements to keep you busy?

This is something for the slightly more distant future, as it requires all the elements of the game to be in place and working well. The game will definitely need some kind of structure for player progression in order to stay interesting though. Just having a sandbox environment with no real goals to achieve can get boring rather quickly.

What locations have you considered and do any of them seem like a realistic locations to implement into the game?

Taking aside the fact that -- like you said -- creating really good levels will require a significantly larger team: We'd like to have a mix of some prominent real-world locations next to some completely fictional ones. We make this distinction to serve two different kinds of gameplay flavours. In the real-world levels you are bound by tight restrictions. You can't really fly longer than one or two minutes tops, for example. And no matter how cool any real-world location is, it's not like it has been purposefully designed for flying/skydiving. That's fine for the hardcore sim crowd, but other players will probably want to get some more 'game' out of the experience. That's why we're also planning fictional environments that have been carefully designed with interesting gameplay in mind. These environments may resemble real-world geometry, but we're also thinking about some more game-y elements such as ridiculous thermals that even wingsuiters can use to rise up. Something like that can extend your flighttime indefinitely, and allows for loads of new gameplay.

Anyway, for a first real-world location we've been discussing Bispen. After that, we'll see.

Has Jarno managed to make any progression in regards to the 3D modelling and animations?

He's finishing up the model, and working on the rigging. He's quite busy yeah, but I hope to get my hands on it soon. I don't exactly know how long it will take me to get it functioning within the game. I imagine that moving the limbs using the physics system will be a snap, but I'll have to think of some neat tricks for procedurally animating the wings.

Hopefully you'll find some more time to post up on your blog this week, I'm looking forward to reading more about what you've been up to in the last 8 months and where you plan to be in the next 8

Thanks for the reminder. It will take some time for me to become a habitual blogger, so please prod me for posts every once in a while.

[Mihawkler]

Will you add a working parachute too?
If yes, will you add normal base jumps without wingsuit?

Will lauterbrunnen and the eiger exist as a location?

[Tinus]

Will you add a working parachute too? If yes, will you add normal base jumps without wingsuit?

Yes and yes! Once the physics system for wingsuit flight is sufficiently mature I'll also be using it to model normal freefall and canopy flight. With any I can get loads more hybrids out of it. Distant future expansions could include speed-riding and skysurfing, for example. At this point those are more dreams than concrete plans, but if the project really takes off, it could happen.

Will lauterbrunnen and the eiger exist as a location?

I definitely hope so. However, as I wrote in response to Murcuseo: Creating locations will require a significantly larger team of level-creation monkeys, so I'll need to step-up my game in order for that to happen. So my advice: Keep your hopes up, but don't expect them for the first alpha releases.

[junkstar]

Hey i was wandering how your going to deal with impacts.
Like, rag-doll or cut scene or what.

And also moving exit points like planes, helicopters and airships.
xx

[Tinus]

Hey i was wandering how your going to deal with impacts.
Like, rag-doll or cut scene or what.

The character is actually already a ragdoll, just one that has some muscle control so it can do things. In the event of a crash I'll just turn off the muscle control system and let some traditional ragdoll madness take place. You'll always be able to instantly reset/respawn/rewind at the press of a button, though. I don't want to punish players for trying something cool and then not quite making it.

And also moving exit points like planes, helicopters and airships.

These will happen, but only once the game has become a little more mature.

[Murcuseo]

This is from a PM I sent Tinus yesterday, he thought you guys might want to read it so here 'ya are

How did you become interested in skydiving and B.A.S.E.?

After coming across a video of Jean-Loic Albert doing some proximity flying (an excerpt from Soul Flyers on youtube, I think) the idea of wingsuiting just got stuck in my head. Any kind of flight is awesome, that's how I've felt ever since I was a kid; and I've always had a passing interest in aviation. Wingsuit flight rocked my mental world because it offers such a raw, adrenaline-fuelled contrast to the otherwise very safe and disconnected feel of modern aviation.

How did you meet Jarno and what led to you involving him in the 3D modelling and animation of the game?

I contacted him after reading a short article about wingsuit aerodynamics on the FlyLikeBrick team website. I thought it contained an error, and pointed it out. I had it wrong (I was a newbie, heh), but the whole team was very interested in what I was building. Jarno pretty much immediately said he would like to help developing the game.

Initially, what gave you the idea for Volo and how have your plans for the game changed since the initial idea?

I've been interested in game development for many years, and I've always kept my studies closely related to it over the years. Appart from some school projects though, I had never actually set out to create my very own game. after discovering wingsuit flying, it didn't take me long to formulate the following question: "But.. why has nobody built a proper game around this?"

How long have you been working on Volo, including the initial concept?

The concept formed late-august 2009, and I think I started prototyping in september.

Did your friends and family have any thoughts on Volo when you mentioned it to them?

They were very supportive, even though my initial productions were very crude. While we all laughed at the results of my somewhat inept tinkering -- the first prototype was a flying capsule, not very evocative -- I guess they did get a good idea of what I was trying to do. I've gotten a lot of good feedback from them, and I still do. Now, they see it as a game with a lot of potential. They just urge me to find a way to start making some money with it, and rightfully so.

In regards to game development, what was your experience level to begin with and how much has it progressed as you've developed the game. Also, which particular parts of the process did you have to learn as you went along?

I had a couple of years of programming experience in some game-related fields. I had no real experience with Unity, nor physics and aerodynamics though. Having gained a decent base for those things, I'm now focussing on multiplayer networking. And after that there's still more things to learn.

Fortunately, learning all that stuff really isn't a chore, at least not most of the time.

Which part of the development have you enjoyed most?

Finally getting the wingsuit to fly in a major new prototype. That moment gives me an immense sense of achievement each time. I always go "it's alive, it's aliiive!" in a Frankenstein-esque manner when that happens. No really!

Looking into the fututre, what are you expectations for the release of the game? Do you plan on making money from the venture or is it more about the process and realising the idea?

At first the scope was just wingsuit flight, but now I'm trying to create technology with which the whole of the skydiving spectrum can be included. I'm trying to simulate all aspects of the sport that can offer interesting gameplay. All the fun stuff goes in, while all the boring stuff (climbing up to an exit point, and, uh, death) are left out.

My initial expectations were: "We'll see how it goes", and they still are. I can't predict the future; I certainly don't know where the game will be in a few months. I've got my graduation coming up, and I've got to form some concrete plans for after that. What I can do is build the game, and try to get enough people to like it so I can continue building it. I'd like to develop the game to its full extent, and that will certainly require earning money with it. I'm exploring a bunch of options for funding.

Now that you've dropped your original coding and started a fresh has your experience and the community input changed the DNA of the game, was the change a radical overhaul of your original coding or have you just had to reshuffle things to get the ideas to fit in?

I've started from scratch, as far as code goes. The old prototype code was just not designed to be extensible or maintainable, so it had to go. Right now I'm working on a solid framework for all of the game's subsystems, the first being multiplayer networking.

Cheers,
Tinus

[Mihawkler]

Ok, Right now I'm modelling trees for the game, as you all may know

I make low poly trees, which means that, i create the trunk of the tree as an actual mesh but all the branches with leafs on it are just a few triangles with a branch-leaf texture on it (partly transparent texture, so you wont see the triangles)...

But here comes the problem/question:
This texture gets applied to only one side of those triangles, so from the other side there is just nothing!
In blender i have the ability to activate 2-sided textures, which allows the branch texture to apper on both sides of the triangles...

but as i have tested and googled it, unity does draw one side of the mesh only (the sides which are not visible anyway are just not drawn, which saves a lot of computer memory) but in case of my trees thats not good, because my nice 2-sided-textures from blender are only shown on one side
and unity does not have any inbuilt function to enable 2-sided drawing

i have found out, that there are 2 ways to fix this problem:
1. i duplicate my branch-triangles and just flip the normals of the duplicated one, so that those 2 ident meshes are just back to back facing each other, and all sides are textured and drawn in unity

2.there are some example scripts, which enable such 2 sided drawing

so.... should i do it the first way, or is it possible to include such a script in the game?

the whole thing is described and the solutions + scripts are shown here
http://www.katsbits.com/htm/google-arch ... =&ucat=12&

[Tinus]

I haven't put much research into specific graphics techniques yet, but I think I've seen this problem on the Unity forums. Have you checked the built-in shaders under the Nature catagory? It has a specific shader for leaves.

Edit: Yep, that seems to work. Take a look at the palm tree in the standard assets folder. It has two materials, one for the bark and one for the leaves. If you look at the underside of the leaves and changes the leaves shader to a simple diffuse shader, they become invisible. Change the shader back to Nature/Soft Occlusion Leaves, and the backfacing polygons are drawn again.

[Mihawkler]

Ah, That's cool!
I'm going to check it out later (school :/ )

Thank you!

[Murcuseo]

Not heard from you in a while Tinus, hope all's well and your progressing as planned.

I'm certain your hangovers aren't slowing things down to much

Are you planning to jump again anytime soon?

[Barton]

Hello! Just heard about VOLO through Rock Paper Shotgun; congrats on the mention! Your game looks really interesting and I'm looking forward to hearing more about it as it progresses.

I'm also a game developer, and I have an idea for a game that would need some aerodynamic physics model implemented, but I have no experience within the realm of aerodynamic physics. You mentioned in your blog that you were in a similar situation, and a lot of your work "consisted of learning a whole lot by study, and trial and error". My question for you:
What did you need to learn to get your game off the ground (hehe) and which resources did you find the most useful in your studies?
Also,
What did you learn in regards to your currently implemented physics model that you couldn't find in books? I.E. Where did your trials and errors lead?

Ideally, I would love to have a look under the hood if some of your code is online, but that's entirely up to how open you want to leave your development process. Keep up the good work, and keep us in the loop!

[Tinus]

Heya Barton, welcome!

What did you need to learn to get your game off the ground (hehe) and which resources did you find the most useful in your studies?

As you can see on my youtube account, I started out with the simplest thing possible: A single wing. That gave me some good practice in playing with the principles of aerodynamics.

Wikipedia is always a great help, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_(force) for example. The formula under Lift Coefficient is in my code pretty much literally. It also helps to have loads of different sources that tackle the same thing, since each one gives you a slightly different perspective. Check this out for example: http://sites.google.com/site/aerodynamics4students/table-of-contents. NASA also has some very accessible pages.

What did you learn in regards to your currently implemented physics model that you couldn't find in books? I.E. Where did your trials and errors lead?

I learned that Real World != Mathematical Formulas != Your Game.

The mathematical formulas, however accurate they might be, are never equal to the real-world phenomena they describe. Your game will use one or several of these mathematical models, usually with some glue to make them work with each other and the rest of your game engine. This means that your game will never seem completely real to you, and you'll have to decide how far you need to go, which ultimately depends on your game-design goals. A lot of the trial and error for me comes from from trying our slightly different implementations and feeling how they play.

I'm still thinking about putting some or all of the code online eventually. Personally I'd like to just open-source everything, but that's a problem in the eyes of potential distributors. And however things go, I'll only put code online that's fairly stable, which none of it currently is.