Short blog today as all time was gobbled up with some really annoying bugs that would not fix. Getting the characters to stop 'jiggling' has beat me today, so I will resume on Thursday with renewed vigor!
Here is a challenge for my readers. Check out this shot:
It is a shot of an enclosed cage, made of single fence pieces. Each piece creates a 2D polygon obstacle shape. My challenge is for someone to create some code which can take a list of 2D polygon shapes such as the above, and figure out which ones intersect, and then create a new larger 2D polygon shape that represents the obstacle, and then indicate which of the old polygon shapes I can remove from the list in place of the new larger one. Effectively doing a "CSG addition" on the overlapping obstacles. This will produce a very efficient obstacle map and speed up the AI system. The key is to eliminate the lines of the polygons inside the final shape so you ONLY get the outline of significance. Any takers?
would love to help you with this lee m8 :D
ReplyDeletebut sadly that went way over my head lol, nice picture though :).
Will we ever get acceptable-looking bloom? :(
ReplyDeleteThere is an awful lot of work that should be done on lighting and shadows as they make things look six or seven years old.
Send me a screenshot of a good bloom and provide lots of detailed comparison description between yours and mine. Right now my bloom is 1000% better than yours ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure bloom is the only problem, lighting, as I said, in general isn't very good. Scenes come across as blurry and glowy, and textures have zero depth to them. I'll see if I can pull some screenshots, but I won't promise anything.
Delete@ Huknar - I do agree that Lee likes too much Bloom for sure. It really should only be used in a subtle way. We're very keen to hear your feedback and take a look at some examples of games that you think display things in a better light (sorry for the pun). So please help if you can.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this might help, but here is a zombie character I created in Cry-engine. It shows the light and shadow and texture depth of that engine.
DeleteIn my opinion, the bloom is about the same. Light rays too. The difference is really only in the texture depth. There is more detail rendered in the textures in CryEngine. It also renders some kind of HDR lighting, but Reloaded looks fine.
I choose Reloaded. Lee is not kidding when he talks about the sheer power of Reloaded to create instant game grids. This alone is worth it. Sure, a bit of work needs to be done on the eye-candy... But looking good. Cheers
Oops here is the link:
Deletehttp://youtu.be/u6LVHVxHMbg
no blocking volumes .. OMG - i think i will go on a hiatis
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I think DarkAI is not up to the task of creating a modern FPS. It's just too old-fashioned and limited. You should take a look at Recast at the first chance you get. It's an industry-standard AI navigation mesh toolkit for games and includes and pathfinding library called Detour. All free, open-source, licensed for commercial use and easy to use.
ReplyDeleteJust a little expert advice from someone who really knows what a good game needs...
The general use of blurring/bloom(ing) of the scene in Reloaded now it seems to me is actually quite helpful as it tends to help with smoothing out any rough edges to the scene and does help as it seems to me to add to the realism of distance for open worlds when looking into the distance where one can see a very long way.
ReplyDeleteFor me it helps with having a relatively low end system where I don't get the benefit of very high quality use of shaders in any case so at low shader settings it helps me at least.
Atmospherically and environmentally outside areas it lends itself well by enhancing that feeling of distance and perspective to far away terrain and entities with low shader quality use as I am using.
The current visual look is the best its been for me.
I understand the need too for clarity, sharpness, depth and detail and that should be available where needed I guess and one can imagine where that might be needed where calrity and sharpness and detail is required scenarios.
At the moment I am happy enough with the outdoor environmental effects as a basis to move forward. Its my fault that I don't really know or perhaps appreciate what things look like with everything in settings turned up to max not having a top range machine where I have to accept that I am not going to be getting best visual quality.
This is I guess a situation many will find themselves in and having to live with.
:-)