March 02, 2006
I've started to work on a combat gameplay prototype. This prototype should hopefully be done in the coming weeks ( hopefully mid-March ) and its primary purpose will be to test:
- the networking module with up to 25 players in the same battle
- the 3D engine with level-of-detail
- different possible c…
- the networking module with up to 25 players in the same battle
- the 3D engine with level-of-detail
- different possible c…
February 23, 2006
Consolidation of the engine continues. I've been fighting against path and files management for a couple of days. That's just no fun, but it now seems to be working as expected. It's now possible to set some aliases to directories in the path of files. For instance:
- $current is the path of the par…
- $current is the path of the par…
February 15, 2006
Moddb.com has finally released the interview. You can find it here:
Link to moddb.com
The new video is here:
Link
In other news, Shawn has made an update to the station and added two large pods. I'll post some screens in a later update.
Link to moddb.com
The new video is here:
Link
In other news, Shawn has made an update to the station and added two large pods. I'll post some screens in a later update.
February 12, 2006
Moddb.com hasn't published the interview yet, so to patient a bit, i'm posting 2 new screenshots.
This week i've been working on the consolidation of the engine. I planned to do it for quite a while, but i thought now would be a good time. I'm re-organizing the whole directory architecture, renaming…
This week i've been working on the consolidation of the engine. I planned to do it for quite a while, but i thought now would be a good time. I'm re-organizing the whole directory architecture, renaming…
February 07, 2006
I've finally completed an interview (with some new pictures, and a video of the space station) for the site moddb.com (they also list standalone games). It should get posted in a couple of hours or days.
In other news, i've added a sun glowing effect and some "dust" particles in space. It doesn't lo…
In other news, i've added a sun glowing effect and some "dust" particles in space. It doesn't lo…
February 02, 2006
I know that some people will be happy: i'm working on a new video, this time to show off the shaders and effects on the space station. It should be ready sometimes next week.
I've been fixing a few bugs ( the "dark halo" around the planet, especially visible in the ring background ), and i'm reworki…
I've been fixing a few bugs ( the "dark halo" around the planet, especially visible in the ring background ), and i'm reworki…
January 30, 2006
In the past days, i've implemented a nice little feature: automatic reloading of texture maps. The engine uses a texture manager, which checks every N seconds (currently, N=1) if a file image has changed ( i compare the size and the last modification date ). If this is the case, the texture is auto…
January 24, 2006
A coworker (Inigo Quilez) suggested that i use anisotropic lighting to simulate metallic surfaces on the space station. To my surprise, it works pretty well! It is also much more efficient than Cook-Torrance lighting, as it only requires to compute N.L and N.H, and to perform a texture lookup with …
January 22, 2006
I've been working on improving the shaders and lighting model used for metallic surfaces ( like most of the station ). In the mean time, Shawn has textured and added details to the top part of the station, with a biodome. It's funny because he actually started to work on it before Shadowstar mentio…
January 20, 2006
In the past days, i've been performing a network stress test, by emulating a server and a lot of clients connecting to it. In the above screenshot, you can see the test window as well as many statistics, which i'll explain in a short while.
The whole server is centralized around two components. The …
January 17, 2006
I've been thinking to a solution to prevent hackers from releasing a pirated version of the game giving unfair advantages. Surely all the critical data and calculations will be done on the server side, but protecting the client from "cheap hacks" (like aimbots) is necessary too. This is for an onli…
January 15, 2006
Not much to say - a few fixes and details by Shawn, but code-wise, most of my work this week end has been oriented towards the Minas Tirith patch.
In the last shot, you can see the station ( which is in orbit at an altitude of 300 Km ) looks like from the ground.. definately huge. Atmospheric shadin…
In the last shot, you can see the station ( which is in orbit at an altitude of 300 Km ) looks like from the ground.. definately huge. Atmospheric shadin…
January 13, 2006
As promised, here are the first screenshots of Shawn's space station:
January 12, 2006
I've been pretty busy this evening to get the shaders ready for the space station. Shawn is making nice progress on it, but it's far from being finished. The results are starting to look nice, so i think i'll be posting a few screenshots of how it looks inside the game tomorrow.
I've implemented a c…
I've implemented a c…
January 10, 2006
I've been working on an ambient occlusion module for my ASE2Bin model viewer, and tested it on a Minas Tirith building.
There are many issues with the way it is currently done. The main one is, while waiting for a proper lightmapping implementation, the ambient occlusion values are stored per-vertex…
There are many issues with the way it is currently done. The main one is, while waiting for a proper lightmapping implementation, the ambient occlusion values are stored per-vertex…
January 08, 2006
The latest version has been released.
Head to the Official Website and download the realtime viewer. System requirements are high, so i would not advise that you download it unless you have at least a Gigabyte of RAM, a 2 Ghz CPU and a 128 MB video card.
For those of you who do not meet the system re…
Head to the Official Website and download the realtime viewer. System requirements are high, so i would not advise that you download it unless you have at least a Gigabyte of RAM, a 2 Ghz CPU and a 128 MB video card.
For those of you who do not meet the system re…
January 07, 2006
The new Minas Tirith version (10) should be released tomorrow. I've been spending an incredible amount of time today to be ready, and i feel exhausted. This new release should include first-person camera walking/running with full collisions, jumping, and most of all.. physics! You can now make stat…
January 03, 2006
Happy new year 2006!
I've back to do more programming. I've been trying to implement collision detection in ODE for the Minas Tirith project (which incidently, is using Infinity's engine: combo hit). It didn't work quite well. As soon as two objects were colliding, they ended up with a NaN (not-a-nu…
I've back to do more programming. I've been trying to implement collision detection in ODE for the Minas Tirith project (which incidently, is using Infinity's engine: combo hit). It didn't work quite well. As soon as two objects were colliding, they ended up with a NaN (not-a-nu…
December 20, 2005
Finally, it is done.
I've been missing some time to fix all the issues, but i'd say it's "good enough". You might notice a bit of popping in the textures, that's because recording with fraps decreased the framerate to the 30s, which in return made the texturing process "lag" a bit. When it's running…
I've been missing some time to fix all the issues, but i'd say it's "good enough". You might notice a bit of popping in the textures, that's because recording with fraps decreased the framerate to the 30s, which in return made the texturing process "lag" a bit. When it's running…
December 19, 2005
I'm now in X-Mas vacation, so i've been pretty busy ( preparing my trip back to France to see my family, buying presents, etc.. ). On the Infinity front, i'm now preparing the promised video. It should be done by tomorrow, as i'm taking the train on Wednesday ( so if it's not out by wednesday, you'…
December 14, 2005
As i've mentionned in a previous entry, the low orbit view is now looking pretty good. I got ride of the visible tiling in the detail textures ( to the cost of more texture popping, but that'll be fixed later ).
I've found a NASA picture on the web showing how the atmosphere looks like from a low or…
I've found a NASA picture on the web showing how the atmosphere looks like from a low or…
December 12, 2005
Actually, i should stop calling this "detail textures". Detail textures are now in and fully working, so i guess as soon as next time i'll go back to "terrain step". I'm really not that productive these days: i'm spending far too much time exploring the planet, tuning the parameters, colors, etc..
…
…
December 10, 2005
Not a lot of progress today, it's the week end, and i'm in a relaxing mood. Still spent an hour to fix a few things though.
The low orbit views are now back to looking decent. I thought to a trick yesterday evening in my bed, while trying to sleep: using a dynamic texture scale, instead of a constan…
The low orbit views are now back to looking decent. I thought to a trick yesterday evening in my bed, while trying to sleep: using a dynamic texture scale, instead of a constan…
December 09, 2005
I'm probably going to hell. It's soon midnight, and i haven't done any progress in the past two hours.. i've been too busy.. tweaking some parameters, then exploring the planet. You can get lost so easily, i doubt i'd be able to find again the exact location of all the places i'm taking into screen…
December 09, 2005
Sweet people, here i do officially present you Mount SnowWhite. Meet Mount SnowWhite: a huge mountain located in a long chain of mountains ( second view ). This mountain is, by strange circumstances, approximately the same size than Mount White, Alps, on Earth ( 4700 m ). The screenshot was taken a…
December 08, 2005
Things are getting better, i've fixed some artefacts introduced by the detail textures algorithm, and i've added variety to the detail textures.
Still, i'm not happy at all. Of course, the two screenies above are pretty good, but due to the tiling patterns, the quality of the low-orbit views has bee…
December 07, 2005
So here we are. I've started to implement detail textures. It's extremely early, and i've actually broken some other parts of the code :) So, i was hesitating a bit to post it, but i thought the end result was "good enough" to show.
As usual, the conditions are very different from the last set of sc…
As usual, the conditions are very different from the last set of sc…
December 06, 2005
A few days ago i promised to post a video showing seamless planetary transitions. It's not ready yet, but to make you patient until i fix all the bugs and implement detail textures, i've uploaded a small "teaser" video: a panoramic view of a valley, surrounded by mountains.
Get it here ( 3.7 Mb DIV…
Get it here ( 3.7 Mb DIV…
December 06, 2005
I'm working on the heightfield generation for the planet surface, as well as improving the atmosphere as seen from space, and some shader parameters. Not much to say, so i'll just post two "experimental" screenshots:
December 05, 2005
Texture seams more or less fixed (there are still a few seams here and there, mostly between patches that are at a differnet LOD level, but since they're usually quite far from the camera, it's not too bad).
Plan for today:
- blending for smoother texture transitions
- playing with the heightfield gen…
Plan for today:
- blending for smoother texture transitions
- playing with the heightfield gen…
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