Angelus blog

Wednesday came fast as always :] As I wrote I toke some break because everybody need some vacation so there is nothing interest to write about development progress. But I will try to recompense this with short text about about designing games. Of course everything in this text is my observation that came from my experience or talks with other people. So you may disagree with them.

In this week I taken some kind of break :] you know Christmas coming so I has walking in shops to buy presents. The only things that I achieved in project is some changes in matrix because I done some stupid things there earlier.  My free time I spend on finishing "Shadow Of Colossus" on PS3 and all parts of "The Blackwell" series on PC. I specially bought bundle in http://www.indieroyale.com/ for it. When I saw the trailer for it I decided to bought bundle (I'm not interested in other games in it) but when I done it I only thought that "The Blackwell" could be good.  On the end it happened that I began playing around 10 PM and ending the game around 2-3 AM. And so on 4 days in row :] And I never had regreted that I spend so much time on them they are great :] I can say that from now on I'm big fun of it and waiting for 5th part :]  Returning to LBA project I think that I will take break in this week too :] and on end  Merry Chris...

This time I want to write my few thoughts about engine developing. I know that there 1000 of ways how to write engines and games. And I don't want to be like some master of programming because I know that I'm more like disciple or even worse :] As you read in earlier posts my engine develop in weird way, because it begun as 2D engine and evolve in small 3D engine with small amount of features. I know that this could sound somehow weird but it's a truth: right now I don't have anything exceptional in it only basics elements. And I'm proud of this.

Like I wrote in last week I asked for permission to continue work on remake. I done it to don't have any problem with copyright, licensing and things like that in future when project will be in advanced state of production (almost finished one island that was planed). And here came this day when I get replay message from Fred Raynal and waiting was worth it because I got official permission so I can at last return to doing things in normal way. Till now I was focusing on prison map and I was waiting with other locations on this message and here I recived it so :] only thing thing that left is returning to work :] So to hear in next week :]

Yesterday I wrote about finishing LBA and beginning of other projects. And I didn't joke about it. I was always saying that I will finish first island with full plot but right now even that is not sure. Fred Raynal on magicball.net forum wrote such a post: http://forum.magicball.net/showpost.php?p=410775&postcount=14 . On Friday I wrote to him PM about approval for remake that I planed (one island) so it would be not any problem with this remake later. I understand their position as developer and thats why I asked directly. I still waiting for replay but I'm mentally prepare to closing project earlier than I planed. Of course I don't plan to throw everything away, but only to shrink this remake to only prison and release it as some kind of lba fan-made demo. Bellow I put some progress from last two weeks :]

In last month I have very often pleasant to do some refactoring of some things that are in code but I didn't had earlier need to do in them anything. And like always I found comments and fragment of code from almost every project that I done in last 2-3 years on white rabbit engine, with names of the project in them i.e my gameplay class of lba had such a comment before it:  /**     @brief Gameplay module of tank  */  It's pretty funny how this small piece of code gives happiness when you remember how you work on this small projects. Maybe time to finish LBA and start something else  .... ups spoiler about tomorrow:]

So next week came and I think about form of all next week updates. Right now I'm not sure are they interesting or even if anybody read them. I know that everybody wait for next movies, screens and things like that but I think that too much of them would destroy all fun of waiting for next bigger update. So I would like to ask question: What form of week updates would be most interest for you? After this short begin post will return to actual form. In this week came another Bundle this time  The Humble Introversion Bundle . Of course I have it but it's hard for me to find time to play. I'm very busy with all works on L.B.A. This week task list extended by dozen of bugs and almost the same number disappeared from there, right now project return to state from before switch on deferred shading or is even further. There are some cool stuff but you need to wait for them some more. After this all weeks next will be probably the same as this so bug fixing and addi...

And here come this day when I should as I wrote in last week update put new preview of lba remake. And of course I have :] it's below this post. I don't think that it's possible to visualize in movie all changes that happened from last preview but I done my best to put everything I have there. :)

And next week came. I think that if nothing change releasing in next week preview movie is realistic plan :] So this week I started as planed on some lighter problems. But in the end I faced with many annoying situation and started to work on things that were problematic to fix. But most of them is behind me end now before me work on some gameplay elements.  In next week as I said before I will post new preview. Plan is like this:  Wednesday new movie will be put on You Tube and here on blog (where I will put some hi resolution screenshots too) and later on Saturday/Sunday as normal I will put this stuff on http://www.indiedb.com/ , http://warsztat.gd and http://forum.magicball.net/ .  This time I will not end this post like that :] Here is some small digression: I often watch other indie projects and many of them look really great. You watch their screens/videos/demos an sometimes think: What am I doing :| their project grow so much from last up...

I just wrote last week update and here come another :] , How this time passes quickly.  This week I spend mostly on fixes in work from weeks before. I recovered almost all base functionality of game and editor. This wasn't easy but was worth it :] right now it's look like performance return on acceptable level, everything in code has more clear structure and it's easier to use. What else ... hmm... right now I started to reexporting models to new format and step by step recovering locations. I thought about posting some screenshot's from how it look right now but after moment of thinking I decided to wait for about two weeks when everything will take some more interesting form. Maybe I will try make then some video how this everything looks in move. On the end of course like always what I plan do to next wednesday.  I think that on this week I will take something easier than before because I'm pretty tired after last two weeks. So I will probably st...

I think that this week I finished with good results. I done almost everything what I planned. Materials are finished, geometry buffers upgraded and I think that everything going in good direction because I don't plan any bigger changes for engine in nearest time. I will only add elements that are necessarily to development of game of course there still left some things that I want to change in engine but they will need to wait to the final state of project or begining of other :] So, what I plan on coming week? I plan to spend some time on modeling and of course writing game and fixing errors that will show in meantime :] Bugs are always worth of removing.

This week is under sign of traveling and big changes in materials. In weekend I had visited Toruń and Bydgoszcz where I meet great people. Other days I spend on changing material system. I try to do some cleanups and optimization: flattening the structure of inheriting, create separate configuration of material for shadow casting and some upgrade of managing material. In the same time I try to separate cg from material system. In the end I think that I opened Pandora Box and It will take some time before I close it again. So plan on next week is to finish changes in material, some small changes in geometry buffers and recover everything (editor, tools, and game) so I could step by step return to working on game.

I will begin from today the series of post in which I will write what I had done in game in each week. So short what changed in this week.: This week is next long week with optimization. After switching on deferred shading my performance is lower then before. On my computer in work I still have over 120 fps but this is not the computer that is my target it is just too good. To show difference on my personal computer I have right now around 40 fps.  To say sincerely I'm not satisfied with it. Of course I could always say I will do optimization on the end but I'm not follower of this idea. Waiting with big optimization till the last moment is the worst way of doing things. You have created assets, exported them to game, created game logic and almost everything is ready. But on the end you need to change them because you done changes in model format or engine interface to gain better performance. Other things that I started to do are changes in models. Right now I...

This time I have some good and bad news, I will begin from good and bad I will left for the end, that way will be better.

And time came when another  humble indie bundle  show. This time Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle, have only one game but if you pay more then average then you will get Humble Frozenbyte Bundle. I personally didn't play in any of games in this pack because in this week I didn't had time. But for sure I will play in weekend :]

This time some big update about LBA remake. Bellow you will find assets on which I worked when there were no posts :]  I think that you should like them too I spend long time to create them the way there are.

Today on IndeDB I found post about  " Legends of Grimrock"  and as in most case I don't write post about projects that I found on internet this time I will do exception because I think that this game is worth it :]

This time I will talk about some tips about how to create assets to games. I will focus mostly on models and the way I done them.

For people that didn't buy or bought already HIB#3 right now have not 5 but 6 games in pack + bonus. For people that already bought HIB#3 on download page show link to 6th game. More info on: http://www.humblebundle.com/

Few day ago I bought netbook with ATI Radeon graphic card. Before I always used cards from Nvidia and Intel. After day of installing tools to programming and profiling I ran for test L.B.A. Remake. And of course it didn't work. But after removing CUDA support that I needed to my thesis work, it started without problems. But when app started i saw other problem: There were some weird stuff on my screen, they didn't look like they should. After two days of searching reason behind it I found that: Nvidia allow more then it should. - I had invalid code (I probably write it very late in night because it was so stupid and when I saw it I thought how I could wrote it :] ). Code for each type of input to shaders (position, normals, texcoord0, ...) set glBufferData with size of all inputs and  data set to NULL. On NVIDIA worked fine on ATI not. NVIDIA and ATI have different bindings of Inputs - POSITION is always ATTR0 but other not. On end I decided on using in sha...

I thought about adding new preview from around two weeks. I had very evil plan to create from it some kind of parody what I don't want to do. But I endure this thoughts and in final create it in somehow normal way. But get to the point. What is happening ? Is project still exist is it grow ? And answers are yes and yes. Project is growing well but probably not the way that could be topic of full preview. Because how to show that I fixed system of object managing or extended mechanic of engine ? There is no way that I can do that. Of course I could do like some other projects (how I hate post like that): I could create on fast some sketch and put very detailed information what I will do in final release. I will write it but in some next post I probably would wrote other things about how this all would look. But who care ? I wrote my vision that changed in a  few weeks. But where project ? I could make other movie about models I created but how long I can do that ? For each m...

This time short post for people that didn't know (like I) that run 3rd edition of action Humble Indie Bundle. Where you can get 5 Indie titles and in the same time support some charity foundations. More info on: http://www.humblebundle.com/

This time some more details about architecture of engine. First thing that I need to mention W.R.E. is not engine for L.B.A. project, I create tools that will be use in next productions. Because of that I take some decision that make it's structure more complicated but in the same time more flexible. In this moment W.R.E. is based on four modules: But as you see there is five elements :] Why ? Exe is only wrapper to game dll and do nothing else so I don't count it as module. Ok, so from begin: W.R.E. - Is main part of engine it's managing window, taking care of rendering, physic, sounds, file, materials and things like that.  Game Engine - It's the frame of game. Contain all templates for objects i.e. Models, Characters, Action objects. Other important function of this module is editor functionality. Editor GUI - It's interface of editor based on Qt. It's mostly call function that are inside Game Engine. Game - This is DLL so it could be simple connected...

In last post I wrote about how all this started. In this post I try to focus more on games and way of work on them. Lba is not my first game I played. But it have very special place in my memory. I tried to finish it at last twice. At first I think that I was to young to understand this game. But second time I was in haven when I played it. And from long ago I thought about remake, there was "Lba Remake" now is "Little Script Adventure" and there was and will be many other groups that try to create remake of this game. But I think that way of how they do it is somehow wrong. So I decided to create my own remake. I started to write games more than 11 years ago. This is one of many projects that I was developing in this time. On begin everything look quiet simple: you have some libraries and game and this is enough. What you need else to write "Noughts and Crosses", "Tetris" or simply plane on scrolling map (from right to left). But as time pas...

This post will be beginning of series of posts about how L.B.A. remake is made. So lets starts with first part where I will try to talk about development of technology I use. Game is based on home made engine w.r.e. that use OpenGL as rendering environment. In this moment everything is controlled by shaders wrote in Cg.  But not always was this way, I started to write this engine five years ago on begin of study. In that time this was a merely 2D isometric game written in pure SDL. It was written on one of subjects and when I think about this now, earlier I wrote 10x better games. But it's was finished and from this everything starts.  Some time later after talk with friend which is very good graphic we decided to create 2D game. We based it on modified code of earlier production but this wasn't enough. Pure SDL is too slow so we switch to OpenGL. This was big step because engine from simply software 2D engine changed to fast 2D engine with support of some 3D objects. But ...

And time came when preview 8 is published. After a little break from publishing previews, new video show changes that I done to Citadela Island. Almost all models in this location were changed, I decided on this design after experiments with different styles. I think that it's pretty good so I don't plan to make bigger changes in most of things that are inside this video. In this moment from things connected to graphics I still fight with lighting parameters to create climat from orginal game, so this bright colors are only temporary. But I dont plan to do to much with this becasue probably everything change after I create render system with good support of shadows. What can I say more, there are no bigger changes in game mechanics because in last few weeks I mostly concentrate on engine, tools development and of course fixing of bugs. So then  like allways, have a nice watch :]

Today I found interesting post on web page of Adama Sawickiwego : http://www.asawicki.info/news_1450_dyskusje_o_polskiej_branzy_gier.html It's pretty short but it's show everything about polish developers. We have very talented game programmers from Poland that work around the world. But we don't have enough of them. Most programmer that you meet on of web about gamedev http://warsztat.gd work already in game industry or don't have experience that is need to do game on actual AAA level. For some main problem in project development is that character head is to small or too big, or color of socks of main character is yellow not black. Which I think is stupid because in most situation the game looks like this: 2D character that sprite on screen have 64x64 pixels, moving in some work in progress environment (without any interaction). Of course to show this character they show 5x bigger picture and talk about it's look. So I agree with this post and article that l...

This week there will be no presentation either. I decided that the changes that are made in visual side of game are too small. If I would show the actual state you would probably see almost the same scenery that you see last time (plus 5 models from which 3 are placeholder) so I think that don't have sens. In last weeks I mostly focusing on learning to school and working. Things that I done in application and are connected to lba is optimalization of rendering. Now on my computer with GF210 I have around 200 FPS in prison location. And I think that I can get even better results :] other things that were developed are debugging and statistics tools. In normal circumstances I would do all that things later but right now I must do this to my thesis work which first version I must finish in next week. So I don't have too much free time to do other stuff.

This time some words about why I decide to create lba remake game alone. Most people don't believe that this is possible because bigger group tried and failed in this. But reality is pretty different, in almost all groups that I was in my programmer career there was one problem the more people worked on project the progress goes slower and slower. The same things I heard from friends which participated in other groups. When not commercial project is developed by 2-3 people then each of them create equal amount of content for it. But if there are 10 members in group. Then there is big probability that one maybe two persons create most of content and other members do nothing or do almost  nothing. This is sad reality of such projects. One reason is that groups looking for people that want to participate in developing. Very often they find people that want to create game but don't have enough experience or time. So when I decided to create L.B.A. remake I wanted to avoid all m...

No więc jakoś udało mi się przeżyć te ostatnie tygodnie (sam nie wiem jeszcze jak). No ale było minęło nawet trochę ostatnimi dniami odpoczywałem więc i sił więcej będzie na kolejne tygodnie a one też się zbyt kolorowo nie zapowiadają. Co do postępów prac to pewnie część osób myślała, że projekt umarł. Podejście takie w pewien sposób rozumie bo wiele jest takich projektów które właśnie w taki sposób znikają. Pojawia się post o chwilowym zawieszeniu prac i projekty znika na wieki w ciemnej otchłani internetu. No ale wbrew pozorom projekt ciągle się rozwija co zresztą możecie sami ocenić w już 7 odsłonie postępów prac. A ona właśnie ujrzała światło dzienne. Niestety przez jakiś czas będę zmuszony przejść na co trzytygodniowy cykl publikowania "preview'ów".  Bo mam trochę innych spraw na głowie a ją mam niestety ciągle tylko jedną. Dobra nie przeciągam już dłużej :] Miłego oglądania :]

Tym razem post w dwóch wersjach językowych :] No więc niestety z powodu nawału obowiązków w pracy i na uczelnie trochę nie wyrabiam ze wszystkim. Dlatego muszę na jakiś czas wstrzymać prace nad grą i skupić się bardziej nad rzeczami bezpośrednio powiązanymi z moją pracą magisterską. Dlatego kolejna odsłona postępów pojawi się najwcześniej za 2-3 tygodnie. Ale obiecuję, że czekanie się opłaci bo lista rzeczy które planuję wykonać do tej prezentacji jest całkiem długa :] * * * This time post in two language :] Because of work with job and my study I don't have to much time to do other things. So I need temporary stop work on game and focus more on things directly connected with my thesis work. Because of that next show of project will be released in 2-3 weeks from today. But I guaranty that this waiting will be worth of it, because list of things that I plan to do for this preview is pretty long  :]

No i kolejny post z ciągu "jak się obecnie tworzy gry". Od czasu do czasu zdarza mi się poprzeglądać co tam za gry są tworzone przez indie developerów. Od jakiegoś czasu śledzę projekt : http://www.indiedb.com/games/overgrowth który wydaje mi się naprawdę solidną pozycją. Czy tak będzie czas pokaże. Trafiłem też na naprawdę fajną gierkę (polecam zagrać, jest darmowa): http://www.indiedb.com/games/broken-dimensions Trafiają się też pozycje przeciętne i niestety trafiam też na pozycje które bym wolał zapomnieć. Gdyż próba zagrania w te gry potrafiła przyprawić o obłęd. Więc nic się tutaj nie zmienia tak jak niestety w sposobie pisania gier. I tutaj  przejdę do sedna posta i rzeczy która mnie przeraża bardzo. Mam komputer stacjonarny może nie najnowszy ale fallout 3 spokojnie chodzi więc nie jest źle. Odpalam prostą grę indie i okazuje się, że ten komputer nie daje już rady. Gra działa na OpenGL wydajność 5 klatek góra :| Pierwsza myśl która się nasuwa "what the fu.....

Tym razem wyszła trochę dłuższa prezentacja ale wydaje mi się, że nie powinno wam się nudzić oglądając ja :] więc nie będę już przeciągać oto pokaz nr. 6 :

No więc na koniec dnia mała aktualizacja projektu. Tym razem może trochę mniej zmian niż ostatnio ale poza graficzną stroną projektu zmieniło się bardzo wiele :] co dobrze wróży na przyszłość. Więc jak widać projekt ciągle się rozwija.

Ostatnimi czasy miałem okazję poprzeglądać trochę produkcji na www.indiedb.com i zauważam pewną tendencje. Większość produkcji korzysta z UDK i nie mówię tutaj o jakichś większych produkcjach ale często nawet małe gry z niego korzystają. I co w tym złego pewnie się zapytacie, silnik z górnej półki za darmo (do niekomercyjnych zastosowań) więc czemu nie skorzystać. No więc przytoczę tutaj bardzo fajny post na blogu  http://www.magicalwasteland.com/  a mianowicie http://www.magicalwasteland.com/mw/2007/6/17/why-not-just-use-unreal.html  (Polecam przeczytać również komentarze). No ale do czego zmierzam post ten ma już blisko 4 lata a mentalność twórców gier ciągle się nie zmienia. Teraz do UDK ma dostęp każdy śmiertelnik i mam wrażenie, że duża część z tych śmiertelników uważa, że tworząc grę na tym silniku ich gra będzie lepsza, fajniejsza i uda im się ją na pewno zrobić. Niestety rzeczywistość jest trochę inna ludzie którzy myślą, że silnik załatwi za nich tworzenie g...

No więc nowy miesiąc i oto filmik pokazujący zmiany z ostatniego miesiąca, tym razem w zmieniło się dość znacznie zarządzanie geometrią.  Wcześniej miałem sytuację gdy lokacja składała się z obiektów aktualnie przeszedłem na system grup. Lokacja jest grupą zawierającą obiekty oraz inne grupy. Dzięki czemu o wiele łatwiej będzie można później zarządzać np.budynkami.  Kolejna duża zmiana to sterowanie w edytorze, przerobiłem przesuwanie obiektów gdyż stare było mało dokładne. Aktualnie wszystko śmiga jak należy.  Doszło też wiele wstępnych modeli które mają stworzyć obraz jak będzie wyglądać rozmieszczenie obiektów na lokacji. Pojawiła się też bardzo prosta woda.

No więc mija kolejny pracowity tydzień. Trochę czasu na wszystko brakuje no i dlatego trochę mniej jakichś bardziej widocznych zmian. A co się zmieniło:  Doszły nowe animacje/czynności postaci. Dopracowałem trochę fizykę, oraz poczyniłem dość spore zmiany jeśli chodzi o wyświetlanie grafiki. Aktualnie pracuję nad uzyskaniem jak największą zgodność z nowym standardem OpenGL. Czyli mówiąc prosto pozbywam się całego forward renderingu. Powoduje to wiele zmian, materiały stały się teraz podstawą funkcjonowania całego silnika. Musiałem przebudować system rysowania geometrii pomocniczej gdyż stary system dość mocno zamulał całość. Wizualizacje fizyki i obiektów śmigają teraz, aż miło :]  No i co mnie jeszcze czeka: przebudowa fontów, wsparcie do dynamicznych obiektów np. systemów cząsteczkowych. Stworzenie jakiegoś sensowniejszego sposobu na wyświetlanie geometrii. Gdyż na chwilę obecną mam wrażenie że, posiadam jeszcze zbyt małą kontrolę nad tym wszystkim. Czekają mnie też troc...

Święta, święta i po świętach zawitał już nawet nowy rok. I tak wprzerwie świątecznej się: obijałem. Z gry powstało niewiele zmienił sie za to edytor. W ostatnim czasie wprowadziłem parę poprawek które od dawna chciałem wprowadzić. Pojawio się w końcu normalne dodawanie obiektów, teraz mam już podgląd gdzie mam wstawiać nowo dodany obiekt możliwe też jest anulowanie tej operacji. Zmienił się sposób obsługi fizyki dzięki czemu obiekty nie muszą już być tylko boksami. Ogólnie zmian jest dużo ale w praktyce wszystkich nie pamiętam. Zmieniła się też lokacja na której grę testuję. Zaczyna ona przypominać coraz bardziej grę. Poniżej znajdziecie pokaz z nowej wersji gry. Mam nadzieję, że zmiany się spodobają :]