Game is starting to come together...

So finally the effect we want for the game is starting to come together. We've posted some screenshots on our website http://probe.tech-hobbyist.com along with a general description of the game in case people want to take a look. There isn't much more I can/need to add to the graphics engine at the present time, so from this point my work will mostly consist of hooking in new content and making sure any required scripts for new levels are working correctly. Still a lot of work, but with primary framework in place, this will be a lot easier.

Once our new 3D artist finishes up the models we need, we'll put a public playable demo - assuming I don't do something horrible to break the build before then ;).

War! What is it good for...cool effects of course :)

So I've got to say, this point is really a milestone for this game. This is the first time you can actually "play" the game. Now obviously not all the functionality is here yet - for example I am cheating in the above picture and giving myself the resources to create "infinitely" many robots for my side, but it does give me a chance to experience the game play. It's a lot faster paced then I originally thought it would be, but that's ok, it makes for an interesting game.

Anyway - what you are looking at is my robots and the enemy robots (both controlled by variants of the same AI algorithm) having it out. The enemy robots are programmed to learn that working together is good (they keep in clusters, and fight in groups), while my robots are less sophisticated - they only care about themselves. It's interesting to watch the two armies battle it out (esp. since the enemy respawns infinitely) and is going to provide me with a few hours of enjoyment before I get back to actually making the game :)

Bring the Rain...

This is just a test image of the game with the rain working. I'll need better textures for the rain and snow particles, but those are on the way!

Only you can prevent Forest Fires!

So, I've got the particle systems integrated into the game, including the ability to light things on fire. This means that weapons of awesomeness can now be integrated into the game. Also completed, although not seen here, is the rain/snow system. It needs to be integrated a little better into the graphics engine, but the snow/rain/sleet/hail now work as intended in game. Next I need to complete the sub-component that monitors the games obectives (so that it will actually be possible to you know, complete the missions) and then I'll start adding the actual enemies/friendlies into the game one by one. I still haven't got any sound or music, but I've arranged for a source of that, so assuming that works out - all should be well!

Hope everyone had a happy new year!

Reflection is cool.

So another week or so has gone by, and despite the perils of playing too much World Of Warcraft, and being sick for about a week or so, I still managed to get something done. It isn't much however - this week is almost a complete write off :P. I have however managed to implement the Projectile system - marking the first time I made use of reflection in game programming. Gotta say it makes life easier - esp. for the level scripting and garbage collection management.

So now that the game has a working projectile system I can start adding bits and pieces of the AI, as I am the only coder however, progress is going to seem chaotic until near the end of the line as I push out whatever bit of code I feel inspired for that day. Don't worry however - the final product should be seven kinds of cool :)

A pseudo-Christmas offering!

So here we have a scene which is basically a good representation of what the games interface will look like. Also, keeping with the season, I repainted the trees with a chrismas motif - merely for testing, but it amuses me :) . There is still a long way to go - even coding wise, from here however. I have Z-Fighting issue with the shadows and the terrain I need to sort out, the objects still need to change orientation to match the slope of the landscape, the AI needs to be implements... it is however getting there :). Anyway - this is the current state of the game, so merry christmas to any readers I may have and I hope to have some more details on line for you soon :)

Terrain and Physics!

So I finished the games terrain engine - you can see my crappy example terrain in the picture above. My 3D artist is going to help me rig up something a bit more natural looking, but for testing purposes, this will due. Also, although it's not clear, I have a physics simulator written into the game now. It's my own work - not a 3rd part plug in. It works out pretty well, using a divide and conquer approach I managed to push the number of fully simulated objects up to about 400 objects. Collision detection is the one place where I skimped, the type of game I am making doesn't require super advanced collisions, so I am sticking with the simplest way of doing it. If it turns out later that I need something more advanced, I can replace the detection method with something better.

Now to finish working on the games plot - more details on that next week I hope :).

Mount Boob

So I've got the graphics engine up and running. There are a few issues I need to iron out before it's completely ready, but for the moment it does what I need it to do. I've uploaded a simple view of a small mountain that I setup for your amusement - it's been affectionately named "Mount Boob". So, without further Ado, I present Mount Boob and Mount Boob at Night.

Graphics Engine Testing...

So I spent today testing all the primary shader algorithms for the game. The results weren't what I'd hoped for performance wise - I am going to have cut the number of individual lights allowed in the game, but I have a backup plan which might be just as cool - we shall see.

With the number of lights cut down to a reasonable level, everything behaves smoothly on the test cases, including my terrain system. Over the next few days I'll be testing the Water system, then I'll toss some screenshots of the tests (mostly cubes - sorry guys I'm not the artist, just the programmer) and get to work on that physics engine!

Still Working...

So the working name for this iteration is still "The Probe". This may change, but for the moment I still like the name so I think we will keep it. As for the game itself, I don't have any screen shots yet - unfortunately the graphics engine for the previous prototype was insufficient for the ideas in this one so I had to scrap. That's what I have been working on now. It's nearly ready for testing, (with the exception of the particles - but those will work the same way as they did in the previous game) I only have a few more features to finish up before I can test it. If all goes well, then the game will support a much larger playing field before which loads section on the fly, some very pretty water reflections, and nifty tricks of light, and the ability to switch from full view of day into literally pitch blackness where you won't see anything not illuminated by your flash light.

Once the graphics engine is completed and tested, I'll be working on the Physics engine - nothing fancy will be here, just a simple 3D rigid body physics simulation. More on that when the time comes :). Anyway, back to work for me!

Cake.

Ok, in the last couple of days I've pretty much used my copious amounts of free time (thank you day job for paying me ridiculous amounts of money to watch flashy lights all day :) ) to come up with a new game concept and a new design document. Thanks to the beauty that is Object Oriented programming I've even got a reasonable amount of code (all canabalized from the original games source code).

I'm not ready to say exactly what the game is just yet, but I do have another coder and an artist on board - so I'm hoping with more assistance I can put together a better overall product. We shall see.

Prototype Officially Submitted.

Alright, so I know I haven't posted up much game news lately, but to be honest there hasn't been all that much to report. However I can say that last night I sent officially sent in the current prototype to Microsoft (along with all the documentation that goes with it). Based on what I have been told, I should have some feed back on what they think of the prototype some time next week. So until then, I guess it's just a waiting game....

Prototype Complete...really.

Alright, so I've finished the last few outstanding issues that I had listed in my last post on prototypes progress. The Prototype can now be considered finished from a coding stand point, so all that remains is to work with Microsoft and see if I can't get this past into the next level and to whip my artist a bit in order to get the graphics looking a bit better. (i.e. not the ones I drew :) ).

Nearly Done...For Realz this time!

Ok - so the AI in the game is complete, and because of it I've made a few minor changes to the game play in order to make everything all the more interesting :). Now there are only a few more components I'd like to have in the Prototype before I really can't add anything else to it except better art without a redesign of the game. (Multi-player just isn't feasible the way the code is currently arranged - I have ideas for fixing this - but they will not be in the Prototype).

So - here is the list:

(1) Fix the bugs in the games help system.

(2) Add the difficulty settings and connect them to the Games AI.

(3) Setup the Opening "CutScene" that tells the story of the game.

(4) ????

(5) Profit !!!

After that, I'll drag it around to my happy go lucky play testers and see what M$'s feedback is.

As always, wish me luck.

Bigger and Badder AI :)

So I just finished working out the main algorithm that will control the games AI behaviour ( this is from the perspective that any new creature I add to the game will use a variation of this algorithm in one form or another ). In order to get the group level behaviour I will need, I worked a way to use a SOM in real time. Basically the creatures will self-organize their overall behavior based on the events they are fed in the game (events having some measure of good or bad of course) - this will produce a final output to which I'll add a little noise in order to get an organized Mob like effect :).

The only creatures this won't work for are the ones that will be working alone - however those ones are special, not fully fleshed out yet, and something you'll have to wait for the full game to see :).

Short update..

Not to worry, I am not dead - however I have put most of my effort this week into getting the hang of my new and 200x more awesome day/night job then I have for working on the game. Now that I've had a couple of days off I can begin polishing the prototype (and it stills needs polish in my opinion). I won't have much new stuff to show off for a while however, as I am working on a larger feature I've just thought up, reworking the story, and keeping tabs on my artist in regards to getting some concrete concept art together. Most of the actual coding is done however - at least for the prototype. Concept art should be availlable next week, which I may or may not show off - depends on what gets done and of course the opinion of my artist.

New Models and "Smarter" AI.

Alright - so two new updates my every so increasingly awesome prototype. First - new models, I wanted to cut down on the triangle count and those aliens were just taking up way more triangles then they justified. Second - although you can't see it, I've finished the update on the aliens AI. It's not exactly what I described trying yesterday, rather a hodge podge of a steering algorithm and the skewed probability heuristic I mentioned. It meets all the requirements and gets results I am happy with for the Aliens behavior. Plus, as an added bonus - I now have a simple way of adjusting the games difficulty level by simply adjusting the parameters that control the AI :).

I'm not exactly sure what else I can add to the prototype, the code base doesn't really extend nicely to all too many more of the full games features (since it was going to have to be redesigned for the XBox anyway) so it's hard to say what to add next. I will however keep my possible non-existent readers posted as I clean up the rough edges for the Concept Submission stage.

On Zombies Swarms...

Todays six million dollar question is: How do we model a crowd of Zombies marching towards a target? Our first consideration should be that our Zombies have no brains - so we can't just shove some simple minded implementation of the A* algorithm and expect to come out on top - last I checked brainless creatures don't come equipped with automated GPS - my former employer not withstanding :) .

So how am I going to solve this latest problem? My best candidate for a solution is a kind of random walk - except in this random walk the probability of moving in a given direction is supplied by heuristic. This heuristic should be such that if we take the HIGHEST probability and set it to one and all other to zero that our algorithm will provide the same path as the A* algorithm. Luckily - my game map has no obstructions (yet) - so creating such a Heuristic is easy - simply divide up the probabilty amongst the different directions. As an added touch (inspired by a response I got from XNA's forums) - when the Zombie reaches some fuzzy threshold switch from the random walk heuristic to the A* itself.

I'll be posting on how good the results of this approach are once I get them implemented into the game.

More Improvements...

Alright - although this looks like a major change, it really isn't. All I've done here is merged Microsofts billboard pipeline (changed very slightly to suit my needs ) with a new terrain model to add grass to the game. It doesn't look half bad, but I'd like to come up with ways of improving how it looks. That blue sparkly thing in the middle is the star trek like shield static I was talking about last post. I think it looks pretty good, although it's possible that the static could use a little toning down. Now that I have an artist one board, I'd like to find a way to replace those "MSN" dudes with something more along the lines of the Robo-Zombies they are supposed to be.

I'm really Bad at this Lockdown concept :)

So I wont show any shiny pictures of here today, but I went ahead and made yet another change to the prototype. This time I added cool shader to replace the hack job I was using for the games shield effect. Now that I've got the hang of this whole pixel/vertex shader thing - I can start to make adjustments to games overall look in a more substantial way - graphically, the quality of the prototype is only going to go up :).