Archive for January, 2009
Original Music Downloads
Posted by Eric DeBrosse in Music & Sound FX on January 20, 2009
I uploaded some of my original music to the downloads section of my Been There game web site. I’m providing this sample music, so that you that can get an idea of the styles that I’ll be using in my game. The music will also give you an idea of the excellent sound quality that I can achieve from my studio. I really want to have good audio in the game, I think it’s important.
I’ve also been making a lot of progress with the game client code. I have the dead-reckoning algorithm working now. All of the movements are a lot smoother. The new camera collision routines are also working great. Next, I’m going to incorporate gravity, to smooth out the height transitions. This should give the game a really polished feel.
Terrain Intersections
Posted by Eric DeBrosse in Engine Development on January 15, 2009
I finally got busy and wrote the code that was needed to perform a ray-intersection test with the terrain height map data. Not only will this be useful for determining where projectiles collide with the ground, I can now also keep the 3rd person camera from clipping with the terrain.
I was worried, but the final algorithm turned out to be fairly simple. I basically generate points to test on the height map using a 2D line drawing algorithm, by projecting the 3D line segment onto the two-dimensional height map data. Using simple interpolation, I can calculate the height of the 3D line segment at the height map point I’m currently testing. I then compare this height with the value stored in the height map data. If the point on the terrain is higher than the line segment at this point, then an intersection was found.
Next Wave of Game Testing
Posted by Eric DeBrosse in Game Development on January 8, 2009
The servers are all back online. We are going to do some more testing again for a little while. I finished a lot of stuff in the game’s user interface. I’m really close to actually being able to engage in combat in the game. This will be a very cool advancement, no doubt. I think I’m going to start working on some of the missing collision detection routines. Another thing that has been bothering me is how poorly my “dead reckoning” algorithm is working. Dead reckoning is used in our game to deal with the high latency issues that plague all networked games. Anyway, I believe I’m going to work on that soon also.
New Game Screen Shots
Posted by Eric DeBrosse in Web Site Updates on January 1, 2009
I’m starting off 2009 by posting some new screen shots of the game that I’ve been working on. I think I’m going to upgrade my WordPress Blog to version 2.7 today. They sure put out a lot of updates, it makes it a pain in the rear to keep my blog code up to date on the web server. Anyway, I’m going to continue working on the user interface for the game the rest of the day. I’ll keep you posted on my progress. Happy new year!