Plan for Melv May
by Melv May · 07/25/2004 (10:57 am) · 11 comments
... continued from previous plan.
Had an awesome weekend in coding terms and managed to get lots and lots of T2D done! I've managed to get a whopping total of 33 hours keyboard-time this weekend just so I could get the rather complex tile-map stuff complete.
Nearly all the tilemap functionality is complete with only a few minor collision details to finish; other than that, it's fully working and is really simple to use. I kept support for arbitrary rotating tilemaps and managed to think of a faster way to handle them so they run much faster than they did.
On the core-object front, I've expanded the blending options. Anything I add to this core, propagates to all other objects such as sprites, scrollers, tilemaps etc. The blending options now stand at the ability to turn blending on/off, set the source/destination blending factors and control the blending colour and alpha per object.
I've also added a feature which was in the fxLight which allows you to animate the blending colour/alpha over time using a KEY string. This is now in the core and allows you to create all sorts of cool effects. For instance, if you wanted to be able to flash the players ship when it starts to indicate a few moments of invulnerability, then you can play a blend animation on it which modulates the alpha field (or RGBA if you want). If the animation is non-cycling then the animation will revert back to the blend before your started it. It's really cool.
Another neat feature of the scenegraph is the ability to save/load a whole scene. There's core self-serialisation in every object so you can save a whole scene with all the physics, mounting, rendering options ... whatever, all saved to a file ready to be loaded whenever you want. To can either load the scene replacing its contents or append the scene. You can use this to do game-saves or use it as a method for storing custom scenes for instant load-up without having to mess with your own formats. There's a hook in the core to allow you to load/save into this stream as you wish for your own custom data. If your scene has sprites and tilemap with ten layers then saving the scene will save all these objects (including the tilemap-layers and tiles) to the disk ready to be loaded.
The tileMap functionality will be complete in a day or two and I'll begin work on finalising the 2D particle-engine immediately after. The particle-engine is simply going to blow your mind, promise. :)
Cheers,
- Melv.
Windows .WMV Movie (Crappy FrameRate from Fraps!)
.WMV Movie #1
Animated LEDs on backdrop!
Had an awesome weekend in coding terms and managed to get lots and lots of T2D done! I've managed to get a whopping total of 33 hours keyboard-time this weekend just so I could get the rather complex tile-map stuff complete.
Nearly all the tilemap functionality is complete with only a few minor collision details to finish; other than that, it's fully working and is really simple to use. I kept support for arbitrary rotating tilemaps and managed to think of a faster way to handle them so they run much faster than they did.
On the core-object front, I've expanded the blending options. Anything I add to this core, propagates to all other objects such as sprites, scrollers, tilemaps etc. The blending options now stand at the ability to turn blending on/off, set the source/destination blending factors and control the blending colour and alpha per object.
I've also added a feature which was in the fxLight which allows you to animate the blending colour/alpha over time using a KEY string. This is now in the core and allows you to create all sorts of cool effects. For instance, if you wanted to be able to flash the players ship when it starts to indicate a few moments of invulnerability, then you can play a blend animation on it which modulates the alpha field (or RGBA if you want). If the animation is non-cycling then the animation will revert back to the blend before your started it. It's really cool.
Another neat feature of the scenegraph is the ability to save/load a whole scene. There's core self-serialisation in every object so you can save a whole scene with all the physics, mounting, rendering options ... whatever, all saved to a file ready to be loaded whenever you want. To can either load the scene replacing its contents or append the scene. You can use this to do game-saves or use it as a method for storing custom scenes for instant load-up without having to mess with your own formats. There's a hook in the core to allow you to load/save into this stream as you wish for your own custom data. If your scene has sprites and tilemap with ten layers then saving the scene will save all these objects (including the tilemap-layers and tiles) to the disk ready to be loaded.
The tileMap functionality will be complete in a day or two and I'll begin work on finalising the 2D particle-engine immediately after. The particle-engine is simply going to blow your mind, promise. :)
Cheers,
- Melv.
Windows .WMV Movie (Crappy FrameRate from Fraps!)
.WMV Movie #1
Animated LEDs on backdrop!
About the author
#2
- Melv.
07/25/2004 (12:14 pm)
@Nicolas: Still expecting! 37 Weeks today, not long for the baby, not long for T2D!- Melv.
#3
I'm getting by doing some game pre production work while waiting for this. You've really done a great job here Melv :o)
07/25/2004 (11:32 pm)
33 hrs....get some sleep man!I'm getting by doing some game pre production work while waiting for this. You've really done a great job here Melv :o)
#4
@Peter: I should've clarified; 33 hours from Friday to Sunday night with sleep inbetween!
- Melv.
07/26/2004 (3:28 am)
:P@Peter: I should've clarified; 33 hours from Friday to Sunday night with sleep inbetween!
- Melv.
#5
Particle effects are like ten layers of icing on a seven layer cake: sweet.
07/26/2004 (5:44 am)
If the particle effects in Strategem are any indication, I know that there's no way I'll be disappointed! Actually, even without the particle effects, I'm already waiting with baited breath!Particle effects are like ten layers of icing on a seven layer cake: sweet.
#6
Some of the features partially complete are static/animated particles (using exact system as the sprites), core-object emitter that has all the features of any object such as physics, mounting, static/animated blending, layers etc. The particles are really easy to setup using a particle datablock and either a static or animated image datablock. Emitters can be added together to produce an overall 'effect', components of which can be linked together via mounting either rigidly or loosly. This is simply because they are core objects which means mounting comes as standard. You can obviously use mounting to produce trails/exhausts etc. Another thing you get from the core is the animated colours/blending for the particles so you can pretty much create unlimited effects.
About 4-5 days work to finish them and hopefully I should be starting on it around Wednesday this week. Having a rest tonight so I won't be finishing the TileMap but I should get it finished tommorrow.
I may take a couple of extra days before I show something because it's just so addictive playing with particle generators. :) Not really; I'll get some shots of the particles ASAP.
- Melv.
07/26/2004 (10:00 am)
@David: The particle effects are a much simplified version of the the 3D one I was developing although the simplification is because I didn't want to get into the position where the effects were not possibly without an editor but there's still plenty of power.Some of the features partially complete are static/animated particles (using exact system as the sprites), core-object emitter that has all the features of any object such as physics, mounting, static/animated blending, layers etc. The particles are really easy to setup using a particle datablock and either a static or animated image datablock. Emitters can be added together to produce an overall 'effect', components of which can be linked together via mounting either rigidly or loosly. This is simply because they are core objects which means mounting comes as standard. You can obviously use mounting to produce trails/exhausts etc. Another thing you get from the core is the animated colours/blending for the particles so you can pretty much create unlimited effects.
About 4-5 days work to finish them and hopefully I should be starting on it around Wednesday this week. Having a rest tonight so I won't be finishing the TileMap but I should get it finished tommorrow.
I may take a couple of extra days before I show something because it's just so addictive playing with particle generators. :) Not really; I'll get some shots of the particles ASAP.
- Melv.
#7
07/26/2004 (10:58 am)
You are a badass Melv, we are constantly amazed. :)
#8
I'm pretty amazed at how quickly all this stuff has come together. Putting a 2D game together will be so easy now leaving plenty of time for art and game-design. If I can achieve that then I've achieved something wonderful, way above the tech. :)
- Melv.
07/26/2004 (11:34 am)
Thanks Josh. :)I'm pretty amazed at how quickly all this stuff has come together. Putting a 2D game together will be so easy now leaving plenty of time for art and game-design. If I can achieve that then I've achieved something wonderful, way above the tech. :)
- Melv.
#9
Between the RTS addition and 2D Torque, I doubt that there will be nearly as many questions about whether or not Torque is simply a FPS engine!
07/27/2004 (5:38 am)
Just from what you've shown already, it looks to be something that no one had considered doing with Torque before. In my time here, most of the 2D work that people had asked about spawned discussions on how to change the billoarding code to make 2D work.Between the RTS addition and 2D Torque, I doubt that there will be nearly as many questions about whether or not Torque is simply a FPS engine!
#10
- Melv.
07/27/2004 (6:09 am)
@David: I agree that it will show that the engine is more than capable of developing a huge range of game/application types. T2D has been, quite honestly, one of the most exciting bits of code I've worked for a long time simply because the potential for cools things being created from it is enormous!- Melv.
Torque Owner Nicolas Quijano
Keep 'em coming :)
btw, how is the expecting Mom doing ?