Hello everyone.

For the past week I've been experimenting with jPCT (very happy with it, actually, I'm very amazed that there aren't more people using it! Why is that??). I wanted to share with you some of my concerns regarding a system architecture for an FP(S) platform (I'd like it to be more than just a shooter (hence the parenthesis).

My end-goal is to create a first-person game, but since I haven't quite decided the game's nature/theme I'd like to begin with creating a general platform for it (that I could perhapse release under GPL for others to experiment with).

Currently I'm wondering about the following things:

1. Levels
My current architecture introduces levels as classes, for each level there is a class with the same name. The level class would store vital information like the players starting position in that level, lighting positions, etc... However, the problem is that that's a lot of information to hand sort, object positions, decorations, etc..

A partial solution to this problem would be having a certain type of signal in the level designs as pointers for a "LevelManager" which would place objects.

For example: a sphere with the texture named "PlayerPos" is actually a pointer for where the Player Starting Position should be. Levelmanager would read these pointers, and use their position to automatically instantiate and place the right types of objects, etc.. (then delete them from the world)

Theoretically, this would be possible with jPCT, yes?

2. Segmented character/player bodies

Multi-part humanoids. For an FPS game, it'd be really nice to have arms, torso, head and feet all separate objects capable of being damaged independently. However that would pose many problems: Animations for each part would have to be animated seperately and initiated at the same time when something happens to the humanoid. So it would be very hard to animate these parts independantly from eachother while the end result is supposed to act as a whole.

Can anyone think of a good way to implement a segmented-body ? There's also the question of computation, will segmented humanoids be too much for jPCT to handle?

I also noticed in another thread that Egon/Helge has been questioned before about skeletal-character physics like Half-Life uses. At the time there was no plan to implement that kind of feature. That hasn't by any chance changed, has it?  

3. Saving

My current thoughts on saving are by simply making the Level class, Stats class (Contains historical info about the gameplay) and Player class serializable. When continued you would simply load the classes.

Sounds a bit brute to me, but that's all I can think of.

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Thanks for reading.
Hope you're having as much fun as I am.

Cheers,
   - Raven

Firstly, I'd like to say that jPCT is awesome.
In only the two days I've been experimenting with the examples, I've been able to create a humanoid character in the FPSdemo capable of moving around and being "shot", as well as making the weapon fire projectiles. I love working with this engine. Thank you for creating it.

However, I have a few questions, mostly due to my inexperience with 3D.

1. I've been playing around with loading various 3ds models. After realizing that objects must be merged, everything works great except that with complex models everything slows *extremely* down when I look at them. Even down to 2FPS in worst cases. This can hardly be due to processing power since I'm running a 2x2.5ghz 64bit powermac with 2GBRAM.

- So what am I doing wrong? (I load the models the same way as the levels are loaded in the FPS demo).


2. Regarding levels in the FPSdemo. How is the playerPosition originally calculated, as well as the lighting? I understand that the level is a 3DS model, but can you figure out a position for the player/lights while you're in a 3D Editor somehow? Or will you have to 'guess' the position after you load it into jPCT?

I'm wondering what the best way would be for me manage this. There's also the question of object placement: Figuring out where to place objects like "Healthpacks" for example.

3. Can objects emit light? For example, could I create a Flashlight object?

I noticed some really cool lighting effects in Paradroidz where the player seems to emit red light.

4. I still haven't been able to try object animations; I don't know yet how to animate 3D and I can't find any md2 files -- does anyone know where I can find an example MD2 file to test animation?

5. Just for interests sake: You can have more than once instances of a camera, right? Would it be possible to project the input of one camera to an object in game? An example of the usage: 'Security' cameras placed in a map can be viewed by the player on Monitor Objects?


There'll probably be more questions later, but thanks in advance.