Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[GordonHalfman]

I'm playing around with implementing this 2.5D lighting/occlusion system that's come up a few times:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q6ISVaM5Ww&feature=my_liked_videos&list=LLkg52CRW3YmT58ZoZwoBFmQ

Writing the shaders doesn't seem difficult, the problem is at the moment I'm only able to test the principle with hard coded values for the height/normal map.

In the info the guy says he creates the maps using 3ds max:

"then a normal map for it is rendered in a similar manner, using a special material which calculates the world-space normal vectors of every pixel and finally a proportionate height-map (again, world-space rather than screen-space) is rendered. "

I'm only just slowly learning max, does anyone know how he manages to do this, how this special material is created? I'm not sure what technique he is using, it doesn't seem possible to do this with the standard render elements options.

I don't know the psychology of the developer but by special he probably means an additional material with a unique purpose. just like special sauce or special ingredients rarely are unknown materials. its a spice, or pot or maybe napkin with the special purpose of flavour enhancement.

The other clue is his worldspace claim.

Look of all things it may be.

http://i.imgur.com/NQOR0.png

http://i.imgur.com/MZOxQ.png

http://i.imgur.com/rHU3r.png


If the material counts for something, think light properties. If there are actual calculations maybe raytrace bitching?

Cheers prosper

Anyway it turns out my google-fu is restored today and I found this guys plugins:

http://www.ylilammi.com/BerconGradient.shtml

Which look to do the job pretty handily.

 

[eric__s]

So I managed to finish a song that I think is good enough for the game. I think with this, I'm finally 100% done.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2957395/turrican dsun.ogg

I took pretty much all of your advice and put it together. One of the things Excommunicator said was that some of the better melodies might get lost behind the action because they were too slow. I took the arpeggios from 4, 5 and 6, the melody from 1 and the rhythm from Jean Michael Jarre's Oxygene 4 and put them together. I'm pleased with the final result and I appreciate all the suggestions that went into it.

I don't know if any of you are into making chiptunes, but I put together a .rar that might help you out if you want to get started on X68k music. I used the VOPM VST, which is extremely complicated and took me about a year to master. I included a bunch of the preset sounds that I made as well as some drum samples I ripped from X68k games. The X68k and Sega Genesis soundchips are very similar and I'm pretty sure there are tools you can use to convert my presets into useable Genesis sounds if you want. Anyway, I hope someone can get use out of this! I'd definitely be willing to help anyone get started with FM sound programming.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2957395/vopm.rar

 

[crojipjip]

x86 the best hardware ever. more of yo0u shohuld program in assembly and discuss assembly manuals. it is attractive to the females. an assembler assembles your asm instructions into binary or derp a derp hex codes. assembly is the family. when you went to school you may of been to one or more assemblies. a gathering of the family. the family. instruction set. assembly. don't tel lme i am wrong.

 

[Excommunicator]

I see you have brought the same more-upbeat feel of the other songs into your new one. It fits together with them well. I can really hear Oxygene in it as well, I was listening to that just the other day

Do you do all of your music as chiptunes?

 

[Niektory]

Here's my turn-based hill climbling simulator.

 

[OuterSpace]

Niektory, what'd you use to create that?

 

[Niektory]

Niektory, what'd you use to create that?

The engine is FIFE, with some modifications. The languages used are Python and C++.

 

[kaizoku]

sounds cool cboyardee
My opinion would be to replace those angelical chimes during seconds 10-20 to something more fitting.

I don't know what type of setting you're aiming for but I'm seeing an 80s retro sci-fi, with the main character wearing a leather jacket, holstering his gun, and then heading to his car, and ride throughout a somewhat vandalized urban area, until he reaches a warehouse... where the action is about to begin. Let the hunt begin.

edit: nevermind, saw what you're working for on page 7

 

[shihonage]

I started replacing monsters with... better-looking monsters. Player will be replaced too.

 

[Davaris]

Here's my turn-based hill climbling simulator.

GreedCorp the RPG. Yeah!

 

[Davaris]

I started replacing monsters with... better-looking monsters. Player will be replaced too.

I liked the previous look of the game. It had a simple style that made it stand out.

 

[eric__s]

Hey, sorry for the late reply, I've been super busy lately. I appreciate the comments! A lot of my recent game music has been chiptunes, but I do a lot more than just that. I think it's just the nature of the projects I've been working on and what the people I've been working for wanted. Also kaizoku, I'll mess around with the sounds. I kind of like the contrast between the calm, kind of celestial synths and the rest of the song. I'll see if I can make something better!!

We've finally gotten the design doc for the action RPG I've been working on to an acceptable point where we can show it to other people and the company is almost registered. Full development will start soon and the goal is for a presentation demo out in the next month or so. Very excited. Things could start getting crazy!

 

[Jaesun]

action RPG

:/

 

[Davaris]

I started replacing monsters with... better-looking monsters. Player will be replaced too.

I like what you have done with the wall and I like the glowy bits. It makes it look kind of cool. But adding the better looking monsters, makes it look like everything else out there.

 

[shihonage]

I like what you have done with the wall and I like the glowy bits. It makes it look kind of cool. But adding the better looking monsters, makes it look like everything else out there.

Which ones did you think were better in the past? I've been changing it so often, it's hard to keep track.

My cousin still believes the monsters looked best as letter "M" of various colors. But while it certainly is ... unique... I don't know if that's sellable.

There's been 3 main stages: letter M, my ugly "programmer art" monsters, and the above stuff I found on the interwebs that is free for commercial use.

 

[eric__s]

I know a ton of artists and it's pretty easy to crank out graphics for tile-based roguelikes, do you want me to talk to a few and see if I can get any on board?

 

[shihonage]

I know a ton of artists and it's pretty easy to crank out graphics for tile-based roguelikes, do you want me to talk to a few and see if I can get any on board?

Well, I don't really see what is the problem with the monster images I'm putting in now. Or rather, how would new images be better. Otherwise, I could use my Shelter artist for this, too. Except with the whole job-quitting business, I try not to spend money where it can be avoided.

 

[Davaris]

I like what you have done with the wall and I like the glowy bits. It makes it look kind of cool. But adding the better looking monsters, makes it look like everything else out there.

Which ones did you think were better in the past? I've been changing it so often, it's hard to keep track.

My cousin still believes the monsters looked best as letter "M" of various colors. But while it certainly is ... unique... I don't know if that's sellable.

There's been 3 main stages: letter M, my ugly "programmer art" monsters, and the above stuff I found on the interwebs that is free for commercial use.

I like what you have in the picture you posted just now, except for the new brown and slime green pixel monsters. The glowing green guy and water is great and I like the secure text. You could pixel animate the red, green and blue to make it look modern. I like the chunky stone walls and that is all I would use for 3D art. The floor looks fine. The yellow door looks horrible. I would use glowing red barriers to represent doors instead. The red blobs I assume are monsters? I would use the same style as the green man for monsters, but make different kinds of red monsters. The green guy has an Ultima I Ultima II look, which I think is stylish in the way you have done it. I would look to the Ultima I, II style for your monsters, but keep the 3 color scheme you have now - player and friendlies are green, monsters are red, water is blue.

I wouldn't use more than 3 colors for the glowing pixel art your game. There are websites on the net that help you select color schemes. There is a good program on Linux that also does it. However the 3 colors I mentioned look good to me.

When I saw your game in action, I thought of Defender for some reason, which is kind of cool. Perhaps you could look to that for pixel effects during combat?

As for the interface I would go for something that is chunky 3D wood, if it is a fantasy game, with a screen showing weapons, in the glowing pixel style. Something like a cross between this

and this:

Yeah I know, Fallout influence, but I would go with an Ultima I II style for the inventory items.

 

[Niektory]

Update time! Thanks to vacation I was able to do a good chunk of work. Now that it's over I'll go back to my usual snail pace...

So, stuff I managed to cram in:
- complete pathfinder rewrite
- line of sight calculation and display
- basic turn-based combat
- some shadows
- a nice-ish brick tile

 

[eric__s]

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2957395/chandragupta2.ogg

Have to make 3 more songs for that platformer because the dude keeps adding new gameplay modes, but that's cool. This sounds like 90s trance or something (I have no idea??) but it experiments with some cool techniques I've never used before like manual arpeggios.

Also, we're working full steam on that action RPG now. I can't believe how well it's going. I've been thinking about this game for over 5 years and now it's finally happening. I hope it continues to go this smoothly. We were planning on kickstarting this in a few months, but it's going a lot faster than we had originally planned so we may even be able to do it in September or October. Also, it's the sequel to a very stupid game.

 

[Destroid]

cboyardee when you are making music like that, how do you decide how to break up the instruments across the stereo stage? A lot of music like this has pretty strong divisions, but I can't think of any particular reason to have any, since they aren't real instruments replicating a band on a stage.

 

[eric__s]

Well, I'm writing it within the limitations of the FM Towns/X68000 computer, which had very primitive stereo panning. Instead of a wide range of panning, like modern sound programs have, it has a left (in which the sound is only played in the left ear), a right (where it's only played in the right) and a center (where it's played in both). This is also how systems like the Amiga, Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo handled stereo panning. When sounds are played exclusively in one ear, you realize how much 'weight' a sound has and you have to balance each ear so that they have an equal amount of weight. That's kind of a weird concept, but here's an example.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2957395/ch2.mp3

The first part of the song shows how it usually sounds, but in the part immediately after that I remove one channel from the left ear. Even though you don't really notice that channel when it's on and it doesn't contribute much to the melody, it does contribute to the weight of the left ear. In the second part, the song plays normally again but pay close attention to the lead instrument in the left ear. If you listen carefully, you can hear a quiet channel that plays the same melody and instrument a half second later in the right ear. In the part after that, I remove the right ear channel and you realize how much weight the left ear melody has. The reverb channel in the right ear doesn't add much to the melody (the reverb effect is cool) but it does add weight to the right ear and balance things out.

So a lot of the time it's more difficult to balance out the stereo panning than it is to actually write songs because of how strong the divisions in right, center and left are. You've also only got a limited number of sounds you can make at any one time - 8 sounds + 1 sample channel. It's kind of weird to put it this way with such old, primitive technology, but it's as much about production and engineering as it is about song writing.

 

[Excommunicator]

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2957395/chandragupta2.ogg

Have to make 3 more songs for that platformer because the dude keeps adding new gameplay modes, but that's cool. This sounds like 90s trance or something (I have no idea??) but it experiments with some cool techniques I've never used before like manual arpeggios.

Your best song yet I think, cboyardee.

 

[Mother Russia]

Would it kill you fucks to also mention what programming language you are doing all the programming in?

 

[Marsal]

Would it kill you fucks to also mention what programming language you are doing all the programming in?

This is so rude, bro. Are you not familiar with programmers etiquette? You never tell the audience how magic is done. NEVER!