Blog for bank at GarageGames.com

AfterWorld Alpha 8

bank — 2007-09-28T16:16:17+00:00

Hey all GGers!

While the snapshot is pending for approval, I thought it could be nice to show you what we have already :)

AfterWorld
jumps to the next stage of it's development

The public Alpha 8 is out. Registration is free and open for everyone who wanna see what our AfterWorld is.

Some tech-related information:

Powered by Torque Game Engine (heavily modified 1.5.0)
Featuring ArcaneFX Core
Integrated Torque 2D technology (not much used atm)
Servers powered by openSUSE Linux
Database: MySQL
More than 3000 already registered players (today we got the 1000-th player registered since we opened registration at September 20)
More than 300 different people playing during a single day
Client for MS Windows (Linux and MacOS will be available as soon as we find time to work on it)

At the beginning we started working with TGE1.3, then upgraded to TGE1.4.2/TLK. After the release of TGE1.5 we merged only parts of it into our project, together with manual merge of cores of ArcaneFX and T2D with lots of customization and changes.
Want to say huge thanks to the community for resources, helped us a lot in development.

Our project - AfterWorld is MMOG, to be a 3D post-apocalyptic-style world (not a nuclear war!) with elements of FPS and RPG merged together to offer a unique gameplay.
The "core" of the economy is manufacturing (crafting) of items. All in-game items made only by players. The regional-based economy we are working on allows us to make really interesting game with a lot of potential for future possible expansions.

On release it is planned to implement a RCE (Real Cash Economy) in game.

Having a strong player-base and good community pushes us to work more and more, implementing step-by-step all our ideas and functionality.

Be sure to check-out the official AfterWorld web-site for news, more screenshots, and forums.
Don't have an account? Make your very own now! Join another 3k+ players now!
Download installer, wait for patches to be downloaded and installed. And you are ready to go in!

P.S. We are badly in a need of new good quality avatars (male/female), and we are looking for someone with good 3dsmax/modeling/animation knowledge to take that (paid) job. If interested, send me a message at

Colors are good and lovely to play with! Isn't it?

bank — 2007-04-24T18:10:32+00:00

Dynamic skin modifiers

Few days ago (while browsing blogs here at GG) I end up in "GI10H - Extreme Kork Paintball!" .post by John Kabus.

I was thinking about ability to "dynamically paint" on DTS objects.
In mentioned resource, John is using decals - that's perfect solution for something like a paintball, but I need something else.

Here, on GG, is quite "old" resource (posted back in 2002) - "Skin Modifiers" - for those who don't have access, here is a short description:

Quote:

All we *really* wanted was a simple way to let players change their outfits: shirts, trousers, and shoes to start with, and maybe hair-color and similar things later.

After much pondering, I decided that something similar to the shape mounting system would be workable. But instead of mounting shapes to the base image, I'd be mounting "skin modifiers".

A skin modifier is a pair of images: a mask image and a print image. The mask image is used only for its alpha channel. It must be same dimensions as the skin of the model that it is modifying. The print image can be any size. The print can be a solid color, or a repeating pattern. Any alpha information in the print image is ignored. The mask image's alpha channel is combined with the print image to create an "overlay" that is applied to the model's skin.

But this requires you to have:
1. basic skin (as always)
2. different masks for every skin
3. limited to colors for which you have "print bitmaps"

Another way to change dynamically the outfit (or anything else) can be done by using setSkinSpecific/setSkinMesh (it's about setting different textures to different parts on player/object), but this requires you to have textures for everything:
1. many different skins
2. many different skins
etc.

So, after brief reading through the code of "Skin Modifiers" I've got an idea...
Why using existing textures for filling the texture?

After two days (in total about 12 hours of coding/modding and experimenting), here is the result:

I've managed to make a working solution for painting any ShapeBase derived object by specifying different "base" texture, "mask" and upto 4 colors that is used to "paint" on base texture by using RGBA channels on mask.

You need:
1. base texture(s) (you can have many, but at least 1 required, "base" is enough)
2. mask texture(s) (you can have many, but at least 1 required for painting, or no mask if replacing skin)
3. optional - specify colors to use for painting.

So, here we go:

I've made a simple box with the texture applied to it:

The masks:

The second one in editor:

Usage:
shapeBaseObject.addSkinModifier(layer, skinLocation, skinTexture [, maskTexture, color1 [, color2, color2, color3]]);

Where:
layer/slot - is an integer from 0 upto 29.
skinLocation - is a texture handle, e.g. for base.mytexture.jpg is will be "mytexture".
skinTexture - handle for skin: base.mytexture.jpg, foo.mytexture.jpg, etc.
maskTexture - the mask. It's possible to use special "mask" textures and "skinTexture" too.
color1-4 - are colors in a form of RGB or RGBA. The colors are used by "color-channel" from mask texture.

The color1 will use "red" channel from mask image, the second - green, third - blue and forth - alpha.

The opacity of the channel is applyed as "alpha" to the color for painting.

Here are some pictures:

%obj.addSkinModifier(0, "testbox", "base", "mask", "255 0 0 255");

%obj.addSkinModifier(0, "testbox", "base", "mask", "", "", "", "0 255 0 255");

%obj.addSkinModifier(0, "testbox", "base", "mask3", "0 255 0 255", "0 0 255 255", "", "");

%obj.addSkinModifier(0, "testbox", "base", "mask3", "", "", "", "255 255 0 255");

You can apply different masks into one "skin", but that can be "too heavy" for computing and can affect to frame-rate.

And, from in-game usage:

%obj.addSkinModifier(1, "hairB", "yellow", ""); // basic hairs

%obj.addSkinModifier(1, "hairB", "yellow", "yellow", "0 0 255 255"); // modified hairs, "red" channel

%obj.addSkinModifier(1, "hairB", "yellow", "yellow", "", "0 0 255 255"); // modified hairs, "green channel

%obj.addSkinModifier(1, "hairB", "yellow", "yellow", "127 0 0 255"); // modified hairs, "red" channel

It doesn't look "right" because I used skin texture as "mask" - this is why colors are bad. If mask image is done "right" - you will have nice looking results.

Calling
%obj.addSkinModifier(slot, location, skin, "");
just sets/replaces the skin (similar to .setSkinName(), but can be used for multiple skins on the same object).

The code itself is a mess and isn't optimized well. If the community is interested on this I can pack it up and publish as a resource.

Most my time I spent on trying to make "blending" to work as expected. Thanks God, I found Blending Tutorial on TDN, that article explained to me few things and gave ideas on how to handle that stuff.

And more, the texture generation is done in C++, so it could be slow comparing to OpenGL-stuff. If someone will be able to merge it to use for example "render to texture" - then if will be much more faster, personally, I don't that powerful in c++ to take that task.

Torque serving 100+ players and more...

bank — 2006-12-30T05:19:49+00:00

Hi everybody.
I just found some time to post my thoughts here, on GG.

First of all I want to congratulate all who contributed to the Torque Game Engine, it's just AMAZING one!

Second: what I am talking about? Huh??? :)
Yeah, here we go!

As some of you know already, I'm working on AfterWorld project.
It's about MMO game, post-apoc style, FPS mostly.

During last months the registration for alpha-test was closed. So, a few days ago we decided (what a BAD idea!!!) to open registration!
In a first 2 hours(!!!) we had about 100 new accounts registered.
After some time we had about 40 players online on our "test server". Huh? Not much you say... Yeah, if take into account that it was PIII 1.3GHz computer with 512 RAM.. with 250 AI objects running on a single mission...

After 8 hours we have found, that most of our traffic been eat by our "testers". Blah! Total amount of registrations at that time was about 500...
So, we decided to move the game server from "home computer" to the co-location on local ISP.
During "move" suddenly the database got damaged (yeah, by bad, haven't made a backup) so we reverted a bit "back" and started again on new server.
P4, 3.2GHz, 2GB RAM on 100mbit pipe
Right after server startup we got 60++ players. In a few hours the limit of 80 was reached, and here problems began...
I've reset AI object to amount of 127 and..... server was handling 120 players with NO problems. The MAX amount of players online was 121... So..
Taking into account that it was not optimized network on heavily modified TGE1.5 (actually 1.4 + TLK + manual merge into 1.4.2 then 1.5 with TGB and ArcaneFX), and ALL AI "thinking" is done via scripts... All I can say - Torque FOREVER!

Quote:

server is Online
Users: 121

Here is a "city" with about 25 players on screen. On a single mission I have about 50 FPS here, with all these players online I had 32 FPS. So, my Torque handles really good so many players on screen at once, isn't it?

So, after about three days I've closed registration, as we got "enough" registrations (about 1000 subscriptions).

Sure, we have a lot of annoying bugs.. but, who hasn't at alpha-stage of development? Huh!

And more... Please, PLEASE, DO NOT PLAN any huge stuff during holiday season!!! Haven't got day's off for about 2-3 weeks already (yeah, it's Indie developing), and I'm too tired these days... Just finished setting up scripts for automated reboot/startup of physical and game servers and plan to go offline till 2nd of January.
Here in Russia we have days off from December 30th till January 2nd.
You know this snowy forest and these white bears offering you vodka on the streets, this is not a game guys...

So, happy holidays, and thanks to Max for a nice car-model:

see full .blog

some random thoughts

bank — 2006-12-11T11:17:26+00:00

Engine
Finally, I successfully merged our project (based on TLK1.4) with TGE1.5 and TGB.
The only use of TGB now is an effect:

short overview video, 450kb DivX
some TGE+TGB integration hints you can find in a separate thread.

AI. In our project we need "mobs" to behave as animals in real world. It means no use of path or similar. So, I sit down, and made a quick structure:

After implementation (a bit different structure, it's an old diagram) of this I've found that it "eats" a lot of processor time, so decided to cut off the support of attacking mobs each other. To reply your future questions - Yes, I have plans on releasing it as a resource. Not sure when... Just need to find some time.

OS. This is my last day working on Windows as my main developing OS. Few days ago openSUSE 10.2 was released. Right after 24 hours of release I downloaded fresh ISO DVD image, recorded, and it's waiting for use right now. I'm getting really nervous of my Windows XP SP2. Yeah, I know, it's cool OS, but just not fits all my requirements. I'll better run Windows in a virtual machine inside Linux. Anyway, lucky we, Torque is multi-platform engine, so it's doesn't really matter what OS you are using...
Actualy, I have SUSE running for a few month already as my "game and database server" with no even single problems.

TorqueX and TGEA. I'm not into C#. I don't have plans to use it in a close future, so moving into Linux is "okay" for me. But, I'll keep my eyes on it, as it's really great stuff GG doing with Microsoft.
TGEA (aka TSE aka Torque AT) is getting closer to release. That's good news. Hope it will be released with full OpenGL support, so I can play with it on Linux... Very possible that our project will be moved from TGE to TGEA. Will see...

Collada File Format. That's the thing I'm interested in. Anyone tried to make Torque to work with it? Or, may be TGEA will support this format? If anyone used to work with it and have plans to make it work with Torque drop me a line. It's not urgent, but I'm looking forward for this.

Great Games Experiment. Cool idea, nice implementation and huge perspective. That's what I think about it.

Bad I don't have enough spare time to submit more games like Transport Tycoon by Microprose, Descent (Interplay), Descent 2 and Descent 3, etc. It's still in beta, but it looks as a really nice portal for gamers, developers and publishers.

The AfterWorld project is going quite well. So far we have about 150 regular players (members of alpha-test team). Not so long time ago we have got our 1000'th registered member on forum. So, taking into account that we didn't made any advertisement it's not bad. People do like what we are doing and how the in-game world is growing.

Some WIP screenshots on game developing from our artist:

About the last image. Is here any artists who are ready to model, texture and animate this for use in Torque? Drop me a line. Possible that we can work more, as we will need lots of different models.

Programmer's Art. I'm not an artist at all. I'm programmer. So, anything related with GUI in our project is "P-Art". But, having a good artist who makes item icons for us makes it looking really nice:

Inventory is still WIP. On the "My avatar" window I plan to put the players avatar (with skinned meshes, showing same as in-game). So, the player can just drop an item from inventory into the avatar and it will automatically "mounted". Taking an item off will be done by moving item to inventory. I've done some big modification on guiObjectView, so it can show/hide meshes, apply different skins on different meshes, appying scale by node. Same as Player object in game. But it's for a future.
Now I need to work on multi-server communication and player transfer from one server to another.

Till next time. Good luck.

American Idol for Indie Video Game Developers?

bank — 2006-05-24T12:58:40+00:00

I've just received Google News Alert about GarageGames:
Thought it would be interesting for all of you to read about it.

P.S. I think GG makes something like "revolution" in gamedev ;) I'm happy.
P.P.S. Our project is okay, in huge development ;)
Screens? ;) Soon, I promise.

--------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday May 24, 6:00 am ET

Bill Gates' E3 GarageGames Mention Grows Mindshare

EUGENE, Ore., May 24 /PRNewswire/

At E3, the world listened to Microsoft's founder Bill Gates single out GarageGames' Marble Blast Ultra as his six-year-old son's favorite game. On June 5th, 2006, GarageGames will again stand out from the crowd as they launch the B.I.G. (Break Into Games) Competition -- the nation's most exhaustive search to showcase America's greatest independent videogame developers. Culminating with a light-hearted American Idol style finale, the entrants and winners will vie for prizes including professional gaming hardware and coveted publishing deals with GarageGames and its partners.

All B.I.G. entrants will be given the opportunity to build their game prototypes with a free trial version of the impressive, new Torque Game Builder (TGB) from GarageGames, which will empower them to build amazing games from scratch and compete for top prizes and recognition. Said GarageGames President Mark Frohnmayer, "We've seen compelling games prototypes created with TGB in one to two weeks."

Support for the competition is comprehensive -- from a step-by-step tutorial to a fully developed online community, where designers are in contact with technical experts from GarageGames and the gaming community. Podcasts and white papers are also available for reference.

Prototype games are due August 25, 2006, a seemingly aggressive deadline when the Top 10 finalists will be simultaneously announced at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Bellevue, WA and at ShowDown in San Jose, CA on August 26, 2006. From there, contestants will have over one month to polish their final games before being flown out to compete at IndieGamesCon (IGC) -- GarageGames annual version of Sundance for indie game developers -- in Eugene, Oregon on October 6th through the 8th, 2006.

Only five contestants will be chosen to appear at the end of the Player's Choice Awards and be part of B.I.G.'s 'Indie Idol,' an American Idol-style showcase judged by a panel of industry experts. Said GarageGames Director of Business Development Jay Moore, "This is the best opportunity for up-and-coming videogame developers to break into the business and for established developers to show their skills. We've made it totally free so that it's possible for literally anyone to pursue the American dream. Furthermore, the support is there to make anyone a winner who has the passion for it."

About GarageGames:

GarageGames' mission is to change the way games are made and played. GarageGames provides the technology, community and market to empower game makers to build commercial quality multiplatform games. GarageGames is located in Eugene, Oregon and on the web at www.garagegames.com and is the annual presenter of IndieGamesCon (Oct 6-8, 2006).

About Torque Game Builder:

Make your game with the world's most powerful 2D game engine, Torque Game Builder. TGB's integrated sprites, scrolling backgrounds, 3D objects, TorqueNET Lite networking, physics, and collision detection allow your imagination to be the only limit. TGB, coupled with TorqueScript, allows easy access to user interface creation, effects, tiles, level building, and packaging. So, if you know Flash, Visual Basic, or other scripting language, you will easily master TorqueScript. Support is no problem either. TGB gets you started with six complete games including all art and source plus access to hundreds of detailed pages of documentation, tutorials, and how-tos as well as a huge worldwide development community through the Torque Developer Network (TDN).

original article

working on progress (warning: no warnings about huge pictures or whatever)

bank — 2006-02-14T02:03:48+00:00

doh!
last week was a kick-ass for me... got lost some files due to the crash of PC while doing backup.. but recovered in a short time.. DO BACKUPs as more as you can! ;) I'm lost already in "test copies" of our project.. every week doing "cleaning" - freeing up about 10 gigs of space..

then we had some problems with loading mission (TLK+Huge interiors).. the answer is: DO FINE TUNE our interiors.. play a lot with "light_geometry_scale"/"light_border_width" together with setting right of portals and details entities.. i'm not an artists, so don't ask me for details ;)

next.. our "avatar" model is almost ready.. one of our most "big" parts of the game will be "personalization" of player's EGO in game..
Already implemented the following (together, mixed, rewritten, combined, etc):
+ Hiding nodes in a model
+ Hiding Meshes
+ Custom Shape Mod
+ Splitting Left and Right Strafe Animations
+ Adding new positions and moves; ie swim, crouch, crawl, prone
+ "Adding new positions" enhancements
+ Sprint Button
(did I forgot anything?)
and now I feel like I know the files player.cc/.h like I know myself ;)
If I find some free time, I'll do post a resource, where all of this will be at once (with all the credits to original resources).
For now our avatar have/can: Walk (W), Run (Q), Sprint (R), Jump (E), Back (S), Strafe left (A), Strafe Right(D), Swim (animation is set automatically when you in water)... huh.. crounch/crawl/prone - all is implemented, but i'm not sure if we will use it in a game... no need...
Then, you can customize (hiding meshes/nodes): different clothing, armor, body parts
Modification of "bones" allows you to change appearance - tall/small, fat, etc...
thinking of "face" modification.. thanks our artists, the model is made in a such way so we can play with face.
For a future we will have a lot of "social" animations like talking, dancing, giggling, etc, etc, etc..
With all of this, it still looks nice, and actualy, avatar can do a lot of "extreme" animations, such as dancing (see my previous .plan, but at that point it was without custom meshes, and animation is not hi-end product, it's just a quick-test).

the .plan? to make it "perfect"..
Polishing now animations, looking for possible bugs in engine (player.cc), etc..
As soon as we'll receive new textures for our avatar, I think I can share with the community some screenshots of how it looks in our game.

P.S. just wrote a HUGE letter to our artist, who working on avatar, to do some more changes in a model.. I've just done "Server Side Melee" implementation into engine.. first try = happy me = works! ;)
Was not sure if it will break anything or not...
anyway, testing, testing and again testing - is our major helper in development..

yours,
//bank & AfterWorld Dev Team

Happy New Year!

bank — 2005-12-31T03:36:53+00:00

AfterWorld team, and myself want to say "Happy New Year" to everybody in GG Community!
Lately we have a lot of progress on project. Added full support of DB (persistant chars, positions, char attributes - skills, inventory, etc), done with "AW Launcher" - external application that loads to server, checks for updates, downloads/unpacks and checking for login/pass and pass encrypted "session-key" to the game.

But all the progress stopped yesterday, as we all need a little break. Yeah, we have just finished a small "party" (it's around 6:30 am 31th Dec here now) and after some beer/vodka I've made a small video ;)

Have a look at our web-site.

AfterWorld Video Section

New screen added with our new avatars, new soundtrack and some concept art pics updated.

And again, Happy New Year everybody!
Good luck!

yours,
//bank & AW Dev Team

Welcome to AfterWorld. First steps...

bank — 2005-12-04T19:26:44+00:00

Yeah.. That's my first ".plan" posted here on GG.
I'm really happy that I am a "member of elite", like you guys, who reads this and owns TGE or TSE licenses.
After seeing news like "NASA uses TSE", etc I'm proud of being a part of GG community.

Working hard last month ... and here is some results we have so far:
Persistent world:

Temp avatar:

Some skatch design from our artists:

Our own crossbow (yeah, we will use it in game, hey Kork!):

More info on the web-site of "AfterWorld" project...
P.S. The text/information on the site was not updated for a long time... Need to put a note for myself and stick it on monitor.. Yeah, we need to update web-site and put there a "proud owner of TSE" ;)