Doodle Post
Been messing around with Spine a little bit. Probably going to use it for some of the bigger art in my next game if I can get into a good groove with it.
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Been messing around with Spine a little bit. Probably going to use it for some of the bigger art in my next game if I can get into a good groove with it.
Dev Log: Game Loops
I pretty much spent the whole day learning that certain video cards, or hardware configurations, seem to really hate rendering large textures.
I've been messing around with some early versions of the background for my new game. I'm composing it from a number of images -- there's the ground, a couple of gradients for water and haze, and a couple of cloud layers. All of my desktop machines seem to have no issue running this (the render time is 1 to 2 ms) but my laptop seems to get very upset about this with a render time of nearly 15ms.
I also discovered that using the SetFramerateLimit() function in SFML is bad news, at least in C# land. I sent my current build to a friend who ran it on his Macbook (running parallels to boot into Windows) and it ran at about 30 frames per second (short of the desired 60.) His Macbook has no problem playing any other Windows games, so this was a bit odd. After messing around in the game for about 5 minutes the framerate jumped to 60 for no reason that we could see. Super weird.
After these weird results I went back to my code and ripped out the SetFramerateLimit() in favor for my own timing code that would limit the framerate. Not only does this seem to just work better than SetFramerateLimit(), but it also fixed the framerate on my friend's Macbook.
Eventually I will be releasing the full source of my framework for people to laugh at, or possibly use and contribute to. I haven't yet reached the point where I think I can do that comfortably, but I would imagine that sometime this month I'll be ready to show it off. It's very similar to Flashpunk, and is basically a big mash up of a lot of the engines and frameworks I've seen or used. In the mean time, you can also check out #Punk by Jacob Albano which is more of a faithful port of Flashpunk to C# using SFML as the core.
I've been messing around with some early versions of the background for my new game. I'm composing it from a number of images -- there's the ground, a couple of gradients for water and haze, and a couple of cloud layers. All of my desktop machines seem to have no issue running this (the render time is 1 to 2 ms) but my laptop seems to get very upset about this with a render time of nearly 15ms.
I also discovered that using the SetFramerateLimit() function in SFML is bad news, at least in C# land. I sent my current build to a friend who ran it on his Macbook (running parallels to boot into Windows) and it ran at about 30 frames per second (short of the desired 60.) His Macbook has no problem playing any other Windows games, so this was a bit odd. After messing around in the game for about 5 minutes the framerate jumped to 60 for no reason that we could see. Super weird.
After these weird results I went back to my code and ripped out the SetFramerateLimit() in favor for my own timing code that would limit the framerate. Not only does this seem to just work better than SetFramerateLimit(), but it also fixed the framerate on my friend's Macbook.
Eventually I will be releasing the full source of my framework for people to laugh at, or possibly use and contribute to. I haven't yet reached the point where I think I can do that comfortably, but I would imagine that sometime this month I'll be ready to show it off. It's very similar to Flashpunk, and is basically a big mash up of a lot of the engines and frameworks I've seen or used. In the mean time, you can also check out #Punk by Jacob Albano which is more of a faithful port of Flashpunk to C# using SFML as the core.
Screenshot Saturday: Some Graphics
Starting to test out some graphics in my engine! I know this looks super hideous right now, but I'm starting to figure out the best pipeline for putting art into the game. I'm used to the old way of Flash where I could just embed everything into my SWF and it would just be one neat file... with C# this doesn't seem to be the best practice. I'm thinking about at least zipping up all my assets for distribution builds, but right now I have no idea how to do that.
So about a half hour later I got my Gradient graphics class working with parallax and alpha blending, so I was able to add the all important haze layers! This makes the background way less jarring. This is super-temporary art, but it still helps to polish it up some.
Hopefully this starts to shape up into a game soon!
TIGJam 5 Aftermath
TIGJam came and went before I could even process what was happening, and overall it was an awesome event to attend (again!) It's great to be able to visit and see a lot of awesome people that live very far away from me, but it's also tough to really get into the jam groove when sometimes I just want to socialize with the awesome people surrounding me.
The first night we got to play some Magic The Gathering with the fully customized "Indie Cube" set. I think the full spoiler of the Indie Cube will be going up soon, but Edmund and George are still working on fine tuning a lot of the cards so it might be awhile still.
As far as work goes, I was able to get a surprising amount of work done on my C# SFML framework, but unfortunately all I have to show still are boxes. I was doing a lot of work under the hood that will make the framework easier for me to use, and also make it easier to use in game jam scenarios. I've been implementing a lot of things from my old AS3 framework and trying to convert them this new fangled world of not being able to just craft bitmaps for all of my needs. RenderTextures seem maybe like a good substitute, but they seem waaay more intense than just making bitmapdata (my monster video card I think can only handle up to 16 render textures at the same time.) Check out my boxes!
I ate a lot of awesome and gross food over the course of the jam as well. Ranging from fancy pizza, indian food, sushi, and... Burger King. I haven't eaten Burger King is quite some time and now I remembered why. I also got to head up to San Francisco for a day to hang out with some cool indie developers which felt totally surreal since I've only ever been in San Francisco during GDC. While there I of course went to Ryoko's to get God Tier sushi! (I ate like 6 rolls myself.)
Now I am back home in Tempe trying to figure out what the next step of my next game is. Guess I'll just keep coding stuff for now! Oh and here are some neat pictures from my flight back to Phoenix. There also seems to be an eyelash or something stuck in my camera lens now.
The first night we got to play some Magic The Gathering with the fully customized "Indie Cube" set. I think the full spoiler of the Indie Cube will be going up soon, but Edmund and George are still working on fine tuning a lot of the cards so it might be awhile still.
As far as work goes, I was able to get a surprising amount of work done on my C# SFML framework, but unfortunately all I have to show still are boxes. I was doing a lot of work under the hood that will make the framework easier for me to use, and also make it easier to use in game jam scenarios. I've been implementing a lot of things from my old AS3 framework and trying to convert them this new fangled world of not being able to just craft bitmaps for all of my needs. RenderTextures seem maybe like a good substitute, but they seem waaay more intense than just making bitmapdata (my monster video card I think can only handle up to 16 render textures at the same time.) Check out my boxes!
I ate a lot of awesome and gross food over the course of the jam as well. Ranging from fancy pizza, indian food, sushi, and... Burger King. I haven't eaten Burger King is quite some time and now I remembered why. I also got to head up to San Francisco for a day to hang out with some cool indie developers which felt totally surreal since I've only ever been in San Francisco during GDC. While there I of course went to Ryoko's to get God Tier sushi! (I ate like 6 rolls myself.)
Now I am back home in Tempe trying to figure out what the next step of my next game is. Guess I'll just keep coding stuff for now! Oh and here are some neat pictures from my flight back to Phoenix. There also seems to be an eyelash or something stuck in my camera lens now.
Doodle Post
Actual physical drawings from my doodle book from the flight back to Phoenix after TIGJam 5.
Screenshot Saturday: Framework Tricks!
So far at TIGJam I'm just working on my framework in order to get into the new version of Gaiadi soon. I added some new tools to my tilemap class, and also added a gradient and grid image class to quickly get those rolling in prototypes.
On to Day 3 to TIGJam!
