[font=arial]Project B - 2013-09-06 - Reaching Milestones[/font]
After a long time, and a lot of work, finally Project B is starting to look like a game. It's not a game yet, but we're getting there. Here's the latest screen shot.
[font=arial]
I've been happy with my team's progress so far. The game has really started to come together. There's still a long way to go, but now we got a character moving around a level and a model editing tool. So I decided to write a blog post that explains how we got here. This time last year, we were working on Genesis Seed, a game that we thought could be epic, but was really too much for us. Now we're building a much smaller game that we think can be really fun. Here's a little time line of how things have gone so far.
[/font]January 2013
[font=arial]In January of this year, I started experimenting with Direct X 11. Upto this time, I had been exclusively using Direct X 9, but I felt it was time to upgrade. I decided to keep Direct X 9 around for testing so I ended up working on a framework that I could use for both APIs. I decided to leave the framework open enough to be able to expand to more platforms and APIs in the future.[/font]
[font=arial]
March 2013
[/font][font=arial]
In March, I decided to abandon the DXUT GUI. At first, I wanted to change it so the DXUT interface could be used on multiple platforms, but I stopped after learning that this is against the Direct X license. I decided to build a new GUI from scratch with plans to later open source it.
[/font][font=arial] I started working exclusively on the GUI and stopped all Genesis SEED work.[/font][font=arial] Later, I renamed the engine and decided to re-brand myself from DSquared to Squared'D as DSquared was already in use..[/font]
April 2013
The Genesis Seed project was quickly dissolving so I decided to rejoin Gamedev.net. I actually have been coming to this site for many years, but had stopped posting. I wanted to get more acquainted with other independent developers.
[font=arial]
May 2013
[/font][font=arial]
I continued to make major GUI progress and decided to discontinue working on Genesis SEED until I got updates from the team. I figured we were all tired of the project after working on it for some years. I started building a text-based game because I wanted to work on a project that I small enough could finish it on my own. I started the project journal on
[/font][font=arial]May 22.
[/font]May 24, 2013
My Genesis SEED teammate pitches a new game idea to me called Project H. I initially reject it. The image below is a very early concept drawing. The game's look and feel is different now.
[font=arial]
June 3, 2013
[/font]After giving the project some though, I saw that it had some merit so we decided to negotiate how to work on the project and how to form the new team. I was provided some mock-ups and prototypes. The images below are not real. They were created by Sung Shin, designer/3D modeler to give me a feel of the game. This was very important. If you're an aspiring designer and want to work with a developer. Provide mock-ups like these. Just draw them in paint if you have to.
[font=arial]
June 17, 2013
[/font][font=arial]
On this day, I created the initial coding plan and started to build a new post-processing framework to fix the glow effect. The old framework ran on Direct X 9 and used the StretchRect() method. This method doesn't exist on Direct X 11 so I needed to just render to a texture from the first pass. This works better anyway as some graphics cards don't have good support for StretchRect() even when using Direct X 9.
[/font][font=arial]
[font=arial]
June 19, 2013
[/font][font=arial]
On this day I finally finished the new post-processing framework. This allows me to be able to apply effects to the completed scene like blur, glow, etc.
[/font]July 1, 2013
[font=arial]
On this day, I decided to discontinue my text-based hame and start working exclusively on Project H, now called project B. I announced this on my developer's journal. Albeit small, this was the first public announcement for development of the game.
[/font][font=arial]
July 16, 2013
[/font][font=arial]
After a lot of work, I finally finished migrating the texture and shader systems from the old version of the engine to the new one. After this, I was sure I'd be able to make a game work on Direct X 9 and 11.
[/font]
[font=arial]
July 23,2013
[/font][font=arial]
This was a very important day as I was able to import a model into the model editor. I felt relieved as development had been going much slower than expected.
[/font][font=arial]
[font=arial]
[font=arial]
July 30,2013
[/font][font=arial]
This was a major milestone day for me. I finished moving the animation system to the new framework. It supports matrix palette based animations with shaders developed for Direct X 9 and Direct X 11.
[/font]
[font=arial]
August 30,2013
[/font][font=arial]
On this day, I finished the basic level stuff. I also added the code that would allow me to start the game in the main menu, create user profiles, and run a level though the menu.
[/font][font=arial]
[font=arial]
September 4,2013
[/font][font=arial]
On this day, I added basic NVidia PhysX support as my physics engine. The character in the game now moves around using a PhysX character controller.
[/font][font=arial]
[font=arial]
What's Next?
[font=arial]
What's next on the docket? I need to develop the levels. My plan is to work on a tool that will allow our team artist and designer to develop the levels and configure them on their own. After that, I'll work on collision detection within the level and then having multiple characters in the stage at once. The next big milestone will be connecting RakNet to the engine again and making it multi-player.
[/font][font=arial]
I'll continue to provide updates on this site.
[/font][font=arial]
