Blog for Tony Richards at GarageGames.com

Indie 2.0 - Content Packs

Tony Richards — 2008-04-10T13:13:23+00:00

IndieZen will be releasing some content packs (Indie 2.0 style!) starting September... between now and then I'll be showing off some concept art and screen shots.

As a recap, Indie 2.0 Content Packs are not static models or models with replaceable parts like the legacy Indie 1.0 style, but instead they have software included that allows you to apply morph targets and other customizations allowing you to export hundreds of unique models.

The first few content packs will include:

Base Humanoid
Male and female base character models with a few choices for clothing and hair.

Vixens and Vampires
Male and female scantily clad and gothic (leather, spikes, etc) vixens and vampire character models. Mountable accessories include horns, tails, wings, etc.

CyberPunk
Cyberpunk males and females in humans, magis, elves, orcs and dwarves, this pack is an excellent choice for your cyber punk or post apocalyptic game.

SciFi Armors
Male and female science fiction armors pack with a variety of light, medium and juggernaut (and anywhere in between) armors with several styles to choose from. Developers creating FPS games that follow along the lines of Tribes, Legions, Unreal Tournament and Halo will absolutely love this content pack.

Medieval Occupations
Male and female characters for medieval occupations such as baker, butcher, tavern keeper, bar maid, dairy maid, guard, etc, including additional animations.

Bladed Weapons and Shields
This pack is meant as an addon to any of the humanoid packs. It includes hundreds of different styles in several different categories that you can combine to literally create literally hundreds of thousands of mountable bladed weapons and shields. This pack includes 30 new weapon animations for attacks and defenses.

Projectile Weapons
Like the bladed weapons pack, this pack is meant as an addon to any of the humanoid packs. From handguns to shoulder mounted multiple rocket launcher and anywhere in between, this pack is a perfect addon to the SciFi armors pack or other future military packs. Additional animations for aiming, kickback, etc for each of the weapons. Mergeable animations allow you to use existing running, walking and idle animations while holding or aiming the weapons along with new prone, squat and transition animations.

Here's a concept for a vampire / demon:

Indie 2.0 - Part 1

Tony Richards — 2008-03-14T02:06:56+00:00

Long time no blog, but recently I've been having to choose between doing or talking about doing and I've been choosing the "doing" path.

So what's been taking so much of my time?

Around this time last year I had just finished Fractured Universe when I had a revelation.

Indie tool chains and game engines have been created by commercial game developers for commercial game developers.

The question that started this revelation:

"What tools and customizations do Blender, Milkshape, ZBrush, 3d Studio Max, Maya have that are specifically designed for Indie Game Developers?"

The same question applies to 3d World Studio, Quark, and even Constructor as well as Codeweaver, Torsion, L3DT and the list goes on...

So, what is it that Indies need that our counterparts don't need? What is it that these tools aren't providing?

First and foremost: We need content packs

Garage Games and a few others have done an excellent job with current technology publishing great content packs.

The problem is with that key phrase current technology.

What help do existing products give in producing content packs?

The answer: nothing

Note that I have nothing against these tools and I own and have enjoyed using most of them... they simply don't meet my needs as an Indie Game Developer.

None of these existing tools provide a way for you to create content packs that could easily be used by Indie game developers to customize and create their own content without significant modeling and/or coding experience.

Wouldn't it be better if a content pack could have sliders, checkboxes and other options to allow you to pick and choose what you would like to export into your game?

What about a tool that would allow you to eazily manipulate the base mesh like ZBrush and Blender, but still retain LOD, UV Mapping, animations and generate a normal map for lower levels of detail?

How about a tool that would allow you to merge multiple animations, bake the results and export to your favorite game engine?

The Quest

Just because the tools don't exist today doesn't mean someone can't create the tools to revolutionize the industry... revolutionize the Indie game development industry.

I'm a great coder with over 30 years of experience and I felt up to this huge challenge, so I accepted this quest.

IndieZen Game Studio

Nearly a year ago in April 2007 I started my quest to revolutionize the Indie Game Development industry.

At first I was coding 20-30 hours a week since I still had my day job, but about a month ago I dumped my day job in order to complete my quest sooner. That's how dedicated I am to completing this.

Over the past year I've been concentrating on what I'm calling IndieZen Game Studio.

This is a complete IDE for creating games without being dedicated to any specific game engine.

First, the IndieZen Game Studio has built-in editors for scripting languages such as TorqueScript, Python, Lua, JavaScript / ECMA Script, etc. Each of these editors are context sensitive and provide many language specific details, including a full interactive debuggers, call graphs and class heircarchy browsers.

Another nice feature of the IndieZen Game Studio is it's Cg, GLSL, and HLSL editors. These help you put together great shaders and test them interactively, not just on a sphere, teapot or plane, but on your own models to see exactly how they will look in-game.

And then that takes me to the modeling plugins.

The IndieZen ZSpace modeling plugin is perfect for creating or importing models, skinning, UV mapping, animating, and exporting into your required game format.

Additional features include advanced sculpting, 3d painting directly on the mesh, multiple skins, multiple skeletons, etc.

And that's only the beginning. With the IndieZen ZSpace plugin, it's easy to create morph targets, texture layers and animation blends.

As a creative content provider, this allows you to export a content pack that your users can then pick and choose exactly what they want in their game.

As a game developer, this provides you with a wealth of content from which you can export fully customized content. No longer will your content look just like everyone else's. You will have access to unique artwork at about the same price as today's content packs that only provide for a few options.

Indie 2.0 content packs

That leads me to my next question. As I'm nearing completion of the IndieZen Game Studio ZSpace plugin, what kinds of content packs would most interest you?

I see a lot of requests for fantasy warriors and commoners with both male and female models.

I'd like to create a Tech Armor pack for a game along the lines of Tribes / Ascension to provide some of the original Tribes game modders with new content.

What else? A zombie pack? A Vamps and Vixens pack? A dragon pack? A racing vehicles pack?

I'm putting together a store with Indie 2.0 content packs over the next few months and I'd like to know more about what the community desires as far as styles and models.

Cast your votes here and let me know your target price. I'm looking for a $50 - $250 range for packs that have enough options to export hundreds if not thousands of completely unique models.

More about the Indie 2.0 Revolution

I'll be giving a presentation at IMGDC at the end of this month covering more of the Indie 2.0 Revolution.

There's a whole lot more to come, including some revolutions in terrain generation and editing, BSP modeling, game engine and game development frameworks, a revolutionary MMO framework and much more.

If you can't make it then I'll be sure to post blogs afterwards, but I hope to see you there!

IndieZen Dev Blog, Dec 2007

Tony Richards — 2008-01-04T03:28:33+00:00

Yes yes, I know it's already January, but I took a couple of weekends off for the holidays and I still wanted to post my December .plan.

The past few weeks I've been working on the IndieZen core C++ plugin framework. I've finished two complete iterations and I'm pleased with the results, meeting most of my requirements. There will eventually need to be at least one more iteration to clean up a few minor hacks, but that can wait until later.

Now that I've finished the core C++ plugin system, then next step is to improve the integration between the Equinox and IndieZen frameworks.

In case you don't know, Equinox is the Eclipse Java equivalent to the IndieZen C++ Plugins framework.

I've finished the first iteration of this integration already but I didn't really like the results. It was difficult to maintain and wasn't very flexible. I aim to improve (but not perfect) the flexibility, but the maintainability will be significantly improved from the previous iteration.

For starters, there are three packages. Core, Modeling and OpenGL.

org.indiezen.core contains most of the core interfaces. For now I'm only including the I_RenderingCanvas, I_RenderingView, I_KeyInputProvider and I_AnalogInputProvider interfaces as part of the open source implementation. Others will follow as I determine if they need to be open source or not.

org.indiezen.modeling contains the modeling interfaces and all of the native (JNI) proxies to go to the C++ framework. Quite likely most of this will remain closed source and I'll create a seperate com.indiezen.modeling package, but enough of it will be open source to allow others to create additional plugins and implementations.

org.indiezen.opengl contains the OpenGL native JNI proxies to go to the C++ framework. For now I cannot support DirectX because of the amount of code that would require to integrate with Eclipse. It won't be impossible but at the moment since OpenGL is supported on all target platforms then I'm happy to just stick with that. All of this will eventually be open source.

Each Java package also has a native JNI library associated with it. These are jniIZF for the core IndieZen framework, jniIZM for IndieZen modeling framework and jniIZOGL for the native OpenGL implementation.

Over the course of the next month I expect to complete the second iteration (the first was closed source, this iteration I'll only be working on the portions that will be open source).

I'll also complete my decision on which build system to use. I'm leaning towards Jam, although I'm still considering SCons. Once I make this decision it shouldn't take me more than a few days to get everything updated for cross-platform use.

I now have my iMac with OS X. My new Linux / Windows dual boot high-end PC is here and mostly put together, except I ordered the wrong CPU fan and the replacement probably won't be here until Tuesday.

Once my new computer is together (which I'll lose a few days since I'm itching to play some of the new recent games I've purchased on my new SLI 8800 GTX!!) then I'll get Windows and Linux installed on it and I'll make sure everything gets ported to Linux and Mac.

At the end of this iteration (subject to change) I expect to have a redistributable version of IndieZen Game Studio for Mac, Windows and Linux with several plugins. At a minimum I'll redistribute the Torque Script Editor (sans debugger), the .OBJ importer and the OpenGL model viewer. I may also re-distribute some of the yet unintegrated tools such as the GLSL shader editor and possibly the beginnings of a terrain editor.

If I have time I'll include an alpha version of the 3d modeling plugin... just remember that this plugin will not be Open Source as it will be the bread and butter that helps me to fund this project. I still need to have it tested so I'll eventually distribute free alpha / beta versions with time-restrictions on the use, but rewards for people who actually help test it (such as a free or reduced price copy).

If you're interested in contributing, the Torque Script Editor needs the debugger integration to be finished, but that requires Java, Eclipse and significant Torque knowledge.

I also need help coming up with the terrain editor, which will primarily be in C++.

Any takers?

Anyways, last month showed some excellent progress and I hope this next month is as fruitful. Wish me luck!

Happy Torquing.

Happy Birthday IndieZen!

Tony Richards — 2007-12-13T00:46:32+00:00

It was one year ago this week that I first registered the IndieZen.com website... woohoo, party time! :D

When I registered the website, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with it, but I did know that I wanted to create something to make it easier for Indie game developers to create games.

One of the things that I wanted to do was to create a place to sell content packs ("Oh, no, not another content pack store!!!" Right?) Ok, so maybe that all by itself isn't a good idea... in fact, I think it's a bad idea because the Indie scene already has too many.

Background

For Fractured Universe, the game I was creating a year ago for the 90 day MMO game contest, I was doing a decent job of making models and getting them in-game, especially being a coder with only about a couple of years worth of experience working with modeling tools.

The tool-chain I was developing made it so I could get a model like the one shown below into the game, skinned, animated, clothed, etc in just a few hours, but the tool-chain needed polishing. A lot of polishing.

I was determined to finish the tool-chain, but a few weeks later things really fell apart. Blender had some bugs in it that caused it to crash when exporting the .DTS files. The animations that I created couldn't easily be copied from one model to the next. The skinning also couldn't be copied and I had to do that manually. The poly-reducer did a bad job of maintaining something that could easily be animated because it didn't "know" where the joints were and it would merge some polygons and make the joint look ugly when it was bent.

Now remember, I was in a very short-term contest creating a full-blown MMO game and half of my time had already been spent. Here's a quote from one of my weekly blogs that I posted around then:

Quote:
That's all pretty easy and with a little bit more experimenting I'll be able to get it down to about an hour per model, plus another hour or so per piece of clothing. I'm trying to keep all of the proportions mostly the same so I can re-use all of the clothing for most of the models.

Well, that didn't happen. I was so determined to finish the tool chain that it nearly cost us the contest. Luckily I realized it was a lost cause and I quickly purchased some content packs and went on with concentrating on the code / game-play. Although we won, in my eyes I lost.

Disappointed, I kinda forgot about IndieZen. Sure, the name was cool, but if I couldn't do what I planned with it then it was worthless.

Thankfully, a few months later I had a revelation. Sitting in my hotel one evening at IMGDC, irritated that it was 2am and I was on a conference call with my boss and some other developers collaborating to work through a production issue, I had some time to think about some of the tools we were using for software development in my day job and I compared that with what I was using for game development.

There was a huge night and day difference. My day job I had everything I needed at my fingertips and it was all integrated into one nice neat package, even though the tools were developed by a huge number of different companies. For game development, either I was stuck with using something created by a single company, or I was in a quagmire of software that couldn't integrate as one seamless package. For game development I was using tools created by over ten different companies and none of them had any form of seamless integration, and even the poor attempts at integration (i.e. export / import or extract / translate / load) was bug ridden, never worked the first time and involved a significant number of manual steps.

So what was my revelation?

Game development doesn't have to be this difficult.

No, no, no, I'm not talking about the magic "make my game" button. Although that would be nice... no, truthfully that would take the enjoyment out of game development, so if it a "make my game" button existed I would refuse to use it. I enjoy the creative aspects of game development. What I don't enjoy is the mundane repetitive tasks and the constant "reinvention of the wheel."

Nope, there are no "make my game" buttons in my future.

My "awakening" was about revolutionary tools that make game development easier and faster to allow game developers (Indies in particular) to concentrate on innovation. Huge game studios (like EA and others) have huge teams of tool-chain developers and they've built up impressive libraries of code, artwork, music, sound-effects, etc.

This puts Indie developers at a huge disadvantage... sure, we might be able to take more risks and we might have more innovative ideas, but most of us have difficulties just getting past implementing mundane ideas, much less tackling our impressive uber-l33t fabulous game ideas.

Enter the Frameworks

After working with my prototype using Blender and MakeHuman and a bunch of scripts, I knew that wasn't going to cut it. First, I have this love/hate relationship with Blender that I'm sure most people have... you either love it or you hate it, or sometimes you love it and other times you hate it. You know what I mean?

The software development tools that I use at work are so successful because they're based on Eclipse.

If you've never looked inside of Eclipse or created plugins for it, you probably missed some of its internal beauty. Sure, it's still a rough cut diamond, but it's getting more and more polish and bling added to it every day.

Of course, at first I completely discounted it as being an option as the foundation for game creation. I mean, really... who would expect game development tools with hard-core algorithms to perform well in byte-code?

But, after messing around with other libraries like QT, FOX and a few other toolkits and even some frameworks, I realized I needed to give Eclipse some more thought.

So, I converted what I'd already written into a C++ plugin and created a Java / JNI / C++ bridge... voila, it worked like a charm.

By creating the basic GUI (menus, windows, mouse / keyboard input, etc) in Java as plugins for Eclipse, and then creating some more C++ plugins to do the dirty work, I had found the perfect solution.

An added advantage is the C++ plugins could also be loaded directly into a game engine, meaning any content creation tools created for making games could also be embedded inside of the games I create. Way cool.

Time for Collaboration

Now, being only one person, I'm never going to be able to create everything required for making a complete content creation toolchain, game engine, etc without some help.

The original plan was to create a great 3d modeler (still part of my plan), then use that to help fund everything else.... quit my day job, hire some programmers and in a few years have something great.

But... I still don't like that plan.

A little over a month ago I decided to go a slightly different route.

What if I followed the Eclipse model of creating an advanced framework with quite a bit of backbone to it and open sourced it? Not with a license like "GPL" or "LGPL", but more open so people who use the framework wouldn't have to redistribute their source.

IBM, JBoss and a whole lot of other companies use Eclipse to create their commercial non open-source software development tools. IBM's Rational is an excellent example. Why couldn't we apply the same principle to game development and tool chain development?

IndieZen.org is where I'm hosting this project.

Obviously this isn't something anyone would want to immediately jump in with both feet. Evaluate for youself if you think this project will succeed (or fail).

It's a good idea, and I have the technical skills and most of the resources necessary for pulling this off, but the goal isn't to finish it by myself.

The goal is to collaborate with a bunch of like-minded souls and create something that will be useful for all of us.

I welcome thoughts, ideas, comments and even criticism.

Happy Torquing.

IndieZen Dev Blog, Nov 2007

Tony Richards — 2007-11-25T22:26:05+00:00

For the past few weeks I've been spread out, doing so many things at once. It's been quite hectic but overall I'm really having a whole lot of fun.

IMGDC 2.0

I'm still preparing for IMGDC 2.0... it's nearly four months away and I still have tons to do.

My booth is on order but I need to have two of the panels custom printed.

I'm not quite ready to order the computer I'm bringing with me... you know, those little things called money and budgets gets in the way sometimes. :-D I'm boot strapping this and funding it with my day job so I have to wait for another couple of paychecks, but I should have it ordered before Christmas.

I have the basic outline finished for my presentation and tons of the content already thought through. I'm still working on the title but it will be something like The Pragmatic Indie Game Developer. The presentation is about exploring Indie game development with a more philosophical approach.

"You know what you know, but make sure you realize that there is a lot that you do not know."

That is the first rule in learning and I exercise that rule every day of my life. As a result, I learn something new every day.

I am hoping that my presentation will not only teach something, but open up a few minds and viewpoints.

Pragmatic maxim by Charles Sanders Peirce

Quote:

Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry. Although it is better to be methodical in our investigations, and to consider the economics of research, yet there is no positive sin against logic in 'trying' any theory which may come into our heads, so long as it is adopted in such a sense as to permit the investigation to go on unimpeded and undiscouraged. On the other hand, to set up a philosophy which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth is the one unpardonable offence in reasoning, as it is also the one to which metaphysicians have in all ages shown themselves the most addicted.

IndieZen Game Studio

My most important project that is taking up most of my time is the IndieZen Game Studio. I have one more week to finish my second milestone and I have everything finished for this milestone except for a few details on the 3d modeler.

I've also started flushing out the details and design for the landscape editor, world editor and the shader editor. I don't expect to have these finished in time for IMGDC, but maybe I will have enough completed to give a tech preview of them.

Game Development Project Hosting for Indies

As part of the IndieZen philosophy in helping Indie Game Developers, we want to make sure everything required for game development is available for cheap or free. To that end I've been working diligently on creating the hosting services for hosting game development projects.

The BETA of the hosting service is free for qualifying projects. If you have a game development project that you would like to have hosted, check out this post for more information.

I am working on the software and servers to help facilitate setting up forums, Subversion, Trac Wiki and a web sites for Indie Game Development Projects.

I'm hoping to make it something like SourceForge, except there's no open source requirements. It's free for the first year (or at least until Feb 2009) while we test it out.

Mind you, it is still under construction, but for the basics I'm using off the shelf software so it's workable as it stands right now.

More IndieZen coding and planning

A few months ago when I started working on IndieZen, although I have mostly been concentrating on a Game Development IDE I also started creating a Game Engine Framework.

I really wanted to have a great game engine framework with plugins and OpenGL support. For the past few years it has been a bit annoying that the only way I can make certain kinds of enhancements to TGE was through major modifications to the source code. Plugins, if done correctly, would solve this problem. I was an early adopter of TGEA for those basic reasons. But... we all know how that ended up. TGEA = TGE + some enhancements but the basic architecture and design remained the same. No plugins and no OpenGL. Oh well, such is life.

After getting over the initial disappointment of not getting a what I wanted out of TGEA, I was pleasantly surprised when I heard about Torque 2.

I was so excited that I even stopped developing my own game engine framework.

Well, "paused" might be a better word than "stopped."

After seeing Stephen Zepp's post, I was ecstatic.... slowly over the past month the excitement has worn off, but I think that's a good thing for me.

I've resumed coding the IndieZen Game Engine Framework, I've checked a lot of it into SVN and I've even open sourced what I have completed with the ZLib license.

This past week I finished the first iteration for the plugin framework, and network framework.

The plugin framework provides the basics for extension points and extensions as defined by the Eclipse Equinox project, except it's implemented in C++.

I'm almost finished with the BasicNetworking plugin. This plugin implements the Network Service extension point and provides a basic two-threaded (one read, one write thread) TCP / UDP networking extension. This combined with the BasicProtocol plugin that I'll be finishing next week should provide enough basic networking to get started. Eventually I'll create some specialized plugins for handling enhanced networking for Linux to include epoll support and other protocol plugins to provide support for reliable UDP, reliable multicast UDP, etc.

I also have quite a bit of the Threading library complete (for multi-threading classes like threads, mutexes, condition variables, etc). This library is based on some research done by my mentor, John Givler, Ph. D. and is shaping up to be an excellent library even if you're not making a game engine.

After I finish Milestone 2 for the IndieZen Game Studio I will resume moving more of it into the Game Engine Framework, which should provide the basics for an OpenGL Rendering Plugin...

Even if that sounds like a lot completed, it's still not anywhere near being finished enough for anyone to consider using it in a game. That won't happen until sometime 2009, and if Torque 2 is finished on time then that will probably be a better choice for you.

But, I'm going to continue developing this framework, just in case something happens with Torque 2... you know that old saying about having all of your eggs in one basket? It's got something to do with that. ;-)

If you're interested in creating a game engine framework, game engines or general game development technology, drop me an e-mail (see my profile for the address).

Please note, though: this is hardcore object oriented design and development in C++ and it's not for the beginner or the feint of heart. :-D

Happy Holidays!

IMGDC tech talk

Tony Richards — 2007-11-17T04:24:25+00:00

As a diamond sponsor of IMGDC, I wound up on the list of speakers, albeit as a "sponsored session." I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

Either case, what's worse... it's at the same time as Kelly Rued giving her sexy round-table discussion on The Lighter Side of Sex.... how the heck am I supposed to compete with that?

First off, although it's a sponsored session, I'm not going to be discussing anything about IndieZen. We have a booth, and if you're interested in what we're doing and would like to learn more about it then by all means, drop by the booth.

Outside of that, I've been at a loss as to exactly what I would like to discuss.

Initially I wanted to talk about Service Oriented Architecture and how to apply it to MMO Game Development. It sounded interested and is something that people probably would benefit from, but in reality, it's a dry boring topic that doesn't interest me in the least.

Scrum, SOA, Agile / Transparent development, Aspect Oriented Programming, Entity Systems... maybe they're all great buzzwords floating around the game development industry (and actually old news in other software industries), but I'm still not interested.

What does interest me is where the rubber meets the road... programmer to programmer, what are the best tools for the job and how does my ruthlessly practical 20 years of programming experience apply to game development?

So that's my topic. Programmer to programmer, how to create a full-blown MMO game in 90 days.

I've been there, done that and it's definitely something that I'm passionate about.

IndieZen Dev Blog, Oct 2007

Tony Richards — 2007-10-18T23:25:24+00:00

Fractured Universe

Fractured Universe is the MMO game that a few of us started last year. Development has been paused to accommodate a few lessons learned.

First, as I've stated before, tools for game creation kinda stink. Using several pieces of software I was able to create some models and use them, but there were a bunch of steps I was taking that were repetitive and unnecessary. As a programmer, I really hate doing repetitive tasks... that's why computers were invented. :D

I learned a whole lot over the past year... IMGDC 1.0 was a huge eye opener as related to game design.

Our original game design for Fractured Universe... well... it was suitable for a 90 day contest (zero risk, quickly implemented) but wasn't really suitable for actually publishing it, especially for an Indie... Indies should be taking more risks and trying out more new things than the funded guys. That was another great topic at IMGDC 1.0.

Do you remember the days of MUD and some of the original BBS collaborative story-telling? I do, and I miss it. I co-founded a BBS hosted in Arlington, VA back in 1988 called Split Infinity and we had some of the best online stories ever told... even better, we actually played some of our characters interactively in weekly AD&D sessions. I miss DMing and that is what I would like to re-create in an MMO game. I miss the SIPs (Split Infinity Party) where Dagger, Ragnarok, Ari and a bunch of the other BBS guys would get drunk, tell stories, play AD&D and just have fun in general.

The technology isn't quite there yet, but that's another story... and enough "inside" nostalgia.

IMGDC 2.0

Over the next few years I plan on spear-heading Indie MMO game development. My startup company, IndieZen is well funded and I'll be using that as a platform for bringing professional grade MMO game development to the general public.

One of the ways we're helping the Indie MMO community is our sponsorship of IMGDC 2.0, which will help keep the costs down for participants (under $100 if you register early). I'm very happy we were able to help with this sponsorship.

Another way we're assisting MMO game developers is by providing a free, Open Source (Apache / BSD style) MMO Middleware Framework and we're also publishing the basic implementation used by Fractured Universe with the same Open Source license.

Quoting myself on a recent press release, virtual worlds are quickly becoming the next big internet revolution and we want this to be something that can be made available to everyone.

This isn't something that should be owned by a single company... just imagine if Microsoft and Netscape owned the only web servers in Web 1.0. Thanks to Apache and Linux, that didn't happen. The world would be completely different if it had.

Game Engines

At this point, everything that I am doing is Game Engine agnostic and hopefully T2 will prove to be a great client. I started creating a game engine framework a few months ago and I've made significant progress on it, but I'm pausing for a bit in hopes that T2 will prove to be a great framework and there will be no need for me to continue working on my own.

What I really would like to see is for the community to band together and create an open source game engine framework, much like Eclipse has done for various other frameworks. The framework should be free and open-source (EPL style), but companies and individuals are free to create their own implementations without any redistribution entanglements. This works extremely well for Eclipse. You can create your own distribution, add your own proprietary plugins and re-distribute it without being forced to re-distribute your own source code or pay any royalties.

The open source part is the framework, not the implementation.... I deeply wish Torque 2 would follow the same model.

Eclipse

Most of you know I'm creating an IDE for game development. What you don't know is that although most of what I'm writing is in C++, the GUI portions are actually based on Eclipse's Rich Client Platform. I've been able to wrapper most of the functionality of the Eclipse plugin system via JNI which has allowed me to create C++ plugins for Eclipse.

In addition, I've made significant headway on a C++ implementation of OSGi, which is an open services specification. In short, anything that IndieZen publishes can be utilized by other developers, but the tradeoff is that IndieZen can also publish other LGPL and EPL plugins and they all interoperate seamlessly.

I've been "mum" on this for a bit because after making this blog post, anyone that knows a bit about Java can do exactly the same, and all of the sudden IndieZen becomes a "me too". At this point it's no longer an issue. The IndieZen plugins that augment Eclipse are impressive enough on their own.

What sets IndieZen apart?

First, all of our frameworks are (or will be soon) open source with an Apache / EPL style license. Non-viral (like GPL), basically you can use the source as you wish, just be sure to include IndieZen in your credits and maintain the copyright text if you re-distribute the source.

Next, our new 3d modeling tool is absolutely incredible.... I keep promising screenshots and I'm sorry for not providing them just yet, but I'm holding off for a bit for a few more features to be implemented, otherwise it'll just look like a 3d model viewer inside of Eclipse, and it's so much more than that even at this early stage. At IMGDC 2.0 (late March 2008) I promise to have a nice technology demo that shows off our progress.

Does IndieZen compete with Garage Games

For the time being, the answer is "no". I've paused the Game Engine Framework project in hopes that T2 will cover our requirements.

Our main competitors are Multiverse, Pixologic (makers of ZBrush) and other 3d modeling application providers like MakeHuman, Autodesk, Chumbalumsoft (makers of Milkshape), etc.

Current status

For the status prior to this week, check out my Dev Blogs over on IndieZen.com.

I've been reluctant to blog here since before a few days ago I was competing with GG. Now that my project is complimentary and not competitive I'll start blogging here more often.

This week I've finished the C++ / Java integration for Eclipse plugins and I have ported three major plugins over to the new implementation.

At first I was having some difficulty with the Ant files and the schema's for defining extension points, but I finally got it.

For the rest of this week I plan on porting the C++ GUI for the modeling tool over to Java / SWT. This will eliminate my need for FOX (the cross-platform C++ GUI library I was previously using).

If I can finish by this weekend, it'll get me to Milestone Adams nearly a month and a half ahead of schedule. This milestone was one of the riskiest... I wasn't sure if I could seamlessly integrate C++ with a Java plugin so I gave myself plenty of time in case I ran into problems.

Initially, when I started experimenting with Eclipse, I was concerned about performance. If you have a whole lot of plugins installed then the startup time is quite sluggish, but keeping a slim installation it easily keeps up with any other IDE I've ever used.

Anyways, back to the coding grind... Happy Torquing!

Long time no blog

Tony Richards — 2007-10-13T21:27:11+00:00

It has been awhile since I've posted a blog, and I've been itching to make some more posts over the past few weeks, but I've been having a tough time deciding what to post.

As some of you know, I've been rather disappointed with Torque, not as a game engine, but for its tool integration.

Constructor was a step in the right direction, but it's not quite what I was wanting.

Don't get me wrong... TGE and TGEA are absolutely awesome FPS game engines, and with a bit of programing you can do nearly anything with them, provided you're a competent C++ programmer.

I have nothing but respect for the entire Garage Games crew... they've provided some incredible game engines at unbeatable prices.

But... they're still too hard to use for mainstream indie / hobby game developers.

I continue believing that making games should be easier.

Here are some of the pitfalls I see in many of today's game creation tools:

Modeling Tools

Some tools have many features and functions that aren't even meant to be used while creating games. These tools are multi-purpose and can be used for creating full-featured animated films. If you are unfamiliar with these tools or with creating games using a specific game engine, you're likely to create a model that cannot even be exported to the game engine.

Programming Tools

Why is it that most game development programming tools are so far behind? Only recently have there been tools that help with auto-completion, syntax colorization, etc. Where's my "refactor" tool? Where are my class hierarchy diagrams? Where's my version control integration?

Integration!

When I'm working at my day job, I have an integrated development environment where my source code editor, database modeling, GUI editor, UML modeling, version control, bug / feature tracking, performance / unit / regression testing, documentation, project management, etc are all integrated into a nice, beautiful IDE.

Why isn't it this way for game development?

If you want something done right, do it yourself.

I've been piddling around, making games as a hobby, but I'm frustrated at all of the hurdles that normally shouldn't be in my way.

I'm fairly good at 3d artwork and game design, and I'm a good developer. Some of my co-works would even say that I'm a great developer.

Earlier this year when I was at IMGDC 2007, I had a revelation. If I'm such a great developer, why am I wasting my time using someone else's software to help me create games?

I decided that it was time for me to stop messing around at making games as a hobby and start making the ultimate Integrated Game Developement Environment. Not just a programmer's tool, but 3d modeling, terrain creation, GUI editing... everything you need to make a game.

That was the birth of IndieZen Game Studio.

Current Status

Sevent months after starting, I'm nearing completion of the second huge milestone... I know, I've promised a few of you screenshots in the past, but not quite yet.

I'm planning on giving a technology demo of the IndieZen Game Studio at IMGDC 2008 along with unveiling another product geared towards the creation of virtual worlds.

If you can't make it to the conference, I'll start posting screenshots soon thereafter.

Torque Support

A few of you that have been following my progress have begged me to include Torque suport.

As of right now, I haven't fully committed to supporting Torque, although I do have a TorqueScript editor nearing completion (debugging isn't done yet, syntax highlighting, etc is finished).

For me to properly integrate TGE into the IDE, I would have to purchase a commercial license of Torque and I've not decided if that is the correct way for me to go yet. Torque also doesn't follow my "distribute a framework, not a game engine" philosophy and it would take quite a bit of work to resolve that issue.

If I don't include full Torque support, I will at least include DTS / DIF exporters.

Anyways, happy Torquing...

IndieZen - 3D Modeling Tool

Tony Richards — 2007-04-28T22:21:38+00:00

Continuous Automatic LOD / Multi-mesh Modeling Tool

Wow, that's a mouthful. What is it?

Lets break it down:

Modeling Tool

Easily create 3d models with an emphasis on NURBS high-poly / high-detail models.

Originally based on Blender, this modeling tool has been completely re-written in C++ for optimal performance and extensibility. The plugin system allows for user created C++ plugins and it comes with fully integrated LUA and Python scripting engines to facilitate creating plugins / extensions in those two languages.

Automatic LOD

Near real-time algorithm that allows modelers to quickly see their high-poly NURBS models tessellated (i.e. converted to polygons) and view multiple levels of detail.

Paint tools allow modelers to paint weights on NURBS curves, Edge Rings, Edge Loops and individual control points or vertices (depending if the node is in NURBS or Mesh mode). These vertex weights are used to provide hints and override the behavior of the poly-reducer algorithm.

Multi Mesh
Not just useful for creating multiple LOD, multi-mesh modeling allows modelers to quickly and easily create clothes that conform to the original model. Spring / weight editing provide a mechanism for creating in-game clothing (provided your game engine supports clothing).

Continuous
Complete collapsible and editable modifier stack allows modelers to go back to the original mesh and modify it through the use of deformers. All derived meshes (LOD and multi-mesh) are automatically adjusted in near real-time.

Create Morph Targets
After creating a base model, modelers can create morph targets by applying deformers or by importing existing models.

The base model and morph targets can then be saved in a library and shared with other developers or even imported directly by your game engine.

Animations
Create multiple key-frame skeletal animations and pre-view animated morph targets and merged animations.

Skinned meshes automatically retain the skinning information on derived meshes (LOD and multi-mesh).

Shaders and Textures
Procedural texture generation includes subsurface scattering, ambient occlusion, texture baking, scripted user-generated procedural textures, bitmap (jpg/png/tga) textures.

Automatic generation of normal maps and bump maps; use the highest detail model to create your normal maps and/or bump maps and apply them to the lower detail models to help reduce poly-count without significantly reducing the visual appearance of your models.

Using GLSL and HLSL editors and compilers, modelers can create shaders and pre-view the models complete with animation without ever leaving the modeling environment.

Current Status

Using the FOX GUI toolkit, boost, Cal3d, and temporarily "borrowing" some C/C++ and Python code from Blender and MakeHuman has allowed me to make significant progress on this project.

Today I finished putting it all together, but there are still some major technical hurdles.

Today I also finished one of the one's that I thought would've been the hardest problems.... polygon reduction. I started with Blender's poly-reducer script, but it doesn't take edge loops / rings into consideration, nor does it work well with my weight paint system or multi-mesh history.

Starting with an image like this:

And using Blender's poly reducer, you get an image like this:

Not horrible, and using a shader with normal maps I doubt you'd really be able to tell much of a difference. The problem is if you mangle your model like this, animations that work well with the original high-poly model will end up creating some strange creases in the lower poly models.

For an in-depth discussion, check out this article.

The new poly-reducer algorithm takes edge loops and rings into consideration and attempts to reduce the polycount by either creating new edge loops / rings interpolations like this:

The advantage of having the poly reducer understand edge loops / rings is significant. Game modelers aren't simply trying to reduce polygons... they're trying to reduce polygons in such a way as to allow their animations to continue working correctly.

The IndieZen poly reducer allows you to paint weights onto significant poly loops / rings to indicate the locations of joints and other significant details and the poly reducer will be less likely to remove / move the loops / rings with heavier weights.

Next Steps
The next steps include creating an export system and a native Torque resource handler for a new model file format that doesn't lose any of the morph target, multi-mesh, animation or shader information yet can be efficiently loaded.

After creating the MDL resource handler for TGEA a year or so ago, this part won't be too difficult, but it will be time consuming. Unless I directly use MDL (or NWN2's file format since it also includes shader support), creating a new file format takes a lot of creative time and energy.

The next part will be to (optionally) eliminate the GPL code. If I change my mind then I'll release the code under the GPL license, but at this point I'm interested in creating Intellectual Property outside of games so it's unlikely that I'll skip this step.

IndieZen

Ok, so what is IndieZen?

In addition to creating the game Fractured Universe, the tools that I'm using to create that game will eventually be packaged together under the brand name of "IndieZen". I'm not sure the pricing model yet (possibly free / open source if I continue using GPL code), but if it's not free then it'll definitely be cheap.

IMGDC 2007 - The good, the bad, the ugly

Tony Richards — 2007-04-18T01:11:05+00:00

First, huge thanks to Jonathon Stevens, Last Straw Productions and all of the IMGDC sponsors for a great first year conference. I'll definitely be going next year. I walked away with tons of new insight, inspiration and ideas on MMO game development.

The good
The highlight of the entire conference was the session titled "Slaughtering Sacred Cows" led by Richard A. Bartle, Ph.D.

If you get a chance to listen to the audio tape of this session, do it... buy it if it's for sale, whatever it takes. This was hands down the most insightful 60 minutes on game development I've ever experienced.

The session started with a few people misunderstanding what a "Sacred Cow" really is and a few people insisting on keeping the session off topic, but once the topic got on track a lot of great ideas and conversations came out of it. It turned into a brilliant light bulb "wow, why didn't I think of that?" moments.

The bad
The Twin Cities, despite being touted as a destination spot for food, had a depressingly poor choice of restaurants. Of course, since I was there for only a couple of days, it's possible I simply went to the wrong places, so that would be my fault, not the destination's, eh? I'll try harder next year.

The only other bad thing was the horrible weather in New York on Sunday... my flight was delayed by several hours and for awhile I was unsure if I was even going to make it home without a two or three day delay. The final hair-raising white-knuckle 20 minutes flying into La Guardia airport through 30 mph gusts resulted in a touchdown where all of the passengers erupted in applause and a huge sigh of relief.

The ugly
And yes, as with every conference, there's always something ugly.

The open forum titled "Battle of the OSes" hosted by Multiverse's CTO, Rafhael Cedeno, turned into an hour long poorly organized forum that would've been more appropriately titled "The Battle of the Game Engines and Why You Should Choose Multiverse" except for the fact that no other game engines had any representation whatsoever.

Rafhael seemed to be a nice enough, intelligent guy, but the presentation was full of one-sided arguments and a bunch of conjecture, suppositions and opinion. I nearly walked out on several occasions.

One example, and I can't quote him verbatim but you can listen to the tape and hear it for yourself, but he basically stated as fact that he's heard of several people using Torque for MMO games with mixed results, yet when I signaled that I had something to say in an attempt to speak up on behalf of TGE I was politely ignored. No mention of Minions of Mirth, Fractured Universe, Ruin or any of the other MMO games in varying levels of completion that use TGE.

Even though I'm not a GG employee or associate, in an open forum I'd be happy to debate TGE vs Multiverse any day. Both have their strengths and weaknesses and Multiverse beats stock TGE as an MMO engine in the pure technical sense, but with some minor modifications (most of which are freely available as resources on this website) Torque is the clear winner in client and server performance, extensibility, diverse tool-chain support, stability, documentation, community, technical support and overall quality.

A few words of advice to Multiverse and Rafhael:

If you want to educate someone, make sure you have all of your facts straight and make sure you stick to the facts and keep your opinions to yourself.

Be very careful hosting public one-sided debates without giving your opposition a chance to respond. No matter how politely you do it, it still comes across as "bashing."

If you want to host a forum to have a one hour advertisement on your product, don't sucker people into the room by misrepresenting the topic.

There's nothing worse than slimy business practices and deceit is the worse kind of slime.

At any rate, in an attempt to end on a good note, if you missed IMGDC, make sure you check out the videos / audios if and when they become available. There was some really great stuff covered for indie developers, even if you're not making an MMO.