Thursday, 21 August 2014

Short Code Week

I am off to a PR meeting Friday so this will be a short four day coding week for me. Today I finished the UNDO and REDO for terrain painting, and added these to a new EDIT menu on the IDE.  Improved weapon accuracy system so the whole weapon set are a lot more accurate, allowing inaccuracies to come from in-game motion rather than built into the gun. I also added new fields for RANGE and DROPOFF in the weapon entity properties so you can control these from your level editing session, and they work a treat!  You can now fire through fences again (and another other transparent entity), and I have fixed the distant black issue on LUSH2 terrain, and did a little command line magic for Ravey who will need this in a week or so.

Also got a nice new preview of more modern day asset items from Adam, so I cannot wait to add these into the demo level once V1.009 features are bedded down.

 The next things on my task list are more small but important editor and engine tweaks, a closer look at video memory use to see if I can make some big savings and avoid those quarrelsome crashes that occur as a direct result of running out, getting characters to explore INSIDE buildings and finally looking to finish some level of support for the ambient occlusion light mapper which has been pushed to the end of the V1.009 list due to it's relative importance compared to bug fixes and vital improvements to the editing experience.

 Probably won't be a blog Friday as it will be a LONG day, but I will tinker over the weekend and might provide an update then. If not, I will write again next week and until then, have fun and enjoy your weekend!
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17 comments:

  1. Unknown21 August 2014 at 10:03

    Great to hear the shooting options have been improved!

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  2. Tommy Scott21 August 2014 at 10:29

    Lee, I hope you can get something implemented for video memory that will always prevent any "running out" issues. As I recall in OpenGL, if you run out of video memory then it just goes into system memory and the drivers do the swapping as necessary. Cannot something similar be done in DirectX so we never ever run out? OpenGL had a way of specifying where a texture "should" reside, but if specified video memory and it didn't fit then it went into system memory. Anyway, good luck on everything and keep up the great work.

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    1. Tommy Scott21 August 2014 at 10:37

      For textures at least, I know DirectX can do this sort of thing as shown here:

      http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb172341(v=vs.85).aspx

      Not sure how it handles things with vertex buffers and such.

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    2. Tommy Scott21 August 2014 at 10:41

      Looks like even vertex buffers can go into system memory if needed.

      http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb206332(v=vs.85).aspx#Memory_Pool_and_Usage

      So, it would seem that you could develop a scheme that prevented ever seeing an out of video memory error. Game performance could suffer if the game isn't designed right, but that's a matter for the game developer and takes any heat off you for an engine that crashes for reasons it shouldn't.

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  3. Unknown21 August 2014 at 19:22

    i hope drop off, is the reduction of damage over distance ; and not actually bullet fall

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    1. Clonkex21 August 2014 at 21:52

      Why on earth not? Bullet fall is an excellent addition to modern games!

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    2. Dave23 August 2014 at 09:35

      Bullet fall is a real thing,so it should be there i think.

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  4. Unknown22 August 2014 at 21:54

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. Unknown23 August 2014 at 15:26

    By default drop is set to zero. Your games are safe. You can introduce drop if you want, but it's not forced on you.

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    1. Clonkex23 August 2014 at 16:28

      So it is bullet drop? Cool :) Though why anyone would NOT want it I don't understand...

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    2. Unknown23 August 2014 at 21:26

      you dont actually play FPS like CS or COD or BF; do you?

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    3. Clonkex24 August 2014 at 05:11

      Are you kidding? I'm one of the best and most frequent players in BF3. I used to play COD on a lan 1v1 with my brother, but not so much now and definitely not online due to an insane amount of hacking. I also occasionally play CS:GO. I've played Titanfall in both the beta and the recent Game Time - don't have the money to buy it yet. Bullet drop is expected in (realistic) modern FPS games; it's very easy to account for when firing (even sniping only takes a little bit of practice).

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    4. Unknown26 August 2014 at 01:32

      not one of those games you mentioned use drop. 1 FPS that did (which is a bit of a fail FPS is red orchestra)

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    5. Clonkex26 August 2014 at 06:00

      What? I never said any of them did specifically; I only said I'd played them. But I must correct you anyway, as BF3 (as do all BF games, at least since BFBC2) most certainly has bullet drop. Pull out a pistol, fire into the distance and watch that bullet fall. Also trying sniping a long way with a rifle and you'll see the bullet hits below your aimpoint.

      I don't believe COD (at least up to COD4) has bulletdrop; it's a lot more arcady than BF.

      I've played Red Orchestra: Ostfront as well as RO2, so I'm well aware of the realism of the RO games.

      Honestly.... of course BF3 has bulletdrop.... :P

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  6. Unknown25 August 2014 at 01:41

    Well there are circumstances where you may not want it. Say a laser gun or such, rather than a projectile weapon.

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    1. Clonkex26 August 2014 at 00:18

      Good point, but I was specifically referring to bullet-based weapons. Obviously lasers don't fall :P

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  7. Unknown1 September 2014 at 03:33

    FYI only...
    Lasers have a different problem caused by the curvature of the earth. Also, depending upon how far the beam has to travel, movement of the earth will cause issues. Neither of these should effect us though.

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