Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[Bad Sector]

Yeah that is plain ordered dithering right there, i think using the pattern i posted above and combining it with some black outlines (perhaps applying a bit of coloring from surrounding pixels when they pass some brightness threshold) can give you some similar results.

You may want to create custom lighting though that (at least for the diffuse term) uses the dot product between the surface normal and the light direction as an index in a gradient (can be an 1D texture), mapping -1..1 to 0..1 so you can colorize shadows/dark areas.

I like dithering in general too, might have to do something with growing up on Windows 3.1 and 95 :-P. A few years ago i made a 3D maze in Visual Basic 1 and what i mainly liked about it was the dithering:

It looked very meh running in true color mode :-P.

I plan on using dithering on a retro 3D game i'm working on, but for me it'll be more subtle, mainly to approximate the dithering that early 3D cards applied in games that added a bit of "texture" to the final image and complemented a bit the low resolution bilinearly filtered textures.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Looks p nice even in the color mode and kinda reminds me of Shin Megami Tensei.

Looking forward to checking out your game too, interested in what you're going to come up with and how you'll going to pull it off.

 

[Otay]

Yeah that is plain ordered dithering right there, i think using the pattern i posted above and combining it with some black outlines (perhaps applying a bit of coloring from surrounding pixels when they pass some brightness threshold) can give you some similar results.

You may want to create custom lighting though that (at least for the diffuse term) uses the dot product between the surface normal and the light direction as an index in a gradient (can be an 1D texture), mapping -1..1 to 0..1 so you can colorize shadows/dark areas.

I like dithering in general too, might have to do something with growing up on Windows 3.1 and 95 :-P. A few years ago i made a 3D maze in Visual Basic 1 and what i mainly liked about it was the dithering:

It looked very meh running in true color mode :-P.

I plan on using dithering on a retro 3D game i'm working on, but for me it'll be more subtle, mainly to approximate the dithering that early 3D cards applied in games that added a bit of "texture" to the final image and complemented a bit the low resolution bilinearly filtered textures.

Hell yeah. My first programming language was Visual Basic 6 and I tried so hard to pull off games like this, but never came close. I gave up and starting programming battle.net chat bots for several years before coming back to game development. Its so satisfying and nostalgic for me to see this maze program.

 

[Bad Sector]

Looking forward to checking out your game too, interested in what you're going to come up with and how you'll going to pull it off.

I don't think it'll be very interesting to the crowd here, it is a top-down-ish shooter mainly inspired (in terms of how it plays) from Raven's Take No Prisoners (although with linear level progression). This recent image from the level editor from the first map blockout, area markers and progress notes might give you an idea:

Visually it'll be something like this:

But with more texture variety (i need to write a retro-art image editor, i have some ideas how to make it easy for me to make textures that look like they were made in Deluxe Paint - the same art program a lot of early to mid-90s 3D games used, especially for DOS - but without the 8bit limitations, although i'll use palettes as starting points) and this sort of camera:

(i don't normally use a CRT, i only bring it out in special occasions like when i want to play some old 2D game)

Also these graphics are placeholders, i made this dude some time ago (...2 years, according to imgur... time sure flies fast :-P) for the main character:

But i still haven't bothered texturing him. At least i made an animation... well, half of it anyway :-P.

Day job doesn't help get things done faster though and i have a tendency to get distracted by pretty much everything .

My first programming language was Visual Basic 6 and I tried so hard to pull off games like this, but never came close.

My first programming language was GW-BASIC, although i quickly moved on to Turbo Pascal (with a short stint in QBasic because my - 30MB! - hard drive died and QBasic was the only programming environment i had that could fit on a 360K floppy). I remember looking at Wolfenstein 3D at a friend's place, initially i wasn't impressed much (he had a 286 and the rendering window was *tiny*) but later i got curious about how the 3D effect worked. I was under the impression that they had painted all possible combinations and somehow scrolled through them and i tried to put books around my head to "visualize" how the perspective worked, but obviously couldn't figure it out :-P. It wouldn't be until years later that i learned how it really worked (and even then since i sucked at math until after high school, even though i knew the ideas, it took me a couple more years to implement it :-P).

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I don't think it'll be very interesting to the crowd here, it is a top-down-ish shooter mainly inspired (in terms of how it plays) from Raven's Take No Prisoners (although with linear level progression). This recent image from the level editor from the first map blockout, area markers and progress notes might give you an idea:

Visually it'll be something like this:

But with more texture variety (i need to write a retro-art image editor, i have some ideas how to make it easy for me to make textures that look like they were made in Deluxe Paint - the same art program a lot of early to mid-90s 3D games used, especially for DOS - but without the 8bit limitations, although i'll use palettes as starting points) and this sort of camera:

(i don't normally use a CRT, i only bring it out in special occasions like when i want to play some old 2D game)

Also these graphics are placeholders, i made this dude some time ago (...2 years, according to imgur... time sure flies fast :-P) for the main character:

But i still haven't bothered texturing him. At least i made an animation... well, half of it anyway :-P.

Day job doesn't help get things done faster though and i have a tendency to get distracted by pretty much everything .

Interesting. Hope you won't abandon this and it ends up being gud.

Also kudos for having a CRT these days... still have my beast from 1999, occasionally use to play older games.

 

[Bad Sector]

I have a few CRTs, including two VGAs, although one looks like someone smeared vaseline all over it. Thankfully the other (shown above) has practically the best colors and sharpness in any monitor i have, CRT or not (including a highly overpriced Dell IPS i have...). Sadly it was used too much (i got both VGAs for free from someone i know a few years ago) and the guns are giving up, making things a bit darker. I adjusted the knobs inside a little to make things look good again, but it is a sign to not use it too much. I'll buy another one at some point though, but i have moved to another place now for work reasons and the CRTs are on my previous place, so that'll wait.

But honestly, i can't wait for OLED monitors (or something of equivalent visual quality), especially ones that aren't in ginormous sizes and ridiculous resolutions :-P. I use a VA monitor now which has great contrast, but low bits per color (natural dithering, sadly it is noisy instead of ordered so it looks kinda bad) and the high response times can be a bit annoying in some darker games with high contrast. But hey, at least black looks like black and not like a washed out gray glow.

 

[Zep Zepo]

I started a commitment to finishing something everyday (or every coding session), no matter how trivial.

So far it's been working for me pretty well.

However, something considered "trivial"...can end up being a pain in the ass as we all know. But if I start it...I finish it (so far).

A larger task I'll break down into pieces. So I can still get something done.

Zep--

 

[toro]

I started a commitment to finishing something everyday (or every coding session), no matter how trivial.

So far it's been working for me pretty well.

However, something considered "trivial"...can end up being a pain in the ass as we all know. But if I start it...I finish it (so far).

A larger task I'll break down into pieces. So I can still get something done.

Zep--

What are you working on?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I started a commitment to finishing something everyday (or every coding session), no matter how trivial.

So far it's been working for me pretty well.

However, something considered "trivial"...can end up being a pain in the ass as we all know. But if I start it...I finish it (so far).

A larger task I'll break down into pieces. So I can still get something done.

Zep--

What are you working on?

Armoire: Harold's of the pinged Templar.

 

[Zep Zepo]

What are you working on?

A...thing.

I don't know exactly what it will be yet.

I finished the basics of a smooth movement 3D step engine, somebody here got to see an early, early prototype last year. I forget who.

Right now I'm taking a break from that and doing some prototyping in 2D.

Zep--

 

[Nathaniel3W]

zwanzig_zwoelf and Bad Sector that dithering is beautiful. What's the game with the snake lady?

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Boku no Pico Arx Fatalis, duh.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Today I learned what Boku no Pico is. All of Japan must be punished for this.

 

[Viata]

 

[Wayward Son]

Learning C++ is going well so far. I hope to be to the point of learning SDL by April or May. After I finish that, I’ll begin working on a project of my own.

 

[Viata]

SDL is cool, there is a good book on it: https://www.amazon.com/SDL-Game-Development-Black-White/dp/1849696829
You can find it easily or buy it. I do recommend it as I used it to learn SDL.

 

[Wayward Son]

SDL is cool, there is a good book on it: https://www.amazon.com/SDL-Game-Development-Black-White/dp/1849696829
You can find it easily or buy it. I do recommend it as I used it to learn SDL.

Nice, thanks. I was just gonna use the link recommended on the SDL website

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

SDL is pure C, so you might have some gaps to fill if you're coming from C++. https://www.sfml-dev.org/download/sfml/2.5.1/ is another rather low level lib like SDL that's C++ native. I haven't used it personally, but some of my collagues use it for making "games" or interactive visualisations of their papers.

 

[Wayward Son]

SDL is pure C, so you might have some gaps to fill if you're coming from C++. https://www.sfml-dev.org/download/sfml/2.5.1/ is another rather low level lib like SDL that's C++ native. I haven't used it personally, but some of my collagues use it for making "games" or interactive visualisations of their papers.

I thought that there was a SDL for C++?
Edit:From SDL’s website:
SDL is written in C, works natively with C++, and there are bindings available for several other languages, including C# and Python.

Am I understanding this wrong?

 

[Bad Sector]

SDL is a C library and you can use C libraries from C++ directly, you do not need any special C++ version for SDL. However as a C library it only provides features that you find in C, so it does not provide an API with stuff like classes, templates, etc. It is a matter of personal preference if you like that or not, some people prefer to use C libraries even in C++, others want to use libraries that provide APIs that take advantage of C++.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun fun

 

[Bad Sector]

Is the menu at the top left a (persistent) mode selection or popup when you do some action? If the latter, wouldn't it be better at the center?

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Is the menu at the top left a (persistent) mode selection or popup when you do some action? If the latter, wouldn't it be better at the center?

It's persistent. I don't think it would be better at the center -- that space is reserved for submenus.

 

[Bad Sector]

Yes, a persistent menu at the center doesn't sound great .

Out of curiosity, i noticed that the minimap shows both the walls and the crates(?) with the same color while the angled wall is also shown as a "half tile", is the minimap automatically generated or you make it by hand?

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

It's a simple camera that only renders directional 'arrows', floor and doors. I tried making them by hand in early iterations, but it ended up being too much extra work for too little gain and too prone to human error if levels had to be changed.