Random SciFly II screenshot (it's so shiny!)

[jshmrsn]

Edit: This post is old and a lot of links/images are broken. I'll post most recent content up here:

YouTube video from TA

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TA article: http://toucharcade.com/2009/06/04/e3-early-gameplay-video-of-scifly-2/

Screenshots:
http://scifly2.com/2.png

http://scifly2.com/1.png

http://scifly2.com/3.png





Edit: Original post:

This is totally random, but I had another one of those development moments where I was like "wow, that looks awesome...", so I wanted to share a screenshot just for fun.

I've been working on the aircraft's paint material material since I got back from GDC. I've always wanted it to look like a sports car, but I don't think I had it quite right until (perhaps) now. I decided to pick a photo of a red Ferarri and try as hard as I could to replicate its paint.
On gaming console hardware, this is possible using all sorts of dynamic reflections and such. These abilities are not available on the iPhone yet, so shiny materials are not too easy to implement.

Okay. So, this is the photo of the Ferarri I was using as a reference:
http://www.2dayblog.com/images/6-novitec-ferrari-f430.jpg

And this is SciFly II
http://www.jshmrsn.com/specular.png

And, just for comparison, this is what the original SciFly looked like:
http://osxreality.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/scifly-dogfight-1.jpg


I would love to hear your opinions on how it looks to you. Does it look final-product worthy, or should I keep working on it?
http://www.jshmrsn.com/newIsland2.png

[IAmAlive]

Amazing job on the plane. It definately looks ready to me. Especially when compared to the SciFly original. Again very nice job on the lighting and coloring.

[inferi22]

Turn the gloss down slightly on the ship and raise the graphics level for enviormrnts

[don_k]

The plane itself looks great, but imho, it doesn't connect well with the cartoony environment. You must have 1 overall style to unite everything in the game, from the planes, environment, terrain and interface.

Would it be cartoony like Clusterball, or realistically glossy like Fastlane, or dark robotic like Transformers posters with less vibrant colours and more moody colour palette?

Huge improvement over the previous one though, huge.

[Scott30]

Pretty much agree with the two posts above, me personally I would take a crappy lookin ship and prefer more interesting and better looking enviroments. And the plane is a lil too shiny as it is.

[Wegmans]

oh man this looks great! I love the blue and green world you've created there, islands are great!! Remember Clusterball? That turquoise water and landscape would have been great to fly around in, and this looks pretty good!

[Owl]

I really hate to say that it really is a bit too shiny x.x

Maybe less shiny, and more shiny in the environment? Then there'll be shiny everywhere! :D

Shiiiinnnyyyyy ._.

[dashzed]

please tell me that there is auto-locking onto targets in this version, because I found the original impossible to play because i could never aim on the targets.

the screenshot looks very nice though.

[Sierra275]

I think I'm getting this game the moment it comes out.

[don_k]

please tell me that there is auto-locking onto targets in this version, because I found the original impossible to play because i could never aim on the targets.

I'm with you on that. I could never aim on targets. Maybe there's something we don't know.

[Der-Kleine]

The plane looks... 100 x great!
I am sure i will buy the game when it's out. (Will it be released soon :p?)

But the enviroment doesen't look that good. (The land looks bad, The see is good)

[vip-freak]

a few more aditions like more levels and bether interface could be made(sorry but the the previous interface was/and still is verry crapy)a nice adition could be to integrate the old planes and buy aditional upgrades(different sorts of rockets,... and maybe armour options.but these are just sugestions.
new modes like survival or mission would also make a great adittion to the the game

thanks for reading i hope this reply was/is verry helpfull

[stargazer513]

i like the landscape as much as the airplane! its so much brighter than the original

[jshmrsn]

Wow, thanks for the great feedback!
So, some definitely like it, but others have issues with it being too shiny and the world looking to basic.

Terrain
I didn't realize that the terrain stood out as being basic, so I'm glad to hear that. Makes sense actually, I've spent way more hours working on the artwork for the aircraft than I did on the planes.
I'll try to come back with something better, terrain wise, sometime soon.

Shininess
For the shininess, I'll just have to continue tweaking it, but it's difficult because some say it looks, others not so much. At one point it might just be a matter of opinion, since technically it's not "realistic."

Controls
There will definitely be auto-locking on missile based weapons. Currently, I don't plan to have auto-aiming on projectile weapons. But here's the thing... Most of the targets now will be turrets and slow moving battleships. Enemy aircraft are sorta the "elite" enemies. Turrets and such will be much easier to aim at, and the enemy aircraft wont appear until later in the game (when you're more use to the controls).
I'm also spending a lot of time working on the general control scheme, so hopefully those changes will help out. PM me if you would like to beta-test the game whenever the beta comes out.


For general info on SciFly II, here's STP's initial coverage.
http://www.slidetoplay.com/story/scifly-ii-first-look


Sweet, well thanks again for the great input!

[HardcoreEricXXX]

Will the shine on the plane correllate with the position of the sun, as is demonstrated in Freeverse's Top Gun preview video. Will the top be in the shade when turned away from the sun?

[inferi22]

pm sent

[jshmrsn]

Will the shine on the plane correllate with the position of the sun, as is demonstrated in Freeverse's Top Gun preview video. Will the top be in the shade when turned away from the sun?

Well the shine is created using a specular highlights overlay. To my knowledge, TopGun does not do this. The darkening and lighting depending on the direction of the plane relative to the sun is standard diffuse lighting. The original SciFly did this as well; when you fly upside down, the top of the ship will become darker. However, the texture quality of TopGun is much better than the original SciFly, which is why it looks very good.

In SciFly II, I'm taking a very different approach. On the aircraft, I've almost removed the use of basic textures entirely. Without any lighting, the aircraft would actually be perfectly solid blocks of color. This would look terrible if only diffuse and ambient lighting was used. However, with the addition of specular highlight, a very unique look can be achieved.

This is important when trying to model a material that resembles a sports car. Compare a standard material, like a brick wall, to a sports car and you'll see what I mean. A brick wall can be easily simulated by overlaying a photograph of a wall from real life. Lighting does not have very much affect on this, other than tinting and shading. A Ferrari, on the other hand, is very different. It's impossible to simulate a Ferrari's paint job using only a texture. The look of a Ferrari is almost entirely derived from specular lighting, not texture. The paint is all just a solid color, it doesn't have any of the detail that a brick wall would have.

An F22 has considerably more texture than a Ferrari:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Two_F-22_Raptor_in_flying.jpg/763px-Two_F-22_Raptor_in_flying.jpg

http://www.smashgamers.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/ferrari.jpg


http://iphone3g-india.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/topgun.png

http://www.jshmrsn.com/specular.png



Heheh well I doubt very many want to spend the time to read all that, so I'll stop there :)

[iFonePhanatic]

Wow, it looks great and, yes, rall, itit is very shiny. Although I agree with many, that the environment could be improved just a little. Overall it looks like a big improvement from the first SciFly.

[inferi22]

looks awesome

[Fletch]

Looks great :) I don't think the shininess is excessive at all, I actually very much like the look of it. Of course an improvement to the landscape would be appreciated, though its not a huge problem in my opinion

[Coral]

Looks great, thanks for the preview. You are definitely headed in the right direction with this one. Good luck with the rest of development.

[dannys95]

Looks good just turn down the shiny a tiny bit bro.

[ktfright]

nah, i like it, maybe you could add a bit of customization, you know, with matte, gloss, or metallic paint.:D

[dannys95]

This is what I meant. It's OK like this:

http://www.jshmrsn.com/newIsland2.png

But this one has a bit too much shine on it:

http://www.jshmrsn.com/specular.png

Nice work though.

[HardcoreEricXXX]

I like the new island design better, but it could use same features like a beach area, trees, and/or a waterfall

[inferi22]

scifly`guy check ur pm box

[Fletch]

do you have a picture of the old island design with the new graphics? Seeing that would make it easier to compare the two styles

[igamer360]

ive never played the first one so dont kill me, but is scifly a on rails shooter or plain dogfighting

[jshmrsn]

ive never played the first one so dont kill me, but is scifly a on rails shooter or plain dogfighting

Hi, thanks for your interest in SciFly! :D

It's definitely all about open 3D environments. No rails. In fact, to go from one area to another, you can actually just fly there in real time without using a menu with load times.

Here's a video of the game play from a Touch Arcade article:

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And here's the article:
http://toucharcade.com/2009/06/04/e3-early-gameplay-video-of-scifly-2/


Let me know what you think :) It's still early enough in development where feedback is very useful.

-Josh

[Der-Kleine]

Maybe put in some scenery like some small islands where there is nothing (no enemy) (just to make the game look nicer. :))

[jshmrsn]

Maybe put in some scenery like some small islands where there is nothing (no enemy) (just to make the game look nicer. :))

I've been thinking about this over the last few days. It would certainly help transition from island to island. The problem is the game is already pushing the 2/3G as far as it can go (with my engine). It would be possible on the 2nd gen iPod Touch and 3G S, though.