Merry Christmas!

We just spent our Christmas at home, everything seems to be great and only thing is that my sister is spending her Christmas at US. Anyway, all our attention was given to my little bro Kevin and so happy to open all his gifts. My mom got a new Samsung phone from me! =D and was surprised as well, great food, bro and me played dota till morning hehe.

again, Merry Christmas... Advance Happy New Year!

Game Engine: GUI / New Game AI Books!

I'm quite busy this days and it does really affect my game engine progress. But anyway i'm still aiming to finish my first game engine Q1 of next year.

I just finished my basic GUI engine that is powered by lua scripting. GUI includes Panel/Parent Window, Cursor, Editbox, Button, Label, Checkbox, and Progressbar. Can modify it's color, texture, position, size, border(some) etc...

I think that's enough for now since i already covers most GUI controls that can bee seen in most games. Here are the screenshots:


I might go back to AI for a while... i just bought 2 books from the internet. Programming Game AI by Example by Mat Buckland and AI Game Engine Programming by Brian Schwab. I've already read some parts and i think it will help my engine to become more modular and systematic. I just wonder at first why these 2 books somehow have their own approaches in creating game AI... and just realized AI by Example is more beginner approach and AI Game Engine is for intermediate to advance which is kind of releif. I don't want to waste money for 2 beginner books. Well i can't really decide what book buy at first hehehe... so i bought both! They have really good reviews y'know. Can't wait to try them out.

Cheers all! and Advance Merry Christmas!

Razer Copperhead Mouse

I had this Razer Copperhead Mouse (Chaos Green) bought last december christmas at singapore and obviously has been overused in games like quake3 and quake4. Last few months the left clicker seems to be worning off.

After confirming via email/web to Razer's tech support if how they can help me fix this stuff and even ask them how to open this thing! then I have been told to ship my broken mouse to Hongkong for replacemant and in just 2 days later without waiting a new razer mouse finally arrived! and this time without "First Edition" label thing. If i broke this one and warranty been voided, i'll probably get another one.

I'm now planning to upgrading my PC for this comming QuakeWars lol! Not really sure yet (e6600 is still expensive). At least my mouse is ready =D

OT: my new game engine is almost done with new rendering code, sound engine and GUI powered by lua scripting. i will keep this update after finishing some errands and hopefully will post a downloadable game sample.

cheers

Hotmail @ 1gig Storage?

hm... i just noticed lately after having problem visiting hotmail and logging in, i saw this text "1% of 1000MB" instead of "1% of 25MB"?? i'm thinkin their having maintenance for upgrades or reconfiguration. well if this is true then it's about time. i'm just 1 of few guys who uses hotmail as their primary email and even i never use my gmail and yahoo for important mails.

Ok hotmail, how about adding Search Box huh?

cheers for hotmail users!

game engine: AI Basic FSM (Finite State Machine)

i almost totally forgot, actually this has been updated late last month. monster's AI are now more fun to attack rather than standing and waiting to get killed hehehe. FSM includes IDLE, WANDER, EVADE, DEAD.. that's all, i told you it's basic :D. i'm currently workin on revised code of my engine. anyway you can check the screenshots.

hey, one a time please...

kill kill!

ping!

pong! still here., well so far not so good. my brother is still in the hospital for his treatment and sadly it's been almost 2 weeks already. i just need to wait till my little bro get well and back home for me to get back concentrate on my stuff.

i wil be talking about my sound engine using openal+vorbis, crappy razer copperhead mouse, updated engine using shadow volume(stencil) and AI Wisdom book for only P350... on my next post.

keep in touch.

birthday thing... y'know

i just replaced my chat box to yellbox(.com). i'm not sure if tag-board.com if still alive but anyway i'm not goin to use that anymore. yellchat is good enough for my blog plus it's very simple.

who's birthday is it today?... me. happy birthday to me! :D hmm rainny day and loads of work... idunno today is just soo boring.

thanks to those who greets and those who forgot my birthday and also to those who don't care. hehehe peace :-)

edit: i got this surprise birthday cake in the office this afternoon, yeah was surprise indeed. big thanks to verifone guys for the cake, pics, everything. this year beats last year's birthday heheheh.


archie, thanks for the pics!

new game plan... sound programming?

i decided to stop workin on AI for a while. for some reason i think i already know the basic theory how you implement it into your engine (ok fsm and stimuli probably). anyway for the last few weeks i've been playing my game with diablo2 soundtracks of Matt Uelmen (on winamp) and it realy came out good and the only thing missing is the sounds. then i realize based on what i saw in the net... sound programming should be easier than any of the modules in game development.

so instead i will just start studying the basics of sound programming using OpenAL with OGG Vorbis and my only goal is my engine to at least play stereo music and play mono sound streams that can change position.

...and after that i will jump back to scripting, AI and sounds should work cooperatively on scripts.

cheers

game engine: AI (Deterministic Algorithm) - Random Motion

no big surprises, i just add another character WANDERING state if in boredom or no evading is involve. anyway check those minotaurs wander around the maps. yeah you wonder why it's slow / low fps, yes my code is not optimize yet plus my laptop's vc sucks. check the screenshots...

i spawned 10 creatures and works pretty well.
next stop, EVADING state most probably, if detected in line of sight and in distance then boom! creature will attack you... classic diablo hehehe.

Using AntTweakBar Library

i am amazed how this little thing works and how will save my time and effort changing data inside the core (even using scripts). plus it only takes me less than an hour to understand and embed it to my engine. check this out:

my game engine using AntTweakBar
i'm looking forweard to check out those advance samples.

cheers!

game engine: avoiding objects

i'm not sure i just made this up actually but actually works anyway. i know there are much better implementation around but sadly i never got a chance to seen one probably until my AI book will finally come. here is the screenshot: hope you get this hehehe.

whooops, sorry, comming thru, yes!

frank's d3d book!

i just got my introduction to 3d game programming with directx 9.0c - a shader approach book. yes it's still new! "9.0c". i can't wait but i need to settle some of my stuff first and also lets just hope that this book will work on my gf6600.

i'm planning to just start reading chapter4, re-write code or start from scratch again, hm... but still an exception if my AI book comes very soon, i might still use my current code.

i already read some of the chapters... neat. it's about time for me to learn graphics programming to the next level.

R.I.P Crikey!

as a fan of watching documentaries at discoveries i am horrified by steve's death yesterday. i didn't believe it when i first read it on other forums and was shocked after knowing it was true. i'm just one of milions of people that recognized and missed for his wonderfull work, his passion to animals and nature, and his wit!.

wildlife documentaries will never be the same without you, best thoughts to his family and friends.

"Crikey! would you look at the size of that one!"

game engine: character mouse over

hi again! i just wanted to post my quick update for character mouse over. life meter and the text all displayed in orthorgaphic view. not probably the best solution but works for me and i think it should be faster than rendering it in perspective view. blahblah... check all the screenshots.

minotaur!
horse!
lagur mount at horse!
ciao!

game engine: added camera features

i added some camera features to my engine. it supports rotation around the point and panning. check the screenshots.




i'm still developing the character selection, attack sequence and AI part of the monsters. it's not easy as it sound really... i have this regret that i should have tried AI before when i have plenty of time. anyway i'm really exited.

weird disturbances

my sister got robbed by PAL(Philippine Airlines) from her baggage, blackberry phone, cams and other valuable stuffs, yes Philippine Arlines! well long story short on her flight from baltimore to san francisco it's ok to handcarry those stuff, then at PAL check-in they force my sister to put those stuff on her baggage! yes philippine airlines!...last few days i met someone and had a dinner then i realized that im actually wasting my time (sorry)... where are all my good friends oh' yeah they are all busy... yes i already experienced crash accident! - i'm good with a friend but my cousin is not, got minor scratches... i'm still trying to get my mood back on playing guitar coz im already getting suckier (if there is such word)... something tells me what the hell am i still doin here, this is not the kind of job i want!. when i'm home all i want to do is to check my little bro and go to sleep. i'm not sure what's happening but i can say that this year maybe the worst year of my life... sorry i need this stuff to get out of my system and sorry for my english. i'm just trying to figure it out how am suppose to get back in my game. only thing calms me down is to listen music... that's it.

you know i can freak out anytime soon?

game engine: attacking & realistic turn

just added realistic turn(AI) of characters which comes out really good! check out my new screenshots that shows character attack animation.

normal standing attack position of 2 characters, nothing interesting...

...but this one is! here you can attack while riding your running horse (like rohirims at lord of the rings movie).

this still has plenty of problems that is need to fix, and there are some things i need to prioritize this comming week... i just hope.. even if i loose my momentum continuing my engine, i still be able to catch up without scanning my codes again.

cheers

game engine: updates as for July30'06

here is my updates so far which includes character mounting and pathfinding. plus, i just bought gems 2 & 3 and got it discounted from macromind megamall, thanks guys!

anyway here is the list...

Updates
- Mersenne Twister Randomizer.
- Object manager.
   + Object Nodes.
   + Collision detection.
   + Fast Ray Picking.
   + Mount handling.
- Lua script test.
- Screenshot path.
- Texture Manager.
- DirectX File Mesh Loader.
   + Texture Path.
   + Optimizer and Cleaning.
- Navigation Mesh
   + A* Pathfinding.
   + Smoothing.

and some screenshot...

rohirim!

navigation mesh pathfinding - wireframe rendering.

navigation mesh pathfinding - solid rendering.

next stop i'm not sure yet but on top of my mind right now is encounter/enemy and battle sequence... ciao

rainny week

so is it sunny now? i'm now looking outside and still dark :-(

office: it's been so boring yet somehow i still manage to finish work (yeah right). idunno but i think i've been affected by the weather... kinda want to sleep the whole time.

family: yes, good news for me... my sister(maryland) is goin to visit us on aug 5. she's goin to attend her friend's wedding.

...ok now i see rain showers wind s@#$% and more darker. i thought it's getting sunny already!

game engine: i did manage to work on navigation mesh pathfinding. basically i added AI to my game =D.

...now i need to sleep.

200gig sata hd

well i bought this a week ago already. but anyway it's seagate 200gig sata. this gives me 24hrs waste of time just trying to make this thing work >:( ...and found out that it's all about SATA2 specification speed. i never thought about SATA jumper settings to downclock something the speed (3.0g/s -> 1.5g/s).

now my pc is happy again. if you ask... before, im only using 40gig and 20gig hdd.

cheers!

off topic: i'm almost done with my next game engine update including character mounting/riding horses and few others :P

game engine: chris mod test v1

while doin some code cleaning up with no special update. my bro (chris) as a 2d/3d artist tried to mod my game engine just for fun... check this out. =)

game engine: orthographic ray picking

presenting orthographic or my 2d panel including my mouse pointer with ray picking or object selection. this topic is included in the book as well but not in details as i expected... gamedev.net has all the stuffs!


in this screenshot i'm using controls and camera somehow similar to WC3's DOTA :D

ciao,

game engine: nodetree/frustum technique and simple fog

not the best algorithm or implementation on the code but somehow it works for me. as for fog, clearly i'm suck at playing with the settings. anyway here is the screenshot.



i'm using octree optimization. i'm planning to try ray tracing / object selection using mouse coordinates but i need to use more time on nodetree technique until i'm comfortable with it.

if you're curious what guide am i using on creating this engine... jim adam's programming rpg game 2nd ed! try this one if you're a total newb on directx like me. this book actually got some bad reviews on non-working codes? i feel bad for them... for crying out loud *it's in the book, not in the source!*.

cheers =D

game engine: bumpmap removed.

one way to make my codes clean is to remove dot3 bumpmap for a while. i'll try to put back in next time when i'm in my advance topic in d3d. right now i'm focusing on frustum, noding / partition... and my work of course ;-)

screenshot next time!

game engine: object attachment

while fixing my code i end up looking at jim adam's code from his book (programming rpg game) about attaching objects. but the part of his code on attaching billboard doesn't face to the screen properly. which i figure out that the code still include x and y rotation this is i think we only need z rotation if necessary. anyway my screenshot!



attaching sword mesh or billboard particle on object now working =) more ideas came up to me while doin this like putting an armor / suit, or charging effect like from dragon ball etc.. cool huh!

next target: code fixes & viewing frustum!

quake tournament timeline

as a quake player (q1/q2/q3) and a verry big fan of id games, i find this site very w1ck3d! here!

actually this is one of my favorite demo in quake2 where Thresh insanely ruled the map. i still have it in my computer.

Date: October 15th, 1998
Location: Ministry of Sound. London, England
Notes: Through an online qualifier, a series of ffa rounds, and a final 1 v 1 round vs. Leper in the U.K., Billox won (along with some other things) the opportunity to play the American Quake legend, Thresh. Thresh won 56 to -1.
Duel Results:
1. Dennis 'LGD-Thresh' Fong (Berkely, Cali)
2. James 'Billox' Page (U.K.): prize = a flight to New York plus a hotel room and a ticket to watch the AMD-PGL finals.

game engine: key framing animation

animation finally! this is just a first attempt so i might find some bugs in the future.

check this out, idle and walk animation screenshot.

game engine: terrain

hhehe nope it's not generated from the engine itself. check this out http://www.ungsoft.com/vtm/. program generates terrain for you easily, can save it to .x file and just load it as static mesh. it's really exiting, i hope this is goin somewhere :)

a friend of mine told me that 3ds or even maya has terrain generator... too bad of me i never tried any of those.

game engine: direct3d fullscreen bug

this issue is about D3DERR_DEVICENOTRESET when use alt-tab while in fullscreen. i already managed to fix this bug anyway. for almost 2 days or bug fixin i also managed to redesign some of my codes. totally worth finding this bug.

cheers

Cont. (presenting my game engine)

...now bumpmap on skinned mesh! i'm using tiny.x model file included in the sdk.

presenting my game engine

not a game engine 'yet' hehehe

load/rendering xfile model sample code snippets from my engine..

Video::IXFile* m_xFile;
...
m_xFile = _graphics->GetXFileFromFile( _T("models\\junbox.x"), Video::IXFile::TYPE_STATIC, true);
...
_graphics->SetTransformWorld( m_worldPos );
_graphics->DrawXFile(m_xFile);
...
m_xFile->Drop();

easy huh?!... anyway here are some of the screenshots from my game engine. this is what i've been doin most of the time.

features: .x model loader, combining matrix / attaching 1 object from another.


features: billboard/particle (source of light), camera free look.


features: dot3 bump mapping

normal texturing


bump map enabled


if you ask what is bumpmap. it's just an illusion of bumps in surface or flat surface for 3d object. this bumpmap thing features on Doom3 game, now even oblivion has it! it takes me plenty of time adding this feature in my code and i'm not even start planning to animate models hahahahah! yep my next project ANIMATION!

ciao!

jim adam's programming rpg with directx 2nd ed book

i was surprise that some of the code really doesnt work... well based on some of review i read about this book (i thought it's just a programmer's issue or something). code is a bit obsolete coz he's using the dec2004 sdk in this book esp. the loading skinned xfile. this thing gets me frustrated this whole night just to make this code work specifically on april2005 sdk.

anyway now it's working *finally*, can load skinned mesh perfectly! and it's 3:00am in the morning and i have only 5 hours left before goin back to work. Zzz...

bsg season2 ending

very nice show just for a tv series actually and best scifi show i've watch so far. *frak!*, can't wait for the next season.

mother's day

we celebrated mother's day by just havin a small family party. my sister and i bought palabok and black forest cake... simple but important is seeing how happy my mom is.

late happy mom's day!

the dawn @ cafe lupe

yep, sorry the show is over. we (mike of antico and peter of verifone) just watch them jam last night @ cafe lupe, all songs are great and the crowd is all crazy. they played new composition, old songs and some cover songs on the 80's. and also 'buddy' from e-heads is now officially bassist of 'the dawn'. this show is recorded by 'mtv' and we're sitting at 4th row i think... cool huh?!

too bad sa mga niyaya ko na tinamad pumunta hehehe! peace!

working @ antico / verifone

my first day is pretty overwhelming but after few hours of chatting with my officemates it's like i've been work here for a month already! everything is great so far.

i have no team yet so i will be working alone on this project but i'm looking in the future to have my own teammates. of course i need to prove them first that i can handle this project smoothly.

wish me luck.

last trip in singapore?

i already gave 1 month notice to the company that after i'm no longer connected to them. i was hired by a local company in the philippines actually, it's not that i just want to give up my job for no reason! heh =). working in Infinitiq is fun and challenging but as always career must go on and i think now is the right time.

my next boss told me even i'm entitled as c/c++ devguy, i will be doin minimal coding but rather close to consultancy type (i think - based on the job description).

last trip in singapore? well let's hope not and will definitely still visit my boss when i get there!

drama series

ok, i'm not realy a big fan of drama series but i find "1 Litre of Tears (jap drama)" very nice and besides Erika is really cute. one factor why i watch this show becase my parents and sisters have all medical background and experiences and happens to be this show is all about uncurable disease. i know how it ends but i still continue downloading. very few episodes but most people who watch it says totally worth it.

blabla... you can watch this here
nicely done!

if this show depressed you, watch this
(just joking)

tip on watching youtube. having slow connection? or/and experiencing unexpected pauses? just pause it for a while and wait until light gray progressbar reach the end.

quizilla

You are Beast!

You are brilliant and extremely clever. You can handle almost any problem swiftly and efficiently. You are devoted to philosophy and are always up for a good discussion. Sometimes, though, your anger gets the best of you and you upset those whom you care about.
Which X-Men character are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla


You are Form 0, Phoenix: The Eternal.

"And The Phoenix's cycle had reached zenith, so he consumed himself in fire. He emerged from his own ashes, to be forever immortal."

Some examples of the Phoenix Form are Quetzalcoatl (Aztec), Shiva (Indian), and Ra-Atum (Egyptian). The Phoenix is associated with the concept of life, the number 0, and the element of fire. His sign is the eclipsed sun.

As a member of Form 0, you are a determined individual. You tend to keep your sense of optomism, even through tough times and have a positive outlook on most situations. You have a way of looking at going through life as a journey that you can constantly learn from. Phoenixes are the best friends to have because they cheer people up easily.
Which Mythological Form Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

reviving natalie

i wasn't able to get a new monitor for the past 8 months. instead i just use my laptop for coding and games and natalie box only purpose is to act as my file server, backup and stuffs.

yep i finally got my new ViewSonic VX724 17" LCD!. tried watching dvd, games.. which is all good. no cons so far. i will let you know and post back.


...with my razer copperhead mouse and coolmaster keyboard ;-)