Sunday, February 24, 2013

Summary

Man, I feel like I'm scattered all over the place trying to get ready for this month's update! Let's see...

One of the major graphical things that I did today was change the way that stars work. Previously, they were rendered as a big plane ('billboard'), which is a common trick for things that are far away. However, this was not a great choice for stars. Today I changed it so that they are actually "baked" into the background texture (the one with nebulae and such). Not only is the result more beautiful, but it also allows me to unify my shading calculations - since the central star is baked into the background texture (a modified version of which is used to calculate lighting), I needn't perform any extra work to account for lighting from the star! Which means less code in the surface shaders It also means that binary star systems, for example, could be easily supported without any additional work.

The ship viewer/cargo/power distribution interface is looking better all the time! It's by no means a polished gem (well, nothing really is, at this point), but I'm pleased with how it's coming along.

I spent a lot of time today doing stuff that I can't talk about yet, but will hopefully be revealed in the update. But I won't talk just yet in case I have to wait until next month

Well, I honestly feel like anything else that I say is not going to be very interesting...my mind is in a million places right now, and the only way to bring it back to sanity is to get back to work. Hope you all don't mind getting a little ripped off on this dev log You won't be ripped off on the update video!

Hour Tally

Coding: 4.95
Internet: 2.97
Testing: 3.19
Total Logged Time: 11.10

Monday, February 25, 2013

Summary

I'm starting to get excited, I think you guys are going to like some of the stuff that I have to show for this month! Or at least I hope so! Sure, there's still not much gameplay yet...but the foundation is coming along really well. Last month I pretty much solidified the graphics. This month, I would say that I've solidified the interface (I mean, the underlying system). I do wish that I had gotten around to more gameplay this month, but one must work in the order that is most conducive to efficiency, and both graphics and interface are necessary to start building and testing gameplay in a thorough way.

So, speaking of interfaces, I poured many hours today into the ship viewer. There are a lot of things that I'm still unsure about, so the design is rough, but hopefully you all will have some helpful feedback when you see it in the video. The point is that it works! I also started experimenting with a sidebar/topbar today, which will be a fast way for you to access all of the various interfaces in the game. I can't decide whether I like the bar better on the side of the screen or the top...at the moment, I'm thinking top, but it's hard to say. Yet another thing I'll let you guys give me feedback on when you see it

Many more hours were poured into the secret sauce to which I alluded yesterday, and I can say with high confidence that it will make an appearance in the video, at least to some extent! So I'll just go ahead and tell you: I've been spending a lot of time with sound effects and integrating sound effects into the engine lately Although everything is still very preliminary, I've already contracted out a few good sounds, and I'll demonstrate them and introduce the sound artist in the update.

So, taking a step back - we've got sound, music, and interfaces...I think it's time we can say that LT is more than just a graphics tech demo? I mean, I know it's not a full-blown game yet...kinda need compelling gameplay for that. But I think we're past the tech demo stage! Hopefully we will be entering the "fledgling game" stage within the next two months

Hour Tally

Coding: 6.01
Composing: 0.81
Internet: 3.38
Testing: 2.56
Total Logged Time: 12.76

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Summary

What an intense day!!! It was just a full day of steamrolling through a massive list of items that needed to be done to make the game presentable again.

No time to tie all of these together into an eloquent story today, so I'll just toss out some of the accomplishments:

• Rewrote power distribution and integrated into the new interface. Yay for being able to control power again!
• Improved cargo interface so that clicking individual items causes them to expand and display detailed information. I think this is a pretty cool way of handling inventory information, hope you like it!
• Integrated command interface with top bar
• Integrated beam weapon sounds into the game
• Integrated shield hit sounds
• Rewrote action menus using the new interface, now the command interface is actually capable of issuing commands again..!
• Added glowing effect to missile heads - wow, huge improvement in visual appeal!!! I love missiles so much, and this only makes them more fun to fire
• Added muzzle flash effect - another huge improvement to the visual appeal of firing weapons! Why didn't I do this earler
• Improved UI drop shadows to be nice and rounded with exponential falloff. If there's one thing I've learned about aesthetics, it's that the human eye loves exponential falloff!

Between the new muzzle flash effects and the new sound effects, firing a weapon has never felt so darn pleasing But I can tell you right now, if and when I do buy a combat ship, it's going to be a missile boat.

Only 12 more hours or so until I need to get to work on recording the video...so it's going to be an intense crunch to tie up all the loose ends! Wish me luck! See you on the other side! Thank you! You're welcome! I miss you!!?!?

Hour Tally

Coding: 6.81
Composing: 0.17
Internet: 3.95
Testing: 2.61
Total Logged Time: 13.53

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Summary

Another day of pure insanity, culminating in what I think is a great monthly video! I really hope you all will like it, personally, I think it is much more exciting than last month's, but you'll have to be the judge of that.

Well, I wish I could remember everything that I did today. When you see the hours you'll understand why I can't. Obviously, a major chunk of the day went to recording/overdubbing the video, along with writing the KS update (which I am still working on now). But, as I recall, there were quite a few other interesting things to happen as well!

I've been unhappy with the spatialized audio for a while. I'm not sure why, but irrKlang really wasn't making the 3D audio sound good. Perhaps I had it tuned incorrectly (that's probably the case), but I really didn't want to spend the time to figure out the quirks of the engine, so I decided to go ahead and write the spatialization myself. I love the idea of having control over the 3D audio mechanism, and I also love the idea of learning how it works, so I went ahead and did some reading and implemented it! Turns out 3D spatialization is extremely easy. You have two output parameters, pan and volume. All you have to do to spatialize a sound is compute the correct pan and volume settings for the sound based on its location! Really, there's nothing else to it. Pan is super easy, it's just the dot product of the normalized unit direction pointing from the "ear" to the sound, with the "right" frame vector of the ear. I.e., the alignment of the ear with respect to the right/left axis of the ear. Intuitively, that's exactly what pan means! Volume is slightly more complex but it's also the fun part. And, hey, wouldn't you know it, our friend Mr. Exponential Falloff strikes yet again

After writing the new 3D audio stuff, the sounds seem significantly better to me, and I feel more in control, since I can specify any kind of falloff formula that I want Makes me very happy.

I guess that's the only big, coherent thing that I can remember, so I'll leave it there and continue working on the KS update, which you can expect, as usual, to come around midday tomorrow. Yay! I must say, I'm very excited for my day off, and am planning on logging some very serious Morrowind time

Hour Tally

Business: 0.56
Coding: 8.52
Composing: 0.63
Internet: 3.98
Testing: 2.54
Total Logged Time: 16.22

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Summary

February came and went (far too quickly for my liking), and it looks like people are pretty happy with the developments! I'm happy as well, but March is going to need to be at least twice as productive if this prototype is going to happen how and when it should. Honestly, I think it's feasible - I've been on a pretty good productivity streak toward the end of February, and have learned a few things about my daily schedule/sleep patterns to help push the productivity of each day even higher...with this knowledge in hand, I think we can expect to see an awesome March. I'm hopeful

Even though I said it was my break day, I'm still going to log the hours that I spent this morning/afternoon, because I worked through the morning to prepare the video and update. So my "off day," in reality, consists of half of today and half of tomorrow. So far it's been great, and I'm looking forward to the other half of it this morning...and then getting back to work tonight!

If you care to know, I'm embarking on the main quest in Morrowind right now, because I've never actually done it! All these years, I would pretty much say that Morrowind has been my favorite game...and yet I've never actually done the storyline. So I'm going to see what this whole Nerevarine Prophecy is all about Might have to bust out some Freelancer as well, if I have time left (although in FL I have completed the storyline many times...probably the only game about which I can say that )

When I get back to work tonight, my first order of business is going to be laying out the month's work schedule in as harsh of detail as I can possibly muster. The more concrete my plans, the more concrete will be the results.

Thanks for all your kind comments on the update today, and, as always, hit that suggestion forum (after using the search function) with any inspirations that strike you!

Hour Tally

Coding: 1.01
Composing: 0.01
Internet: 8.08
Testing: 0.02
Total Logged Time: 9.11

Friday, March 1, 2013

Summary

Alright, it's March, which means it's time to get even more serious than before. I feel like I said the same thing at the beginning of February...but really, March needs to make February look pathetic. So. To that end, I've begun drawing up plans for my own personal "March Madness," which will be completely unrelated to any similarly-named sporting events.

Lots of thinking time today. I'm really attempting to wrap my brain as snugly as I can around the prototype, feeling it out and determining what it really is. I know, kind of strange, you're probably like.. "It's a combat prototype, Josh..." yes, yes, but what IS it? I think I've answered that question in a pretty thorough way today. If it all sounds a bit vague, well, unfortunately March is probably going to be vague at times, because I don't want to give away every detail of what I'm doing for the prototype! No fun or surprise in that

Between the first half of my day still being a break (which was great, btw, although I didn't manage to finish Morrowind...maybe next month ) and the extensive mapping-out-the-future work, not a lot of coding happened today. But, honestly, I'm OK with that. In order to make the prototype happen, I'm going to need to be even more careful in March about thinking before touching the keyboard. There is no time for mistakes that will end up costing days of re-writing time (*cough* interface *cough*). There is no time for dumb coding!

And now, my friends, I must charge into the depths of March with caffeine in my flask, deep thought lining my quiver, and the cold steel of C++ extending from my hand.

Hour Tally

Coding: 2.82
Internet: 4.28
Testing: 0.27
Thinking: 2.71
Total Logged Time: 10.09

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Summary

Ah, man, when I looked at the last entry, which was mistakenly marked "March 2," then put "March 3" on this, I was very scared....to see that March was already 10% gone...but it turns out that it's only 6.5% gone! Really hope we can keep it from slipping by!

I'm trying to keep up the pace that developed toward the tail end of last month, and even amplify that a bit...today, at least, I've succeeded! If I can keep up this pace, I think good things will be in store for March. Still, even though I got a lot done today, it's not quite as much as I wanted.

I started off the day with upgrading icons a bit - not the actual visuals of them, but the implementation. I mentioned previously that icons are defined in a very similar way to meshes - using scalar fields. Previously, I used special-cased fields for icon, which were 2D versions, as opposed to the 3D fields that meshes use. But today I deleted all of this "special case" code and replaced it with the same system that meshes use. Wow, this is really a very clean system...what other game do you know of that uses the exact same internal representation for models and icons? An icon in the LT engine is now considered to be a 2D slice of a 3D scalar field. There are loads of advantages to this. Interestingly, it creates a duality between icons and meshes that can do some potentially amazing things. Sure, we could actually render an icon in 3D now, and visualize it as a 3D object. Even more interesting, however, is that we can go in the reverse direction, and visualize a mesh as an icon! This means that we have just instantly gained icons for every object in the game! Of course, that's only in theory - but does it work in practice? Turns out it does! Tested it today, creating icons out of the fighter & cap ship meshes that you saw in the demo. They look awesome! You can definitely tell that they correspond to their respective ships. So that's going to be a very cool piece of functionality to exploit, and it means we can have "real" icons for ships, not just abstract representations!

I started getting more serious about missions today. I've improved on the widget that displays the current mission and objectives, and I've also improved on how missions are defined. I've added a HUD marker that shows where the mission's "target" is (i.e., the ship you are supposed to destroy, or the object you're supposed to goto, etc.) Finally, I've created a "Job Board" component that can store and visualize a listing of available missions. This will be used on stations and planet locations that offer missions. There's still a lot to do with respect to missions - I need a system for formally accepting missions, recognizing success/failure, and acquiring the reward upon success. These should all be fairly straightforward, since I've already laid out exactly how all of these things integrate with the AI system, but implementation will take time. I'm definitely looking forward to doing my first mission in LT! Although it will probably be something very stupid, like "fly to that asteroid."

Finally, I spent loads of time on the internet today dealing with various sound-artist related things. These things ranged from sad and disappointing to incredibly promising / exciting...so, as vague as that is, there may be some very cool stuff on the horizon for LT audio But we'll see. Can't get my hopes too high yet..!

So far March is going very well I'd say...let's keep up the momentum!

Hour Tally

Coding: 8.56
Composing: 0.08
Internet: 4.60
Testing: 1.48
Total Logged Time: 14.71

Week Summary

General Sentiment

Definitely another hyper-productive week! Even with my day of rest, I still managed to clock in almost 90 hours of work for the second week in a row, so I'm pleased about that. More importantly, however, I got a lot of stuff done. As usual, a few days before the update video, I started to get worried about not having much to show...but when recording it, I realized that I did, indeed, have quite a good bit!

Every day, LT is feeling more and more like a game to me. With the new interface and audio, it's getting hard to stop myself from diving in and playing for a while each time I test. I'm even more excited now to build and play this game than I was when I started the KS!!!

PS ~ I think I have a problem with smileys Has anyone noticed how many I use in my logs??? Very unprofessional, I know, sorry

Major Accomplishments

• Greatly improved ship viewer / cargo / power distribution interface
• Implemented sound effects for pulse / beam / missile weapons, shield effects, and a few UI actions
• Implemented the top bar
• Improved missile visuals
• Improved/unified the implementation of icons (scalar fields!!)
• Replaced irrKlang's 3D sound implementation with custom
• Achieved rank of "Master Thief" and completed roughly 50% of the main quest in Morrowind...
• Successful second development update video!

Combined Hour Tally

Business: 0.56
Coding: 38.67
Composing: 1.73
Internet: 31.23
Testing: 12.65
Thinking: 2.71
Total Logged Time: 87.56