Flight Back

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Flight Back

Flight Back ODFL loader on OpenSuSE 11.1
Information
Producer: The Open Descent Foundation
Developers: King Lo, D.Cent, d3jake
Current version: v0.0.3 Pre-Alpha
Latest release: none
Operating systems: Linux, Windows, Mac
Category: 6DoF, First Person Shooter
License: GPL version 2 or 3
Languages: C++
Website: none yet
Project page: click here

Flight Back is a non-commercial, Open Source 6DoF ("6 degrees of freedom") game. It can be compared to Descent, but it does not claim to be a clone of any Descent game. However, there are importers for different versions of Descent levels, but only user-made levels that are not covered by copyrights.

Flight Back is supposed to be licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or 3 (not clear yet).

Note that all Flight Back related articles are located in an own wiki category. Flight Back has also its own subforum.

Contents

[edit] Current Progress

The below list might be deprecated. Please look into our Flight Back Todo List for a more detailed and updated view.


What we currently have is:

  • a design document, currently it is a physical copy held by d3jake, a digital copy has been posted to the forums.
  • a script, a storyline that our game will adapt itself to
  • a multi-active state gamestate system
  • a d3l exporter
  • a 3D graphics engine
  • the basic netcode (not the multiplayer gamecode)
  • a player ship model
  • tablefile reader

What is currently in work:

  • dynamic menu system
  • reading and displaying objects
  • the physics library implementation
  • Pilotfile reader, reads keybindings and other controls


What we still need at minimum:

  • a system for gamemods, and level scripts, potentially Lua or Angelscript
  • level and texture designers for new singleplayer and multiplayer missions

Extras that would be nice to have:

  • Scripting system for the background of the main menu

(to be continued)

[edit] The Name

There was a thread with proposals for a suitable name [1]. The most popular names were put into a voting. The name had been decided democratically, where all members of the ODF had 3 votes [2].

The name "syzygy" is currently being used to name the coding project that will eventually become Flight Back.

[edit] Components

[edit] Library Summary

Module Library
3D Engine Irrlicht [3]
Physics Library Bullet [4] through the irrBullet wrapper [5]
Audio (not set yet) SDL_mixer or OpenAL
Netcode (not set yet) Possibly libodf, enet, irrNetLite, SDL_net

[edit] The Script

The script titled "Flight Back : The Aftermath of Samuel Dravis " for the singleplayer part was written by our member Gold Leader (a.k.a. Obi-Wan Kenobi). In February 2009, Obi started a special scene called Flight Back: Vengeance and announced a special scene "Flight Back: Unorthodox". "Flight Back: Vengeance" was finished on 29th November 2009.

[edit] The Music

There are several proposals for music. For details, look into our Musician's Forum.

[edit] 3D Engine and File Formats

The 3D Engine will be Irrlicht. Most file formats are not sure by now.

Some experiments with the .b3d format have been conducted. Using a custom export script for Blender [6] animation frames have been exported and animated in Irrlicht, and animation bones, that are typically used for animations have been successfully used as a sort of gunpoint to define certain points on a model from which weapons are to shoot, or powerups\players are to spawn from.

[edit] ODFL File Loader

In April 2009, Lo an D.Cent were able to load a D3L Level into Irrlicht.

At first, a D3L level is converted into an ODFL Level (ODFL is the new level file format. which stands for "ODF Level"). This work is done by a special d3l master extension. The same routines also extract and convert all media files. Therefore, libdoh (extracting files out of hogfiles) and libogfoaf (converting ogf/oaf files into tga files) are used.

Now, Irrlicht can load the ODFL level file with the CODFLFileLoader class. The file must end on ".odfl" to automatically let Irrlicht find the correct file loader. Therefore, little changes in the irrlicht library had to be made.

You can see the result in the infobox.

[edit] Netcode

Pending testing of the network libraries mentioned above, other libraries may be used, or may not. The project is too new to be certain of anything network\netcode related.

Our Flight Back Netcode page details our plans for the multiplayer section of our game.

[edit] The Programmer's Team (alphabetical)

[edit] d3jake

Main programmer and project leader is d3jake (as voted on an ODF meeting in TeamSpeak). He is currently working on getting the game to a point where other programmers may have a place to start helping. Currently, he is doing work to experiment with and feel with the Bullet [7] physics library with the irrBullet [8] wrapper. 6Dof movement has been establish easily. Conversations with InsanityBringer has revealed that the structure of events in Irrlicht for the mouse are not conducive for the movement desired. This will have to be figured out before a full implementation of physics.

[edit] D.Cent

D.Cent wrote the D3L exporter class. He also took part at the 3D engine. Now, he is writing a loader for Descent1/2 files and he already made first efforts. Additionally, he's working on a dynamic menu system with a new GUI design. The menu system is already complete and being merged into BZR these days. Later on, he will work on a converter program for Descent3 table files.

D.Cent is German supporter for Flight Back. You can PM him on the DescentForum.

[edit] Lo

Lo wrote the ODFL format and loader and the netcode drafts.

In August 2010 he has started a forum thread rating possible network candidates. The network candidate competition will include Lo writing 3 test applications for the network candidates, which he stated to finish until the end of September. Finally, a voting will take place and Lo can then start programming (most work should be done with the draft, though). Additionally, Lo is about to finish the ODFL importer's lightmaps and will continue extending it.

[edit] InsanityBringer

InsanityBringer came to us in July 2009. In August 2010, he confirmed that most of the irrlicht pilotfile reader has been done by him.

[edit] Used Projects (Summary)

The Flight Back project is using the following ODF projects:

It will also be possible to launch Flight Back using D321GO!!.

[edit] Weblinks

Retrieved from "http://www.odf-online.org/wiki/index.php/Flight_Back"
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