Browser-Game: Helicopter-flying, voxel-based

[xxzulu92]

Hi people,

interested in a Pre-Alpha of a voxel-based Helicopter Browser-Game?

www.helicopter-fun.com

Have good days!
Thor

[h3ckboy]

wont ift in my screen 

[xxzulu92]

i will construct a smaller version also the next days. sorry.

but greetings!
thor

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[Hansdampf]

wow! pretty impressive.
looks better than Comanche (was it called so?)
An option for a demo flight along a spline would be very cool (for the lazy ones who only want to watch the terrain).

[SimonH]

Looks very nice but runs a little slow (5-10fps?). A smaller version, (maybe 800x600) would be faster.
Excellent job but... why can't I crash? 

[bienator]

voxel terrain? - very cool
the helicopter looks like a rubber duck, but the terrain looks better as in Outcast

[TheAnalogKid]

That's an interesting game. Is it 3D accelerated? It's slow. What I don't understand is that I tried to pass inside the circle and then a  popup that ask for main menu appeared.

[kevglass]

It's pretty quick here, fun too.

Landscape reminds me of Magic Carpet by Bullfrog.

Kev

[Eli Delventhal]

Uh, the controls just didn't work. The copter never seemed to respond. Maybe allow buttons on the keyboard in addition to the mouse wheel? I could get the helicopter to face where my mouse pointed, but I couldn't get it to move.

[EgonOlsen]

Nice...i just don't get how to fly up and down. Does it use multiple threads? My quad core is at 50% when running it which means that two cores are fully used.

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[mh114]

Very cool, I always like voxel stuff! Runs quite slowly here, much smaller window size would probably help.

[xxzulu92]

Hi people of Java Gaming

first of all: thanks a lot for all the feedback.

Perhaps some short sentences to the lots of questions
and remarks:


** The game it is a bit slow

right, at the moment it is optimized for dual core, 1280x1024 screen, computer
a standard-two-years-old-double-core-AMD3.5.   I guess
and of the week i will put different versions for
- different qualities
- single core, dual core, perhaps quad core
- different resolutions
on the server
 

** Is it 3D accelerated?

no, all rendering is done by the CPU only. But the game is parallized,
at the moment only for single and dual core, quad core is in work
(1 or 2 days of work to do i guess...)
But a fast Graphic Card is nice, because java has to transfer the
calculated picture from java to Graphics memory, and that is done
very fast by a 3d accelerated one...


** the helicopter looks like a rubber duck

Thanks :-) !  Yep, it does. Maybe i will transform it into one of these
insect-like-aggressive-looking-flying-machines...


** when i flew through the first ring, a menu popped up

Ok, i confess: it is ALPHA version. You flew through the LAST ring...
The first is right ahead to the north at the start.


** The Mouse Wheel doesnt work

Thanks a lot for that - i will include keyboard acceleration and breaking


** Two cores are fully used

Yep, right: the game is fully parallized for two Cores, parallelization for
four cores will come.


Thanks a lot again,
have good times!
Thor

[Orangy Tang]

Visually very cool, with a really nice landscape. But I'm finding it very hard to control - particularly going up and down is very sluggish and the control scheme is very unintuitive. Snappier controls would make it a lot more fun to fly around IMHO.

[JAW]

Really cool. I always wished I would understand Voxel Engines. Well I read them and I never could imagine how to create a decent framerate with tracing every pixel on screen. Its like I basically understand the math and algorithm, but it feels like far too much to be done several times a second. I considered using a Voxel Engine for a RTS. Well,actually it is probably easier to learn real 3D. But somehow 3D is not my thing.

Well steering sucks, but you probably know that. But the rest is really cool.

-JAW

[Abuse]

Worked for the 1st run, but refreshing the page gave this exception

1   2   3   4   5   6   7

java.lang.NullPointerException    at V.a(Unknown Source)    at ai.c_(Unknown Source)    at V.f(Unknown Source)    at MainApplet.init(Unknown Source)    at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager$AppletExecutionRunnable.run(Unknown Source)    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

[Abuse]

Looks nice, and runs fine on my Quad 2.4gig.

Only 2 things are:

1) Warping of the terrain as it approaches the camera
2) Flight mechanics for helicopter arn't very helicopter-like.

[Alan_W]

I liked it.  About 12fps on my old 2.8GHz Pentium 4 laptop.

[EgonOlsen]

But a fast Graphic Card is nice, because java has to transfer the
calculated picture from java to Graphics memory, and that is done
very fast by a 3d accelerated one...

Not always...http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=6652116

[jojoh]

Very impressive and good looking!

Ran fairly smooth on my rig and used ~90% on both cores. Agree with others though that ctrls could be improved by making it snappier (and not have to hold down the mouse button!), but still fun enough to just fly around and grazing the ground (maybe move the heli a bit further forward, so that the shadow is seen when you are a bit higher up in the air).

Looks promising, and if this is what you consider pre-alpha, then it will be really interesting to see what comes out of it.

[xxzulu92]

Thanks again for the replys!

Just a short remark: you do not have to hold down the left mouse button:
pressing the "F" key toggles "free flight" (don't need left mouse button).
I myself prefer "non-free-flight".

Have sunny days!
Thor

[Markus_Persson]

Niiiice, I love voxels.

I got like 5.1 fps on my MacBook, and it was a bit difficult to control, but that's a very nice voxel engine!

/ Markus

[JL235]

My track ball doesn't have a mouse wheel, and although I found an accelerator key it wasn't labelled. It was fairly smooth until I went up high where it became unplayable. Literally 1 or 2 frames per second.

I've always been interested in voxel graphics, so I'd really like to see more of this when it's more mature.

[pjt33]

Very very pretty.

Are keyboard-only controls on the TODO list?

[Abuse]

It seems that if you press 'Y', followed by 'T' a few dozen times, then 'Q' to come to a stop, you can tear a hole in reality =)

With a large enough vertical screen, you can also fly upside down! (and do a loop-the-loop!)

[xxzulu92]

Hi lads and guys,

first of all: thanks again for all the input. I know now lots of open
issues and will work on them. sooner or later.

A configurable Version (Screensize, Quality) of the alpha-Preview is
now available. I am not *that* fit in PHP, so i hope there are no
additional errors :-)

Adress is still

www.helicopter-fun.com


Carpe diem
Thor

[Abuse]

Where is 1920x1080? 

Incidentally, where is the fps counter?

[SimonH]

At 800x600 this plays really well - good framerate (where is the fps counter though?) and it looks beautiful! BUT those controls are hard to manage - why not also the arrow keys?
I really admire the way this renders (I tried something similar myself a while back but I never got anything this good!) so if you can make me feel like I'm actually flying the helicopter (& it doesn't look like a duck to me) you'll have a winning game!

[xxzulu92]

Ok,

next thing in my todo list is the keyboard controls... I think about
using ASDW like in the Egoshooter-Genre.

Enjoy the weekend!
Thor

[swpalmer]

Worked for the 1st run, but refreshing the page gave this exception

1   2   3   4   5   6   7

java.lang.NullPointerException    at V.a(Unknown Source)    at ai.c_(Unknown Source)    at V.f(Unknown Source)    at MainApplet.init(Unknown Source)    at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager$AppletExecutionRunnable.run(Unknown Source)    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

I had the same problem - obfuscation gave different symbols but it looks like the same stack trace.. I would have pasted it but apparently it didn't make it to the clipboard before the Java Console went away...

[gouessej]

Excellent job!  I find it really nice and smooth. Keep it up.