[WIP] Ground Operation - Top-Down view Car-Combat game for mobiles

Ground Operation - is the fast paced car combat game with top down view.

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Features are:
- "Campaign" mode - a set of mssions connected with story.
- "Arena" mode - Capture The Flag and Control Points - team matches with bots ( single player mode ).
- Boss fights
- Fight a variety of enemies: from soldiers and missile boats to helicopters and giant battle robots.
- Buy new cars and upgrade their capabilities.
- Use cool powerups: "Super Damage", "Force Field", "Sentry Gun" and others
- In "Arena" game mode assemble your team and manage it's behaviour.
- Find the Hippie Van to trade hidden guns, bonuses and powerups.


App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ground-operation/id1227503914?l=ru&ls=1&mt=8
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Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.FoxForceGames.GroundOperation

Windows Store: https://www.microsoft.com/ru-ru/store/p/ground-operation/9nblggh4vhq4#




Thanks,

Andrey.

 

Looks very good. Did you create your own vehicle physics?

 

Hey,

Thanks a lot!

.Yeah, im basically faking the car physics. There're no wheel colliders or complex calculations. Car is just a single rigid body.

I was looking for the simple game idea. One day I was playing the "Rock'n'roll Racing" on a sega emulator and I really liked how cars behaved, always drifting even on low speeds. I thought this kind of fake physics will be pretty easy to implement, and it was actually

 

This looks like a lot of fun! Would love to try it

 

What did you do for lighting? Is it just lighting baked into vertex colors?

 

Hey! Thank you!

I can build either an Android or a Windows demo for you if you like. Don't have ios developer account yet. On PC it is playable with xbox-like gamepad or with virtual joysticks (on screen controls).

There're baked lightmaps for static objects. Dynamic objects use light probes.

I guess the impression of vertex colors apeared because of low resolution lightmaps. There're pretty big terrains, aprroximately 500x500 meters each and a lot of objects. If I increase the resolution of lighmaps, build size grows very fast. Right now the game with 12 playable levels is around 70mb in size. If it will became, say, 250 mb, I guess many people will just get tired waiting till the game will be downloaded and will cancel it. This is just my guess I didn't do any research or something

 

Great looking game! Would be a perfect time killer while traveling to work. Will it be a collection of loosely if at all connected missions or will there be a grander overarching campaign?

 

Well, if you want to reduce your build size, you could possibly use vertex colors to bake in lighting for static objects and use baked lightprobes for dynamic, I wrote a simple editor tool to do this, I could send it over to you when I get home if you would like. I also created a simple lightprobe generation tool to create an automatic spread of lightprobes across meshes. PM me if you'd be able to use those

 

As for a demo, I could use a windows build with virtual joysticks (I have a Surface pro 3), would be happy to test it and check for bugs!

 

Thanks! Missions are connected but I think you understand there's no deep storyline

I never worked with baked vetex lighting in unity. If it will look good and at the same time build size will reduce I would like to try your tool, of course. Thanks for the proposal.

As for lightprobes, I spread them with grid pattern. Im sure this is not the best thing to do in terms of performance, but it doesn't seem to lag on my very basic android phone. Still if your solution is better I would like to try it, sure.

Ok, will build a pc demo for you a little later, need to make some cleanup in code.

 

Cool, I'll package those up when I get home from work and send it to you with some instructions

 

Figured it was something like that

 

Hey guys!

new in this update:
- more interesting car physics
- couple of new weapons
- new enemies types
- car upgrades, changable cars

currently working on new mini-boss




I almost forgot I promised the demo, sorry for that. Links for android and pc demos are in the first post. There're twelve playable levels and two playable cars.

Let me know what you think.

 

Didn't anyone managed to play the game?

 

I'll download it over my lunch break. Also, sorry about the tools, been busier than expected, but I haven't forgotten!

 

I prefer to just chill after work, but I'll give it a go tomorrow.

 

May consider posting in a game 'player' focused site (which ones are up to you) instead/in addition to a game 'developer' focused site.
Just - ya know - we are creating games too - and sometimes don't have a lot of time to test out others builds.
I downloaded but haven't played it yet. I told my son about it though - who is fixated with all kinds of driving games, and since this gave me some nostalgia resembling rc pro-am and the original off road racing - it looks like it has potential.

 

If anyone will have some feedback I'll be glad to hear it, thanks!

theANMATOR2b,

Thanks for the suggestion. However im not with you on this. Game isn't ready at all. If I put it on any "gamer" site, it will be claimed awfull. I can say to them: Hey guys, give me your opinion on gameplay only, don't pay attention to those unfinished textures and theese placeholder models. I can say them this thing will be fixed and that thing will have a fancy particles and there will be a funny cutscene. Any game developer will understand those things. But players just don't know anything about deveopement process and they don't have to know anything actually. So I won't have the feedback I need.

Sure. Obvioulsly Im not saying anywhere you must test it. Just asking, if anyone have tried it maybe. Im interested in feedback, thats all.

Lol, not a problem, thanks!

 

One more addition - Im not asking for betatesting, searching for bugs or anything like that of course. Just want to know your opinion on how playable it is. Thank you guys!

 

Very good point. When me and my son get to play it - I will see. I assumed it was closer to final than it is.

 

I got to play some of it and I really like it and I have some inputs:

-When using the machine gun it was hard to tell where I was aiming, and some sort of reticule would be very helpful or maybe make the shots more distinguishable from the desert environment. I ended up staring and trying to see where my shots went so I could adjust the angle.

-Controller support without any fiddling around with menus is a big plus!

-When there is a countdown for the dialog, it would look much better if the timer was used in parenthesis like: Ok (5).

-Nice and clean graphics.

-The jeep controls really well.


A very polished and well made game .

 

Thank you for the feedback, exactly what I needed! Special thanks for the first advice, certainly will think something up in the next update.

 

Here's the update:

Blue laser sight is showing the direction you're aiming to.

 

Hey Andrei
Finally got around to playing. Me and my son had some contrasting views, I don't think he liked it very much, he's only 8 so he was distracted with the enemies and would frequently stop and engage which lead to death, and he didn't like how there were obstacles between his jeep and the goal.
However I enjoyed the game, the graphics are nicely done, and for the most part the controls are tight.
I pretty much agree with everything ephemeral life stated above. The bullets for the guns for both player and enemy are difficult to see, but after awhile I got used to it.
There seems to be some odd physics going on with the vehicles and the hills/mountains. The vehicles acted odd when I attempted to drive close to them, and sometimes I tipped over, but the vehicle reset which is nice. The odd physics is difficult to describe - kind of like how the magnetic guard rails on F-zero acted but without a reason, like the hills kind of didn't want you on them, but the vehicle physics were alright with it.

The ricochet sound effects at the beginning of the game made me think I was being shot at all the time even though it was only my bullets making that sound. This was evident during the tutorial and continued in the regular missions.
using the controller going in one direction and switching the other direction 180 felt a little odd. kind of like it lost vehicle control and went into fake instant reaction 2D character control.

Overall I think the game is pretty cool. The snow level with the laser gun and extra interesting enemies enhanced the experience even more. It made me think the first couple levels could even be improved to match the snow levels.
Below were a couple odd things that happened and some edits that would improve the game.


Spelling error


The repair team seemed to get "stuck" here

They were still moving - but SUPER slow, and kind of jittery.
When I went ahead towards the bridge and came back to them, they started moving at regular speed again.

 

theANMATOR2b,

Hey!

Thank you and your son for spending your time playing the game and writing this review

So would you say game should be easier at first levels? Less enemies maybe?

Got it, thank you!

I had some hard times trying to solve this problem and probably will have some more. What I came up is this thing doesn't happen whith sharp colliders, like box collider, and happening all the time on the smoothed terrain edges. Trying to think up simple yet working solution.

this is the indended behaviour. Not entirely of course, but I chose it to be like this instead of realistic car physics.

I think it is the fence was blocking the ai path. When you destroyed it, they could proceed with their movement. This is the intended behaviour. There's a dialog before those fences that says that you must destroy obstacles on the way of the repair team. Seems like I must make it more obvious for the player. Say "Destroy fences" instead of "obstacles" probably. Or show another dialog if repair team isn't moving for some time.

Thanks again for the help, it is highly appreciated!

 

Regarding the physics, I tried really hard to find any bugs but I couldn't find any. In what level did you first encounter it?

 

Im not the one you're asking but this is the known problem

To catch this bug try moving fast and hit the hill not right in front of you but in slight angle from your moving direction. After several attempts car can start rolling like mad

 

Alright, I will try to find it. You should consider using a triplanar shader for the rocks btw.

 

This is not necessary at all. Only if you're interested, of course.

 

No - I think the game is plenty easy - maybe too easy - but I think he didn't like the arrow pointing directly toward the end goal - because there are hills in the direct path. If you could have the direction arrow point along a path in the direction for the player needs to travel and update around bends - I think this would make younger people be able to follow better the direction arrow easier. If this is difficult to understand I can give more feedback.

I will give this another go - tonight and see if I can recreate the slowed down repair team. I don't think the bug is as you described.
This area is directly after destroying the first fence (I think) and the repair team traversed that area fine, but oddly just slowed down to a snail crawl. When I went up to the bridge and came back down it seemed to reset it's speed and proceed as intended. It was weird, but if I can recreate it, I will try to capture in video.

 

I am since I tried really hard to find any bugs before but I failed, and I'm always interested in figuring out solutions.
It seems I had to upgrade the engine to be able to flip over with the jeep, and I can see what you mean now.

Something that worked for my human character was to check if the position of the next frame was "safe", and if not I would halve the speed and check the new position, and if that one was also not good, I wouldn't move it. Sorry for the awful wording, I'm very tired .

 

I do understand, thank you. I could use navMesh to show direction along the path, but obstacles on the way such as those destructible fences won't let the pathfinder find correct path in some cases, as they make holes in the navmesh. Will try to think something up.

Ok, thank you!

 

Interesting solution I'm not sure if it will work in this case (car is controlled by physics, not "car physics" but still by the physics engine), but I'll give it a try, thanks!

 

I think I found a bug. If you don't drive into the water it's very hard to flip the car, but if you drive down into it once, your car flips really easily after that.

 

Lol! Thanks, will check it out

 

I played through again and couldn't recreate the slow down error with the repair team.
It might be easier for you to try to recreate this - since you can set a start point without having to play through the entire game.

Not sure what your development budget is - but I think there are several assets in the store that could help with this. Though I'd be wary of adding in systems in the middle of development. I remember commenting on one in the wip forum several months ago - not sure if it has been released or not.
Either way - I think it works. I think you might want to get some additional feedback on this before putting in time to edit the system you already have.

 

No problem, thanks.

I would tell but don't want to make anyone laugh

I managed to make the precise target pointer that is showing wich way to go on each turn of the road. As I thought, destructible fences caused some troubles as they carved holes in the navMesh. Now they don't carve into the navMesh and the target pointer shows the way. But npc's behave dumber around those fences, they try to push it. Not a big problem though, I don't think it would be very noticeable.

The video shows how the target pointer works now:

 

I thought up a simple solution, happy to share with you Fences carve into navmesh but each fence has offmesh link around it. This offmesh links use special navmesh area. Npc dont walk on this area, but target pointer can use this offmesh links to calculate path to the target.

Finally npc dont get stupid when they're close to the fence, but target pointer will still navigate you through this fence if your target is somewhere behind it.

 

Hey Andrei - fyi - the video above is private -

 

Hey!

Thanks for letting me know. Fixed it.

 

Here's video of how I make animation rig and walk cycle animation for new mini boss Robot Mech:

I'm not sure if anyone is interested in such videos. If so, let me know.

 

Having fun playing capture the flag with npc's

 

Some progress in Capture The Flag game mode:

 

Cool idea to make the enemy guard the flag by standing on it .

 

New game mode Control Points:

 

Hey! So I finally got around to finishing off those tools I mentioned earlier, nearly done the vertex lighting tool, which can also bake to texture maps , I'll start a thread for the package here soon, but the plan is to give these tools away for free!

 

Hi! Thanks for letting me know, will check it out as soon as you will post the thread.

P.S. Lightmaps size is really starting to become a problem for me. apk size is almost 100 mb.

 

Testing new optional "3D-camera" mode. It will be only available in CTF and Control Points modes

There're some glitches, like incorrecly working target pointer and camera flying through walls. Theese things will be fixed as soon as possible.

 

Don't get me wrong, your game is looking great, but implementing a 3d camera in a twin-stick shooter simply won't work that well. Would need some auto aim for example, and use the other stick to control the camera.

 

Hi! thanks for the comment!

Auto aim is there from the beginning The camera in the video is how it would be in the actual game. I mean, I don't control it with mouse, it rotates itself to the direction car is moving. And, of course, it will be optional. Player will be able to switch it on or off by his desire.