Plan for Chris
by Chris · 05/21/2001 (11:35 am) · 7 comments
There's a mouse in my house ;-O !!!
The last time there was a mouse in here, I caught him, then I rubbed curry powder in his asshole, then I taped two straws together and crucified him on my front lawn to make a point to all the other mice out there !!! ...
On the programming front:
I spent the better half of this month improving my 3d engine:
Added a little 2d engine::(animation, alpha blending, particles ... etc) ... I had to write a sprite class myself because I couldn't get DX8's [ID3DXSprite] to work.
Added shader support::Not actual pixel shaders ... it's more like a shader library ;-), the implementation is meant to be simple.
Added better Animation::Tweening and Bones in my propriety format(I'll probably dump one or the other as time goes by).
Scene Visibilty::No bsps( they just suck in today's world ... no e-mails please), No Portals(they're good for indoor, but useless in my game), No octrees(my second choice). So what did I use ? ... < insert drumroll.wav > Objects !!!
My editor uses pre-made objects which in turn makes it easy to determine the position and bb's for each object ... rather than going into details, I'll just state that I get over 100fps on my voodooII card and that's good enough for me ...
As always I made some free tools:
A geometry compiler::It converts milkshape files into one big file, it's similar to quakeII files I guess ? But milkshape files support grouping which is why I made it ;-). The output is very useful if your game supports tweening.
Photon::Photon is a 2d animation editor ... the output (ascii) it's very useful if your making a 2d game or particle sprites for a 3d game. Today I'll implement tga compiling so you can convert many tga files into one big file.
Material Editor::I probably won't give this away because it took so much time to make ( 1 month of pain) ... sorry.
I made some other stuff ... but I deleted them in a drunken rage < seriously :-[ >
Commercial products:
The modeller/animator is going well ... but I want to say something about 3D modelling software in general < approaching podium > ... < clearing throat > ... "3D Modelling Sucks !!!" I'm a fairly good 3d artist, but I've got to say it cause nobody else will ... Every 3D program has the same dumb primitives and functions. And they all ( for lack of a better word ) suck !
The reason why this is a problem isn't that fact that the average person can't produce a commercial quality model because they can, the problem lies in the time it takes to produce that model !!! When your tweaking a sphere to look like a head then you know what I'm talking about !!!
Off course this is just my opinion. I think some functions are important: vertex editing/modelling, booleans and splines/curves that's it !!! Everything else is bloatware. In the future 4 things will either happen to modelling software
(1) We'll all be wearing are VR helmets while editing some sort of digital clay with pressure sensitive gloves.
(2) 3D modelling software will turn into libraries containing hundreds of thousands of objects which could be edited just by changing a few parameters.
(3) Affordable laser scanning
(4) All of these things will happen and we'll be reminiscing over how redundant modelling used to be.
Off course that future stuff could just be the lithium in my system talking, but at the present 3D modelling just plain sucks!
Back to programming:
I probably won't use the tribes 2 engine for my current game ... but then again who knows ?
I really want a geforce 3 ... but I don't want to purchase a card early again ( Paid over $250 for my voodooII).
I find great interest in Cliffhanger Games ... maybe I'll sign up ...
I've stop doing contract work (It was cool being a programming bounty hounter ;-) ), but off course I'm a hor and if the price is right ... I'll program naked !!!
Damn this plan is getting a bit long so I'll end with this:
They call'em crack hors cause they luv crack ?
'Till next time'
'Much Props'
Chris "Senor_P" D
The last time there was a mouse in here, I caught him, then I rubbed curry powder in his asshole, then I taped two straws together and crucified him on my front lawn to make a point to all the other mice out there !!! ...
On the programming front:
I spent the better half of this month improving my 3d engine:
Added a little 2d engine::(animation, alpha blending, particles ... etc) ... I had to write a sprite class myself because I couldn't get DX8's [ID3DXSprite] to work.
Added shader support::Not actual pixel shaders ... it's more like a shader library ;-), the implementation is meant to be simple.
Added better Animation::Tweening and Bones in my propriety format(I'll probably dump one or the other as time goes by).
Scene Visibilty::No bsps( they just suck in today's world ... no e-mails please), No Portals(they're good for indoor, but useless in my game), No octrees(my second choice). So what did I use ? ... < insert drumroll.wav > Objects !!!
My editor uses pre-made objects which in turn makes it easy to determine the position and bb's for each object ... rather than going into details, I'll just state that I get over 100fps on my voodooII card and that's good enough for me ...
As always I made some free tools:
A geometry compiler::It converts milkshape files into one big file, it's similar to quakeII files I guess ? But milkshape files support grouping which is why I made it ;-). The output is very useful if your game supports tweening.
Photon::Photon is a 2d animation editor ... the output (ascii) it's very useful if your making a 2d game or particle sprites for a 3d game. Today I'll implement tga compiling so you can convert many tga files into one big file.
Material Editor::I probably won't give this away because it took so much time to make ( 1 month of pain) ... sorry.
I made some other stuff ... but I deleted them in a drunken rage < seriously :-[ >
Commercial products:
The modeller/animator is going well ... but I want to say something about 3D modelling software in general < approaching podium > ... < clearing throat > ... "3D Modelling Sucks !!!" I'm a fairly good 3d artist, but I've got to say it cause nobody else will ... Every 3D program has the same dumb primitives and functions. And they all ( for lack of a better word ) suck !
The reason why this is a problem isn't that fact that the average person can't produce a commercial quality model because they can, the problem lies in the time it takes to produce that model !!! When your tweaking a sphere to look like a head then you know what I'm talking about !!!
Off course this is just my opinion. I think some functions are important: vertex editing/modelling, booleans and splines/curves that's it !!! Everything else is bloatware. In the future 4 things will either happen to modelling software
(1) We'll all be wearing are VR helmets while editing some sort of digital clay with pressure sensitive gloves.
(2) 3D modelling software will turn into libraries containing hundreds of thousands of objects which could be edited just by changing a few parameters.
(3) Affordable laser scanning
(4) All of these things will happen and we'll be reminiscing over how redundant modelling used to be.
Off course that future stuff could just be the lithium in my system talking, but at the present 3D modelling just plain sucks!
Back to programming:
I probably won't use the tribes 2 engine for my current game ... but then again who knows ?
I really want a geforce 3 ... but I don't want to purchase a card early again ( Paid over $250 for my voodooII).
I find great interest in Cliffhanger Games ... maybe I'll sign up ...
I've stop doing contract work (It was cool being a programming bounty hounter ;-) ), but off course I'm a hor and if the price is right ... I'll program naked !!!
Damn this plan is getting a bit long so I'll end with this:
They call'em crack hors cause they luv crack ?
'Till next time'
'Much Props'
Chris "Senor_P" D
#2
05/21/2001 (1:16 pm)
A better way to animate than motion capture? I can't see any. :-) Though sadly, many games can't fit the costs of going that route into their budgets. 
#3
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05/21/2001 (4:23 pm)
do you like playing with small animals in your spare time? hehe jus kiddin.<
#4
They give you quite an assortment of shapes, of which most can be used to create objects (mostly mechanical). From there you can export it directly to .X or do animation in their animation editor.
http://doga.co.jp/english/index.html
good luck!
05/22/2001 (1:40 am)
Ever try DOGA CGA? L-1 is a freeware product while L-2 is a newer version, shareware, w/more options. They may have come out with L-3 by now.They give you quite an assortment of shapes, of which most can be used to create objects (mostly mechanical). From there you can export it directly to .X or do animation in their animation editor.
http://doga.co.jp/english/index.html
good luck!
#6
i hopefully thought we'd grown past that.
how disappointing.
05/23/2001 (12:27 am)
why swear every 2 words when it's a post about game development?i hopefully thought we'd grown past that.
how disappointing.
Torque Owner SR
The person who comes up with a better way to create 3d models will indeed be a famous one.