Games Scraps: Modular Vehicle Combat - Vehicle combat with buildable vehicles

You know, the one piece of code I didn't write myself, the skidmarks code which I stole from the Unity car tutorial; I just noticed that it has massive garbage collection spikes constantly while you're skidding. Like, takes 50% of the processing time that frame massive.

Looking at their code, I think they're re-creating every skid segment every time one segment changes. Unityyyyyyyyy

 

Oh interesting find, since one of my projects uses that code lol, I'll look into that myself when i take a break from my current secret-yet-to-be-announced project - so if you create a fix, please share!

 

Hey look, it's a...

▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █Playable Build!█ ▇ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁​

In this Builder Release, you can try out the vehicle creator and try driving your creation around.

Important Notes​

- This isn't a proper game yet. There's no fighting or damage system implemented. What it is is a functional vehicle builder where you can build a vehicle and test drive it around. This is an early release to give the community something fun to play with.
- Nothing here should be considered final. Gameplay/physics/graphics/sound etc all need work.
- The actual game release will not be free. This is a long-running full-time project which already has a lot of time put into it, and will have a lot more. However, updated versions of the vehicle builder demo with new build features are likely in the future.
- Your weapons need energy to fire. If they're not firing, check your energy. Generators provide energy and some energy storage capacity. Capacitors provide a bunch of cheap storage but no energy.
- A few notable things that are coming or are known issues:
1. You will be able to assign individual keys to weapons or groups of weapons via the build screen
2. Weapons with rotation range will automatically try to disallow angles where you'll be shooting your own vehicle
3. The vehicle physics are a bit floaty and need some work
4. Many more parts are coming. e.g. cooling systems, energy weapons. More chassis types too (e.g. tank tracks, hovercraft).
5. The vehicle in the build screen can get into weird suspension oscillations. Just click the freeze button to stop it for now if it happens.
6. The handbrake is way too intense right now
7. There's no calculation of aerodynamics - yet
8. There are other minor bugs in this release!
- If you find a bug or get a crash, there's a bug report button in the game, or send to the bugs email here: http://www.scrapsgame.com/contact

Downloads

Windows 32-bit
Windows 64-bit
Edit: Mac

Linux (hopefully) coming - having some issues with file I/O at the moment.​

 

LOL I built a flying coffin and reached 217 Km/h

This game will be a hit, don't stop!

 

A couple of ridiculous designs that I've seen from people already:

 

I've also received this sweet "aeroplane" car. Too bad I haven't coded in aerodynamics or lift yet.

 

This game looks so great. I will stay tuned for mac version.

 

Just tried it yesterday... for 4 hours... very addicting!

What i noticed:
-you can place stuff in the area above the wheels when you increase the suppression, after placing you can reduce suppression again and have clipping issues
-i guess these are on your list already
-- if you pick up a large tree of parts you get a lag (i don't know how you do the determination of subtrees but there has to be some optimization, but i have no clue)
-- are you going to restrict the big turret's rotation if a part obstructs his barrel?

hope there will be a track based groundplate and more cockpits to build some tanks

Incredible game, insidious potential, i am looking forward to it

EDIT: as for your damage visuals, what about this thing:
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=Dissolve_With_Texture

you can make a fine transition into a damaged glowing texture with this

 

Awesome. I can't wait for more components.

 

Thanks for the great comments! In response:

1. Well spotted, I didn't know about that bug. I have an idea of how to fix it.
2. You mean lag at the moment you pick it up? It can definitely be optimised somehow but it'll take a bit of thought. As you seem to have deduced, there's a tree of part connections that it has to check, so that parts get picked up only if their only connection to the chassis is via the part you picked up. When you're actually holding a stack of parts, you might notice that it also only actually checks for a snap on the first part you're holding, otherwise that'd be lagtastic too (for different reasons).
3. Yeah, all the weapons should be doing that. The vague plan is that on the build screen weapons will show their available rotation range visually (like with an arc drawn in front of the barrel). If the weapon would hit the vehicle at some angle, or would be shooting your own vehicle, that available range will be automatically restricted. If it can't help but shoot your own vehicle no mater what (everything in its available angle range is hitting), it'll be coloured red and stuck at a 0 angle. And there'll always be some available angle where the weapon itself isn't colliding with you vehicle, or you wouldn't be able to place it.

One problem I've already thought of though is that when multiple things are moving around at once, the original restrictions might not apply. Observe this professional diagram:



So I probably need to check for collisions on weapons AND check whether weapons will be shooting your own vehicle every time they move, and restrict or allow on-the-fly.

4. There should be at least 6 chassis options, probably 9 (adding Large size). Small/Med wheeled, tracked, and hover.

5. That texture code looks pretty cool, thanks.

 

Mac build is now up. Linux build not, because none of my StreamingAssets stuff (i.e. file saving and loading) is working in Linux, and the only info I can find on it is someone else reporting the same problem.

 

I've updated the builder release a bit with the few fixes:

Changes in version 0.0.10:
- Fixed Open Save Folder button not working on Mac
- Made vehicle’s weight in pounds round to to the nearest whole number
- Right Ctrl now works on build screen (left Ctrl still works also)
- Fixed bug where multiple cockpits could be placed via duplication
- Fixed a weapon rotation bug when changing link modes
- Fixed overzealous auto-flip from righting the vehicle while in the air

http://www.scrapsgame.com/download

 

Great progress.

 

Excellent work as usual man! I fell in love with this project from the moment it began And I am uber keen to see it make it That being said, let us not pressure you into releasing it "quickly", otherwise, it will be very sad, and I think we can ALL agree on that ;D Love it man, keep it up!

EDIT: Just an FYI, the download links are broken, but that's ok because we can navigate straight to the download links from the page anyway

 

Its like "kiddies' borderlands" with cars

 

It's really nothing big, but for an autistic like myself, it looks pretty funny, but I've noticed that when you click on build, and there is the "tips and how-to", you've got the checkbox "Don't ask me again"... You should probably rewrite that Because technically, you're not asking anything xD Maybe "Don't Show Me Again" or something instead? Hahaha just thought I had to mention it Loving it btdub

 

My finest creation yet!
You're gonna need a separate forum for all the uploads you're gonna get from your fans man!

 

Thanks for the heads up about the links, it was because I changed the file name when I put up an update. Too many different things to keep track of at the moment. I would like to create an official forum on the main site if the game becomes significantly popular, but I'm also worried about then having to spend a bunch of time moderating it. I could probably find keen people to do it for me, but then I have to make sure I find good people...

Anyway, I hope the game does well too, not least because it's my full-time job at the moment, but also because I really want to play it!

 

Wow, that is really nice. I just played it and its got a good feel. Modular system is very well made, I can see it’s in beta stage but already its appealing. Something that I have noticed and may be of interest to you is the "eve online" modular system. It possibly the best out there and defiantly worth checking out if you haven’t seen it already.

How’s you network layer going? I could see this being a large scale battle game of 70 to 100 players..

Sweet concept, can’t wait to see the end result .. Now back to my normal map baking.

 

Alpha stage Actually, PRE-Alpha! But yeah I agree, this has such a nice feel. Easy to get into, no bullshitting about. Nice layout. Controls feel AMAZING!

 

Downloaded and loved it, even the music is just great and so fitting! Really very excited for this game!
Although, I did come across a few niggles.
Firstly, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but the car can do some funky stuff when adding parts in the build screen. For example, I couldn't quite catch it on camera, as the print screen wont work on my mac when playing, but my car disappeared for a bit whilst the center of gravity shifted - here's what I mean:

But even that's pretty entertaining

Also, I found a neat way to measure the car's turning circle


But I thoroughly enjoyed playing it and even now the physics feel pretty good, and I had fun getting my car as quick as possible
If I could suggest one thing, I think it'd be awesome to have tyres burst when you skid suddenly high speeds I was doing sharp turns at 300km/h and the sound effects made me think they were gonna pop

Overall loved it, you're doing a great job and I'm very excited to see progress on this

 

Thanks for the comments again. Networking is the next big thing I have to do and it's probably going to be a nightmare, but obviously it's really important that it works well. I don't think you'll be getting 70-player matches though - think more like 8 or 16, at least for a start.

It's good to hear that the controls feel good because, although I think it still needs a bit of work, when you're working on something for long enough you just kind of get used to however it controls.

I had another go at playing the free version of Gear Up yesterday and I still couldn't get into multiplayer but at least it didn't crash. I started a singleplayer game with bots. It's kind of OK but it's kind of boring. It gets repetitive pretty fast. I need to make sure that Scraps has various possible strategies that are all useful - y'know, light and fast, big and slow, all guns, all armour... Gear Up has only one real strategy which is Big Tank.

Also the big cannon projectile moves super slow but it doesn't drop (I guess it's a rocket), and it doesn't take into account your current velocity either, it always hits exactly where you were aiming where you fired.

 

The build screen stuff you're seeing, I know why it happens, it's not really worth explaining but I just need to work out a way around it. At the moment if crazy stuff is happening, just click the Freeze physics button. And if the vehicle itself falls over then it'll freeze automatically.

 

Ah ok good to know, I'm not too bothered about it as it shows me how madly unbalanced the car will be, but thanks for the info, I apologise if you've written that before, which I'm sure you have
Thanks!

 

if it helps, this guy programmed mars explorer, he revealed his netcode and later made the whole game open source. It's well suited for physics based games, but i believe the synced player-player or player-obstacle collisions are not so smooth, but it's a nice start:

http://aubreyfalconer.com/view-5426

 

That looks awesome, I'll definitely check it out. Thanks for the link!

 

I just put Scraps up on the Steam Greenlight Concepts section. Not the real Greenlight where votes actually count towards something, but the sort of building-a-community section.

Anyway that's pretty boring, but the more interesting part is that I had to make a trailer for the game for it. I'm actually quite pleased with it as I think it manages to capture the intended tone and concept of the game quite well. Which is, y'know, build terrible vehicles and fight.

I should be clear though: Although it's all real in-game footage, the "fights" in that video are staged - actual multiplayer isn't in yet.

 

hahahah that is friggin awesome, not much of a "car" guy but this is something else!

Love the way u can build ur car in a way that shooting with it disables u completely

 

I think the scale in the game is slightly off. Not that it matters hugely but I like things to be right (and correct scale makes the physics better). Observe a comparison with correct-size person and VW Golf MkIV (with no wheels):



The person is the right size for the cockpit, because I was careful about that. The chassis though are a little bit over-scaled I think. So rather than adding a "large" chassis size, I might make the medium slightly longer and create a new "small", smaller than the current small. Maybe a three-wheeled trike?

Also, please show your support for the game on Greenlight by giving a thumbs up:

​

You can also find it via the Steam app itself under Community > Greenlight > Concepts.

 

Well this is not a Golf car game, it's a military game after all.
And military vehicles tend to be larger, especially if they are filled with batteries and guns.
I wouldn't care much about that, unless you plan to put in the game also real scale people.
And even then, we are still talking about military vehicles, which can be completely off standard.
I wouldn't like so much to have a vehicle with smaller wheels, that would also change a lot about the weight the vehicle could carry (visually) etc.
It's good as it is imho.

And btw, you could also slice the cockpit in 2 longitudinally and still be believable, as the pilot could be well fit into it in a technologically advanced piece.

 

Fair enough. It's only slight anyway - I just feel a bit like the who thing is slightly scaled up from looking right. I have another reason for adding a smaller rather than a larger chassis though: Performance! More parts always = more optimisation needed. Although it's already supporting a decent amount of parts on any reasonable computer.

 

Mhh I don't know which tests you carried on and what is the entity of mess you plan to have in the scene at once.
If your concept involves 20 cars to be on screen at the same time I would test the visuals with those 20 vehicles.
And on top, also add a lot of scenery probably.

I must say that Unity is incredibly performant, on my map, completely covered with normal maps, speculars, terrain, 1 mil polys, lightmaps, trees, I added 500 static rocks, and 500 destructible static objects and I've noticed an impact of... practically nothing.
So, until you can keep your car around 10 drawcalls it's all good and running.

 

Oh crap, must download stat... As soon as I'm back on my pc I'm gonna try it out!

 

What's the most popular game on Greenlight Concepts today?



It's my game!

 

OK you're right, I was wrong about the scale, it's actually fine. Especially when compared to an actual tank.



At the bottom right you can see my half-finished experiment with a trike that has a built-in cockpit; sort of a basic tutorial-esque vehicle base. I still kinda like it, but I definitely need a "large" chassis as well.

 

Uhhh I could see it on the web but not in Steam.
I can't find it and so I can't vote it, strange.

 

Community -> Greenlight -> Concepts

 

This is great, how the hell did I manage to miss this? Awesome stuff!

 

I just checked out a game called ROBOCRAFT that I saw someone mention. They're actually doing something pretty similar to what I'm trying to do, so it's interesting seeing how they solve some of the same problems. Although their game is very early in development too.

- When removing parts in Scraps, any parts which were only connected to the chassis through that part are removed. i.e. Parts can't float. In ROBOCRAFT, parts are left floating, but any floating parts don't translate to the in-game vehicle.
- In Scraps, I'm working on a system where weapons will try to stop themselves from being able to shoot your own vehicle, but you can still make a dumb design that does. In ROBOCRAFT, weapons just ignore your own vehicle even if they're actually shooting it.
- To get more parts in ROBOCRAFT, points drop from enemy vehicles and you spend them in the parts store. In Scraps, enemy vehicles drop parts directly. There's a reason for this that I particularly don't like: They're going to have a real money purchase option if you want to cheat to get more parts.
- They don't have an energy system - guns fire infinitely at a fixed rate. Their wheels contain their own power or steering. You still have to place a pilot/cockpit part.
- Rather than using a base chassis, you start with nothing and build with blocks, so it's a bit more freeform.

 

Yeah I checked out that Robocraft game. It's great but allows a bit TOO much freedom. To the point where a majority of my inventions don't even work. I like how they have the ability to add your own wheels though. But with the variation of different chassis (if you made them wheel-less, so essentially just frames), we will be allowed to create unique, but working modules. Anyway, keen to see the next update

 

just got a chance to try out the current build, and I like it! The physics behave pretty naturally, and its fun just ramping around on hills, and the building is fluid and easy to understand. I must have missed a help menu or something that told me how to rotate and object before placing it on the vehicle, but I managed to just work without it, and mounted some machine guns and cannons onto a medium chassis. I like the link'ing of the guns and the ability to fire them in sets or alone, good idea. Seems like this game is coming together great.

 

I really need a proper tutorial because everyone seems to miss how to rotate. Here it is for everyone:

SPACEBAR​

 

lmao, ahh thats a good tut! Now my armor can be on the sides as well at the front

 

Next time I do an update I'm going to also put rotate on right-click. Also armour is the one thing that should auto-snap to the right angle anyway, just got to implement that.

 

Hurrah for rotate tutorial. Now to really see what I can build

 

Behold the test map in all its aerial glory:

 

Ahhh I thought there was a little nipple in the sand ;D

 

A new version of the builder release is up with some bug fixes and improvements. Most significantly, this version offers much faster loading of saved vehicles.

To Update

Just download the new version and delete the old one.

To keep your saved vehicles, before you delete the old copy, you need to copy your vehicles across. Go to the Vehicle subfolder and copy the .scraps files you want, and paste them into the same folder in the new copy of Scraps.
On Windows it's: \Scraps_Data\StreamingAssets\Vehicles
On Mac: \Contents\Data\StreamingAssets\Vehicles inside Scraps.app
OR go into the game -> Build screen -> Choose Save or Load -> Click Open save folder

You won't have to do that again in the future as I've moved the save files out of the game directory itself, and the new version will automatically move your files to the new location when it runs. The Readme has information on uninstalling everything thoroughly.

Changes

2013-06 - 0.1.0
Changes:
- Moved user vehicles and key config to an AppData folder, so it can be preserved when installing a new version of Scraps
- Added a button in options to remove said data
- Set rotate part to right-click as well as spacebar
- Delete held parts by pressing Delete (can already press Escape as well)
- Massively decreased the time it takes to load a vehicle, and made it visual so you can see the vehicle "building"
- Adding visual text for saving as well (but saving is extremely fast already)
- Improved button graphics a little
- Increased power drain on weapons by about 25%. Note that all stats are still in their early stages and not intended to be very balanced
- Removed antialiasing post-processing effect from the inventory parts camera, as it was a waste of resources
- Added (partial) keyboard controls to Save/Load screens
- Order of parts on in the build screen now goes small->large
- Made it a little easier to find the cause of other people's crashes
- Improved performance a little in-game for vehicles with many parts
- Added back button to the vehicle select screen
Bug fixes:
- Fixed most parts not tinting red/green when snapping, and made the time more obvious
- Fixed bug on the build screen where dragging would get stuck on
- Fixed up modal dialog code and switched to the new GUI.ModalWindow system
- Fixed anti-aliasing settings not applying correctly
- Fixed some craziness with the build screen platform
- Some other minor fixes and edits

2013-05 - 0.0.11
- Disabled bottom GUI controls when holding a part. Messing with them while holding a part could break things
- Fixed weapon stats tooltip formatting

2013-05 - 0.0.10
- Fixed Open Save Folder button not working on Mac
- Made vehicle's weight in pounds round to to the nearest whole number
- Right Ctrl now works on build screen (left Ctrl still works also)
- Fixed bug where multiple cockpits could be placed via duplication
- Fixed a weapon rotation bug when changing link modes
- Fixed overzealous auto-flip from righting the vehicle while in the air

 

I've put up a small update to fix a few bugs in 0.1.0:

• Fixed right-click drag while holding a part also rotating that part
• Fixed a bug with modal windows not being called correctly
• Fixed audio playing when pausing the game, minimising, and then restoring

http://www.scrapsgame.com/download

The audio pause/restore bug was caused by Unity indiscriminately unpausing the AudioListener when restoring the game window, even if it had been manaually paused beforehand. IMO, it should remember the state it was at before minimising and restore to that.

 

Some things I'd really like to see in Unity​

First an obvious one: The new GUI system. But enough people are going on about that already. Some less obvious stuff:

The ability to check if a rigidbody will be colliding when at a certain position.
A WillCollide type method for rigidbodies would be useful. When wanting to position something at a certain place, it's currently impossible to universally determine if it will be free of collisions without actually moving it there and waiting one frame for physics to simulate, then checking an OnCollision method. The lack of this means that I can only use cuboid, non-rotated colliders on the Scraps Build screen, and checking takes longer than it should.

There are several methods that provide this functionality already for basic shapes - Physics.Spherecast, Plysics.CapsuleCast - but none for arbitrary rigidbodies.

For un-rotated cuboid shapes, the bounds can be manually compared with an AABB test against other cuboid colliders but this is tedious and slower than the proper physics system, and rotated cubes are out as Bounds doesn't handle rotation.

I suggest either a method that lets us check for collisions at a certain position:

Code (csharp):

1. Vector3 targetPosition = new Vector3(4, 6, 9);
2. bool result = myRigidbody.WillCollide(targetPosition);

or an instantaneous way of checking for collisions instead of waiting for the next frame:

Code (csharp):

1. Vector3 curPosition = myRigidbody.position;
2. Vector3 targetPosition = new Vector3(4, 6, 9);
3. myRigidbody.position = targetPosition;
4. bool result = myRigidbody.IsColliding();
5. myRigidbody.position = curPosition;

Per-platform settings for audio.
We have this for textures, why not for audio? Per-platform .ogg bitrate settings. For instance in Skylight I had a lot of audio files, and I'd have liked to sacrifice a little bit of quality in the web version to lower the file size, while not compromising on the downloadable version. As it stands you'd have to go through and manually change every file between builds. Which brings me to the next thing...

Multi-object editing for audio.
Group editing has been supported for images since Unity 3.5, but it's still not supported for audio. Here's an editor script that lets you group edit in the meantime.

Nested Prefabs
This is another one that's also a popular topic, but would also be great to have. I have to instantiate the wheels on my vehicles programmatically so that I don't break their prefab instance by putting them inside the chassis prefab. Argh!

Exposed Input Manager settings
Not having this made making a custom input manager for Scraps way more time-consuming. The 1138 votes on the Unity Feedback post says it at least as well as I could. The Input Manager is way to much of a black box.

Expose all the graphics settings
Why can I change most, but not all of the graphics settings in code? Why can I set shadow distance, but not shadow type for instance?

As an addendum, because all of these are minor; bugs I've found and submitted in the engine this year:

• When changing LODBias to some values in code, with the Anisotropic setting on ForceEnbable, the Anisotropic setting is changed to just Enable.
• When leaving interactive GUI elements like buttons and sliders while holding any mouse button down, the tooltip stays active until the button is released.
• The 1px border issue with MSAA on some cards.
• Light halos are not correctly moving between scenes. The halo disappears, and an error message shows in the console: "Unable to find Halo to be deleted".
• Unity automatically unpauses the AudioListener when a built game is restored (unminimised), even when the user has paused the AudioListener manually.

Don't take this as a Unity-bashing post though. I still think Unity was definitely the best choice for this project, and it's a great engine. But one can dream.