Going to take a break from my Useless Designer series to talk about a personal project which has me very excited. While judging Dare I came across a good idea which could be brilliant: using a mobile device as the controller in a shared space.
Back in the day... okay that makes me sound old. Seriously though I picked up 3D Studio Max way back when. I remember eagerly awaiting the character studio with 2.5.... and well lets just say I've been using Max a very very long time. I'm familiar with it and happy with it but well it's expensive!
This LudumDare I was hit by a blaze of inspiration. I was soooo excited by this project!!! Then the truck of problems ran me over, several times. Build a 3D Spatial Puzzle based on a secret phrase. The phrase is revealed when the person completes the puzzle.
Puzzle Scrambling itself with easy Physics. So this weekend the theme was Discovery which really inspired me. The plan was simple. Build a 3D Spatial Puzzle based on a secret phrase. The phrase is revealed when the person completes the puzzle.
Game Flow So basically that's the game flow detailed there. The mission select is of course random. Tonight development goal is as follows. Build a blueprint and save it. One Page Designs. I am becoming a bigger fan of vector based one page designs.
So POV declared The October Challenge : Make a game in a month and sell it. New Grid system for Game. The game is relatively simple and based in the Channels of Power world using some ideas from the MMO I was making. The idea is I will use Google App Engine as a backend and Unity as a front end.
So the big milestone for the Data Driven Dialogue project is in and frankly it needs some time to sit on the shelf while I gather my thoughts for a fresh assault. So I set about learning Unity, something I've been interested in for a long time as a prototyping tool.
Of course there is a story So the data driven dialogue project is moving along and well a simple problem arises. The more mechanic driven and gamey your game is, Ludology focused, the easier it is to scrape and implement a data driven dialogue system.
Working on my Cave Generator. Task List. Trace Wall Outlines. Smooth Lines. Generate 3D Geometry
Get Talking So I have some paper examples composed. They serve to demonstrate, but I feel are rather lacking. I don't think the true nature and power of the system will be exposed until I plug it into a living system or game. Examples. Agent Knowledge Example. Query & Response Example.
XML Data formatted with CSS. Over 13,000 characters and this blasted XML is still not complete enough to provide a decent concrete example. Thank you CSS for making it legible to the human eye. I may look at doing some examples tomorrow night.
Formatting data into a meaningful representation is a whole area of study. XML is a wonderful way to format data. Using a bit of CSS to transform XML into prettiness is a wonderful way of formatting it. Well still loads todo but progress is here. XML Data (WIP) Reference Scenario
Progress Shots
So I was so tired of seeing a computer the last few days I switch to paper notes for a while. Still need to scan / transcribe them to digital format. Here are some highlights. Key Points.
Arrays are listed as { }. Groups are “- - -” boxes. So some graph confusion between arrays and groups. It’s very clear on the graph but the query starts looking strange. Really tired and not making progress. So going home, grabbing some food and hopefully I can clean up the mess in my head.
Okay some actions can affect multiple targets, my old model ignored this and hence broke in a few places. I’ve now fixed this. This resolves a few graph query issues I was having. Containers. Aaah yes arbitrary containers are extremely useful in a graph systems.
Okay so loads of code written, which has really found holes and helped smooth out the model. Query Graph. Okay so the most basic Query format is a Graphed Query. Pop-able Context. Any item which is pop-able can throw away it’s parents without loss of information.
Sadly no pretty pictures, but loads of progress. That’s the sad truth of programming, loads of boring text before anything cool happens. So what are you seeing. Query Response Format working. People, Locations, Objects populating with random generator. No Events Yet.
Almost missed last bus home. Really good progress has been made. Lots of clean up and refactoring making good headway. Query & Response format cermented. Basic test bed in. Hard coded a random populator to fill values. Unified time sensitive atom structure. More tomorrow (^_^)
So I wrote this long article about how I switched to an Atomic data model. How this is one possible implementation of the proposed model. Different code would be written based on language, memory and cpu restrictions. The implementation is a proof of concept . It does not define the model .
Not much progress tonight. Looking at examples and the refrence scenario, getting bogged down in detail. Will look at a code implementation of Thursday
Dissertation: Atomic Structure A sample atomic structure laid out in a document. Query and Response forms also discussed.
So there is a slight glitch with the reflection but ALMOST there.
So for those of you curious I’m throwing down some water rendering magic. Not to mention real-time environment cube mapping. Behold the result. So it’s broken and the ocean needs some motion ( pun fully intended ). I also may be slightly sleep deprived… but onwards and upwards.
Okay above you see rough and blurred. The rough pass uses a single sample against the depth buffer. Those bloody pixels are a result of the resolution of the shadow map.
Many people will tell you this but whenever you have a problem try to visualise it. This can be applied to almost everything (except cases where visualisation is a constraint, think advanced maths and quantum). So above you see the debug frustum.
Wooot! Progress, the shadow is low quality due to PC card limits. I need to add some bias to avoid flicker, and smooth off the edges to get soft shadows.
Full Screen shadows almost done. Had to run. Just caught last bus home. Some weird filming on the lot. More tomorrow.
So after a lot of thought and planning yesterday I set about implementing soft shadows using shaders tonight. Sadly this meant I needed to re-haul the entire scene manager and packer to support texture swapping, and effect management.
Animation test for Hand
Well lighting & shadows are a complex bag of trickery and maths. Basic Lighting is simple. Take a book outside into the sun now rotate the bugger around and throw it.
Day & Night Cycle. Woot! Not only did I get a pretty awesome Sky-Sphere in place but I also managed to knock up a day/night cycle. I also cleaned up the shaders and have global lighting in place. Found an awesome tut, and manage to knock the shader up from that.
So the second biggest shot, the walk up and meep sequence needs some polish. I need to re-render it at a higher quality. The little guy needs to blink. I wasn’t happy with light balls. Now the real question… White or Green lighting strip?
Classic Dialogue for the Inn-Keeper Well it took much longer than I expected. First Complete Draft of the old Style dialogue tree. Now to replace it with my new system.
Event Details - Some Notes. Events are data blocks which are used to construct the dialogue system. The full list of blocks are as follows. Events. Locations. People. Where: The location where the event occurred. When : A fixed time, as to when the event occurred . Actors (1..N).
I am back at work. My laptop is 20hrs into a 90hr render. Post from iPhone as my laptop is locked in the grasp of uber render.
Dissertation: Progress So I’ve made the reference document (see link). I’m extremely impressed with Adventure Game Studio. Made a simple game in it, now I just need to do the dull task of writing all those dialogue trees.
The task list is getting chomped through. Some proof reading needs to be done, but ultimately I think I can close up the Machine Learning task and put up my feet for the rest of the day. :) Evaluate Dataset. Choose Classification Method Justify. Implement Method. Measure Accuracy. Discuss Issues.
Machine Learning: First Pass I still need to write my conclusion and improvements. Not to mention Proof Reading. Also the code, sanitised data and outputs are not attached. Looks like with a bit more work I can put a ribbon on this assignment
So I’ve been trying to normalise and format the data-set for consumption and processing. Some key points. Random Corruptions. Some Data is outside the specified range. The module code column needs to be ignored as there is no way to convert it into input which is expressed as a float.
Machine Learning. The task list is getting chomped through. Evaluate Dataset. Choose Classification Method Justify. Implement Method. Measure Accuracy. Discuss Issues. Discuss Reliability. Suggest Improvements Data gathering. Processing.
First Draft: Virtual Pets (Reinforcement Learning) Uni Assignment Well the first draft is there. The assignment says approx 1500 words, I’m currently sitting at 1190, excluding footnotes and such.
Write a short essay on the topic approximately 1500 words . Describe an example of an artificial intelligent system.Identify as precisely as possible that aspect of the behaviour that makes it ‘intelligent’. Explain how that intelligence is achieved.
Lets put a pin on it. Well the animation on the screen, I had ideas of really complex animations and stuff but it doesn’t really need it an time is short. So I just made a quick avi of scrolling code, it seems to fit. Also the cuteness of Frank is in the tube.
All done. The pipes are cleaned up. I’m not cleaning the IK pipe as its a messy mangle, but I’m leaving it in because its educational and this is a university assignment. I’ll just make sure the camera avoids it. Tried making the red lights wash more to the nearby materials.
Overnight. Okay so some serious progress with texturing, cameras, materials and the like. The render times are getting silly though. I rendered an overnight job at full quality every 45th frame (not all included due to Tumblr limit).
Success!!! Doesn’t look very different but its VERY different. The wires animate around the pipes. The second pipe is in using spline & loft (animates nicer than my messy IK). Everything without a proper UV map has been mapped.
Animation Task List So I’m focusing on the Multimedia module if you haven’t noticed. I’ve updated the task list and crossed off a few. Still no good way to export or print off Google tasks. Hopefully the animation work should be finished by Wednesday.
Wire Solution: Snap, Tweak, Loft. So after having headaches trying to think how to do wires I am reminded by how much familiarity increases speed. Be it a familiar language, setting, project, or 3d modelling package.
Distractions Away. Got a bit delayed today, power ran out so my alarm didn’t go off. Anyway got to it. After some initial worrying about multi-materials, UV mapping, the list goes on… I said, “Away with thee Daemons!”.
Glass Glass Glass. Wrapping my head around the materials system again. I think the work will need some great texturing and lighting to come alive. Also I think the quality of the green goo and smoke will have a high impact. I still want to keep things light though.
Rusty to the Max. So I’ve been moddelling most of this afternoon and remembering how rusty I am at this stuff. Trying to decide on the work flow path to take.
Case Project. Created Project. Menu System. Networking. Skinned Animated Models. Sounds like a lot but in reality I stole the Network State Sample and Skinned Model Sample used some duct tape and got to work.
Soooo the university tasks list commences. I have a short amount of time to do a lot of overdue work :P. Story Board Notes. Camera fly around. Focus on Read outs. Start Drainage. Camera pull back for full view. Drain tube and drop lid. Heavy smoke emissions from the top of the tube.
A to Z with a Twist is an exploration into racing games and freerunnnig games where we are trying to get from A to Z but we add something to make it interesting. BE CREATIVE AS POSSIBLE as the whole idea of this weekend is to take risks and explore. Focus on the twist not the racing.
The weekend is done and the coffee is finished. Download Entries. Please leave and Read the feedback. I'm sure all the entrants will appreciate it. Comments
The theme is announced as Magnets / Gravity. For more details please click here .