pic: Breakaway Field Mockup (now with a simulator!)

[1986titans]

[cdm-description=photo]34451[/cdm-description]

[Qbranch]

That's really cool. Great job! :yikes:

-q

[vg674]

I can dig it, I can dig it - and so quickly too! Nice job!

[kjolana1124]

Great job! This is such a cool simulation. Do you think you'll make updated versions with AI robots or possible multi player?

[Bomberofdoom]

Blender3D, huh?

Not bad! Has potential for a whole lot more, if the programmer is into it. :)

[goodsky]

This is very cool! Thank you very much for sharing this. Great work on your part.

[Venturelli]

Good job! ;)

[playbass06]

Great job! This is such a cool simulation. Do you think you'll make updated versions with AI robots or possible multi player?


(I'm the creator)

I'm not sure if I'll expand it really far, I just meant it to help teams get a basic feel for the field. AI is tough, Blender uses a Logic Brick visual programming system, but for more complex logic, you can use the Python programming language, which I don't know (yet...).
However, I made some adjustments in this update, like resizing the bumps (they were about 2x as large as they really would be) and giving the game more accurate physics (by that I mean instead of -9.81 gravity, it's now -19.62, but it is more realistic.)
I also changed the "time" so that it does not end the game, but simply goes into negative time.
And the car is now controlled by the arrow keys instead of WASD.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/numw2ky4yjh/Breakaway Rev 1-11-10.zip (Breakaway Rev 1/11/10)

[1986titans]

The simulator has been updated!

New features:

Flappers (pinball style)
Unlimited time
New control scheme

[DiehardCybercard]

Blender? open source for the win!

[TimelessFate]

So much win and love for this. Great job!

[gblake]

Chris,

Thanks so much for the kind mention of 5th Gear in your simulator's documentation file!

Looks like we might have to light a fire under ourselves if we want to keep up with Team 1986 :)

Are you able to export your field model as an FBX or Collada file?

Blake (one of the 5th Gear guys)

[lachoneus8]

Incredible!

Nicely done.

[JonellGregor]

Wow, that's awesome. Nice Job! :)

[MikeWherley]

Thanks for creating this, and doing it so quickly!

[Blackphantom91]

Good Job!

[Blackphantom91]

Great Job! Happy to be your teammate.

[playbass06]

Oh, I forgot to fully update the "Controls and Info" text document.

Shift controls the flippers.

And that was really the only thing I forgot! :D

EDIT: Okay, the file is now updated.
I could probably do another drive train (say, a mock omni drive or something), but I personally do not know Python, Blender's programming language. (yet...)
I may attempt to convert one of our robots to test such a system.

[Navid Shafa]

This is awesome, I just regret that it's blender, because I'd love to be able to interchange the robot with some of our 3D models from inventor :)

Has anyone been able to ELEVATE the car above the plane of the platform before the time runs out. If so, what was your method and did the bonus in points factor in?

[dtengineering]

I hope our robot gets air like that little car does! Wheee!

A great tool to get a sense for what it might be like on the field. If this is what you can come up with in a few days, I wonder what it might be like after a few weeks.

On-line network play? Model and upload your own custom robots? Sheesh... we'd hardly have to show up for the competition. :]

Jason

[EncodersRUS]

Is it just me or is there an invisible wall preventing you from doing a Dukes of Hazzard out of the arena?

[Are Jay]

Great job. I'm really impressed my the amount of time it took you in order to do this. :yikes:

[Borisdamole]

this is a great break from real robotics work... HOURS of fun... lol

[Scott Carpman]

Excellent simulation for such a short amount of time since kickoff. Any chance that the camera view options will be expanded upon? Perhaps a user controlled zoom or a middle option between the two existing ones.

[playbass06]

This is awesome, I just regret that it's blender, because I'd love to be able to interchange the robot with some of our 3D models from inventor :)

Has anyone been able to ELEVATE the car above the plane of the platform before the time runs out. If so, what was your method and did the bonus in points factor in?

Well, I decided to test that with our robot's inventor file. But after importing it into Blender, it had a lot of duplicate vertices, which totaled to over 300,000 faces. In comparison, the current car model in there is 94 faces. It might be simpler to just remodel the robot in Blender for a game-ready model.

Also, I didn't implement the bonus, for the reasons that the game really never ends, and after several tries, I couldn't get the car up there anyway.

An update will probably come later, but now I'm adding a few more camera angles, an overhead one, and a sort-of third person view (an automatic effect achieved by the Camera Actuator).
For visual effects, I may add some super-cool OpenGL GLSL shaders, but I would like to know how many of you actually have a graphics card better than an nVidia GeForce 6x series before doing that... (any lower can't use GLSL)

EDIT: Yeah... it breaks kind of hard... I'll put that down a bit. I had changed it to better deal with the gravity (I had to set it at -19.62, twice Earth's gravity, for realism), but it dealt a little too well. The car's suspension is also doubled, but that worked out well, while the braking did not. I am unsure at this point of how to do a "zoom" camera effect... (but I have an idea now...)
I did put the invisible box around it, just to keep things from flying out (including you), but that may be removed with a penalty system - if a ball goes out, it's returned midfield, and a point is deducted. My dilemma is figuring out how to get the game engine to identify who hit it out. This isn't a problem with just one robot, but if there is more (hopefully there will be) that will become an issue.
I got a book on Python, so I might be able to start using that for more complex logic, like AI! But not really soon, I mean, there is a robot to build...
And to the person who wondered about acquiring the field, I do have the capability to export it in .3ds, .obj, .dae (Collada), and possibly .fbx (not sure on that).

[Borisdamole]

space bar=HARD break

[kapolavery]

[cdm-description=photo]34451[/cdm-description]

I feel like starsky and hutch flying the car over the ramps! Good job and nice simulation!

[Ahnxlazyman]

this is really great. this will provoke endless nights of playing :D

[StevenB]

Would you be willing to release the source? I'm using Linux, so I've got all of the libraries and building from source would probably be easy.
Maybe you could open a FIRSTForge (http://firstforge.wpi.edu) project for it. I'm sure more than a few people would love to help develop this as a group project.

[Rizner]

Also, I didn't implement the bonus, for the reasons that the game really never ends, and after several tries, I couldn't get the car up there anyway.

An update will probably come later, but now I'm adding a few more camera angles, an overhead one, and a sort-of third person view (an automatic effect achieved by the Camera Actuator).


I was able to get the car up there (before the bumpers were added), and also can you add camera angles from all 3 driver stations (at some point)?

And, great job with everything.

[EncodersRUS]

I was able after much trial to get the car to glitch up there, but then it started shaking around and mass confusion insued. Also, are the bumpers supposed to be able to glitch through the floor and walls?

[playbass06]

Okay, another update! Better gravity, ball return system, sounds, shadows, the works!

http://teamtitanium.org/resources.html

[1986titans]

Chris is still having account problems. Here are the revisions that he uploaded yesterday:

Sound Effects
Use "R" button to roll
Left and right boundaries automatically return balls
Improved physics
Overhead, driver's station, and third person camera angles added

The file is still on http://www.teamtitanium.org/resources.html.

[cmoon71]

I downloaded and ran "BreakawayRev4.exe". Application failed because it didn't initialize properly. What should I do?

[EricH]

I downloaded and ran "BreakawayRev4.exe". Application failed because it didn't initialize properly. What should I do?
If you were running it from the .zip without extracting, extract all the files then run it.

By the way, this was one of the fastest ways to demonstrate the game to another FIRST alumnus who didn't know the game yet. Definitely a good job on this.

[1986titans]

Yep, you need to extract it so it can use all of the dll's it needs to run.

Thanks for all of the positive feedback on the game.

[RoseJ]

This is absolutely amazing! Good job at creating it.

[cmoon71]

I did extract all 31 files and when I run BreakawayRev4.exe...
The application failed to intialize properly (0xc0150002). Click on OK to terminate the application.
Any other suggestions?

[playbass06]

Well, my best suggestion is to download Blender 2.49b. It is only 34.7 MB uncompressed, and you can get it at http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/
Then, after installation, copy every .dll and manifest from the installation directory (C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender) and paste them into the folder that BreakawayRev4.exe is located (overwrite the old .dlls).

EDIT: Oh, wait...
That error for some reason appears on computers that are entirely unable to run Blender or applications made by it (our school laptops behave like that). Sorry...
Next year I'll try the UDK! (maybe. don't count on anything.)

[bearbot]

nice can u add some other robot to the game to compete against

[Tanner]

That's pretty neat. I like the little car robot.

You should be able to add another player robot by using different keys to control it with. Not sure what you could do with cameras, but you could just do a overhead view or something.

Nice job!

-Tanner

[playbass06]

Just a note:

I am working on an update, with a much-requested feature: MULTIPLAYER! (not over a server/internet/LAN, just on the same computer.)
Unfortunately, my knowledge of Python is too sparse to even edit the car template I've been using, so I would like to thank a programmer friend of mine in Australia, raider, for his assistance so far (although I doubt he'll be reading this...).

And, I have changed the car model to a robot-esque chassis.

Physics accuracies are also being improved, at a slight expense to performance, but not much.

For those of you that have been asking about acquiring the actual file for this, instead of the excecutable, I have decided to release it after the national competition is over, but not until then.

[fordchrist675]

I just have to say that.. that is extremely cool. I'm about to test the simulator XD

[gblake]

5th Gear's Breakaway is available for download!

Thanks Team 1986 (Team Titanium) for the field model!

Thanks WPI for supplying the download server again!

Thanks Lockheed Martin for your continued sponsorship!

Thanks FIRST for your continued support!

I suggest updating each of these before installing the actual 5th Gear executable.
Your Microsoft DirectX (DirectX 9.27.1734 non-Web Installation (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=04AC064B-00D1-474E-B7B1-442D8712D553&displaylang=en))
Your Microsoft .Net (.Net 3.5 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en))
Your Nvidia PhysX (PhysX 9.09.1112 (http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_9.09.1112.html))

Report any problems here (Thanks FIRST): FIRST 5th Gear FORUM (http://forums.usfirst.org/forumdisplay.php?f=1091)

Suggest improvements, discuss uses, brag about high scores, post pictures or links to videos, etc. in the FIRST 5th Gear forum (above) or here on CD.

The core CD thread is here: 2010 5th Gear CD thread (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79796&highlight=2010+5th+Gear)

Download 5th Gear from this page in WPI's Think Tank site: 5th Gear download site (http://thinktank.wpi.edu/article/141)

Enjoy,
Blake

[playbass06]

Alright, the much-awaited update is finally here!
Much has been updated, but I'll add some suspense and let you read the Controls and Info document after downloading.

For this game, I would now recommend having something better than an integrated graphics card to play it. It's fine on my nVidia GeForce 6800 (over 30 fps), and okay-ish on my GeForce 7150M (anywhere from 5-15fps), to give you a picture on performance. Since this is using OpenGL shaders, it will run slower than DirectX shaders, but not by too much.

Have fun! Here's the link:
http://www.teamtitanium.org/resources

[playbass06]

They are still not letting me post everything...
Sorry for any delay on the actual link getting here, I'm just seeing if a shorter, non-HTML-link-containing post will show up.

EDIT: Well, it let this one in...
Major changes, in controls and graphics and menus! Read the Controls and Info document for more info.
As the post that will eventually get here said, I would recommend a semi-decent graphics card to play this. To give you an idea, here are two I've tested it on:
nVidia GeForce 6800: over 30 fps
nVidia GeForce 7150M: 5-10 fps

http://teamtitanium.org/resources.html

[1986titans]

I realized that some people were having problems with the multiplayer version of the game, so now both versions are available on the website.

[playbass06]

Okay, I am happy to announce that I am releasing the source file to this game!
As promised, it's Championship time, and here it is: http://teamtitanium.org/resources.html

Not much has been improved on, and only the single player version is available (both because the other is glitchy beyond belief and I only had the file on our old laptop...), but it's still there.

Feel free to improve upon it, I consider this in all regards open source and open to the community. I'd love to see this turn into some sort of competition (Simulator Award?) in the following years, but even if just a few teams attempt it next year, that would be great.
I do ask that if you do modify this in any way and/or release it, please give Team Titanium FRC 1986 credit for its original creation. Also, as a courtesy to other pieces that have been used in it, like scrips from tutorialsforblender3d.com, do not remove headers from the scripts that state who they belong to.

Once again, many thanks to the 5th Gear team for their inspiration for this, and to all the teammates and CD posters that helped improve upon the original concept of this!


-Chris

[gblake]

...
Once again, many thanks to the 5th Gear team for their inspiration for this, and to all the teammates and CD posters that helped improve upon the original concept of this!

-Chris
Right back at you Chris! - Many thanks to you and Team Titanium for the Field Model that saved us many hours of modeling!

I think the idea of using simulations (aka serious games) is here to stay. They are too good as educational/mentoring tools, design/strategy/practice tools, fun pastimes, recruiting/exhibition/outreach tools, or the foundations of a virtual competition (one that is more than a hand-eye coordination contest) to fade from the stage; and folks like you and the other contributors to the community are making "it" happen.

Let's keep having fun - There are 8.5 more months until Kick-off - It's time to start working on our encore :)

Blake