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[TheSpaceMan]

Oh i was hopeing for space quest. But I don't see how that could be brought back any further.

[Will Vale]

Cheers all!

So long as there's a painfully long loading screen

There's definitely an uncomfortable pause on opening a new planet in the map, my noise implementation is taken pretty much from Ken Perlin's improved noise reference and not in any way optimised (yet).

Also, how did you do the name generator?

I'll post the source since that probably explains it more eloquently than I can. It just picks from sensible lists of beginning, middle and end elements - you could do a lot more with the same idea, like having themed sets of element tables to get more consistent styles.

Code:

static const Char *name_starts[] = 
{
	SIL_LITERAL("Ma"),
	SIL_LITERAL("No"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Ka"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Cho"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Tarn"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Lor"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Re"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Li"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Lau"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Gla"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Vu"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Pi"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Gry"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Di"),
	SIL_LITERAL("Da"),
};

static const Char *name_middles[] = 
{
	SIL_LITERAL("sa"),
	SIL_LITERAL("to"),
	SIL_LITERAL("ama"),
	SIL_LITERAL("etta"),
	SIL_LITERAL("tone"),
	SIL_LITERAL("ela"),
	SIL_LITERAL("wara"),
	SIL_LITERAL("eno"),
	SIL_LITERAL("ema"),
	SIL_LITERAL("dala"),
	SIL_LITERAL("ro"),
	SIL_LITERAL("mu"),
	SIL_LITERAL("cla"),
	SIL_LITERAL("ebu"),
};

static const Char *name_ends[] = 
{
	SIL_LITERAL("en"),
	SIL_LITERAL("em"),
	SIL_LITERAL("el"),
	SIL_LITERAL("aton"),
	SIL_LITERAL("de"),
	SIL_LITERAL("ist"),
	SIL_LITERAL("lin"),
	SIL_LITERAL("daal"),
	SIL_LITERAL("den"),
	SIL_LITERAL("as"),
	SIL_LITERAL("ale"),
	SIL_LITERAL("et"),
	SIL_LITERAL("asi"),
	SIL_LITERAL("in"),
	SIL_LITERAL("at"),
};

/**
 * Add an element to a name, provided it fits. Partial elements will not be added.
 */
static void append( Char *& cursor, const Char * end, const Char *element )
{
	// Should be terminated already
	SIL_ASSERT( *cursor == SIL_LITERAL('\0') );
	SIL_ASSERT( cursor <= end );

	// Don't append partial element.
	const Nat length = StringLength(element);
	if ( length <= static_cast<Nat>(end - cursor) )
	{
		CopyString( cursor, end - cursor + 1, element );

		// Consume buffer
		cursor += length;
	}

	// Should have moved up to the terminator.
	SIL_ASSERT( *cursor == SIL_LITERAL('\0') );
	SIL_ASSERT( cursor <= end );
}

/**
 * Generate a suitable random name into the provided buffer. The buffer must have space
 * for a terminator at end.
 */
static void make_random_name( Galaxy::RNG& rng, Char *name, const Char *end )
{
	// Start with nothing
	name[0] = SIL_LITERAL('\0');

	// Always have a start element.
	append( name, end, name_starts[random_int(rng, 0, SIL_ARRAY_COUNT(name_starts))] );

	// Add zero or more middle elements.
	const Nat middle_count = rng.RandomNat32() & 3u;
	for ( Nat i = 0; i < middle_count; ++i )
	{
		append( name, end, name_middles[random_int(rng, 0, SIL_ARRAY_COUNT(name_middles))] );
	}

	// Maybe add an end, always do this if we have no middle elements.
	if ( (rng.RandomNat32() & 1) || !middle_count )
	{
		append( name, end, name_ends[random_int(rng, 0, SIL_ARRAY_COUNT(name_ends))] );
	}

	// Shouldn't overflow
	SIL_ASSERT( name <= end );
}

Any questions let me know, but it should be pretty obvious.

Will

[muku]

Heh, that's simple but clever. Me, I probably would have spent days coming up with some statistically trained Markov chain stuff, and in the end it would still produce crappy names :D

[Will Vale]

Been hit rather hard by the real life bat recently - apart from work and a dentist visit (yay drills!) I spent most of the weekend shivering uncontrollably with some sort of cold thing, although today it has retreated a bit. Not shivering, but when I move my head it feels like my eyeballs are getting left behind. Weird.

Anyway, I knocked up some desert planet tiles while I was waiting for a build this afternoon. And when I went to try them out I realised I'd forgotten to do the interior corners for the transitions - doh!



It's not looking good in terms of finishing any gameplay for the deadline I'm afraid - I have a nice map, some noise-generated planet stuff, but no driving around or landing or fighting or anything that might be fun.

Still, I'll keep plugging away at it for a while longer to see what happens. What are the options for bowing out gracefully if I encounter EPIC FAIL??

Cheers,

Will

[increpare]

Oh gosh.  I like your tiles...it actually looks like a field of maize or something, the way it's raised ... really looks like the sort of thing that tracks would be left in

Sorry to hear about cold (When I read it I first I thought that you had gotten hit in the face with a baseball bat or something (mention of getting hit hard bat dentist visit...    )

[captainbinky]

It's not looking good in terms of finishing any gameplay for the deadline I'm afraid - I have a nice map, some noise-generated planet stuff, but no driving around or landing or fighting or anything that might be fun.

It's a shame if you've not got time to get much of a game in there, you've done such a nice job of it so far!

Love those desert tiles - really reminds me of Dune 2 especially with the vehicle thing (forgotten what it's called in Mass Effect) that looks a bit like the Harvesters :D

I hope you post what you get done regardless of how finished it is.

[Will Vale]

So I lost last week to the common cold, and this week has been mostly taken up with real work, but I have made a bit of progress:

* Randomly generated maps with working terrain type transitions.

* Two (!) kinds of planetary environment, temperate and desert, each with two (!!) terrain types! Each!

* Dodgy vehicle physics.

* No pesky collision to stop you driving where you want to.

* No gameplay to distract you from the wonders of the universe.

There's a tech demo to download, and I'd greatly appreciate knowing if this doesn't work for anyone. Requires Win32, VC9 redist, and DX9. Just unzip preserving directories and run effort.exe. You may find it easier to switch to windowed mode (ALT-ENTER) since I haven't put a mouse cursor in yet for fullscreen

ESC quits utterly, RMB goes back a screen.

http://www.secondintention.com/files/effort_1.zip

Have fun exploring the galaxy! I'm hoping to add a bit more stuff this weekend but Mrs. V. is away at a conference so I'm in single-parent mode - as you can imagine this may not leave much time.

Will

[Will Vale]

Thanks for the feedback! I spotted the D3DX thing after I'd uploaded, but it was late - sorry about that.

As far as I know the MS EULA doesn't allow developers to just stick DLLs in ZIP files - you have to package the redistributable installer which is much bigger than my little game.

I can bundle the redist if people think that would help, let me know. When I have a bit more time I'll try and scare up a link.

[EDIT] Added links to the prerequisites on the first message, and updated the demo to version 2 - this adds jump jets so the vehicle feels a bit more Mass Effect-ey. You can do aerial 180s and stuff

[muku]

Works fine for me here on Win2k, Radeon 9500. The intro sequence looks very cool, BTW.

But how do I jump?

[Will Vale]

Works fine for me here on Win2k, Radeon 9500.

That's excellent, I hadn't fired up my old Radeon laptop to test on but I was hoping it would be OK since it doesn't use much more than alpha-blended tris.

Did the pixel doubling work OK? That uses render-to-NPOT texture.

But how do I jump?

I really suck at this releasing business. Press SPACE to jump, you've got a couple of seconds of charge as shown by the blue bar in the top left. When you're jumping up/down/left/right control lateral thrusters rather than steering and traction motors, but there isn't any animation for these thrusters yet so the effect is rather undersold.

[Will Vale]

Updated the demo again - now with title screen!

See first post for details plus a list of keys, prereqs and such. Suggestions for gameplay elements would be appreciated.

Obviously the first priority is to expand the rover game, probably with the following:

* Terrain collision and a third raised terrain type with ramps.

* Collecting resources (feed back into nonexistent meta-game).

* Hazards (thresher maws, smaller beasties) and therefore a turret to shoot them with.

* Detail sprites (plants, rocks, ...?) for adding more variety to planet terrain.

Longer term, I need to work out a meta-game design and probably add on-foot gameplay as well. Bases to explore?

[moi]

If you don't have VC2008 already, install the VC 2008 redist

I'm not going to comment on the game yet (didn't try it yrt) but incidentally, out of curiosity, Isn't there a way to just package what Dll is necessary with the game itself? Or are you required by the licence to not redistribute it.
I think it would be a bit awkward to have to link to a microsoft download every time you would want to distribute a program

[Will Vale]

You can't package the raw DLL. You can build a stripped-down version of the DirectX installer which will provide the correct version of D3DX, and then create an installer program which bootstraps this plus the VC redist.

The problem with all this is you're then downloading a multi-megabyte file. Fine for a full game but probably not for a few hundred K of competition entry where much of the audience consists of developers who have this stuff already.

I dunno, maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot here, but it's not like Space Effort is finished enough to gather votes, more a curiosity for the interested gentleman

[moi]

Thanks for the answer I was just wondering, it's a shame that microsoft tries to enslaves devellopers and their customers like that , but hey, it's not like it was a new thing from Microsoft.

[Will Vale]

I think that's a typical anti-MS internet reaction. What they're doing by using the installers isn't unreasonable - it just tries to ensure that everything on the end-user machine is going to be properly configured rather than just a pile of things they've manually copied to system32. And for 95% of games it's fine, it's really only teeny-tiny indie games for which the installers are too big. For small games, linking to the websetup is probably the right answer.

(They also offer a small tool (Windows Component Installer SDK) for creating installers for DX etc. and then bootstrapping your own, that's probably the path of least resistance.)

I find it hard to hate a company that gives away world class development tools for free. If you've done any console development you'll know how good the Visual C++ debugger is

[moi]

I don't deny I'm biased anti M, but hey sorry for derailing your thread with that, I'll comment on the game later

[ProgZmax]

Very nice!  I've been looking for a game that captures the scope and feel of Star Control II (Mass Effect fell well short of this) and it looks like you're set to deliver. 

[Zaknafein]

The bootup sequence is so awesome. It goes so fast though, we're left with no time to appreciate it!

The game itself... would probably appeal me if there was any gameplay. But the scale of it is quite amazing.

[Will Vale]

Cheers guys! I have some free time coming up in a couple of weeks, which means I might get to do some more work on Effort. I'll post here if/when that happens.

The bootup sequence is so awesome. It goes so fast though, we're left with no time to appreciate it!

I see what you mean, but I think that for something like that you want it to be slightly too fast, in order to hide the joins and make people work to read the text if they're really keen. I've been meaning to put some Easter eggs into it - press F1 to continue, POST fail, etc. - but haven't got around to it.

I should point out that I didn't waste my valuable compo time on the boot sequence, it was code I had lying around from a couple of years ago. Hope this isn't considered cheating.

Also of note - it's all done with alpha blended tris, no shaders required.