As an increasing effort to post more often, i will update with more screenshots and progress on all fronts that i work on.
For now, implementing the demo of shadowracer into Torque3D. The screenshots are intentionally ugly and washed out 
no candy here
As i mentioned, things were on hold. As i have now the things needed in my bag’o'tricks i will be reimplementing the game play over the next short while, and ill have a nicely polished video to display as well.
no candy here
Cant wait.
Taking on a challenge (while waiting for certain things to be finalised on shadowracer, and other things taking my time), I decided to challenge myself to some code architecture design. Like designing systems that are clean, simple and efficient while being powerful enough to maintain their stability and usability on a much larger scale. Things like networking, user interface design, game core runtime designs etc.
V8
One of those steps was getting the v8 javascript engine running nice and smoothly behind the scenes of the core code base, which was incredibly easy thanks to their simple approach. Using a modified base of CProxyV8, i have managed to expose entire classes to script on a whim via some really minimal preprocessing of class files and macros, which will be polished and released here as soon as its a viable tool.
Multi User Interface design
Allowing the switching of user interface engines at any time (even runtime) was another challenge i took on, which has also proven quite fruitful so far. While using the PhoenixCore engine for rendering at the moment and hooking up some gameswf flash UI code to that is quite powerful , i still have the flexibility to change those at any time with minimal wrapping of gameplay code.
Interesting Gameplay
While the engine may be all cool and dynamic it doesn’t serve any good without a nice fun game to play. I wont be speaking on what exactly i have gotten into making with some friends but i can post some mockups that have come up so far.
Coming sometime
Coming sometime
man, i went back to visit this underground art community im part of only to find :
I found out the day before the deadline! So i spammed a rush entry, and didnt get very far ,
The concept being a split/broken interface, something like :
Which then after a few hours was like this :
Long story short i got reinspired by insane timeframe and managed to pull the final out just in the nick of time.
I turned the design into a wrecking ball instead…
BB 53
Hope you like it! I enjoyed painting it.
Wow, this is some really awesome news.
During the month of December 2009, you can pickup full fledged binary (no source code) licence to the amazing Torque3D game engine. Not only that but that constitutes a $250 licence discount on the professional (full source code) version at any time.
Read the blog here : Link!
One thing i forgot to post (doh!) while working on the reflection setups in my engine for shadowracer was the reflectance tests i had done. I had typed an incorrect value and ended up with a super low res reflection – This and something Blindside had mentioned to me before about trying that as a trick got me into messing around with ambient color and reflectance under the diffuse layer, based on the realtime environment around the car itself.
i attempted to layer the lighting setup in such a way to have a diffuse map + ambient surrounding reflectance + the realtime reflection and it looked really nice – but within certain parameters was not giving what i expected due to the nature of the reflection im using. After a lot of messing around and tweaking i reimplemented the layer for ambient reflectance but pre diffuse texture in the pipeline. This means i ran the low pass reflection on the white/blank slate car instead of the diffuse texture. This gave me even better underlying results for the reflectance and i already had an ambient texture attached to the map (a baked AO map) in the 4th slot. Multiplying adding and trying different combinations gave some cool results, so i tried using the abient map as a falloff of reflectance and fresnel and who knows what else i added for the testing phase, but a lot of really interesting results came about. Below is only one of the stages i had reached and i realised i hadnt shown any of this progress so i figured what the hell. The amount of time its taken to finish this small post in between the rest of the fun things that im working on (work side) and the fact that i had an image set already screencapped means you get one bunch of pictures. Enjoy!
Reflectance of ambient scene lighting and surrounding objects
Some notes : the reflection and base shaders are based on my own work, but the original point i started at was BLindsides great DP realtime reflectance in irrliche engine.
All shots realtime, +- 300 fps, 16×16 RTT per pass (2 passes per object) on a ATI thats not immense
All images are overly exaggerated to demonstrate the effects here, a low level ambient reflectance works really well with any material, wood, metal, concrete etc etc. More sometime, i think!
One thing i love is when reality is smacked on top of a buzzword, and a current OMG moment.
I really appreciate such a nice breakdown, especially for indies/beginners. Thanks Brett!
http://www.torquepowered.com/community/blogs/view/18741
Go ahead, indulge yourself. Im making this post about the UDK license and the REALITY behind their move to make the engine free.
Torque3D kicks ass, btw.
Check out the demo on the www.torquepowered.com website – and read the development blogs.
One of the things that the iPhone offers is the awesome but interesting accelerometer – Opening avenues of game play that never existed before on other mobile / hand held platforms. Flipt for iPhone is a puzzle platformer game that relies on the use of the accelerometer to put the player and the world head to head. Amazingly intense and beautiful levels and effects, the artists have outdone themselves. Below is the copy paste press release, as well as a trailer! I would prefer constructive comments on the video page instead of here. GO GO GO >
Flipt : in Game
Flipt : in Game
Flipt : in Game
Flipt : in Game
Flipt : in Game
GET FLIPT! InstantAction brings the most engaging and exciting puzzle platformer to the App Store to-date. With Flipt for the iPhone and iPod touch, players race to become the fastest to solve puzzles and blast their way away around deadly traps to unlock new characters and time trials.
The accelerometer has played a significant role throughout every step of Flipt’s design, meaning that players will be able to use the full motion controls to twist, turn and flip their way through the game.
Players guide their free runner forward, backwards, upside down and inside out through 20 urban themed levels. Players can flip the world allowing them to run on the walls and ceilings. Turn the puzzle on its head to tackle it from a new perspective.
Game Features
Touch-based controls
Distinctive accelerometer use
Immersive, uniquely stylized graphics
20 increasingly challenging levels
No limits: Solve puzzles using all axes
Unlockable time trials and characters
Comprehensive tutorials
Leaderboards
Fluid parkour animation
Hi-fi sound
Get an iPhone, and then get this game. now.
So while we were finalising the demo, we have been working really hard on getting a cool style into the game, and coming up with the coolest possible look we can for this game, while keeping it in a sane time-frame, and a plausible scale, while still challenging other games graphically as well. This post will explain a little more of the art direction up until the “playable version” which will be ready soon (thanks to having an amazing artist helping me out).
Ill carry on where the last post left off, the 3 cities merging and joining etc as a proof of concept.
While this looks pretty cool to make as a city perhaps, its totally crazy to do it fast. So, instead i came up with a much simpler, one track layout instead.
Thinking about it, the outer edges of the city need not be seen, all that often in the demo. so putting up stuff to pretend made no real sense. I then refined my idea and went around with something like this :
I took the map into the game “context” and had a look at it so far and realised theres quite a lot you can do with quite a little in the kind of game i am making. the workflow was really fast and simple too so this seemed like a nice direction to move in. Below you can see that the above box city, can still look quite cool in game.
So, now i had something to work towards and somewhere to look at for ideas, and i now also had someone with a really cool eye for art, step up to help me along with art direction. We made a couple of style tests along the way to see what can come of it, and did some painting around the current renders we could generate in a matter of seconds in the box city. The first and second one i did and the others below that are from renier, the actual artist ;p The second one of mine is clearly inspired by his style test, in terms of style. When trying to find a good starting point for the style in a game theres plenty to keep in mind.
Renier’s :
This progressed further, to an even cooler idea renier had. I wont say much as to where we are headed but the pictures are pretty cool to look at either way 
So while testing, the world has changed quite drastically, going from the top image to the below image relatively quickly. The difference is startling 
While the dark style looks really awesome, i must say i do prefer the white actually. There might be a combination of many, but again, images speak loud enough.
This weekend at rage, and the week before iv had invaluable gameplay feedback from many many people. Certain things are going to be coming around and , i am really really excited about this project, seeing it grow has been awesome seeing as i only do it in my spare time and work full time making games at work. I will keep the blog updated, so bookmark this page for any news on the game and its releases.
Have a really good read here :
And, of course :
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net for a download
dev.mag newest articles dev.mag news Game.dev South Africa Gamedev.net