Free Sky - multiplayer space shooter

This is about 3 weeks of on again / off again work using some standard assets, files we had laying around from another project and a lot of scripting fun. I'm a coder, so this was an exercise in function, not form. I know it could be a lot prettier.

Be sure to play it with a friend or two (or 16!). Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.sindome.org/verse/freeskysd.html


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humm I couldn't manage to control the space craft, the controls seem very strange and I'm a flight sim junky.

I will say I learned something interesting, my Sidewinder joystick worked with your game to a basic extent. When pushing the stick forward that worked as the throttle. Backwards made the ship go back and side to side made it roll.

I notice the mouse option for yaw and pitch. I'm thinking you should make a settings option to allow users to select their own control mappings.

I'm quite sure if I could map the settings for my flight stick, it would work very well and allow your users to use a joystick.

Nice job, and it gives me hope for one of my game ideas. I was wondering if you could use a game controller with this and my question has been answered.

 

Ya - looked interesting, but I quickly spun out of control and couldn't get it back. Could there be a set of "brakes", where the on-board computer resets all vectors to 0?

 

I have no friends! Post screenshots!

 

joystick support: nothing but the default at present. I just got a stick to work it all out with. Should be finetuned in the next build.

level off: something I noted with my beta-tester that needs to be added just recently. Gets a bit disorienting at times.

screenshots: I'll fraps up a short battle when I get the chance.

I was expecting you guys to tear me apart or something. Thanks for being gentle!

 

Woot! I killed the Angry Ant! 8)

 

Tried a game. Controls annoy the heck out of me.

 

I got to play online. I was against AngryAnt and Chilly, but I got extremely disoriented, killed twice, and disconnected. D:

 

I got into a spin, figured out how to shoot missiles, gave up on the spinning and just shot missiles in random directions.

 

Additionally it looks like you're writing a lot to the console. This sets syslogd into a spin on Leopard. I advice you remove these messages before too many people are affected :wink:

 

I tried using your PathDebug C# class, Angry, but don't think I can do it from within one of my javascript behaviors. At least, I'm not sure how to.

 

It's nice,but I can't control the ship at all.

 

I think the problem with ship controls may be due to very high mass/drag. Try reducing the ship mass and it may work better for others. Other than what everyone else said (bad controls), it's pretty good.

 

Ok, I've practically overhauled the controls (thanks ForceMode.Acceleration!) to make them much looser, made the joystick support work a lot better and removed the last ship control that was directly affecting the transform's position (I know, shame on me). Thrust was the holdout and its been recoded to apply a force on the rigidbody as it should have.

I find the best control is by putting 4 fingers on WASD and IJKL and disabling the mouse control with the backslash key (\). The mouse is a LOT more responsive now. Also, the F key (re-orient) is invaluable when you get into a spin.

SHIP MOVEMENT:

• W/S (up/down arrows) - engine thrust
• SPACE - boosters

SHIP ORIENTATION:

• I/K (mouse up/down, numpad 8/2) - pitch
• J/L (mouse left/right, numpad 4/6) - yaw
• A/D (left/right arrows) - roll
• F - re-orient the ship
• \ (backslash) - toggle mouse pitch/yaw on/off (defaults to on)

WEAPONS:

• E,C (alt) - fire lasers
• Q,Z (ctrl, left mouse) - fire missile

MISC:

• T - toggle chat input
• TAB - show scores
• ESC - leave game

JOYSTICK:
(note that you'll want to disable mouse control for proper control)

• back/forth (axis 1) - pitch
• left/right (axis 2) - yaw
• rotate stick (axis 3) - roll
• thrust slider (axis 4) - engine thrust
• main trigger (button 1) - fire missle
• 2nd trigger (button 2) - fire lasers
• button 4 - boosters
• button 5 (button 12) - re-orient the ship

 

The controls react way to violent to action. Well atleast if the space craft only have jets that fire out the back of it.

 

Have you tried PathLibrary.PathDebug.Instance().Message( "Hello?" );

Note that you'd probably want to change the pathes and file names given in the beginning of the script. Especially the location of the debug.command file.

Also - this will not work for webplayers, so I suggest you implement a boolean variable to toggle debug on and off.

 

The game is great fun. We just played it in the office. The only problem was whenever I got shot and respawned an instance of my ship was spawned as well. This made it extremly easy for the other guys to shoot me down as there were about 500 of me.

 

Very cool and congrats. Controls and gameplay reminds me of Jumpgate and Tie Fighter....

Very cool.

 

Ok this is 100% better but IMO still needs a bit of change.


These two need to be reversed IMHO
[*]left/right (axis 2) - yaw
[*]rotate stick (axis 3) - roll

In a typical flight sim, moving the stick right or left (axis 2) will make the aircraft roll.

Using the twist function or the rudder pedals moves the rudder right or left, in a flight sim. I think you should definitally reverse these two.

The only other problem I had with the joystick functions is my throttle didn't control the forward or reverse thrust. I had to use the keyboard [W&S]

You may want to get someone else to test with a stick, to see if their throttle works. Just to make sure that part isn't on my end.

Good work on it though it's getting there.

Another thing, It would be pretty cool if you could get the joystick hat switch to work. To allow the user to look around with it. Would really improve the game play for people using joysticks.