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Marleys Ghost

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Blog Entries posted by Marleys Ghost

  1. Marleys Ghost
    To prevent non Leadwerks Engine specific entries from my Blog being automatically published here via the Blog Feed, I have removed that functionality, and will simply add a new entry title and link here for all Leadwerks Engine specific entries.
     
     
    Leadwerks Specific Blog Entry.
     
     
    3rd Person Movement & Animation Control Rig Test
  2. Marleys Ghost

    5 Hours !!!!

    By Marleys Ghost,

    5 Hours ago I started "playing" with the road feature in the new editor .. 5 hours ago !!! no, not because there is a problem its just been way so much fun if you recall the video Josh did of this function, let me say its way more fun driving than being the passenger, but that aside this feature is simply great, and will suit a project I have in mind down to a tee. Took a while to figure out a few things I was doing wrong but the end results have been exactly what I was after. Top marks for this, I think I will need a few more days off to try out all the other features, oddly I feel a bout of flu coming on <coff coff>
  3. Marleys Ghost
    The new Indoor Lighting Optimization is truly a fine addition to the Engine. It has taken a little while to get into the habit of automatically setting the lights to Dynamic, Dynamic + Static, Static or Dynamic + Static + Buffered, as well as the needed setting for the objects in the scene. Objects that would normally always be static I have, for the time being, simply added an ini file to set them to static automatically. This will later be set via their scripts but for now it suffices.
     

  4. Marleys Ghost
    To prevent non Leadwerks Engine specific entries from my Blog being automatically published here via the Blog Feed, I have removed that functionality, and will simply add a new entry title and link here for all Leadwerks Engine specific entries.
     
     
    Leadwerks Specific Blog Entry.
     
     
    A* Pathfinding MapData Generator.
  5. Marleys Ghost
    Following on from:
     
    On The Right Path, A* Pathfinding In Leadwerks.
     
    The Way Forward ... Making Blitzmax Trax ...
     
    I decided to give the testing a few more hours. First off I wanted to create a new NPC Type which would have its own control flags and most importantly its own path storage buffer.
     
    After a little thinking (a little thinking is what I excel at lol) and a few hours of coding and tweaking, I managed to get 32 new NPC Types all pathfinding their individual way around "BlocksVille".
     


     
    For those interested I will try and get a demo.exe up later onto the showcase thread:
     
    Pathfinding With A*
     
     
    Demo now added: Hide And Seek Demo 2
  6. Marleys Ghost
    To prevent non Leadwerks Engine specific entries from my Blog being automatically published here via the Blog Feed, I have removed that functionality, and will simply add a new entry title and link here for all Leadwerks Engine specific entries.
     
     
    Leadwerks Specific Blog Entry.
     
     
    AI, Waypoints, A* Pathfinding, Lua & Leadwerks.
  7. Marleys Ghost
    Well, its been almost a week since the release of 2.3 and although I have been working away at it there is still so much new functionality I have not had a chance to fully explore yet. I decided the best approach would be to go back to basics, so to speak. Investigate how the new lua scripting and other features would cross over to C++ and Framewerk, this is still on going for me, and I am mixing that aspect in with getting to grips with the new functions in the editor. All in all I am impressed.
     
    The only real problem I have at the moment is do I continue learning C++, I have after all only been coding in it for about two months, or change to Bmax or just concentrate on scripting. I am trying to decide which would be best for the new functionality of 2.3
     
    For me this is key and the basic building block for any venture, especially an actual game. I am looking forward to the tutorials on lua and how it can be used. I do think we have entered a very exciting time with LE, and patience is still needed.
     
    As I always say " Grant me patience lord .... but hurry up!! "
  8. Marleys Ghost
    Last September I mused about the concept of what I call Ambient NPC populations, I spent a lot of time researching (read playing) certain games that have what I call an ambient NPC population. This is specifically those NPC's that reside in the background and generally have no real or very limited interaction with the player, but may have some limited interaction with each other or the surroundings.
     
    I felt a new approach would be needed to sort through what was and was not required to achieve a similar environment in LE, I decided first to create the environment and to then set about, at different levels, adding in the ambient NPC population, the thought behind this was it would be easier to visualise what I wanted to see taking place, if it took place ... in place ... not the best description but I hope you will understand what I mean.
     
    So the first step is to create a small village environment and then to start adding in the population.
     
    Test/concept scene (test application screenshot): The Village of Swanwyck
     

     
    The important thing with this small test village level will be the roads/paths, as the first tier of the population will basically be simple "walkers".
     
    Even now, I am still formulating the different types required from "walkers" to simple "static actors" and how to implement some of those types to have different interaction levels. I will be utilising several different methods to allow the NPC's to navigate Swanwyck, from a simple "follow node" approach to predefined path data and on the fly A* navigation.
     
    I did have some very good results with A* pathfinding already, which can be read about here:
     
    A* Pathfinding Using Blitzmax And Leadwerks Engine
     
    Hopefully I can find the time to get "Swanwyck" up to a usable standard, and get the first tier of the "walking" population up and running.
  10. Marleys Ghost
    Firstly, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you all a belated happy new year. I hope you all have had a great start to it.
     
    I have not been doing much on the coding front for the last few weeks. I decided to get some assets created and try and develop my texturing skills a little further.
     
    I also purchased Silo 3D Pro over the Christmas period as it was on offer. I had used the demo and was impressed at how "comfortable" it was to use. I now use this package as my main modeller but in conjunction with AC3D and UU3D. Basically Ultimate Unwrap 3D is the junction where all my modelling and art packages meet. Not only for Leadwerks with its .gmf export for both static meshes and animated assets but for all the engines I use, for me its an invaluable tool and a good investment for the minimal cost.
     
    I have need of a modular corridor/room set, and decided to set about seeing just how low you can go with the poly count and how much you can offset the inherent "flatness" of a low poly environment with normal mapping and "hand painted" textures. This would be moving on directly from a previous flirtation with texturing which can be found here. Some more incriminating evidence can be seen in the gallery as well, fairly obvious I am no artist.
     
    Another aspect of texturing I have been playing with is bump mapping. I use ShaderMap Pro which is great but making bumpmaps from diffuse textures can have horrible "side effects" when creating panelling.
     
    Diffuse only:
     

     
    Diffuse and Normal map created directly from the Diffuse texture by ShaderMap Pro:
     

     
    Not really the effect I was after. After a few ideas and some testing I found hand crafting a Normal map "template" from which a Normal map would be generated by ShaderMap Pro gave much better results for this exercise.
     

     
    I then made the first test section of the low poly modular level pack:
     

     
    The textures were then UV mapped onto the section in UU3D and then converted all over to .gmf .dds and created the .mat files using ADN ... I love ADN truly one of the most useful tools written by a community member ever!!
     

     
    I Lined a few of them up just for show .. 480 polys not bad .. considering the default rusty oildrum is 256.
     

     
    Encouraged by the result thus far I moved on, making the section bigger but retaining the tilable nature of the textures
     
     


     
     
    Unfortunately real life commitments caused a pause in my endeavours until a day ago so I have spent the last few hours refining some aspects and making a few more test sections:
     

     

     

     
    The overall effect of the technique I am developing can be seen better in this video (HD available):
     
     


     
     
    This is currently the point I am at, With some preliminary drafts for doors/doorways rooms and elevators/elevator shafts ect. I am trying to reach a point where variation is only a texture change away on standard section low poly models. I am still getting my templates organised and fine tuning the work flow and still very much a WIP, but so far I am quite pleased with the results.
     
    Source
  12. Marleys Ghost
    To prevent non Leadwerks Engine specific entries from my Blog being automatically published here via the Blog Feed, I have removed that functionality, and will simply add a new entry title and link here for all Leadwerks Engine specific entries.
     
     
    Leadwerks Specific Blog Entry.
     
     
    Colourful Behaviour.
  13. Marleys Ghost
    It seems Crytek maybe planning a free CryEngine release.
     
    "The developer behind Crysis 2 and the engine behind it, CryEngine 3, has plans to release a free version of their game engine that will be "up to speed" with CryEngine 3. This should help Crytek to further compete with Epic Games and Unity, both of which offer free versions of their respective game engines, Unreal Engine 3 and Unity. "
     
    http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178763
     
     
    I suppose it was only a matter of time considering the route both Unity3D and Epic have taken. But will be worth keeping an eye on.
  14. Marleys Ghost
    Last April, I blogged about the news that Crytek might be releasing a free version of the CryEngine, much in the same way that Epic did with UDK and the Unreal 3 engine and also Unity licensing the indie version of their engine as free. Well, it seems that this will happen with CryEngine 3.
     
    According to Crytek co-founder Anvi Yerli, "The barriers for entry will be very low, and perhaps [it will be distributed] for free." Details and a release date for this CryEngine 3 Lite SDK have yet to be announced. It seems resonable to speculate that such a release could be similar to what Epic Games did when it released its UDK tools in 2009.
     
    Full Article Here
     
    Sean Tracy also mentions this at the end of an interview recorded at GDC 11.
     


     
    It is turning out to be an interesting year for indie developers.
     
    Source
  15. Marleys Ghost
    I started out this morning looking to update a test scene that I used for some first person tests I did in C++ after only having the engine for a few weeks and coding in C++ for even less time. Well, that was the plan. I managed to redesign the layout using 3DWS, and threw a few Dexsoft crates and Barrels in. The plan was then to work on textures but as usual after about an hour I had set sail on the good ship "unrelated" for a voyage across the bay of tangents. Don't you just hate it when that happens?
     
    The scene under modification was for my FPS prototype code in Blitzmax, whilst sorting through my code "archives" I came across my basic code for NPC creation with basic Seek : Pursue : Attack Behaviour (an NPC Type using methods which I wrote about here). Integrating it into my FPS prototype was easy enough and an hour and a few more dozen tweaking "tangents" later I had it all working quite well. The video basically shows 3 "settings" for NPC toughness.
     


     
    Best viewed in HD
     
    Player Control was a bit "twitchy" as I have yet to tweak the Xbox 360 gamepad functions for smoother action, also the screen capture lag did not help
     
    It all still needs a lot of work but I was happy with the results thus far.
     
    I guess tomorrow I will do what I was intending to do today ... or maybe not
  16. Marleys Ghost

    Finally

    By Marleys Ghost,

    Well, after much testing I have decided on an actual 3D modelling app to use in my workflow. I already have Blender, and while there are some very skilled users of this on the forum (Niosop and afecelis spring to mind and their tutorials are definitely worth checking out), I still find its user interface awkward and clumsy. So I demo'd a few different ones that would not break the bank. In the end I decided on AC3D. I find it simple to use and has enough features for what I wanted it for. 3DWS is still my main application for creating architecture, but I needed something for what I call redundant decoration, and so far AC3D has proved to be just what I was looking for.
     
     
    Redundant Decoration is simply my term for low poly non functional assets, like in the picture below, filing cabinets, desks, fake PC's ect.
     

     
     
    Filing Cabinet: 12 Polys
    Desk: 192 Polys (currently, still room for "pruning")
    PC Screen & Keyboard: 70 Polys
     
    The textures still need some work, but using a combination of ShaderMap Pro and manual editing on the normal maps has produced some promising results.
     
    So far I am impressed with AC3D, and would recommend to those who were looking for a low priced 3D Modeller to check out its 14 day demo. Combined with 3DWS, Blender and UU3D I think I have this side of development sewn up application wise.
  17. Marleys Ghost
    Currently I am taking a small break from actual coding right now, give or take the odd few hours now and then I thought it best to start construction of my testing level, or at least get the main parts of it built as the testing scene/areas are blueprints for a project I have had in mind for a while, basically some nasty persons do some nasty things which in turn brings about a whole lot of nasty and the player is the antidote to nasty in general. Yeah, not much of "game description" but radically indepth compared to one by our very own Gordon ... but as usual, I start on one thing and somehow get sidetracked .. not my fault though, honest, it was Epson's! They made my printer, and it got clogged, and if I had not spent 15 mins cleaning it out with A4 paper I'd have never have thought, hey look .. grunge textures. Well, I am no artist that's for sure, and I hate texturing, but I thought might as well make a start. So after the ink had dried I scanned them in and spent a few hours working on a connecting corridor section, heres a few screenshots of how it has progressed so far. Still very much a WIP, but slowly coming together.
     






  19. Marleys Ghost

    Happy New Year!!

    By Marleys Ghost,

    Nothing much to report at the moment, still tinkering with some ideas, but thought I would take this opportunity to wish everyone, a happy, safe and rewarding new year.
     
    Happy New Year Everyone.
  20. Marleys Ghost
    Time is proving to be a most scarce commodity at the moment. So having a few hours spare I set myself some tasks and as usual did something completely different I started work on a room and ended up on a new 90 degree section, corridor doorway section (with separate reusable door frame / doors and simple placeholder keypad switch box all to need textures), a few WIP scripts for the doors and some hashed together sound FX for them to and a short corridor "Door Plug" section to allow the standard sections to fit the door frame. Part of the plan for this modular approach to the level is that as many sections/parts as possible will be able to "plug" into each other. I also wanted to test out some new base metal textures to try and break up the "monotone" look. The door keypad switch would also require some sort of 3rd person object interaction functionality which was hastily coded and again as with everything else, still very much a WIP.
     
     
    Simple keypad switch prop:
     

     
    Development in Silo PRO:
     

     
    A quick medium resolution video to show the "worksite" test scene. I can't take credit for the blue and yellow textures they are curtesy of Paint.NET's floodfill tool..
     
     


     
     
    Hopefully next week I will be able to free up more than only a few hours to get fully back into this "adventure", but I was not unhappy with the progress I made in only two hours.
     
    Source
  21. Marleys Ghost
    I am currently working with EKI One, working through its format and structure, getting to grips with the lua behavioural scripting side and trying to brush up on my c++ skills, actually brushing up on my c++ skills is an overstatement as I don't actually have any to brush up! .. lol, I have also been going through my Blitzmax code and trying to compile all the game mechanic functions and methods into a single .mod, trying to keep things tidy. Whilst going through my **** drive, I mean, my well organised storage drive, I found some DarkBasic/DarkGDK stuff, which included the Dark AI library. I have never really used DarkGDK, although I did start out a few years back with DarkBasic. So I wondered (as you do), could it be utilised in LE2.5? Having never used Dark AI (which came in a bundle, that I have never used either, but it was a bargain lol) I knew that R.T.F.M. would be in order. If it relied solely on DBobjects and inherent DarkBasic functionality then probably not. I spent half an hour looking through the commands, and an hour later had it working in an LE context. So to answer the question, it seems you can.
     



     
    I'd have upped a better quality image but I am told "You can upload up to 7.74K of files "
     
     




     
     
    Its all a work in progress, and probably will remain that way as its certainly nowhere near the solution that EKI One is, but as an exercise it wasn't a bad use of a few hours.
     
    I will post a demo in the showcase later for those interested.
     
    EDIT : Demo posted here : http://www.leadwerks...-ai/#entry45564
  22. Marleys Ghost
    After the first hour and a half I spent on this little exercise, I followed it up with another couple of hours. The basic integration now has an animation FSM. All still pretty crude and basic but a template to build on at some later date. The NPC's Entity script controls the models animation routines and gun attachment, the c++ application interfaces with the Dark AI library, and then uses messaging to communicate with the NPC Entity via lua script. Again this was just more experimentation and practice for me using c++ to build up techniques that will be beneficial later. Special thanks to Pixel Perfect for pointing out the error in my ways with regard to text strings in c++. Anyway this is the result, I just threw in some values for speed and animation blending off the top of my head just to test the FSM functionality, it will need those tweaking, thats for sure.
     




     
     
    I'd have posted some pictures, but I seem to only have 7k of space left in the blog section, not sure why, as it was over 200MB last time I did an entry here and not just a link to an entry on my off site blog.
  23. Marleys Ghost
    I thought I'd spend a little more time on this integration, using the laptop whilst watching the Olympics. The next phase was to automate the routines for NPC update and compacting the code routines. Ultimately, the idea is that after the scene is loaded, it will be parsed and flagged Dark AI objects, NPC's, Paths and Zones will be set up automatically via information taken from the relative lua scripts. Paths and Zones will be later, collision objects are done, so I was working on how to go about NPC's using this method. As some may have noticed I am using the FPSC Model Pack 53 characters.
     
     



     
     
    I converted about 5 or 6 characters to Leadwerks format and all the weapons for this exercise. I will eventually convert them all but I hand "prune" the bones of the rig and that takes longer than I want to spend at any one time on this side project. The FSM is still very basic but the first goal was to derive a current Animation state with each of those states having sub-FSM's to dictate the current behaviour based on the previous state and internal and external inputs. The framework is in place for the animation state which is derived by performing Boolean logic on returned values and strings from the Dark AI runtime and some stubs are in place nested inside for some basic behavioural sub-FSM's. First though I want to able to set up the scene and then place all the Dark AI objects, NPC's, Paths and Zones directly in the editor and then use the load routines to set all that up in an automagic way inside the application. The collisional objects were easy and are done with some simple tick box flagging functionality added to their property scripts. The NPC's a little more in depth , due mainly to the large amount of usable settings! lol. But I wanted to be able to place the model and then assign it some basic attributes to be read on load, this included what weapon to attach.
     
     



     
     



     
     



     
     
    So that was the basic NPC property script setup (wasn't that painful anyway). So using the test scene from Leadwerks 2.5x + DarkBasic's Dark AI [Part 2], and placing a few enemies and some friendly's to look after the player, this is the result of the current stage reached in the integration.
     
     




  24. Marleys Ghost
    To prevent non Leadwerks Engine specific/Related entries from my Blog being automatically published here via the Blog Feed, I have removed that functionality, and will simply add a new entry title and link here for all Leadwerks Engine specific/Related entries.
     
     
     
     
    Leadwerks Related Blog Entry.
    Leadwerks 3.2 Indie : Animated Character Workflow Test
  25. Marleys Ghost
    To prevent non Leadwerks Engine specific/Related entries from my Blog being automatically published here via the Blog Feed, I have removed that functionality, and will simply add a new entry title and link here for all Leadwerks Engine specific/Related entries.
     
     
     
    Leadwerks Related Blog Entry.
    Leadwerks 3.2 Indie : I hate waiting in for deliveries! [HD]
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