Comment thread: Welcome to Future Perfect

Hugh

Comment system currently functioning below optimal levels. This is the comment thread for the article: http://unknownworlds.com/futureperfect/welcome-future-perfect-2/

Soul_Rider

WoW, I am looking forward to this. I can't believe you have updated Spark to be a component based engine. I have been looking for a component based engine with a good renderrer for editing, and now there will be one... eventually .

Hugh

@Soul_Rider get's FIRST BLOOD ... comment.

Sir_zino

Well...Thats looks awesome! Not exactly what i expected the secret project to be but still looks really awesome!

Soul_Rider

@Hugh‌ I've bought it already as well, looking to have some fun with this

Husar

Interesting project there. As I understand an enhanced/overhauled spark engine is being used for Future Perfect? Can we expect that the NS2 dev team has access to those enhancements and can build them into NS2? Or is it to different to retrofit NS2 for that @Max?

Soul_Rider

It has been expressed previously, that the changes to spark would require a complete from scratch rewrite of NS2. Spark has gone from an entity hierachy structure to a Component based system, and the 2 are completely different.

IMHO, a component based system is far and away the better choice for game engines.

Husar

Soul_Rider wrote: »

It has been expressed previously, ...

That implies that I have to be a regular reader of the UWE forums and has a somewhat an undertone of "you should know better". But my intuition tells me that you probably wrote that answer like a 100 times.
Thank you for your patience and your quick answer.

P.S.: Why is a component based engine better? I can imagine that it gives the devs more flexibility but does it amp up also the performance? If it already has been discussed here give me a link and make your life easier.

MurphyIdiot

I wouldn't say it is strictly better but it does have some advantages.

WARNING: It's about to get technical!

The main thing I would point out is maintenance.

NS2 had a deep hierarchy of "classes" of objects that inherited functionality from each other.

It looked something like this:

Object->Actor->AnimatedActor->LiveActor->LiveScriptActor->Player->Marine->Exo

The problem comes when you want to add another type of LiveActor (something that has health points and can die) but that isn't animated.

LiveActor inherits from AnimatedActor so that simply isn't possible. Maybe there are bugs now or perhaps you are synchronizing animation data across the network that you aren't actually using.

With a component based architecture, you would have components for each of those bits of functionality. These components are not directly related to each other so if you don't need animation, remove the animation component.

There is a really strong sense of component and entity independence in Future Perfect which allows us to optimize, debug, and implement features in really simple ways.

Brute

This is exactly the thing I was waiting for, and I did not even know it.
Are you planning to add more payment methods? Because right now it requires either a paypal or an amazon account, which I don't have.

Soul_Rider

I didn't mean it condescendingly, but was informing how I came about the information, post text never comes off well.

As for component based engines, I have been working with one, and I totally love the flexibility of the component system, for me it is a much better fit for games design, but hey, it's my opinion

I am really looking forward to see what power you have given to modders.

I am going to run a stream for a little while shortly giving first impressions...

Insane

Brute wrote: »

This is exactly the thing I was waiting for, and I did not even know it.
Are you planning to add more payment methods? Because right now it requires either a paypal or an amazon account, which I don't have.

If you choose the PayPal option and click through, there's an option to "Pay with a debit or credit card" that doesn't require you to make a PayPal account.

Brute

Insane wrote: »

If you choose the PayPal option and click through, there's an option to "Pay with a debit or credit card" that doesn't require you to make a PayPal account.

When you do that, you are required to think of a paypal password, so I guess it wants to create a new paypal account for me.

Dictator93

Darn, my game crashes as soon as I click it.

Max

Husar wrote: »

Interesting project there. As I understand an enhanced/overhauled spark engine is being used for Future Perfect? Can we expect that the NS2 dev team has access to those enhancements and can build them into NS2? Or is it to different to retrofit NS2 for that @Max?

I've integrated a few bug fixes back into NS2, but a lot of what we've been doing isn't applicable. We are however working on some new rendering features that the CDT has asked about (like directional light shadows) that we're going to try and get into NS2.

SquishpokePOOPFACE

My dreams of creating a perfect utopia with Goodthink citizens will be one step closer! Doubleplus good!

BeigeAlert

I think this game is a great idea. I fondly remember back in the day making maps for starcraft and warcraft III... I hardly played any melee games.

deathshroud

i think this is an amazing idea, some of my favorite gaming moments were played on operation flashpoint on a lan, i used to make up these insane levels and games for us to play. I would share the games i made but i dont want anyone stealing my ideas like how spy party stole 1 of them

1 game, 1 person played as a hunter and the rest played as civilians, the map boundries were in a city area. The goal was for the hunter to kill the civilians however he only had a few rounds, 6 shots for 3 civilians. The map was filled with npc civilians walking and driving around and players would mimic the ai in order to blend in and not become a target. There was a goal area the civilians had to reach and a time limit the hunter had to kill them in or something.

It was just silly fun spy party shares a striking resemblance to it and its probably just coincidental

MurphyIdiot

Soul_Rider wrote: »

I am going to run a stream for a little while shortly giving first impressions...

What is your Stream URL?

2cough

Boy, you guys have been busy!

Koruyo

What should I be able to do in the current state of the project?

Not sure if only the editor works (which is cool enough), or if there is something wrong...

Testing my editor map, or trying out one of the existing ones either ends up in showing a black screen (usually after moving a tiny bit, everything just goes black) - game still runs and lets me disconnect via console etc, or only lets me fly around.

The player spawner seems to be broken(assertion failed), and lots of things don't load/are not found/are not pre-loaded... edit: also ran out of state diffs comes up a lot.

Edit: Log
http://pastebin.com/6zT98QsR

Benson

And now we wait for someone clever to remake NS2 in future perfect!

j/k, but seriously I love games that let you make your own scenarios!

Kalopsia

Allowing players to change the environment on the fly is awesome.

Sub space is my favorite map so far

Max

Koruyo wrote: »

What should I be able to do in the current state of the project?

Not sure if only the editor works (which is cool enough), or if there is something wrong...

I think that's due to a bug which has been fixed. Can you try with the latest version on Steam? I just pushed a new build up a few minutes ago.

Koruyo

Works now

Needed to delete the FuturePerfect Appdata folder and reinstall with the new patch. (maybe it would have worked earlier, forgot about trying to delete the appdata folder until now)

Nazo

So does Future Perfect have a Trello for following development like NS2 / Subnautica?

runekn

Nazo wrote: »

So does Future Perfect have a Trello for following development like NS2 / Subnautica?

https://trello.com/b/IOspnbWW/future-perfect

AurOn2

Much Pistachionauts. Wow.

Comprox

Heh, I forgot I had set people involved with the project to that name on the forums. Oh well, it's good for now. Project Pistachio was the working name for a while.

ezekel

This looks very cool, but judging by the status of it right now it looks like it's a bit too advanced for me to play around with.

I get the explanation but basically this is going to be something similar to GMOD eventually with a much bigger feature list? Basically we make our own map, players can make scripts/events, and we just make random games to play with each other just using the game itself.

Or can it go further and people can actually use it to publish a working independent title? I hope in the next 5-6 years I learn enough programming to start doing some cool stuff with things like these! need to finish learning java first though :{

Dictator93

My game just refuses to launch. Shame