[RELEASED] VoidFramework 1.1

Community Showcases
1

Hi :),

we have released a huge update for VoidFramework!

VoidFramework 1.1 brings a lot of content, many new additions and a lot of small and large bugfixes.

What is it?

It’s a framework for creating 2 and 2.5 multi-dimensional space shooters.

Where can I play it?

Link to the WebPlayer

Rotate your ship, using the mouse. Or change the control scheme in the options menue to use the keyboard.
Mouse Control Scheme:
The cross-cursor indicates in which direction you want the ship to look.
The ring-cursor indicates the current rotation of your ship. Since the player-ship is completely dependent on physics, it will take a short amount of time to rotate to the wanted direction.
Fire your installed weapons with the left and right mouse-button. The left-mouse-button fires the weapon, located at the Front-item-slot. The right-mouse-button fires the weapons located in the Left- and Right-item-slot in turns.
Keyboard Control Scheme:
Use the arrow-keys to rotate your ship.
Firing of the installed weapons:
1 - Fire the weapon installed in the left item-slot.
2 - Fire the weapon installed in the front item-slot.
3 - Fire the weapon installed in the right item-slot.
E - Enter the shop
In the shop install the selected weapon in the front, left or right item-slot by pressing the corresponding number-key (1,2,3).
Cycle through the available weapons, using the left and right arrow-keys.
Weapons that you can’t afford at the moment are greyed out.
Update your ship in the shop and assign different weapons to your 3 item- slots.

What can I do with it?

The system is built for the development of multi-dimensional-shooters in a space environment.

You can dive into content creation right away. All the tedious work of building the basics is already done.

Create your own weapons and asteroids, and get them ingame, without writing a single line of code.
Nearly every aspect of the game is tweakable in the editor.

The number of levels is not limited. New levels are generated randomly. The level of difficulty will raise over time. How fast, or if at all, is up to you.

The complete Source-Code (C#) is included, and documented by Doxygen, for a state of the art documentation.

What has changed in this update?

V 1.1

  • Added MainMenue.
  • Added Options menue with resolution, quality and controls dialogues.
  • Added new ship-spawn effect.
  • Added local Highscore.
  • Added the following weapons:
  • RapidFireMassDriver MK1 + MK2
  • PlasmaCannon
  • RapidFirePlasmaCannon
  • ScatterCannon
  • ScatterRocketLauncher MK1 + MK2
  • SwarmMissileLauncher
  • Added CUBE asteroids.
  • Completely reworked the appearance and controls of the ingame shop.
  • Completely reworked the way weapon projectiles work (modular assembly of weapon properties).
  • Level-Objects are now able to collide over level-bounds.
  • Added missing xml-comments.
  • A lot of small and large bugfixes.

Where can I get it?

VoidFramework is available in the Asset-Store for 50$.

VoidFramework in the AssetStore

2

Hi :),

we’ve put together a small video to showcase VoidFramework 1.0.

We are making good progress on the 1.1 Update. This update will fix some smaller bugs (for example shooting when clicking on the shop), and add a lot of new weapons.

I will post a webplayer of our progress soon.

3

Looks interesting. Tell me, would you consider selling some of your graphical assets separately on the store? Really love the asteroids.

4

Sure, would you prefer one big package with all the graphical-assets included, or several more small packs (like asteroids, weapons…etc.)?

5

Several smaller packs ideally. :slight_smile:

6

Hi :),

I’ve spoken with the rest of the CaveCreatures.

Since we are working on an own online-shop, we think selling the graphical assets there is the way to go.
I’ll keep you posted on our progress :).

As promised here is the Preview-Webplayer of the upcoming Version 1.1 (work in progress).

VoidFramework 1.1 Preview WIP

I’ve set the cost for all weapons, for this build, to 0, so they can be tried out right away.
Also there are only two weapon-icons for now. All weapons will have different icons for the release of 1.1.

Beside some bugfixes, I worked on improving the weapon-mechanics.
It is now possible to have rapid firing weapons with configurable inaccuracy. This also makes shotgun-like weapons possible.

The next thing that is now possible are projectiles that carry sub-ammunition (think of cluster-bombs). This subammunition can carry subammunition too (which can carry subammunition…). This is showcased by the ScatterMissileLauncher MK2.

7

Excellent- well keep us all posted. I like the look of it all definitely. I’m trying it out on a macbook and didn’t really find the controls very intuitive- but then I am working on a similar themed but entirely differently controlled setup, so perhaps it’s just what I’m used to.

8

I agree on that the current controls are not very intuitive at the moment.

I am intrested in what part of the controls you didn’t found intuitive.
The mouse-look?
The absence of sideways-movement via WASD?
The shooting via the mouse-buttons?

9

HI Angstrom.
I tested this on my Macbook…same brutally slow performance like in Mr. Moustache:(
I was getting maybe 2-6 FPS it was a slide show really.
Just thought I’d let you know.
Looks cool to me!
B

10

Thanks for the feedback :).

Strange issues with these macs. While MrMoustache requires a reasonably powerfull graphics card, VoidFramework runs well on my laptop with a crappy onboard Intel graphics-card (Windows 7 64 bit Professional).

I don’t own a macbook myself, but I know someone who does.
I will ask him to try playing VoidFramework on his device and report back about the performance.

Update:

The issue seems to be related to the browser used. When using Firefox everything runs smoothly. When using Safari we get the 2-6 frames you reported.
So this seems to be an issue with the WebPlayer-browser plugin.

11

From my perspective, the most intuitive controls are probably something like Space Wars! original controls, e.g. arrow keys left/right to rotate each direction and a thrust button. To get the feel right in Unity, I’ve typically set it up as kinematic rotation (e.g. rotating at a set speed, usually limited, to make it manoeuvrable without being “slippery”), and then a rigidibody on the object, thrusters applying physics force in the direction of transform.forward. To get this mix working right, set a high angular drag (90+) and low normal drag. Constrain movement to x/z and rotation to y.

I currently target IOS, so in place of arrows, I have a thumbstick for direction, and thrusters. Obviously I can’t prove this, but playtesting has shown me that this works extremely well, and complete strangers with no passing interest in space games have enjoyed my controls.

Some clips of it in action here (you can see the silhouette of the thumbstick on the left).

Regs,
Mike

PS, please PM me if there is the possibility of purchasing your assets before you launch your full website/store, via paypal or similar.

12

At first, your game looks awesome!

I love the sun in the first video.
The swarm-behaviour of these little ships is somewhat fascinating. Do you used UnitySteer for this?

If I understood you correctly, the control-scheme you mentioned is already included (but deactivated by default at the moment).
I have uploaded a new WebPlayer with the alternative keyboard-controls:

Preview Webplayer with Keyboard controls

Sure it is possible to buy VoidFramework before we start our own shop.

I will send you a pm with the details shortly.

13

Hi :),

I’ve noticed someone bought VoidFramework today.

With the upcoming update to 1.1 (already submitted to the AssetStore, awaiting approval) the price will drop drastically.

I think it’s only fair to offer a refund of the price difference (45$) to this person.

If a refund is desired, please send me a pm unknown person ;).

14

Hi :),

Update 1.1 is live on the AssetStore, yay :smile:.

VoidFramework in the AssetStore

15

Hi :),

version 1.1 has been out for some time now.
We would like to hear what you think about it.

What do you like?

What don’t you like?

Are there any bugs you encountered?

Is the documentation comprehensible?

What would you like to see in the next update (More asteroids? More ships? Some changes to the game mechanics maybe?)?

Also we would love to see what you have created so far ;).

16

Since my login timed out typing my last attempt at a reply I’ll keep this short. :slight_smile:

Docs could use fleshing out beyond the basic class descriptions. Descriptions of the prefabs and scenes currently included and the locations of where to modify them in the myriad classes would be handy.

A separate set of scenes for mobile platforms would be great for Android/iOS developers.

There are a few minor english spelling mistakes that could be easily fixed to give a more polished first impression. (Not important but just an aside)

An extension to the framework for enemy AI to interface with would make it simple to add enemy ships as well.

17

Hi :),

thanks for your feedback!

Descriptions of prefabs and scenes sound like a good edition, I will definetly look into this.
The documentation is definitely something I want to expand further in future versions.
On that occasion I will also correct the spelling mistakes, thanks for pointing this out :).

I’m planning on adding mobile support in a later version, but that’s not assured for now ;).

An extension for enemy ai sounds interesting. What would you like to see in such a interface?

18

re:Enemy AI
Read player(s) ship position and attributes (Velocity, Heading, Health, Shields etc… )

A* navigation, path following and flocking are available in other asset bundles and simple versions of them are easy enough to implement anyway.

Event handler for modifying attributes that can be added to a queue then applied (Allows for damage bypassing shields or only to shields, tractor/repulsor beams etc…)

GetClosestShip()
GetClosestEnemy() (Good for AI, or multiplayer or item add ons for player ship(s) )

Player ship classes I can see you were adding anyway… a single variable for Group would allow player and enemy ships to share the PlayerShip class.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Sample game is a blast BTW… pun intended. :slight_smile:

19

Hi :),

the methods you mentioned will not be hard to implement.
I will look into this, as soon as the next version of MrMoustache is finished.

In the meantime, most of the things you want to do are already possible:

Getting a reference to the player-ship.

A*:
Since there is no static level-geometry for now, I would recommend using UnitySteer instead of a A* pathfinding solution.

Damage bypassing shields/only to shields can be implemented using the CalculateDamage method.

Couldn’t Tractor/Repulsor-beams just be implemented using the physics-engine to add forces to a specific object, what benefits could a queue bring here?

The queue-idea confuses me a bit. A event handler that subscribes to events that can be queued to alter attributes? Wouldn’t a simple method call do the job as well with less overhead? Do you want to be able to dynamically queue actions on a LevelObject?

GetClosestShip() and GetClosestEnemy():
Get a list of all currently-active level-objects The List that is returned by this can be easiliy filtered with LINQ-queries to filter the LevelObjects you are interested in.
Iterate over the resulting list, and find the closest object by using CalculateDirectionToTarget.

Using the same base-implementation for player and enemy-ships is a good idea.

20

I was thinking more as a generic extension for others to find useful. The queue would be for situations with 64+ elements that need updates or for network implementations. Not specifically applicable to anything I’m working on myself at the moment but it would leave farther room for expansion on future projects.