Bought Skyline Pro Today

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Hi All. I've been lurking on this forum for more than a year ... maybe closer to two. When I first downloaded Skyline, there was just something about it that kept me wanting to return to it. When I learned that they were developing a second, more updated version, I was anxious to see that developed. Then, of course, there was the sad reason for the delay (sorry the developers had to go through all that). However, now they are going full-force into development of v2. As a result, I decided to buy the developers several cups of coffee via purchasing Skyline Pro and support them in their efforts! I'm excited to see what you guys do with this fine engine and I hope that I will one day be able to create something nice with it. Current projects keep me from even starting with my planned game project, so the timing is good. I hope I am ready in about a year ... and I hope to see the next Skyline sometime along the way, too.

[SolarPortal]

Hi monkeyfrogstudio, thanks for the support and yeah, we are really focusing hard now on the project but lots of work to catch up on and still some really good stuff to add. As always, time is the factor; but we want a usable beta as soon as possible and have a somewhat usable product again.

i hope that one day you can do something great with skyline as with everyone.

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Thanks, SolarPortal. I'm truly looking forward to seeing what you guys create. One of the things that kept me checking back here over and over again is that even without having read the manual or looking up this or that, I was able to get some simple things up and running in Skyline pretty quickly. This means that it's pretty intuitive to use. And that's exciting. I bet that v2 will be amazing.

[StarFire]

lol skyline documentation ... the mythical hidden tomb of knowledge.
Great to hear you find it intuitive, once you understand the engine paradigm it is very easy to get advanced stuff happening quickly and we hope this will be even more true with Gen-3 our Skyline V2 build and maybe some docs

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Heh! Yeah. Ultimately, no matter how intuitive, documentation would be great.

[epsilonion]

Hey, great you have purchased.
Sorry I have not been around for a bit (been on and off the forum checking most days) but this weather has been awesome lol...

No seriously, I have been upgrading my solar panel system and getting some urgent jobs out of the way with.

Hoping to be back fully in a few weeks but will be keeping an eye on the forum as usual..
Is there anything in particular you would like to know about the engine?

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Hi Epsilonion,
Good luck with your upgrades! It's a lot of work that should pay off significantly!

Is there anything in particular you would like to know about the engine? Not at the moment. I've downloaded and played with it a bit. But I am mainly waiting for the next version before I get serious with development. I'm currently slammed with other work at the moment, both client and personal projects. I hope to be freer to look at this engine more deeply when the new version goes into beta or is released (whenever I'm allowed to get my hands on it ).

To be frank, I am not a programmer, but it looks like quite a lot can be done (at least the basics of an FPS, etc.) without programming (setting up triggers, keys, etc.) and that's one of the things that attracted me to Skyline to begin with. Since the creators had indicated, via an email exchange, that this philosophy was going to continue to be developed in the next version, I'm pretty excited to see it when released.

[monkeyfrogstudio]

I'm holding off on developing anything with Skyline for two reasons - 1) I'm in the midst of some major projects right now, so time just isn't there and 2) I'm waiting for the second version to be out. I'll be busy for quite some time (at least until late fall or later), so there should be plenty of time ...

Having said that, I fired up the current version of Skyline today just to play. I have to tell you, I've tinkered with a lot of game engines over the years and had been looking at several for my project. The thing that keeps drawing me back to Skyline is that it just makes sense. It's darned easy to use to do basic stuff. That's not always the case with other engines. Even simple things can be made overly complex. If this trend continues on with v2, then Skyline will simply be amazing ... well ... MORE amazing!

I look forward to what you guys come up with down the road as the next version keeps being developed.

[SolarPortal]

@monkeyfrogstudio, glad you like the feel of the engine and that its easy to use is just a bonus. Our goal with v2 is to follow up on some of the easy features and as you say make more make sense

[monkeyfrogstudio]

A goal, for me, would be to be able to create a simple FPS game that has all the functions of a game like DOOM without having to write a line of code. Now, by "DOOM", I obviously don't mean the original DOOM's graphics. Duh! But that I could do the following:

- Have an FPS camera/player
- Be able to pick up and switch weapons
- Be able to pick up and reload ammo
- Be able to open/close doors
- Be able to have doors locked, only able to be opened by specific keys (red key card, etc.)
- Have enemies that notice me and attack
- Can fire and hit enemies (can set how much damage they can take, etc.)
- Player can take damage (can set how much, etc.)
- Have various pick-ups (health, power ups, etc.)
- Have triggers for things like auto-opening doors, etc.
- Be able to create a custom GUI and link to things like player health, etc.
- Level save/load
- Transition from level to level
- Etc.

I understand that for any game to be truly unique, scripting/coding is going to be required. However, to create a game like DOOM (but with modern graphics) should be do-able without coding. And, from what little experience I've had with Skyline, it looks like most of this is already there!

[cassius_b]

Doing all that without writing code is a tall order.You might find a tutorial that does most of it for you , but then it would not be your own work. Best to learn lua coding.

[StarFire]

Ah for the most part Skyline can already do this by using the game objects. There are already the fps player with basic stats, twin weapons, ammo pick up, door activation, basic npc enemy ai, animal ai, exploding objects and vehicle entry/exit. On top of this there is an addon for V2 for crafting with inventory, gui and stats plus an object creator that will set up any object to interact with the system. Also there is a quest system for npc dialog and mission logging start/completion plus setup editors all with no or very little script required just requires properties.
Plus there are more GO for triggers to control level/scene changes and other mechanics in the pipeline.

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Doing all that without writing code is a tall order.

I don't think so. An engine like S2 Engine HD allows it via GameMachine (and much more). GameGuru, by The Game Creators, allows for most of this (minus the GUI creation part). And Skyline already has most of this in place already.

Ah for the most part Skyline can already do this by using the game objects. There are already the fps player with basic stats, twin weapons, ammo pick up, door activation, basic npc enemy ai, animal ai, exploding objects and vehicle entry/exit. On top of this there is an addon for V2 for crafting with inventory, gui and stats plus an object creator that will set up any object to interact with the system. Also there is a quest system for npc dialog and mission logging start/completion plus setup editors all with no or very little script required just requires properties.
Plus there are more GO for triggers to control level/scene changes and other mechanics in the pipeline.

Awesome! Glad to hear it.

I've purchased the Pro version. Will this add-on you mention be a part of it or is it an additional purchase?

[StarFire]

Yes , official addons will be part of the pro version

[epsilonion]

You do realise that skyline has a visual programming mechanics like blueprints.

Drag lines to boxes to create your game mechanics, this feature is made with none coders in mind..

[StarFire]

Lol thanks epsilonion, yes forgot to mention that!

[monkeyfrogstudio]

You do realise that skyline has a visual programming mechanics like blueprints.

Drag lines to boxes to create your game mechanics, this feature is made with none coders in mind..

I did not! That makes Skyline even more awesome!

Like I said, I've not had a lot of time to play with and learn Skyline. I'm waiting for v2 and since I am currently slammed with projects at the moment, it will most likely be around September or the end of the year before I can even think about researching into Skyline.

BTW - Where is the info on Skyline's visual programming? When I go to Documentation and click on Visual Modules, I get "This topic does not exist yet."

[epsilonion]

Documentation is upcoming, there was some on the old documentation server maybe SF or SP can have a look at one of the old backups and pull something out.

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Thanks. It would be nice to take a look and get a feel for how visual scripting is done in Skyline. They all can be a bit different. Unreal Blueprints is quite a bit different than S2 Engine HD's GameMachine, etc.

Is Skyline's visual programming a type of FSM (Finite State Machine) or something else?

[epsilonion]

Not the best example

[epsilonion]

Wow this is an old one..

[SolarPortal]

omg, thats going back some time Gen1 and unstyled visual modules

[StarFire]

nice one, wow looks so different now.

[monkeyfrogstudio]

Thanks! I'll look this over (and look forward to the documentation ... some day ).

EDIT - Found time to watch the video. Loved what I saw. It looked very simple to wire up things like that.

Is visual editing going to continue to be developed? Or is it pretty much in the state it's going to stay in (at least for some time)?

[SolarPortal]

the visual module system is well developed, but the code does have its gripes which will need ironed out. But it was quite usable.
We were in the process of creating modules in modules which would allow for better code flow and organisation of the nodes as the FPS player ended up with a large amount of nodes which became complex to see where things were.
Grouping modules means a single module could have inputs and outputs but contain an entire bit of code which would allow you to have a module called locomotion that would then have a subgraph where all the player movement was handled.
You could then do the same for animation, reloads, ammo, gui, particles etc and on the top level it would show a simplified version of the overall bit of visual code..