For the last few days I’ve been working at learning D3D10 and using it to whip up a quick prototype of doing fully-deferred shading while using MSAA (multisample antialiasing). If you’re not sure what deferred shading is, but are curious, check out the deferred shading paper at NVIDIA’s developer site. Here are my notes on the experience.
On D3D10
D3D10 is very, very well-designed. It has some interesting new bits of functionality, but the way that the API has been rearranged is really quite nice, though it does tend to produce MUCH more verbose code.
One thing in particular that is very different is the buffer structure. rather than creating a buffer of a specific type (IDirectDrawVertexBuffer9, etc), you simply create a generic buffer (ID3D10Buffer). When you create a buffer, you specify the flags with which it can be bound (as a vertex buffer, index buffer, render target, constant buffer [another new feature], etc).
A few things to talk about this entry (no screenshots, but there is an MP3 later):
Cube Farm
Cube farm is declared complete. I decided not to add any polish to it, because it was simply a test of my game development framework. It gave me a large list of things that I need to work on (better UI layout control, ability to put 3D objects into the UI, menuing systems, better input setup, etc) before moving on to the next game. Which brings us to…
Next Project
In keeping with my Konami-inspired game development theme, the next game that I’m planning will be a side-scrolling space shoot-em-up similar to Gradius.
The plan, however, is to have all of the entities and backgrounds be full 3D and make use of some of the higher-level features of my framework (some of which are actually implemented). These features include (but are not limited to):
- Procedurally-generated textures (on-the-fly, cached in, no tiling)
- instancing
- Multi-core support
- Procedural geometry
Well, I finally have all of the gameplay working. It supports 2-5 players, and is quite enjoyable.
I need to add a, you know…menu, stuff like that. Also, I would love for it to play networked, since it does kinda require the cards in one’s hand be a secret to the other players.
But, the gameplay logic is all done, the last of the (known) bugs is squashed, and it’s time to go play Super Paper Mario!
BEHOLD MY RIDICULOUSLY UGLY SPECULAR GAME PIECES!
Cube Farm is coming along nicely – half of the gameplay is done.
In the game, for every turn, you place one card, and fill one cubicle (if possible). I have the card-placing portion done.
It involves filling in holes that are too small for a card to fit in as walkable floor space (for the purposes of determining if workers can reach the elevator). Any hole that has room for a card must remain open.
So now there’s a hand of cards to choose from, and you can select one and place it in a legal spot. Also done (though not visible), the code to determine which areas can reach the elevator and to determine how many points a given cubicle is worth is also in. Next up: worker placement!
More to do, more to do!
The first test of my scripting setup is going rather well. And it’s completely chairless.
I have been working on converting over Cheapass Games’ “Cube Farm” into a digital format (which, sad to say, I’m never going to give out to anyone, what with copyright issues and the like. This is just my own internal test to make sure that I can do it), and it’s going rather well.
While I don’t have any of the scoring working yet, what I *DO* have is very promising. Namely, I have the cards displaying, and you can place them in the world.
Also, I recently added a blueprint-style background which, while it’s a bit higher contrast than I’d like, is a bit more interesting (and fitting) than the original green-on-black grid.
Some screenshots!
The camera control is simple (and intuitive): hold down the right mouse button, and you can drag the grid around (to move the camera). Holding middle mouse lets you move the mouse left/right to spin the camera around the look-at point, and up/down zooms in and out (and also adjust the angle at which you’re viewing the board).
So far, so good. Next up: Actual gameplay!
Crazy!
So, I’ve been working on the Intangibles. Otherwise known as the Unscreenshottables. Those things that improve the innards of the whole system, but you can’t really show off.
But first! A screenshot of something (to prove that my renderer can display more than just chairs):
One goal of this whole thing is that absolutely NO game logic will exist within the main EXE. It will all be loaded from script files (and eventually managed code assemblies).
I’ve gotten that up and running. The “scripting language” that I’m using is, in fact, C#. Basically, a script is an entity in the world, or an event, or any number of other things. They all derive from the IScript interface, which really requires three functions be implemented: OnCreate, OnTick, and OnKill.
I’ve exposed certain things to the scripting, like the math functions (vectors, matrices, quaternions), Camera control, texture/model loading, etc. There’s no direct access to the renderer, it’s all through the world data. You add objects into the world (which is setup by the main script), and it handles the rest.
I’m trying to make it as simple as possible.
I got bored and made a video of the chair demo. Why not? 😀
So here it is:
WOO!
(2024 blog port note: this was once a link to Mop of Destiny winning first place in the gamedev.net 4e5 competition, but alas that page has long since vanished)
For those who missed it:
Mop of Destiny Soundtrack MP3s!
On Power Outages (And Other Weird Things)
They suck. Our power was out for 9 days. For someone as hopelessly addicted to the Internet as I, it was like not having legs. Legs that could span the globe in an instant. Or at least under a few seconds.
The power came back on, predictably, about 2 hours after we had left for the airport to go home to Indianapolis for the holidays.
Thus, the tally of weird things that have happened in the 6 months since I’ve moved to Seattle area and started work at Microsoft is:
- My car (Which already had $3800 in hail damage) has been involved in 3 accidents, 2 of which were definitely not my fault and the third of which I can make a pretty good case for
- Approached by a guy with a knife near Pike Place Market. He didn’t threaten me with it, he just wanted to sell it to me for $5.
- Almost punched by an angry chauffeur in a stupid-looking suit at the Sea-Tac airport because I had the absolute audacity to try to help him out and tell him that the name on his little sign wasn’t visible.
- There have been floods and even a (mild, for Indiana) snow storm
- 9-day power outage
Life: Always entertaining.
(Breakdown of Mop of Destiny's development after the fold)
It’s there! or here! Whatever!
Four months of effort, finally out the door!
Click here for Mop of Destiny!
