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Call for Mappers [Intensity Engine]

by kripken on 06/28/2009 12:41, 104 messages, last message: 09/29/2009 09:14, 60616 views, last view: 05/05/2024 12:48

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for good mappers to work with on maps for the Intensity Engine, an open source project of mine that is based on Sauerbraten. After a year of development, the Intensity Engine code is fairly stable, and almost ready for a 1.0 release, so what I'm focused on now is adding an example game (or games).

Why should you do this? Because cool stuff can be made :) Here are example videos showing some things that are possible in the Intensity Engine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7iq3ZxD5hw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gGe_pIV7cU

The Intensity Engine extends Sauerbraten with a very flexible API. In the first example some scripts use that API to make two automatic gun turrets, which face towards the closest player and shoot at him/her (it would be easy to make it so the turrets can be temporarily disabled when a player clicks a button, etc.). In the second an 'eye' is created by a script that generates some particle effects; the eye is only shown when someone is on top of the tower. A lot of other stuff is possible with the API, like for example doors that are controlled by scripts, special weapons that are only usable in certain areas in the map, etc. etc.

So, as I said above, the engine is almost finished, and now I want to create a game (or games) for the upcoming 1.0 release. The best sort of person to work with me on this would be someone that is both a good mapper and has a good idea for a game, because just one or the other might not get us far: My own mapping skills are poor, and my game ideas aren't much better - currently the top one I have is "insta ctf + automatic gun towers near the flags" ;) In other words, I can do all the coding, but an idea + mapping are really needed.

Here are some relevant things about this project:

- Changes to maps in the Intensity Engine can go live immediately: No need to download and install map files, or to compile anything, or to wait for a new release. When you upload changes to your map (which takes 1 click, well, 2 to click "I'm sure"), immediately after that all games using that map will use that latest version, streamed from the asset servers. This means that whatever maps we create, will immediately be playable by people that have the Intensity Engine client.
- I really want all content to be CC-BY-SA - in other words, no NC or other limitations - so that all content is reusable, both in the Intensity Engine and also in Sauerbraten and other Cube 2 based games. However, if you are absolutely not willing to use this license for your map, talk to me, maybe we can figure something out.
- Due to only using non-limiting content, we have fewer textures, mapmodels, etc., than Sauerbraten. I think we have enough to start with, and more is being added, but do not expect the same stuff as in Sauerbraten.
- In particular, there are currently no hudmodels, and I am thinking about making the first games in thirdperson (simpler for various reasons) - I implemented better thirdperson camera control to make that possible. But, if you want a firstperson game, it's possible, so long as we can find CC-BY-SA licensed hudmodels for it.
- As already mentioned the Intensity Engine is open source. Syntensity, which is the active server infrastructure (running master server + game servers + asset servers) is free to use and open source (everything but part of the master server, but that too will be open sourced soon). As running Syntensity costs me money, I'm looking for ways to make it self sustaining (while remaining free and open source), like getting funding somehow, or showing ads. Very possibly this won't work out anyhow, but I'm mentioning it here so I don't surprise anyone later on in the unlikely event that it does.
- Importing maps from Sauerbraten is possible, if you have a map of yours from there that you want to use as a starting point. The import requires some manual fiddling, but I can do that for you.
- While the Intensity Engine code is fairly stable, it is still changing fast enough that it doesn't make sense to release binary builds. Compiling the engine from source isn't that hard, and I will of course help, but if you aren't comfortable with that then you should probably wait for the 1.0 release.
- The engine currently compiles and runs on Windows and Linux. I haven't been able to test on OS X as I lack a suitable machine. But all the code is cross-platform, so there should be no problem (help is welcome).
- Bugs exist, hopefully not too many at this point, but still.

Some technical features of the Intensity Engine, for those that care:

- Over 30,000 new lines of code, in C++, Python and JavaScript.
- Scripting is done in JavaScript, using Google V8 (the same fast engine used in the Chrome web browser), using a custom object oriented API.
- Scripts (and parts of scripts) can run on both client and server, whichever is best for the map (for example, the automatic gun turrets in the video above are managed on the server, and their projectiles also on the clients).
- Syntensity provides a central user account system, which should be very helpful to prevent cheating (however, you can run your own server infrastructure, if you want - the code is available, and see README-standalone.txt for details on how to do it).

Links:

http://www.intensityengine.com
http://www.syntensity.com
http://syntensity.blogspot.com/

Feel free to ask me any questions, either here, or on IRC (I'm in the sauerbraten channel, and also #intensityengine on FreeNode).

- Kripken

Board Index

#85: Re: ..

by kripken on 09/23/2009 19:00, refers to #84

@tentus:

Yeah, getting the controls system right is hard, and probably we'll end up changing how it's handled a few times.

Currently the approach is 'virtual action keys'. So there is action key 0, 1, 2, and so forth. You can bind them using cubescript to whatever physical keys you want. Scripts on the other hand only deal with action key 0, 1, 2, etc.

So action key 1 could be 'reload' in one game and 'crouch' in another. And keybindings are done entirely in cubescript (which is good since maps can't mess with your keybindings). But there are several problems with this approach, of course.