January 09, 2007
So I really did intend on coming up with a schedule before I started major work on HydroGen. But even with the best of intentions there are times when things just don't work out according to plan. Instead, I started building the basic application and framework without even writing a sinle word of…
January 06, 2007
My third article was posted to the GameDev.net front page a couple of days ago. It presents a new silhouette rendering technique and you can see it here: Fast Silhouettes. I wrote the article a while back, but now its up for everyone to use. Hopefully it helps a few people out.
I did receive a co…
I did receive a co…
January 04, 2007
I updated the header of the journal with a tentative list of things that have to be done before a true development schedule can be hashed out. In essence, right now I have a good idea of what I want the game to be and what I think will make it special. I want to more clearly define the major char…
January 03, 2007
I just got an email from NVIDIA saying that it is going to take them longer to process the article submissions since they received so many of them! This means that I am still in the running to work on an article!!!! Woohooooo!!!!!
I think that is the best email of the year so far. I know it doesn…
I think that is the best email of the year so far. I know it doesn…
January 03, 2007
Just a quick update before going off to work:
Stompy pointed out that I was spelling Hieroglyph incorrectly, so I fixed that last night on all of my projects, files, and folders. Thank you for the notice!
I am also continuing to develop the schedule. I think for now I am going to go with a more gen…
Stompy pointed out that I was spelling Hieroglyph incorrectly, so I fixed that last night on all of my projects, files, and folders. Thank you for the notice!
I am also continuing to develop the schedule. I think for now I am going to go with a more gen…
January 01, 2007
The Beginning of the ProjectSo, now that I am dedicated to developing my first title, I will be working to put together a somewhat conservative but realistic schedule. I am usually pretty good at estimating how long it will take to perform a certain task, but the difficulty comes in when determini…
December 31, 2006
What is in the past???
2006 has been a good year for me. I have had success in my personal life as well as my professional life, and to be honest I can't complain at all about how this past year has finished out. With that said, its time to start making plans for the coming year.
What is next???
I…
2006 has been a good year for me. I have had success in my personal life as well as my professional life, and to be honest I can't complain at all about how this past year has finished out. With that said, its time to start making plans for the coming year.
What is next???
I…
December 30, 2006
The BitterWell, I didn't hear anything from NVIDIA about my article proposal, and yesterday was the last business day of the year. So unless NVIDIA works weekends (even worse - weekends near holidays) my submission was probably denied. [sad] Even so, I am glad that I at least submitted the article…
December 28, 2006
My wife bought a copy of Dave Eberly's "3D Game Engine Design, 2nd Ed." for Christmas. I am a pretty big fan of Eberly - it seems that he takes the time to explain things properly from the ground up. In fact, between the four of his books that are currently available, you can basically learn ever…
December 21, 2006
Just a quick update - I still haven't heard anything from nVidia yet about my article. I hope they actually received the submission and that it didn't get filtered out in a spam filter.
Even so, I have had a few more ideas on how to improve parallax occlusion mapping. Lately I have been reviewing …
Even so, I have had a few more ideas on how to improve parallax occlusion mapping. Lately I have been reviewing …
December 12, 2006
I spent my dev time yesterday working on a newer version of my parallax occlusion mapping effect. There was actually a bug in my interpolation between the final two sampled height points that was causing an aliasing effect unless I used insanely high sampling rates to somewhat 'brute force' the al…
December 09, 2006
I had been thinking about it for quite some time, but I finally got everything together and submitted an article proposal for GPU Gems 3. The submission page is here for those of you who are interested, but essentially they say that it would be best to provide a video or screen shots of the propos…
December 07, 2006
Jack Hoxley recently started a thread on parallax occlusion mapping, asking if the algorithm is fundamentally flawed or not. I have to say it is not, and posted several additions to the algorithm for ensuring that the image does not get clipped. Here is what needs to be done:
1) Clip any pixels th…
1) Clip any pixels th…
December 03, 2006
I finally have a little time to post about my most recent game project, titled Alpha Blast. This game was built for a Computer Graphics course that I am just finishing up now. It is a 2D side scrolling game, but everything is rendered in 3D with 3D models. All of the models are textured only, wi…
November 29, 2006
I have been meaning to post a little bit about my current OGL project, but I am right in the middle of a huge crunch for homework assignments. It seems that everything except the game project is due tomorrow, so I have been working hard to get everything done before then.
However, I should have som…
However, I should have som…
November 27, 2006
It has been a good long while since my last post. Things have been pretty busy between work, school, and family - but I should be updating more regularly over the next couple of weeks.
Lately I have been working on a project for one of my Masters courses: Computer Graphics. The requirement is to d…
Lately I have been working on a project for one of my Masters courses: Computer Graphics. The requirement is to d…
September 28, 2006
As mentioned in my last post, I am going to be releasing the article here in my journal instead of posting it to gamedev.net because they don't seem to respond to any inquiries for months at a time. Anyways, here is the link to the article and a demo program to demonstrate it:
Article (*.pdf)
Demo P…
Article (*.pdf)
Demo P…
September 21, 2006
The third time is a charm...
I submitted my third article to gamedev a long time ago now. After each submission, you get a fogbugz ID and link to check the progress of your article in the review process. Basically it just says wether or not the fogbugz case is open or closed.
With each of the artic…
I submitted my third article to gamedev a long time ago now. After each submission, you get a fogbugz ID and link to check the progress of your article in the review process. Basically it just says wether or not the fogbugz case is open or closed.
With each of the artic…
September 09, 2006
I have been busy integrating Physx into my engine, and I decided on the first project that will use it. I am going to make a sequel to my original game Lunar Rift. The new game will include a much needed graphics overhaul, real physics for all game objects, and a much better gameplay mechanism th…
August 18, 2006
I have been having fun integrating the PhysX system into my engine. Originally I was going to try to make it an add on to the existing system with the use of 'controllers' (Dave Eberly Lingo), but ultimately decided that putting the reference to the physics actor in the object that the actor is si…
August 11, 2006
I finally received my copy of Shader X4 yesterday. It's always good to read about some of the latest advances and techniques to help you come up with more ideas. My productivity is probably going to be pretty low for the next week or so...
While trying to update my Lunar Rift code, I basically dec…
While trying to update my Lunar Rift code, I basically dec…
August 04, 2006
I am just putting the finishing touches on another article. It details a method that I am using for fast, older hardware capable silhouettes, ridges, and valleys. Hopefully someone out there will find some use for it. I should be able to submit it relatively soon...
Not a whole lot going on other…
Not a whole lot going on other…
August 01, 2006
While trying to figure out what my next rendering project would be, I decided to revisit my first game, Lunar Rift, and see how it was doing. I spent almost two years developing Heiroglyph (the engine) alongside Lunar Rift (pilot application), and am actually quite proud of how the game ended up.
I…
I…
July 26, 2006
It sounds pretty crazy, but putting the GUI into the scene graph was actually one of the best changes I have ever made to the display system. All of the work and testing that I have done on my scenegraph object rendering code is now brought to bear on the GUI, which had previously been used as a s…
July 25, 2006
Well, I recently posted about how best to use the directx effect file system to control state changes, in particular how to minimize texture changes. The best suggestion that I got was to use the ID3DXEffectStateManager and take control of how the states are being set.
This was actually much easier…
This was actually much easier…
July 18, 2006
I am heading off to go camping until the end of the week - and won't have any access to a computer until I get back. However, my recent studying of parallax occlusion mapping has sparked an interest in raytracing, so I printed out a few papers that I will be reviewing while I'm gone.
I have been ha…
I have been ha…
July 17, 2006
I have been noticing that rendering my GUI elements is really a performance hog. After running some tests with PIX, I was able to figure out that each of my textured buttons was setting the same texture right before it was rendered. This amounted to about 45 set texture calls on a scene that only…
July 11, 2006
I haven't taken the time to get the silhouette comparison images together that I mentioned in my last post. Things have been really busy, and I haven't had much time for graphics programming :(
However, I may have a little more time to look into things for the next couple of days. I recently wrapp…
However, I may have a little more time to look into things for the next couple of days. I recently wrapp…
June 27, 2006
I have been working on several new rendering effects (or render views as I call them in my engine) for rendering nice silhouettes, ridges, and creases. The actual geometry that I am rendering is relatively low-poly, so just about any algorithm was open for trial and error.
The first method I tried …
The first method I tried …
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