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[popawheelie]

Working with particle fx:

[Schrompf]

Utterly impressed. Your tech is incredible! I see real difficulties turning this into a game, but the tech is amazing!

Is there a special trick to change bullet's collision structures mid-simulation? I saw the changes of the sand by each and every contact, and I soon intend to change the geometry on impact, too, so I wondered how well Bullet took this.

[popawheelie]

Utterly impressed. Your tech is incredible! I see real difficulties turning this into a game, but the tech is amazing!

Is there a special trick to change bullet's collision structures mid-simulation? I saw the changes of the sand by each and every contact, and I soon intend to change the geometry on impact, too, so I wondered how well Bullet took this.

Thanks.

Changing the collision structure mid-sim can be costly. I try to do it as little as possible, but it is very much doable in bullet. I only use it for large impacts or explosives.

However, in this simulation, the debris pieces are small, so the sand deformation is being entirely done on the GPU.

[popawheelie]

Hi Everyone,

A video of endless stress testing:





Still a few issues, but getting there.

Cheers,
H

[popawheelie]

Hello all,

When not fixing bugs, Im working on game play. Here is a test video of the Destructo-Pod sequence, where you fly a pod through a trench full of sentinels.

Cheers,
H

[popawheelie]

Hi,

This is the model for one of the sentinel cannons. This and others will placed through out the levels.



I wrote a maya node that let me create pipes and deform them. These days I find writing a routine easier than trying to figure out how to do it in maya. Plus, as a bonus, I output optimized triangle strips.  

This model uses preset fracturing. Only the blast will vary between instances.

Cheers,
H

[popawheelie]

Hi,

I placed my cannon on a pedestal and added some simple shading. Turns out that my nifty pipe model maker had all sorts of normal and triangulation issues. Hopefully all the problems are handled, but Murphy is always waiting just around the corner.


 
Next Ill try adding some lights.

Cheers,
H

[popawheelie]

Hi Everyone,

I continue to work on my sentinel cannon. Added some light and particle f/x:



Got an alignment problem with the launched ball, and the particle fx. I think I need to delay the ball by one frame.

I want to add some embedded neon lights on the main sphere. Im thinking Ill try creating some glowing lines in photoshop, and than try super imposing them over the sphere.

Cheers,
H

[freank]

good job!

[popawheelie]

Thanks freank!

I added some animation and did some more particle work:



Getting closer.

Cheers,
H

[popawheelie]

Hi Everyone,

What a weekend! An endless stream of bugs. Fixed a bug, took a break, got back to work, and within 5 minutes Id find another. Was like clock work, and it's almost always the math. Ugh.

I started looking at the Unreal engine. I had looked at Autodesk's Sting Ray in the past, and it wasn't up to the job. Unreal looks really promising. I like the fact that it's all C++ based, and seems to use a node system.

Meanwhile the latest wwise updates broke the audio listener system, so Ill need to address that today.

Cheers,
H

[popawheelie]

Hey there,

I'm having a lot of issues with importing assets from different scenes in maya. Ideally I'd like to create assets separately and than import them into game level scenes. Unfortunately, copy/pasting complex dependency graphs in maya leaves a lot to be desired. It only really works with simple objects. When you get a lot of nodes and connections, things fall apart.

So I'm trying to come up with an asset catalog system, where the game searches a catalog for the objects it needs. Found objects would than load up on the game side, not the maya side. This should give maya a little boost in performance too. Less nodes the better.

Catalogs would be generic and will start with containing two types of objects: grenades and rigs. Grenades are destructible models, while rigs are destructible structures. All grenade/rig dependencies ( IE. curves, models, lights, particles etc. ) would be saved.  A stand-in model would be created so there is something to work with in maya too.

In maya, you would specify the asset by name and the stand-in model associated with it would be loaded up. In game, the asset would load as regular.

Sounds simple, but usually ends up being a nightmare.

Cheers,
H
 

[jctwood]

Great to see this pop up again! Good luck with the catalog system, sounds like quite an undertaking!

[popawheelie]

Thanks jctwood!

The first step was to use a recursive routine to find all asset dependencies. The routine bows out if it finds that a node has already been saved. Although, that should never happen because cyclical relationships are not aloud. Than I just wrote out all the data to the asset file.

Tomorrow comes the harder part: reading the data back in and setting up the asset.

Cheers,
H
 

[popawheelie]

Hi Everyone,

So I got grenade assets now importing via catalog. Hooray! Next I need to do Rigs, and those are a bit harder.

This catalog routine is important because it will be how assets will be imported in to Unity/Unreal. Although, I was hoping to put this off a bit. Maya has a reference system that would have worked for this first game. However, like most Maya functionality, it's buggy as hell, and it's failures are catastrophic, meaning there is no recovery. You'd better have a back up file on hand.

It's issues like this that put me on the fence when it comes to using third party software. By ditching your own code, you seem to be replacing one problem with another. You still have to do maintenance, but with your own code you at least have a solution to a problem. With third party you could easily be completely screwed or have to adapt to a compromised solution.

Anyway food for thought.

Cheers.
H
 

[popawheelie]

Hi Everyone, Well the catalog system turned out to be way more complicated than anticipated. 

But its finally done, and I can continue with level creation. Hopefully this new system will stream line the process and was worth the time.

Cheers,
H
 

[Josh Bossie]

I really want Griffon McElroy from Polygon to play this game - I frickin' love the carefully controlled chaos

[popawheelie]

Thanks Josh,

Ive been slowly working on levels and trying to get the flying in order. Ive opted for a point and follow method. Initially I wanted to make some real flight controls, but that was too hard. Probably best to just integrate an off the shelf flight simulator. But this method makes it easy to fly.

One challenge was trying to get the aiming just right. Being a plane, I didnt want it to be too exact, but adding too much play made it impossible to hit anything. Trying to find that sweet spot.

Here is another game play video:






Cheers,
H
 

[popawheelie]

Hi Everyone,

Im working with IMGUI ( Immediate Mode Graphical User Interface ) to help create an options interface. What a great tool! Really easy to use. You can find it on github.

The game needs a ton of polish, but I think Ill be able to release an alpha of the game really soon.



Cheers,
 
H

[popawheelie]

Hello Everyone,

Using IMGUI, I was able to setup an options panel.



Press F9 anytime and it pops up. Quickly lets you make adjustments to controls and audio etc. IMGUI is one great product. Really easy and nice to use. Glad I came across it. Highly recommend.

Now working on setting up a small db that will store player high scores.

Cheers,
H