Unemployment and blender and firefox. Oh my!
by Arland (Barry) Woodham · 03/11/2006 (10:54 pm) · 7 comments
Unemploment
Well it has been a while yet again since I have posted anything. First off I am no longer working at the deadend job I had before. This is a good thing in that I don't wake up every morning wanting to go back to sleep rather then face the day. I have a few job prospects and some money saved up so I am not too worried ..... yet. The good news about all this is right now I have more time to work on projects of my own, including a hex based puzzle game, but more on that later.
Blender
At the school I was working at I installed Linux on all the machines because they were old and would run Linux more stable than windows. Plus no easy access to file sharing programs to junk up the systems. For a little while I actually got to teach a class and in doing so taught 3d to those who actually wanted to learn something. We used wings 3d for the ease of modeling and then blender for the rendering and texturing. I myself had attempted to understand blender many times but gave on and went to other programs. This time I did not have the choice in order to teach someone else I had to learn it for myself. Now even though I am no wiz at it I am comfortable using it and I can see what power it really has. Among the many tests I made i will share two.
The first a static particle test (aka hair) with simple vertex coloring for textures. That is why the eyes are so weird. Length and density of hair determined by vertex painting.
The second was an attempt to crash one of the old computers at the school. Insane number of polys with raytraced reflections and refractions. It took 2 1/2 hours by the way.
Just in case you are wondering about the monkeys. Suzanne is the blender equivalent of the 3dsmax teapot.
Firefox
Another big software change I made a few days ago was a switch from IE to Firefox. This is something I have been meaning to do for quite some time but, it always seemed to get pushed to the back burner. While working on the linux computers Firefox began to grow on me so I took the plunge and put it on my home system. To my surprise the thing I had been dreading, transfering bookmarks, settings, etc., was all done automatically. As soon as it finished i caught myself asking now why hadn't I done this sooner. After a little performace boost I had found about earlier I didn't need to even turn back. I must say the best feature IMHO is the tabbed browsing function. I can load 20-30 forum threads and have them all ready to look at one right after another. I think its safe to say that I won't be headed back to IE for anthing except those that won't work otherwise ie. windows update.
The performance boost if you are wondering is so. Type about:config in you browser bar. find the network.dns.disableIPv6 setting and double click it. This disables a rarely used internet protocol that the only use I have seen is to slow down web browsing
Oh my!
Well all of this culminates into what got me excited enough to post. I have picked T2D back up just don't ask me to call it TGB. I have had an idea for a hex based puzzle game bouncing around in my head for quite sometime now. When I saw Neo Binedell's post about isometic tile mapping in t2d it spured the idea back into my head. I went though all of the work of updating to sp2, setting up c++ express, and recompiling T2D only to find out that I didn't have the first clue what I was getting into. Discouraged I went back to bed and figured I would just have to scrap the idea for the time being. Something came over me and I decided to try and use the level editor again with a snap to grid for my needs. I had problems with this before with say a 64x64 image using a snap up 1 would move 0.2 0.8 1.2 etc. Now going back and trying a non power of 2 image 60x60 I was able to get the image to snap on 1 2 3 etc. This is good enough for desgining my levels so I set forth to tweak my 3d setup until the rendered tile matched up more or less. The next fun part will be the selection process for in game. But I will worry about that later.
Quicky level prototype in T2D. More monkeys.
How tile setup looks in blender.
How setup really looks to get right tile shape. Notice camera length and tile distortion.
The End?
If you have followed this long good for you I know alot people don't read but skim these. Heck I'm one of those people sometimes. The moral of this story is change is good. Looking back unemploment = more time = t2d interest = blender renderings = firefox to post it all. Thats it for my long 2 am post maybe now I can actually get to sleep. Thank you and good night.
Well it has been a while yet again since I have posted anything. First off I am no longer working at the deadend job I had before. This is a good thing in that I don't wake up every morning wanting to go back to sleep rather then face the day. I have a few job prospects and some money saved up so I am not too worried ..... yet. The good news about all this is right now I have more time to work on projects of my own, including a hex based puzzle game, but more on that later.
Blender
At the school I was working at I installed Linux on all the machines because they were old and would run Linux more stable than windows. Plus no easy access to file sharing programs to junk up the systems. For a little while I actually got to teach a class and in doing so taught 3d to those who actually wanted to learn something. We used wings 3d for the ease of modeling and then blender for the rendering and texturing. I myself had attempted to understand blender many times but gave on and went to other programs. This time I did not have the choice in order to teach someone else I had to learn it for myself. Now even though I am no wiz at it I am comfortable using it and I can see what power it really has. Among the many tests I made i will share two.
The first a static particle test (aka hair) with simple vertex coloring for textures. That is why the eyes are so weird. Length and density of hair determined by vertex painting.
The second was an attempt to crash one of the old computers at the school. Insane number of polys with raytraced reflections and refractions. It took 2 1/2 hours by the way.
Just in case you are wondering about the monkeys. Suzanne is the blender equivalent of the 3dsmax teapot.
Firefox
Another big software change I made a few days ago was a switch from IE to Firefox. This is something I have been meaning to do for quite some time but, it always seemed to get pushed to the back burner. While working on the linux computers Firefox began to grow on me so I took the plunge and put it on my home system. To my surprise the thing I had been dreading, transfering bookmarks, settings, etc., was all done automatically. As soon as it finished i caught myself asking now why hadn't I done this sooner. After a little performace boost I had found about earlier I didn't need to even turn back. I must say the best feature IMHO is the tabbed browsing function. I can load 20-30 forum threads and have them all ready to look at one right after another. I think its safe to say that I won't be headed back to IE for anthing except those that won't work otherwise ie. windows update.
The performance boost if you are wondering is so. Type about:config in you browser bar. find the network.dns.disableIPv6 setting and double click it. This disables a rarely used internet protocol that the only use I have seen is to slow down web browsing
Oh my!
Well all of this culminates into what got me excited enough to post. I have picked T2D back up just don't ask me to call it TGB. I have had an idea for a hex based puzzle game bouncing around in my head for quite sometime now. When I saw Neo Binedell's post about isometic tile mapping in t2d it spured the idea back into my head. I went though all of the work of updating to sp2, setting up c++ express, and recompiling T2D only to find out that I didn't have the first clue what I was getting into. Discouraged I went back to bed and figured I would just have to scrap the idea for the time being. Something came over me and I decided to try and use the level editor again with a snap to grid for my needs. I had problems with this before with say a 64x64 image using a snap up 1 would move 0.2 0.8 1.2 etc. Now going back and trying a non power of 2 image 60x60 I was able to get the image to snap on 1 2 3 etc. This is good enough for desgining my levels so I set forth to tweak my 3d setup until the rendered tile matched up more or less. The next fun part will be the selection process for in game. But I will worry about that later.
Quicky level prototype in T2D. More monkeys.
How tile setup looks in blender.
How setup really looks to get right tile shape. Notice camera length and tile distortion.
The End?
If you have followed this long good for you I know alot people don't read but skim these. Heck I'm one of those people sometimes. The moral of this story is change is good. Looking back unemploment = more time = t2d interest = blender renderings = firefox to post it all. Thats it for my long 2 am post maybe now I can actually get to sleep. Thank you and good night.
About the author
#2
Having the time to do stuff you like is such an opportunity; I'm glad to see you're using it well. Good luck with your projects.
Looking forward to seeing what your hex-game comes out like. :)
- Melv.
03/12/2006 (2:08 am)
Arland,Having the time to do stuff you like is such an opportunity; I'm glad to see you're using it well. Good luck with your projects.
Looking forward to seeing what your hex-game comes out like. :)
- Melv.
#3
First, I moved to Firefox myself and forced my wife to do so :) (she tried to do back, but she realizing now how it's confortable, stable and nice). thanks for the IP6 tip!
Second, I'm starting to move to Blender after trying everything else... It's painful (exporters), but it's moving
Good luck!
03/12/2006 (10:03 am)
You made my day, ArlandFirst, I moved to Firefox myself and forced my wife to do so :) (she tried to do back, but she realizing now how it's confortable, stable and nice). thanks for the IP6 tip!
Second, I'm starting to move to Blender after trying everything else... It's painful (exporters), but it's moving
Good luck!
#4
03/12/2006 (11:13 am)
Just curious - why did you decide to warp your hexagon and make a long camera instead of simply using the "orthographic" view in blender? Blender has the ability to render without perspective, which is what you want in order to get isometric tiling to work.
#5
@Melv - Thanks for the encoragement.
@Alexander - Glad i could make someone's day.
@Philip - Actually I am using the ortho camera mode. However it was not enough without some tweaking to get the tiles to line up right it t2d. For some odd reason the tiles were still wider at the bottom than the top even though it was very little. Believe me though you don't want to see the non ortho attempts.
03/12/2006 (3:01 pm)
@Anders - The shadows are just from the default lighting. the final tiles will have some shadows but they will be very light and soft. Maybe some gobal illumination.@Melv - Thanks for the encoragement.
@Alexander - Glad i could make someone's day.
@Philip - Actually I am using the ortho camera mode. However it was not enough without some tweaking to get the tiles to line up right it t2d. For some odd reason the tiles were still wider at the bottom than the top even though it was very little. Believe me though you don't want to see the non ortho attempts.
#6
Remember tho that for a simple static hex/iso game you could just use
2 normal tile layers offset the correct amount and just use every other tile per layer.
~neo
03/13/2006 (5:04 am)
Hmm, perhaps I should add hex tiles to the iso example ;pRemember tho that for a simple static hex/iso game you could just use
2 normal tile layers offset the correct amount and just use every other tile per layer.
~neo
#7
03/13/2006 (5:58 pm)
@Neo - No worries. It's just after 4 1/2 years of not doing any c++ I was a little out of my league. The level editor ahould be enough for my needs though. 
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