next »

[neon]

i frequent makezine and all the other maker areas and such, and there's a couple things you could make that people have already done

http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MKEMS2
(no individually addressable LED's though, what a shame, you can probably do that with a different microcontroller)

monome.org
(maybe if you made a reaaaallllly big one)

[Melly]

One of those led screens with Annabelle's pixel animations on it would be the best gift in the fucking universe.

[muku]

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I could create a sweet game in the "graphical style" of this.

It might be a much cooler way to have a low resolution game (though I guess it technically wouldn't be low resolution anymore) than the traditional giant square pixel approach.

EDIT: if anyone else wants to try this, they can too; mockups would be cool as well

We need this: a software emulator of this thing which is hooked up to a simple scripting language like Lua so that people can easily create games for it. And I want to make it. But I probably don't have time.

[moi]

Hey guys, I have the same toy but even more sophisticated, it's right in front of me right now.

[GregWS]

Hey guys, I have the same toy but even more sophisticated, it's right in front of me right now.

Yeah, but that's like saying HD is better than pixel art (and that's only true sometimes).  Retro's the shit, man!

[muku]

We need this: a software emulator of this thing which is hooked up to a simple scripting language like Lua so that people can easily create games for it. And I want to make it. But I probably don't have time.

Heh. I figured out a quick and easy way to do something like this anyway, using LÖVE, and I just prototyped a little oldschool shmup. Here's a screenshot:



Huge pixels are fun

[deadeye]

Neato

Are you going to develop it further?  I want to play it.

[Farbs]

Heh. I figured out a quick and easy way to do something like this anyway, using LÖVE, and I just prototyped a little oldschool shmup.

Needs bloom.
Holding this opinion makes me uncomfortable.

[GregWS]

Sweet; at least something good has come from all this deception!

[increpare]

Heh. I figured out a quick and easy way to do something like this anyway, using LÖVE, and I just prototyped a little oldschool shmup.

Needs bloom.

Definitely. 


There: MUCH BETTER

Though, we must confess, even without the presence of such an eminent figure, it's still quite a dashingly handsome prototype Muku.

[muku]

Neato

Are you going to develop it further?  I want to play it.

Ah, I don't know. I'm not really a shmup player, so I doubt I could make a fun one. I mean I could get this one to a playable state and put it out there if you really want it...

Needs bloom.
Holding this opinion makes me uncomfortable.

You know, you're actually right. It's just that I did it in Lua, so I would have to reimplement it in something more sophisticated to make that happen.

[Farbs]

You know, you're actually right. It's just that I did it in Lua, so I would have to reimplement it in something more sophisticated to make that happen.

You can fake bloom pretty easily with a standard 2D engine. I did this in Fishie. For this game all you'd need to do is create a "flare" bitmap (load your peg image, make image bigger, recenter, gaussian blur), then draw flares over all the pegs with an additive blend. Done!

[muku]

You know, you're actually right. It's just that I did it in Lua, so I would have to reimplement it in something more sophisticated to make that happen.

You can fake bloom pretty easily with a standard 2D engine. I did this in Fishie. For this game all you'd need to do is create a "flare" bitmap (load your peg image, make image bigger, recenter, gaussian blur), then draw flares over all the pegs with an additive blend. Done!

That's clever. I'm gonna try that.


EDIT: Farbs, you truly are a king amongst men!



I didn't even have to make a separate flare sprite, I just blended it in with my LED sprite and render everything additively (since I have a black background anyway). So I don't need a second pass.

Actually it looks a bit artifical on the screenshot, but it's very pretty in motion.

[neon]

arrrrr you should release this so we can play with it too! it looks so nice 

[muku]

No problem. Why not.

1. Download sweet, sweet LÖVE. Install it.
2. Download this. (Forum attachments broken? )
3. Doubleclick it.

Um, I should perhaps mention that there's no collision detection So, this isn't a game at all. Techdemo at best. Also, the code's a fucking mess, a disgrace. You have been warned. It might be too slow for some because I put a hardcoded sleep() in there.

If you want to play with the source, just rename the .love file to a .zip file and unzip it into a folder. You can then start it by dragging the folder onto love.exe.

[Farbs]

I didn't even have to make a separate flare sprite, I just blended it in with my LED sprite and render everything additively (since I have a black background anyway). So I don't need a second pass.

Oh right, yeah that works. 

If you separate 'em though then you can adjust the flare layer's brightness independently to the LED, which makes it much easier to simulate twinkling. It also means you can have slightly different colours for the two, which again is something I found useful in Fishie.

Boosting the flare on missiles and ships as they take damage would be pretty cool too.

[neon]

awesome!! 
thanks a ton muku!

edit:

If you separate 'em though then you can adjust the flare layer's brightness independently to the LED, which makes it much easier to simulate twinkling.

actually, he's already got some pretty good twinkling going.  you might want to take a look.  you definitely have a point though.

[muku]

I didn't even have to make a separate flare sprite, I just blended it in with my LED sprite and render everything additively (since I have a black background anyway). So I don't need a second pass.

Oh right, yeah that works. 

If you separate 'em though then you can adjust the flare layer's brightness independently to the LED, which makes it much easier to simulate twinkling. It also means you can have slightly different colours for the two, which again is something I found useful in Fishie.

Boosting the flare on missiles and ships as they take damage would be pretty cool too.

Dude you are way ahead of me

Great ideas. I'm just a bit wary of performance because this 2d engine doesn't batch quads, so every LED is already in its own glBegin/End batch (I presume at least), and adding separate flares would double that. Plus Lua isn't exactly the fastest thing around. But if I'd reimplement it in D, I'd definitely go down that path.

[GregWS]

Well, I'm really impressed! 

And I can't seem to upload a new avatar (or even my old one for that matter), so I think forum attachments are broken too.

Do we just ask Derek then?  Or is this someone else's domain.  Not having an avatar isn't cool, and I still haven't chosen which image hosting service I want to use, so I can't fix this problem that way until I make up my mind.