About armory3d

I’m always one click away from buying this engine. What prevents me from it, is never ending status of preview version. In same time, new features (optional one’s in my opinion) are added more and more. So I might be wrong, but from the perspective of project managing armory is a bit of a mess.

What I would suggest:

  1. Build a very simple FPS Benchmark/game like https://benchmark.unigine.com/superposition?lang=en
  2. In This process it will be acknowledged what’s missing to build a actual FPS game.
  3. Ignore anything else (new trends, tech like VR, etc.), just to focus to get the engine ready to build some first FPS.
  4. Then add missing stuff, update existing, test and polish to squeeze max performance and quality.
  5. Release executables on all platforms.
  6. Ask community to run Benchmarks (on low, mid, high, etc.) and play with the game mode.
  7. Collect the benchmarks and bugs.
  8. Fix & improve to some extent and release BETA.
  9. More people will trust in this and buy the engine.
  10. Assemble a team, get it to the Final 1 release.
  11. Then start again adding new tech.

Or in simpler words, try to get the first stable version done. It doesn’t have to beat Unreal in tech at first run :slight_smile:

2 Likes

There is already a very small benchmark scene: Benchmark 1 - Spaceship Interior
I also think that here should be game that uses Armorys strengths (Voxel GI).

Hey @trsh!

Thanks for posting this, helps a lot to get a feel on what direction to take next. A tiny benchmark scene was already produced, as mentioned by Simonrazer. There will be an fps benchmark too, however just putting a quality assets to complete that is a challenge. Help on that welcome! :slight_smile:

If you inspect GitHub repositories, majority of commits is bug fixing - there is now 200+ issues resolved. I know this is hard to show-case, but it should all be worth it in the end.

PS: the git version is now marked as v0.1. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

@lubos , What kind of assets do you want ? Can you list it down ? I think @trsh is right, you probably need to create a complete example or an actual small game(complete game with an actual ai,player hud, menu screen,pause screen, savegame, options screen, minimap , objective and etc) to see what is missing and what can be improve more on armory.

Maybe do a doom1 clone game just to test what is missing and what can be improve and added to armory ?

Meanwhile, I really like Kha… :slight_smile:

1 Like

@lubos will be more than happy to make assets. and i’m sure i’m not the only one here in this group willing to make assets for any project you start. coding and stuff makes my head hurt but i’m sure i can get assets done

2 Likes

@lubos I say those things only because I believe in Armory so much, and want it to success ASAP.

1 Like

Would be supper cool to assemble a community team and make some level :smiley:

1 Like

Well now I am speechless. And the repository is born!

Thinking about the assets:

  • Some basic level area, perhaps taking place outside so it can be sun lit. Having smaller indoor places on it is still cool for variety.
  • Crates, barrels, obstacles, any props we could use to fill the level.
  • Gun & first person rig, shoot & reload animations.
  • Enemy character rigs?

For the looks, maybe something more stylized / overwatch-y is easier to approach?

For multiple people to contribute to this, I think we need some Legit concept art of the scene. And that’s bit a problem :/. If we clone this screenshot, somebody/somewhere will sue us probably :smiley: ?

I would personaly not do sci-fi-comic style stuff for a demo, since this may seem a little bit like it was just copying the trends and maybe once the demo is finished, this style is totaly out again. Would still help with assets/logic where I can, since Armory is amazing anyway.
Alternative idea: some fleeing/fighting/parcour gameplay in such kind of environement https://youtu.be/LSTqzXY31HU?t=23 . If it is realistic enough graphics- and gameplay-wise, I can imagine it beeing a very thrilling experience. Some concept ideas (props,buildings) are not too hard too imgine and to put together to a level in some way, but I dont have any clear ideas about the gameplay.
Imo, there should be an extra thread (maybe even category) for this project, in which everyone wanting to be involved can share his thoughts better than in this giant list.

2 Likes

As always, I’m being late :grin:
Nevertheless, I second Simonrazer’s posting: try to rather showcase Armory’s strengths instead of following the latest fads.
Personally, I’m more into realtime, “realistic” simulation rather than gameplay, hence a parkour-type of game living off of its physics and lighting capabilities would be desirable to me.
Anyway - continue rocking! :+1:

I think having mobile and web platforms first class support is mandatory. This is where Armory3d has upper hand compared to Unreal/Unity: smaller executable size, lighter and also much more robust. Both Unity/Unreal target HTML5 through emscripten which results in huge .js size and hence makes them unfit for web.

3 Likes

jeez im late but i take it the offer to make assets is still up. i’ll try to make some assets on my free time. characters/ animation is my thing :slight_smile:

I was inclined towards a first person shooter since it’s relatively simple to hook it up, and one of the most common questions is whether an FPS is possible. In other words I am scared to go too wild on this project - as soon as there is no exact idea on what to do the development can stall at some point.

For a copy-cat shooter we could keep the development time low. It would also serve as a base that others can later built upon for their own stuff. It is not built for profit but mainly as a showcase / open project for learning Armory.

On the other hand majority of comments here seem to be not in favor of an fps. :smile: The project should ideally appeal to the most of armory users, which makes this a tough decision. Once this game is done we can still move on to bigger things, I just fear moving there too quickly. I am committed to make Armory as good as possible, but we know it’s a marathon.

I propose to build a simple scene with some first person camera rig & non-textured blocky-art level. I will publish this .blend file so everyone can access & run it. Then we can fill in the level with graphics and gameplay mechanics, open more topics for discussion as @Simonrazer suggests etc. What are your thoughts? Yay or nay?

1 Like

Definitely yay!
Very first question, as it seems rather important, will the majority of the logic be done in logic nodes or in Code? Nodes seem to be easier to understand, while I personally don’t get how to code in Armory, and for both things is not a lot of documentation. A downside of nodes is that they probably never have as much power as Code, as it is the case with Unreal Engine, BGE and expansions for Unity (imo).

Since you are doing that example, I would like to suggest add this in the FPSController or maybe just upgrade the current fps template.
1)Crouch
2)Mouse lock and hide mouse cursor.
3)User dont need to mouse down and drag to rotate view like we have currently.
4)Changing weapons example
5)Crosshair
6)Proper jump and landed. Currenly we have infinity jump with spacebar
7)NPC ragdoll
8)Anything else that would make it as a good reference when doing a fps game.

If you want to attract Unity users
1)Mobile services (monetization, iap, ads, gamecenter and etc)
2)Alot of tutorials and documentations and examples
3)Platforms IOS,Android,Facebook gameroom and etc.
4)Show some 2D examples.

If you want to attract UE4 users
1)Good FPS examples and showcase
2)People will always compare X engine graphics with UE4 graphics
3)Performance

If you want to attract leadwerks users
1)Just do a complete example of FPS game template and also driving template.
2)Maybe shows off by playing armature character that have around 50 bones and have about 30 of them playing at same time without crippling the performance especially when the zombies are chasing or going to player location. Does armory can handle this ?30 zombies with 50 bones chasing player. Will it cripples the performance ?
3)You already beat them with pbr, multiplatforms and etc

If you want to attract s2engine users
1)Just make it stable and dont crashed, dont use up to 6 months development time to create a dlc and the core program still not stable and not a single updates.
2)Do a rain examples and good outdoor scenes.

So far I really enjoying Armory and lubos is really serious with the bug reports at github. That is a big plus for me. The software is stable and in my opinion is going to the right direction. So keep it up lubos!