Screens of Projects

i havent had much time this summer for hobbie programming (had a full time programming job) but i did find some time to start a new terrain engine with OpenGL. Some of you may have seen my last terrain engine... well, i tossed that and started a new one from scratch. Its much better :)

it features:
-height mapping
-per vertex lighting
-dynamic lighting
-fog
-skybox
-frustum culling (although its not being used yet)
-my own PVS algo
-terrain gravity (?) (camera follows terrain)
-first person, third person chase, and third person overhead camera states.

anyway, here are some screens..

Using gametutorials skybox images
Dense Fog

So lets see some screens from everyones current projects. what have you all been up to over the summer?

Well, I've been working on this highly metroid-influenced platform game for over a year :eek:.
Sadly, this project is practically abandoned. The only big thing left was to make enemies, and the graphics for them. I got bored from making/extracting the gfx and haven't done anything on it for several months...

Anyway, here's a screenshot of it:

I hate you Perspective. Of course that hatred is fueled by an extreme level of jealousy :D

Well, the normal site I use for hosting is down atm (server's being moved :/), so I can't show off my normal range of shots :(

But here's a couple I took just now, anyway. The JPG compression kinda messes up the quality, though, and the board won't let me post anything bigger than 640x480 :(

First Pic:
Two tanks and a jeep (just visible on left) battling on a CTF map

And #2:
A couple of bots battling in a volcano :)
It's kinda hard to see at that size, but I was right in the crater.

Sorry for the double-posting, but I can't see any way to attach more than one image to a post :(

Wow. Now I'M jelous. All those pics look amazing! :cool:
And, here's the game I was working on over the summer. Wait, did I say working? I meant playing. ;)

http://www.thedevelopersalliance.com...o/untitled.JPG

Perspective, what's your programming job?

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Originally posted by funkydude9
Perspective, what's your programming job?

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i am a research assistant at my university. I spent the whole summer writing programs to parse and analyse data, mostly running graph theory analysis. Right now im writing a program to simulate query forwarding in a P2P network using HC Routing Indices. :)

Magos: you cant give up on that project! it looks so good!

Bieh: As always, thats looking really good. What type of LOD alogrithm are you using to render your terrain?

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Originally posted by Silvercord
http://www.thedevelopersalliance.com...o/untitled.JPG

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Woah...that reminds me alot of DOOM III. :eek:

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Originally posted by funkydude9
Woah...that reminds me alot of DOOM III. :eek:

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it should remind you more of Quake III since its a screen shot of silvers Q3 BSP loader :)

Well it definitely shouldn't, those shadows are hard static pre compiled shadows that are actually textures, not generated from stencil shadow volumes, but they run fast. It takes too many calculations for a fully dynamically lit scene (calculating the silhouette edge of an object then actually drawing it into the stencil buffer :( )

EDIT:
and there are no special lighting calculations such as bump mapped objects, even that red light is a friggin texture. You can actually get stencil shadow volumes in any quake3 engine game just do the following in the console:
r_stencilbits 8
vid_reset //must do after setting stencil bits
cg_shadows (1-3) with 2 being the best I believe

Silver, why is your red light a texture? Are you using dynamic lighting, or just ambient? It seems to me that if you're using dynamic, it shouldn't be hard to have colored lights.

It is a static texture using the OpenGL multitexturing extension, it's masked over the original polygon's texture

that method is much faster than OpenGL lighting, that's why it was done in the quake3 engine

well of course it's faster. That doesn't mean it's as cool. :D :p :D :p

Nope, that's definitely DOOM III, no doubt about that. Behold, my mad MSpaint skillz! :rolleyes:

Thats what I got so far. Reads one or more q3 bsps, supports alpha tested texures, blending and curved surfaces with variable detail. When it's finished it's supposed to be a landscape engine that uses BSPs for the buildings (or dungeons)in the landscape, but right now it lacks even the most standard things like collision detection inside a bsp or animated models.

have fun w/ collision detection

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Originally posted by Silvercord
have fun w/ collision detection

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It will be the last thing I do.

Hmmm... this is *almost* worth posting a screenshot ;) A big thanks to Coder for helping me out with the model loading.

What model format are you using? MD3? Do you interpolate the model frames?

md2 right now, and not yet. I have to do some more research and stuff... and optimize the rendering code. That's the next step, actually.

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Originally posted by confuted
md2 right now, and not yet. I have to do some more research and stuff... and optimize the rendering code. That's the next step, actually.

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I guess that will be fun =)

Here is a game I worked on:

that looks nice wizard. Is that something you are doing at zombie?

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Originally posted by Silvercord
that looks nice wizard. Is that something you are doing at zombie?

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Thanks!

Well its a screen from the game at Zombie I was working on. That screen is nothing particular that I was working on. The quality is kinda bad, it looks better then that :D

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Originally posted by MrWizard
Thanks!

Well its a screen from the game at Zombie I was working on. That screen is nothing particular that I was working on. The quality is kinda bad, it looks better then that :D

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that looks really good :) . what exactly did you get to work on? must be cool working on a project of that calibur.

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Originally posted by Perspective
that looks really good :) . what exactly did you get to work on? must be cool working on a project of that calibur.

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Thanks.

I worked on implementing pixel/vertex shader primitives into the Unreal Engine. I made a new primitive that supported multiple shaders on static meshes. I also made a few "triggers" using Unreal C.

It is pretty cool working on a professional title but it definitely has its downsides.

What are some of the downsides? I just want to know what being on a professional development team is really like, because there's the idealistic vision we all have and then there's the real world, you'd be helping a lot of us out by telling us what the real world is like. If I'm not mistaken though you are still new to all of this, you just received internship there only this summer (meaning you couldn't've been there that long right? maybe a few mos)

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Originally posted by Silvercord
What are some of the downsides? I just want to know what being on a professional development team is really like, because there's the idealistic vision we all have and then there's the real world, you'd be helping a lot of us out by telling us what the real world is like. If I'm not mistaken though you are still new to all of this, you just received internship there only this summer (meaning you couldn't've been there that long right? maybe a few mos)

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Yea I only worked there for a few months over the summer. Also this is the only professional company I have been with so my experiences are based soley on one company. However, I do have many friends who work in the industry at companies such as Sierra, NST ( Nintendo Software Technology ), Gas Powered Games, Handheld Games and some others and I hear the same things from them.

Where to start? First of all get ready to work grueling hours without compensation. I'm talking sometimes 70-80+ hr weeks. I hear this is not exclusive to the game industry though. You won't be working these hours every week but when a milestone is approaching you will certainly have to in order to complete your work. I did not have to because I was an intern. A milestone is basically a deadline where a list of new features and fixes need to be finished for the publisher. Speaking of publishers, you will have one for your game. In our case the game is published by Atari. You will get non-technical people from Atari coming over and demanding the most ridiculous changes. And guess what? Since they are paying the bills you had better change it. It could be the stupidest thing you have ever heard but you will do it and like it. Milestones are pretty demanding on everyone. In an ideal world you would design everything fully and test everything extensively. Well, time is money. Often you will be forced to release code that you feel is not ready. Your boss usually won't care about the code but just the end result ( pretty pictures ). Also it is different when people are waiting on you to finish coding something so they can work on their tasks. Having people rely on your code is something I was used to from school fortunately. Also documentation plays a big role. You always hear comment, comment, comment. If you don't comment when you get in the industry you probably will by the time you leave. You will no doubt write some code in the beginning and everything will be fine. Then weeks/months later someone will e-mail you saying its broken and fix it. Unless it is a small function or something you may not remember every aspect of how it worked. Comments will definitely help out in that respect.

Well I think I'm done with my rant for now. There are plenty of positive things too. I got to meet many contacts and very cool people who worked there. I learned a lot techically and also learned a lot as far as team dynamics go. If you have any questions or comments you can PM me if you'd like.