Blog for Mike Kuklinski at GarageGames.com

irc.maxgaming.net #garagegames

Mike Kuklinski — 2008-02-10T06:47:41+00:00

This is going to be an odd blog, since it has absolutely nothing to do with game development.

So what, pray tell, will I be ranting about today?

Our IRC channel.

When I started going there, I would place a rough estimate that it was four to five times as large as it is today, and GarageGames devs, like Ben Garney (Galdor/Sado) and such were almost always there.

What ever happened?

Right now, as I speak, there is not a single GG dev in there of any kind, and there are 18 people in the channel, and far less active. There used to actually be meaningful discussions occuring there, and now there are none.

I miss the old days. Come on, let's bring the channel back to life!

irc.maxgaming.net
#garagegames

StackHeap Master Server Beta Release

Mike Kuklinski — 2008-02-04T06:23:13+00:00

In ammendum to my previous blog post (which I apologize for it being so short, as I was at work when I wrote it... yes, I am a very busy at work, obviously), I am posting a beta binary for the SHMS... no source yet, it's not ready for public release.

It -should- be capable of handling all basic Torque functions... server updates, lists, filters...

A few things:

It is only compiled for Windows x86 systems... it will probably run under other systems other emulators or interpreters, though... it's not very complex.

I compiled it in release mode as right now I am not too interested in debugger output, only in stability in general... please report ANY problems you encounter with it to me.

DOWNLOAD HERE

StackHeap Master Server

Mike Kuklinski — 2008-02-03T16:17:20+00:00

I'm working on a new Master Server daemon as a replacement for Ben's Push Button server... I have it done to basic networking, and I should have a beta out either tonight or tomorrow.

Just letting you all know...

What I hope to have done by the beta:
- Static Core (single thread)

Actually, that's about it :D. I just want to make sure that the core works before I work on more advanced stuff.

Engine Writing

Mike Kuklinski — 2007-12-21T06:28:50+00:00

So, the lot of you might have thought that I'd dropped off the face of the Earth for a while, maybe I was run over by a loose Vehicle* or something...

Nah, just been hit really hard by work, school, and writing my own Game Engine, or some combination of the before-stated.

Yeah, been working on it with another guy (I'm sure that he'll comment here on his own at some point) for about a month or so; a lot of the basic, basic stuff is in; memory management, reimplementation of stdlib, threading... and it's only getting better -- we have every intention of writing a Game Engine that supercedes everything so far, even Torque -wink-.

I really can't paste any screenshots yet, because we aren't anywhere near that stage and won't be for a while, but I thought I'd check up with the community and all that.

A few things I've learned:
1, Cut optimizations down. I wasted a lot of time optimizing bits of the memory manager that although may be meaningful in the end only slowed down overall development.
2, Abstraction, Abstraction, Abstracted. Abstracted code is golden; just write it in a way that does not kill performance.
3, Write your code not only to be easy for your users to read, but for you to read as well; it's more important that YOU can read your code than your users, it's THERE job to learn it, not yours to write it for them.
4, Comment! Put comments in your code lest you forget what-the-chewable-vitamin-c (yes, it was nearby) you were writing about.
5, Don't be afraid to ask questions... I'm in a C++ channel quite often asking questions, often I find that when you ask the question, the way you word it triggers your brain differently, causing you to find the solution yourself.

Kuiper Work .. lots of pictures.

Mike Kuklinski — 2007-01-17T07:46:11+00:00

So, I finally decided to get off my behind and start porting Kuiper code to TSE MS4... hopefully (please Brian, PLEAAASE! -hysteric crying-) MS4.2 will not be TOO different.

I got some basic code in, and started replacing the sky code. It is VERY different now, and this is what I have so far:

100,000 stars is too many!

22,000 works.

1,000,000 is definitely too many.

With editor...

Definitely messed up something with glow...

Star glow!

100,000 is still too many.

See? No bleed through!

The system for making any object glow, even without a material, was substantially different than it was before... but I figured it out... you can't stop me, GG! Muahahaha!

MS4? No one told me!

Mike Kuklinski — 2006-09-13T03:41:50+00:00

So, I get up yesterday... night (ok, I hadn't actually just gotten up), to find out that MS4 had been out, and had been out for some time. After berating key people for not notifying me, a person who's interest in MS4 easily dwarfed that of anyone else, I downloaded it, and fixed numerous bugs (glow/transparency, optimized the glow buffer, fixed some shadow distance issues), and came up with this somewhat serene image using one of my crappy fighter models that I made and unfortunately textured:

Enjoy.

Kuiper Optimizations, and other stuff

Mike Kuklinski — 2006-06-10T08:32:41+00:00

Well, I went back into my Volumetric Cloud Class, in order to optimize it a bit. Phew, who knew how hard of a challenge that would be...

I shaved off a few instructions and got them a bit faster...

I also fixed up some explosions for some fighters, as well as reparing some overall bugs.

Of course, the only reason you are reading this is to see the screenshots, so here you go:

Inside a cloud.

Outside the same cloud.

A really, really big cloud with ships nearby.

With some texture fixes, the Carrier is back in action :)

And here is an avi of a fighter exploding:

www.kuattech.com/fixedexplosion.avi (XVID)

Orbit - Newtonian Physics

Mike Kuklinski — 2006-06-02T08:07:44+00:00

For the past 2 days I have been working on a pet Newtonian Physics project called Orbit. If you could not already have guessed, it simulates, guess what, orbits!

It is written in C++ and OpenGL. The graphics engine is half-ripped from NEHE's tutorials since that is not the main point of it, the main point is Newtonian Physics.

You can download it here.

Some Screenshots:

The Solar System. The big brown thing is Jupiter.

A close up of Earth. The little grey thing is the Moon.

Note, this project is not complete, I will continue to work on it until I feel it has some level of completion to it.

Semi-Dynamic Cubemaps, oh my.

Mike Kuklinski — 2006-05-09T05:55:28+00:00

Well, I was sick of static cubemaps, and their lack of ability to properly represent my scenes... so I decided to step up a bit -- generate a single cubemap after the environment was rendered. Simple, right? Apparently not.

Obviously, something is wrong there, the planet renders completely in-game... but the cubemap seems to be missing most of it! Oh no, what can we do!

Oh well.

But wait!

If I make it a whole model, it works! But... it's the other side of the planet -- it appears as though it was rendering it inverted... in the end, it doesn't matter, I get a nice image either way, but still...

Mmmm... Planets.

Mike Kuklinski — 2006-04-20T03:02:59+00:00

Well, with a slightly increased vigor for coding after I played a few hours of EVE Online (makes me think about my space sim, and how to beat them graphically), I decided to look at my planet renderer again, something that was a constant thorn in my side.

I made a few test runs:

Too shiny.

Way too shiny.

Too shiny and somehow too dull!

So then I edited the material to drastically cut down the effect of specular, then I moved the planet around for better shots:

Ooh.

Pretty.

Interesting.

Out of all of them, the last was my favorite, so I toned up the image a bit:

Did I get any 'real' work done? No. But I made a planet look cool.

Edit:

Hey look, I think I see Venture Africa!

Edit 2:

By playing around with the cloud layer resolution, I was able to bring the FPS up from 14 to 110. Yay.