A Day In Bits
Today was designated 'bits day' where I move other projects along that had been building up, and it has been a successful one. Got two apps free of bugs and a few preliminary versions ready for release. Currently retrieving a pre-Perceptual version of DBP from my backups to build a new FPSC V120 without the MFC dependencies :)
Reloaded News
I can report some Reloaded news from last night which saw the rest of the light mapping tweaks put in, and it hums along nicely now. I changed the text font to improve visuals but it still lets it down so I have decided to have no text in the map editor part, and allow the full screen text game to dictate the back-buffer size. This basically means higher quality test game renders.
I also took a few hours to play Borderlands 2 as well, which was a very good idea of mine. I am about to start the player control system and Borderlands 2 is a nice game to teach you about a control system. It's simple, but works. The speed of movement, jump height and timing, strafing, stop/start inertias and mouse look speeds are all nicely calibrated. My hope is to get something similar in the next week or so (the controls that is) ;)
It also teaches some great character AI as well, with some enemies just charging in, others hiding and lobbing metal objects at you and others sniping from positions almost as good as the player can find. I think it's a great game to bounce back and forth from and should improve the Reloaded offering over time.
Signing Off
It is about 6PM now and I have one more hour of 'bit duty', then going to reward myself with a huge steak with stinky cheese on top. Maybe be back this evening to play borderlands 2, or get started on the control system, or finalise any beta uploads that might be required. As it was an early start (relatively) for me, I am looking for an early night so we will see how that goes. All in all, a very productive day (and an almost empty inbox).
"then going to reward myself with a huge steak with stinky cheese on top"
ReplyDeleteCan't say I've ever eaten steak with cheese on top but it sounds delicious! You're making me hungry :D
Oh, nearly forgot... I remember in one of your previous posts you mentioned you might try to create a dynamic light system that basically rendered the dynamic shadows into the static light texture....is that still happening? That would just be incredibly awesome and would allow the creation of truly modern-looking games!
ReplyDeleteLike this: At edit-time, most lights are static (and default to static), but you can place as many dynamic lights as you like. The static lights are rendered (via your awesome real-time Dark Lights) into the lightmap texture. Then at run-time, dynamic lights are placed where, in the editor, there were static lights. These dynamic lights only cast light (and SHADOWS!!) on dynamic objects but only cast shadows onto static objects. The shadows are then rendered as part of the static lightmap, and on dynamic objects as one of their own texture stages.
For the dynamic lights, they simply cast light and shadows onto everything within range, including rendering their shadows into any static lightmaps in range.
I know, I know, it's complicated and difficult, but lighting is seriously important and in FPSC X9 the dynamic objects were not lit well. I mean, if there was a light in the next room or underneath they lit up like Christmas lights!
Anyway...good work so far :P
Clonkex
Lee fully understands the importance of dynamic shadows and has promised a truly moder dynamic shadow system which I believe is going to be based on Dishonored. Can't wait
ReplyDeleteI certainly hope so :) I can't wait either :D
ReplyDelete