Kaftan's development thread of doom

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

I force artists to give me everything in XSI format, they can build it in max, play with it, mold it, do whatever they wanna do with it, but when I get it I want it in dotXSI, else I will get out the axe

Edited March 24, 2008 by @\NightandtheShape/@

[Kaftan Barlast]

For the first time, eye candy!!

 

 

So it's just a quick render of a character without any texture or normalmaps, but its something

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Niceticals...

[theslug]

Cool stuff. His right arm/hand looks really thin though. Keep on truckin'.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Wednesday 26th March "Too much physics"

 

 

today we discovered a really cool and amusing bug, that makes the physics act too much on the main character, causing her to behave exactly like a slippery bowling pin instead of a person. If she stands on a non-level surface, she slides, falls over and rolls away. If you try to run up a hill, youll slide backwards when you stop running.. and then fall over and tumble down the hill.

 

Its awesome, and Im happy Im not a programmer :D

[Kaftan Barlast]

Our graphics programmer managed to put together a screenshot function an hour ago, so I am now able to show you the very first screenshot from our game. Now, this isnt the alpha but a debug version a so theres nothing to see really, so its not that exciting. You would never ever release something like this on the internet if you were working on a fully commersial product. The programmer also hasnt installed the license properly so theres a watermark on it.

 

very very early screenshot

 

Its easier to list whats in this shot, than what isnt so:

 

-a neat skydome

-some basic enviroment props with a basic shader on it

-an omni light

-a game character with diffuse map only

-a heightmapped ground mesh with no shaders

-a completely distorted shadow caused by an old broken mesh

 

 

hooray!

[theslug]

cool. Character looks out of scale with everything else :>

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Considering it's clearly early days, it doesn't look too bad... Still seems that you've got months to go yet before an Alpha.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Somewhat naively, I expected a pre-made engine to be much easier than this to work with. Some of the things the programmers are pulling their hair about is basic things like collision meshes and basic shadows. There's also a strange bug that causes the FPS to drop to exactly one if 40,000 or more triangles are displayed onscreen at once. We are going to be able to fix this, but it still feels like it should just work.

 

 

Weve also got trouble with keeping the programming team in the office at working hours. And weve been struck with a bad case of cold, which our producer brought home from Gothenburg so things are even more delayed. Today there was just me and another lad for almost the whole day. Our second-best programmer first got sick for a week, spent 3 hours in office before damaging a nerve in his back, an injury he still hasnt recouperated from.

[Rob Smith]

Wednesday 26th March "Too much physics"

 

 

today we discovered a really cool and amusing bug, that makes the physics act too much on the main character, causing her to behave exactly like a slippery bowling pin instead of a person. If she stands on a non-level surface, she slides, falls over and rolls away. If you try to run up a hill, youll slide backwards when you stop running.. and then fall over and tumble down the hill.

 

Its awesome, and Im happy Im not a programmer :D

 

You probably don't want the player to be driven by physics at all. You'll need to have their collision representation in the physics world, but the object should actually be moved either manually, via animation or both. At least that's the way I've always done it. Otherwise you're fighting the system just to get basic functionality. Certain events like ragdoll on death and the like, but not generally.

Edited March 29, 2008 by Rob Smith

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Somewhat naively, I expected a pre-made engine to be much easier than this to work with. Some of the things the programmers are pulling their hair about is basic things like collision meshes and basic shadows. There's also a strange bug that causes the FPS to drop to exactly one if 40,000 or more triangles are displayed onscreen at once. We are going to be able to fix this, but it still feels like it should just work.

 

Why do you think I always say if you can build your own engine, then you should build your own.

 

I don't see how collision meshes could really be a problem? But then again... Like most things in programming their are several ways to approch it, and the approch is obviously important.

 

Shadows don't come anymore basic than planar shadows that use the stencil buffer, pointless excerise with modern day hardware if you ask me, but both Shadow Volumes and Shadow Mapping present their own challenges, the problem with volumes is that the mesh needs to be rather specific, where maps need to be projected correctly, they're difficult to alias, and use a fair bit of the old memory.

 

That's an interesting bug, 40,000 polygons is a rather small amount...

 

Weve also got trouble with keeping the programming team in the office at working hours.

 

Working hours???!!! Programmers! Are you serious! Most coders are glowy white goblins for a reason LOL

 

And weve been struck with a bad case of cold, which our producer brought home from Gothenburg so things are even more delayed. Today there was just me and another lad for almost the whole day. Our second-best programmer first got sick for a week, spent 3 hours in office before damaging a nerve in his back, an injury he still hasnt recouperated from.

 

If it's anything like the cold I picked up in Estonia, I pity you all... That was a harsh cold, and if I know something, coding on a cold is BAD news.

Edited March 29, 2008 by @\NightandtheShape/@

[Kaftan Barlast]

Its monday and the 40,000 triangle bug has been solved. Its an ATI mobile driver error that occurs when the framebuffer switches from 16- to 32bit vertex data to handle the increased polycount. Nvidia and regular ATI cards are not affected by this bug at all.

 

The physics "bug" on the main character has also been resolved, it was just a thingie that was set to TRUE that shouldnt have been there at all.

 

 

 

And at 14:45 in the afternoon the programmers are still AWOL... no, there's one! Now we just need the others and we can get to work.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Is there nobody in charge or something? Geez, the coders seem to be getting away with ALOT of slacking.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Well, today they excused themselves with "Well, we cant do anything until we get the animations for X and the GUI design" which may very well be true, Im too busy with my corner of things to have time to check up on them. But theyre skilled people who know what thyre doing(mostly)so theres really no reason to doubt them.

 

 

Lately Ive been doing mostly pleasant art design and building enemies, but tomorow Im going to have to dive into the tech swamp of exporting animation sets. The way we would prefer to do this is to export each separate animation as a single file, because its much easier to update and keep track of, but the exporter we're using now requires us to take every single animation and merge them into a single long file. Then we have to write a txt file explaining which frames occupy what animations so the programmers know what to do with it. Its nuts, but we dont have anyone to write us a new exporter and we cant afford middleware like Granny3D

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Well, today they excused themselves with "Well, we cant do anything until we get the animations for X and the GUI design" which may very well be true, Im too busy with my corner of things to have time to check up on them. But theyre skilled people who know what thyre doing(mostly)so theres really no reason to doubt them.

 

I totally doubt them . I also don't know them mind, but there is always code to be written and new things to be learnt.

 

Lately Ive been doing mostly pleasant art design and building enemies, but tomorow Im going to have to dive into the tech swamp of exporting animation sets.

 

Welcome to what can be the most hellish and most dull job you may ever do!

 

The way we would prefer to do this is to export each separate animation as a single file, because its much easier to update and keep track of, but the exporter we're using now requires us to take every single animation and merge them into a single long file. Then we have to write a txt file explaining which frames occupy what animations so the programmers know what to do with it.

 

This is actually a fairly common straight forwards approch, it's not pleasant but it does get the job done, its just not the most efficent and easiest use of said time.

 

Its nuts, but we dont have anyone to write us a new exporter and we cant afford middleware like Granny3D

 

I can understand not being able to afford Granny3D, but you have pleanty of programmers claiming that there isn't nothing for them to do, yet right here you've mentioned a perfectly reasonable job... Far as I can see, they're doing what programmers do best, make everything seem overcomplicated so the average human doesn't have a choice but to believe what they say, that way they can slack and get all the work done at a later date. I'm critical, mostly because I know alot of programmers who take that exact approch, infact it's the ones that say "I'm not implementing that, its too much effort" that really really get under my skin.

 

Without some sort of power structure, they will run riot.

[Rob Smith]

Lately Ive been doing mostly pleasant art design and building enemies, but tomorow Im going to have to dive into the tech swamp of exporting animation sets. The way we would prefer to do this is to export each separate animation as a single file, because its much easier to update and keep track of, but the exporter we're using now requires us to take every single animation and merge them into a single long file. Then we have to write a txt file explaining which frames occupy what animations so the programmers know what to do with it. Its nuts, but we dont have anyone to write us a new exporter and we cant afford middleware like Granny3D

 

Can't the programmers that have nothing to do write you a tool to do that? Should take all of about a day to get 80% functional with the kinks worked out along the way. I think it's worth the 8-16 hours of programmer time versus the countless hours of art time and that's not even including having to re-export for fixes.

 

Edit: yeah what Night said, except the part about all programmers making things needlessly difficult and being total slackers of course.

Edited April 1, 2008 by Rob Smith

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Edit: yeah what Night said, except the part about all programmers making things needlessly difficult and being total slackers of course.

 

I think you misunderstood me, not all programmers are absolute slackers, some are, and they don't make things needlessly difficult, they tend to purposely use language which confuses designers, and managers alike. It's petty pointless and pathetic, but it does exist. I personally HATE the attitude.

 

I personally know programmers who neither give a crap what designers design for a game, ignore it entirely, put what they want in, don't do anything challenging and basically slack off as much as possible.

 

All the best coders dedicate themselves to either making a designers life easier through tools, to making the implementation as close to the design as humanly possible.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Well, lazy or not, today they managed to assemble the first playable build of the game! And I managed to do that "itll just take half an hour" animation exporting in about 5-6 hours, which was great fun.

 

But the most important event of the day was when people were flocking to watch our pre-pre-pre-alpha and commenting positively on the very delicate and perfectly rounded bottom of our main character, a detail which took three artists working an entire weekend to perfect. Many people do not realise the attention and care a good bottom requires.

[Noceur]

Rounded Bottom.

 

You have my undivided attention, sir!

[Noceur]

Rounded Bottom.

 

You have my undivided attention, sir!

 

 

edit: Also, it's a shame that the majority of game-related plug-ins is for Max, since the modelling part of Max isn't all that intuitive. At least in my opinion, but I've got a 2D background so I like to just get in there and move things around rather swiftly, which is easier to do in most other 3D modellers. (Then again, I haven't tried all those modelling plug-ins that are supposed to make Max more artist friendly)

 

Edit2: Hah.. I seem to have messed up a bit here... clicked quote/reply instead of edit on my post above ^__^;

Edited April 2, 2008 by Noceur

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

I managed to do that "itll just take half an hour" animation exporting in about 5-6 hours, which was great fun.

 

You sir are a very sick human being!

 

But the most important event of the day was when people were flocking to watch our pre-pre-pre-alpha and commenting positively on the very delicate and perfectly rounded bottom of our main character, a detail which took three artists working an entire weekend to perfect. Many people do not realise the attention and care a good bottom requires.

 

And breasts, great stonking adorable ****!

[Kaftan Barlast]

Now we've hit a bit of a snag, our TGA textures take too much space on the graphics card so we're going to have to bite the rotten apple and convert them all to DDS using DXT compression. But does anyone know if the compressed DDS will remain compressed in the graphics memory or if theyre decompressed?

 

 

... the modelling part of Max isn't all that intuitive.

 

Says you, the Lightwave man!

 

 

I managed to do that "itll just take half an hour" animation exporting in about 5-6 hours, which was great fun.

 

You sir are a very sick human being!

 

 

Am not! Its going to be even more fun to manually convert all our TGA's to DDS

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Now we've hit a bit of a snag, our TGA textures take too much space on the graphics card so we're going to have to bite the rotten apple and convert them all to DDS using DXT compression. But does anyone know if the compressed DDS will remain compressed in the graphics memory or if theyre decompressed?

Am not! Its going to be even more fun to manually convert all our TGA's to DDS

 

You sir, are beyond sick!

 

Lets see, DXT compression, yes you can, but it is lossy, I believe the loss can be minimized.

 

http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/32/43/324337_324337.pdf < May be useful

Edited April 2, 2008 by @\NightandtheShape/@

[Kaftan Barlast]

Sorry I havent written anything lately! We've been busy annoying eachother and sneezing on eachothers keyboards. Here is a promo shot of the unfinished level

 

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Art Direction seems nice!