Blog for Dennis De Marco at GarageGames.com

Long time no Blog

Dennis De Marco — 2007-05-22T00:32:17+00:00

Well, it's been since last October since I blogged something. I can't say I've been super active in the game development world. I've been focusing on my career a bit, and I'm proud to say I am now a Redhat Certified System Engineer.

It was a wild certification test. In hindsight it was not too difficult when I think back on it. The great difficulty in the test was the great amount of pressure I had not wanting to fail it. It's an all hands on test that must be completed in a certain amount of time. Safe to say, I finished in record speed (First one done) and with a perfect score.

That kind of made me thinking, that I really hate games which put a set countdown timer on you. Rescue the person before the building blows up, or disarm the bomb. I always seem to have to reload and keep trying over and over.

I've also released my python 'ultima map viewer' program. It's nothing super to look at, but it seems to work great so far. It can read all the ultima game maps from ultima 3 to 5. I've also added a little 'viewer' for ultima 5 maps. My little attempt into learning Python and some SDL libraries

svn @
www.demarco.com/repos/uview/

I'm also hosting an Ultima IV Multiplayer shard that Johnny www.shatteredmoon.com wrote. He's making a mini 'mmo' engine in which uses those fun old style tilesets. You can check out the demo at:

www.demarco.com/ultima

I've also spotted this, which looked interesting in my travels.

www.panda3d.org

It's a 3D engine which you can program in Python. It's what they made Disney's Toon Town.

Anyways, that in a nutshell is what I've been up to!

Peace,
Dennis

Where I've been since April?

Dennis De Marco — 2006-10-13T23:40:39+00:00

Well It's been a while since my last blog post in April. Some of my steam was stolen away for a few months playing Guild Wars Factions and playing Saga of Ryzom. That is one good positive thing about being a hobbyist. I don't have any game deadlines for my projects. However, it is really easy to loose focus. If I spent the time instead of playing, learning, I would have something to show.

This last month I have put aside TGE/TGB to refocus on learning OOP design. I was getting caught up with art pipelines, lack of any artistic skill on my part, and general engine tinkering, that I was going nowhere and getting frustrated. I wasn't creating games, I was just modding an engine to make it snow!

I am from the old school methodology of procedural programing. Pascal,C, and mostly Perl. They serve me well for my day job when I need to write scripts for Linux administrative tasks or use C knowledge to patch / compile some open source software. The source of my frustration seems I needed more experience with OOP and design. PennMush's soft code programming language could be considered OOP, but.. It's a mud scripting language that isn't something 'main-stream'.

I needed to get back to basics!

The following book was a good starting place for me to get into C++

Beginning C++ Game Programming by by Michael Dawson

This book was an excellent bridge for me from C to C++, and a theme I can enjoy! I was able to tinker around to get the Lua scripting language embedded into a simple C++ program with the knowledge I learned from this book. It was simple program I wrote to populate a "inventory" vector in C++ from Lua script.

A very good tutorial on Lua and embedding it into C++ can be found here for those interested:

gamedevgeek.com/tutorials

LUA sparked my interest to revisit Python again.. I have used python once before to see if converting a Perl database application I wrote would be easier done in Python with SQLAlchemy (with sqlsoup). I disliked Python. It's whitespace sensitiveness drove me up a wall. Where are the fancy {} to block code? Python is known to be used in the game industry as well as Lua for scripting and tool creation.

A common theme kept popping up on the various game development boards I visit. Python is easy to to prototype a game. Using pygame (SDL) and if your daring, using Twisted for networking. I thought learning Python would aid me in OOP design in any language at a pace I would enjoy without having to deal with C++ specifics.

The past two weeks I have grown from loath to LOVE python. I should have never passed it up in the first place. It's cross platform ability (Linux/Win) is great and I found a decent Editor (Wing) for windows to really keep me interested

Here are some excellent books to get up to speed with python I suggest anyone interested would find them useful:

Beginning Python (Wrox Press)

Game Programming with Python by Sean Riley

The Game programing book by Sean Riley is _excellent_. Not only applicable information with python but game theory and design. I highly recommend this book. It's opened my mind on some of the terminology used by TGE. (SimObjects, Simulations, etc)

Now armed with all this information what I am going to do with it? I started to work on a remake of the Classic Ultima 5 in python using pygame (SDL) and my trusty Ultima Collectors edition CD.

I was very much inspired by others who have done conversions/remakes in the past: EUO (www.swut.net/euo) and Ultima IV multiplayer (www.shatteredmoon.com)

In doing a remake, it has given me the ability to take 'baby' steps in the process of developing a game. The art, content, and general game template has been done already. It also gave me the ability to do this in bite sized chunks, so I can work on it after coming home from work. My goal is having a multiplayer classic remake of Ultima 5.

This should give me enough to keep me busy, and in using python, getting fast results.

In about a week and a half I was able to write python classes that enables me to load any Ultima game map from Ultima 3 to Ultima 5 and display them both in ascii (for testing) and using the original tile sets and binary data files with pygame. I have been writing it using Design Patterns "Model View Controller" (MVC) framework which I found a good tutorial at:

sjbrown.ezide.com/games/writing-games.html

Doing all this has giving me a better appreciation of the TGE and TGB game engines. All the tool sets like GUI editor and Torque script are pretty much taken for granted until you realize what it's like writing something from scratch. I've learned a lot by choosing to focus on python right now, and anyone else in the same position as I am, check out those books I suggested. Terms like 'object serialization' make a lot more sense to me now, as well as different simulation models.

Hope you find this useful,
Dennis

Getting Feet wet with Torque

Dennis De Marco — 2006-04-23T18:17:08+00:00

I figure I would continue with my experiences as a newbie with Torque with another follow-up article in my blog. This way a year from now I can look back and see how far I've come. Perhaps these entries will even help other people starting off :) In any case here is what I've been up to.

Bought two books last week that are Torque specific and that I recommend reading:

3D Game Programming All in One Amazon

This is a very good overall view of Torque, the editors, scripting, and tools for art. This book gave me a larger understanding of the tools needed to create art and modeling objects and animations. It covers modling using Milkshape 3D, which is perfect for me right now.

The Game programmers guide to Torque Amazon

This book seems to be the "one source" of information strictly on the engine itself that I've been needing. It doesn't cover any of the 'art' creation tools that the 3D Game Programming All in One book covers. It's right down meat and potato torque. I was a bit worried about purchasing both books if there would be a lot of overlap. This isn't the case, and I suggest both for newbie like me.

More content pack reviews

Content packs are like 'Lego kits' for me. At this stage I want to focus my learning on the engine and not dealing with paint/modeling programs. The more 'lego kits' I have the more assets I can use to my advantage to make some sort of believable environments and game worlds.

www.arteria-gaming.com

I had my eye on this site for awhile. They offer a nice selection of 'Lego pieces' of art for all sorts of natural environments. They also offer 'mood' music tracks with their packs. It was the "Tropical Pack" I had my eye on first, but all the other packs looked great too. I knew sooner or later I would most likely collect them all, so I went for their Gaming Membership. Membership gives you 12 month access to ALL their content packs which for a guy like me would be a good investiment down the road. It also gives you access to any new packs they release in the future, and they plan on releasing a lot packs this year.

So far I've been working with the Tropical Pack, and I am happy with the art. Steve of Arteria and his associates always seem to tweaking the packs to make them work great depending on what engine you use. I was very happy to see the objects for Torque were scaled correctly when placed in the world. I had some problems with other art not scaled correctly (not from Arteria) that looked like skyscrapers when placed in the world map.

Their member section is a bit rough around the edges, as in not existing yet, and there is no central area for the pack downloads. Downloads were handled via e-mail exchange of URL's. Their membership area is 'under construction' and it was not a big issue for me, as Steve was pretty quick in providing me with DL URL's. They seem to be a small outfit, which I like to support, being an indie myself.

First pseudo project

After lightly reading over both torque books it became clear that a lot of time in creating "a game" is devoted to just having art assets. My goal is to leverage the 'Lego' content packs of art I have assimulated, and build environments around them. Hopefully giving me a more rounder experience with the engine.

My first pseudo project I wanted to start off simple with creating a tropical island with the terrain/mission editor and making it look somewhat decent. I scribbled down some minor things this fantasy island should have.

1) A cool raised volcano that dominates the island.
2) The island is surrounded by water
3) The island has tropical plants and tropical feel.

Sounds kinda simple no? Well Let's talk about the first thing. Generating the terrain for this island:

Generating Terrain

It took about half a day pulling and kneeding the Terrain Terraform editor to understand that creating a halfway decent island is just plain fustrating. It also dawned on me that having a waterline around the island being '0' meters was a bad idea. So I had to scrap my first attempt. I started to look for tools to help with terrain generation using greyscale bitmaps. Terrain generation was way too fustrating for me to start fresh in the terraform editor.

Using random hightmaps off the internet rebel13.com/SimCity/100/trinity.jpg

I tried first being cleaver let mother nature do my dirtywork and use already generated hightmaps. Well, it sorted worked.. I had to do some image magic with Gimp to get the heightmap 256x256 so I could import it into the terrain editor. I got eh results.

Terragen www.planetside.co.uk/terragen

I started off with this little program. Tweaking with the output running about mashing stuff lower and higher to make it look like an island. I got it to something I could use and exported the heightmap as a TGA. Converted the TGA to PNG in Gimp and played arround with it in the terraform editor in torque. It wasn't too bad, but the land did not feel very real to me. It was however, easier than kneeding the terrain in the terriform editor, and a better result that mother natures attempt.

L3DT www.bundysoft.com/L3DT

This last program I gave it a shot. Seemed a lot of people are using it for the TSE engine and though 'eh why not'. This program gave me the best results so far, and exported what I wanted in the correct PNG 256x256 heightmap without having to deal with GIMP. These greyscale images imported nicely in the terrain terraform editor. This was the best program so far with results.

I suggest using L3DT and then pounding around the ground with the terraform editor with the resulting bitmap. I was very happy with the results. Seems the terriform editor works great for touchups and taking something good and making it better than working from scratch.

Waterblock, how I despise thee

After getting something looking like an island pounded out, the next step was to create a waterblock and have the land I made surrounded by water. Well, there are some things to note about waterblocks..

1) Don't have the 'ocean' at 0 meters. I got better results making the 'sea floor' at around 20 meters. Gives you lots of play making some dimples and valleys for anyone going swimming.

2) There is a bug with the Waterblock gizmo's and gadget. My inital fustration was creating a waterblock and not seeing on the screen or being able to manipulate it. This took me about a half of day to discover this is a 'feature' in Torque. This 'feature' was fixed in GPTG book's provided lesson editor. This threw me for a loop. The book didn't mention any 'patches' it added to the lesson engine or suggested bugfixes once you purchase the engine license. Luckly Alan James gave me a hand describing the fix located in this post www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=37015

Around like 399 in waterblock.cc comment this stuff out.

// if(!mRemoveWetEdges)
// {
// setGlobalBounds();
// }

3) I got the best results making one giant scaled up waterblock and then locking it to prevent it moving if accidently selected.

Once I did that, it worked like a charm. Waterblocks were now under my control. My island now is starting to look like an island with water around it.

The island has tropical plants and tropical feel.

I'm using Arteria's tropical pack to help me out here, and I'm dabbling with using fxFoliageReplicator and fxShapeReplicator to make the island a bit more life like. I'm at this stage right now. I'm not sure how crazy to go with adding tree's and 'tropical stuff'. It seems fxShapeReplicator is giving me some trouble right now. I don't think this function uses collision detection. Should I plop down an army of objects? I better start using simgroups for my junk ;)

That's it for this week. I think I will add the waterblock fix to TDN later today. It will save someone else a headache :)

- Dennis

My first Wiki post in TDN

Dennis De Marco — 2006-04-18T04:44:07+00:00

tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/RTS/Compiling

I wrote my first Wiki article tonight. First time using Wiki and it was interesting learning experience. For all of those that have the RTS-SK, this article explains how to compile the engine using Visual Studio C++ 2005 Express.

Tomorrow night I should have the TLK Lighting kit instructions up. I'm most likely not going to bother with trying to port RTS-SK to 1.4. I want to toy with something else next :)

New guy playing with Torque, initial thoughts.

Dennis De Marco — 2006-04-15T16:42:37+00:00

This is my first blog post and I thought why not share some of the things I discovered and learned. It's been about a week so far since my inital purchase and feeling guilty spending more money on expansion content packs than actualy producing anything tangable.

I picked up Torque game engine and Torque Game Builder together to save some money. Both seem interesting at the time and there was a combo pack if you bought them together you save $20 bucks. This was the first step down a road that would consume me in purchasing more and more content packs :)

Each content pack is a learning experience how to do things, and each provided insight and vauleable resources to fiddle with in the engine. I'll write about my experiences with the content packs a bit further down, but first I'd like to comment on building a toolbox.

It became clear that I needed to start putting togther a toolkit of programs to help me facilitate making something. Here is a short list that I discovered that seems to work for me, and possibly save someone else new to Torque some time and money.

DIF (Interior Creation Tools)

Quark (quark.planetquake.gamespy.com/)

It's a bit fustrating to learn but you can't beat the cost. It crashes on me and it lives up to it's name being 'Quarky' Adding Textures you will need to 'import' them first which took me some time to get the hang of it. The 3D view when creating an interior looks poor and doesn't resemble what you actualy will see in the engine but for a free tool I can not complain.. It's a free tool! and you can't beat that. It also seems to have the most tutorials and documentation out there.

3D World Studio (www.leadwerks.com)

I liked this software very much. It seemed more stable and easier to pick up. I haven't had it crash on me and adding textures is straight forward copy them into a directory. The 3D view when creating something looks a lot better, closer to what you expect in the engine. However this package costs about $80 bucks and seems a bit steep and I stuck with Quark.

GTKRadiant (www.qeradiant.com)

They just GPL'ed this tool. I spent about 30 minutes toying with it and hated it. I'm not sure why, It's now free and apparently works with both Linux,Mac, and Windows.

Valve Hammer Editor (collective.valve-erc.com/index.php?go=hammer)

There did not seem to be much documentation dealing with this editor, and it seemed clunky to get working with Torque. I spent like 5 minutes with it and went back to Quark.

Of the three, I suggest slugging out with Quark until Gas powered games releases their world constructor kit. I think that would be the best choice in the long run. The constructor looks promising, plus viewing the interiors in the same engine that will be using them would be a big plus.

DTS Object creation

The next quest for me was to find a decent 3D modeler program. This seems important as almost every object in a game you create comes from a mesh model someplace. This is also one of the most expensive tools that you need as well. It seems to me, almost everything is created in 3D Studio Max, and this tool costs over $3k. All of the content packs you see out there seem to come in this format. There are other packages out there, less expensive like Maya and Lightwave studio. I use the term less expensive lightly. These packages cost around $500 or so dollars.

Being a new guy hobbist those packages I mentioned above are just unrealistic to purchase and a complete waste of money for someone who has never created 3D art objects. I settled on using these two modelers below. If your like me, starting out as a hobbist, they seem to make sense.

Blender (www.blender3d.org)

This is a free :) modeler that is very powerful and there is a plugin available so you can export in DTS format. There is a lot of documentation on this guy. The drawback? This thing made my head explode when I first loaded it up. There are so many features and things it will take serious sessions getting up to speed on it. Another issue I have with blender, is that I can't seem to be able to import many of the objects created in the content packs with it. 3DS importer seems broken, I had better luck importing using .lwo objects. I wish more content pack providers had .blender sources included. It would make me happy.

MilkShape3D (www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/)

This is a low poly modeler that costs $20 bucks. It also seems to be able to do animations. I think I am going to pick this up. Many of the content packs come with milkshape sources, and I seem to be able to import a lot of meshes from other sources such as models people created for Quake, Unreal, etc.. There are MANY tutorials out there on Milkshape. Free Trial for 30 days.

Paint Programs

GIMP (www.gimp.org/windows/)

There are a lot of commerical paint photoshop programs out there, but I really really like GIMP. And best thing is it works on Windows and Linux and Mac. It's free. I didn't bother going too deeply looking for other paint programs, but I think this one will suit me fine.

Content packs

Now onto Content packs, These are the ones I picked up and toyed with and my first impressions with them.

Tim Aste: Content Packs Combo (www.garagegames.com/products/50)

I liked the demo video from this pack, and unfortuantly this pack does not seem to live up to the quality of Tim's second content pack in terms of being easily installable. It took me a while to get the environment part of this pack working and installed. The documentation was not very good in the README.TXT file. The art however is awesome but your going to have to tinker a lot just to get to see any of it in action. I wish he would re-release this pack and bring it up to newbie friendlyness as the 2nd one.

Tim Aste: Content Pack Combo #2 (www.garagegames.com/products/69)

This content pack is right on the mark. What you see in the video you get with a great installation and demo. It installed and I was able to simply click 'demo' torque app and walk around and see this pack in action. The art is great! I suggest saving the money and purchasing this pack before getting #1.

Frogames Dungeon Pack (www.garagegames.com/products/81)

At first I didn't know what to make of this pack. It looked cartoony and 'out there' but I am VERY happy and surprised with this pack. It comes with EVERYTHING source wise and gives a great insight on how to put together environments and mission maps. It comes with textures and even the skin for objects. If your starting out with Torque, like me buy this as your first pack. It will teach you a lot before moving on to Tim Aste's packs. It comes with a good installer and demo app/mission. I'm using this to learn a lot about using DIFF pieces together to make something larger on terrain maps.

Synapse Gaming: Torque Lighting Kit for TGE (www.garagegames.com/products/54)

This adds to your engine Lighting. It makes a big difference, I mean a BIG difference in creating atmosphere on your maps with lighting. Bite the bullet and purchase this. I am still learning how it all works but it looks great.

CubixStudio Human models (www.cubixstudio.com)

For $15 bucks you can get a very good human models for your games. I picked up the female and male models. They come with all the sources and animations as well as two skins for them. It's way worth the money just picking up one of these so you can play with them in Milkshape.

Future Purchases

I have my eyes set on my next purchase most likely something from www.arteria-gaming.com or messing with the RTS Starter Kit. But honestly I'm feeling a bit guilty spend this money on content without producing anything.. I am having a blast simply creating virtual terrains and using the editors in Torque.

My current Project

For my first project I have been working with TGELobby1.2 and tinkering with that and InspIRCd (www.inspircd.org) which is a free C++ Open Source IRC server that module support for mySQL databases. My goal is to learn the GUI editor through TGELobby and create an account creation backend so only people who have registered accounts can join a irc lobby.

So far I ran into a nasty bug with TGELobby when you click the button for the ROOM list. Apparently this button is a toggle button and it triggers TWO LIST command to the IRC server giving you a nice list of duplicate rooms to choose from. Top if off, some IRC servers will kick you for flooding since the TGELobby is sending Two /LIST commands and two /NAME commands. I'm hopping to solve this problem by changing the Room button to pop up a dialog box with a push button called [UPDATE] to fetch a list of rooms.

I know what I want to do, but learning the language and trying to speak it is fustrating at this point. I wish there were some better documentation on the engine was online.

I'm off to pick up Kenneth's book at the store today. Wish me luck!