Graveyard Dogs (the Blog)

Head wear...

2012-01-30T19:58:00.002Z

Working on attributes for Kid...this might NOT make it into the game !

Scale is the key...

2012-01-29T12:13:00.003Z

Well today I have been writing DyEd some more to cater for some of the little sections I missed since starting the project, DyEd as a whole has come a long way since it started and now it will allow us to create anything we want to make with ease.

I still have to do the Cut/Copy and Paste but this is at the top of my todo list for DyEd along with id tags for notes, messages etc that are on the tiles. I have been fixing numerous little niggles too that suspend the fluidity of the editor and make it kludgy one such niggle was the tile selector this now will not scroll off the right of the reservoir but stops nicely now. Also gone is resizing levels whilst they are loaded, before resizing didnt do anything at all so the sizes didnt matter all levels were 256x256 but for some games you will want smaller areas than the maximum size of the editor now you can. DyEd itself will resize and keep the level you have so the new size will still contain the level you was editing this can be handy as its easier to see how the level will look after creation and how big it is then be able to resize. One bug was a killer bug which stopped background images being loaded into the editor itself this also has been fixed and normality restored :).

On the whole the entire editor is looking quite polished and creating levels is quite simple and easy to do, I will be tweaking and adding the last features of the editor over the coming few days and once they are all in there I can move to creating the levels for JJ finally.

EDIT:Well I have completed the New button so now that does something, I have also completed the message system. Our new message system will allow for some rather nifty stuff to be done in game alongside the scripting system that is planned it will make a loverly editor to work in :).

I am also working on GDGUI which basically is our own GUI system, the thing instantly noticeable about Windows, OSX and Linux is all the GUI's are different. What im proposing is quite simply a graphical GUI that will sit in a OpenGL window and allow us to do the same things that the GUI does now BUT without having to redesign everything for each platform this will enable us to concentrate more on getting the games out there and not fighting the GUI's to make things look the way they should do.

More soon...

Next step...

2012-01-26T19:32:00.001Z

Today was mainly getting the look right...some shading and lighting.

Super sneak...

2012-01-26T13:28:00.002Z

heres the pic as promised this one shows the backing being used to generate a level...

Sneak again...

2012-01-25T18:05:00.000Z

First model from scratch...

...and after a little refinement....

Most Common Screen Resolutions in 2011

2012-01-24T16:54:00.001Z

http://www.superiorwebsys.com/blog/93/Most_Common_Screen_Resolutions_in_2011/

Sneak Peek...

2012-01-22T21:16:00.000Z

Experiments with style and lighting...

Messages of all kinds...

2012-01-20T10:33:00.001Z

Well I have been planning the system out today for the message system that will be in our games this system will allow us to do all sorts of things that will be required for current and future projects, its not just a case of having a thing appear on screen when you reach a location I want to have a system in place that allows us to decide how and where it will appear on the screen.

Here is a good point to state that these early plans can save you hours in the long run as you wont have to go back and change everything once you add a new feature to the editor, ideally though you will want the system to be as modular as possible and easily expandable.

At the moment we have simple dialogs, popups, messages, and logs these will determine how they are all displayed on screen and if they interrupt the flow of the game whilst being shown. Once they are all in there I will put a simple example so everyone can see what we mean.

On the background front its looking amazing and we can do anything we want with it now, I will be posting some pics soon to demonstrate the new exciting system.

More soon...

Getting there yet again :)

2012-01-17T20:59:00.001Z

Well after a long rest after the Xmas period I have been adding the backing system so we can have backgrounds to screens as well as special sections.

I still have to work on the message system so it works perfectly in the game editor and engine once they are in there we can get more in and complete whole games with minimal adjustments.

More soon...

Level design in full swing

2012-01-13T20:25:00.000Z

While Ed fights the hardware, I was able to complete two more level layouts for the introductory part of our game (teaching about controls, interaction, puzzle solving etc).
One basic puzzle might look like this:

Easy stuff, but my pholosophy is, the easier You can drag the player into the game, the better, and I am all for seamless transition while providing actual gameplay.

"Press A to jump" for no purpose has...no purpose, so we put the learning phase right there into the gameplay from second one.

At the same time, Ed came up with a brilliant idea how to trace the layouts in our "DyEd" editor, to create them quickly and easily and be able to make changes without pain.

Fun times ahead.

When Apple does a EA...

2012-01-13T19:09:00.000Z

[RANT] Well in EA's case its game related so you could be forgiven to think that somethings get broken by patches and fixed in others BUT (big but) Apple has done the same thing. Heres how it all goes;

2006 to present after OSX Leopard was broken with a patch from Apple on their own hardware no less people complained (Apple took notes and did nothing).... They then released OSX Snow Leopard which works fine on everything including my Mac Mini until the patches start flowing now im patched upto date I cannot write DVD's as I get an error stating there is a communication issue between the computer (Apples own) and the Superdrive (Apples own not so 'super' drive) so it wont write a single byte to a DVD.

After all this I decide to do a google on the error and it comes up with LOADS of disgruntled people who have many solutions to fix the problem ranging from changing media (I have tried four brands including TDK and Memorex DVD's, DVD-R and DVD-RW's too) down to writing smaller amounts of data which sort of makes the idea of a DVD-R defunct as its for 'writing DVD's'?!?!?!? The problem has been known about since way back when leopard made an appearance and apple shipped patches to sort stuff. With all this in mind I am hell bent on NOT getting OSX Lion or any other Apple product for that matter.

I have spent most of the day transfering 4.47Gb of data between computers to a 'Windows XP' netbook so I can attach a external DVD writer to it so I can write the DVD in one go which it did effortlessly. One attempt works perfect. Now I know Mac Mini's after 2009 dont come with DVD drives but for god sake apple some people dont update with every mac revision.

From now on I will put my data on a USB key if I want to write it to a DVD so I can use a Windows netbook, hell even my Linux netbook writes DVD's and thats a free OS.

Incidentally for all those wondering why I didnt connect my external DVD drive to the Mac Mini well you guessed it, I get a power error stating that some of my USB devices have been disabled due to power usage and yes its the DVD drive which was plugged into the BACK of the mac mini :s
[/RANT OVER]

As you can see today hasnt been very productive but tommorow will be hopefully....

Drool...

2012-01-09T11:56:00.001Z

Saving and loading...

2011-12-29T23:12:00.003Z

Well we can now save and load in the editor this will allow us to create the levels for the game engine, after we have some levels completed we can then move onto getting everything in there for making the game engine and getting that section finalised.

Me and Emm are going to be designing levels for the game that will then allow us to expand the game as and when required this will then allow us to add expansion packs to the game as we design new sections or add whole new game mechanics or challenges.

More soon...

Painting by numbers...

2011-11-28T13:44:00.001Z

Now I have added selection in so I can select an area by holding down CTRL and then clicking another area to drag out an area, with the area selected I have now added a paint tool so I can paint an area with the selected tile or tiles.

Yes the new system will also cater for multi-selection as well so if we have numerous backing tiles or floor tiles they too can be painted out to the desired location..

On the screenshot front well here ya go

If you dont count selecting the tiles from the reservoirs this room took 13 drawing actions these are:
one for each of the corners
one for each of the walls
one for the background
one for the shadow at the top
and three for the prefabs

So its all quite quick and easy for us to use, as you can see in the tile reservoir the green selected tiles are visible. Also for Emm theres the 'preview window' down the bottom left.

More soon...

Woooohoooooo....

2011-11-27T10:21:00.001Z

Well I have now added the scrollable tile selectors, this might not sound like a big change BUT the new system has a tile space of 1024x1024 which should be enough for us but if its not I could increase it to the ludicrously big number of 9,223,372,036,854,776,000 by 9,223,372,036,854,776,000 so its rather portable ;).

I have also adjusted the selectors to accomodate the new system and the packer also does the same. On the packing front I have the progress bar in as well so we can see how well its going and whats happening and where :).

More soon...

Multi selection is in...

2011-11-25T13:22:00.001Z

Righty, today I have added multi-selection now we can select loads of different tiles from the tile selector. Its that adjustment that will allow us to draw levels as we want without having to select a tile one at a time then place them down.

Once we have the scrollable tile reservoirs in then we can move onto the file system and once complete I will be able to send Emm another build.

Almost there....

2011-11-23T13:11:00.001Z

Well DyEd has taken a little longer than expected by I have finished loads of it today, things in today are:

1) Tile reservoirs - these now load correctly and pack perfectly.

2) Progress indicator for loading - this now works as expected.

3) OpenGL Context sharing fix - this has now been sorted and is working perfectly.

4) Annotations - we can also now place little notes on the levels for us to work with.

5) Prefabs - they are now actually used in the game engine and allow us to place them perfectly in the level.

6) Trap indicator - now there is a small square on areas that have traps in, this will show us where traps will be in the game.

7) Preview window - now I can actually see the tile, this was a simple bug fix but it needed to be done.

Dont get me wrong there is still loads to add and complete but its getting there and its moving forwards now at an alarming pace. I still have to add things like:

1) Scrollable tile reservoirs - so we can move around them and use other tiles.

2) File system - this has to be changed to use the new systems that are implemented into the game

3) Multi selection - this will be used for tile placement and will allow more variety.

4) Area fill - this will be in there to allow filling of an area quickly

5) Cut, Copy and Paste - this will also allow quick adjustment of the level.

6) Snap to grid - this is required for Emm ;)

7) Offsetting of prefabs - this is required for me ;)

8) General bug fixes - this will need to be the last thing and is always the hardest :), I never release anything till I cant break it ;). Mass testing the preview window etc ;)

So as you see its getting there but isnt there yet, the editor itself is taking longer than required but once its complete it will give us a solid platform to work from and create anything we can imagine. Also as time goes by I can add extras to the editor like a 3d module and other modules as our games require it.

More soon...

Even more DyEd...

2011-11-22T18:45:00.002Z

Well i have been massed bug fixing today so its as robust as it can be :)

Also i have found time to add the preview window to the editor, once everything is in i can make a start on the levels and game mechanics.

More soon...

Merging of code...

2011-11-21T11:52:00.002Z

Well after having a rather hectic weekend I am now back at the keyboard and coding DyEd, this has to be finished so we can move forwards with everything and get our games out there to the masses. I have managed to merge the new packing code with the editor now and after some testing and adjustments (it still needs the selector and being able to show the user where the tiles are) and once everything is in there and working and I have reworked the saving and loading system I will send Emm another build.

On the saving and loading front I want to have a system in place that checks to see if any images are used from each atlas sheet this will keep memory requirements down as we done really need to load textures and images in if they are not used in the system. Once all these adjustments are in there I can move forwards and start getting the levels done for JJ and once they are done we can actually move onwards with the graphics and everything getting the game planned out and complete.

More soon...

Art development: Two books

2011-11-17T13:40:00.000Z

Since I buy educational books from time to time, here are two I recently purchased, and my short, biased opinion on them:

Game Art Complete

This one is very superficial when it comes to zBrush, it covers barely the basics . The modeling parts for 3DS Max and Maya, as well as the texturing parts with Photoshop are decent.The game model created is very good, and the process involved is explained thoroughly. Included are anatomical explainations, photography, retouching, modelling, concept art, character design.

Realistic Game Characters

This one is a brilliant zBrush learning ressource.Explained are the brushes, the modelling process, in depth anatomical details, how to create a model for a next gen game engine and how to create textures. Very well explained, includes a DVD and is from a Pixologic insider.Very good !

Ed: Yes its me again ;). This time I have completed the packing system and its fast. In comparison the old system I was using took twenty seconds to pack five images which to me was incredibly inefficient so I rewrote the entire section of the code now for five images it took twelve milliseconds (yes twelve milliseconds) so we now have a MAJOR speed increase. I will now add this to the reservoir system of the editor that will allow us to create anything imaginable and use the editor with much more ease.

Level Design

2011-11-15T19:07:00.000Z

After dabbling in Photoshop, I decided for exchange reasons to use OpenOffice Draw for the basic layout of our levels.
Tip for Mac users: when trying to drag-copy and paste an item in OO Draw, use the "Alt" key, not "ctrl" to drag-copy an item :)

I am working from rough to detailed, thus laying out a rough concept of the structure, exchanging it with Ed and adding illustrations where possible and required, then moving on to flesh out the details.

At this point its interesting to add story "locations" and events to the layout, so the game flow can be demonstrated.
Its equally important to make as many annotations as possible, so the team can work from that instead of guessing.

Emm

Ed: Well I am working on making the atlas packer faster now, this will be for the tile reservoirs and allow us to make as best use as possible for all our tiles. I will be increasing the tile reservoirs tile areas to 1024 by 1024 for this purpose. On the while the system will now work quicker and more efficiently with the new packing system over the old one once I get it to my satisfaction I will be sending Emm a new build with the new file systems and tile systems.

DyEd the next generation....

2011-11-15T12:57:00.001Z

Well having made significant changes to the whole editor layout I am quite pleased with the way its turned out. This new layout will allow affords us to be able to create anything imaginable from simple games to much more complex game like Baulders Gate 2. All in all its a much easier to use layout and much more intuitive.

The loader system is going through some changes as well, the old one loaded atlas sheets into each layer the new system (when completed it is being worked on at the moment) will load the tiles in and place them in the relevant section of the editor so tiles are placed into the tile section, prefabs into the prefab section etc. Basically the new editor system will allow us to have multiple different tiles on one sheet this will allow us to keep overheads down and make the game more professional :)

More soon...

DyEd is getting there...

2011-11-13T09:50:00.001Z

Well I have been working hard at getting DyEd complete with all the features that Emm has requested and I have added some of my own too, these equate to:
1) Toolbar - this is now in and almost fully functional I still have to do cut,copy and paste but its getting there

2) Grid - I can now turn this on/off (wooo) and change the grid size( yay ) ;)

3) Options - being that I have the editor on a flashdrive putting it into different operating systems (I have Mac/Windows and Linux here) means a reconfiguration of the programs folders now this is sorted as the editor itself now saves the configuration dependent on the operating system its running on.

4) Numerous behind the scenes bug fixes and corrections :)

5) Zooming is also now in there too :), still needs a little work BUT its in there and fast as anything :)

6) Layers are now in there too, I can show/hide Tiles, Backing, Items and prefabs this makes it easier to edit the levels as required.

Once all the features requested are in there the editor will be ready for its initial beta phase and after probably some more adjustments we can move forwards with getting everything in there :)

More soon...

DyEd in action

2011-11-09T19:00:00.002Z

DyEd, our dynamic editor, in its early version, in action :D Feels good !

Ed: Well Emm has identified areas for improvement this will be in the next build of the editor. Once they are in there we will be able to have an editor that will allow us to create anything we want to make with it. Our main aim with this system is a all encompassing editor so we dont have to reinvent the wheel for everything.

DyEd...

2011-11-07T10:17:00.004Z

No not dyed we are not changing the colours of clothing :)

DyEd is our dynamic editor its coming together now that we have a plan of action for our latest game, the editor itself is totally modular so I can add and remove stuff as it becomes obsolete and changes over time. I am programming the entire thing in BlitzMax as its the most versatile language of this age and the 3d engine is pure OpenGL anyways so you have access to the core rendering engine as well as the language itself.

On the whole the first iteration of DyEd will be for our up coming games but I will expand it as required to feature a total 3d engine editor for other projects that we will require this may come in the form of Minib3d as its already there and is totally cross platform or in the form of something of our own via the Tombstone route.

Only today I have added the saving system and scrolling around the view area, I am currently tacking in the loader and I have some small things to adjust then when I add everything together I will send Emm a version to test this will be a early beta build. There are still loads of things I want to add into the editor itself to make it fully feature rich and this will allow us to do anything we want with it :) One of the main things is a basic script editor to allow us to do simple scripted sequences for things and items in the game, these sort of things are good for boss encounters in games like Baulders gate or Metroid like games where there are some dialog and animations but the player has no control over what happens.

Continuing what Emm said in the earlier post its always a great idea to make a game where the player has total control after all games that are too linear with no thought to what your supposed to do get boring REAL quick. One that jumps to mind immediately is Too Human its a nice looking game but there is no threat of death or losing a life every time you get killed a Valkyrie turns up floats off with you and your back to shoot again with full health no penalty whatsoever so with this in mind your just plodding through reams of enemies with no real emotion behind it. On occasions you come across a boss but they are all the same really.

Now a game like System Shock where there are audio logs and interactions throughout really sets the mood and gives you the emotion behind it to actually get in there and do something. Its nice in these games to see the interactions between the characters after all who here remembers System Shock 2's lovebirds who escape in the pod what a twist that was :). True classic games have a great story and they are remembered for the emotions they invoke its these that make them true classics.

More soon...

Tom Chick gives Uncharted 3 4/10. Scandal ?

2011-11-06T10:45:00.001Z

Personally I have yet to complete Uncharted 1.
Uncharted 3 is heading to be one of the most critically successfull games of this (slowly fading) generation.
Tom Chick says 4/10, mainly because its a matter of "filler" stuff, "been there done that" situations, loads of quotes from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
He claims storytelling and interactive gameplay don't meet, and there is 10 hours of game, yet only a few hours of quality game.
Without having played it, I have tp agree with Tom that storytelling in games is pretty much one of the biggest failures of this generation.
Granted, many games don't need shakespearesque stories, but a good story doesn't hurt, now does it ?
Can You name the game with the best story You ever played ?
If I take Dragon's Age, Dead Space, Bioshock...there are good stories somewhere, but the way they are told is mostly confusing, boring or just unadequate. I also don't know what qualifications those developers have regarding to storytelling.
It aint easy. Most stories that aim for mass acceptance fall short in characters, development, tension, ending, and its easy to ruin a 60 hours experience by offering a bad, unsatisfying ending. That's why some game are designed backwards, to make sure the player has this memorable end satisfaction.
When I create a game story, I mostly think in images and dialogues and first I think of the ending once I found a story hook that's worth developing.
And don't fool yourself, writing a story/game that keep the tension up for several hours is VERY difficult and most of the time nigh impossible.
The best approach is to not try and keep that large, classical tension curve of story development.Its better to try to write the game story in small chunks, of which every single one has a climax and a great mid-ending.
This way players can focus on one arc at a time, play through it, gain experience for the bigger, background arc and yet don't feel like things are stretched and tedious.

The Magic Candle

2011-11-01T09:29:00.000Z

One of our visitors (You know who You are ;) ) mentioned we should add "The Magic Candle" to the poll to the right (cant add anything after a vote has been given, sorry).I want even aware that game was so popular !

I am pretty sure Ed knows it, as he is a walking, talking archive for games :D

The search for that title led me to this site with loads of stuff about old CRPGs.

Completeness Ed: You also forgot Mines of Titan, Dragon Wars, Escape from Hell, Rogue, Bloodwych and Nethack ;). Oh and 'the colour of magic', 'Sword and sorcery' on the ZX Spectrum. Also all the Dungeons and Dragons games that were out there that we both played till the disks broke. Plus games like the Elder scrolls series, the Might and Magic series :).

For all indie game development fellas..

2011-10-30T10:05:00.003Z

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

10000 visitors and counting...

2011-10-26T20:00:00.000+01:00

We have reached the 10,000 visitors mark :) (we must be doing something right :) )

On the JJ front I am working on a editor that we can use for everything and we will also be able to use it in the future for other projects as I want it to be modular, this basically means i will write segments of the editor as required and these will be tacked into the main editor for use. On the whole I am very pleased with the results so far and we should be able to edit levels by the end of the weekend. Once everything is in there we will have nothing stopping us from creating some fiendish puzzles and traps for the player to navigate.

The whole game is brilliant and its really starting to come together with this editor as well we can and will be able to do anything we want with it including writing RPG's which is a game style close to my heart, Star Rogue is also still very much in progress as StarFlight2000 is a game I really enjoyed making and want to rewrite using a cross platform 3d engine (yes even Linux ;) ). If the engine isnt available or not powerful enough I will have to complete Tombstone to get that game to fruition but it will be done. I have the design document for it too from 2000 yes its that old (no its not duke nukem forever this game actually was released on time in 2000 ;) ).

Graveyard Dogs also have loads of other projects on the go as well these are all top secret and when we have something loverly to show you we will splash it here first. One thing I have learned over the years of coding (I have been doing it almost thirty one (31) years since i was eight) is that announcing a project to early will cause the project to nosedive as the inevitable flurry of activity dies down and people lose interest in it. Its always best to splash the project everywhere when you have almost gone gold and its complete apart from one or two small bugs which are being squashed as you announce it.

More soon....

OMG

2011-10-26T08:12:00.002+01:00

I just noticed we approach 10,000 visitors !

More fixes and updates...

2011-10-24T20:11:00.000+01:00

Well I have been busy working on the whole system where the rubble placement was a pain in the butt, I have managed to get a massive speed increase though from twenty seconds to place the rubble down to one second to place it. I intend to use the same system to speed up the whole generation system this will make it hopefully take less than five seconds to generate the entire level.

As an added bonus the random level generation system I have developed can now generate an infinite number of different levels, on the whole Emm and I have only explored a few combinations but with each iteration of the game the levels change so it will be interesting to see how it all pans out :).

Rubble is in the game not but still needs some work with some of the placements I will be doing that over the next day or so and tying up loose ends so the whole thing looks amazing.

I have fixed some more bugs as well in the game engine namely the placement of stuff in the level, now it no longer 'levitates' in the air ;). Also I have made restarting a level instantaneous as the system now remembers where everything was an replaces it when the level is restarted rather than regenerating the whole level this will make the game more playable ;). On the whole I am pleased with the speed increases I am getting I just need to get every ounce of speed out of the engine to this end i will be looking deeper and deeper into the game to add more to it and make it look amazing, I have already added the blue portal lighting to the engine and the ending item glow now radiates light around it :). I still gotta generate the last few tiles for the game engine but once they are in and the rubble placement is correct I will send a build to Emm :)

More soon...

Polishing the fixings....

2011-10-23T18:29:00.001+01:00

Well I have been fixing some bugs in the game, well not really bugs but things that irritate me. These are as follows:
FIXED: Treasure placement in a square that JJ cannot get to, this normally was a platform and it placed it underneath it.

FIXED: Health draining on death, the game now only takes one heart from the player when they die.

FIXED: Rubble system, the rubble is now placed in the game correctly. There are some little niggles here that will be fixed but its getting there.

FIXED: Monsters and traps when changing level, now they are erased when the level is changed.

ADDED: Rubble graphics to the renderer, this now shows up in game and I have recoded the placement system so it works correctly.

ADDED: Emm's block graphics for walls, these now look much better than the old ones, they still need some work which I will be doing tommorow :).

As you can see I have had a very productive day today and once the other niggles are fixed I will send Emm a new build so he can see the new stuff in action :). Technology wise its getting there, as always there are some small niggles that im not happy with but I can fix those as time goes on.

More soon...

Adding even more...

2011-10-22T20:21:00.002+01:00

Well Emm has sent me yet more 'new wall tiles' these are now in the engine, after some tweaking so it doesnt waste OpenGL video memory which is in short supply (300x300 images will get scaled upto 512x512 internally by OpenGL this wastes LOADS of video ram so after some simple modification its now 256x256 :) ). These tiles are in the engine but I have yet to do the placement system once thats done we will be able to see them in all their glory and maybe we might even post a picture so you can all see the beauty of them :).

On another note I have 'condensed' some of the other images in the game for example with the new tiles in place the old ones are now deprecated and have been removed from the game, the traps that were on the image have been moved to a little 64x64 image with all the traps on there this will make the game more efficient and allow us to change the graphics without playing with the traps every time.

The new tiles do look really nice I just wish we could have done this when we switched over to BlitzMax as it would have saved me LOADS of coding and recoding to get everything loverly to have it all changed again, this blog is a testament to 'GET YOUR DESIGN DOWN IN STONE ALONG WITH ALL STEPS TO GET IT TO COMPLETION' and never deviate from the design document.

More soon....

Emm: Mea culpa, mate :D Everything will be smoother next time, but then, the first version was done for iPhone, so there had to be some...adjustments to be exspected :) I think its worth it, and I only regret that it took me so long to realise that we needed the graphical improvements :) But then...Borderlands was also already deep in development when they decided to change to a more cartoony style. Its part of the R&D process to try out thing, throw out stuff and redo stuff.

Ed: All things considered its coming along now so no worries, just lets hope it will be released next year as at the current rate of things it will not be available till then. Gameplay wise its coming along nice but there are some things with the random generator that I am not happy with so I will change them in the coming builds but I want to get the new graphics in there and then move to refining the generator's speed this will allow for a much speedier game and allow us to test it better.

Adding stuff back...

2011-10-17T14:51:00.000+01:00

Well I have started adding the graphics to the engine, which has been modified to generate the stuff required now to do the relevant sections. What I have to add next is the torches back once there are in there the engine will be back almost where it started the system itself looks good for the new walls but I still have modifications to make.

More soon...

New arrivals...

2011-10-15T21:21:00.000+01:00

Well after the massed image rush from Emm I have finally got around to cataloguing the images and adding the relevant data to the game engine, the next thing I have to do is quite simply to add the required code into the generator and renderer to allow us to see the new stuff. Every time these things come about its quite exciting to see the end results of our work and once its complete and the game is out there see the end results.

Emm has some other ideas what to do with some of the graphics, I will implement these as required this should make the game even more gorgeous and once implemented will allow even more stuff to be added later on.

More soon...

Refining perfection...

2011-10-12T16:09:00.000+01:00

Well Emm has sent me loads of loverly graphics to add to the game BUT before I dive in and add it all to the already feature packed game I will refine the renderer some more, the reason for this is I want the game to be as fast as possible before we jump in and add loads of features and stuff to make sure it dont slow down. At the moment we are getting 60fps (Frames per second) at all times but this will change when I test it on my netbook ideally if I can get above 30fps at all times ideally 60fps that will be great :).

My netbook is our lowest common denominator meaning its the slowest machine I have with the lowest grade graphics card, its always good to test it on these sorts of machines to get a idea on what it runs on after all not everyone has a quad core machine with oodles of ram and a graphics card that could render real-life graphics without even breaking a sweat.

More soon...

Moving onwards...

2011-10-11T13:36:00.002+01:00

Emm has come up with some nice ideas for other additions to the game this is small additions to the system that will make it more appealing which add to other sections of the game that are already there, once they are in there I can move to getting other bits in there that are on my list this will help get everything complete and get the game to a shippable state :)

I want to add a quota system to the game as well so we can see at a glance what we have to do to get the portal open for us to progress forwards, this will be a new addition that will be in the next build.

I know loads of you know me on facebook and some have added me to their lists but as of today I have terminated my facebook account, this has come about as it soaks up too much of ya time trawling through everything and to be honest its way to cluttered the new interface is bugged and cumbersome so I will no longer be on facebook from now on. I have a Google+ account where I can post and people can follow me if they want to :).

More soon...

Ricochet can be a killer...

2011-10-06T19:48:00.000+01:00

Finally I have gotten back into the swing of things and I now have added ricochet to the bullets in JJ, this small effects looks nice when the bullets hit a wall other things in the level dont get ricochet as they arent as solid as stone. I have also located some nice sound effects from a previous published product of mine and they sit nicely in the game.

Now that section is complete I am going to tackle the ceiling traps, these like the other traps...well how can I put it... fall from the ceiling onto JJ if hes now quick enough to move out of the way. After that I will complete the item selector that will finish up two sections of the game and open up others as I will also then have to add the items into the game engine, things like dynamite etc.

Its at times like this its good to have a end goal, with some projects and coding groups end goals arent set in stone and as time progresses a nasty little illness sets in, this illness is the bane of any project and can make it stall over time tilll it gets to the stage where the project is canned. What is this illness called well we programmers call it 'Feature creep', it may sound harmless enough but look at it in these simple steps:

1) You draw up a idea for a game but dont set down a design document but you have a idea of where you want the game to go and how to do it.

2) As the game progresses one of the people working on the title sees something in another game they think 'oh cool I would like that to be in our game' so they mention it and add it to the list. This might not sound a problem BUT imagine the coding that would go into adding this loverly effect time that could be spent on finishing the first idea of the game.

3) After this they see something else and we end up at 2 again.

Repeating steps 2 and 3 many times over and over for all the games they see x effect in or a video on youtube and a six month game could become six years, this is why its always good to have a design document and stick to it. If you want another feature in the game one that you love add it in version 1.x this way people come back to your game afterwards to see whats new and it keeps it fresh.

Something for all of us to think about eh...

More soon...

Bonuses all round ...

2011-09-30T13:01:00.000+01:00

I have added the bonuses to JJ today these were in the original version of the game but have been lacking in the current version, now they are in there I can move to other areas of the game to make the whole thing more complete. Also I have to merge in the planet map code into the game engine so we can select missions that may have been opened by completing certain sections of the game.

On the whole the entire game is looking really good there are still some optimisations to do and refine the game in some fashion but I will get around to doing that as time goes on, these optimisations will include merging the arrays into one array to increase lookup speeds and removing variables from the array type so its all merged into one big array of items which will make it quicker to look through as there will be less in there. I also have to wrap the check routines in a select..endselect block to make fetching faster as well.

All these things will speed the game up sufficiently hopefully that it will run on my netbook with adequate ease, most games these days run so badly on that to the stage of being unplayable and its a 1.6Ghz Atom with 2Gb of ram (shared with video). Game from the likes of Bigfish should work but they lag really badly on there which is a shame so I strive to make this game so that it works for as many computers as possible without causing problems or being unplayable :)

More soon....

Progress...

2011-09-29T20:55:00.001+01:00

Well today I have been refining the system that generates the planet this has given me a couple of extra frames once I complete the process I want the whole thing running at sixty frames a second with the 256x256 map this will set us in good stead for future projects.

I have also been looking into 3d vertex placement and have cobbled together a function that will allow me to create 3d shapes in a 2d screen without DirectX or OpenGL, next up I will look at rotations and manipulation of the vertices.

More soon...

A world without limits...

2011-09-28T12:25:00.002+01:00

This is the shot before I optimised it

And this is how it looks now after some optimisation

Here you can see an early build of our mission selector for JJ, I know there are loads of loverly high detail planets out there that I could have used with a 3d engine etc to get the same effect but this one is 100% 2d there is only some calls to BlitzMax's max2d module and thats it. On the whole I like it as it reminds me of Starflight where you orbit a planet and its shown in a little window in the top left for you to select somewhere to land I will use this function again when required so i can make the game so I can create a Starflight style game called Star Rogue.

The texture map is 128x128 I am currently looking to see if I can get 256x256 in there next and if I can then it will be brilliant but not 100% required.

On the image you can see the white dots these are mission markers that when on the map will allow the player to select missions for that location by clicking the markers, at the bottom there is the white bar this is a placeholder for rotating the planet in a desired direction so you can see if there is a mission available :)

JJ will be something special :)

EDIT: Well I have been doing some optimisations and the whole thing now runs at sixty frames per second which is brilliant, I tried the 256x256 map and it drops to seventeen so I will need to do some serious optimisations there to get that to speed. As I have been progressing through the system I have made the system now use the pixel maps parameters rather than my internal variables this basically means that I just have to pass the texture to the planet function that creates it like the shot above and it will create it for me without me having to play with the variables. Its all these small optimisations that will make the render faster and faster till the whole system is running lightning fast and we can create anything we wanted :)

EDIT2: Whilst optimising the system via a array lookup table which is a fancy name for a large block of computer memory where I can shove values I want to keep for later use, I have managed to get another eight frames per second out of the old machine, ideally I would like to get it to sixty with a 256x256 texture map but beggars cant be choosers and if I can get it above thirty it will be good enough for the engine as it stands as its only for mission selection :).

More soon...

Light, here there everywhere...

2011-09-25T12:26:00.002+01:00

Over the weekend I have been coding the realtime lighting system for Graveyard Dogs creations and up coming game JJ:TOTA the main idea behind the system is we can have a infinite number of coloured lights in any game we do that we can use in any way we want to so far this system has done us proud and it looks absolutely amazing in the game.

Whilst doing this lighting effect I have a new (or rather old seeing as I done it back in the day) of dark light, the simple premise is that if a light can brighten an area a dark light darkens it. This might not sound amazing but if you think of effects like portals from Chaos Engine and black holes in space games then you will see the amazing possibilities of having it as part of the system. When coding reusable stuff like this its always good to think outside the box and think of other uses that it could be used for this is one of those times.

Back in the day I used dark lights in a 3d game to remove sections of the area or make certain areas purposely dark this worked very well I could even do it with alpha for suitably weird effects. In my archive I still have the code to do this as it was part of an old engine I done for a test game called Hunted. Hunted itself will be reborn in the coming years after we have built up our games collection who knows when this will be released but it will see the light of day.

EDIT: Well on the JJ front I have fixed some more glitches, one was JJ was up the screen one pixel to many so I have moved him down. Darts are now flipped when travelling to the left and are placed correctly at shooting time. Also when JJ is shooting its no longer stopped by ladders, classically JJ also falls right off the screen now when killed by traps, monsters or anything thats dangerous :). Its little glitches like these that would tarnish the perfect game we are trying to create. I have also adjusted the position of the backing effect of the Egypt level its no longer coming out of the backgrounds nose but from its mouth as was originally intended. Peru now has the background in it and the trap sprites are now captured correctly. Game play wise the game is smoother now with the new lighting system than when the old one was in there and personally I think it looks much better. I have also added dark lights(tm) to the engine so now I can suck the light out of the level as well as put it in and it will suck the light from lights around it so red lights will fade down the nearer to the dark light it gets.

More soon...

Reusable code...

2011-09-22T09:45:00.001+01:00

Righty, I am currently coding the link between Graveyard dogs games and TimelineFX and in the best 'EdzUp' fashion I am coding it as a reusable library the reason for this is simple. When we want to use the TimelineFX system in our games all I have to do is import the library and its there ready for us to reuse over and over again.

Reusable code is a great way to keep any programming time to a minimum after all why re-invent the wheel every single time for every game, yeah dont get me wrong over the years I have refined and modified the reusable code libraries I have but only to make things faster and more efficient not the other way round :). You can see reusable code in LOADS of things these days look at most modern games how many use the Unreal 3 engine or Id tech x or some other licensed engine all of them are reusable code its just the companies that make them have chosen to sell the libraries to make extra money (some quite lucratively).

Well heres to finally getting TimelineFX into our products that will mean that no matter what it will look amazing no matter what we do :)

More soon...

Fixing bugs as I go ...

2011-09-21T11:10:00.001+01:00

I have fixed some bugs today that will make the game more fluid and faster, basically its some movement problems with the monsters and some other issues that need fixing. Now these are out of the way I can move onto adding some effects to the game thanks to the brilliant module TimelineFX :)More soon...

Climbing on up...

2011-09-19T12:39:00.002+01:00

JJ now has the ability to climb up and down things this allows him to reach otherwise inaccessible areas, at the moment there are ladders put out in places on the level but these can be anything from vines to bare walls. A loverly side effect of the way the system works is that we can have secret areas where players can explore and access bonus stuff for extra items.

Its another big section of the game done so now I can move onto other sections like getting the bonus's in there for JJ to pickup and getting the ending portal in.

More soon...

Holy speed increase

2011-09-17T16:52:00.000+01:00

Well, 2000% is terrifying, and it shows that its always good to know Your C++ to REALLY optimise things.
On the art front, I created a small test flamethrower-like particle animation yesterday with our new tool "TimelineFX".The workflow is pretty nice, it could use a little more options added, but its not shabby.
I am looking forward to see this flamethrower in action to see if Ed's implementation really is 1:1 what I created.
The strange thing is that the *.eff file I exported from TimelineFX is actually 4.4 MB ! I can't tell where that comes from, as in theory it should just export loads of numbers and one image (namely the particle image used in the effect).Gotta figure that out.

Even poorer JJ...

2011-09-17T13:05:00.003+01:00

As the game gets more complete and all the sections of the game get added its starting to look better and better, now I have the basic HUD (Heads Up Display) in there this displays your health, score, keys and bullets. I still have to add the option to change selected item but this is being worked on as I type.

Additionally since I added these I also have made it so they actually do something now JJ can die the lives can decrease and the game can end, also his bullets can run out as well. Keys on the other hand dont do anything yet but will do later. The game is starting to look really nice and its all falling into place, once I have the ending portal in place for the game we can finally complete the levels.

I still have to add ladders and climbable sections to the engine this will be added next to make the generator complete, game wise the engine can generate any one of over four billion different possible levels this means it will have loads of replayability, coupled with the other stuff we want to add to it will make this a loverly game.

One thing to note here is not to add overly too much to the game as to much happening on screen will bog the game down and you will start to lose frames to effects, nobody likes to play a game running at ten frames a second but will love a game running at thirty or sixty frames a second.

EDIT: Well I have just recoded the collision system so now it uses C++ function calls instead of BlitzMax ones, this has got me a 2000% speed increate when starting levels, some things are still better done in C++ ;)

More soon...

Poor JJ...

2011-09-16T15:40:00.002+01:00

Death has now been added to JJ, the poor bloke can be killed by all manner of nasties. These range from monsters patrolling the levels to traps that spring at random. If he is unlucky enough to get in the way of one of these and caught he will loose a precious life.

All I need to add now is the restarting of the level and it will be done, after all the lives have run out I also need to add the ending sequence as well before it returns the player to the main menu :).

Its all getting rather exciting :)

More soon...

Testing effects...

2011-09-14T11:56:00.003+01:00

Well lately we have been looking at Timeline FX for our graphics effects this is a good system and at 29.99 its a steal the editor comes with loads of things you can use for your games and you can create sheets of images if you so desire, at the moment im putting together a test so I can use it in JJ for some of the stuff that is required in the game.

JJ is coming along really nicely too and its looking really good I still have some things I would like to change to make it more 'perfect' but these will be sorted over the coming week :).

I have also got a lighting system down that will allow me to use unlimited lights in a future 2d game it doesnt sit well in JJ but I can work on that later as I have to study FBO's to make it lightning fast for that game as its system requirements are going to be very intensive.

Well spike traps are now in there and I have started on getting JJ to be injured by things in the game as well as tidying up loose ends once its all in place then we can move forward and see how much room we have to manoeuvre with regards to everything else that has to be added. On the plus side I have managed to squeeze out some more runtime by adjusting some of the systems in the game making them more refined this will allow us to have more stuff in the game making it look even more special :)

More soon...

We are no longer alone.....

2011-09-06T17:21:00.003+01:00

Well I have now got around to re-adding the monsters into the JJ game these move around the level and add another element to the game, with limited bullets its either a fight or flight plan. Game wise the whole thing is coming together really nicely now I have added the complete redefine system so you can choose the controls you like and in what combination you like this gives the game a more polished feel to it. Once I add everything back in there it will be much nearer completion than it was before. I also have some small niggles to sort out this will complete the whole experience :).

Emm and I have also another thing planned for this game and it will be a corker once its implemented and the game is nearing completion I will tell you more but it will be hinted at as time goes along one such hint is the title :)

More soon...

Machine Gun Ed

2011-08-26T11:26:00.000+01:00

Ed sends those builds like a machine gun, and each one feels better than the last, has more features integrated and...gives us more ideas what to add.
Bloody brilliant stuff.

Even more progress...

2011-08-25T19:07:00.002+01:00

Well things are going very well now we have the basics down for a brilliant and beautiful game, the language we have ended up on is BlitzMax this has enabled us to write fast tight code that we can reuse later on again and again.

On the game front JJ is playable now, we can move around and collect items in the game also manoeuvre around the levels I still need to make some small adjustments to the game to make it so the inaccessible areas are reachable once thats done then there will be nothing stopping us from moving ahead and making a game that will stand the test of time.

One brilliant problem that we encountered was the lighting issues these have now been sorted (for now) and look amazing I will upload a screen shot of the game once we get more into it as its still early days and some things in the game need more polish. To get the game to a complete state we want to have networking in there, two player one machine playability and some other sections like sound/music once thats all in there with the rest of the level design elements, code and sound then we can move it from alpha to beta :)

More soon...

Progress once again...

2011-08-22T20:14:00.002+01:00

Well we have moved JJ over to Windows and Mac (with maybe a linux build later on) the reason is a simple one Apple AppStore is too flooded with games and apps that if you dont keep updating your game every so often it disappears into obscurity. Also the selling price of loads of the titles is a meagre 59p (GBP) this isnt good if you spent a year on it and it sells some then disappears into the void never to be heard of till the next update or someone searches you out specifically.

So moving JJ to Windows/Mac isnt without its problems most of them I am overcoming and the renderer is in place now and the game engine is coming along nicely, the game itself is going to be something rather special I hope you all will like it and play it.

More soon...

Ah sweet memories

2011-08-18T15:14:00.000+01:00

Yeah, it was my fault we couldn't finish "Fury Squadron", but the more we do now iwth Unity, the more we appreciate that we could (and probably SHOULD) reboot that game, give it a facelift and release it.
In the meantime, I am doing concept art for one of our games (if anybody of You out there has the blueprints for a cloning device, please send it OUR WAY ASAP, or as Neo would say: "We need guns.Lots of guns.").

9000+ visitors and counting...

2011-08-10T22:18:00.002+01:00

Yep we finally reached 9000 visitors which isnt bad seeing as the blog isnt that old, well neither are we :). Graveyard Dogs started almost two years ago and in those two years we got a iPod game out there (iSmashem Galactic) and have several other games in the pipeline, also we have looked at several different programming system and tools and have discarded LOADS of tools in favour of a select few. Its been a hectic ride these last two years but I do feel that we are MUCH closer to where we want to be as a software developer.

As a little back story me and Emm go way back we met years ago when I was working on EMP, Emm offered to update everything to loverly high poly models though this offer was refused we stayed in contact and worked on another title called 'Fury Squadron' there are some pictures floating about the internet on that one. Sadly due to real-life reasons the project was shelved indefinately, a few years ago apart from the 'how are you' emails I fired off a email to emm asking if he wanted to finish Fury Squadron to this Emm said nah but wanted to make a different games and Emm game me a design plan of the game and I quickly had a working engine to develop the game he required. Our first game idea was a dungeon romp which has been paused in development whilst we look at other tools, the next one was a iPod game called 'iSmashem Galactic' this was completed and released a year ago. Our other titles are still in production and now we have the tools together I think we can get the games to the masses quicker and more efficiently.

On the tools front we have decided to go with Unity, not only is it cross platform but also allows for deployment on iPod, XBox360, PS3 and Wii (with special license) along side the OSX and Windows platforms. On the Tombstone front I am still very much interested in getting that working and once its to a suitable level I will look to making something with that for now though we are using Unity :)

I am currently working on getting a load of reusable scripts out so we can bolt together great games out of reusable scripts and get games out there fast and efficiently without having to reinvent the wheel everytime just change the tire :)

More soon on this and everything else...

Comparison

2011-08-06T13:08:00.001+01:00

Experience is really paying off. The grey head has 294 polies, the coloured one has 216. That mean expression I wanted already shows on the smooth shaded model.

UNITY, Unity, unity....

2011-08-03T11:05:00.003+01:00

Well after some discussion we intend to create our first clutch of games using Unity, Emm has located options in the editor allowing us to go right back to DirectX 7 (shudder) and test it in there. Unity itself seems quite accomplished as engines go so moving forwards through the engine should be quite simple.

Unity is a very polished engine (it should be for $1500 for each platform ;) ) and making games using it should be quite simple and straightforward, once we get our first games out there we can do anything imaginable to make some really nice looking and decent stuff :)

Tombstone is still being worked on and we have managed to get a 60000 poly sphere working on a 1Ghz netbook running at 60fps so its getting there, I do want to move forwards with BlitzMax/C++ via this route though so there is some things there that will need looking at there as to which one suits us better.

As you can see from this Blog Emm is in full swing for our first Unity game, and at the moment I am still toying with Unity getting everything in place so we can get the game out as quickly as possible. There is loads of information online about Unity and its scripting so its just a case of getting it all into the game and making it the best we can with what we have available.

More soon...

Wip

2011-08-01T15:19:00.001+01:00

Layered textures in Unity...

2011-07-27T21:01:00.000+01:00

Experimenting with layered textures in UNITY3D.

JJ moving forwards...

2011-07-27T13:24:00.004+01:00

Well today I have been adding more stuff to JJ this clears up certain sections of the engine. Now the engine will load in the monsters relating to a particular level so Egypt will have mummies and scorpions and Atlantis will have little piranha fish as more enemies are sent over by Emm I can add them to the engine. Also I have made it so when a monster is loaded it will then keep tabs of how many are in there so it doesnt put a monster on the level from a dead entry in the list (this would crash the app).

I have also put in the office that JJ has and its placed in the correct position on loading, now all I need is the desk then I can move forwards with that segment of the JJ system :).

I have also removed the WIP text from the frontend now its 'Treasure of the Ancients' :)

More soon...

Emm: Desk is in the making, probably will be finished by the weekend :)

Graveyard Dogs goes Unity...

2011-07-26T21:09:00.003+01:00

Well after much testing and discussion between myself and Emm we have decided to use the Unity game engine for Graveyard Dogs titles that are going to be worked on in the coming years, Tombstone will still be in the pipeline but it will take some of the pressure off coding it whist I work on other projects.

Once we get more titles out there it will give us more omph to move into creating other titles and other applications for us to use to allow us to make our games much faster than before, Unity is one such application its easy to use and once we get stuff working in it we can then move forwards to getting everything out there to the masses.

The only drawback of Unity is its pricetag at $1500 for Mac/Windows and Web deployment for the Pro license (no Unity splash screen) it can be extravagent. We will however work within the confines of the Free version at the moment till we have something to release this will allow us to test it fully and see what it can do :)

Its always good to test these things to make sure they are good enough for what you want them for there is nothing worse than writing half of the game to find out there is a niggling bug that wont be fixed or cant be located by the original programming team behind it. This is partly the reason that Tombstone is still being worked on so that we have something to fall back on when something goes wrong yes it will be a while away but its being worked on.

More soon...

Using Unity to its potential...

2011-07-21T20:01:00.002+01:00

Well I have been looking at Unity still after working through some niggles (namely adding stuff to the editors 3d window in the base scene doesnt get saved) I have been looking at scenes these form every level in Unity so what you create can be seen by players :)

Once I create these I will be able to make a small demo game to actually test :)

More soon...

Concept Art

2011-07-18T01:40:00.000+01:00

As usual, this is for one of our game projects.

Unity3D in a browser window (BeGone browser FPS)

2011-07-17T11:57:00.000+01:00

Its really fascinating, 3D in the browser window is making leaps ahead every week it seems, also thanks to Unity3D. Behold the interesting post processing effects (DOF).

Unifying all of the Unity...

2011-07-15T18:00:00.003+01:00

As you can see we are getting further forwards using Unity, once we have all the scripts down we will be able to release LOADS of different games using Unity :)

Edit: Well I am currently studying collision, once thats in there I can move onto other sections of the game plan. I already have third person controls in there with mouse look :). Unity makes loads of stuff really easy but some of the things arent explained that easy in the manual one such thing is collision, I had to do an internet search on the topic in the end to get loads of pages of information on the subject to work out in theory how its done.

More soon...

Almost installed...

2011-07-06T18:38:00.001+01:00

...that took a while to get there. Graphics machine runs again :)

Ed: Man Emm ya only set it up today and you already have two empty cups and other stuff randomly placed on ya desk, now it looks like a desk :D

Back to Unity...

2011-07-05T12:13:00.003+01:00

After some discussion me and Emm have a plan for a game thats a bit out of the scope of the current Tombstone engine (it will be possible in future but not yet as there is still LOADS to do) so we have decided to use Unity to create the game, more on the game as it progresses but rest assured its being worked on ;)

On the engine front im current converting sections of code to Tombstone friendly code this takes a little while and once complete will complete large swathes of the Tombstone engine, after going back to the drawing board im glad I did as this new renderer direction has allowed me to create things that just wouldnt be possible in the previous revision so once this revision is completed we can move to getting the engine to a final point where we can make something with it :)

More soon...

Normalising normals....

2011-07-03T22:04:00.002+01:00

Being a math illiterate I havent a clue how to calculate normals (yes my math is THAT bad), luckily there are loads of resources on how to calculate this correctly and efficiently. One such resource is Warners excellent engine thats on the blitz forum, yes this is a young engine by anybodys comparison BUT its easy to understand and a credit to Warner's vision of a excellent engine. Its his UpdateNormals code that I have borrowed and im going to recode it into Tombstone, there are loads of other sections of the engine that will be 'borrowed' as well one such thing is the Quaternion rotation and movement thats another excellent and easy to understand section of code :)

Once all these loverly things are in the engine we will be two BIG steps to completing the engine. A thing to learn from this is if your knowledge base isnt up to the standard required to do complex trigonometry then do a 'google' and locate something thats easy for you to understand this way you can move forwards slowly but surely to your goal and with the internet anybody can write a excellent engine with time and effort.

More soon...

Extended extensions...

2011-07-01T20:38:00.004+01:00

Well today i have coded the section of tombstone that allows Tombstone to work out what is supported by opengl, this section of code it quite extensive and examines ALL opengl extensions to date (list on the opengl.org website) once this is completed then we can quickly identify what works and what isnt supported :)

Heres the log output from the engine (This is from my Mac Mini 2009 edition):

------------------------------------------------------------------------
OpenGL information
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vendor:NVIDIA Corporation
Renderer:NVIDIA GeForce 9400 OpenGL Engine
OpenGL Version:2.1 NVIDIA-1.6.36

Maximum texture units:8
Maximum Texture size:8192
Maximum Lights:8

Extensions:
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix
GL_ARB_vertex_program
GL_ARB_vertex_blend
GL_ARB_window_pos
GL_ARB_shader_objects
GL_ARB_vertex_shader
GL_ARB_shading_language_100
GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays
GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint
GL_EXT_rescale_normal
GL_EXT_draw_range_elements
GL_EXT_fog_coord
GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters
GL_EXT_geometry_shader4
GL_EXT_transform_feedback
GL_APPLE_client_storage
GL_APPLE_specular_vector
GL_APPLE_transform_hint
GL_APPLE_packed_pixels
GL_APPLE_fence
GL_APPLE_vertex_array_object
GL_APPLE_vertex_program_evaluators
GL_APPLE_element_array
GL_APPLE_flush_render
GL_APPLE_aux_depth_stencil
GL_NV_texgen_reflection
GL_NV_light_max_exponent
GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip
GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap
GL_ARB_imaging
GL_ARB_point_parameters
GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp
GL_ARB_multitexture
GL_ARB_texture_env_add
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map
GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3
GL_ARB_multisample
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine
GL_ARB_texture_compression
GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat
GL_ARB_shadow
GL_ARB_depth_texture
GL_ARB_fragment_program
GL_ARB_fragment_program_shadow
GL_ARB_fragment_shader
GL_ARB_occlusion_query
GL_ARB_point_sprite
GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two
GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object
GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object
GL_ARB_draw_buffers
GL_ARB_shader_texture_lod
GL_ARB_color_buffer_float
GL_ARB_half_float_vertex
GL_ARB_texture_rg
GL_ARB_texture_compression_rgtc
GL_ARB_framebuffer_object
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_draw_buffers2
GL_EXT_framebuffer_object
GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit
GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample
GL_EXT_texture_rectangle
GL_ARB_texture_rectangle
GL_EXT_texture_env_add
GL_EXT_blend_color
GL_EXT_blend_minmax
GL_EXT_blend_subtract
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_stencil_wrap
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
GL_EXT_secondary_color
GL_EXT_blend_func_separate
GL_EXT_shadow_funcs
GL_EXT_stencil_two_side
GL_EXT_depth_bounds_test
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc
GL_EXT_texture_compression_dxt1
GL_EXT_texture_sRGB
GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate
GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp
GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil
GL_EXT_bindable_uniform
GL_EXT_texture_integer
GL_EXT_gpu_shader4
GL_EXT_framebuffer_sRGB
GL_EXT_provoking_vertex
GL_APPLE_flush_buffer_range
GL_APPLE_ycbcr_422
GL_APPLE_rgb_422
GL_APPLE_vertex_array_range
GL_APPLE_texture_range
GL_APPLE_float_pixels
GL_ATI_texture_float
GL_ARB_texture_float
GL_ARB_half_float_pixel
GL_APPLE_pixel_buffer
GL_APPLE_object_purgeable
GL_NV_point_sprite
GL_NV_blend_square
GL_NV_fog_distance
GL_NV_depth_clamp
GL_NV_multisample_filter_hint
GL_NV_fragment_program_option
GL_NV_fragment_program2
GL_NV_vertex_program2_option
GL_NV_vertex_program3
GL_NV_conditional_render
GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once
GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3
GL_ATI_separate_stencil
GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp
GL_SGIS_texture_lod
GL_EXT_texture_array
GL_EXT_vertex_array_bgra
GL_ARB_instanced_arrays
GL_ARB_depth_buffer_float
GL_EXT_packed_float
GL_EXT_texture_shared_exponent

------------------------------------------------------------------------

More soon...

Its all coming together nicely...

2011-07-01T00:20:00.002+01:00

Well now that sections of the engine have been recoded its all coming together nicely now and im very pleased with the results, on the whole its working smoother than it originally was which is always a bonus.

What im coding at the moment is getting the system to check the hardware to make sure something is supported in hardware before using it this is always handy as I dont want to use vertex buffers, frame buffer or shaders if they arent supported :)

More soon...

Normals are anything but...

2011-06-28T22:23:00.003+01:00

Well i am currently working on getting the normals sorted once these are completed the lighting should be complete for the first phase. After that i can move onto other sections of the engine and getting tota all the more complete :)

EDIT: Well I have added the Texture and Surface system to the new engine code and this will form one of the major parts of the Tombstone Engine once normals are in there I will move onto getting everything perfect so far. I have code to do the normals and they will be added to the renderer as soon as I get a free second (family life is hectic at the moment).

More soon...

Let there be light...

2011-06-25T23:19:00.003+01:00

Well I have added Lighting to Tombstone this is just the basic OpenGL lights that come as part of the package, this is just to make the engine look more then a 2d blob engine where everything isnt that interesting or its flat shaded. Lights may not sound that important BUT they are they can make a flat looking engine have depth and something that does something loverly in the engine.

I do have information on doing shaders in a book I have but I dont want to jump ahead and run into problems so I will not be adding them till I have everything done for the basic engine once the engine is the same spec as something like minib3d or warners engine then I will look towards shaders and add them to the engine to finalise the lighting system and give it realtime shadows as well.

Edit: Well leading on from lighting quite nicely I have to work out the normals of each triangle in the entity this is really interesting stuff and I have always wondered about things like this, once I have it all together I will put a nice piccy of it :)

More soon...

Getting to a complete engine...

2011-06-22T18:51:00.002+01:00

Well I have been seriously looking at GLUT but a good friend told me that GLUT takes to much control away from the programmer which I agree with, now before you shoot me or burn me at the stake if you look at GLUT the whole thing hasnt been updated it a while and there are other ways of doing things.

I do like GLUT its good at what it does but I have also been looking back at my BlitzMax engine and I have managed to work a fix into the offing that makes the spheres I wanted in there complete there are some small snags but its looking good and once that works 100% then I can move to the LWO loader and get that updated to the same code.

One thing to take into account when writing an engine is that not always the first build of your engine will be the perfect one that will take you all up to Doom3 and beyond, I have been writing engines for years and Tombstone has been through about four iterations before I even got close to settling for BlitzMax but I have removed the second version of TombstoneMax (the one that used max2d) and have gone back to my own engine this will be sorted in the final build as I would like Max2d intergration to make hud's etc easier. Remember never give up writing your engine as Doom wasnt written first time it went through loads of revisions and improvements to getting it the finished game it is, I would love to code an engine that worked straight out with no problems but being a perfectionist I always see things that need improving so I improve them.

More soon...

Swatting up on everything OpenGL...

2011-06-18T23:32:00.002+01:00

Well I now have a book titled 'OpenGL Superbible third edition' which is absolutely brilliant for budding engine programmers like myself as everything is explained so easy that a kindergarden kid can understand it which is about my maths level ;). With the information contained in the book I will be able to write everything efficiently and perfectly this will contribute to a perfect engine that will allow us to move forwards making the Tombstone engine.

OpenGL Superbibles are up to the fifth edition I got the third edition as it covers what I want to support as the fifth one caters for OpenGL 3.x and above the one I have caters nicely for 1.x to 2.x and does everything from a basic square on screen right upto shaders, shadows and advanced lighting techniques.

Any budding programmer can never be without enough information either from the internet or via technical reference manuals, its always best to get more than one example for each thing your trying to do as this will broaden your understanding on the techniques used to get the results you want after all if you always follow one coding paradigm then are you sure its the right one. I have fallen fowl to this before and had to rewrite loads of code to do the things I was doing before, for example Tombstone is now on its third revision but this last one will be the killer one as I have all the information to hand to allow me to create the engine as I had always intended it may also allow me to make the iOS version of Tombstone more efficient as well. It has always been my fond wish that Tombstone either on Windows, OSX, Linux or iOS will always be a C/C++ engine and the reference material I have now will allow me to make that a reality. Watch this space as the next version of Tombstone will be C only it may even forgo the ++ :)

After all there are LOADS of computers out there that have C but 'no' C++ Amiga machines of yore are one such machine, if we can build support for the C side of things on there then we are away I will move to C++ if its required as its a simple adjustment to get code from C to C++ but thats something I will look at down the road after all if the engine can be C then I will make it so :).

More soon...

More soon...

First Linux build...

2011-06-15T18:27:00.003+01:00

Well I have now built our first Linux build of Tombstone this basically means it compiles perfect on Windows/OSX/Linux and iOS. I think once its fully together across all platforms then we should have everything covered :P

This is an exciting time for me as the engine is running on a ASUS eeepc 701SD 8G and it runs at full speed even on this old machine :)

At least we now know we are heading in the right direction for 100% cross platform compatibility this means we can move ahead with getting it all together and moving ahead with our plans for loads of games across the board.

More soon...

Tombstone Engine (part deux)...

2011-06-14T22:39:00.002+01:00

Well the new version of Tombstone is looking quite nice and it will feature loads of stuff that was in si's minib3d and warners engine (yes guys you will be given credit where due and thanks for making your engines open source :) ), both of these engines are quite portable but I love making things myself so I will be looking at their engines and then coding my own routines to get everything working as it should do.

Minib3d and warners engine both feature multiple cameras, multi texturing and in warners case basic shadows so these will be implemented as required and as I understand them. I am still looking at Unity as a stopgap measure to get the games out there so watch this space for further developments.

On the Tombstone front I am currently recoding the entity system to everything is entities or related to them in some way so camera will be entities etc the only things that wont will be the textures, sounds etc :)

More soon...

Back to the drawing board...

2011-06-12T12:27:00.005+01:00

Well I have been looking at different render methods for getting stuff to the screen and the current system we have has some issues that I need to rectify, once these are done then I should be able to render everything perfectly and get it all working. I will be looking MUCH deeper into this over the coming days to try and get everything working as it should do :)

Heres hoping with the new system I will be able to load the stinger properly as I think this is part and parcel of the problem.

Edit [1]: Well now I have move glDrawElements from GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT to GL_UNSIGNED_INT and I want to move the whole engine as far as possible to make it load high poly meshes as required at the moment it seems to be struggling in this area so once I find out whats wrong then we can move forwards with our Doom3/4/5 engine ;)

Edit [2]: I have looked on Amazon for some books on the game programming subject this will help me understand how to program everything required to get an engine up and running and so that I dont keep running into pitfalls where I have to backtrack to locate why things happen.

Edit [3]: Well I have a new engine basics now this will also have 3d added as time goes but the current system now has a FULL BlitzMax 2d integration already this will allow me to skip certain sections of the engine like the image system that is in the iOS version this will allow us to make ANY 2d game like JJ or iSmashem already.

More soon...

Spheres of influence....

2011-06-08T23:07:00.002+01:00

Well I am currently recoding the createSphere function the one I had I borrowed from the Blitz forums now this might sound good but it didnt work as I wanted it to within the Tombstone enviroment sooooo in good Ed fashion I am recoding the function from scratch to be as lean as possible but still give me excellent results. Early tests of the code give me the desired data for me to create the perfect sphere next will be to create the mesh in the engine and see how high detail it can get.

Everything I am testing at the moment is within the BlitzMax programming language, this language is very robust and makes a perfect testbed to work out new routines and functions it also has OOP (for those that dont know the acronym its Object Orientated Programming) which is very helpful.

More soon...

Still some bugs...

2011-06-07T13:49:00.002+01:00

Well the cone and cylinder doesnt look like it should do, this is not a major issue I just need to look into it and locate where the problem is.

On the BlitzMax front the engine is coming along nicely, I have now got round to limiting the FPS of the engine using a simple timing system that will be used later now the whole engine runs at 60fps this can be set in code so makes it more useable to everyone :).

Once everything is in the max side of things then I will have to convert it to C++ if required or continue move towards getting it all done and get games out there as was originally intended. Dont get me wrong I love C++ but BlitzMax does make engine writing a lot easier and at the moment its coming along nicely but that could all change as math isnt my strong point I will get a good OpenGL engine writing book on the subject as I want everything to work like clockwork :).

Well back to the keyboard...

to C or not to C that is the question....

2011-06-06T22:39:00.004+01:00

Well I have added the create cone system to the C++ Tombstone engine this was relatively simple to convert over as the engines command set it the same from BlitzMax to C++ versions of Tombstone. I will also be adding CreateSphere and CreateCylinder this will bring across the last two creation functions to make it more feature complete.

I also added renderMode to the surface class in Tombstone this basically allows me to change the render mode for a particular surface in a mesh so one surface could be rendered as a triangle fan with the relevant vertex and triangle data and another one could be quads (not iOS) or triangles. It doesnt seem like much BUT the end results will allow for much more freedom when programming games using it for example instead of adjusting Tombstone to change the render mode of a surface all I need to do is call Surface[ surfaceToChange ]->renderMode = GL_TRIANGLES to change it to triangle rendering.

Im still working on the LWO loader but I will use BlitzMax to test this out and once it works as it should I will bring that across as well :)

On the Unity front the entire tutorial is complete now it was rather painless and simple to do and I have a little more understanding of what is required to make a game work, the proof is in the pudding is in the eathing as the saying goes (for those not in the UK its a small sentence that means something to us but seems strange to everyone else :) ) so I will look at making another game in Unity to see how easy it is what form it takes I havent decided but thats something for another day :)

EDIT: I have also now added CreateCylinder to the mix, and I have made it so if the ends of the cylinder or the base of the cone is not required the UV coordinates are adjusted so the texture fits and looks complete. If the programmer requires adjustment later they can adjust the UV's themselves quite simply with the VertexCoord command :)

More soon...

Linux...

2011-06-01T10:49:00.002+01:00

Well linux is getting there and I will be building a wrapper that supports everything to work on Windows/Linux and Mac OSX this will cover all the bases.

I will still be looking at Unity as this is a excellent system for rapid game development and we will use this until Tombstone is to the required level to make games quickly and easily once that is done then we can move forwards with Tombstone. Making an engine is a lengthy process and it all takes time and real life issues takes up loads of my time so I dont have as much time as I used to to make games.This will be rectified soon...

More soon...

Unity...

2011-05-29T22:30:00.002+01:00

Well I have been playing with Unity3d over the last day or so and I have to say its looking amazing the tutorials explain it quite well (they are a little rough around the edges but they are good at what they do), I have managed to wade through the 3d platformer tutorial and im upto page 42 at the moment (its a playable game as it stands) so once its complete I will post some pics of the demo :).

Ogre3d is a brilliant engine BUT its a pig to setup and there is too much download x compile y to get z, once you have z you have to make sure its compiled correctly before you use it. Unity has no such problems like Leadwerks Engine its simply a case of moving stuff around coding some scripts and its away.

The models etc for the 3d platformer are on par with Ratchet and Klank on the PS3 so its quite nice looking :)

More soon...

Shadows rising...

2011-05-26T23:09:00.001+01:00

Just had a deep conversation with Ed, and we are checking out shadowing options now.There are several, and I like the soft edged look of projected shadows most, DOOM 3 is nice, but I like it softer...

Ed: There are loads of shadow options available to us, it depends on how easy these are to implement into the engine we have. Math isnt my major strong point so the easier it is to understand the better, I will definitely get a good book on this subject as I want Tombstone to be the best engine it can be :)

XML Part 3...

2011-05-25T12:35:00.002+01:00

Well now the XML loader is complete I can get back to bubbles, no not your ordinary game bubbles as they are boring I want real bubbles that look amazing.

On the XML front the entire system now creates XML documents and saves them out in a Excel and OpenOffice readable form, it can also read in OpenOffice XML documents and the ones created by the system. This should cover us for a good few years till they change something but by then we will have other tools in place instead.

More soon...

XML part 2...

2011-05-23T23:07:00.002+01:00

I am now working on loading the XML file this will be done to be easily convertible to C++ so I can add this to the iOS engine easily, at the moment it grabs everything and then I am running through converting the data to a engine readable form.

Once this is done I will continue to move back to JJ's bubbles that are coming together really nicely and will look amazing once complete, this will have to be seen to be believed :).

More soon...

Blast from the past part 1...

2011-05-22T18:22:00.012+01:00

These are the shots of a game I was working in 2005/2006 it was never released because building levels, animating characters and designing everything took a huge toll the project stalled and went nowhere. I am posting them because Hunted is on the cards as a Graveyard Dogs project and in my opinion its very much doable using Tombstone once I get some of the extra commands in there once thats done there will be nothing stopping us.

Oh and I have already started adding Bubbles to JJ this will be added with other sections of the game for testing purposes, once in there this will complete another section and move us ever onwards to the release date.

More soon...

Emm: Seriously cool, I love the lighting effects, creepy atmosphere !
What did You use for building the levels ?

Ed: Well I used a little known program called Quill3d to design the levels as it has a b3d importer that will allow ANY b3d mesh to be added to a level as a static brush making level design and placement easy, everything is lightmapped along with the rest of it making it look amazing. There is a downside that lightmapping takes a good eight hours to get to the fine detail level.

Emm:Interesting, so all the boxes and barrels are static, lightmapped and cant be destroyed ? Is there any physics ?

Ed: Yes all the barrels etc are static entities that are actually part of the level mesh. As for physics the game features basic gravity and other sections this can be changed 'per area' so in one section of the level there could be no gravity where there is in others. Decals are also catered for as well which was cool and look amazing in the game when its running :). Coronas you see in the images fade out when behind objects just like in the Unreal engines around the original Unreal Tournament game. Vehicles were implemented and the Quad bike was usable I designed a track to test it on and it was fun too :). Hunted was about 40% complete when it stalled due to model constraints and time to plough into it.

Emm: I remember those lensflares/coronas/halos from Fury Squadron, that was looking pretty realistic.I imagine if the Quad worked like the Mako in Mass Effect, it would be a hell of a lot of fun and make for a great diversion between indoor levels.A lot of the atmosphere of games like Amnesia, Penumbra and System Shock is coming from the sound environment though, so its not all graphics :)

Ed: Hunted is no exception to the rule the background ambience is definately something that will be in the game from 'taunts' to downright terror, it was planned to have one surgical robot have a dentist drill complete with sound effect. Yes it was going to be that sinister :)

XML...

2011-05-21T21:09:00.004+01:00

Well I have been looking at XML for some sections of our 'creations' I have now looked much DEEPER into this and think that the Excel version of XML is easiest to work through (the tutorials are amazing in this area) so I will use that one, there is another bonus for this which simply means that OpenOffice and Excel can open these.

At the moment I have the systems in place to identify the XML version, the Excel version and it now creates a worksheet. I will be adding tables and text to the system yet. Yes I could do this in notepad/TextEdit etc but then I would have to do it EVER game with this system I can just do some simple calls to create everything and add the data required to the mix this is then saved out and sorted for the system. Once the entire system is complete it will allow me and Emm to edit items in the game VERY easily.

Well now the entire system works perfectly and I can create a worksheet and add data to it that will appear in the final sheet, this will enable us to quicky and easily edit data on the fly :P

More soon...

Emm:Its brilliant to be part of this, watching our game design tools grow is a particular pleasure.Designing fun with spreadsheets isnt the most eletrifying aspect of game design, but it gets the job done quickly and easily, mass changes to game elements can be done efficiently (imagine changing the values of minerals to be gathered for example) and the whole thing gets more structured and ordered.
Ed has surpassed himself again and coded this in no time.

Merging the world...

2011-05-15T21:50:00.002+01:00

Well im working on a new function this one is called AddEntity. Basically the idea is simple adding one entities data to another entity with the offset location and texture data, this has the added bonus when its created to allow for me to create cities, forests etc

I have created the section of the code where a surface isnt located in the mesh so a new one is created to accommodate the data, I am now working on getting the entire section complete where it will merge the existing data with a existing surface this will make it completely perfect and once working 100% will allow us to do things like huge terrains where the trees are rendered using one entity and are pre-merged to create a whole section of the game engine.

Exciting times ahead and loads of possibilities for extra things to do with these sort of functions...

More soon...

LWO take 2...

2011-05-13T21:19:00.002+01:00

Well the previous LWO Loader is working but has some issues that need resolving, however Lee 'Terabit' Page was kind enough to send me the LWO2B3D source code he has that I am now converting to BlitzMax code this will enable me to load LWO files like Lee's Tattoo package does ( http://www.terabit-software.co.uk/ ) :).

Once this is in Tombstone then we can move to much more informative areas :)

More soon...

Heavy load

2011-05-08T18:47:00.000+01:00

No, I am not talking about Ed's built, but about some future stuff we have in the pipepline.
Since we have this HUGE list of ideas, its sometimes difficult to find a roof for the games, and both Ed and I love to create universes, so we think that if we can create a brand which can be used in different genres, we can give Graveyard Dogs that special edge.
We started a space game years ago, and it went pretty well until I had to drop out of it for personal reasons (health, family, time), and we still treat it as the foundation of maybe something bigger.We both think that one of our game universes might deserve a MMO, and so its a whole new level to think of a game universe when designing instead of just a game.
So to avoid getting burned out with our current production, I decided to spend some time on designing and thinking about unifications and collected ideas.This is a WIP of one of our future characters.

Eight thousand views and still going...

2011-05-08T02:19:00.002+01:00

We have reached eight thousand views of our blog, who would have thought that it would get that far :)

Lightwave all the way...

2011-05-06T13:53:00.003+01:00

Well I have the basic Lightwave mesh that Emm sent me working now, so now its onto the other mesh this is a old space ship from a 'never released' game me and Emm worked on over seven years ago once that loads in and looks as it should then I can move into other areas of the engine.

Thanks to Warner I have code that allows for movement and rotation in 3d space I will learn how this works and add this to the Tombstone project once this is in there the last major hurdle will be complete (adding simple lights to it will be easy) then its onwards and upwards.

Finally I can add the Blitz3d loader and the Milkshape3d loaders to the mix then I can make meshes for the games as placeholders (they cant be as good as Emm's ;) ).

Edit:Well there are loads of new tags for me to add to the lightwave loader and loads of 'envelopes' to decode these strange things appear everywhere in meshes for things like animation etc. Now personally I like the Blitz3d format as its compatible with milkshape3d BUT Emm loves Lightwave (the classic editor that harkens from the Amiga days) now dont get me wrong lightwave is an amazing package but I cannot afford it sooo I got milkshape3d which to me does everything I want :). As Emm is the graphics artist for Graveyard Dogs I have to think what would be easier for him in relation to getting media out there so we can use it in our games, you see in a partnership like a programming team you have to give and take. Now I could have just coded a LWO to b3d converter but that would be cheating so I opted for a LWO loader this may seem like a copout BUT it gives us a graphics format to use in our games, I also still want b3d and ms3d in the engine as well for completeness. DirectX .x and 3d studio max .3ds may or may not be added to the mix later but that is undecided as yet.

Well I have me work cut out so its back to the keyboard :)

More soon...

LWO needs work but its getting there...

2011-05-01T22:44:00.002+01:00

Well everything is looking good I still need to work on some of the stuff in the LWO loader but its simple stuff that should be done in the next day or so then it will be at the same level as the iOS version.

I have also located all the source code for Star Rogue (v0.1) this was something me and Emm was looking into a couple of years ago for something like Starflight a classic game in its own right even today, the thing looks amazing even now and I cant wait to see where Star Rogue goes when its complete. I will create a Starflight style game in the same vein as starflight with planet landings and exploration :). I am still in two minds weather or not to code it in 3d or 2d although 3d would look beautiful but 2d would mean we could do much more later on that will still look beautiful and also give us loads more scope (3d is limited by what the GPU can throw around) 2d is down to what the artist can do.

More soon...

LWO Loader getting there...

2011-04-29T13:48:00.006+01:00

Well the LWO loader is now almost complete, its to the testing stage once its finalised all I will have to work on is the sprite system and then Tombstone (Win32/OSX/Linux) will be to the same level as the iOS version. On the whole thing the command set for the iOS version is exactly the same as the other platforms so apps should be compilable with little or no changes to the whole system.

The whole Tombstone on BlitzMax thing is a temporary system that allows us to release onto the relevant platforms these will be brought into the C++ engine when it is required once that is done the whole thing will be write one compile everywhere which is what I wanted from the beginning when I started the project.

Star Rogue through the ages :

This game is an early test of another thing that was a WIP game :)

More soon...

Much ado about everything...

2011-04-25T23:42:00.003+01:00

Well loads of stuff to post this week, this goes as follows (in no particular order):
1) Traps are now fixed - JJ can now be 100% killed by the traps in the game this makes it more appealing to us. I have recoded the trap system to accommodate a more more tighter and more efficient deadly trap placement, it can now check to make sure there isnt two dart traps on the same floor as this was 'too lethal' ;)

2) Spike traps - these are also now 100% lethal, sometimes for some strange reason they werent and JJ could stand on them rather comfortably this has now been rectified and he gets killed every time

3) Cosmetic adjustments - Emm asked me to make some cosmetic adjustments to the game these have also been completed and the game is running much more 'efficiently' now which I am glad to say.

4) TombstoneMax cylinder - this was untested and there were some small niggles that I didnt like now the system can accept a cylinder of some one hundred sides making it loverly and smooth :)

5) LoadLWO - yes this one Emm has been waiting for with baited breath, and I am slowly making my way through the C++ system and converting it over to the TombstoneMax system (this is taking longer than expected but its getting there).

More soon...

Coordinates are now coordinated...

2011-04-18T20:47:00.003+01:00

Well I now have the coordinates for Peru and Europe treasure sets that I have been meaning to add to JJ these will be added next so when they are in we can move to getting everything completed and move forwards :)

I have changed the internals of JJ to accommodate the new graphics as Egypt has loads of treasure items but the others dont have as many, next up will be loading the treasure in :)

Well the treasure is in there now so its off to add the lwo loader to the win32/osx and linux versions of Tombstone :)

More soon...

Massed coding day...

2011-04-17T23:33:00.002+01:00

Well I have managed to get a LOT done today, these are as follows:

a) Dart trap - this now kills JJ, poor guy can now get killed by them rather ruthlessly.

b) Hero death sprite - this is now in the game and looks amazing.

c) Spike trap - this didnt look right and now works as it should do.

d) Player death - this caused some cosmetic problems on the main menu this is now fixed and looks good.

e) sound options - we can now change the volume on the main menu of the game, using the new commands I added the other day everything is possible.

f) Scripting problems - this is also now fixed the player dying on the main menu kept running the script this is now fixed.

g) TOP SECRET PROJECT - On another project I am working on for a good old mate I got the errors down from 40,000+ to 17 this is going well and I cant wait to see the end results, once thats in it will be up from there.

h) CreateCylinder - Tombstone can now create cylinders [UNTESTED], it can already create basic spheres, quads, cubes, cones. Now all thats needed is to recode the sphere code with the new system i have devised it should allow for spheres of very high detail.

Its loverly to have these coding marathons and once they are done I get a sense of amazing progress, the great thing is I learn so much doing things like this especially writing engines like Tombstone. Years ago I wouldnt have the focus to do things like that but now its all coming together, hats off to Josh over at Leadwerks as hes created a great engine that soon will work on everything :).

More soon...

More sound fun...

2011-04-14T21:35:00.004+01:00

Well after working on the main menu system I needed to work out the volume system for Tombstone this has now allowed me to look deeper into it and I have added the following commands:

changeVolume - rather self explanatory allows us to change a volume of a particular sound

changePitch - we can now change the pitch of a particular sound

loopSound, stopLooping - I can now loop a sound and stop it if we want it to stop after the last play.

positionSound - this can now position a sound at a specific x, y, z position.

setSoundVelocity - this can set the velocity of a sound

positionListener - this will position the listener of a sound this can be done for a particular sound for fun effects or you could set it to the same position for all sounds :)

These will allow us to do loads of loverly things with Tombstone and I will be looking into 3d sound as well with sound positioning etc.

More soon...

Menus and subs...

2011-04-13T21:39:00.002+01:00

Well I am currently refining the menu system so it better suits the game we are making this may sound good but its a headache, I have managed to get it working but I still need to work the sub menu's into place. I have some of them in place its only the sound menu and other small sections of the system that are required to be in place.

I have managed to add the death image of the soldier into the game engine and this after a small resizing to suit the rest of the images works perfectly and suits the game perfect. I still have to add the hero death image that I have from Emm along with the treasure system. Once I get all this together I will move onto the treasure and other sections of the game to make it easier for us I will design a item editor for the game (and all other games we create) this should make it easier for us to continue onto other things.

More soon...

Aaaaaahhhhhrg

2011-04-12T18:22:00.001+01:00