๏ Stormys 3d Pseudo blocks ๏ with 9 vids (now with parallax blocks in invaders)

StormyStudio

Evening Guys

Firstly apologies for the unenthusiastic voice in this video, its way past the time my body wanted me to stay up, but I got a little determined to get this thing working... this felt a lot more like programming than it should do.

I give you, a quick preview of a pseudo 3d block effect I've got working. Blocks which can be scaled and moved around a scene and as a camera pans passed they look 3d...

It uses a few lines of confusing (no trig though) maths and I think two constrains for each cube, runs perfectly on my old laptop...yet to test on my phone.

I decided to see if they could be made to create some 3d buildings for my current project . But it does open up the opportunity for some simple 1st person shooters, where bad guys could be lurking behind the blocks...and jump out, a cool 2d platformer where the character can run and jump on the pseudo 3d blocks. Would look nice when mixed with some parallax scrolling and what not...

Anyway, I hope you like my cubes... it all came together pretty quickly then lost 3 or 4 hours trying to set it up so they could be easily scaled and still work fine.

I've also added 2 attributes so you can vary the Field of View on the camera (so the buildings look deeper or shallower)... is shallower a word... right thats it..off to bed..

I'll try zooming through them some how tomorrow... not cause I need that for my game... just cause it could be pretty sweet.

enjoy.



Edit:

2nd Video:



Edit:

3rd Video:

Showing the 3d in my current invaders game project.



Update:
4th Video: A poorly filmed video showing how the 3d blocks perform on an iPhone 4.



Update:
Video 5...showing scaling in game..


Well...I've finally made this available as a template, so if your interested head on over to my site.

http://www.stormystudio.com/templates01.html.

Video walkthrough...


Video tutorial to change image.


Update:
Finally got some blocks working on a different parallax level.


Another Update:
Video showing my buildings in my game development...

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For a collection of professional GameSalad templates (which now includes this very same 3d blocks project (with out parallax) and to check out the 'Think Outside The Box 4' GameSalad competition head on over to www.stormystudio.com

Asymptoteell

Nice. Looks awesome.

tenrdrmer

Looks really cool. Man that gives me some ideas. You gonna put up a demo on that. Would be interested in taking a look for sure.

StormyStudio

Glad you guys approve.

@tshirt yeah my dock is a little full. But I kinda like it. I think pretty much everything gets used fairly regularly. Or maybe I just need photoshop, Gamesalad and a link to this forum.

I'll post another more varied video of the 3d effect later.

UtopianGames

Super cool effect, love it.

Darren.

GS TOOLS
GAME TEMPLATES

beefy_clyro

tenrdrmer said:
Looks really cool. Man that gives me some ideas. You gonna put up a demo on that. Would be interested in taking a look for sure.

+1

LumpApps

Morning Stormy.
Looks very slick.
Looking forward to your progress.

mynameisace

Hahaha no way! This is sick!

Ace

StormyStudio

Here's another video, put together a few more mixed blocks...now back to my real day job...

Will try and work out zooming later today... if its possible.. (I don't mean zooming with the camera, but scaling the blocks in game).

UtopianGames

Would be cool to make a star wars type game out of this

Fly down the trenches and plant that bomb!



Darren.

GS TOOLS
GAME TEMPLATES
Video Tutorials
Forum
3rd party marketplace

StormyStudio

UtopianGames said:
Would be cool to make a star wars type game out of this

Fly down the trenches and plant that bomb!

Darren.

Yeah definitely...that game looks so good... who does'nt love the idea of trenches in space...
Would struggle to have the up down movement look right, as the walls taper off into the distance alters...the left and right distortion would work fine though...

I also like the view when there are the left and right side next to each other a bit like looking at a triangular shape from above...I can imagine having a character running and having to jump over the obstacles...from a top down view point...
...................................................................................................................................
For a collection of professional GameSalad templates and to check out the Summers 'Think Outside The Box' GameSalad competition entries head on over to http://www.stormystudio.com

StormyStudio

Another video showing the 3d blocks, now moved over to my current invaders game project.

Opens up a few ideas for the game, initially the plan was to use them purely as cool foreground and background scenery... but maybe they could be a form of defence that gets blown up or something you protect....that also gets blown up.

mynameisace

Nice addition to the project! I'm really excited about trying out your sound invaders game.

How did the zoom go? Is it possible?

Ace

JPickard

Man, this combined with mynameisace's parallax would be awesome for my game! Will the rules/math be made public/for sale?

StormyStudio

Yeah at some point the rules will be made public or for sale or maybe a freebie from my site.

First I want to concentrate on my game. But maybe I can steal some hours and put it online.

Just tested on my phone with accelerometer controls. Works better than on my mac.

mynameisace

That's because lifting up and tilting a widescreen iMac doesn't affect the accelerometer :P

Would be amazing if it did haha

Ace

StormyStudio

mynameisace said:
That's because lifting up and tilting a widescreen iMac doesn't affect the accelerometer :P

Would be amazing if it did haha

Ace

:-) he he

Actually and weirdly I think my mac book has got some accelerometer in it. I remember ages ago having some liquid screen saver that moved when you tilt your mac. I think it's in there so it detects when being dropped it stops the hard drive spinning. How amazing that would be to test accelerometer on my mac book.

mynameisace

That would be awesome! Haha... Come on GS, this feature is more important than Android Publishing

Ace

creativeapps

+1 with ace first they have to be 100% perfect in iOS market like loading and ram usage issue still users are facing. And this way they are diverting other attentions.

creativeapps

@Stromy I really you for this appreciate. Hope some day you release as template or tutorial.

StormyStudio

cheers creative apps..

Hopefully get something available for download at some point... ideally I'd get zooming working first as that opens up more options...and maybe add a platformer example or star wars trenches...

StormyStudio

Another video, this time showing the 3d blocks working well on an iPhone 4. Sorry for the bad filming, I was using my wifes iPhone to film mine. The blocks work perfectly, silky smooth...even smoother movement than on my macbook, I think this is down to the accelerometer controls and how the movement is sped up and down softly where as on my macbook when I move it jumps straight to speed of 300....



Also I've started working on zooming, certainly think it will be do able, as I can zoom in and out of a block but its position goes slightly wrong, so need to sort out the maths for both the left, middle and right blocks.

old_kipper

Its looking really, really good. I can't quite see the detail on the blocks and had wondered about rendering the blocks in a 3d app and animating them as they move across but what you are doing is someways more interesting. You'll be doing bloomin' shadows on the blocks next...

good luck with this. kip

StormyStudio

@Old kipper

Glad you like it...it's tempting to add some sort of shadow with a blending mode below the blocks...that affects the space tank (thats what I call it anyway)..

ZOOMING UPDATE:
I thought I'd nearly got the zooming aspect working, but then my brain frazzled into a world of confusing maths and turned into a dry lump of bacon... will try again later...

Scale:
essentially I'm trying to work out if you scale the blocks side actors by a game.scale attribute (lets say value of 2), how far do I need to move their position...and then the same question for the opposite side block....and then again for the middle ones. If the middle one is scaling up both side ones need to move out...

Position:
It all gets rather confusing as I think the position related to the camera would vary a lot with scale (fake zoom)...so its sort of like working out the scaling, and then animating the blocks depth by also varying how much its affected by the cameras position (parallax scrolling)...

Fingers crossed...

StormyStudio

Another video, this time showing how far I've got with zooming passed the blocks. I can now scale them up in game and the positions of the side blocks move and scale appropriately whilst still working the same as before scaled.

Still yet to tackle moving the blocks in fake 3d space, so I can animate the parallax effect...

I'll get there eventually I hope...

StormyStudio

Cheers for the link RKS

You have a nice collection of experiments there.

I may take a look at your 3d road project but I'll attempt it on my own first for that extra sense of woo!

3xL

great effect buddy!

i did something similar for one of my upcoming games. but its a looping animation of 10 frames. i'm sure your style is better performance wise :P

StormyStudio

3xL said:
great effect buddy!

i did something similar for one of my upcoming games. but its a looping animation of 10 frames. i'm sure your style is better performance wise :P

Thanks. Not sure if mine would be better performance wise, but it's all done with rules and behaviours. I think there are 4 constrain behaviours per side of each block now. (one for constraining the position to where it needs to be as it scales, width constrained to what it needs to be as the camera moves passed (and if you scale), another for height, and another one for working out the numbers that are used to make the whole thing work...Still runs fine on my phone though...

A little hung over today after a murder mystery party, so won't be touching it today... it turned out I was the Murderer....wah ha ha ha ha...

JPickard

Good. If you were the victim we would never find out how to make 3D blocks with zooming! (They will let you use game salad in solitary confinement, right?).

StormyStudio

Well after tinkering for a day or two, I've given up (for the time being) on sorting out animating the parallax. Although I got it mostly working it just didn't work in a cool enough way to be happy with. It would scale and move in parallax and move off too much to the left or right...

Anyway...before I jump back full tilt onto my invaders project I've put the 3d blocks together as a template on my site.

I've also made two videos which give you a nice walkthrough of the template and another one showing how easy it is to make and add new images for the blocks.

Enjoy...

....................................................................................................................................
For a collection of professional GameSalad templates and to check out the Summers 'Think Outside The Box' GameSalad competition entries head on over to www.stormystudio.com

StormyStudio

Quick image mocked up in photoshop for the sort of aesthetic I'd really like to achieve for my current invaders project. Trying to make it look a bit vintage, like a black and white B movie...



With a mixture of my 3d blocks and some parallax (non 3d and 3d layers) I hope to get it just right...