BZK and lightning

Due to my graduation thesis, I’ve been working on my lightning and shading algorithm for the render. The results?

The shades feel much more realistic, but also gives the level designer more work, as he/she has to lit everything.

Im still finishing my thesis, but when its done, I will figure out how to deal with that

Just check out the screen shot from this post and compare with the screenshot from this post. You can clearly see improvements on lightning. After both screenshots, I’ve also added (with little to no impact on rendering quality) pre-baking the lightning, so it doesnt need to process all the static lightning over and over every frame. Now I only have to take into consideration the doors. Im about to give this a proper solution before commiting the code to SVN.

tackling the monster of subdivision

Its been a while since I was working on conbed and monobed so I can design a “free form” level in monobed and leave the hard work for conbed. And today, It seems that finally worked!

While that old tutorial still applies, now I have envisioned a new way to design maps. Just design as you want the rooms to be. You dont need to set the connections and all that bullshit. But make sure the sectors you want to connect touch each other perfectly (no more, no less). and then, give it to conbed and it will crunch it for you and spit a optimized version. You can even make it split the sectors in equal sizes (à la voxel importing, defining the size of the resulting sectors indeed!)

the results are impressive:

I know, this seems trivial, but its not. Belive it or not, we only have 9 sectors in the map depicted above. If this were drawn as a voxel first, we would have 687 sectors! I’ve just tested this map on the 770, using the riddler binary and it worked very well too! The same scene, on the 770 would be a lot slower.

However, due to some bugs in the frustum culling, sometimes, it will be necessary to break some bigger sectors. Every case takes a diferent solution.

Anyway, this “fix” will be available very soon @ svn. The SVN is almost finished. hold your breath.

The Riddler updates – And what about the visual identity of the game?

After some time just doint some ant work, I’ve finished both the game mechanics and the levels.

Now its time to give it a visual identity. One thing that annoys me today is the number of graphically similar games and I can understand why it happens. Take Riddler for instance: It is currently using all 2D graphics from Angstron1! Of course I still have to update lots of stuff, but most developers forget to change some of the graphics as they still have the balance from the development time.

Other important thing is the configuration and asset management. After you finish your FIRST game, and you go for the second, you might wish to use the same code base and you will have to came up with a scheme to switch between assets of the two games. Its not a easy thing to do and Im facing it right now.

Being a cerebral game (instead of a action game, like Angstron 1&2), it must have a more bland (Myst!) visual, more calm. Even with the fact that the user must acomplish everything in 40 minutes.

To make this more clear, compare Prince of Persia 1 & 2 (Shadow and the flame) with the newer ones. Specially the first one, they were puzzle+action games and his pace didnt disturbed the gamer.Funny enough, the marathon games also had this pace, even being a “Doom clone” (how unfair! Marathon is SO MUCH BETTER!).

Now, ,grab some paper and pencil and back to work!

Installing the Maemo Gregale SDK – an updated guide

Im writing this as of august/2008.

FYI, Im not responsible of the consequences of this tutorial or anything related to it. If your N770 turn into a zombie TabletPC and start a zombie-run looking for fresh penguin blood, its not my fault.

Lots of things happened to the Maemo community and its fair that they moved on (they’re pushing the edges of penguin mobile computing to the edge, and the EeePC , in my point of view, is a direct consequence of it). The documentation on the installation of the SDK is a bit outdated, so Im going to deliver a more updated view on it.

My system is a Ubuntu 8 x86 32bit box.

My reference: http://maemo.org/development/documentation/tutorials/maemo_2_2_tutorial.html

as you finishing extracting all the scratchbox packages, please run /scratchbox/run_me_first.sh

I dont know why they omited this, as it was part of the docs before.

then proceed the installation as indicated until you have to login into scratchbox for the first time.

then , you will probably face some weird error messages:

You have to add these two lines into  /etc/sysctl.conf :

vm.vdso_enabled = 0
vm.mmap_min_addr = 4096

After this, reboot your system.

Then, as you proceed, you have to copy the rootstraps to /scratchbox/packages. Make sure you change the file permissions to allow everybody to read them.

Also, as you login, the guide will instruct you to run sbox-config. This tool was replaced with sb-menu. So you have to configure it in a new way. When you have to select the rootstrap file, there is another catch: You have to place the cursor above it ,PRESS THE SPACEBAR AND THEN ,ENTER.

And finally, when it is asked to you where to install the stuff, select all the options. It will complain about /usr/include/asm, but you can safely ignore it (I guess so).

I just tried it with a test build of The Riddler running fullscreen on the 770. Works fast! Even with the lightning on!

Angstron debian package final releases

Finally, I’ve learned how to create debian packages the correct way, so here we go =-)

update:

Release candidate 2 – now with good icons, full sound and music (no music for 770 version due to the lack of native OGG support )

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=167767

EeePC users:

if you have a customized menu, Angstron will override it. In order to run , take the binary from inside the debian package (angstron-0.99-EeePC/data.tar.gz/./usr/bin/angstron) and copy it to the same folder of the regular debian package.

OR

you can always checkout the source code from sourceforge (http://www.sf.net/projects/bzk ) and run angbuild.sh. I did it several times FROM the EeePC.

Now, I must state this:

I wil stop working on BZK from now on. I have to graduate and this gamedev thing got on the way. I will probably fix demanded bugs and work on it for my grad-thesis, but no new feature will be incorporated.

I will also stop the work for “The Riddler” and every other side-project I have. Very sad, but true…

PS: the last Maemo release still worth as the definitive, as I changed little things since then.

The saddest thing is that the EZX release was around the corner and even more the PocketPC port, as I had it compiling, but not linking…

funny icon, huh?

Aventuras em EZX – o começo

É isso ai amigos, resolvi investir em mais uma plataforma mobile: EZX. Mas e porque? Bem, Maemo e EeePC são muito legais, mas não tem muita penetração por aqui. Quero tentar fazer algo mais popular. Mas não abandonei elas – vou me esforçar pra lançar a BZK rodando bem nas 3.

Pra quem mora no Brasil , é o que roda nos telefones motorola como o A1200 (meu caso).

Vou comentar agora como tweekar o telefone (testado apenas com A1200i – firmware da claro) pra começar os trabalhos. Não sei da legalidade destes procedimentos. Não assumo QUALQUER responsabilidade sobre o conteúdo deste artigo (graças a deus não temos DMCA).

programas essências (sem link de download porque não quero me comprometer e porque to com preguiça):

-Antes de começarmos, faça um backup da pasta .system do seu cartão de memória. Não ta achando? Ative em seu sistema operacional a opção para ver arquivos ocultos. No Ubuntu basta ir no menu ver e escolher a opção “ver arquivos ocultos”.

- SmartAssist (tentei o MPKG, mas pelo visto o firmware dos telefones distribuidos pela claro não vai muito bem com ele). Ele é o primeiro passo ,para instalar aplicações nativas. Tanto que ele vem como uma pasta .system pra vc sobre-escrever a do seu cartão de memória.

- eKonsole (este foi um cadinho mais complicado de achar): O que será de nós sem um console? será util para testarmos os primeiros passos com o SDK.

- MyStuff – um gerenciador de arquivos alternativo ao padrão. Esse mostra as coisas de verdade.

- EZXSysInfo – um “painel de controle” muito util para você ver as quantas anda seu device, e pra vc saber o tamanho do estrago que teu programa fez ;-p

Boa caçada no google!

No próximo artigo, vamos setar um SDK básico que vai permitir desenvolver aplicações de console.

E pra vc saber oq vem por ai:

BZK update – end of march 08

- A new rendering method was implemented and it works just as well as the heapsorted painter’s algorithm (BZK_APROXIMATE) – its called Radial Tree (BZK_USERADIALBUFFER). Its not such a big deal, as it is slightly slower faster than BZK_APROXIMATE, but it allows BZK_OPTIMIZE_FACEMERGING. While the facemerging itself doesnt work help much (in fact, makes it slower), it doesnt produce garbage in the screen, so it will probably work faster some time.

- Im also already planning a new geometry organization and a new schema for the XML, it will be BZK3 and will mix free-form geometry with sectors, allowing meshes and belziers and using the sectors only for visibility processing.

- Im also planning to create a modeling system for games where you dont need to code the game code in C/C++, but just implement trigger rules.

- The work in VEGA is not halted for that long,as I will need it to code BZK3. Im also researching how to code a ECMAScript VM.

- And now, the best news – MEDIA LEAKAGE! Exclusive pictures of the new BZK game! Its a short adventure (~50 minutes to solve) and it will be released (I hope), in 6 months. Here goes the pictures:

It still looks a lot like Angstron, as there is roughly 3 days of work. But the game concept is all done, just as the puzzles (it was all written in a scrap in roughly half an hour!)

For this game, I want to put some texture mapping and maybe some true pre-processed lighting.

This will be the last game to use BZK2 and will be available for Maemo , EeePC Linux and probably Desktop Linux

c ya folks!

BZK updates

its been a lot since my last post. Lots of news to tell:

- the render is FINALLY (after two years!) ready!!!!! bring some champagne!!! Now its time to juice it the most we can

This also means that some shelved levels I did for Angstron will spring very soon.

NOTE: there’s a limitation on the rendering semantics. I will fix/explain/”block from conbed” later. For now, make sure you enclosed the level in order to prevent the sectors to connect to the master sector. This is a ambiguity on the rendering system that Im working right now

- The MonoBED editor (until now, my pet project and a well hidden project) is finally exporting some XML. Soon we will be able to export some very optimized BZK maps without those limitations of voxels , like fixed sector size. Voxel will still have its use, specially for games like Angstron, but for some shooters, better to use a more neatty arrangement.

- newbie_x11 got me surprised again: he’s working a game engine full of physics and good OpenGL powered graphics. the fun fact is that he’s using a good deal of BZK components. Some of them with some adaptations that will be incorporated to the mainstream code. (with some adaptations, in the name of flexibility) – http://newbie-x11.blogspot.com/2007/10/prepare-seu-processador-fisica-chegou.html (pt_BR)

- after some good deal of bug fixed that got the render working, I fixed the coodernate system and thus, I got the Angstron’s AI working better

- A College mate got me a good tip for configuring my Dell Latitude 120L’s LCD Painel:

get this on your /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Monitor Genérico”
Option “DPMS”
DisplaySize 338 212 # 1280×860 96dpi
Gamma 0.77 0.64 0.501
EndSection

replace “Monitor Genérico” with “Generic Monitor” if you use EN_GB or EN_US instead of PT_BR.

- Opera mini 4 Beta 2 is out and its almost like the Opera Mobile I had on the N-Gage. It renders the full page and sports a virtual mouse. Its like browsing on a computer

now the not so good news:

- my Cassiopeia A-11 finally is going to retire: one of its touchscreen sensors finally gave up. It still works, but the touchscreen is worthless. Im going to keep it. Its gona be useful when porting BZK to WinCE. (no, I dont plan to run full blown 3D games on it, but I guess I can run the engine core without graphics on it). Im going to buy some new handheld computer. Im still analysing the options but Im very inclinated to PalmOS handhelds. They integrate with Ubuntu very well.

- Im giving up MaemoWizard development. Its current release works well, but there are already some better projects. But the Mono version project is up and it will hildonize stuff too. (I guess).

gosh, I hate posting very mixed posts like this…It become a tag’s hell. (almost all the tags were filled…)

new angstron alpha release!

Do yourself a favor and grab the newest beta of the game now!

https://garage.maemo.org/frs/?group_id=258

GPL apply here

by the way:

got Mono running on the 770!

The onboard level editor is comming around the corner.

PS: this mono thing also means the new maemowizard release is going to be a bit late.thats becouse I will release a special edition called MonoMaemoWizard

concurso: cria a tela de abertura de angstron!

isso mesmo macacada!

um concurso onde vc vai ver sua arte como tela de abertura deste incrivel jogo!

a tela de abertura provisória esta no primeiro post a respeito do jogo. Outras artes estão por ai no blog.

pra colaborar com vocês: um modelo no formato blender e a tela de game over , de loading do jogo e mais uma das arenas mais avançadas (sim, são várias arenas diferentes!) , pra dar uma inspiração.

(notice the 3D model is in the right orientation for exporting to BZK. if you plan to contribute with more models – for the other bikers, please adopt this orientation)

http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/daniel_on_go/bike_blend.zip

regras:

- imagens devem ser mandadas em PNG,para que não haja perdas. tente criar um PNG com o mínimo de retícula o possivel.

- as imagens devem estar na resolução de 800×480

- o personagem principal de angstron, surpresa, é uma mulher.

- apesar do nome e da jogabilidade, angstron não tem nada a ver com TRON, então não é recomendavel se inspirar no filme ou nos jogos relativos.

- vencedor deverá apresentar um “escudo” que será exibido junto a outros escudos de outros colaboradores nas telas anteriores à tela de título. o escudo deverá ser de no máximo 100×100 e ter fundo preto.