Archive for February, 2006

"Seeing Double" Contest

Gamedev.net is hosting a [new contest].

“Create a game prototype based around two simultaneous views of the game world. These could be as simple as two simultaneous camera angles (forwards and backwards, side and top, etc), or could look at presenting different families of information about the game world, such as an infra-red or x-ray view, visualisation of sound or smell, or even things entirely specific to a fictional game world. The views do not have to be equal sizes, but both views should be presented to the player at the same time throughout gameplay, and the game design should favour a player who will make use of both displays equally (so both views must be equally useful – a minimap in the corner of a regular game display is probably not sufficient). Views should be primarily graphical; text is permitted provided it is not over-used (i.e. a simple text listing of health and position of monsters in the level will not be acceptable).”

I have an idea about creating a Pacific Northwest Salmon demo. You are a fish and you need to spawn. You navigate rivers using star positions while also battling upstream current. And if you happen to make it upstream, it’s spawning time!

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Expose for Firefox

The [Viamatic forXpose extension] is one of the best extensions for Firefox that I’ve seen so far. Open as many Firefox tabs as you want, and then press the F8 key. All your tabs will instantly arrange and you can select what you want to browse easily.

Here is a nice screenshot:

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Snow with Clear Sky

Tonight it starts snowing and there are no clouds in the sky. Totally clear, lots of stars, really cold, and falling snow… How does that work? Has weather been upgraded recently?

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Sector13 [Screenshot]

I added a nice lens flare effect on the back of certain engine types. Basically the alpha is based on the dot product between the engine mount vector and camera angle.

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Sector13 [Screenshot]

This is the GCDF Capital Ship “Defiant”. I just added the collision logic where you can shoot off its turret weapons.

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Snow for Valentine’s Day

Just when you think Winter is almost over:

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Sector13 [Screenshot]

This is a capital ship in progress. Not its actual texture yet…

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Import/Export Ogre Meshes

First of all you need a modeling tool and [Blender] is freely available.

You also may need the [Ogre conversion tools] (make sure these tools are in your path).

Blender uses these Python scripts to [Import] and [Export] Ogre meshes.

These scripts should be copied into the blender scripts directory.

You may need to install the latest [Python].

And you may have to install some of [Blender's pre-compiled plugins].

Also you’ll notice when you export the skeleton that the axii are inverted. You can remedy the problem with this:

// Flip axii
Ogre::Vector3 tempPosition = Ogre::Vector3(bonePosition.z, -bonePosition.x, bonePosition.y);

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