Ambiera Forum

Discussions, Help and Support.

Ambiera Forum > CopperCube > Feature requests and bug reports
Feature Request: Cam with PIP for map and other effects

karmacomposer
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-11 04:51:42

@Niko:

I would like to suggest a feature request to allow any camera in a scene to be used as a picture-in-picture 'map'.

This is something I used to be able to do in Dark Basic and Blitz3D and I am shocked it cannot be done in Coppercube!

Make a new cam, move it into a top-down position and then have come command or action/behavior turn it into a map.

Just like you can already do by adding a new viewport with any active camera.

2D coordinates could be set for placement on the screen.

Preferably, any number could be used, so you could create 2 player or 3 or 4 viewable angles for a game - the uses are endless.

Mike


karmacomposer
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-13 14:50:43

Niko - please tell me this is possible. It's a GREAT idea for making games with either multiple views, but can also be used for radar, mirrors and lots of other stuff.

I wait with baited breath for your reply.

Mike


niko
Moderator
Quote
2018-09-14 07:56:54

AFAIK, this is not possible currently, sorry. But there is a plugin script which draws a map of your game, not sure if that helps, search this forum for it.

But yes, picture-in-picture mode would open a lot of new features.


karmacomposer
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-22 13:32:43

Niko, if you are the main dev of Coppercube and the owner of the Irrlicht engine - then you SHOULD know, so don't use the AFAIK statement.

This type of feature is available not only in every other engine, but even in your own editor. Please make this a feature you add in a (hopefully) not too distant future.

Thank you.

Mike


j9907
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-22 23:53:12

Get over yourself. Either code it yourself or knock it off. I'm so sick of people comparing this engine to Unreal / whatever other ones are out there when everyone seems to fail to realize that he's really the only person who works on it!


karmacomposer
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-23 00:24:19

wrote:
Get over yourself. Either code it yourself or knock it off. I'm so sick of people comparing this engine to Unreal / whatever other ones are out there when everyone seems to fail to realize that he's really the only person who works on it!

Nothing to do with ego or comparing engines to Coppercube nor am I full of myself.

You could easily do this in blitz 3D and dark basic pro with minimal coding. Those existed long before Coppercube and were not considered AAA engines by any means.

Since you can already do this in the editor I can't see why it can't be in your games.

Besides, as someone who has paid for Coppercube for 5 versions at least I'd say I deserve to request this. I'm certainly not being unreasonable.

Mike


j9907
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-23 00:38:20

I never said you're full of yourself. Sorry about that. I was rather worked up prior to going on here and seeing the post. I more or less misconstrued the message you were trying to get across.


In all technicality I think it shouldn't be too hard if it can be done in the editor. Maybe a few changes here and there.

Also: pretty neat that you've bought it for that long. I've only been a paying user since maybe the 5.7 series whereas before that I messed with it back when it was at 5.3.0 (i still have a project file which uses that version haha)

Well, I don't know if you could really consider CC to be a AAA engine. Yes, if you have the know-how and expertise, you can do an incredible amount of things with both JavaScript + the C++ client source code (the latter would allow you to do virtually anything...)

The only thing I was meaning is Niko's the only guy who consistently works on the engine day in and day out so it takes time to make these things happen. I can imagine the backlog of feature requests is damn near limitless and if you think of it, I'm sure all of his time is being taken up by making the D3D11 renderer since that's not exactly a small feature to add.


Also: How is the sewer game project going? I'm talking about the one you showed in a post a few months back.


karmacomposer
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-23 01:31:49

wrote:
I never said you're full of yourself. Sorry about that. I was rather worked up prior to going on here and seeing the post. I more or less misconstrued the message you were trying to get across.


No problem. You said to get over myself. I was legitimately asking for a feature that honestly should have been in Coppercube 4 versions ago.

In all technicality I think it shouldn't be too hard if it can be done in the editor. Maybe a few changes here and there.


Currently, it cannot be used in games as per Niko.

Also: pretty neat that you've bought it for that long. I've only been a paying user since maybe the 5.7 series whereas before that I messed with it back when it was at 5.3.0 (i still have a project file which uses that version haha)


I have been a supporter of Niko and Coppercube for many, many years. Since I am a long-paying client of his software, and it's still no where near ready for creating quality games, I have the right to ask for things that I feel should be in the engine. I also make sure to mention bugs when I find them

Well, I don't know if you could really consider CC to be a AAA engine. Yes, if you have the know-how and expertise, you can do an incredible amount of things with both JavaScript + the C++ client source code (the latter would allow you to do virtually anything...)


I never said it was. In fact, I have worked with (and by worked with, I mean bought, licensed and spent gobs of either time or money or both on...) S2, Unity, Leadwerks, Unreal, CryEngine/Lumberyard, Godot, PlayCanvas, Game Guru and AGK, Coppercube, Maya with Stingray, Blender with Blender Game Engine, Blitz 3D, Dark Basic Pro, Esentheal (almost bought, researched like crazy), Hero Engine (never bought, researched like crazy), C4/Tombstone (never bought but almost did - worked with the demo a LOT), 3D Game Studio and several others I am forgetting - I have literally been doing this for over 15 years. And in all that time, I have rarely been able to create a game due to bugs, errors, bad assets, bad editor extensions and the inability to code in c++.

Fact is, Unity is crap. It crashes all the time. Editor extensions regularly clash with each other since there is no measured standard, it takes longer to fix stuff than do anything productive.

Unreal is just too hard to use, CryEngine/Lumberyard took an entire weekend to install and it refused to accept any of my assets, so I gave up.

Leadwerks is unfinished and always will be, Game Guru eats memory like crazy and is just too simple to make an actual pro game with, AGK is fun but coding with no visual editor is fine for 2D games, but 3D games needs visual editor or a level editor.

Dark Basic Pro and Blitz 3D are outdated and outmoded. I hated Godot - could not do anything with it.

Blender will always be Blender with it's near impossible learning curve (for me). 3D Game Studio is too old now.

Stingray is gone belly up because Autodesk decided to go the Unity/Unreal route. Play Canvas - nah.

That leaves Coppercube and S2.

S2 is a GORGEOUS AAA engine with the best water i've ever seen. It has decent terrain, good eco painter and its engine is beautiful. However, it crashes all the time and assets barely load in - it could take me a full afternoon to figure a way to get one static asset to import - so until Fabio updates (been waiting over a year for the update - he works on Fabio time, which is 10 hours for every millisecond) S2, it will be too hard to work with. I also fear it takes too many resources to run on a lesser gaming system and is PC only.

Coppercube imports EVERYTHING but looks like the 1990's Doom or Doom2. No PBR and sketchy programming. Grass and water are barely ok. Terrain is a joke. Cross Platform is a plus but a very light weight engine.

Mike


karmacomposer
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-23 01:47:18

wrote:
The only thing I was meaning is Niko's the only guy who consistently works on the engine day in and day out so it takes time to make these things happen. I can imagine the backlog of feature requests is damn near limitless and if you think of it, I'm sure all of his time is being taken up by making the D3D11 renderer since that's not exactly a small feature to add.


I know this. I have known this for many, many years that Coppercube is the Niko show. However, with no written roadmap (there are free or cheap scripts that let you make these), there is no way to know what Niko is working on. There is no legend of what's the most important and what's the least important, so there are thousands of requests and very, very little feedback. Not a great way to get the clients to support you.

Fact is, I have to use SOMETHING to make these games and I am pulling my hair out over this.

I love Coppercube's editor (except for terrible snap to grid, no snap to object and weird oddities with other viewports and fog).

S2 also has a good, very complete editor but the crashes kill me.

There is one other engine I did not include in the list because it's now on my worst offender's list. We chose Skyline engine and for over a year, created 5 full very, very large levels for the game we were working on. After a ton of work, many crashes, hundreds of bugs found and squashed, constant level problems with assets disappearing for no reason, loading levels would be unpredictable - to the point that we were unsure they would load at all - five steps forward and 100 backwards at times. But then, the straw that broke it - no working final game - that's right - a year of work and no way to make a finished game. It would take 45 minutes to load and looked like crap. I am sure they will fix it in the next few years, but I refuse to waste one more second on all of this.

So it's either S2 or Coppercube - hence why I am asking Niko for things - to get this engine up to speed and good enough to create a real game. I like that is has that Banjo Kazooie feel to it - perfect for most of our games. If it could just do everything you need to make a finished game (save/load system, options, multiple levels with cut-scenes and a bit better rendering engine that includes PBR textures, proper AI or at least the ability to program it and a much more robust and open-ended way to program what the engine lacks - in javascript, not c++), it would be the perfect engine for me then.


Also: How is the sewer game project going? I'm talking about the one you showed in a post a few months back.

Great! Looks almost as good in Coppercube as it does in S2 - and that is really saying something. S2 has WAY better water with caustics and foam (and bouyancy) and I can make great randomly flashing lights that look real with that engine, but Coppercube really holds up against it.

My worry is other levels - that game requires a city level, a suburb level, a theatre level, a abandoned amusement park level - with animations and all are very large levels (these were all about finished in Skyline - I could just scream). I am not sure if Coppercube can handle it. I KNOW S2 can if the update ever happens and importing is massively improved.

This is my very complete answer to your questions.

Mike


j9907
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-23 02:34:49

with no written roadmap (there are free or cheap scripts that let you make these), there is no way to know what Niko is working on. There is no legend of what's the most important and what's the least important, so there are thousands of requests and very, very little feedback. Not a great way to get the clients to support you.



Yes, I agree. I'd love to see this become a thing. It'd accelerate sales a fair bit, too (I'm sure it would) since potential buyers / clients could see what future versions will have / may have.

I love Coppercube's editor (except for terrible snap to grid, no snap to object and weird oddities with other viewports and fog).

S2 also has a good, very complete editor but the crashes kill me.


CopperCube's editor is the best one out of them all, though the insanely large 3D camera and light icons is unbearable... I want to have the option to resize them / make them smaller since in an inside environment it's not easy to get lights which are closely placed together placed nicely.

As for S2: The 3D viewport is great, yes. I love the Q and E camera controls especially. Very convenient. I'd love to see this in CC... Yes, the crashes are damn near limitless it seems. It crashes more than it runs!

As for Skyline (won't quote it - too large of a post) - It was too confusing for me to use, but otherwise it was stable when I was messing with it. I've yet to hear about any games which actually use that engine... At least with CopperCube and S2 there are a handful of commercial titles which use them as bases.


Great! Looks almost as good in Coppercube as it does in S2 - and that is really saying something. S2 has WAY better water with caustics and foam (and bouyancy) and I can make great randomly flashing lights that look real with that engine, but Coppercube really holds up against it.


Well, the sewer level I saw looks incredible. Very nicely made and the level itself looks stunning. Very professional look to it. Great job.

The other levels sound awesome. What type of game will it be?


karmacomposer
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-23 05:49:37

We have three games in the pipeline.

Maddie Marlow and the case of the screaming silhouettes - (that's the one with the sewer level) is a branching storyline FPS game - think Nancy Drew, but she is a paranormal investigator. There are around 8 or 9 very large, detailed levels. I THINK we can use Coppercube for it, but that's asking a LOT of Coppercube.

Turbo Turtle and the Simean Threat - Think Banjo Kazooie or Ratchet & Clank - very funny 3rd person open world game with our hero, Turbo Turtle and his sidekick (several possible cartoon assets - horse, donkey, camel, goat or hamster) Bob - they meet good guys and simean enemies on their adventures. In this case, their space ship broke and pieces scattered all over the planet they landed on - now they have to find all the pieces across 12 very detailed open world levels to fix their ship and continue their adventures. Great fun!

Lastly, Li'l Gremlin - Poor Li'l Gremlin lost his family in a tragic picnic accident and now he has been separated from them. Not knowing if they are alive or not, he travels from level to level looking for them in an attempt to reunite. Great one for Coppercube. Smaller levels and fun gameplay with puzzles make this 3rd person adventure good to create in Coppercube.

I did find one last engine i'm going to try out - Blender with Armory. I JUST found out about it. I am not sure if it's finished, but it looks good. Blender is unbelievably difficult to learn and master, but i'll see if it's even doable.

Mike


j9907
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-23 05:54:48

Nice... Great ideas!

My current project isn't an original title per-se, but rather a remake / remaster of an old game from my childhood. I will be announcing it eventually, but I want it to be as good as possible before I do so. I need to find a way to get the lighting perfected / as close to the original game's lighting as possible. It's proving to be challenging. The original game has 8 total levels to it and I'll be doing all 8 of them. I'm working with most of the original assets so it's going to look a lot like the original. It's coming along very slowly but surely it'll be done within a few months to maybe early 2019...


karmacomposer
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-23 05:58:27

wrote:
Nice... Great ideas!

My current project isn't an original title per-se, but rather a remake / remaster of an old game from my childhood. I will be announcing it eventually, but I want it to be as good as possible before I do so. I need to find a way to get the lighting perfected / as close to the original game's lighting as possible. It's proving to be challenging. The original game has 8 total levels to it and I'll be doing all 8 of them. I'm working with most of the original assets so it's going to look a lot like the original. It's coming along very slowly but surely it'll be done within a few months to maybe early 2019...


Good luck with that - FPS or 3rd person?

Have I heard of this title?

Mike


j9907
Registered User
Quote
2018-09-23 06:15:06

Third person title. It was a game made as a tie-in for a major animated film released in 2001 (the game came out in 2002). I'd announce it at this very moment but I'll feel an obligation to finish it quicker and I don't want to lose sight of what I'm doing


Robo
Guest
Quote
2019-11-15 14:56:08

I never said it was. In fact, I have worked with (and by worked with, I mean bought, licensed and spent gobs of either time or money or both on...) S2, Unity, Leadwerks, Unreal, CryEngine/Lumberyard, Godot, PlayCanvas, Game Guru and AGK, Coppercube, Maya with Stingray, Blender with Blender Game Engine, Blitz 3D, Dark Basic Pro, Esentheal (almost bought, researched like crazy), Hero Engine (never bought, researched like crazy), C4/Tombstone (never bought but almost did - worked with the demo a LOT), 3D Game Studio and several others I am forgetting - I have literally been doing this for over 15 years. And in all that time, I have rarely been able to create a game due to bugs, errors, bad assets, bad editor extensions and the inability to code in c++.

Fact is, Unity is crap. It crashes all the time. Editor extensions regularly clash with each other since there is no measured standard, it takes longer to fix stuff than do anything productive.

Unreal is just too hard to use, CryEngine/Lumberyard took an entire weekend to install and it refused to accept any of my assets, so I gave up.

Leadwerks is unfinished and always will be, Game Guru eats memory like crazy and is just too simple to make an actual pro game with, AGK is fun but coding with no visual editor is fine for 2D games, but 3D games needs visual editor or a level editor.

Dark Basic Pro and Blitz 3D are outdated and outmoded. I hated Godot - could not do anything with it.

Blender will always be Blender with it's near impossible learning curve (for me). 3D Game Studio is too old now.

Stingray is gone belly up because Autodesk decided to go the Unity/Unreal route. Play Canvas - nah.

That leaves Coppercube and S2.

S2 is a GORGEOUS AAA engine with the best water i've ever seen. It has decent terrain, good eco painter and its engine is beautiful. However, it crashes all the time and assets barely load in - it could take me a full afternoon to figure a way to get one static asset to import - so until Fabio updates (been waiting over a year for the update - he works on Fabio time, which is 10 hours for every millisecond) S2, it will be too hard to work with. I also fear it takes too many resources to run on a lesser gaming system and is PC only.

Coppercube imports EVERYTHING but looks like the 1990's Doom or Doom2. No PBR and sketchy programming. Grass and water are barely ok. Terrain is a joke. Cross Platform is a plus but a very light weight engine.

Mike[/quote]

Very interesting that you have tried and used so many other game engines Mike. I strangely have a similar idea to you in regards to using the S2 engine - and Skyline I have been researching lately. I also found Unreal too complex and Unity a bit unstable also... Interesting that Skyline has all these problems - glad to know as was considering abandoning CC for it instead with its better weather system...and tod system it seems (with better save/load & pbr textures and lod also etc).

I have built my own tod system , save/load and options screens anyway in CC and so far its ok....always some issue to fix but at least its consistent.... lately found more CC bugs with fog not working with imported height maps and loads of problems with imported scenes....have to try the default way might be better....


Create reply:


Posted by: (you are not logged in)


Enter the missing letter in: "Intern?tional" (you are not logged in)


Text:

 

  

Possible Codes


Feature Code
Link [url] www.example.com [/url]
Bold [b]bold text[/b]
Image [img]http://www.example.com/image.jpg[/img]
Quote [quote]quoted text[/quote]
Code [code]source code[/code]

Emoticons


   






Copyright© Ambiera e.U. all rights reserved.
Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions | Imprint | Contact