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tjheldna

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Posts posted by tjheldna

    What next?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Thanks guys and thanks pixel, I've been working on games for at least 8 years and never finished a single one. Mainly due to the project being too ambitious for a sole developer and not realising it until a large amount of time has passed. This game has come together very quickly with Leadwerks and I'm very happy with the ease of use of the engine.

     

    I checked the limits with my host and it seems it probably would be enough for a beta version. It will be a little while yet till I need hosting, but thanks for the offers as I may just use them in time. I'm hoping for around mid Feb to have this game done.

     

    There are still a few things I can't work out currently but the good thing is they aren't critical. I'll probably do some Q & A in the forums a little later.

     

    Thanks Again!

    What next?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I think I am in need of peoples opinions, I had a guy from work have a quick shot at it and from that came about a weeks worth of work of changes. I've been looking at it for soo long it's hard to tell if a feature is good/fun or intuitive (as I just found).

     

    I guess when I think about it I never really planned on making a profit from this, I just want to create a game that people want to play. So I think that's decided on.

     

    Its playable now so... if I focus on finishing the in game tutorials, main characters and aim to have 2-3 levels more or less finished I could give myself around a month for an open beta, bugs an all. **** that's scary but exciting at the same time. I really have to bite the bullet soon.

    What next?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hey all,

     

    Having reached a stage in my game where all core features are coded, levels being steadily being constructed and all aspects are being polished/optimised.

     

    I'm looking into the distant future of my game and the question I ask is.... what do I do next? I have never reached a stage in developing a game which is looking like it will be finished and want to start preparing for when it it is.

     

    The questions I have are......

    • What do I do with the game i.e is it a good idea to sell your first title or should I just get my name out there and make it a free download?
    • File hosting where?(it's around 750mb currently and I'm estimating about a Gig when finished).
    • How do I promote it?
    • How do I protect my work? is it necessary?
    • Should I release a build for the community to test?
    • Any other things I need to be aware of?

     

    Too many questions!!!

     

    Cheers

    • Upvote 2

    Buffer confusion

    in Programming

    Posted

    Hi Chris,

     

    This is ripped from my code in C++ I changed the variable names more genereic names. I have no idea how to do it in lua, but this may help.

     

     

     

    TTexture bufferTexture;
TBuffer buf;

if(flags & flagsUpdateBuffer)
{

flags &= ~flagsUpdateBuffer;
if(bufferTexture)FreeTexture(bufferTexture);
bufferTexture = 0;
bufferTexture = CreateTexture(20, 20, TEXTURE_RGBA);

SetColorBuffer(buf, bufferTexture, 0, 0);

SetBuffer(buf);
//Do the buffer drawing here
SetBlend(BLEND_ALPHA);
//Draw red a rectangle in the buffer
SetColor(1.0F, 0.0F, 0.0F, 1.0F);
DrawRect(0, 0, 10, 10);
SetColor(1.0F, 1.0F,1.0F, 1.0F);
SetBuffer(BackBuffer());
}
//Draw the rectangle
DrawImage(bufferTexture, 0, 0, 20, 20);

    Wizard Defense Alpha

    in Showcase

    Posted

    Hi Rick,

     

    It ran fine for me my work computer specs are:

     

    Intel core 2 Duo 2.4 ghz

    4GB ram

    Win 7 32bit Enterprise (Bootcamp)

     

    I think you should be very happy with that! I wont pick on anything as I can see things are a work in progress and I'm at work anyway. I'll take a more in depth look at it tonight and give you some more feedback.

     

    Good work!

    Project a Texture

    in Programming

    Posted

    Hi all,

     

    Does anyone have any advice on how to project a texture in the scene? I can see many uses for this in my project, but mainly I need to project a circle at the players feet at various radius's. Can this be done with some sort of light that projects a texture? I just don't know where to begin with this so any help would be appreciated!!

    Game Logo request

    in Game Artwork

    Posted

    Hi Josh, maybe the image is a little dark as its a gem in the centre =). I put it together rather quickly and whole thing was very adhoc. I'll work on it some more and add more detail into it and see what I come up with.

    Buffer Issue

    in Programming

    Posted

    Yeah I've got a few things being drawn. So I clear the buffer, but I seem to loose my alpha channel. Is there something I need to call to get it back?

     

    I'll redo the textures and see if that helps.

     

    Cheers!

    Buffer Issue

    in Programming

    Posted

    Hi All,

     

    I have a Color Buffer going and rendering an alpha image, but I am having one issue with it. See Image below...

     

     

     

    I can't seem to get rid of these artefacts. They only seem to appear in transparent areas and the amount of them vary every level load from 0 to pretty bad like the image.

     

    Any ideas of what this could be?

    Computer Problem?

    in Tech Talk

    Posted

    We can help with wired and wireless network setup, internet connection setup, firewall install, data recovery, virus and malware removal, hard drive crashes, operating system reinstallation, new computer setup, upgrades and troubleshooting for all your computer related issues. We do computer repair and laptop repair on all models.

     

    lol if the people here can't do that kind of stuff they shouldn't be making games.

    Textures

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    OK got it working. there were a couple of things.

     

    1) forget the .mat you have, just delete it or something. Your .gmf model is not associated with any material (you have to do that yourself)

    - Change your .dds to something more meaningful like boxTexture.dds (I know your only testing but that name was horrible =) )

    - Copy the genmat.exe from your Leadwerks C:\Leadwerks Engine SDK\Tools to your model directory and run it. From that it will create a .mat with the same name as your model and associates it with the .gmf some how. Open up the mat and It should have your boxTexture.dds as the diffuse. Add this sample using the same texture as the normal map.

     

     

     

    texture0="abstract::boxTexture.dds "

    texture1="abstract::boxTexture.dds "

    blend=0

    depthmask=1

    overlay=0

    zsort=0

    cullface=1

    castshadows=1

    specular=0.1

    gloss=0.4

    bumpscale=1.1

    shader="abstract::mesh_diffuse_bumpmap.vert","abstract::mesh_diffuse_bumpmap_specular.frag"

    shadowshader="abstract::mesh_shadow.vert"

     

    2) I noticed in your original .mat you had the diffuse and normal maps added. The diffuse was fine but, just adding dot3 to the end of a texture name wont do anything unless you have the texture [texturename]dot3.dds in yoonur project. There is no automation there. I'm not sure so correct me if I'm wrong, but If you have a texture with dot3 at the end and you run the genmat.exe I think it might add the texture into the .mat as a normal map.

    Textures

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    From my experience what you need to do is make sure you have the options to generate mipmaps for your .dds files (like cassius said) else your model appears all black in the model editor. The option should be there when you export. The textures will show as expected when you load in the world editor though.

     

    Check your .mat file and make sure the correct file name and extension is there. I've had the problem where when you export (3DSMax) whatever file name and extension you set in max, is the one that is written to the file so open it with notepad or something and check and change the texture names to .dds if necessary.

    Game saving and loading

    in Programming

    Posted

    Glad you like it!

     

    I had considered just saving the data rather than the actual objects which can always be reconstructed and re-populated with the data.

     

     

    That's the way I see it and it's worked for what I need.

     

    I can provide you with more code. I'm happy to share it, the basics are all there I'd just have to isolate what you need. I think sqlite is a great way to store data too. I think you can also encrypt the data in the database too.

     

    I'll update my previous post with a more complete solution when I have a chance.

     

    I thought about using boost, but for no real reason that I chose not to. I also decided against using xml format because although I'm not worried about security I'd like it to be as unreadable as possible (also using the binary flag). I will look at doing some kind of encryption later, but I'd be learning that from scratch so it's going to have to wait. I think there is a relatively easy way to encrypt using the binary shift.

    Game saving and loading

    in Programming

    Posted

    Hi Pixel,

     

    I have recently done saving and loading. I didn't need to save object states in the level, more the players things like health inventory etc.

     

    The solution I came up with works very well using ostream and istream which is just in the std library so I believe it will be compatible.

    Here is basicly what I did

     

    First Created a template to overload the extraction operators

     

     

    template<class derivedTp>
class Packable
{
public:
void Write(std::ostream& os) const
{
static_cast<const derivedTp *>(this)->Write(os);
}

void Read(std::istream& os)
{
static_cast<derivedTp *>(this)->Read(os);
}
};

template<class derivedTp>
std::ostream& operator<< (std::ostream& os, const Packable<derivedTp>& s)
{
s.Write(os);
return os;
}

template<class derivedTp>
std::istream& operator>> (std::istream& is, Packable<derivedTp>& s)
{
s.Read(is);
return is;
}

    If you want the object to save load just add the <Packable> template to the class in the .h and override the read/write classes

     

     

    class Player : public Packable<Player>

     

     

    The way I cope with changes are as follows each written object has a header and a terminator line at the end then breaks. If it finds the value good, if not it just goes onto the next header

     

     

    
void GamePlayer::Write(std::ostream& os) const
{
short i = (short)(index);

os << 'play' << std::endl <<
'plid' << std::endl <<
i << std::endl <<
'pcht' << std::endl <<
playerCharacterType << std::endl <<
'term' << std::endl;
}

     

     

    So I just loop through the lines and search for the header if the header matches any one of the cases it assignes the value else it just keeps on looping until terminated.

     

    
void GamePlayer::Read(std::istream& is)
{
std::string line;

long type = 0;

while(type != 'term')
{
is >> type;

switch(type)
{
case 'plid':
{
is >> index;
break;
}

case 'pcht':
{
is >> playerState.playerCharacterType;
break;
}
}
}
}

     

     

    Does this help?

    • Upvote 2
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