polycube

gearbox

2011-09-01T15:06:00.000-04:00

reel of unfinished works

2010-04-21T16:52:00.003-04:00

udk: edge detection shader

2010-03-13T16:58:00.006-05:00

A few months ago I made a post process effect for UDK that uses the scene depth to detect edges. It might be overly complex but the results are pretty good.

It needs to be tweaked for any level it's applied to in order to adjust for scale, fog, and desired level of detail. This version was adapted to VCTF-Sandstorm, one of the maps that comes with UDK.

I used the shader provided in this post as the basis for mine, and this post helped as well. This is another example I found more recently.

Click for full image

It's also possible to use the alpha component of the scene texture node instead of the scene depth node (the scaling values must be changed too).

hand eye social

2010-02-14T13:46:00.002-05:00

I'm in the back there somewhere
On Thursday I was in Toronto to see Capybara and Superbrothers present their games Heartbeat and Sword and Sworcery. It was the first Hand Eye social of 2010. I didn't get to see much of the presentation because the place was packed and I could hardly see over the crowd, but it was still pretty exciting. Both games look (and sound) very cool. I'm interested in getting more involved in Toronto's indie game scene, so I was very happy to be there and I look forward to the next one.

Read this for more info about the event.

udk

2010-01-18T15:21:00.000-05:00

This semester I am working on a major project using UDK. I'll be documenting some of my work here. The project is a complete playable level which will hopefully be available for download once it's done. I'm part of a team of two and my primary role is to do the scripting that's required to customize the engine.

Some of the features I'll be talking about:

custom vehicle
custom weapons
custom character
animated materials

pulse+

2010-01-08T23:53:00.001-05:00

This is a little game I made for school in second year. The menus were made in Flash but the rest is pure ActionScript. It could probably use a timer and the audio should be replaced, since it is not original.

new year, new template

2010-01-01T20:40:00.000-05:00

I'm going to attempt to revive this blog over the next few months by posting more of my work, documenting the two major projects I'm working on at school, and maybe writing some tutorials. I expect to be pretty busy though, so whether or not I'll have time for all that remains to be seen. 2009 was mostly crap with a few highlights; hopefully this one will be better for me. 2010 is cooler to say at least.

The new template is a modified version of this. The colours and the header image may be subject to change.

mughal tomb

2009-12-23T13:56:00.001-05:00

Another assignment from my second year at college - a perspective drawing of a Mughal tomb.

jetpack basketball v1.01

2009-12-19T00:30:00.001-05:00

messhof has released an updated version of Jetpack Basketball, originally made for Bivouac Urbain in August. It now features the option to play against the computer. Not as intense as playing against a human opponent, but still pretty good. The only thing the game lacks now is the ability to steal the ball, which sounds like it's coming in the next update (edit: and it's here).

life drawing

2009-12-16T14:36:00.001-05:00

I had the opportunity to do some life drawing as part of my drawing classes in first and second year. This is probably my best one. I can't remember how much time I had, but it was probably about 30 minutes.

character turnaround

2009-12-12T22:29:00.002-05:00

This is a turnaround of a princess type character that I drew last year. She's based on Kumatora from Mother 3.

star guard

2009-10-10T17:40:00.002-04:00

This game is a super concentrated kind of awesome.

bivouac urbain

2009-08-28T15:52:00.000-04:00

game jamming inside the main tent. taken with my DSi

A few weeks ago I was in Quebec City for Bivouac Urbain, a game jam/game prototyping competition. I'm not too proud of my entry but the event was extremely awesome and resulted in some interesting games. My favourite entry of the ones I played was messhof's Jetpack Basketball, which I highly recommend if you have someone to play against. Also worth checking out is Stimergy, by Renaud Bédard (Polytron) and Heather Kelley (Kokoromi), a game about guiding ants using pheromone trails. Click the link for Renaud's post about it which includes a postmortem and a time-lapse video of the development of the game.

My simple and not very original entry was Spirit. The theme of the competition was "antithesis" which was pretty vague and prompted me to do some research. I found that a particular line from a poem by John Dryden came up repeatedly as an example of antithesis as a rhetorical device, so I based my game on it. I coded it within close to 24 hours, since I didn't get any work done the first night. It probably would have gone better for me if I'd been more prepared, with a framework in place and maybe some idea of what kind of game I wanted to make. Overall it was a good experience and I'm looking forward to my next game jam.

second year 3D work

2009-07-23T22:55:00.010-04:00

I'm finally posting some school work!

I call this one a futuristic Mayan warrior. I started texturing it the day before it was due. Still turned out alright.

Low-spec lizard. At over 600 tris it's a little more high poly than I was aiming for. It was supposed to be a ZBrush assignment but I don't like ZBrush (pretty sure I failed the assignment).

A Mughal themed level in UE3. I didn't model the arches, but the texturing and everything else is my work. I wanted to avoid some of the trouble of importing models from Maya so it's mostly BSPs. That turned out to have its own issues though. I think my next level will be made primarily in Maya.

pikachu

2009-06-29T03:20:00.003-04:00

slots

2009-05-03T01:24:00.000-04:00

I made a slot machine in actionscript for school, but it wasn't very good. This is a stripped down version. The fruits are rendered with actionscript's drawing commands; I drew them in Photoshop first with the curve tools, then transferred to code by counting grid spaces. It was tedious but I like the results.

tic tac toe

2009-04-25T00:47:00.003-04:00

A not very smart tic tac toe game.

play with my heart

2009-02-28T21:15:00.004-05:00

I made a little flash toy for school that makes use of bezier curves:

use the mouse to play with my heart

news

2009-01-29T11:59:00.008-05:00

Apologies for the lack of posting lately to those who are still visiting. I've started a new project! It is a minimalistic platformer in XNA. Here are some mockups:

It is very Knytt Stories-inspired. I'm aiming for online co-op for two players with somewhat experimental gameplay (more details on that once it is better defined).

The physics based platformer game project is now on hold. It was a difficult project to work on and I want to do something that has a better chance of being completed. I still want to make that game, so I will likely pick it up again later.

Posting will probably be light until the end of the semester. These are my goals for the next few months:

work out the design of the XNA platformer and get some serious coding done
post some the school work that I did last semester
update the flash game I made for school last semester and make it public
finally make an update to Polyworks

a walk at night

2008-12-15T15:29:00.005-05:00

This is an excellent third-party level for Knytt Stories. It is short but the atmosphere is fantastic.

You can download it here. Direct download link here.

back from the dead

2008-12-11T14:30:00.002-05:00

I've finished another semester of school. I will be posting some of my work soon, but for now here is an animation I discovered in my old files:

It was made in QBasic using arrays of colour values for the frames. It's my earliest character animation (unless you count ascii graphics). The file is dated February 2002.

flash platformer physics

2008-09-21T13:58:00.010-04:00

I've been experimenting with platformer physics using the Flash version of Box2D in order to familiarize myself with ActionScript. I gave the character the ability to hang on edges and climb ropes by using joints in ways they were never meant to be used.

click to activate and use the arrow keys to control the character

yet more physics animation

2008-09-01T15:09:00.003-04:00

Here is a better example of a physics-based walk:

It's still a bit crude but it's approaching something that could be used in the game. The animation system controls the rotation of the box that the feet are attached to, the feet being IK handles that control the animation of the legs. The walking animations are played when the appropriate keys are pressed.

In other news, I'm starting to see the true enormity of this project, and scaling my plans down accordingly by stripping them of unnecessary features. Fortunately, I hadn't posted about those features so there is nobody to disappoint except myself. I think this may strengthen the game though, by removing distractions that could obscure its core.

jumper 3

2008-08-24T08:42:00.005-04:00

I don't normally have the patience for these types of games, but Jumper 3 was fun enough to keep me playing until the end. In it you control Ogmo through over 50 stages, switching between five separate forms with different abilities. For an additional challenge you can try to collect the coins and medals. I really liked the simple graphics and the music, as well as the general atmosphere created by the story and setting.

I personally would have enjoyed this game more if the controls were a little easier. The way Ogmo accelerates when moving horizontally makes it hard to predict his movement, and each of Ogmo's forms have different physics properties which make it even more difficult to learn. But overall it's a very polished experience.

more physics animation

2008-08-17T12:40:00.002-04:00

I decided to try integrating physics right into the character editor. I'm not completely sure yet if it's going to work the way I expect it to, but the plan is to have both the skeletal animation and the physical movement of the character controlled through the animation system.

For example, consider a character that is made up of joints and quads and attached to a box which is connected by a revolute joint to a circle (as in the screenshots). The walking animation would animate the joints to make it look like the character is walking and it would also animate the motor of the revolute joint to rotate the circle so that the character moves along the ground.

I'm still working out the complexities but I think this system has a lot of potential for awesomeness. It is basically a way of doing data-driven character movement, which gives character creators a lot of freedom without having to write any code.

more concept art

2008-07-28T11:56:00.007-04:00

I'm thinking about going with a more abstract style than the textured/painted look I was originally planning. The graphics would be much easier to make - I could possibly even do all the artwork for an entire game by myself.

The sprites look to be a little too detailed for the environment. Flat colours might be more suitable there instead of the shading.

physics based animation

2008-07-25T18:44:00.007-04:00

I was experimenting with physics based animation with Box2DX:

I don't think it would work well for my project, but the results are entertaining. The movement of the bodies is controlled by joints (revolute and prismatic), with motors enabled. The speed of a motor is modified to target a certain angle/translation based on keyboard input.

PSA

2008-07-13T17:50:00.005-04:00

I haven't been posting lately because I haven't been able to come up with anything worth posting. I took a break from coding for a couple of weeks, and then (re)started working on the game editor/map editor for my project. It's going well, but it is still in its early stages. Posting will resume as soon as I have something interesting to show.

animation system

2008-06-21T17:00:00.018-04:00

I don't feel like making a new screenshot so here are some tulips instead.

This is a general overview of the way my character editor works.

To recap from my last post about aiming, all of the objects in the editor are nodes in a hierarchy. They are derived from a base class that I call TransformNode. The specialized nodes that I have so far are the Joint, IKHandle, and Quad. Joints are nodes that form a skeleton and can be affected by IK, IKHandles are nodes that control an IK chain (of joints), and Quads are the textured quads that make up the visible part of an entity.

All nodes contain a collection of attributes that are used in animation. The base node has translation and rotation attributes, and specialized nodes can add other attributes to the collection. The Quad, for example, has additional attributes for width, height, and texture coordinates. (This means that texture/sprite animation can be used in combination with skeletal animation.) New attributes are animateable as soon as they are added to the node and exposed to the interface (via a public property with get/set accessors so that they show up in the property grid).

Attributes are animated by setting keyframes in the animation curve that is associated with that attribute. A curve contains a set of keyframes and a reference to the node it affects, along with the attribute index. Keyframes contain data for control points on the animation curve and their tangents. The positions of the points on the curve are the frame of the animation (x) and the value of the attribute at that frame (y). Bezier interpolation is used to interpolate the values between keyframes. An animation is simply a set of curves.

Aim animations have an additional bit of data called an AimVector. It has minimum and maximum rotation values and is attached to a node in the hierarchy. Aim animations are like regular animations except that there are only two keyframes. When aiming, the angle of the vector between the aim vector node position and the target position is compared to the minimum and maximum angles to get an interpolation value. This value is used to do a linear interpolation between the two frames of the aim animation.

When exporting animations, the curve data is interpolated and values are saved for every frame in the animation (so that interpolation does not need to be performed in game).

This editor has evolved a lot over the time I've been working on it. I'm finally satisfied with this particular implementation, although a lot of the functionality was copied from Maya.

animated gif creation

2008-06-14T19:23:00.003-04:00

In my previous post, I included an animated gif showing my editor in action. I thought a gif was appropriate in this situation because it was a short animation, uploading it to YouTube caused serious distortions, Photobucket doesn't allow me to host swf files, and because the limited colours make it suitable for gif compression. I used several free tools to make this gif, and thought I'd describe the process in case others find it useful.

First I used CamStudio to record the demonstration. It's a really simple app that outputs avi files and has the option of converting them to swf files.

After that I used RAD Video Tools to convert the avi file into a series of gif files. I set "Adjust (adds/removes frames) to" to 15, so the output would be 15 frames per second of video.

Then I used GIMP to turn the gif files into a single gif animation using the instructions I found here. Like the post says, I opened the first file and imported the rest as layers using File -> Open As Layers. I saved the file as an animation that loops forever with a 60 ms delay between frames. I also set "frame disposal where unspecified" to one frame per layer, and checked "use delay entered above for all frames" and "use disposal entered above for all frames".

The result was a 523 KB file with 266 frames at 272x248 pixels, 17 seconds at about 15 fps.

more aiming

2008-06-11T14:59:00.003-04:00

I came up with a better way to do weapon aiming. In order to implement it I had to rewrite some parts of the editor to make it work more like Maya. All of the objects in the editor (Joints, IKHandles, and Quads) are now derived from the same base class, called a TransformNode, which has translation and rotation values. They are all contained in the same hierarchy, with a single root node. Here is an example of how this system can be used for aiming:

In this example, the aim animation rotates the node that the IK handles are grouped to. The shooting/recoil animation moves the IK handles.

It seems so obvious now that this is the correct way to do it; I'm not sure why I didn't think to do it this way earlier. This system uses the IK handles directly, so the hands are always placed correctly. It's also more flexible and consistent than what I had in my previous post.

game project

2008-06-04T15:08:00.009-04:00

I figured I should start documenting the development of my game more thoroughly. I've avoided posting my plans because I don't feel certain about them, but there are some things that are not likely to change so I can at least talk about that.

As you can probably tell from previous posts about this project, it's a side-scrolling game inspired by Soldat. I was motivated to start it by the demand from the Soldat community for more modding possibilities in Soldat. I'm borrowing heavily from Soldat in several aspects (2D skeletal animation, terrain made of textured polygons, combat with projectile weapons, mouse aiming) but the similarities mostly end there.

My game is going to be a single-player Metroidvania-style platformer with a focus on exploration and the use of a variety of weapons and items to defeat monsters and progress through the world. I plan to incorporate elements inspired by the Zelda series, especially Wind Waker, into the gameplay and visual style. Like Zelda, it will have a fantasy theme, with possibly some steampunk thrown in (see Chrono Trigger). Features include vehicles, water, and dynamic lighting.

One of my main goals with this project is to make content creation relatively easy and fast. To that end, I'm developing powerful tools for use with the engine (the character editor and the map/general editor that I will start re-writing soon). I'm aiming to have the tools and engine ready to use by September 2009, with a demo ready by May 2010 for use in my portfolio. At that point, assuming I get there, I will decide if it is worth turning into a full game (possibly with online play). However this schedule is not fixed.

I'm using C# with MDX, and I intend to port it to XNA 3.0 eventually.

In upcoming posts I will go into more detail on the internal workings of the game and character editor and on my plans for the game itself.

box2dx

2008-05-25T13:44:00.003-04:00

I've decided to use Box2DX, a C# port of Box2D, for physics.

It was easy to integrate into my program and start using it, and it should save me a lot of trouble. Writing my own code for rigid body dynamics would have taken me forever. It also opens up more potential for physics-based gameplay.

newest addiction

2008-05-18T15:26:00.008-04:00

Kryzta. TIGSource describes it as:

an “anti-shooter” where you defeat your enemies with their own bullets. Collect the power-ups they drop to shield yourself (or press “Z” to unleash a devastating attack with them).

It was made in only 6 hours - a great example of rapid game prototyping/development.

Last weekend it was Portal: The Flash Version. Portal is one of the few commercial games that I actually kind of want to play, but can't be bothered to, so this was a good way for me to get some portal action.

weapon aiming

2008-05-13T22:13:00.003-04:00

I got my aiming animation stuff working, sort of. The editor now allows one animation to be added on top of another. This allows me to blend a shooting animation with an aim animation, like this crude example shows:

However it doesn't always give good results. My test animation looks alright when aiming upwards and straight ahead, but not so well when aiming downwards:

As you can see, the support hand doesn't stay where it's supposed to. This could be solved by changing the shooting animation or by using IK for the support hand. In the game, the aim animation would be controlled by the crosshair position.

what's taking so long?

2008-05-09T13:04:00.005-04:00

You may be wondering why the progress on my project has been so slow. The main reason for this is that as usual, I bit off more than I can chew. It's a much larger project than anything I've done before, and it's somewhat beyond my abilities - that's what makes it such a good learning experience.

I'm not making just a game, but a game engine and a set of tools to go with it. This means that for every feature I want to implement, I have to generalize it. For example, with the weapon aiming system I've been working on, it's necessary to allow any character made in the character editor to be able to aim, and each character will have a different set of weapons that they are able to use. This makes the problem much more difficult to solve than if it only applied to the main character, for example - then it could all be hard coded. I also try to implement each feature that is exposed in the interface in a way that's easy to use when creating content.

When it comes to programming, I look for solutions that are simple and keep the level of complexity low so that it doesn't turn into a maintenance nightmare in the future. In fact I have a hard time getting any code written if I'm not satisfied with the plan I've come up with. This means that I spend a lot of time working stuff out on paper, but it also means that when I do get around to coding, it often works the first time and cuts down on the time I spend debugging.

All of this, plus difficulty concentrating, results in really slow progress. I'm enjoying the process though, and I'll keep chewing on it as long as it's fun.

P.S. I now have access to a camera, so expect more unrelated photos with my posts.

update

2008-05-05T15:18:00.002-04:00

According to the earliest timestamp I could find on my game-related files, I started working on it in May of 2006 - it's been two years. I've learned a lot, even though much of the work I've put into it hasn't produced tangible results.

All I have to show for now is a rough implementation of the graph editor:

Currently I'm working on having joints be controlled by the crosshair position, to make it possible for characters to aim their weapons in a convincing way.

sketch dump

2008-05-04T16:27:00.005-04:00

A composite of some random sketches.

self-portrait

2008-05-03T12:09:00.000-04:00

Self portrait for drawing class. I did the initial drawing in an hour, so it's kind of sloppy and the proportions are off. About another hour was spent adding some shading.

another redesign

2008-05-01T22:34:00.006-04:00

As you can see, things have changed. Here is a list.

Template - It's green! This theme was inspired by the GDNet classic theme. Hopefully I didn't break anything with my lack of CSS skills. Also, no more bunnies.
Display name - I've ended my half-assed attempt at anonymity. The blog is now on my main Google account, which is more convenient for me.
Title - I still suck at coming up with names for things. Might as well call it what it is.
URL - I wanted something related to what this blog is about. It's hard to come up with decent sounding names that aren't already taken.
Stat counter - Now I can keep track of my readers. All three of them.

level

2008-04-28T15:15:00.003-04:00

Some screenshots of my unfinished level for intro to games class:

work dump

2008-04-27T02:15:00.003-04:00

This is some of the work I did in school this year that I hadn't posted yet. All done in Maya and Photoshop.

Lighting assignment for rendering class:

Coffee cup for rendering class:

Obligatory crate:

My can and logo design for the falcon punch commercial:

Character model for modelling class (textured as a statue):

knytt stories

2008-04-26T14:49:00.003-04:00

I've just finished replaying Knytt Stories (The Machine and A Strange Dream). It's a 2D platformer by Nifflas that came out in 2007. I meant to post about it earlier, but didn't get around to it until now. I have much love for this game - I think it's as close to perfect as a game can get.

First off, it's very easy to pick up. The interface and controls are extremely simple. The game is all about exploration (which happens to be my favourite thing to do in a game). As the player advances through the world, they gain new abilities that allow them to reach places they couldn't access before. I like that it does not rely on the kill-or-be-killed mechanic (it's just "be killed," but still, it's refreshing). There are infinite lives and plenty of save points, which cuts down on the frustration. Story is minimal: just enough to provide context, the way I prefer it. The retro style music and graphics are great and combine to make a fantastic atmosphere. Levels are short, which is good because I don't have a lot of patience these days, and it makes for a tightly focused experience. Nothing is out of place; all the elements fit together to form a cohesive whole.

This article goes into more depth on the gameplay.

I also recommend previous games by Nifflas: Within A Deep Forest and Knytt.

level concepts updated

2008-04-25T16:16:00.006-04:00

I made my level concepts more prettyful:

The graphics in my game might look something like this.

falcon punch

2008-04-16T08:40:00.003-04:00

This was part of a group project for my presentations class. Excruciatingly intense hilarity provided by Colin and Steve:

comic

2008-04-13T20:24:00.005-04:00

After a solid week of work, I bring you my amazing two page comic spread for rendering class:

I used Maya and Photoshop, with various screentones found on the internets. Models were provided for this assignment. This has got to be the worst way to make a comic. It would have taken me a fraction of the time to just draw it out by hand. The screentoning was fun though.

level concepts

2008-04-11T22:58:00.004-04:00

Some really quick concepts for a flash project for school:

another character design

2008-04-03T10:51:00.007-04:00

For drawing class:

i'm not dead

2008-03-23T21:51:00.005-04:00

...just really busy with school. This is a screentone test for a two-page comic spread for my rendering class. I'm aiming for a black and white manga style:

(Maya + Photoshop; model provided by the teacher; various screentones found online.)

bezier interpolation

2008-02-10T17:13:00.002-05:00

I just got my Bezier interpolation working:

This thread was very helpful, and I stole the code for the cubic equation solver from here. The code to draw Bezier curves is from here.

Now I have to apply it to my animation curves.

animusic loop

2008-02-02T10:43:00.001-05:00

A looping musical animation:

I was working on this all week - 14 hours straight on Thursday to get it in before the end of the day. It was heavily inspired by the Animusic videos.

Here are some lovely curves:

[edit: made it loop 4 times instead of once]

love letter

2008-02-01T09:54:00.002-05:00

Dear Maya Animation Curves,

I'm hopelessly addicted to you. I can't stop thinking about setting your keyframes. I want to run my cursor over your splines. Let me unlock the weighting of your tangents, and manipulate your control points. I'll gently scrub back and forth along the timeline, and then we'll edit until our motions are in synch with the music. We can cycle to infinity all night long. Or at least until after the buses stop running.

Love,

Anna

musical primitives

2008-01-21T17:02:00.001-05:00

This is a Maya animation I made for school. I had to animate some primitives to music:

lack of progress report

2007-12-25T01:56:00.001-05:00

yay for Bezier curves
Despite having been out of school for two weeks, I have not managed to make much progress on my project. I did a lot of thinking about my animation system though, and I've decided that I will try to implement a simple version of Maya's graph editor.

My original plan to do frame by frame animation with linear interpolation between frames doesn't seem good enough after animating with Maya. I need the smoothness and slow in/slow out that gives the movement weight and makes it convincing. Also, the ability to set keyframes at any point in the animation, rather than regular intervals, will help with the timing.

Hopefully I'll have something interesting to show before I have to go back to school in two more weeks.

texture

2007-12-06T18:51:00.002-05:00

I was given a model to texture in rendering class:

This is my first time texturing a 3D model. It's two 1024x1024 colour maps, spec maps, and bump maps (for a total of 6 images).

I gave her my eye.

character design

2007-11-12T15:32:00.001-05:00

An assignment for my drawing class:

And yeah, that's a shovel.

[edit: flats]

cutout animation

2007-11-02T23:37:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I learned that the style of animation I'm going to use in my game is called cutout animation. Two examples of it can be seen here and here. The best example of the use of this technique in a game is probably Odin Sphere:

My implementation is going to be rather primitive looking compared to this though.

inverse kinematics

2007-10-27T19:40:00.002-04:00

After discovering the Joint and IK Handle tools in Maya, I decided to implement IK in my animation editor:

It works much better for animation than the particles and constraints; it's like a cross between that system and the bone hierarchy in the old version. I used Cyclic Coordinate Descent for the IK solver.

old pixel art

2007-10-20T20:26:00.001-04:00

Some old sprites for my RPG that never got made:

Some of the pixels were shamelessly ripped from Seiken Densetsu 3 and Chrono Trigger sprites.

Perfect Dark mod for Soldat, Part I:

Part II:

For this mod I also did all the little in-game graphics and ripped the sounds directly out of Perfect Dark using an N64 emulator. The second part was made 2 years after the first part, and was never fully completed.

sprite

2007-10-18T16:41:00.002-04:00

Based on the last random face:

The rock tile was inspired by Cave Story.

more physics

2007-10-17T19:04:00.001-04:00

Another simple physics test:

I made the wheels "turn" - when a particle is in contact with a line segment, and the left or right key is pressed, a force perpendicular to the line is applied to the particle. It's pretty fun to play with.

planets

2007-10-15T16:00:00.002-04:00

I made these a long time ago, but I still like them.

I'm pretty sure I used this planet tutorial and this starfield tutorial.

reboot

2007-10-13T12:35:00.001-04:00

Quite possibly the best show ever.

It looks like every episode has been uploaded onto youtube, so I'll have to go and watch them all. Here's the first part of the first episode.

editor rewrite

2007-09-30T21:49:00.002-04:00

The fourth version of my character/model/animation editor, in progress:

I got rid of the bone hierarchy and cleaned up the interface; it's easier and more fun to use now. I've been working with Maya for a few weeks at school so I ended up stealing some interface ideas and I have plans to incorporate more Maya-like features when I re-implement the animation stuff.

game music

2007-09-29T21:59:00.001-04:00

One of my more recent discoveries in game music archives is Mirsoft: World of Game Music. They've got DOS game music in several different formats, mainly S3M, MOD, and MIDI. I was surprised that they don't have the Tyrian soundtrack in LDS format, but that can be found here.

Zophar's Domain is a great source for game music. It doesn't seem to be updated anymore, but it is probably the best place to get NSF (NES) and SPC (SNES) files. There are also various sites dedicated to certain formats: USF Central (N64), GSF Central (GBA), PSF Central (PS/PS2).

Also available for download is Cave Story music, which is playable using OrganyaView (click on the icon located at 2004, Music), all of Nifflas' music, and Wings 2 music.

random face 02

2007-09-13T17:33:00.001-04:00

I coloured this one at school, no tablet:

side scroller physics

2007-08-29T14:28:00.002-04:00

I was working on porting my collision detection stuff from C++ to C#:

It's a simple AABB colliding with line segments using SAT for collision detection and response. I added friction so it's not sliding around everywhere, but this kind of physics doesn't seem appropriate for this game. I'm going to try to make it work more like old side scrolling SNES games, where the movement is more predictable and easier to control.

Also I made a little particle physics test. It's surprisingly easy to implement this kind of system:

random face

2007-08-12T17:20:00.001-04:00

old programs

2007-08-02T01:34:00.001-04:00

I came across my old programming stuff from highschool. These are some of the more interesting examples.

QBasic

Behold, my first game!

Some silly ASCII animations:

I was a Star Wars junkie back then. This was made with the drawing commands:

Fake scandisk with animated progress bar:

Connect Four. No AI or win detection though:

Turing

A little tile based program with an animated player-controlled character and collision detection. I came up with an interesting method of faking the tile transparency so the tree tiles would overlap the character properly. The tiles were stolen from various SNES games but I made the sprites myself, including walking animations:

Obligatory Pong clone:

The Maya were another one of my obsessions. This program takes a date and calculates the Mayan long count date from it, then displays it in Mayan numbers:

Visual Basic 6

A clone of Flying Pictures which is a clone of Flipull. Graphics are from Gundam Wing:

Some tile map editor, more stolen tiles:

Paint program:

A clone of that slime volleyball game, no scoring and no collision with the net though. Background stolen from Gundam Wing: Endless Duel:

A game I made with my friend Michelle. We had to do a "who wants to be a millionaire" type game. Yep, Gundam Wing was yet another one of my highschool obsessions. The graphics were made by me and I animated Heero; he blinks, moves his eyebrows, shifts his eyes, and looks like he's talking while the text is appearing. It's a pretty cool effect:

I wanted to make an RPG but never got past the tiling graphics/animated character/collision detection stage. The sprite in the middle is mine:

bunnydev

2007-07-31T12:38:00.001-04:00

I really suck at coming up with names for things. BunnyDev seems to fit though.

The icon is based on the arctic hare:

=:3

c++ vs c#

2007-07-27T21:13:00.001-04:00

One question I keep coming back to is whether or not I should switch to using C# and Managed DirectX instead of C++ and unmanaged DirectX for my game. (I also considered XNA, but decided against it for various reasons.)

I'm a lot more productive in C# than C++ and I'm already using C#/MDX for my tools so it is quite tempting. However MDX is no longer being developed, and I'm not sure what kind of features it might be missing compared to native DX, if any.

I already have a lot of working C++ code, but it shouldn't be too hard to port it. Any drop in performance would probably be negligible and I'm not too concerned with cross-platformedness at the moment.

Another thing about C++ is that it makes me feel like a Real Programmer™, which is kind of stupid, but I spent long months learning the intricacies of the language and I'm hesitant to give it up now even though a lot of what I learned also applies to C#.

The most important thing should be to get things done, but still, it's a tough choice.

sketch dump

2007-07-24T11:32:00.001-04:00

I have pages and pages of notes and sketches that I make while trying to figure stuff out. These are some of the better ones.

lighting implemented

2007-07-22T16:21:00.002-04:00

In addition to the light and shadow generation, I have also implemented multiple textures and four polygon layers (lit non-colliding background, lit colliding foreground, unlit colliding foreground, and unlit non-colliding foreground). I've been able to salvage some code and design from the discontinued PW2 but this map editor is still in the very early stages.

redesign

2007-07-20T22:19:00.001-04:00

Driven by my desire to have a recent comments section on the sidebar, I redid the design of my blog. I'm not sure I'm really satisfied with it but I think it's quite an improvement over the old design. I will probably change the header as soon as I come up with a better idea for it.

lighting

2007-06-30T11:05:00.002-04:00

Originally I was going to use 3D polygons and DirectX lights, but I changed my mind because 1) working in real 3D, even in a limited way, is a pain, and 2) it's hard to predict the effects of a light on 3D geometry. Instead I'm going to implement a two dimensional method that includes shadows. I used one of VirtualTT's maps to do some testing in Photoshop.

unlit:

red, green, and blue lights overlapping, night:

shadows and light-blocking polygons, sunset:

animation editor

2007-04-08T00:31:00.002-04:00

I just started working on the third rewrite of the character/animation editor for my project (C#):

After it's possible to create and save animations I'll be able to start properly implementing my animation system, starting with walking and jumping.

character designs

2007-04-01T20:28:00.001-04:00

New sketches of my old RPG characters:

I might colour them sometime (and fix all the little mistakes I've noticed since scanning it).

[edit] Quick colouring, about 1.5 hours:

soldier

2007-03-30T10:53:00.001-04:00

Another bit of concept art.

GUI

2007-02-08T13:21:00.001-05:00

I restructured my GUI system so it's more modular. I still have to implement check boxes, radio buttons, labels, and some other controls, but I'll do that later. Now I can work on the game itself.

concept art

2007-01-23T15:30:00.001-05:00

Two attempts at creating the effect of depth:

(foreground drawn by Michal, backgrounds by me)

The background will be rendered in full 3D, so it will have an automatic parallax scrolling effect. The foreground layer can also be 3D but it will be rendered with orthogonal projection so it will appear flat. This is because entities like monsters and characters are flat and would look odd rendered on 3D terrain.

wip

2007-01-03T21:21:00.001-05:00

Changes to the interface include:
- scenery window, waypoints window, colouring options combined into one "tool options" window that shows the options of the current tool
- resizable colour palette with variable number of colours
- more display options
- alpha tool

C#

2006-12-19T17:44:00.001-05:00

I started learning C# and so far it's great. For practice I'm re implementing some parts of PolyWorks which will also give me some base code that I can use for future map/character/etc editors. I like how it's possible to derive gui controls from existing ones; I can make all kinds of customized controls this way with a minimal amount of work. Managed DirectX seems to be pretty easy to use as well. If things go really well I might even rewrite PolyWorks in C#. It would be a hell of a lot of work but I keep getting the urge to refactor PolyWorks. This would be a good opportunity for that and there would also be a lot of overlap with future map editors. I'm not sure yet if it's worth the trouble though.

analysis paralysis

2006-12-05T20:43:00.001-05:00

Lately I've been doing a lot of reading on object oriented design, and trying to come up with a decent program structure for this project. There isn't really anything new to show but things are slowly moving forward. I did some more work on the gui; currently I'm working on a list box control which is probably the hardest one out of all the controls I'm planning to create. I also changed my event handing system to use functors instead of plain function pointers.

htf_Glimmer

2006-10-28T13:58:00.001-04:00

Download

progress

2006-10-24T13:04:00.001-04:00

I've got a nice framework set up that implements Direct3D and DirectInput for graphics and input. The buttons and text boxes are pretty flexible and I used function pointers to implement callback functions. Next I'll make a working camera and after that I'll probably start making a custom map format. Then there's drawing and animating the character sprites, putting in light sources and a particle system, and putting in some actual gameplay...

htf_Emblem

2006-09-18T15:32:00.001-04:00

Download

ctf_Oracle

2006-09-18T15:30:00.001-04:00

Download

dm_GloomyDawn

2006-09-18T15:26:00.001-04:00

Another variation on my first map.

Download

dm_NightLights

2006-09-18T15:15:00.001-04:00

A variation on EskimoGirls.

Download

dm_EskimoGirls

2006-09-18T15:07:00.002-04:00

My first Soldat map.

Download

Gostek Viewer

2006-09-18T15:02:00.002-04:00

A tool to view the gostek and animations and edit the player options in Soldat.

Download Gostek Viewer 1.0.0.1

Download Gostek Viewer Source Code

Soldat Polyworks

2006-07-04T13:21:00.001-04:00

A map editor for Soldat.

Download Soldat PolyWorks

[Update 10/30/07] More info:
I started on this project in December of 2004. My brother was really into Soldat and asked me to make a better map editor because the default one was crap. I worked on it on and off for about a year and a half. It was a pretty fun project, especially since so many people actually use the program.

Here are the original PW concepts by Michal Zajaczkowski:

mmm caek :9

2006-06-28T17:13:00.001-04:00

So I finally managed to use my nonexistent html/css skills to get this thing to look the way I want it to. Actual content is coming soon ;)