• entries
59
86
• views
40784

# Devblog #40: Geometry grass, Random island placement

801 views

Geometry grass solution

DOMEN KONESKI

A couple of weeks ago I showed some early samples of rendering grass on the GPU by using geometry shaders. Fresh in-house grass solution allows us faster performance and fuller environment. This video shows you what can be done with the new grass system. It aligns to the terrain, grass color is the same as the vertex color beneath it. It also has full forward shadows and global wind support.

Random island placement
VILI VOLČINI

This past week I was working on random Island placement and many other things. I found a need for Gradient Descent style optimization, to place Islands around each other, with special constraints. First I made a penality function or error function. This function is scalar field, since it returns a real number based on position in the world (and islandRadius you are willing to place).

float PenalityFuncIsland(Vector3 point, float islandRadius) {

float error = 0;

// island-wall-distance

error += Mathf.Max(wd - minimumDistanceBetweenWallAndIsland, 0);

// closest island-island-distance

error += Mathf.Max(minimumDistanceBetweenIslands - d, 0f);
error += Mathf.Max(d - maximumDistanceBetweenIslands, 0f);

// difference between 2 closest-island-island distances

error += Mathf.Max(c2, 0f);

return error;
}

In order to minimize the error, I needed to do a gradient of the same function. This is 2D version, since we are placing regular Islands (not Floating Lands). Because it’s 2D gradient, I just needed to calculate 2 derivatives.

Vector3 PenalityFuncIslandGradient(Vector3 point, float radius) {

float dx = PenalityFuncIsland(point + Vector3.right,   radius) - PenalityFuncIsland(point - Vector3.right  , radius);
float dy = PenalityFuncIsland(point + Vector3.forward, radius) - PenalityFuncIsland(point - Vector3.forward, radius);

return new Vector3(dx, 0f, dy);
}

Then I picked random iterPoint in space (initial guess), and then I just walk over world like that, minimizing error (walking down the hill).

while(..) {
..
..
}

Obviously this is not the whole story, since I also needed some termination code (knowing when to stop & knowing when a point is good enough or should be discarded). I have drawn the trail of walking through our space, and this is the end result:

ANDREJ KREBS

I have modeled and prepared some more skins for the crystal armour, which the players will be able to collect and use. This week’s newly additions are two more modeled and animated critters for the game, an armadillo and a spider-like robot with a drill.

Painting more icons for the UI
MITO HORVAT

I continue to paint icons for the UI. Slowly finishing with armor sets and moving towards the trash icons. You can see some of the new trash icons in the picture below. Trash items are mostly damaged objects you’ll be able to find in the floatlands universe. From mechanical parts to wooden junk that will lay around on the ground.

Additional UI icons - armor sets and damaged objects

Creating templates for Floatlands Wiki

Perhaps you noticed the Gamepedia link on our blog. Well, Gamepedia is hosting Floatlands official Wiki. Since our game is still a work in progress, game changes also have to reflect in the Wiki.

So lately we’ve been updating the main page – correcting the layout, background and logos (featured images are a little outdated and will be replaced soon). We’re also preparing various templates, which will help us add elements to Wiki a lot easier. Tadej and I first put together a template for adding Weapons. The example on the right shows Close Encounter Shotgun and all of its characteristics in the game.

An example of weapon item template on Wiki

Floatlands music: Earth
CHRIS PLEXIDAS

Earth is a darker track, soothing and mysterious that will play during nighttime and dawn time when exploring your unknown surroundings.

There are no comments to display.

## Create an account

Register a new account

• ### Similar Content

• GameDaily.Biz spoke to Improbable about its new shortcuts to multiplayer game development for Unity and Unreal.

Improbable helps game developers build believable online worlds with its bespoke technology, SpatialOS. Now, that task is much easier and accessible for those building games on the technology with the recent release of the SpatialOS Game Development Kit (GDK) for Unity. With these kits, Improbable hopes that developers find it easier to create vast, dynamic and unique worlds.
This GDK for Unity includes a 200-gamer, first-person project that allows developers to experiment and tinker with their ideas for what their vision of a multiplayer game will look like.
GameDaily.Biz met with Improbable’s Head of Product Marketing, Paul Thomas, and Head of Comms, Daniel Nye Griffiths, to speak about the SpatialOS GDK for Unity, as well as the upcoming launch of the SpatialOS GDK for Unreal Engine.
In its first week, the SpatialOS GDK for Unity achieved over 2,000 developer sign ups to use it. “What we're trying to do is basically make it really fast for people to build multiplayer games,” said Thomas. “It comes with all the multiplayer networking so that developers don’t have to do any multiplayer networking. It comes with feature modules to allow [easy] solutions to common multiplayer problems, like player movement and shooting. And it comes with a cool starter project where you have 200 players in a free-for-all scenario. You can obviously use the power of SpatialOS to scale that project up to more players, with NPCs, and things like that. It gives people a really good base to start building multiplayer games.”
There are several games currently in development or early access that utilize SpatialOS. The first into Early Access was Spilt Milk Studios’ Lazarus, a space MMO where the player becomes a pilot in a universe that ends every week, complete with a map that’s twice the size of Austria. Additionally, Bossa Studios released its survival exploration game Worlds Adrift into Steam Early Access earlier this year.
Also using SpatialOS is Scavengers from Midwinter Entertainment, a studio founded by former 343 Industries studio head and Halo 4 Creative Director, Josh Holmes; the game is heavily inspired by his Halo 5: Guardians’ multiplayer mode, Warzone. Right alongside that company, Berlin-based Klang Studios is working on Seed, a simulation MMO that, according to its developers, lets players “interact and collaborate to create a world driven by real emotion and aspiration.”
According to Thomas, for those looking to use the SpatialOS GDK for Unity, there is no limit to  what their games can do with Improbable’s tech.
“What we're doing is expanding the possible gameplay you can do. Traditionally, when you make a multiplayer game, you're constrained by one single server. So you can say you have a 64-player game with a handful of NPCs or you could have a world that's 3km by 3km. With Spatial, you can go beyond that, test a much broader canvas to start thinking about different gameplay.”
“You can go for a massive online persistent MMO with 10,000 players and hundreds of thousands of NPCs, something very, very vast and big like that. But you can also have smaller experiences. For example, there's a lot of interesting space in just extending what you see in the Battle Royale genre and session-based gameplay.”
Thomas continued: “Our partners at Automaton have a game in development called Mavericks. The interesting thing there is they have a Battle Royale with 1,000 people, but what I really find interesting is the gameplay mechanics they've put in, like footprints so you can track people. They've added a cool fire propagation mechanic so you can start a fire that  spreads across the map and changes the world. Or you can add destructible buildings and things like that.”
“So I think even looking at smaller scale games, we add a lot of value in terms of the new gameplay you can start adding. I'm just interested to see what people do with this extra power - what they can come up with.”
While Battle Royale games and MMOs are obvious standouts for genres that best fit with SpatialOS, Thomas introduced some other ideas of genres that could benefit from the technology.
“I also think there's a space for very interesting MMORTSs as well,” he said. “An RTS where you have persistent systems, like telling AIs to do things and then coming back to them a week later and seeing what's happened is an interesting space.”
“I also see interesting mobile experiences that could come up. Having these worlds where you lay down some interesting things and then come back a few weeks later to see how they've evolved and changed, and the massive player interaction. Say for example with Pokemon Go, we can actually roam around the world and battle on the streets. I can see something like that working very well. Again, these are just ideas we've had and talked to people about. It's about giving people that flexibility and the ability to explore these ideas.”
Klang’s Seed
Griffiths added the possibility of events in a game that will have a massive, rippling, and lasting impact on its world as something that has people excited. One example he gives is how someone on one side of the map can do something that’ll have a knock-on effect for the rest of the world in real time.
“There's a whole bunch of different angles you can take, some of which are about much larger player numbers or a much larger map, but there are other things you can do which are taking a relatively constrained game experience, a smaller map, a smaller number of players and adding richness to the game as well.”
In fact, this is something that Thomas refers to as a “persistent in memory database,” meaning that for every object in the game world, there’s a history. Two examples cited by Thomas: “...a player could chop down a tree and that tree stays disappeared forever. Or a player can kill a big monster that was raiding a town and that town no longer gets raided by that monster, and this changes the dynamics of the world. Worlds can have a history. That means players can have a lot more meaning in these MMO worlds.”
“Normally in MMOs, they're kinda like roller coaster rides: you go into a dungeon, you kill the boss and that guy respawns. It all resets,” Thomas continues. “But in Spatial MMOs, you could have these persistent effects that should change the gameplay meaningfully for all the rest of the player base.”
“The other one I think that is interesting is the level of dynamism that you could have. So because you can have so much more server-side compute, you could potentially have NPCs roaming around the world changing their mind and deciding all of a sudden, 'oh, we're going to attack this player's base' or 'we're gonna go attack this town' and they have a lot more range and emotion and intelligence to them that you'd not see in other MMOs.
“Normally in MMOs, NPCs sit there tethered. You go near them and they come and attack you, you run away, and they go back to where they were. In a Spatial MMO, that NPC can trace you across the whole map or a group of them can decide to get together and attack someone..”

Next week, Improbable plans to launch its SpatialOS GDK for Unreal Engine, which will have a big focus on ease of use for access to Unreal, as well as a big emphasis on porting your projects to SpatialOS.
“One of the things we'll be trying to push is a porting guide so you'll be able to take your existing Unreal game, move it onto SpatialOS and then you can grow to expand it with new and extra gameplay,” says Thomas. “ You can bring across your existing Unreal game and it feels very, very native and similar to Unreal if you're familiar with Unreal.”
Griffiths continued, explaining how testing these experiences includes free cloud deployments, to a certain point. “If you're developing in SpatialOS in other ways, we provide a sandbox environment so you can get your game running. When you’re happy, you can port it over and sort of experiment with it in a free sandbox environment with a small number of cores to get started.”
Based on what we learned, Improbable’s SpatialOS GDK for Unity will give developers enhanced flexibility to produce more in depth and engaging videos games. That said, we look forward to catching up with the company in the near future to see how this exciting technology is being used in the different games that we play.

• Ok am not an game developer but I really got annoying when a player uses aimbot and no way as a player to do a thing. Im graduated as electronic technician and I study the nand.
This guy can be implemented on our game program as a protection in case of cheating.  The objective of a cheater is for example 7, 10, 15, kills on a row but what if the player install a nand program and instead of the cheater kill he automatically dies....."wtf" he will be confuse.  What about a nand program.  If the player suspects cheating or server admin then you will apply the cheater the medicine and he will eventually goes.
Thanks
Samuel Aponte

• PROGRESS
Thought I'd reach out for some feedback on my little project. This is an android two-player game for top-down boxing matches. The core mechanics are all that I have accomplished thus far, later I want to add different configurations for your boxer (special effects, increased health or damage, etc) and maybe even a single player AI to practice against.

SCREENSHOTS
#1

*****************************************************************

#2

FEEDBACK
Right now the gameplay feedback I'm looking for is on the fundamental mechanics of the game.

One area of particular concern is the window of opportunity for a player to block after their opponent has begun a punch. Currently that window is one-tenth of a second, otherwise you will be to late to counter their blow. I want it to be difficult to successfully pull off a block and have it be something that requires real attention to accomplish. I'm wondering though if it isn't too difficult right now, which may encourage mindless button mashing, which is certainly not what I want to condone.

Another consideration is whether having three main actions (block, attack, charge) provides a good balance. My idea with having three main areas is that your two thumbs will have to leave one section uncovered at all times. This should result in hand movements that telegraph actions to the opponent.

Aside from these, any other constructive criticism is very welcome.

My game can be found at the Google Play Store here:

NOTE There is a known graphics error when performing a special punch. There are no doubt other unknown errors as well.

Thank you for your time, I hope you'll be able to find some fun in this little game!

A wicked witch turned the main hero into the stone, you need to find a way to break the spell.
INSTRUCTIONS
Click on the objects and they will open.
Click on the stone and its skill to attack the animals will grow as well as a the losses from clicking on animals.
Click on the river to improve the function to manage time and clicks on the animals will be more precise.
Click on the tree and it will give you things from animals and the level of luck will grow which give you an opportunity to Harder hits.
The higher the level of monsters the more animal can visit the stone and give presents which are essential to make a portion.
Screenshots:

• By Znippy
Hello everyone!
This is my submission for the Frogger challenge.
The final build for the project can be found here!
I hope I have fulfilled all requirements for this challenge. Sadly, I do not have time to create a gameplay video. I am not sure if this is a must. I have added a couple of screenshots from my blog series.
My post-mortem post will be done next week.
As I already mentioned on the project page, I also could offer a Linux build if somebody needs one!
I hope you like it and I am excited to see your high scores!
Please tell me if there is anything missing!
×