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[SP9000]

I'm a long time lurker of the devlogs board, but I had to register because, like jute, this looks straight up my alley.  Right down to the combination of fantasy and sci-fi.  I'm very excited that you're developing on/for Linux too!

I have many gameplay questions, but I can see that you're early in development and working very hard to get the basics implemented, so I won't pry yet.

We are working on this all day every day, so we do need a little bit of pocket money to survive ... we quit our jobs as translators to try and become indie game devs, so we will ask for a small amount for the full version

Wow!  Best of luck to you!

Keep it up guys, I'm looking forward to future progress!

[DementedChicken]

Ah! Another awesome comment! Thank you so much!!!! 

Yeah, we do need to get the basics up and working, but we really appreciate input from anyone who has ideas, so when we release the demo, please play it and let us know what you think. (i.e. what to add, what to change, etc.)

If this game proves to be even remotely popular, we really want to keep on adding to it and improving it for a very long time.

We are going to try and release something playable within 3 weeks. I tend to get over optimistic about estimating the time to complete a job, but we are going to try!!!

[DementedChicken]

A problem, although a minor one, has reared its ugly head!

The animation system had to be thrown out completely!!!  It was keyframe animation, which was working fine until I noticed the file sizes. 40 megs for a sword swing animation!?

Yep, 400 frames x 2500 polys x (3 surface normals) x 3 floating point numbers x 4 bytes =

*drum roll* 36000000 bytes = 34 megs ... and that's just the normals (and not the vertices)

Whoops! 

I thought I could get away with keyframe animation until a later version but the filesizes and memory usage is stupid, so I've been busy implementing skeletal animation into my engine!!

I have absolutely ZERO experience in skeletal animation so it took me all last night and all of today to figure it all out and get the skeletal data out of blender and into my engine. I will take another day of work to get it working it seems 

On the bright side, this was something that *did* needed to be done and will save me the trouble of doing it when I come to add all the features that need it like characters with random clothes/armour/weapons and ragdoll physics, and maybe procedural animation one day!

It's kinda hard to see what's going on here, but it's a screenshot of the bones for an arm and sword that was rigged earlier (I was using it as a test model):


But we will have exciting stuff soon!!! Please bear with us! 

[DementedChicken]

Hehe, after 24hrs of skeletal animation stuff I got sick of it so I
started upgrading the outdoor graphics. I'll come back to the
animation system again shortly though because it's important.

I'm experimenting with a new look, what do you guys think?


It obviously needs more variation but I'm struggling with making the
grass look better. Suggestions very much welcome!! 

[DementedChicken]

It's 1a.m., I've been coding since about 10a.m!! 

Anyway, improving the environments more:


There are a few things there that need ironing out, but I think it's an improvement. Still need more types of trees I think! And some of the lighting effects are actually turned off in that screenshot but that's because I'm half-way through writing a new pixel shader for the grass.

Goodnight!

[multivac]

The models look really nice, but everything looks really grainy and jagged, it could use some antialiasing.  Do you have mipmapping and texture filtering working in those shots?

[DementedChicken]

The models look really nice, but everything looks really grainy and jagged, it could use some antialiasing.  Do you have mipmapping and texture filtering working in those shots?

Thanks for the feedback! 

That screenshot was taken in a 800x600 window so that could explain some of the graininess, but you know mipmapping is something I almost completely forgot about!  It was quite far down my "I'll do that when I get around to it" list, but you are quite right, it would help to clean up some of the graininess.
You are the authority on tidy graphics, Rada looks very clean and nice! You've got an awesome stylized look going on there.

I appreciate the feedback because I been staring at it for so long I can't decide what looks good and what needs improvement anymore! 

[Sakar]

Yeah, mipmapping and some anti-aliasing would help a lot (though AA isn't that big a deal for me)

Looking great so far nonetheless! Looking forward to a playable version

[SP9000]

Ooo, nice!  Sure there's plenty of room for improvement, but I didn't expect the graphics to get updated so quickly.  Any new progress on the gameplay front?  Or is that skeletal animation issue deterring you?   I totally understand if that's the case.  Might as well work on what's fun at the moment while it still is fun.  And, as a result, we get more pretty screenshots! Everybody wins!

Keep it up!

[DementedChicken]

Yeah, mipmapping and some anti-aliasing would help a lot (though AA isn't that big a deal for me)

Looking great so far nonetheless! Looking forward to a playable version

Ooo, nice!  Sure there's plenty of room for improvement, but I didn't expect the graphics to get updated so quickly.  Any new progress on the gameplay front?  Or is that skeletal animation issue deterring you?   I totally understand if that's the case.  Might as well work on what's fun at the moment while it still is fun.  And, as a result, we get more pretty screenshots! Everybody wins!

Keep it up!

Thanks guys! Sorry I couldn't reply yesterday, my Internet was down again. 

Don't worry, I'm not going to get too carried away in the graphics department, but I definitely wanted to bring the outdoor environments to the same level of graphics and the indoor ones! 

Yesterday was spent cleaning up the code, it was getting messy and running slow, so it doesn't look any different to before, but the framerates have massively improved. I'll finish cleaning everything up, and add mipmapping. Anti-aliasing will have to be later, but it'll get there eventually.

The skeletal animation issue isn't really an issue any more because I have it all figured out now. There are two parts to it though, actually importing all the bone/vertex weight/key frame data - and the second part, actually getting it to animate! I finished the first part the other day, and I'll do the second part once every-thing's all cleaned up.

Anyway, back to work! 

[DementedChicken]

Hi,

More major clean-up under the hood. But this time I improved lots of stuff at the same time:


Mip-mapping is in, so I hope it's a lot less grainy now! 

Right, now on to that bloody animation I was putting off...

[DementedChicken]

Finally got it!

I didn't get to work on the game yesterday, but I spent all day on it today and have the animation working.

It still has a few problems I need to iron out, though. The interpolation between frames is linear, not bezier, so that needs fixing because movement looks very robotic.

Also, the rotation matrix associated with each bone is also being rotated in a linear way, so when there are two key frames that have a large amount of rotation, the mesh becomes temporarily 'squashed.'

Things to do tomorrow:

• Fix interpolation between frames
• Fix rotation matrix interpolation (quaternion?)
• Allow vertices to be influenced by an arbitrary number of bones/bone weights
• Various animation utility methods

After all this boring stuff it'll be back to actually making the game more ... game like! It should all be downhill from here so here's hoping we'll have some gameplay-ish footage (fighting, exploration, etc.) ready soon. 

[DementedChicken]

Yo!

It's been a while! The other guy working on this had to go away for almost a week for his graduation ceremony, but I was still working on it - although I did take a little bit of a break because I was going crazy. 

TIGsource updates sorta stopped happening, but work on the game has been on-going nonetheless!

Animation is pretty much all done, sound is done, the GUI system is done, new plants, etc. have been added, water reflections added, the skybox was re-done, etc. etc.

Anyway, screenshots:









The GUI code is very flexible, so it will also be used for the inventory screen, etc - the smooth animation and movement of the menus looks very good in motion!

We are stuck in a 3x4 meter room/building-thing that we work/sleep/live in, and have been here for a while. We can't leave until this game is finished!! I'll upload photos sometime, it really is tiny!!
Anyway, this 'cube' that we live in is way out in the middle of nowhere in rural New Zealand. We are starting to go crazy from cabin fever!!!  But the desire to get the hell out of here serves as motivation to finish the game. expect another update soonish ...

[starsrift]

Who put a freestanding arch on the middle of a tropical island!?

Can we see some animation?

[DementedChicken]

Shoosh you! 
There'll be lots of ruins all over the place, that's the only one done at the moment.

It's a real hassle to upload video with this Internet connection, but I'll upload some soon. It's much better moving and with sound, the ambient sounds are procedurally mixed depending on what kind of environment you're in. The sounds of the cicadas and insects, birds chirping, wind blowing, etc. really adds a lot of reality to the environment.

[kevglass]

Beautiful looking game! Something so soothing about the grass

Kev

[DementedChicken]

Beautiful looking game! Something so soothing about the grass

Kev

Hahahaha!! Thanks!!

Maybe it's the pretty dandelions?  At first there were 8 colours of flowers because I wanted to spice up the colours and make it even more happy (to contrast with the dark dungeons), but dandelions look silly when not white or yellow so I got rid of them! 

I'll add more colourful types of plants after the alpha is out.

[Taugeshtu]

Anyway, this 'cube' that we live in is way out in the middle of nowhere in rural New Zealand. We are starting to go crazy from cabin fever!!!    But the desire to get the hell out of here serves as motivation to finish the game. expect another update soonish ...

Emmm, guys... If it'll help - you aren't alone in that)) There's me somewhere on Earth in about the same conditions - no future untill game finished! :D I agree, it's extremely high motivator, and sort of proof - in about 7 month I came to this sort of stuff (I'm very proud of it... Just trying to give you a bit more punch ):


Anyway, you two are insane, and I f...reaking like it! Cheers, nice illumination, nice islands and pretty intriguing concept!

[DementedChicken]

Anyway, this 'cube' that we live in is way out in the middle of nowhere in rural New Zealand. We are starting to go crazy from cabin fever!!!    But the desire to get the hell out of here serves as motivation to finish the game. expect another update soonish ...

Emmm, guys... If it'll help - you aren't alone in that)) There's me somewhere on Earth in about the same conditions - no future untill game finished! :D I agree, it's extremely high motivator, and sort of proof - in about 7 month I came to this sort of stuff (I'm very proud of it... Just trying to give you a bit more punch ):


Anyway, you two are insane, and I f...reaking like it! Cheers, nice illumination, nice islands and pretty intriguing concept!

You too, eh!?  Hopefully we're not squandering our youth fruitlessly!

I've already been having the occasional sneaking peek at your game on your thread, it looks very cool! Like a more abstract mirror's edge. (Although I've never actually played mirror's edge!) It scares the hell out of me when I think that I'm competing with talented people like you and the guy making that Rada game! 

[Taugeshtu]

It's not a competition, think about it like about biiiiiiig, looooooong jam