Joncom2000 Random Ramblings

Wireframe Challenge

2011-05-27T20:29:00.004+01:00

Not had much time to work on this challenge, so my entry isnt going to be what I wanted and probably not much of a demo, but I did atleast model something in blender for it and learnt abit about texture mapping at the same time.

Here's a small pic of the ship styled on Tron.

Object Loading, Multi Texturing

2011-05-05T22:32:00.003+01:00

Well I have finally got .obj model loading going for single mesh objects in my opengl engine, works with normals and textures, so I took a look at adding multi texturing to the engine, useful for lots of things like adding a second texture over a terrain to add extra detail. It appears to be working but I am not all that happy with it at the moment, I have little control on the way the textures are combined so I need to add more into that side of things, which then means I can look to setup different modes for how they work with each other, but I need to also figure out how the parameters need to be set as my first hard coded tests did not seem to yield all that useful a result.
Still it's a step in the right direction and hopefully I can give the system more options for how the textures tile and blend.

WoT no game!

2011-05-02T21:53:00.005+01:00

Well no there is not any game yet. I got side tracked and ended up making some changes to my gl framework in bmax and decided I should actually use it for something, so I made a small cracktro style intro and put it up on the DBF forum so I could get some feedback, seems my code works well on various setups so thats good to hear.

Quick Piccy

I have also been messing about with my old opengl engine code, it now runs on top of the tiny gl framework and I spent some time improving it abit. It can now load .obj models exported from blender as long as I set a couple export options, it expects UV's and Normals and uses them both so I need to export as a single mesh with normals, uv's and triangulate turned on but if i do that I can load and display the meshs fine, I even seem to have got hard edges working to a good extent. Working on Multi Texturing, going for 2 layers only at this time, cant see me needing more and by that time I will likely be using shaders.

So now I need to start messing about with blender and see if I can make some useful models, to that end I have been watching some tutorials and messing about with some of the features. Made a very simple mini hexscape thing and made a rather nice render, so here it is.

DBF are currently running a demo coding challenge, with a theme of wireframe, will see if I can come up with something for that before the deadline. Hopefully something cool as well.

Going Retro

2011-04-14T18:28:00.005+01:00

Having gone over lots of my old code and effects looking for a project to work on and get finished, I struggled to find anything I felt inspired to code. So after spending more time going over my old code archives, I came to the games I wrote back in 2002/3 and while some were pretty good, others were never finished. The code for almost all of them is by my current standard very poor, there's no OOP at all but then the language they were in didn't support it, but there's no proper structure, no functions its all a mess of gosubs which while they work are not very well thought out at all. At the time I hadn't long come back to coding from a long gap stretching back to the Amiga days, so I can forgive the bad code style a bit. Anyway to get to the point, I have decided to recode some of the games in bmax taking advantage of a lot of the new things I have learned over the years and hopefully I can create so cool retro inspired games worth playing.

I still plan to put some of my recent opengl experiments to use in a demo related effort but it can take a backseat while I attempt to get a game done first.

Time to Code again

2011-04-02T12:17:00.004+01:00

Well I have finally cancelled my WoW account, havent actually been playing for well over a month due to RL issues but was totally bored of all the content having killed 99% of it with in the first few weeks of the expansion. Dont know at this time if I will ever go back.

So now I have lots of free time I think its about time I got back into coding and to start with I think I shall finish learning OpenGL, move onto GLSL shaders and maybe take another look at Directx stuff once I have one that.

Will continue most of my coding in bmax since its a great little language, can always use c/c++ if I feel the need but for most things bmax is just nicer for me to tinker about in.

Going to try and get a little demo scene style intro coded, been a while since anything came out of the TTD stable since myself and zawran been busy with other stuff. Probably do some cheap retro thing since I like retro effects :P

A New Year

2011-01-08T19:46:00.002Z

Well its a new year, a new WoW expansion and I already have 4 max level characters, been raiding for a few weeks and killed half the raid bosses. Dont think its going to hold my interest everyday anymore so I guess I will be trying out some more F2P mmorpgs.

On the coding and OpenGL front I have done nothing for months and months, tho I still check the forums and look what everyone else is up to.

Found a new interest in reading comic's and graphic novels, always read the odd one here and there but both DC and Marvel were hard to find were I live so I have been buying there black & white reprint collections of 60's/70's stuff. Enjoying it alot, wish I had full color versions but no way I could afford that, these collections are over 500pages worht for very little money.

More F2P MMO's and God Of War 3

2010-06-09T20:51:00.002+01:00

Have played a few more free2play mmo's and overall they have mostly been good and enjoyable but the last week I have spent more time playing God of War 3 which I finished and enjoyed alot and I also decided it would be a good time to finish the second game on PS2 since i was near the end anyway. There great games and I hope to see more from the developers along these lines, maybe set in some other mythical era or age :)

Free2Play MMO's

2010-05-12T10:00:00.002+01:00

While I am still playing WoW in the evenings for raiding, (7 bosses down on 25man heroic ICC), I find that I dont feel like playing it during the day leveling or grinding on my alts. While looking over forum posts to do with 3d modelling I came across shots and a video link for a game called Allods Online, after some research I downloaded it and gave it a go and found it to be pretty decent, good graphics and nice class design, but then a patch hit that for awhile made the game unstable so while I waited for a fix I started to look at what other f2p mmo's are out there. As it happens there are hundreds of them, from well known ones like Runes of magic and silkroad, to lesser known ones.

I have given a few a go, Runes of magic is ok but I wanted something alittle less wow like, enter Jade Dynasty, an oriental styled mmo with very impressive graphics for a free game and a nice clean interface design. Have found myself playing this a fair few hours and while I have basicly been soloing everything its felt fresh and new. Will be looking at more of these free2play games in the future as it seems some of them are very enjoyable even if you never go near there cash shops.

More Experiments in Blender

2010-04-22T13:49:00.003+01:00

Been having some more fun with blender, made a sort of demon head sculpt then started to mess around with the materials and created this render, makes my basic model look pretty cool.

For a free application its a very powerful tool, there's far more to learn such as textures and lighting but its fun to mess about with and see what i can do.

Blender

2010-04-14T13:38:00.004+01:00

Having been looking for a 3d modelling software and trying a few out, I decided to give blender a go since there working on a new version, while the 2.5 release is currently alpha 2 it seems abit unstable, so I installed the older 2.49 release. The interface is not like anything I have used before but after some hunting around for information and a few tweaks to get myself a quad view going, i have had a fw quick goes at making something. Havent yet worked out all the polygon modelling side but I already like the multi-res mesh sculpting mode.

Here's a shot of my interface and a quick sculpt test.

Hopefully given a bit of time I can learn to make more interesting stuff, but for a free application its fun to mess around with.

March already !!!

2010-03-22T10:55:00.004Z

Been a fairly long time again since last update, spent alot of time playing WoW again. Currently an officer in the guild i am in and we have everything but the Lich King down on both 10 and 25man raids, tho we focus more on 25mans and have only had about 4hours on the Lich King in 10man.
Since there's little else for me to do I am atleast now only playing WoW by night so have the rest of the day to do other stuff.

Which brings me to my PS3 and Xbox360, there are so many good games for them that I havent played, I got my PS3 with Uncharted:Drakes Fortune, what an amazing game, very cool and still looks good for being such an early release.

Then there's my JRPG's that I have been playing, wish I could focus on one game alittle more but I seem to bounce around abit, currently have about 20hrs on Eternal Sonata, about the same on Star Ocean and Last Remnant, then I got Lost Oddessey for £9 so started playing that :D
Then they launch Final Fantasy 13 and I want to play that but I think it can wait a little bit ;)

Hopefully I can find some time to start alittle coding again, even if its just messing around learning Opengl or Directx stuff, I miss making demo effects while learning new stuff so it would be nice to do some again.

Long Time No Update

2010-01-10T11:43:00.002Z

Well its a new year and a long time since I posted an update on here. Havent done much of any coding the last few months which I hope to slowly change over the next few, still spending alot of time playing WoW, its been great fun and helps fill the time of day but now I am at the stage were I dont need to grind so much so can allocate time to doing other things. Which thanks to a wonderful sale on steam over xmas means I have several new games to play.

Speaking of which, Overlord 1 & 2 are some of the most fun games I have played in a while were you get to be the bad guy, the humor reminds me of some of the early Bullfrog stuff. Makes me think about trying to get the old Dungeon Keeper games going again as well :)

Side Tracked

2009-09-23T15:19:00.002+01:00

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?

2009-09-18T15:46:00.002+01:00

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

2009-09-15T18:15:00.005+01:00

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

2009-09-12T10:50:00.002+01:00

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

2009-09-08T11:03:00.002+01:00

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

2009-09-06T20:18:00.003+01:00

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

2009-09-05T11:05:00.004+01:00

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

2009-09-04T22:02:00.004+01:00

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

2009-09-04T21:41:00.000+01:00

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