Open Hydroball - Updated 1/10/2013

[Drakan]

Hello All

My BEC name is Blitzburner for anyone that remembers the Blitzball Elite Club back in 04.

 

As most of you know the source code for Jedi Academy was released allowing a great amount of work to be done upon the framework of Jedi Academy, I had a short discussion with an old team member from BEC and we've decided after about 10 minutes of discussion to go ahead and start work on a "Standalone Hydroball", which would allow you to play Hydroball without needing Jedi Academy. 

 

Now as nobody has actually started work to my knowledge unless the guys over at Moviebattles have started work on standalone, nobody that I know has actually started working on it, so you will notice that this project is going to take a very long time mainly because of the amount of code we're going to sift through to make this work. 

 

Currently at the moment i'm sifting through old files that we used on our custom hydroball server to make sure half of assets are ready to use but most of it will have to be rebuilt. 

 

My coding knowledge isn't great but what I provide to the team is my scripting and server knowledge for our team. Most of the people or rather the only person in our team is a mapper and he has made well most of the maps i've played on.

 

EDIT: Open Source is no longer an issue. 

 

Update #1: Starting a new version from OpenJK and recruiting for people to help, looking to make a standalone version of the game in the future on another engines pref (Unity).

 

Update #2: Included dates, I'm going to start working on an OpenJK version as of November/December, Team building for now.

 

Update #3: BEC Website/Game Server to go up between 1/10/2013 - 1/12/2013 

 

Features to be included in Pre-Alpha - 2013

- Basic Character Selections

- Team Selection

- 4-8 Online Play

- 1 Box Map

Alpha - 2013

- Hydroball Music

Closed Beta - 2014

- 1 Spherical Map

 

Future Features for Open Beta / Post Release - 2014/2015

- Full Character Customisation (Head/Torso/Arms/Legs/Feet + Head Design (BEARDS!) )

- Team Customisation/Team Symbol/Team Locker room ( Team Uniform / Clan management System / Map designed locker rooms for teams )

- Live spectating ( Area based and direct spectator )

- Ability System ( Special moves like Power Shot / Overhead Shot )

- Ranking / Leader boards ( Competitive stuff )

- Clan Maps ( Maps made by clans to be played as home game maps )

- Spherical Hydroball Maps ( http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/HydroDesert2;78018, Made by my friend Rocksolid )

- Difficult Obstacle Hydroball Maps

- Hydroball Music

 

Looking for Coders/Mappers/Animators

 

Suggestions are appreciated greatly!

 

Regards

[mrwonko]

You hardly need to do any coding. You need to remove the CD check and that's about it. Mostly you just need to recreate the assets since you can't use Jedi Academy's, most importantly the animations. And if you simplify movement outside the water to walking, crouching and jumping, you only need very few since most of your game is in the water, with what I believe are already custom animations.

 

That requires access to Hydroball's source code though - do you have that? Otherwise you'll either need to recreate all animations or accept glitchy animations.

[Drakan]

I think one of my old mappers has it, I'm just discussing it with him right now to see if he still has it if not I may have it on one of my old machines from the stone age. But unfortunately even if we have it we can only use it as reference since the mod was originally created by Rich Whitehouse.

[minilogoguy18]

Rich may even help you out if you ask, he responds to emails.

[Drakan]

Sent an message to Rich, just waiting on a solid response.

 

In the mean time, I'm going to dig out alot of the old maps that we're never released and see if any work needs to be done on them.

 

I'll keep this area up to date.

[TriForce]

Sent an message to Rich, just waiting on a solid response.

 

In the mean time, I'm going to dig out alot of the old maps that we're never released and see if any work needs to be done on them.

 

I'll keep this area up to date.

 

I sent him an email in 2008 asking for the melee code in the hydroball source code for jk2, and he replied me that he lost their own mod sources because his hard drive was burned and explode (where was all sources).

 

rly sad.

[Drakan]

Well Rich has given me permission to use the name Hydroball and to continue work on a new standalone project. 

 

He did explain to me that the source code is lost but it hasn't taken me long to rebuild a standardized version of the mod. 

 

There's nothing really to show at the moment since it's just the two teams setup. 

 

I'm doing this little by little but hopefully will have a working project by the summer holidays.

[MagSul]

Seriously looking forward to it, keep us updated!

[eezstreet]

This is pretty awesome.

[CansecoDev]

I loved this mod in JK2.

[Pande]

Hydroball is so friggin awesome, I loved it especially since I played a lot of Blitzball in Final Fantasy for PS2 when I was a kid. Seriously why did they never make it it's own game?! Well.. now you can I guess.

 

 

I do have one concern though: Since you are starting out completely fresh and going standalone.. why not use a better engine? Surely the physics in Unity or UDK would be a better fit?

 

That said, the simplicity of JKA and it's ease of modding would be a fair enough platform for this. 

 

Whatever you do, I am so behind you on this. Contact me when you start needing assets like maps.

[Drakan]

Hydroball is so friggin awesome, I loved it especially since I played a lot of Blitzball in Final Fantasy for PS2 when I was a kid. Seriously why did they never make it it's own game?! Well.. now you can I guess.

 

 

I do have one concern though: Since you are starting out completely fresh and going standalone.. why not use a better engine? Surely the physics in Unity or UDK would be a better fit?

 

That said, the simplicity of JKA and it's ease of modding would be a fair enough platform for this. 

 

Whatever you do, I am so behind you on this. Contact me when you start needing assets like maps.

Hello,

 

Well I started work on a prototype and finished it but it turned out that whilst it did work, I can't actually release the version as it requires you to download assets from the actual game which in turn, turns it into a free copy of JKA.

 

In the end it was more or less Hydroball II, the only feature I couldn't get to work is the melee code for it, it was a little bit messy but it has the catch and grab mechanic, but powering up to do a power shot was in there.

 

So I re-assessed the situation and a came to a conclusion with two new engines.

 

Unity offers us a web browser interface which also means we could potentially port it to the mobile devices like iPad.

 

UDK also offers up the same but to release UDK on the iPad we would have to enter into a agreement with Epic/Apple and then it get's messy.

 

As of this moment, the actual mod re-make is currently done/over/discontinued but I will be continuing this as a standalone game project moving to a new engine etc and looking for more people to sign their soul away to me to help build it. 

 

If you're interested just shoot me a private message, going to re-structure the main topic to attract people :_)

[Futuza]

CryEngine3?

 

Just kidding go with unity, its more than complex enough to do this.

[DT.]

UDK & Cryengine 3 are decent to work with and both offer existing, free to use code that people can expand on. But if you want the task of basically building the code from the ground up, then go Unity.

 

 

EDIT:

 

JKA is so cheap now, that anyone who wants it should be able to get it. I think just have this hydroball be only for those who own JKA. I've been apart of 3 Star Wars projects on 3 different engines, and 2 have died horrible deaths and I'm not sure what's going on with the 3rd. So I wouldn't recommend starting one yourself.

[Drakan]

UDK & Cryengine 3 are decent to work with and both offer existing, free to use code that people can expand on. But if you want the task of basically building the code from the ground up, then go Unity.

 

 

EDIT:

 

JKA is so cheap now, that anyone who wants it should be able to get it. I think just have this hydroball be only for those who own JKA. I've been apart of 3 Star Wars projects on 3 different engines, and 2 have died horrible deaths and I'm not sure what's going on with the 3rd. So I wouldn't recommend starting one yourself.

 

JKA is cheap but to do this properly, I need to open the horizon and expand, It might take me 5 years to complete this project but if im able to play hydroball in an open platform in 5 years, I'd definetly go for it.

 

My general inspiration behind standalone sports game is "Empire of Sports", they managed to take some of the best aspect of sport games and throw it all together.

 

Plus i love the things that you can do in Unity.

[DT.]

What sort of animations would you need for hydro ball? I know nothing about it, but it sounds like you wouldn't need a full redo of JKAs animations correct?

[Drakan]

Well in terms of general movement of the player character, movement underwater and above water and ball animations. 

 

I'm not an animator though, will be trying my hand at a few things. 

 

A future game mechanic would be that the arena where the game would take place would drain/fill with water into the arena after/before the match starts. 

 

Since it's being produced on Unity, The entire game will need to be built up.

[DT.]

I think you would find doing this on OpenJK would be better in terms of getting help for the rest of the assets. Yeah, the engine isn't exactly "1313" but you'd have more support here than trying to go it alone. The amount of animations isn't crazy and sounds very doable to me, just please no one use dragon for them rofl. At least use Mod Tool, 3ds Max or Blender.

[Drakan]

I think i'm going to start looking for people to help me make a prototype which can be used as a better subtitute then the current Hydroball II, something that allows players and other modders to customise the game in the way they want. 

 

Something in the terms of the customisation from Movie battles