My sorry excuse for a flight game

[ZoltanTheHun 101]

Hi,

 

I am an avid Strike Fighters player, and the game inspired me so much that I had the idea to create my own flight game.

It is in pretty poor state so far, but I managed to squeeze out 1 release every month since January, and I added new features at every new release.

 

So this is SkyHussars R5:

 

 

By now I have the most basic things: I create a poor model of a P80, I read about flight physics, and implemented a very very simple physics model. Then I added terrain, some simple particle effects, enemies, shooting and positional audio, then I created simple text configs for the game and simple menus. And now I have sea and some self shadowing. The framerate as of now is quite abysmal though, that's something I should improve immediately.

 

The game s built on top of the jMonkeyEngine. I am a Java enterprise developer by profession, so this engine suited me the best. It was an exciting experiment so far, but because I work on it during late night coding sessions, I don't know how long I can keep this up. So I felt it is time to show this to others, despite the abysmal framerates and the poor gameplay:

 

https://github.com/ZoltanTheHun/SkyHussars/releases/tag/R5

 

The main platform is Windows, but It should work on Linux and BSD too, but I haven't tested those platforms for a while.

 

Regards,

ZoltanTheHun

[Skyviper 1,101]

First of all ... as person that made a handful of crappy mods I can appreciate the time, dedication, talent, and skill it took to get to this stage. That's awesome.

 

And for reason this reminds me of the old Chuck Yeager sim. I know you're not going for that look. Your video brought back good memories and lifts my spirits that flight simulation isn't dying off.

 

This is so exciting to see this! I love seeing how games are made. This is awesome! I can't wait to see what you'll come up with.

[+76.IAP-Blackbird 3,557]

Zoltan, you are my hero!!! Thats a big step my friend! Hope this will be moddable as SF2 and I think we have a lot of people her that can work this out far more ahead of SF2 NA!  

[Nesher 628]

great job for one person! this could be your résumé to work for Eagle dynamics :P

Edited May 16, 2016 by Nesher

[+v. Deutschmark 69]

Hi Zoltan, Its not easy for just one person to make a full flight sim game, I am impressed at your knowledge!

If you need or want some help just send me a PM, I also have a friend that is a very good Java programmer that has made the editors for CK. 

 

Deutschmark

[+Spectre8750 167]

That's a huge step to take. Looks like a lot of great potential, could turn into something grand. Nice work Zoltan!

[BlitzGreek 34]

 That's splendid..i wish i had half of your talent

[+Menrva 4,194]

Be proud of yourself. Believe me, this has potential, just keep doing what you're doing, nice work!

[ZoltanTheHun 101]

Thank you all for the kind replies. Well, this is still one very early tech demo, I had to test if Java and jMonkeyEngine, the engine I use is capable enough. 

Java does not have the performance of C, and game devs don't like it because garbage collection can cause occasional stuttering, also jME is not as actively developed as Unity or Unreal, the guys have too few resources, but it is a nice community. And it's open source, I have most of my experience in Java, and I think stuttering can be avoided mostly. Regarding the performance, I think It would be a must to surpass the Strike Fighters 2 NA detail levels, which I definitely think to be possible on modern hardware and with multithreading.

 

There is the FlightGear route to take, I am going to check the engine, at least that has the flight physics done correctly, I suppose it already supports Blender models, but there are tons of modifications needed there too to make it a functioning combat sim, and my C/C++ skills are poor.

[+v. Deutschmark 69]

Hi Zoltan, If I was you I would stay away from FlightGear for a combat game it has many issues in the game it self that would need to be worked out before trying to make a combat game out of it.

 

Have you seen this;

The Combat Simulator Project

https://sourceforge.net/projects/csp/

It has stalled the last update was 2013, I have it and they where doing a very nice job on it.

 

Deutschmark

[+KnightWolf45 1,147]

if you ever a hand on 3d work PM me please.

[+mue 715]

Hi Zoltan, If I was you I would stay away from FlightGear for a combat game it has many issues in the game it self that would need to be worked out before trying to make a combat game out of it.

 

I'm curious about what are the problems with using the flightgear engine for a combat game?

[+v. Deutschmark 69]

Hi Mue, as I said there are many things in flightgear that would need to be worked out first as we looked over flightgear when starting the CK project, here is one thing out of the many, it don't have self shadowing and that in it self would take a lot of work to get into game, go look and when you get deep into the game engine it self you will see the things that need to be done unless they made some big changes from when we looked at it last in 2010.

 

Deutschmark  

Edited May 17, 2016 by v. Deutschmark

[+76.IAP-Blackbird 3,557]

Same here, if you need some 3D models, just PM me, I think this conversation could be more better placed ... but totaly offtopic in the SF2 section 

 

There are so many guys who wants to have more than 10 animations slots, proper ground avionics, A2A refuel, better terrain engine and alot better weather and cloud effects.... Man you are my hero! Hope some guys are out here, who can give you a hand in codeding 

[Do335 382]

Some ideas... 1. Isn't the entire IL2 java based and although it's not very fast still gets it done? 2. For a mobile game it wouldn't be too bad maybe? 3. Java and C++ have good similarities, maybe a conversion is feasible?

[ZoltanTheHun 101]

Deutschmark: I think FlightGear has the huge advantage of a good and working flight model, which I think is more difficult to implement than shadows etc... The Combat Simulator Project sounds like a good thing, but if it is in C/C++ at least code from FlightGear could be reused for that game too. One of the good things about jMonkey that there is an active developer community around it, so there are some awesome shadercode available. But there are few people whom needed to render such distances as a flight sim, and last month it turned out that the shader code is not fully compatible with multiple viewports. What I want to say with this that any open source engine will have its limitations, because it does not have the same number of developers/funding as a commercial engine. Therefore I think all efforts should be concentrated in the following order: 1. usability(game setup + menus + modding) 2. flight 3. combat 4. everything else, and FlightGear/SimGear might have the second one

 

Do335: Supposedly if it is not written in Java it won't look cutting edge, and it might have higher resource requirements. My aim would be to reach 2012-2013 level of high end graphics on my rig, which is an i5@3.5GHz and Radeon 270x. I think it must be possible in Java. In case of Il2, I think it is just the scripting that is in Java, the core is in C++. Even in mobile games, C++ is often used for critical parts. That is, Java and C/C++ can be combined. Well, if jMonkeyEngine catches on, than the engine developers can focus on performance and optimize it as it is necessary. The greatest concern is the GC pauses, caused by the automated garbage collection, I think that can be largely avoided, and shouldn't cause an issue.

 

 

Here is a recent demo about the engine btw:

[ZoltanTheHun 101]

Hi folks,

 

I did not want to create a new topic, so I post it here.

 

A new release of my humble flight game is available here:

https://github.com/ZoltanTheHun/SkyHussars/releases/tag/R9

 

 

The new features this time are:

• Menu navigation and menu look are improved
• Project upgraded to jMonkey 3.1
• Joystick support
• First altimeter ingame
• First Options menu, options can be saved
• Camera outer view movement
• First Plane Editor

Edited June 11, 2017 by ZoltanTheHun

[RUSTYMORLEY 162]

As long as you continually strive to improve on the latest version then eventually you will have an excellent game.!!!

[jeanba 1,920]

Thank you Zoltan !

[ZoltanTheHun 101]

Thanks everyone for commenting. 

 

Since my last post I made some small fixes:

There are a small new features that I was able to implement since the last release.

The most important one that games won't stuck at the main menu after exiting a flight.

After that I took up the work on the Terrain Manager. Small change, but a few of the terrain properties are coming from objects now, which is the first step to be able to select between terrains.

The third change is that there is a new panel on the plane editor. This panel will contain airfoil properties. It is already capable of displaying a few of them, but there is a long way to go for fully editable airfoils.

 

I hope I can keep my working spirit and put some further small features in until then ext release.

[ZoltanTheHun 101]

I managed to get some worked done again. Most of the work is in the background, I prepare for more modular terrain, so I can work on a terrain editor later, and I had a little work on the plane editor too. I was also playing with some terrain textures, and terrain editing.

 

It is not looking good yet, but I was able to put the code through some high poly stress tests, and I am satisfied with the results: despite the lack of optimization the engine was able to display a 2048x2048 terrain with 15+ framerates:

[+mue 715]

Nice project!
 
Regarding flight modeling. You mentioned that flightgear has the flight physics done correctly. Among other FDMs, flightgear uses JSBSim, a sophisticated open source FDM: http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/ It's written in C++. However I found another (abandoned) combat flight simulator project written in java: "SimuLab" https://sourceforge.net/projects/simulab/  , that also uses JSBSim for the flight physics. I think they started with accessing JSBSim via JNI but later ported JSBSim to java.

[ZoltanTheHun 101]

Nice project!

 

Regarding flight modeling. You mentioned that flightgear has the flight physics done correctly. Among other FDMs, flightgear uses JSBSim, a sophisticated open source FDM: http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/ It's written in C++. However I found another (abandoned) combat flight simulator project written in java: "SimuLab" https://sourceforge.net/projects/simulab/  , that also uses JSBSim for the flight physics. I think they started with accessing JSBSim via JNI but later ported JSBSim to java.

Thank you! I will definitely look into that!

SkyHussars R10 is out.

 

Release is available at:

https://github.com/ZoltanTheHun/SkyHussars/releases/tag/R10

 

The new features include:

 

Fixed bug when it was impossible to start a new mission after exiting one.

Lots of background in preparation of loadable terrain

Airfoils are correctly loaded into PlaneEditor

New terrain texture and terrain model introduced

First cockpit implementation

Shadow bug fixed, it is again possible to see smooth shadows on the surface of the plane.

Refactoring, code improvements in the background.

 

 

A new video will show some of these advances. There is a short clip of the plane editor, after that I show how to set the joystick and I show a configuration file for the game and one for a plane used by the game.

All game objects in the future should be configurable via text files, but I try to provide some enhanced tools for modding the game. Terrain just had its folder created.  

 

A created a cockpit model, which lacks everything, but will do for now. I show the plane from the outside, then from the inside. There is a little "dogfight".  Then I show how shadow is cast to terrain, and then I start another flight with different lighting conditions. At the very end a new bug pops up, so there is work for next month.

 

 

 

[ZoltanTheHun 101]

SkyHussars R11 is out now.

New features:

• New, slightly more accurate flight model
• Bullet updates are independent of framerate
• AOA is displayed on UI
• Airspeed Indicator is added to the cockpit
• PlaneEditor has Speed, Height ad AOA simulation
• Small graphical enhancements, bugfixes etc....

New bugs:

• Physics is not enabled for AI planes
• Shooting bullets can selfdestruct the plane
• Reset does not reset plane to original condition

Please see the release video here:
https://youtu.be/gFh2aUSuMGw

GitHub:

https://github.com/ZoltanTheHun/SkyHussars/releases/tag/R11

Edited November 12, 2017 by ZoltanTheHun
Forgot the github link

[ZoltanTheHun 101]

SkyHussars R12 is available:

Due to my limited free time, I was able to include only a handful of features. Enemies are flying again, there are some improvements in physics, there are some features which are making progress in the background. The main problem at the moment that the controls are too sensitive, something that I should fix soon. The other thing is that in case of negative aoa it easy to loose control of the plane, I suspect an issue with the damping code again.

New features:

• Initial TerrainEd UI
• Projectiles physics are in sync with rest of the physics
• Small deadzone to joystick
• Save As… functionality for PlaneEd
• AI planes won’t fall from the sky when a new game is started
• Preparation for selectable maps
• Reorganized PlaneEd UI, moved telemetry panels to the right

Please watch the release video here:

Release and source code available here:

https://github.com/ZoltanTheHun/SkyHussars/releases/tag/R12