Collaborative Sci-Fantasy Tech Demo for an Official Panda3D Showcase

[Epihaius]

@Simulan

This sounds great. I just gave Write privileges to members, so that should clear up any Push issues you may have been having! Sorry about that.

Thanks – and don’t worry about it! As soon as I have integrated my motion system into the ship-generation code, I’ll upload it all into the experiments folder.

@Thaumaturge

All right, I’ve just pushed an initial update to Section 3.

Thanks! Will check it out soon (I’m a bit busy today).

@Simulan

So the new plan is thus:

Sounds good to me.
It does indeed seem like a good way to draw the player in by starting off with “pure/standard” sci-fi in the first two sections and then gradually introduce a more fantasy-like setting. The space station could be harboring a terrible secret, related to an alien menace from a different dimension for example, which could explain the sudden appearance of fantasy-themed props, weapons and/or enemies. This should make it easier for the player to accept/digest the fantasy element, more than if it were there from the start, I think.

@Thaumaturge

Instead, I was thinking that Section 2 would end with a portal, with Section 3 then taking place entirely in a new environ. It likewise would end in a portal, which would lead to Section 4 which in turn would have its own environ and style.

Hmm, I’m not sure I agree here. The portals were mostly intended to form a kind of puzzle segment, where the player needs to figure out which ones to go through in order to leave the space station. Spreading them out to earlier sections would dilute that concept, I feel.
How do you imagine the starship to enter that portal, by the way? In a deliberate fashion, to escape enemy fighter ships at the end of the space battle, or purely by accident, or perhaps manoeuvred into it by the enemy?

Regardless of art style, the worlds inside these portals would be very hostile, such that the player shouldn’t have to stick around long; each “world” could therefore be just a single scene from which to quickly escape through another portal – which should not immediately be recognizable as such.

An example: you see a poster of an old movie on a wall and only by moving alongside it do you notice apparent depth behind said “poster”. Let’s say it’s a poster for the 1977 movie “The Car”, where said car is pictured inside of a garage. Not having seen the movie, you decide to jump through the poster-portal, only to discover to your horror that this car is actually alive, indestructable and hell-bent on killing you. Revving its engine as if possessed (and it is!) and honking like mad (which it is too!), it starts to exhaust its deadly fumes and the garage door cannot be opened. Then your eye catches a painting on the wall…
See where I’m going with this?

But should this prove too difficult to implement, then alternative ideas are welcome of course!

@Thaumaturge

@Simulan

Pushing the date further and further into the future for adopting PBR has limited and decreasing benefits, to my eye. I’m not sure why, besides code inertia, one would want to use severely outdated tools to build a game.

Code inertia, familiarity, the tools working well with the desired style, the tools still working well, and so on.

“Old” is not necessarily a synonym for “bad”, remember. (Neither is “new”, to be clear.)

Further, while I imagine that I’ll at some stage pick up a later version of Blender and whatever exporter I settle on, it’s not likely to be in the short term. For this project, Blender 2.79 + YABEE is the toolset that I’m familiar with and in a position to use; if we’re vetoing it, then I’m not in much of a position to contribute as much, I fear.

For the time being I wouldn’t worry too much about the exact file format the models are exported to. Perhaps it’s best to focus on the shape of the models right now, and add materials to them later. Applying textures to them should already give a good idea of where you’re going with them, art-style wise. So I don’t see an immediate problem with using .egg files.
Let’s just do what we can with the tools we’re most comfortable with – there should always be a way afterwards to convert the model files to a more preferable format.

That said, this may be a good time to discuss the future of the .egg file format.

@Simulan

I may have to consider abandoning the demo if it’s only myself and Epihaius working on it – though I will 100% finish the procedural code section because that is super cool and we already have an 90% working solution for that. I’m not going to solo the whole demo by myself – I do have a number of other real-life projects that require my attention.

Totally understandable – there’s life outside of Panda3D! And I’m also working on another project as well, although I’ve put it on hold right now, so I can focus on this one.

Let’s just take our time with this and work on it one small step at a time – I don’t think anyone is expecting this demo to be finished any time soon. The longer it takes, the more ideas and insights will develop naturally – just look at the myriad of ideas we’ve already gathered since the original concept was introduced! Besides, the development of Panda itself isn’t all that fast (and understandably so); if we can get it together before that elusive Panda3D version 2.0 is released, I’ll be pretty glad already!