Side Tracked

Been rather side tracked from coding at the moment, I re-subbed to WoW to have a look at the new content and mess around leveling some of my alt's. However I got talked into joining a raiding guild and have spent the last week doing raids in the evening and farming gold,gear and pots for the raids during the day. Was not my initial plan for my return to WoW but the guild I have joined has a great bunch of people who have taken me on every raid so far and it just wouldnt seem right not to put some effort into being geared, buffed and potted at the raids. Currently I have done most of the fights as DPS tho my role in the guild will be foremost as a Tank, which I got to do abit of in 25man last night as we attempted one of the bosses on hardmode, wasnt the first time I have tanked since returning but was the first time in a 25man raid and my gear is mostly from Naxx 10man, so I am not best geared for 25man Uldar, but since I wasnt on a main boss it seemed to go fine and we made some good progress and worked out how we can do the fight, Now we just need people to stay alive :)

What to code?

Well I still haven't settled on something or some effects to code for an intro or demo, while I have made several little tests of new things that I have learned they still have a more oldskool feel to them. Zawran has been having similar problems but from a test piece of code he made and an idea he was considering we have fleshed out a possible use were the initial effect he was working on will become part of the presentation of the other effects. Hopefully he will be able to pull it off, between us I am sure it will happen. Now I just need to find a design/concept that I can do, I might have to spend some time looking over some older scene stuff to get some inspiration. If I cant find a project I will likely end up doing another little cracktro tribute just to keep me coding.

VBO's But still no projects

Decided to have a crack at using VBO's rather than the older displaylists, since the extension code Zawran had supplied had the needed extensions for opengl defined, I set about creating a simple test using a cube for the data. I got it up and running fairly quickly and then re-coded a recent cube field effect to use it over the older displaylist code, while I didn't get massive jump in fps (about 5-10) I can see it being more useful for more complex objects as the data wont be pushed from system ram to vid ram all the time. With the basic code working I decided to wrap the whole VBO system up in a bmax type, I can basically create an instance of the type, add vertex,normal and tex coord data to it, then call a method to create the VBO's. Then when I need to use the object I have 3 methods, one call to bind the VBO, one to draw the VBO and finally one to unbind the VBO. The layout of the type follows the same idea as the FBO code which will make the use similar and keeps things simple. I also added a quick method to create a cube VBO since its a fairly common shape and easy to define to test the type's use. Still haven't settled on a project idea yet but at least the base code is looking more useful with each experiment.

On a positive note my books have arrived so now I can see what else I can learn about, I am sure there are commands and features of opengl that I haven't even scratched the surface of, not including shaders, which I also have the book for.

FBO's and what to code

Well I have had time to mess around with the FBO's and made a couple tests with render2texture effects and I have some idea how some effects are done. The downside is still a lack of a general idea to bring all the recent effect experiments together as a demo or intro.

Since most of my opengl knowledge comes from tutorials found on the internet, like for example Nehe's, its abit out of date in some areas and finding decent info can take some hunting about, So I decided to get myself the new opengl library which consists of the "red book" and the "orange book". The "red book" is the programming guide to opengl, it will be nice to have a full reference and it will be covering the newer versions which ditch alot of the fixed function pipeline I have been using. The "orange book" is on shaders (GLSL) and since thats an area I am interested in learning more on as well it will hopefully prove useful.

Shaders Without GLEW Part 2

Well my test exe worked fine for Zawran so I explained what I had found and he tried it out with his framebuffer (fbo) code and that also worked. He sent me a nice piece of code with all the fbo,vbo with constants and setup code, which will be useful and save me hunting down the function prototypes. He also sent me code for his FBO type in bmax which deals with the creation of an fbo, with code to bind and unbind it and delete it, the setup means it can be used for effects like render2texture. It will save me some coding and should mean I can get some r2t effects going fairly quickly.

Shaders Without GLEW

After several failed attempts to get shaders working in my tiny opengl framework for blitzmax without using the glew module, I have had some success. At first the code would crash in debug and release mode but give no reason, after a few attempts a week or so ago I gave up.

I returned to the code today after Zawran had be trying to get FBO's working in the framework and encountering the same type of errors as me. After spending alot of time trying to work out what exactly glew does with its pointers from wglprocaddress I came to the conclusion that I was doing that part right so it had to be something else, a trip to the bmax forums and hunting for anything useful I final found something that made me thing about how the extern command works, this lead me to a final piece of information that hopefully has solved the issues.

I have emailed a test exe to Zawran since he runs an Nvidia card and I run an ATI, hopefully if it works for him as well I may have finally cracked it and we can add any needed extensions. The interesting thing is the test exe including the shader code came out when compressed with kkrunchy at a mere 25kb, the same thing using the glew module is 50kb without the shaders included in the exe, a nice bit of space saving. Maybe we can make a 64kb demo with bmax yet!

1K Intro Shaders

I have been looking at how 1k demos are done using shaders and after making a couple of very simple looking screens I have now made something that looks abit more interesting and I am wondering if I can make it look like an RGB plasma effect. I haven't done any shader coding before so my efforts are rather random in there results as I try out things and hunt around on the web for information on them.

Here's a little screen of what my shader currently looks like, it does change but only because I am spinning the quad I render, but my next attempt will hopefully not need to do that.

C OpenGL Framework

I have made a C framework to allow me to code some opengl based demos, now I just have to think of something to code as far as effects are concerned. At the moment the only thing I have made with it is a test conversion of a Blitzmax effect based on the juggler from the RSI megademo. My version uses sphere's and sits on a reflective checkboard.

Here's a screenshotSince most of the stuff I have coded before has been oldskool style effects I am looking to move forward alittle and try something newer.

So it Begins

Well here's my blog, never had one before, not sure how often I will post but we will see.

Who am I, I am Joncom2000 of the demo group The Tin Dragons, this blog will likely contain random ramblings about coding, demo effects, opengl and probably stuff about games and mmo's.

Not that anyone will ever read it :P