DerDragon's Maeva Fan Page

Introducing.... CoreFactory

Wed, 21 May 2008 09:59:02 GMT

This has been in the works for most of the past month now. Up until just recently, "projects" in Core were basically non-existent. Now, with CoreFactory, you can manage projects, compile them, and even test them from within the IDE.

Here are some key updates since my last post:

Code is highlighted (keywords and built-in "Core Commands")

Multiple files can be opened at once in a nice little tabbed interface.

Both code files and resources are now "compiled" and encrypted. All encryption currently uses the same key, but eventually this will tie into a system for controlling the distribution of your games/projects.

Projects can be compiled as libraries and included in one another. (both resources and code)

Physics constraints (ball, hinge, upvector, etc.) can be added through the script now, though at the moment only upvector has been added.

Core can grab information from web pages, I don't remember if I mentioned this in my last post, but it'll make it easy to tie your games/worlds into a web interface for managing stats and whatnot.

Work is started on an "editor" mode for CoreFactory. Basically, when you open your project up in CoreFactory, it gets an "editor" library placed on top of it, for doing things like editing maps, and flying around with a debug camera.

Core Errors are reported with a pop-up window, and you are returned to your code for review.

There have been loads of bug fixes and optimizations as well, but those aren't as fun to talk about. Anyways, this is exciting for me because it means that I can actually start getting to work on the games I've been wanting to make with this. Actually, the development of Tynkin is basically what's driving the development of CoreFactory as I realize the need for features and fixes.

Updates to Core (BIG post)

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:30:08 GMT

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted about Core, which would lead many to believe that I'd stopped working on it. The truth is quite the contrary however, I've been working quite busily on it whenever I've gotten the chance. I've got some eye-candy ready so, here we go!

Compound meshes. The screenshot here doesn't seem like much on it's own, and really it isn't. The big deal here is... both of those meshes there are actually the same mesh. They are rendered as one object, and thus, at the speed of one object. You may be thinking... so what? Well, my plan, and actually, in screenshots further down, I've put it to use, is to make meshes built from several smaller "mesh parts" to allow for the sort of customization you had in Bomberman Arena, without the slowdown of rendering each individual part. The mesh as a whole uses one texture, since it's just one mesh, so I've also created "compound textures" which allow you to overlay textures on each other, which opens up all sorts of other possibilities in and of itself.

Full-screen Anti-aliasing. For those of you blessed with nice video cards, you will now be able to enjoy anti-aliased graphics. The top section there is the one that's anti-aliased. You'll notice the text is clearer and the edges of things are smoothed slightly.

Billboard chains. No, this has nothing to do with advertising as one person thought. Billboards are basically just sprites. A Billboard Chain is a bunch of sprites linked together to form sort of a trail. This can be used for all sorts of things: ropes, lasers, snakes, lightning, movement trails, etc. In terms of Core, they're fairly easy to use. I still have work to do on them to allow for things like branched out lightning, multiple beams from the same origin, or "tautness" for ropes/chains/etc.

This is just another shot of a billboard chain, this one is using parameters to make it appear like a spring. It becomes stretched out as it's start and end points move away from each other. (one end is attached to the level, and one end is attached to a mob who has fallen off it)

Non-standard Grid Shapes. Also, multiple independent grids, movable grids, rotatable, scalable, you name it, they're just like objects now. You could theoretically attach a level to a mob's hand and have it carry it around if you like. Collision detection would be a bit difficult, but the point is... major flexibility going on here. The shot above shows a "sphere" type grid distribution. Notice how the turfs and walls fit into a grid that is basically warped into the shape of a sphere. I still have some work to do for making the sphere more usable. Most people will probably stick with the standard grid, but for things like cylindrical buildings, or heightmapped planets (caverns and buildings on the surface are still possible), I want these other methods available.

More Post-Processing Effects. I finally figured out how to get depth info in my post-processing effects. I'm re-working the lighting system, so you'll notice in all these shots, nothing is really "lit" or "shadowed". This shot here basically just outlines suddle differences in depth, which creates a bit of a "sonar" effect. Expect some very interesting possibilities for post-render effects.

Fur shading. By no means limit it to post-render effects! I'm still working on pixel and vertex shaders as well. You can use fur shading now. While not my ideal choice for how to render fur, it's available now. With the framework there for it, I can probably figure out some other effects using multi-pass rendering as well.

Finally, Render to Texture. This is my most recent accomplishment and really opens the doors for a lot of other neat things. Portals, mirrors, water refraction/reflection, security cameras. Post-processing effects can also be applied to these surfaces.

I don't know where I was at with networking last time I posted, but, despite not having a good way to screen shot it, networking is a lot closer to where I want it now. You can basically send messages between datums now. If a datum has message sending procs, it becomes a "network datum" and upon creation, or connection of a new client, it executes it's "Announce" proc, to update new clients about important information relative to that datum. For a mob it might mean position and orientation, current weapon, etc.

I've unified pretty much everything that has some sort of visual representation to make it attachable to other things, like I touched on above with the grids. You can attach GUI elements to other objects, or objects to GUI elements, or particle effects to objects, or to the world.

I'm about to start work on creating somewhat of a development environment for creating Core worlds, which will be compiled into files executable by "Core Clients". I have yet to set up a login system, but I of course have plans for it.

Anyways, tell me what you think, questions are welcomed. I just blew the entire rest of my lunch on this, so you'd better be happy! ;)

SFXR and Musagi

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:21:03 GMT

http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/hp/projects.html

I seem to recall someone else posting about this before, at least about Sfxr, but I didn't see anyone mention Musagi. For those of you who don't know, these are both excellent tools for creating content for your games, particularly if you're shooting for that 8-bit retro feel.

Sfxr is extremely easy to use and can generate all sorts of useful sound effects. Musagi is used for creating music and also has a very intuitive interface. The tutorial "Making Music in Musagi" takes you through all the basics of how to start making your own music. Musagi is still in development, and right now only outputs to a wav format, but this can be converted to ogg for use in BYOND games.

Just though I'd share that with the BYOND crowd, and hopefully bring in some more users for Musagi, as I'd really love to see it continued.

Wedding Pics (lots of images)

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:47:23 GMT

here they is

Seeking Cell Phone Advice

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 06:53:05 GMT

My 2 year contract finally ran out with Sprint and I'm looking at my options for getting my own plan. The one main thing I'm looking for is the ability for me to upload my own content to my phone, via something like bluetooth or USB from my computer. (ringtones, pictures, programs, etc.) I really don't know much about cell phones, but I absolutely loathe the fact that you get charged for just about anything you want to do with them.

Obviously I don't want to spend a lot of money (a lot being over $100 for just a phone), but if it's a worthy investment that's going to last me a while, I might consider it. My wife will need to be covered as well, but I don't think she really cares about the bells and whistles, she mostly just gets calls about bunnies.

Suggestions anyone?

More Updates to Core

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 06:24:04 GMT

It's been a little while since I've blogged about my development, and I'm working quite busily every day on it, so I figured I'd post some more stuff.

Turf edges are a recent addition which is very similar to a method I used in BYOND to "eliminate the grid". There's still an obvious grid in most cases, but you can use turf edges to add borders to turfs to get rid of that hard edge a little bit. This screenshot is actually older than my latest rendition. Since I have direct control of the polygons, I'm able to do some tricks to make the non-convex parts of the borders fit together nicer than they did in BYOND.

I've been doing some more work with particles as well. This shot shows a "ball of foliage" basically. I was experimenting with some ways of rendering trees for Tynkin. Right now, you can specify a "dispersion" variable for your /particlesystem's and it will spawn the particles randomly within a sphere of that range. I intend to add more dispersion types so you can eventually have effects that occur in a box, or a ring, or maybe JUST along the edges of those shapes. I still have to add ribbon trails, which should open up a whole new set of effects like lasers and motion trails.

This last shot is my pride and joy at the moment. It's a forest of a 50x50 region of trees. Each tree has it's own offset, scale, and rotation. I generated it with the following code:

world
    name = "Super Happy Fun World"
    awesomeness = 1000
    New()
        output("Hello [src]! Awesomeness = [src.awesomeness]")
        setambient("gray")
        setsky("pitchblack")
        x = 0
        while(x < 50)
            y = 0
            while(y < 50)
                T = new("/staticatom/tree",x,0,y)
                T.scale = random(5)*5+10
                T.orientation = vec4(0,1,0,random(360))
                T.position = vec3(25-random(50),0,25-random(50))
                y += 1
            x += 1

The amazing part of that shot is the framerate. I added a new type to Core, actually, I just defined the common type of turfs and walls more. StaticAtoms now can use meshes. StaticAtoms don't move, but if they're mostly using the same materials, they render REALLY fast. This is good news for things like dense forests, or terrain loaded with rocks. You can vary the scale, position, and rotation of your meshes, but so long as they keep their common material, it's like rendering one object. Core still knows the difference between each object, so if you hit one of these trees with a fireball, you can just as easily remove that tree, or if you wanted to get really fancy, convert it to an object and let the player chop down trees.

I made an improvement that lets my while loops run for much lengthier periods, which not noticable in a screenshot, it's a handy addition. I didn't take the screenshot while the text was outputted to the screen, but I have also implimented BYOND's style of handling text strings with embedded variables. I plan on adding support for the gender var and him his etc. text macros. I've started putting together a "Core API". I plan on selling the engine someday, I'd like to make a few games in it first myself, but I'll need people to help test it out on different machines, as well as help with the networking.

I've removed FMOD and ZoidCom because I'm trying to use libraries which I don't have to worry about licensing at all with. Does anyone have any suggestions on audio and networking libraries? I'm trying to use Audiere and HawkNL, but they don't seem to like to function with Ogre, something about how they each were compiled I'm guessing... and I really don't feel like downloading the whole DirectX SDK again if I don't have to.

Enter CoreScript

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:48:56 GMT

For a while I'd wavered on the idea of implementing a scripting language into Core. The idea seemed like it'd be more tedious and hectic than it'd be worth. Well, I was wrong.

I didn't like the idea of using an already existing scripting language, because I wanted to have full control over how it functioned, and set it up to be used inside my object tree, as you'll see, much like BYOND. The payoff is amazing. I can edit game logic without having to recompile. I attach game logic to objects, rather than defining it inside the code.

I'm following very much in DM's footsteps. I still have a lot of work to do on it, but I thought I'd throw a screenshot out. The frame rate is actually because I have so many individual objects out with different materials, I have some optimization to do with that, but as far as the 200 running procs are concerned, there is virtually 0 CPU usage.

world
    New()
        x = 10
        while(x > 0)
            y = 10
            while(y > 0)
                new("/turf",x-1,0,y-1)
                ball = new("/obj/sphere",x-1,0,y-1)
                ball.color1 = pick("red","green","blue","cyan","magenta","yellow","gray")
                refresh(ball)
                spawn(0)
                    while(ball)
                        addforceglobal(ball,0,10000,0)
                        sleep(random(5)*10)
                y -= 1
            x -= 1

Something else you may be interested in is my continuing work on shaders. I have bump mapping and parallax mapping working. This shot shows the illusion of extra mesh geometry, when in fact, it's just a flat grid, with a shader. The effect is more impressive in real time. I just took two screenshots and put one on top of the other to show the effect.

As for Tynkin, he's getting more detailed here and there. The shaders are working wonders on the model. He's got a bit of a "Zelda Windwaker" look to him, and that's pretty much what we're shooting for. In this shot you can see how different shaders are applied to different parts of the mesh based on the color region. Notice how the blue parts are toon shaded, while the gray parts have specular highlights and are not toon shaded. Also, the cyan parts do not repond to lighting at all, so they will glow in the dark. If you compare the Tynkin now to my previous models, he's come a long way already.

I think for starting this engine last November, I'm making pretty good time. Give me your thoughts!

Taking the Edge off of Core

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 11:06:14 GMT

I'm still cracking away at Core, I've been doing considerable work using Perlin noise to generate textures, but the screenshots here actually use it for terrain generation. The big deal isn't even the Perlin noise though, it's what turfs are to become. I'm trying to eliminate the grid a bit, by smoothing the transitions between different elevations. As you can see, my hills become a bit more "rolling". I also "roughened" the grass turfs a bit, so "natural" turfs like grass, rock, or dirt, won't always end in a perfect straight line.

While I wanted to do smooth transitions, I still did want to keep the option for straight edges, for things like roofs, or artificial turfs that an edge would make sense for. (They also require a lot less triangles to render ;) )

Here's a shot of the smoothed terrain without the "roughness".

I still have a lot of work to do. Right now, I'm only rendering the tops of turfs, I will need to render the sides and undersides as well. I'll also need to tie these into my wall system, which I'll probably be redoing in similar fashion. I'm generating all the triangles for this on the fly, rather than loading meshes. This will also allow me to do some optimization for flat areas that have the same texture. I can render multiple turfs with the same 2 triangles as long as they're adjacent.

I don't know if I mentioned before but sound support has been added. Different turfs sound different when Tynkin walks across them. Anyways, back to work.

Introducing... Tynkin

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:37:19 GMT

Not sure how many people read my post a while back about a few different game ideas I've had, but I've been slowly but surely bringing one of them in particular to life, and it now has a name, Tynkin. NeonLare has been helping with ideas and graphics. The robots in the shot here are just different colorations of what will be Tykin himself.

The game will mainly revolve around physics based puzzles, combining different components together to form machines, and even vehicles eventually. As it stands I can run around with these guys, pick things up, and attach things to each other by means of the "mountpoints".

I'm using my Core engine, obviously, to create this, which will mean that this game will be very expandable and modifiable. For instance, the different coloration of Tynkin here was created just by setting his color1 to red. I also changed another variable to allow him to jump higher. The modules have mountpoints which are also very easy to add, and more or less automatically know how to work. At the moment, I have only fixed joints, but axels are soon to come, and with those, I'll really get things rolling, literally.

I guess I don't want to talk too much about it just yet, but I figured I'd leak a shot of what I've been up to.

In other news, I have Internet at my house finally.

I'm Tom's first

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 06:01:34 GMT

So just prior to my wedding, I went out to San Diego to visit friends and family. I found out a few months ago that Tom lives fairly close, and decided to finally meet my hero. My wife and I drove up to Carlsbad. Despite being late because of traffic and a mix up at McDonalds we had a great time. I totally got a blue book, which I'd only seen online. I've given it (lent it out to) a kid out here who I've been starting to teach DM. Tom said that I'm the first person he's met from BYOND that he didn't already know. I've been planning on meeting other people, but Tom just so happens to be the first person I've met from BYOND as well. Gughunter lives in a place that my wife and I go for rabbit shows, and Popisfizzy lives where I want to go some day to visit the birthplace of Sheetz.

If anyone has facebook, pictures are worth thousands of words. For those of you who don't: We had a REALLY great wedding. Several people told us that they'd been to a lot of weddings, but ours stood out because it was different, and good. Instead of flowers, each of the bridesmaids had a bunny in a basket. Each of their dresses matched the color of the bunny, and the groomsmen's vests matched those. Jesse's horse Spanky made a guest appearance behind the altar. The minister was a little odd, and kept asking me what day it was, like I wasn't going to remember the date, so I got to deal with everyone asking me it jokingly afterwards. For our first dance, we set up Dance Dance Revolution.

Despite my multitude of requests to make it a dry wedding, Jesse's family insisted on purchasing alcohol. If that's all people were sticking around with, that's pretty sad, but I guess it made some things interesting. My dad got drunk, and ended up dancing in the middle of a big circle of people. I use the term dancing loosely. Everybody said he was the life of the party, I'm just glad he didn't get punched in the face by someone. I got to drive someone home and carry him into his house over a puddle of vomit, even though he tried arguing with me for about 20 minutes about how it was ok for him to drive his wife and two children home himself.

I am really enjoying being married. I can honestly say I've never been happier. Both of us are proud to be married to each other. I know Jesse loves to hear everyone tell her how pretty she was and what a great wedding we had. I'm amazed just how well it all went. I had reason to worry, but it all pulled together in the end. I guess I'd expected it to all work out, I just didn't see it all going as well as it did.

Anyways, I'm making quite a large post here, and I want to get back to work on Tynkin... :D