Early videos of the shadow maps + dynamic sky

Published December 05, 2005
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Alrighty...it's been a few days since the last update, I was debating if I should post these or not seeing as it's still a major work in progress...but why not.

There are still a few issues:
- No alpha testing in the shadows (fences, etc.)
- No fancy sun/glare...just a billboarded quad...that will change tommorow, and it's gonna be good.
- Sorry for the somewhat spaztic camera movements [grin].

I've still got a lot of tweaking to do regarding the sky/ambient/fog/cloud colors, it's very time consuming tweaking them all...I'm just doing a texture lookup into a 1D texture for each of the colors. Except the sky, which is a 2D texture, mapped onto a skydome.

I think it's coming along nicely....I'll have some cooler lookin' stuff soon enough (tommorow).

Here you go...as usual you'll need DivX to watch these. Let me know what you think.

Just click each image to download video 1 & 2....


Here's another screenshot...please excuse the sun...or lack-of rather. [edit]Aaaaand I just realized the sun isn't in the correct position in this screenshot...it must have been early on [lol]


Lets see what else is new...oh yea...I got a new chair. Since as I'm either in the gym, or sitting at my computer (it's rough these days [wink]), I figured it would be a good investment. It's an "Anti gravity massage recliner", I got it from Best Buy's website, it was 300 bucks. It's damn comfortable.

Here's how the control center is looking these days:




Also I've been playing a lot of games lately. "Star Wars Galaxies"...I'm getting back into that, since they released a 10 day free trial. They recently released a new "Combat Upgrade" and everyone is up in arms...some are predicting that they lost 75% of their user base because of the upgrade. Though that's the only reason I started playing it again heh.

Apparently Sony Enertainment Online sprung this patch on people totally simplifying the game, and negating years of hard work developing their online personas. They dropped the number of in-game professions down to 9 from ~35, and all kinds of other crazy things...and they didn't run it by the user base. I read up a lot about this fiasco and it's pretty crazy, Sony f-ed up on 100s of different levels...the more I read the worse it gets.

Check this out...start with the "Open Letter to the community" from the President of SOE [lol] Then read the 255 pages of responses...it gets interesting to say the least.

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/swg/board?board.id=swggpdiscussion

Also Battlefield 2 & Call of Duty 2, and others are consuming all of my time. Some of these games are so damn addicting...

- Dan
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Comments

ildave1
Quote:Here you go...as usual you'll need DivX to watch these. Let me know what you think.

Well, It's not like I know enough to criticize, so here is your daily, "Hell yeah, that looks frickin sweet!" ;)

Yeah, thats pretty amazing how things like that look, but even more so, I can't wait to reach that level. Pretty exciting stuff going on in the world of Game Development.

Quote:Here's how the control center is looking these days:

Hmmm. I'm going to have to work on my setup, that right there sir is damn god-like.

Quote:Apparently Sony Enertainment Online sprung...

You know, thats pretty interesting to hear considering what I ran across today. Seems like they cut the bill for EverQuest 2 also. They removed the need to recover your shard once you have fallen, so there is basically no penelty for dieing anymore (oh, up to a %50 debt......). This has rowled up a lot of folks in the EQ2 playerbase. I've also heard that they are giving away Double XP likes its candy recently. Veterans of EQ have been receiving all kinds of XP buffs too..

I've noticed a lot more activity on the Vanguard SOH forums lately. I hope I don't get sucked in too bad this time, but I sure do miss playing MMO's off/on.

Hmm, has SOE finally lost their touch and are "Attempting" to keep control over their playerbase in an ass-backwards sort of way? I guess time will tell... Stay tuned, for the next episode of "The Biggest Loser"

Quote:Some of these games are so damn addicting

Damn them for that! ;)

Take Care Dan and keep up the Motivating work!
-Dave
December 05, 2005 01:50 AM
dgreen02
Dave - I appreciate it man!

Keep at your development, you definantly have the right attitude...it's just a matter of time 'til you can do anything you want, just stick with it.

Wow...SOE is on a roll aren't they? I really don't see what the big deal is with tweaking the gameplay of these MMORPGs...I like the changes they made to SWG. But then again, I didn't spend 2 years developing a level 90 Jedi, heh.

I have never played Everquest, but I'm sure they pissed a lot of people off by changing that around [grin].

Oh yea...I also edited the videos and made them watchable heh...they were in fast forward before.

Edited Video1

Edited Video2

- Dan
December 05, 2005 02:42 AM
choffstein
Dude, how are you doing those shadows? Is it simply a black texture of each object being stretched and blended on the ground texture based on the angle of the sun? Or do you find the shadows procedurally? If so, how do you do it so fast?

It looks feckin sweet.
December 05, 2005 07:32 AM
Texas Brigade
I like the videos, but at the end of each one, the video quality seems to get really grainy.

Funny story, I was loading your second video, and the SWG home page at the same time. The Star Wars theme started playing right when your video started. It had a really cool effect.

Can't wait for more cool stuff!
December 05, 2005 01:26 PM
dgreen02
Yup, as AP stated they're shadow maps. I'm going to add support for projected planar shadows as the fallback for people who can't run PS 2.0 on their cards. Though this will lack self-shadowing, and it won't appear right on ground that isn't flat (the parks for instance).

It's not THAT fast. (well I havn't noticed a speed hit yet, but I clamp the FPS at 30...there's really no reason to render more times than you update the scene), Star Wars Galaxies does this...their FPS never go above 30..so at least I'm not the only person who does it that way [grin].

Texas Brigade - Heh...glad you like it...funny about the Star Wars theme playing, that must have looked cool!

I guess because the camrea stays stationary at the end of the videos, the DivX compression algorithms use that opportunity to "get gay"...oh well, I'll post some bigger, beter, and un-cut videos later on [grin].

- Dan
December 05, 2005 03:38 PM
Drew_Benton
I'm almost done with COD2, I need to get BF2 though! Sigh, if I could only make games like yours [grin]
December 08, 2005 03:06 PM
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