January 14, 2008
First Post of 2008I've been strangely busy this year, as witnessed by the fact that I haven't posted until two weeks into the new year. Even so, I have managed to squeeze a few development activities in here and there. The first thing I wanted to post is the fact that I made a much better video c…
December 27, 2007
FeedbackI've been doing some maintenance work on my engine, and started to overhaul the physics portion of the engine to get ready for Feedback. Previously I have very simple wrappers for the PhysX classes and didn't really provide much additional content in my classes. This time around I have de…
December 20, 2007
I guess this means it's official - check out chapter 2, section 4:
Shader X6 Site
I can't wait to see how it finally turned out, it has been a long time coming...
Shader X6 Site
I can't wait to see how it finally turned out, it has been a long time coming...
December 10, 2007
Getting back to FeedbackAfter spending some time on SSAO, I have decided not to write an article on the subject. It is an interesting technique, and I think it has a great potential user base, but there are a couple things working against it. I'll list them briefly:
1. The algorithm needs a view s…
1. The algorithm needs a view s…
November 30, 2007
Screen Space Ambient OcclusionI still haven't finished my task scheduling homework/project, but it was driving me mad to have the SSAO not working so I took a break for a few hours and got it working. Here is a screenshot of the raw output from the depth tests - for each of eight samples, if the s…
November 25, 2007
Ugh, I've been really busy with programming projects for my OS course and haven't had much time for other projects. I did however get the basis for SSAO started. I've more or less created a separate render view, making it pretty easy to add to existing applications as a first pass prior to final …
November 15, 2007
IntersectionI have decided that I will stick with doing my own intersection code. I need to have a code base that I can reuse as I want, and don't want to be tied to the physics API. So I will just grind it out and get it done. Yesterday I took an exam for my OS class, so I should have a little …
November 13, 2007
3D GUIThe 3D intersection testing code has been very slow going. I just don't have enough time to relearn how the geometric intersections are calculated and implement them without any bugs. I have been considering using the physics API to do my intersection testing for me, since the API writers p…
November 09, 2007
Feedback RequirementsAfter working on my design documents for a while, I started a list of the required engine technology that I would need for my new game. The first one that I am going to tackle is an overhaul and paradigm change of the GUI. GUIs don't seem like that much fun to work on, but if…
November 03, 2007
Now that I have finished the renderer article, I feel like a bit of a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I'm not sure why, but that write-up took much longer than it should have (partially due to school work and house work) and I am glad to have it behind me now.What's Next?Since I released …
October 29, 2007
Well, I've been talking over the last few posts about describing my rendering system. I have been writing a small document trying to describe it in some detail, but I haven't had very much free time per day - so the end result is that it took forever to write up even a semi-complete document. Sin…
October 10, 2007
Man, it seems like ages since my last post. Wait - it has been ages since my last post! Things have been busy with school/work/family plus development time, but I still managed to get the new renderer more or less roughed in. I just have to add comments and clean up some of the interfaces and it…
September 23, 2007
Rendering Continued...I have been plugging away at implementing the DX9 version of my rendering system design, and things have been going quite well. Currently, I have the geometry classes working together with the renderer and render effects classes - which is ultimately the basis for all renderi…
September 14, 2007
Busy BusyI have been splitting my time between working on the new engine, writing up a description of my rendering system, and putting together an OGL/MFC application for work. Here's the highlights from each...
1. The new engine work is going well. I am really concentrating on getting a clean int…
1. The new engine work is going well. I am really concentrating on getting a clean int…
September 12, 2007
Renderer Design Cont.I have been busy writing the interfaces for the basic renderer functionality. The process is going very smoothly, and I have been able to eliminate several design issues that I had with the first engine. As I mentioned last time, the renderer basically implements an abstract …
September 06, 2007
Renderer DesignAfter approximately 4 years of development, the new Hieroglyph engine is finally being developed. Of course the heart of any game engine (or multimedia system as I'm calling it) is the rendering system, since that is what provides the most immediate feedback to the user. The sound …
September 01, 2007
Creating TexturesI tend to have zero artistic ability when it comes to creating art assets. I am thankful that I have the technical abilities that I have, but must accept that the artistic side of my brain (whichever side that is...) is apparently significantly smaller than the other side. Even t…
August 31, 2007
Article Demo Submitted!At long last, the article demo has been submitted and is out of my hands. I'm quite happy with how it turned out, but was really surprised about how much time investment it takes to put together a decent demo. So I thought I would do a small post-mortem about the demo to sh…
August 25, 2007
The LaptopThe new laptop arrived yesterday, a full week ahead of time. I'm busily downloading updates, to be followed by a few hours of VS to be installed, then the DXSDK, etc... It really is amazing how long it takes to get a machine ready to rock, but it is going to be very much worth it. My l…
August 18, 2007
It has been approximately 4-5 months since my last laptop died on me, and I finally ordered a new one. Here's the specs in a nutshell:
- Dell Vostro 1500
- Core 2 Duo (1.6 GHz, 2MB L2, 800 MHz FSB)
- 2 GB DDR2
- 256 MB GeForce 8600M GT
- 15.4" Widescreen LCD
- 120 GB HD
I really wanted to get a DX10 lev…
- Dell Vostro 1500
- Core 2 Duo (1.6 GHz, 2MB L2, 800 MHz FSB)
- 2 GB DDR2
- 256 MB GeForce 8600M GT
- 15.4" Widescreen LCD
- 120 GB HD
I really wanted to get a DX10 lev…
August 17, 2007
I have finished off the article on Wednesday and submitted it late Wednesday night. Overall, I am happy with how it turned out and hope my section editor will agree - only time will tell. The demo for the article is being polished up and will likely be sent in sometime in the next few days. It w…
August 07, 2007
Well, I have been pretty as busy as I have ever been lately. My wife and I had our second daughter, and I haven't had much time to do anything since then. It has been a great and rewarding few weeks, but I am pretty much exhausted...
Plus I am finishing up an article for an upcoming shader program…
Plus I am finishing up an article for an upcoming shader program…
July 13, 2007
WritingI have been working hard on an article for the last week or so. It's been a while since my last article, and I had forgotten how much I enjoy the writing process. Not only is the subject matter very interesting to me, but getting it down on paper in the way that you think will help explain…
July 08, 2007
SSE Matrix MultiplyI don't know if you guys have ever played around with writing SSE assembly, but I have to say that it is really quite easy and has profound performance impact. I took a short break from writing to implement a matrix multiply member function for my SSE matrix/vector classes. Aft…
July 06, 2007
x87 FPUA few posts ago, I mentioned that the x87 FPU registers were arranged as a stack instead of the random access registers from the x86 integer area. It didn't make sense to me at first, but now I realize why they did that - when a mathematic expression is in postfix notation, typically the pr…
June 29, 2007
Busy BusyI have been trying to get more work done on my SSE optimized vector/matrix classes, but have gotten only a few member functions updated. The ones that I have update seem to have quite a good boost in speed (typically between 15-50% faster), but I just don't have time right now to finish i…
June 22, 2007
Floating Point UnitIt is truly amazing to me how much different the x87 floating point unit operates when compared to the normal integer based x86 area. The last couple days I have been exploring how it works, playing around with different instructions and so on, and it has stack based registers i…
June 19, 2007
Re-learning AssemblyIn the spirit of eventually using SSE optimizations, I have started reviewing x86 assembly. There are a couple of decent articles here on gamedev.net, and I also have a hardcover book that I bought about 5 years ago and never really dug in. I have done some work with Motorola …
June 18, 2007
Software Rasterizer On HoldI pretty much have hit a limit with optimization on the rasterizer. I made quite a few improvements with respect to memory access, redundant function calls, and overall program flow. The net result, when rendering a single bilinear filtered textured triangle at 640x480 …
June 10, 2007
Opimization ProgressThe optimization effort has been moving along much better lately. The results of my profiling efforts show what you would expect: anything that is done at the per-fragment level is expensive due to the huge number of times that it is done. In general, memory access at the frag…
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