Month: May 2011

Change of direction ;)

Update forget what I said I played slingers again it’s a pretty good ga,e and sales blow…. I need to continue to shoot for the games very few are willing to take a risk on…. So dungeon keeper clone is on!!! ;). I can be skitso sometimes 😉

I want to make an even faster to make simple angry birds type game with crazy good graphics. That way I can have a fully developed OpenGL es 2.0 engine going into a larger project. The game will be based slingers 2.0… Slingers was a game I made over a month as a fun little project to test the water in simple arcade games. The idea in slingers 2 would be to have the sling shot fire different types of shells in a specific order like angry birds in a way. Each shot does a different type of effect. On the other side will be a castle that you must destroy to continue. What will ensue is a graphics lightshow while playing showing off the graphics. To me this is the best way of proceeding without just building a starlight engine for months while making a moderately large dungeon keeper clone project.

This way w can show the power of the engine prior to making the dungeon keep clone. 😉

I am also looking for a game to appeal to the casual crowd wth minimal time investment for this next few months. The casual crowd is about 90% of the market easy..I want to have a lot more exposure for future projects. Currently I have around 4k units sold of mission Europa I would like to see a lot more then that for the enourmous amount of work I have investeted 😉

Happy memorial day!!!!!!

In the nasty stuff

My wife has kept me REALLY busy lately with parties and friends and the like…great fun but sucks the time right out… She is out of school right now so lots of free time…In the mean time I have made great progress… I am in a slow area right now. I had to finaly create the scripting system and command system to parse string based commands… took a little time is all. Now I need to do a debugging run and find some of those bugs I put in from working to fast. (Mainly just adding removing and cloning the scene graph.. there is a small one in there =) )

Other then that maybe by the end of next week I will finally be able to get to some real art assets =).. I cannot wait to make the heavy husk with the chaingun =)… with pretty shaders woohoo -=)

Great Progress New Game….

With the new tools I have written I placed in all the menus and functionality down to gameplay. Where they are ready to go when I get there =)..

Good stuff… back to work!..

The menu art is temporary if I post pics.. I want to get to an alpha first with just the first entire level. That way we can tweak gameplay before pushing forward. =)

SALE!

BTW Remoter VNC for ipad is an AWESOME VNC app… It is better then any PC one I have used =)…

Its the weekend… LOOK OUT FOR TOMORROW!!!

Update:
Wiki updates:

GAME OBJECTS

MISSION 1 INTRO

MISSION 1 LEVEL

GAMEPLAY

Update:

Heavily updated Wiki… The design has to be done before one line of code is written towards actual game play not engine ;)…
http://ryanmitchellgames.wikispaces.com/

I plan on getting a level playable… then building a Alpha team to develop game play before continuing the story =)..It will be a few weeks for sure before that happens though =) I will post when I have spots open.

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Spread the word if you have friends on the fence =)…

Today day job.. then I will be moving towards digging out a level in the new game =).. good stuff

Ever have one of those weekends where..

Update:
Effect system in… I love it =)

The way it works. I place a base effect node on the effects graph. Then I hang off of it a node that creates the particles some how. Then hang another node that moves them some how. And lastly a node is hung that renders them some how. All defined in a text file.

Example:
version 1
string name |_e_WhiteSpray.txt|
string headNode |true|
string type |SGT_TRANSFORM|
floatArray pos 0.25,0,0.25
floatArray rot 0,0,0
floatArray scale 0.2,0.2,0.2
tree node
{
string type |SGT_SHADER|
string name |EffectShader|
string shaderLod0 |SHADER_EFFECT_GLOW|
string tLod0_0 |_t_EffectWhiteStar|
int t_alphaLod0_0 0

tree node
{
string type |SGT_EFFECT|
string name |SGT_EFFECT|
int numParticles 100
float life 99999.0
tree node
{
string name |SGT_EFFECT_EMIT_POINT|
string type |SGT_EFFECT_EMIT_POINT|
floatArray dir 0,0,1.0f
floatArray grav 0,0,-0.5
float particleLife 10
float birthRate 10.0
float varyAngleX 45.0
float varyAngleY 45.0
}
tree node
{
string name |SGT_EFFECT_MOVE_GRAV|
string type |SGT_EFFECT_MOVE_GRAV|

floatArray startColor 1,1,1,1
floatArray endColor 0,0,0,0

floatArray startScale 0,0,0
floatArray endScale 1,1,1
}
tree node
{
string name |SGT_EFFECT_RENDER_QUADS|
string type |SGT_EFFECT_RENDER_QUADS|
}
}
}

This way I can hang say 2 different emitters…or 2 different movers. And maybe 3 renderers.. Who knows. But it is the way I like to work. Make small lego type pieces and add them together for the result. =).. Now I am on to what is almost gameplay!… The next step is to click and start digging out levels =)..

Basically click the dig tool.
Click a spot to dig.
Change the grid node to reflect that that node is dug out.
On the next update run in the graph it will notice the sector has been updated.
The sector will then commit the update.
The sector will delete the old collapsed node and replace it with a new collapsed node.
(batch collapsed for render speed).

Good stuff!

Nothing fancy yet but the effect system is up and running =)

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Ever have one of those weekends where..you wake up and it is Monday?

I accomplished nothing this weekend but did get to have some fun!.. Kids Birthday sleep over, Pool party, Rangers Game (WE WON HA! With no pitching AND no Hamilton!)

Anyway.. I will be kicking it in to the new game more as sales drop off the charts for M.E. I will start the next upgrade soon but with so few interested it will move to 20% M.E. and 80% next game. (It has to make sense financially) . There is a pretty big marketing thing I am working on with a group for M.E. that will launch mid June ;).. Maybe that will fill the arena… (I know it will -) ) .. Hopefully an update before then also!..

Back to the day job!. .. Really busy today! ..

Effects time!!!

I am creating the effect system tonight… it will also fit on the Scene Graph like EVERYTHING ELSE… 😉

Simplicity is king!.. Thus I will be able to do really awesome things really quickly with a reliable tested and serialize-able system =)..

I hope to have it running in one night =).. good stuff! =)

Maybe a video in a few days when it is done.. Just an emitter for now. But I will be using it also to create the future dig pads in the level. =-).. Going to be pretty =)

I LOVE the new engine rewrite.

It is finally getting to a level to be able to be licensed later if I ever chose to. Really easy to work with and the design is the best I have created in 12 years. I am actually starting to create some game-play aspects now.. (already)… I hope soon to be able to start digging out levels and having all the subsystems running. The process would be…
-Player rotates moves camera.
-Player presses dig button
-player then can press were they want to dig and then two finger press to cancel dig mode
-When they are dug out the game grid that is dug out notifies the sector that it has been modified.
-The grid node in the sector is reloaded to reflect the build… IE a floor added and up to 4 walls.
-Then on the next sector update run the collapsed sector in the render graph is trashed and the new sector
batch collaped to its spot =)..
-So pretty….

Back to the day job more work tonight =)

VIDEO!

Update: I have decided to ditch mip mapping in this build as with the shader level of details it makes no sens and could interfere =).. I am creating that system there.. There are 3 levels… extremely close. Extremely close to decently far. Then really far away..each is a setting that can be altered and it is calculated by distance to camera (I might add size of object also or just leave the settings up to the artist)

I know.. its dirt… yea but it is firt from several models batch collapsed to one draw call with per pixel lighting parallax mapping and many other bells and whistles in its own organized collapse graph…

Ahhh.. now time to go go go!!!

Upgrade to XCode 4.0

Real nightmare … I have to relearn where EVERYTHING IS!… How silly to redo an IDE to this level when it adds very little to speeding up development. So far I think it is a bad move. There are a few nice things. The integrated provisioning (After you figure it out) is nice…the interface so far …blah!.. 😉

So I will be spending some time converting the source to the new release.

A note to devs. My printf calls were being ignored until an NSLog call pushed them through.. (might save you some time)… I converted reluctantly to NSLog calls…

Collapsing almost done…

I should have neer left the scene graph for M.E. .. I went more of an Unreal design.. The scene graph is king WITH BATCH COLLAPSING… otherwise fo-ged-a-bod-it.

If I get time tonight I might actually finish!..

Then onto the interface to build levels….I might have a playable system (minus characters) in a few days!…

Moving fast =)…

I will look at the present mails also for M.E…. strange…

Working all the time.. but at least the evenings are fun work =)

Update: (no news on Father-in-Law) BUT here is the planned batch collapsing code. I decided to tackle it now as it would help the frame rate in testing later. Not very complicated really. Cut right from the source comments.

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BATCH COLLAPSING.

These functions are designed to take a piece of the off screen graph and collapse them into an optimized part of the render graph.

1. Input : Graph node to collapse, Graph Node to Collapse to (IF EXISTING ITS CHILDREN WILL BE ERASED)
First step non collapsable models (models that are effects, skeletal animations, or are moving
-Go through and any models that cannot be collapsed. Take note of the last shader before model is found in the graph
-If it is different in any way IE Textures/Type then store it as in need of a copy.
-Create all shaders as base shaders (one copy of each) in the collapsed tree.
-Now go back through the collapse graph
-Find the shader that matches the models current shader copy it including
creating a new collapsed () transform into the collapse tree.

Second step models that are flagged as collapsable
(Really all level geometry that is organized by sectors is collapsable. So a 100×100 node collapse graph with 16 models in each node could come in around 160,000 batches. After collapsing it would be 1600 or so batches. or less depending on shader setup… then cull what is not seen and get a few hundred batches per frame for the level. I really need to do some quantification on all devices as far as batch limitations.):
-Go through and make a list of all different shaders and do not store duplicates.
-Keep list of shader pointers that are original and not duplicated.
-Go through graph adding to shader list pointers any model nodes that match as you reach them.
-Process each shader list with the models. (they should have been updated once to have
the correct combined transform matrix.)
-now for each shader list. Add up the number of Verts/normals/tex/color, and indices.
Create a new empty model under the new empty shader in the collapsed graph.
copy each model into this new model while transfomring verts / normals / tangents /
bitangents.
(be sure to only rotate the tangent/normal/binormal. but fully transform the verts)

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I love making games! =)… Not to shabby to do them at night.. 😉

Last nightI thought I fixed the mail bug but now seems it still is not sending the presents out.. Tonight I will actually be sending small gifts most probably unless something comes up (a friend lost their job this morning not sure if there will be the drink or two later)…. Anyway gift mail bug is tops right now as stability seems to have gotten dramatically better (and the mail bug should not require a patch) Next patch more stability, balancing, and skill fixing. I do not see me adding much more content to M.E. as the sales currently would not allow it. Instead I would like to add content to the new engine and game. This bad boy is getting more impressive every day. Pretty soon I want to add in the bloom filters and maybe depth of field( never really been a fan of DOF in gaming beyond sniping screens). Tonight I should actually have the level system working and running. The biggest items left are the new skeletal system ( I need to add BiNormals and Tangent modification to the code now with the per pixel lighting), the actual art content, and the batch collapsing system. All of it planned out I just need the time to get-er-done =).. I finished the control system last night to about 95%..I might toss a video out showing the blank dirt and the control system in use soon. It worked great…. the dungeon keeper series and the like really were born for the iPad =)…

Back to the day job!

Update will try to get to mailbox tonight.. Father in law had a heart attack. Not sure whats up right now but we shall see…Note to others if you have a chest pain go check it out…sheesh…

Day job time..=)

At least I am getting to do some 3D at work again. =).. renderings of projects..just tons of it =)

I am thinking the controls for the overview side of the new game would be :
1. Use one finger to move the camera over the field.
2. Use two fingers to rotate the view around the board.
3. One finger to press a button for an item or ability then press again where you want it.
4. One finger to press dig then press the blocks you want to dig out.
5. One finger to press on a minion to slap them.
6. One finger to press pick up then each minion you press it picks them up…turn of pick up again with a press then tap to drop them.
7 (Thanks MrSpud) And of course the pinch zoom =)

This should be AWESOME on the iPad…

Anyway day job calling….

Presents away….

Update: Day job killing me today!.. But tonight I hope to be able to get the actual game logic kind of together.. It should be pretty easy and straight forward as this game is not so free form as mission Europa (on purpose)… I am LOVING the shader and the building look. No art will be complete until the game ships and it will always be improving just like the engine. As it is developed I hope you all stick around and help it evolve. As I finish things I will be posting shots and data here. The wiki will hold the descriptions and here we can discuss it =)
Game Grid

Update: getting late again.. Here is a shot of a Rock wall… 120 polies! =P…Thank goodness I can use shaders now! =)..

This was 40 minutes of work.. I still need to add a base and other things but at least we can see the power of the shaders =)..

Care Package away to our intrepid soldiers =)

Check your mail =)

Working on next gen still.. no shot yet .. still working on the tank and its 4 shaders…

Video of Corpse tank.. normally you will be far away from these with the camera unless you go into first person or zoom in 😉