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[marcgfx]

I wanted to render a 3D Ring (well just dots that I am connecting) with my new line-renderer. It works nicely until there are some very hard corners... not sure if I should solve this or just try to avoid the issue.

[JobLeonard]

Use it in enemies that are inherently glitchy 

[vdapps]

Hi Marc!

I wanted to run your games, but so far I can see just Falkenbrew logo with eagle and then nothing. Do you require some plugin? I don't have Unity installed. I'm using new Microsoft Edge (on Chromium) so HTML5 compatibility should be good.

[marcgfx]

@JobLeonard: Glitchy enemies? My enemies are all perfect

@vdapps: are you using this url? https://devader.space/html/game.html
I have not tested with all browsers, Chrome/webkit is what I work with. You should see some loading info at the top left, sometimes it takes a bit to load... There is no plugin required. It's just plain old javascript/WebGL. I have not really worked on browser compatibility, mainly because it runs best in Chrome and anything else is comparably slow.

[vdapps]

Nope, I used the links which you have in 1st post of your thread. You should update first post, I noticed it's good practice to keep it with latest state (as anyone who'll click on your thread will see it).

The link you gave me works flawlessly. I must say, I'm amazed by what did you achieved by plain HTML5. Runs fluently (on my weak 15W 2-core laptop), looks great!

I guess, direction you're heading is to have online battles with random players across the world? Do you plan to monetize it somehow?

I know there are some successful pure web-only games with lot of players, so I just guess you're aspiring this way? Because technically, your game is really good.

[JobLeonard]

I just linked it to a friend who is into these types of games, he replied with chrome.system.display.getInfo failed

[marcgfx]

@JobLeonard: Thanks for linking the game. Hmmm... that's an error I throw myself and it should not lead to any issues. It just means I can't get the screen resolution. Happens when resizing the window in the browser and not the NWjs wrapper.

@vdapps: Thank you for the kind words. I'm not really focusing on the browser based version, as I do not know how to monetize it + it really does not work well in every browser. Online play... I really do not know how I could achieve that. Too much to synchronize and I would have to write my own network code + have a reliable server running 24/7. It's focused on single player and local co-op, it's difficult enough without networking

[vdapps]

Yep, I understand. I'm anything but expert in the area, but only monetization which I can imagine in web-based game (except crappy ads) is lot of players/MMO, login/pwd to play and either subscription model (game must be really good) or free-to-play and micro-transaction. You're right, this require lot of resources and normally is beyond scope of one man project.

So, to which platform you're porting now, if you're not focusing on web?

[marcgfx]

I feel like I have no idea too, but the current web-models don't really match the game. I've released Devader on Steam, so target is currently PC. If I do find the resources to port to Unity, I will, as that would make it possible to release on consoles. It might also improve performance.

[JobLeonard]

I figured I could support you a little bit, so I bought you a fancy and got a copy of the game

[vdapps]

I see you updated your first post in thread (removing no more valid links and added link to Steam). Good move. I had no idea, you're on Steam. In thread name is HTML5 so it was misleading me that you're browser only.

So how do you ported to Steam? From HTML5 to desktop PC executable looks to me like quite a long way. What language / technology did you use?

I checked your Steam page. Trailer is yummy, Doom like metal music, I like it!

[vdapps]

So I got inspiration from @JobLeonard and supported you as well.

I mentioned it already, not lot of time to play while I'm developing, but your game looks suitable for casual fast-paced action so I'll use it. Plus, when I buy for my new dev laptop, I'll move my current one (2 cores / 4 threads Skylake with IGP) to TV (I have Xbox controller for Windows) and my son will soon reach age when he'll be able to play something (he's 2 years 4 months now), so games which run on integrated graphics and supports controller are totally welcome for me (currently I have old MacBook there at TV as HTPC, but it's pain to get Xbox controller running on it so I resigned with any gaming on it).

[marcgfx]

Oh wow!!! Thanks a lot @JobLeonard & @vdapps!! Means a lot , even more if you enjoy the game and give me a tiny review on Steam (sorry, I have to ask).

The new stuff in the devlog is not on Steam yet and will first be revealed on one of the Beta-branches. Not quite there yet though. It does run on integrated graphics (on my mini pc), but I have not tested the newest version out there yet, it might be a bit heavier... but there might be a few tricks to improve my main shader I can look into.

It's for up to 5 players (4 gamepads + mouse & keyboard), so TV is perfect. The youngest players I had at exhibitions were around 6, some were pretty good

Porting HTML5 to Steam is pretty simple, I use a wrapper called NWjs (node webkit), based on the same tech as the chrome browser. Works well, but Steam Remote Play was not working last time I tried.

Yeah, I updated the first page, thanks for telling me to do so!

[vdapps]

Done now! Review from v.dienes.

(Can't see it right now when accessing outside from my account. Probably take some time when review on Steam will pop-up publicly for everyone).

[marcgfx]

@vdapps: many thanks!!!

I started messing around with some old code. I had made lava-floor (you take damage if you move onto it), but I removed it shortly before release due to performance concerns + very little use. I was using a fairly heavy fbm noise shader (using recursion), that looked pretty cool. I've now tried something else that should be faster. I must say I find it quite hard to test shader performance, it seems more guestimating than anything else.

The new shader uses a bit of Sin/Cos + Magic Numbers in combination with the Fade-Out-Value. I quite like the effect, will have to see how well it works in play.


I was also debugging and fixing the snakes head, my bezier code was a bit messed up (there was no head).

[JobLeonard]

Looks cool!

Eh, you'd have gotten away with "headless snake" as an alien thingy though

edit: haven't had time to properly sit down and play yet, let alone review. But will do that later!

[Schrompf]

Trippy sort-of-oil trail, I like it!

[JobLeonard]

[checks signature]

Well that's a nice seal of approval, given your experience with making worms for games

[marcgfx]

@Schrompf :)Thanks
@JobLeonard that does put it into perspective

I've updated to webgl2, only just found out this is a thing. It's allowed me to make some improvements to my main shader and reduce quite a lot of operations while making it more readable. Not sure if it will actually improve performance, but I am hoping it will, as fill-rate seems to be my main issue on slower GPU's.

I do some unusual things, as everything is alpha blended. For example I don't think I could work with multiple material shaders. Alpha blended polygons must be rendered in sequence (I do the sorting). So every material change would have to be done per polygon, or so I think. My solution was to pack all materials into one shader and use a single float value to specify things like alpha, hue & effect. The effect is now handled much better (at least more readable) by using a switch statement. Until now every effect was calculated, but a max of one was applied in the shader. The change could still be hardly noticeable as alpha-blending itself might be the major cost.

While changing the shader, I also did some tweaks to my color palette. It's not really a color palette but shows what red is turned into using HSV hue-rotation, saturion and value changes. The new palette puts more emphasis on dark colors.


I've done some modeling for the second robot type, behold the new shoulders and head. Kind of reminds me of doom guy, that was not my intention though.

The first robo had his shoulders changed

[JobLeonard]

I'm getting more of a Space Marines vibe from it. Is it burning the xenos with extreme prejudice?