Cherry Darling released a demoveraion of Wings Battlefield.

Link: http://cherry-darling.net/voxelnoid/index.html

That link points to VoxelNoid, here's Wings of Battlefield:
http://www.cherry-darling.net/wings-battlefield/index.html

You can read my preview review here: https://morphosuser.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/wings-battlefield/

Does Wings Battlefield use the MorphOS 3D drivers, or are all versions of the game using the same "Composite 3D" necessary for running on AmigaOS4.x, due to the lack of 3D drivers?

@WB_Coder

MorphOS: TinyGL
AROS: Mesa
AOS4: either Warp3D or Compositing. Compositing contains hacks to get hardware accelerated fog and hardware accelerated depth-testing out of the 2D API.

@Daytona675x

I played the demo and have some questions:
- would it be possible to add some trees, bushes (2d or 3d), scenery looks a bit empty now, regardless texture quality
- touching the ground/mountain should give instant crash
- Planes in Wings by Cinameware could have problems with an engine during looping, it would be nice to have it
- After being shot the plane could try to land

@zukow

Thanks for your feedback but I'm sorry, we won't add any more complex features at this point for the release version (however some smaller suggestions from people trying the demo have been added last minute).

- trees etc.

The thing is: the original purpose of this game was to give users stuck with AOS4 RadeonHD systems without 3D drivers a real 3D game. Unfortunately the hacks required won't work too well with such things (mostly due to the transparency). Plus it means additional work for the artist, of course. The game took over 4 month of work already, we cannot do more now.
However we might try to add something in an update (the game contains an auto online-update mechanism).

- touching the ground/mountain should give instant crash

No, definitely not! It's no fun, believe me

- Planes in Wings by Cinameware could have problems with an engine during looping, it would be nice to have it

We decided to simply add a deceleration if you fly upwards without any more "interfering".

- After being shot the plane could try to land

No, that doesn't fit to the gameplay and environment. Look, the gameplay is roughly comparable to something like a Bomberman-session: you get killed, well, that's it. Besides that: the terrain would need enough "flat" areas for landing sites. That's not fitting our game mechanics where the landscape is everything but flat - the contrary is the case: the idea is that the lanscape is full of hills and bumps etc. to allow "hiding" and tight navigation through it.

Thanks for the cool multiplayer game! I love the idea of NEW local multiplayer games :) We arrange classic Amiga multiplaying game events here and there, but would love to do the same with next gen machines too.

What I'd like to see in these kinds of the games would be that you could combine split-screen players and LAN players. That way you could do fun multiplayer events with for example two machines. No need to stare too small area of the screen and share too many controllers on just one computer, but also no need to have own computer for each player. Just like in the good old Lotus2 with Amigas in serial linkup: you can have players on two machines like 1-1 or 1-2 or 2-2.

Could that kind of option to be added for this game, please? It already has both 1 on 1 network and split screen local options, so maybe it wouldn't be too hard to combine them?

@jPV

That's a good idea indeed! However it is too complex to add it at this point for the initial release (involves modifying the UI accordingly, the network system is currently pretty hard-coded for one player per machine). All that is not really tough to change, but it's a critical area that requires quite some testing and a bug can happen easily... Better not now, but rest asured that I'll do that in an update!

> "Composite 3D" necessary for running on AmigaOS4.x, due to the lack of 3D drivers

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=9767&start=59

@Andreas_Wolf

Well, the whole idea was born before there was any Warp3D for any RadeonHD at all
And until now there's only the W3D for HD 7xxx (and that can only be considered good beta at this time, luckily workarounds for the remaining bugs we stepped into were possible).

>>> "Composite 3D" necessary for running on AmigaOS4.x, due to the lack of 3D drivers

>> https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=9767&start=59

> until now there's only the W3D for HD 7xxx

...and R7/R9 :-) I just wanted to get straight that there are 3D drivers for (certain Radeon HD cards on) OS4.

@Andreas_Wolf

yes, there is! And on such systems we strongly encourage using the W3D version! Last not least because there are some weird compositing driver bugs on some of those systems

How about adding some "floating ballons" which repairs you airplane a little bit if you shoot at it or holds different types of weapons?

@Daytona675x

Tested the demo version. It run really smooth! Perhaps you could add an option to reveal fps rate on a top/bottom corner just for comparison between systems.

I agree that the scenery needs a little more variety (such as trees on the landscape or perhaps a building such as a barn here and there). Also, when hitting the ground you should die instantly imho.
When steering vertically for a long time (gaining height), the engines of the plane could stall after a specific altitude, thus making the player a free fall - easy target (since he wanted to attack from above and he overused it).

How about implementing a re-load gauge of the guns, a health bar of the player or altitude meter (if you make the engines stall)?
The idea of floating balloons from igracki is cool and will make the rounds last longer (especially fun on amiga lan parties :).

Finally, why not being possible to accelerate or lose speed when in pursuit of an enemy? I think that would make the gameplay more complete. If you disagree on that idea and you still want to keep it much arcade, then you could copy the way Biplane duel originally did it on the Amiga (gaining speed) without using accel. buttons.

Anyway, just my thoughts :)

[ Edited by Cool_amigaN 16.05.2015 - 10:24 ]

@igracki
@Cool_amigaN

Thanks for checking it out and for the input!

fps-rate:
There's a tool-type for it.

trees:
As being said: usually trees and things like that are a no-brainer, from a coder's perspecive. But our primary goal was to provide a 3D game that looks (almost) identical even on systems without hw 3D support. And things like trees involve transparency which is problematic with our pseudo-z-buffer on AOS4 (one stupid unnecessary limitation of the Compositing API makes it impossible to work with such things - and the software fallback will result in potential flickering of such elements). That's why we decided against it. So, even if I wanted to add it now for the other systems, the next problem is: we cannot come up with decent artwork in a few hours (because that's the time remaining until the CDs are being produced...), not to mention the code for object placement and then the testing etc. (it's all rather trivial, but nevertheless...).
This thing has to come to an end now.

re-load gauge of the guns:
not necessary, you got unlimited ammo. The gun may "overheat" though if you constantly shoot for a long time. It turned out to be more fun actually to NOT know exactly when this will happen.

health bar of the player:
is inside, on the top left; fuel bar is below that.
And you can indirectly see the rough health state of an opponent: if his energy level gets rather low it will start to spill more an more "dark" smoke.

altitude meter:
That would probably make sense if we'd have something like stall. However it turned out that it's more fun without such things. We tuned the mechanics following the K.I.S.S. principle

balloons:
The idea is good indeed - and we already came up with it ourselfs It's on the list of potential addons for an update.

stall:
Turned out to be not that much fun to "punish" the player even more. He already gets punished because flying that much upwards makes his fuel deplete quicker. And we don't want to interfere too much: if somebody wants to fly high, let it be so. Besides that: a free-fall enemy isn't such an easy target at all

Acceleration:
right now you accelerate when flying down and decelerate (less) when flying up and slowly get back to normal speed when flying more or less straight. We're thinking of adding a turbo-button maybe (also requires AI modifications).

[ Editiert durch Daytona675x 16.05.2015 - 09:53 ]

@zukow
@igracki
@Cool_amigaN

Okay, one of the items of your wish-lists made it into the game... Guess which one

Just tested the game a little bit more and I really like it.
But there more things I want talk about:

1. It would be really cool if you can strafe your plane left and right.

2. Fog does not work on MorphOs 3.8 with Radeon 9600XT
(on 3.7 it also did not work).
Here a screenshot of the game with enabled fog:
WingsBattleDemoMOS.png

3. It would also be cool if you can look left and right.

4. VBOs do not work (see debug log)?
r300.library: Performance warning for task "Wings-Battlefield": Disabling VBO rendering due to incompatible parameters

5. Far future: Please reuse your engine to realize a sequel to
The Shadow of the 3rd Moon

[ Edited by eliot 16.05.2015 - 20:47 ]

TinyGL has no support for GL_FOG, which is what WB uses I presume. The fog aide... strafing with an aeroplane? :-|

Quote:

Ok,

sorry, not strafing, it should be yaw:
Axes

Really good!!!
I like it!
Some trees wouldn't be bad and a story mode (in full version is there something about it?) would be really appreciated.
Finally: if you code a multiplayer online (not lan) playing i think it really could become the best selling amiga game for the next years. :D
Wait for the full version!

Quote:

Daytona's answer regarding the trees:
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=10&topic_id=11166&post_id=118884&viewmode=flat&sortorder=0&showonepost=1

[ Edited by BSzili 17.05.2015 - 11:40 ]

@BSZili

Thanks for linking to my previous answer on the tree topic

But turns out I found a way to make it happen on Compositing with the depth-test-hack and with transparency...
So we don't have trees, but we got grass now at least!

The compositing limitation I talked about before still exist of course, but the good thing is:
grass is green

@rebraist

Story mode: no, this is the "Duel Edition". We once planned a "History Edition" too, but that's simply too much work for us (we aren't story writers). It most likely won't happen.

Multiplayer WAN: not for the initial version. In an update maybe.

Quote:

Yes. I'd already read it. :) But if in a next release they put it, well, they'd only make happy those platforms owners (as morphos, aros and 3d driver capable os4 are), whose os have better support from their coders.

Very impressive! Foliage is a welcome addition :) A multiplayer lobby with a master server would be nice too. I accessibility can boost the number of players.