P.H.O.E.N.I.X. Demo

Hey all. Well I'm finally graduating and getting my fancy degree... Which means my time here at Penn State is done. Which also (and much more unfortunately) means that my time with Unity is done.

So... before I go gentle into that good night, I'd like to share my capstone with you guys. For the past two semesters I've been working with Unity to create a 3D Space Flight Combat Sim ala X-Wing or TIE Fighter. The result is the Demo Level for P.H.O.E.N.I.X. - The Project for Human Operative Enhancement to Neutralize Invading Xeno-Sapiens.

Download Links:

Edit: Mac version.rar removed, Mac .zip version should now be free of any launch errors. If errors persist, follow instructions in the ReadMe. Links updated, should work again now.

Mac Demo (.zip)
Windows Demo (.zip)

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank OTEE for making such a great tool in Unity... when making a game it's my job to play god, Unity makes that job a lot more managable, lol. I'd also like to thank Starmanta for doing the principal AI coding. And I'd like to thank anyone who's ever taken the time to respond to one of my cries for help here on the forums, I've honestly never in my life come across a community as genuinely helpful as this one. So thank you all.

So please, go and download, and let me know what you think.

 

Just a couple more shots.

 

i loved all the old space shooter games, i'll definitly check it out when you post it. are you not going to continue developing it?

congrats on your graduation ; )

 

Why are you stopping? Is the Unity license owned by Penn State?

 

I did too. TIE Fighter was the first PC game I ever played as a kid, back when it came on 15 floppy diskettes, lol. So I figured it was only proper to make my first ever from-scratch game an homage to those style of games... especially since you don't see many of them any more.

Yeah... and since I'm just a poor college grad I don't exactly have the cash to go buy a mac and then drop $1000 on Unity Pro (much as I'd love to). But on the upside... my profs were so impressed with my work that they decided to invest the New Media department here in Unity and buy 20 Pro Licenses.

You're welcome OTEE.

 

Nice work...I managed to get my school to cough for 5 indie licenses, but 20 pro licenses is hard to beat. Who's up to topping this? I dare ya...

Ps your project looks great-perhaps you cold get someone with pro to pick up where you left off? I think the law says if you port something from an academic license to a commercial one you just have to modify the content by 20% (it might be 10%-I'll find out)
Obviously that only applys to your art programs as the unity license is commercially friendly from the moment its installed.

I like the cockpit surrounds. If you dont do anything further will you be posting the project at all?

AC

 

My web design teacher is impressed with Unity, but doesn't have enough pull/budget to buy any. Too bad too, because then they'd probably unblock this site at school. This game looks very cool. It's a shame you won't still be using Unity.

 

Great work and bravo on the Unity promotion as well. Once people see what it's capable of there's no stopping them.

 

It's been brought to my attention that during the tutorial part of the level, the collision detection between your bullets and the 2nd Nav Buoy can sometimes be ignored if you are too close to the Buoy. Just put some distance between yourself and the Buoy when you shoot and you should be fine. Enjoy.

 

When I double click on the .app the dock jumps momentarily but nothing happens.

 

Are using one of the new Intel-based Macs? Because the Intel Macs in our labs have the same problem with Photoshop sometimes... it's usually fixed by restarting the computer... Is anyone else having this problem?

The Mac Build was built using the 'Universal Binary' Option... I'm not a hardcore Mac guy, so... was that the right option to use?

Edit:
If it's not too much trouble, could anyone having problems please respond quickly? I'm only going to have access to Unity to fix any bugs for about another 3-5 hours... then I won't get the chance.

 

I ran into the same problem on my G4.

It turned out that the universal binary
"P.H.O.E.N.I.X. Demo_Mac/P.H.O.E.N.I.X. Demo.app/Contents/MacOS/P.H.O.E.N.I.X. Demo"

did not have its executable bit set. So I set it. And it worked

 

Awesome. Would you mind posting exactly how that's done so I can update the ReadMe file?

 

Yes .rar is superb tho for large amounts of images, text, and other things of the sort.

 

FWIW I downloaded the zip archive, and it too didn't have the executable bit set. Rather than using any command line tool, "Create archive" in the Finder should handle this properly.

To fix this problem for anyone who's already downloaded it, open Terminal.app and type "cd " (without the quotes, but with the space) and then drag Phoenix Demo onto the terminal window. Press return, and then type "chmod +x Contents/MacOS/P.H.O.E.N.I.X.\ Demo" (again without the quotes) and finally press return. You can now launch the game successfully.

And it's well worth the effort! That's a really impressive piece of work.

 

Wow, that looks really cool! Too bad the file size kinda kills my dial-up connection...I'll be back with more comments next week or so.

--Eric

 

Actually, I downloaded the zip, but maybe the file had been through a rar transport first.

If the damage is done, and you want to set the executable bit, I can tell you how to do it from the "Terminal" app, which comes with MacOS in Applications/Utilities

Ok, here goes:
- Start Terminal and type "cd" followed by a space.
- Then drag-drop the Phoenix Demo app onto the terminal (this pastes the path to the app into the terminal)
- hit return
- now type chmod a+x Contents/MacOS/P.H.O.E.N.I.X.\ Demo
- and hit return

That should be it.

Edit: Duh, took me so long to get it right, that shadowphiar posted an explanation before me.

 

Thanks guys... I had no idea about that with .rar files... I managed to create another archive and will probably have it uploaded sometime tonight (hopefully without the bug). In the meantime, I've got packing and driving to do... so if you actually CAN play the game, please do and post your impressions.

Thanks again.

 

It came out of the zip fine for me. Anyways, cool game! I felt like I was really in the ship, fighting giant unknown alien entities! The guys talking over radio was pretty cool, and getting blown up and spiraling out of control was exciting, and cool. Overall rating: Cool/Cool.

 

That blew me away MC (and I even helped program the thing!). You have a serious knack for creating atmosphere! The music, models, voices are all flat-out amazing. Well done.

(Like, seriously, I'd pay money for this game, which is a feat so far unperelleled in [finished] Unity games.)

 

It sure looks very professional. Including being too much for my G4 to handle. When the enemy goes into action, the frame rate drops so low, that I cannot target anything. I also cannot tell if I am firing the cannon or not.

It sort of reminds me of playing Wing Commander on the Amiga. Probably a good game, but the Amiga wasn't cut out for it.

Same here. You put a lot of work into this

 

Wow. Thanks guys. Those are some big compliments. My beta testers were all pretty meh about the game, they thought it was ok... and my profs actually hated the game (long story, but hey, they're investing in Unity anyway, so I guess it turned out alright in the end). So I'm glad somebody finally enjoyed it.

And btw... if anyone needs a game artist/level designer... I'm on the job market now

 

Does the game require Unity Pro? If so, how much of it does? Could it be scaled back to use Unity Indie?

Seems to me that you could possibly make some money with an Indie version of the game (or some other game of your devising) and then buy Pro that way.

 

Well... the entirety of the cockpit interface panels rely on RenderTextures... so I have no idea how I'd scale that down to work with indie... is there some way around that?

Yeah... I have some great ideas for new games too... but now that I'm back home I'd have to find a way to even get my hands on any version of Unity to turn the demo into something that I could make money from... but if I had access to Unity I wouldn't need the money... ah, the vicious cycle of life, lol.

 

It looks to me like you could do the cockpit just using multiple cameras and not rendertextures.

 

Not quite - moving the camera would be tricky and best, and look terrible at worst.

I would say recoding the interface to use either procedural textures or planes would be the best way to go - that's assuming of course that you can't talk OTEE into giving you a "commission" for the licenses your prof bought.

Or maybe you could talk your prof into buying you a license? Long shot, maybe...

 

Seems like a redesign might be in order. As cool as the cockpit is, you might be able to get by in v1.0 with a static display of your target, its level of damage, etc.

Or, just work on those other game ideas for the bootstrap period.

Incidentally, just so you know it's possible... I was a bit lucky, but I was able to make my Indie license pay for itself. So then I bought Pro, and thanks to a lot of luck, that paid for itself too. Someone who is more deliberate and energetic about it might not need quite so much luck.

 

Well... that might be possible for the Targeting Computer, and player health display, but how would I go about doing something highly dynamic like the compass or Radar? (I've actually racked my brain over this before and not come up with anything terribly efficient/appealing).

Thanks again for taking the time to download and play the game guys, I really appreciate the input.

 

Algorithmically it's not too difficult to make these things; in days past that was all anyone used. You really just need to work out the magic "real world position -> screen position" formula and you're all set.

Easier said than done, I knw, but it can be done.

 

That's what I meant by not terribly efficient/appealing, lol. But yeah, I know it can be done that way... maybe that's what I'll end up doing in the future if I continue with this project.

 

Might not be too hard to get a basic radar working. As someone else said, you need a formula to convert real-world position to radar position. Slap a script on each radar-visible object that updates that object's radar image as needed. The image could be done with one or two polygons (a dot texture and a polygon scaled on the Y axis to do the vertical line.)

Disclaimer: I haven't actually played P.H.O.E.N.I.X. yet, had trouble downloading a valid archive two nights ago. I'll try again though.

 

Best way to do this would be via the particle interface. Create a radar class and make all your enemies report their transforms to it at start, and then in the radar's update use the magic position formula and the particle interface to create the display.

 

finally got a chance to play it - great job that's alot of fun. makes me wish i still had my old joystick ; )

very nice polish too - i love the opening with the sound effects over the titles.

 

It was recently pointed out to me that Filefront periodically deletes files off of their servers, and that my files were apparently among last weeks batch. I've since re-uploaded, so download links should work again.

 

I just got to play it. It is pretty good. A big missile hit the ajax and then I spun out and woke up with a glow effect and some people talking. Is there anything after that?

 

Yes, actually. If you manage to prevent the missiles from destroying the Ajax, the level continues until its 'storyline' conclusion. Glad to hear you enjoyed it.

 

Wow, its cool you spent the time to create "bad endings" for other possible outcomes. I am quite impressed by this actually. Nothing in it is super great, but the whole thing put together is neat and compelling.

I will have to play it again.