| Phil Hassey - game dev blog |  |
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"You can't buy awesomeness.
You're born that way." |
I spent most of my time working on improving the water flow algorithm. As it turns out, I couldn’t find any real improvements, so it’s not visually any different than last week. Code-wise, it’s maybe a bit better.
To say I got something done, I added in basic auto-tiling and a barely functioning editor.
Nothing too fancy, but hopefully I can add gameplay sometime soon. Will probably build up the editor more first.
-Phil
After a while I found re-working the water algorithm in C++ was taking too long. I recoded it in Lua with a much lower resolution and numbers over the water so I could see exactly what was happening.
I first reproduced the classic demo-scene effect. The problem with this effect is that it does not maintain volume at all, it is a rapid simulation of the waves only.
I found an algorithm that would preserve volume, however it was very slow and did not have a very wavy / water feel to it. I’m not even sure if I implemented it right.
I did a lot of experimenting with different ideas until I made one that did work! This effect is wavy and maintains volumes. It also settles down over time. Quite a few of my experiments would never result in a calm pool.
I then re-coded it into C++. Initially I was disappointed to see it not work at all, but I found by adjusting the parameters I was able to get the effect I want. With a larger area for the waves to wave in, they behaved much differently than in a small area.
I did a bit of optimization work on the algorithm and the rendering and it now works at a decent speed even for large bodies of water.
-Phil
I tried playing around with water effects. This first one is a pretty standard cellular water effect.
I was messing around with the settings and got this really fun effect.
The tough bit is getting the water to distribute in a way that no water is lost or gained. Haven’t quite figured out how to do that yet. The basic effect really gives “infinite” water and just models the waves.
-Phil
I put together a lighting engine this week. It took a lot of coding before I could really test anything.
My first test effort I just rendered things as boxes to ensure that I even had the correct data.
Next I did some ray casting so I could see if I got that working.
Lastly I rendered those rays using a triangle fan.
I found that the CPU was being maxed out pretty bad, it turns out my first step (showing the boxes) was using the most. So I turned those off and things ran at a nice clip.
-Phil
So I spent some time adding time rewind to a simple breakout style game. Once you miss a ball, it rewinds a few seconds.
The rewind worked, but I didn’t feel it really added much to the breakout experience. It would do just as well to just give the player more balls. While creating this prototype, I named the folder “breakwind” and only an hour or so later did I realize the double meaning. I’m not sure if that makes it the best or worst game name idea I’ve ever had.
-Phil
Part of the trick of time rewinding is to have as little state as possible. This fire effect is generated from just this:
I’ve been playing around with various prototypes over the past few months. I decided I might as well start sharing what I’m doing. Gifs are easy to make!
I made some simple time rewinding code the other day. I’m pretty pleased with how it came out. I updated it with fancier particles and a slightly different pattern and got a really neat effect:
Anyway, hope to make some more fun prototypes off this concept. We’ll see!
-Phil
