Blog for Jeff Faust at GarageGames.com

AFX 1.1.2 for TGEA 1.7.1 (Limited) Open Beta 2

Jeff Faust — 2008-06-30T17:57:00+00:00

Derek Bronson recently made mention of this in his blog, 3rd Party Product Update - June 2008, but here is a more complete announcement.

Just a couple of months ago, I announced the beta release of AFX 1.1.2 for TGEA 1.7.0. That beta went really well, but while preparing the final release, we heard about the TGEA update to 1.7.1, so we decided to postpone the final release and do a second beta that was compatible with TGEA 1.7.1. So here it is...

Right now, if you have a license to AFX for TGEA (ComboPack or CoreTech), you can download a copy of the AFX 1.1.2 for TGEA 1.7.1 Beta 2 from the AFX for TGEA download page on your account page.

Please refer to this thread in the AFX private forums for more details regarding the (limited) open beta:
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=76548

The changes from TGEA 1.7.0 to TGEA 1.7.1 were largely minor in regards to AFX compatibility, but in particular, the Atlas support is much improved. All of the Atlas-based missions are looking and working much better now.

We also took the time between the two betas to implement some new Zodiac features...

Zodiacs on Polysoup DTS Objects

Zodiac rendering now works on polysoup-enabled DTS objects. Currently this is limited to TSStatic objects with the usePolysoup field set to true.

Zodiac Altitude Management

In addition to a position, Zodiacs now also keep track of separate altitudes relative to the nearest terrain and interior. (For the purposes of altitude measurement, polysoup objects are treated as interiors and atlas objects are considered terrain.)

By default, a zodiac's altitudes are undefined but they can me measured using a special AltitudeConform transform modifier. When used, it adjusts an effect's z position to the nearest point on an interior or terrain and additionally records the original (pre-conformed) altitudes of the effect. These altitudes can then be interpreted by zodiac effects so that the zodiacs shrink or fade as their altitude increases. This is very useful when you have bridge-like interior or polysoup structures above visible terrain. With altitude management, zodiacs can be made visible on the bridge-like structures but not on the terrain directly below.

Zodiac Distance Fading

Zodiacs now fade out according to distance from the camera.

Zodiac Gradient Filters

Zodiac rendering can now be filtered by the gradient of polygons on interiors and polysoup objects. Here is how gradient filtering works... Horizontal floor polys have a gradient of 0, vertical wall polys have a gradient of 90 and horizontal ceiling polys have a gradient of 180. Each zodiac can specify a range of gradients and will only appear on polys with a gradient that falls in the range. 0-45 is a good default setting that avoids walls and ceilings, but still appears on most floors even if slightly angled or rounded. 135-180 would put the zodiac only on the ceiling. You can also invert the filtering so that gradients in range don't show the zodiac. For example, an inverted range of 80-100 keeps the zodiac off most walls (where they get all stretched an ugly), but renders it everywhere else.

Please enjoy AFX 1.1.2 for TGEA 1.7.1 Beta2!

AFX 1.1.2 for TGEA 1.7.0 Open Beta

Jeff Faust — 2008-04-17T16:45:14+00:00

Recently GarageGames officially released TGEA 1.7.0, a rather vast update to the TGEA engine. For several months we have been tracking the evolution of this release and in parallel, have been porting AFX for TGEA to it. Since the open beta releases for TGEA 1.7 went so well we are doing the same for AFX.

Right now, if you have a license to AFX for TGEA (ComboPack or CoreTech), you can download a copy of the AFX 1.1.2 for TGEA 1.7.0 Beta from the AFX for TGEA download page on your account page.

Please refer to this thread in the AFX private forums for more details regarding the open beta:
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=74306

There were so many changes to the TGEA engine between version 1.0.3 and 1.7.0 that we decided to keep the AFX update for 1.7.0 as simple as possible. As such, this AFX upgrade adds little in the way of new AFX capabilities and focuses on making existing capabilities compatible with TGEA 1.7.0. However, we have been prototyping many exciting new AFX features in our development branch and look forward to releasing much of this tech in a future release. Also, we are just beginning to work with some of the excellent new assets available in TGEA 1.7.0, many of which would look great in some sci-fi oriented demos.

Finally, I just want to extend a big thanks to GarageGames for granting us early access to the TGEA 1.7.0 project. Without this we could never have released a compatible version of AFX so soon after the TGEA 1.7.0 release.

Enjoy the AFX 1.1.2 for TGEA 1.7.0 Beta!

Preview Pics from AFX for TGEA

Jeff Faust — 2007-12-13T21:37:49+00:00

One year ago, nearly to the day, we released the inaugural version of AFX for TGE. Now, in a matter of days, we'll be releasing the long awaited version of AFX for TGEA. I originally projected two or three months for this project, but what can I say, I was very wrong!

As we tie up the final loose ends, prep the product pages, proofread the updated docs, and build the installers, here are some recent images to look at, all made with AFX 1.1 for TGEA 1.03.

Watch for the final release, in time for Christmas!

AFX and Bottle Rocket Science

Jeff Faust — 2007-07-04T19:07:45+00:00

Today is the 4th of July, Independence Day here in the United States, where a big part of the celebration is fireworks. A few weeks ago, with the 4th holiday approaching, Matthew Durante and I decided to see what kind of fireworks effects we could come up with using AFX. Here are the results in movie form and some images:

Fireworks Movie (AVI) <4mb> -- silent
Fireworks Movie (QuickTime) <3.75mb> -- silent

At first we attempted to pull this off in stock AFX 1.0.2. I got some good results attaching particle emitters to multiple debris effects, and Matt made some nice bursts using particles on paths, but we quickly realized that we lacked a good flexible way of moving effects in a ballistic fashion.

Instead of creating a monolithic fireworks effect, we wanted to find a way to harness the kind of physical forces at work in real fireworks and apply them to the movement of any AFX component effect. To do this, Matt had a clever idea for something we call ForceSets. In much the same way that AFX assembles multiple component effects into a bigger compound effect, it also groups individual forces into one or more ForceSets. From there, you can link other AFX effects to specific ForceSets which will then influence their motion in a physical way. You can think of each ForceSet as a separate little universe of forces which can fade in and out over time. Assigning an effect to a ForceSet causes its movement to be steered by the collection of forces in the ForceSet. (We are just using simple linear forces, nothing rotational, and no collision response, but this is enough for decent fireworks.)

With a prototype implementation of ForceSets in place, Matt went off and researched fireworks and designed the fireworks display captured in the movie. What you see here is mostly achieved using stock AFX 1.0.2 with the addition of ForceSets, however, the results are still highly experimental. As a whole the complexity of the fireworks display seriously pushes the software to the limits and beyond.

From here, we'll use what we've learned from this experiment to implement production-ready ForceSets to be included in a future update of AFX. We think the ForceSets will turn out to be very useful in a wide variety of effects beyond fireworks.

Happy 4th of July!

AFX: Off to a Great Start

Jeff Faust — 2006-12-18T17:44:34+00:00

It's been a little over a week since the first ArcaneFX products appeared on the virtual store shelves at GarageGames.com and by all indicators we've had a very successful and stable launch! So, I'd like to extend a personal thanks to all of you who jumped right in and invested some of your hard-earned indie dollars on our new technology. We are indie developers ourselves and we know how every dollar you spend on your development tools counts.

As far as we're concerned, this is just the beginning. We have big plans for ArcaneFX and don't intend to let it stagnate. We'd like nothing less than to have AFX become the essential special effects solution for all Torque technology. Not just magic, but all special effects - sci-fi, horror, racing, and more -- not just TGE, but TGEA, and other Torque engines yet to come. Of course, we'll need a strong user community to make this happen, and we're off to an excellent start. Thanks for your support!

- Jeff Faust

AFX Presents: A Little Night Magic...

Jeff Faust — 2006-10-23T21:49:31+00:00

While we await the final release of TGE 1.5, I thought I would share some of the latest lighting enhancements we've made to the soon-to-be-published, Arcane-FX.

As we were developing AFX, we deliberately avoided using TLK for a long time. This wasn't because we didn't think TLK had anything to add, quite the opposite. We just wanted to make the best special effects possible using TGE plus AFX and nothing else. To avoid confusion, we refrained from using TLK or any other content packs when creating sample images and movies.

Eventually, we did add a few features that took some advantage of TLK when it was available, but these really just scratched the surface of what was possible. Then we learned that the AFX product was going to be built on the upcoming TGE 1.5 and that 1.5 would also incorporate integrated TLK lighting. Now that TLK would be the standard lighting system for Torque, we realized that we needed to go a little further with the lighting features in AFX.

First we made a number of enhancements to the AFX sample spell effects to improve their appearance under the starker TLK lighting. Then we implemented support for using TLK's sgUniversalStaticLights (called sgLightObjects in 1.5) and VolumeLights as AFX component effects. Finally, we created an alternative nighttime mission and added advanced lighting effects to most of the AFX sample spells to make them look great in day or night settings. The results can be seen in the images posted with this blog entry.

In the end we've found that AFX and TLK are a powerful combination. The TLK lighting adds many deep and flexible controls for incorporating advanced lighting in AFX special effects, and AFX offers powerful new ways to dynamically manage animated and mounted TLK lights.

To see a new movie showing AFX special effects using TLK lighting in a nighttime setting, visit here.

For more, visit arcane-FX.com.

AFX Selectrons and Other Goodies

Jeff Faust — 2006-07-28T17:53:07+00:00

My previous blog entries covering Arcane-FX development have mostly been about spellcasting effects. For this blog, I'm going to set aside magic effects for a bit and present some other kinds of special effects and special effects tools we've been developing for AFX.

When we first started development on Arcane-FX, we were not thinking much beyond spellcasting and other magic effects. It was the early days of World of Warcraft, and the whole notion of AFX grew out of a determination to recreate, in TGE, the kind of spell effects I was seeing in WoW. However, once we got the first few AFX spells working, it was clear that the same mechanisms we had developed for crafting magic effects could also be used for other kinds of special effects. Now, we finally have some concrete examples.

Selectrons

It's understandable if you don't know what a selectron is, since it's a word we made up. Selectrons are what we call the effects used to indicate that a scene object is selected. They are usually used for picking a target of some kind. The target of a spell, the target of a conversation, etc.

Selectron effects were not something we planned for. We just suddenly discovered that we needed a way to make them. AFX target selections were originally a simple red circle projected on the ground below a character. It was static and fairly hardcoded.

One day Matt asked if we could make the red circle glow briefly when first selected so that it would reflect the behavior of the casting zodiacs in many of his spell designs. I spent about 10 minutes thinking about a quick and dirty way to add an animated glow to the selection circle, before I realized that what we really needed was a way to create selection effects that was parallel to the way we created spellcasting effects.

In AFX, special effects are organized using an effects choreographer. The choreographer used for spellcasting is called afxMagicSpell. To create dynamic selection effects, we made a new choreographer called afxSelectron. It's a bit simpler than afxMagicSpell, but it generally works much the same way, and this really opens the doors to designing some very interesting selection effects. And unlike spellcasting effects, you usually want selectrons to execute only on the client used by the player actually making the selection. afxSelectron takes care of this.

Well, what can you do with a selectron? If you prefer to show a selection using a texture below the selected object, you can do that with zodiacs. They can be layered and animated creating something much more dynamic than a static circle. If you prefer to show selections with some kind of geometry hovering above the selected object, that's easy too. Attaching separate sound effects for object selection and deselection is trivial. The selection effects in WoW are pretty simple, a colored circle beneath the selected character. But if you look closely, you'll notice that the selections are not really circles but somewhat crescent-like, and very subtly, the fat part of the crescent always points toward the camera. This camera tracking is easily reproduce in AFX by aim constraining a zodiac to the camera. Here are some stills of some example selectrons we've created.

The selectrons shown in the pics are dynamic, so you may get a better impression of this viewing the Selectrons movie here. Also, the movie is silent, but our default AFX selectron has separate sound effects for the select and deselect actions.

Sci-Fi Effects

Our results here are still rather preliminary, but we have started experimentally applying AFX to the realm of sci-fi and other futuristic effects. Matt's first creation is a spell-like effect that materializes a small personal attack satellite that orbits the player, executes a deadly laser attack, and then dematerializes. A nice aspect of the effect is the way that the hovering drone appears to kick up dust clouds as it moves over the ground. We think there's room for improvement in the lasers and would like to explore development of a special energy beam type projectile.

Beyond the satellite effect, there are a few details about the space helmet that are worth mentioning. In the AFX demo, when you go to the spellbank containing the satellite effect, the demo enters a simple Sci-Fi mode. It switches the targeting selectron to a sci-fi style and adds a space helmet to the player's orc. The space helmet is not part of the orc model and it is not added using the mount mechanism. The helmet is an afxModel effect and it is constrained to the orc's head using an Effectron. Effectron is the name we give to a simple one-stage choreographer that is very useful for simple effects groupings. Here it's used to add some special gear to the player character. Effectrons are also useful for adding effects to a freshly dropped item, to an unlooted corpse, or for subtle environment effects. They are also potentially useful for melee effects, and weapon embellishments.

For more, visit arcane-FX.com.

Arcane-FX: spellcasting effects for TGE (Update)

Jeff Faust — 2006-02-20T19:05:48+00:00

Here's a progress report on the Arcane-FX project...

In spite of the fact that this blog has been silent for a bit, we've been making steady progress on the Arcane-FX software. Unfortunately, much of what's been going on has been the kind of stuff that, while important, doesn't make for great screenshots and movies. One of the main reasons I've been quiet for so long.

For those of you interested in details, here's list of some of the goals that have been completed, many of them mundane:

- Greatly reduced and consolidated the customizations to existing TGE code.
- Made all customizations backwards compatible with stock TGE. This means that all the mods that come with TGE, (starter.fps, starter.racing, demo, etc.), still run after AFX customizations are added.
- Migrated the code to TGE 1.4 while still maintaining support for TGE 1.3.
- Migrated the code to TGE 1.4 on Mac OSX.
- Implemented Zodiac textures on interiors.
- Began writing documentation.
- Worked with a couple of early users.
- Hired a sound designer to create sfx for all the example spells.
- Fixed a slew of problems, especially multiplayer related bugs.

Ok, now that that's out of the way, on to some more interesting news.

Official Website

The official Arcane-FX website at arcane-fx.com is now open. Highlights include, a whole bunch of new screenshots, a new movie featuring sound effects from sound designer, Dave Schroeder, a development blog, forums, and some early drafts of the documentation. From here on out, the Arcane-FX website will be the best source for information on development progress. With this website, I'm doing something I haven't tried before, and that is building a community. Hopefully some of you will participate and add your voice to the discussions, and help shape Arcane-FX before and after release.

New Example Spells

Matthew Durante has added a couple of new spells to the collection, Astral Passport, and Insectoplasm. I think that brings the main set of example spells up to 10. Astral Passport is a teleportation spell with effects for both arrival to and departure from a scene. Insectoplasm, which is still being developed, features an unusual projectile in the form of a giant flaming centipede-like insect. This monster bug soars aloft like a long segmented kite and then dives from above onto the intended target. This plan features screenshots from both Astral Passport and Insectoplasm.

Game Developers Conference

I will be attending this year's GDC in March. Perhaps I'll see some of you there. I expect to be spending some time demo-ing Arcane-FX in the GarageGames booth, so look for me there.

Status

If I had to put a name to it, I'd say Arcane-FX is now entering the Alpha phase of development. We're adding some new pre-release users, and for the remainder of the project, most code changes and final readiness will be determined by how well the code does with the early users. Keep watching arcane-fx.com and this blog for any firm announcements regarding release dates, cost, etc.

For more, visit arcane-FX.com.

Tuesday Nov 8 17:20

Jeff Faust — 2005-11-08T17:20:39+00:00

Arcane-FX: a special effects system for the Torque Game Engine (Update)

First, to all of you have been waiting to hear more about Arcane-FX, I apologize for dropping off the radar for a while. I had another work-for-hire project that needed my full attention for a couple of months, and that pushed AFX to the back seat in my priorities. That project is Gold now, so I'm back on Arcane-FX fulltime for a stretch... and things are quickly moving forward.

Progress Report

Actually, the AFX project wasn't totally stalled. While I was otherwise occupied, Matthew Durante continued work on some great new magic spells and I've linked to some screenshots of these in this plan. His new spells feature such wonders as: a raging leaf tornado projectile, gushing streams of blood, a giant caterpillar crawling up the orc mage, an exploding cocoon, swarming moths, and a gigantic hammer.

I've been making targeted improvements to the system, consolidating code changes, and fixing errors and strange behaviors. We recently made a small but powerful change to how procedural effect animation works and this has opened up many new possibilities. One of which is the ability for effects to conform to the ground shape. For example, the ring-of-fire effect seen in earlier postings will now take on the shape of uneven terrain.

Also, having been away from the code for a bit, I've been able to take a fresh look at the whole system which has been most helpful for getting the documentation started. I'm also reframing the system more broadly as a special effects system, instead of merely a spellcasting system. Magic spells will remain its strong suit at first, but a fairly small portion of the code is specific to magic casting, so it will soon begin evolving into other effects areas.

Moving Forward

In the short term, I need to evaluate the ramifications of Torque 1.4 and get AFX upgraded to that version as soon as it's available. Then it's a matter of getting ready to take on some outside testers. This is something I'll want to ramp up gradually, starting out with just one or two testers. If everything goes well, I may be ready for the first testers in a matter of weeks and once some of the logistics are in place, the number of testers can probably grow.

Finally, just today, I've started the launch of a new Arcane-FX website. It'll be at least a week before there's anything to see, so I won't post a URL yet, but this will be a nice central location to keep up-to-date with the progress. It will also have a much bigger bandwidth capacity so I'll no longer burn up my quota every time I post a new movie.

When can I get it? How much will it cost?

I get these questions a lot. My hope is to have AFX published as a Dev Tool in the GarageGame's Torque Store. I've had some discussions with the folks at GarageGames and the outlook for this is quite positive, but they've been very busy with their current projects, and as yet, we have not completed a productization plan. I don't want to make false promises, so these questions will have to remain unanswered for a little while longer.

Once AFX is available, I'd like to also offer a series of special effects packs. Initially these would take the form of magic spell collections, but would eventually move into other special effects areas.

Well, that's all for this plan... I'll post an update when the new website is ready for visitors.

View all screenshots and movies here.

Tuesday Aug 16 15:50

Jeff Faust — 2005-08-16T15:50:45+00:00

Some spell effect movies from Arcane-FX

Many of you who commented on my .plan and Dev Snapshot from last week wanted to see some of the Arcane-FX spells animated. So here are some movies...

All movies are 320x240 avi files captured at 24fps from an 800x600 game screen. I used Game Cam from www.planetgamecam.com which I've been pretty happy with. (This the first time I've used Game Cam so I apologize if the settings are not optimal.)

View all screenshots and movies here.