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Plan for Melv May

Name:	Melv May
Date Posted:	Aug 12, 2004
Rating:	5.0 out of 5
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Blog post

... continued from previous .plan.
... T2D .plans.
... T2D .Discussions.

The 2D particle engine is complete!

There's just so much it can do that I'd need pages of text to describe it all. I've had lots of fun putting this together and I think you'll really enjoy developing games with it. It should certainly give you the ability to add really cool, professional effects to your games.

The next step is to design and implement a particle editor which will really allow the true power of it to come out. I personally can't think of any effects which you couldn't do with it and I guess that can be taken as a challenge... :)

Not going to say much more as it's now time for bed. I'll just keep going on developing until my wife has our baby so next-up is to put a few finishing touches to the engine as a whole and that's probably it prior to packaging the engine as some kind of alpha/beta.

All in all, it's gone extremely well with very few coding 'mishaps'. I put this down to an extraordinary amount of time working on paper in a quiet room with good music and lots of beer.

I spent about 15 minutes tonight putting together a simple smokey/fire trail effect, obviously without the aid of an editor. This effect is dark and moody and I'll probably do some nice hot-explosive dynamic effects perhaps tommorrow. I could've made it look much better but time simply disappears when you're playing with particles! With an editor, you could work extreme particle magic, reusing emitter/effects as you go. I simply can't wait to see what people can come up with using it and all the other features within the engine.

I'm not in a position yet to give out any details of when you nice people are going to be able to get your sticky hands on it but I will say that it'll be worth the wait!

Cheers everyone,

- Melv.

Windows .WMV Movie (Crappy FrameRate from Fraps!)
Smokey Fire Trail

Multi-Layer Particles...

Older Single-Layer Particles...

Recent Blog Posts

List:	06/10/08 - The long overdue blog... 10/24/07 - New Baby Girl... 03/19/06 - The GG Journey... 03/05/06 - Just arrived in Eugene... 11/18/05 - Plan for Melv May 10/10/05 - Plan for Melv May 09/01/05 - Plan for Melv May 07/27/05 - Plan for Melv May

Submit your own resources!

David Montgomery-Blake (Aug 12, 2004 at 20:17 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

I'm excited by the fact that it moved from "Early development preview" to "Final Development shots"!

Looking amazing, as usual!

Britton LaRoche (Aug 12, 2004 at 20:30 GMT)

Fantastic stuff Melv!! I'd like to use it for emitters on a jet pack and some jet planes... and ofcourse for the vehicle damage scripts... lots of thick smoke popping out.

Any performance hit at all? or can we just go nuts and have the whole level smoking away? Okay maybe this is way off... I realize that its for 2D... but couldn't we use it in the regular TGE? Most of the particles are 2D anyway.
Edited on Aug 12, 2004 20:33 GMT

Peter Dwyer (Aug 12, 2004 at 20:53 GMT)

:o)

Passenger : "Oh my god we're all going to die the engines are on fire.."
grizzle (Pilot and player character): "And your point is what?" smiles wryly "besides the Quantum Flyer hasn't let me down yet...have you girl"

Makes mental note to add cool smoke effect to intro ;o)

Excelent job there Melv

Timothy Aste (Aug 12, 2004 at 21:58 GMT)

That first shot looks cool as hell.

Metal Slug Torque. :)

Jeremy Alessi (Aug 12, 2004 at 23:28 GMT)

Totally sweet looking! Yeah looks like you could do an amazing Contra or Metal Slug type deal.

fireVein (Aug 13, 2004 at 00:16 GMT)

Hmm.... Contra... now have some ideas. :) I'm a huge fan of Contra. Before I didn't think I really had a use for a 2D engine... but now that you mention Contra, I'd love to take a crack at using Melv's 2D engine and see what I can come up with.

Kudos to you, Melv! Your particle engine looks great.

-Jase

Michael Cozzolino (Aug 13, 2004 at 01:41 GMT)

Sweet Melv.

Dylan Sale (Aug 13, 2004 at 04:20 GMT)

Ah crap, Now I need to get some more tissues. Damn you Melv :P

Eric Risser (Aug 13, 2004 at 04:53 GMT)

man, forget Metal Slug Torque, I'm thinking Radiant Silvergun Torque :D

and as always, thanks Melve, you rock!
Edited on Aug 13, 2004 04:54 GMT

Melv May (Aug 13, 2004 at 06:11 GMT)

@Britton: The particle-engine is pretty darn efficient and you can unlease plenty of particles but I find that some of the best effects are from relatively few particles and a good use of layers, textures and settings. It's all to easy to simply add a couple of hundred more particles to 'fatten' the effect up when you could simply make the particles a little bigger. You can't really use it in a 3D world because they're placed using 2D coordinates. There's also no 3D perspective so you'd have a hard time doing it this way ... but like you said ... it is a 2D Engine. :)

Thanks everyone; your support is appreciated. :)

Paul Dana (Aug 13, 2004 at 12:20 GMT)

Melv,

As always. You rock bro.

David Montgomery-Blake (Aug 13, 2004 at 12:35 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

@Eric
That's what I've been thinking since he started this project!

Melv May (Aug 13, 2004 at 13:03 GMT)

Hmmm ... Radiant Silver Gun ... Hmmm. :)

- Melv.

Melv May (Aug 13, 2004 at 18:03 GMT)

Guys,

Got home tonight and finished the scene load/save support within the particles so when you issue a scene load/save, all the particle effects, emitter and particles are saved/loaded at their exact positions and ready to go.

I'm going to take a small break and then I'm going to finish the fxPortal object and this weekend I'm going to finish some of the other camera abilities that I wanted to put in such as camera-shake etc.

Just thought I'd update everyone.

- Melv.

David Montgomery-Blake (Aug 13, 2004 at 18:09 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

I can't wait!

BTW, isn't the kid's ETA sometime around now?

Melv May (Aug 13, 2004 at 18:51 GMT)

@David: Sunday will be week 40, the due-date so it could be any minute or up to 10-14 days from now ... who knows!

That's why I'm working like hell to get through the final features for T2D.

- Melv.

Bil Simser (Aug 14, 2004 at 01:18 GMT)

And there was much rejoicing! Good job M.

Melv May (Aug 18, 2004 at 11:20 GMT)

continued here.

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