Worklog for Skully
Worklog 1
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| Yay! MaxPlay lives! It LIVES!!! AAAAAhahaahahhahaa Sorry.. I've gone completely mad working through issues in MaxPlay. It works and is just undergoing optimizations and tweaking. MaxPlay works exactly the same way (on the surface) as DirectPlay, and is a replacement overlay networking library. All that has to be done is Max_ added to the front of the commands. Max_JoinNetGame() Max_HostNetGame()... Max_RcvNetMsg() Max_SendNetMsg() This way if you have developed a multiplayer game using direct play you can pretty much instantly overcome the reliable message pauses and instability. I am going to take the lib well beyond this but this version will be free to the public source included. You would not believe the amount of debug and profile code that is in this thing ;) So, Once I get this completed its back to GalAxis and the adding of the components that will make it a real game! Skully Anth800 w/128Mb Ati All-in-Wonder 32DDR P3-450 w/128Mb TNT2 P3-450 w/128Mb i740 & Voodoo2 |
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| I've been working on the MaxPlay networking back end for my games and am almost complete! I needed a known working, and hopefully fun to play, game to test it with so I brought GalaxyBlitz back to life! Its popularity has caused me to develop it farther than I originally intended before getting back to MaxPlay and now its fun! I plan to get back to development and fully complete this game after I finish MaxPlay - maybe a week from now. I have GB working surprisingly well with DirectPlay but the DX7 version still leaves much to be desired - like locking systems up when the host isn't running, how dumb of MS... I hope they fixed that with the DX8 version that I will never use :) Now that I have the game playable and people seem to like it I will go back to finishing the MaxPlay back end and then go back to GalaxyBlitz. The name is likely going to change to "Galactic Domination" though as it seems more popular than GalaxyBlitz... oppinions to submissions@... Anyway... I'm leaving the GalaxyBlitz server running and you can dl and try the game at http://24.69.16.68/galaxyblitz.zip join 24.69.16.68 Please let me know what you think.. thanks. Skully Anth800 w/128Mb Ati All-in-Wonder 32DDR P3-450 w/128Mb TNT2 P3-450 w/128Mb i740 & Voodoo2 |
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MaxPlay is coming along nicely.. I am reworking some of the join code
and have a cool fun example program on top of it for testing :) Life is good.. Anth800 w/128Mb Ati All-in-Wonder 32DDR P3-450 w/128Mb TNT2 P3-450 w/128Mb i740 & Voodoo2 |
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| BIG life changes happening right now. They will be settled by Mid-March so I should be able to get back to my projects then. Skully Anth800 w/128Mb Ati All-in-Wonder 32DDR P3-450 w/128Mb TNT2 P3-450 w/128Mb i740 & Voodoo2 |
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Gee.. for some reason I get asked over and over to put up a new
worklog.. and the weird thing is people keep calling me The Man, or
Mark, and various other names ;) I have returned to my network layer (SOFTUDP) after looking at Surreals. His is very nice work but I feel I need to complete the work I have done on mine otherwise it's something I haven't completed. I like to complete what I start and I started this for reasons of learning. Also for my upcoming cool shooter game GalaxyBlitz3D ;) The other reason is that I can't really see how I can have multiple players on the same machine with his, which is a requirement for my game. These are the features I want to have: Auto-Join forwarding - Gamers can just connect to their friends computer and it will automatically forward their join request to the server. Multiple players on 1 machine. My goal is to make it so that two players can site side by side and play over the network with others. Client-Server model with Peer-to-Peer support.. Basically - essential game packets travel client > server > other clients and non-essential ones go direct from client to client. Skully Anth800 w/128Mb Ati All-in-Wonder 32DDR P3-450 w/128Mb TNT2 P3-450 w/128Mb i740 & Voodoo2 |
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Ok.. the Terrain System is done.. its called TerraScape and has been
made open for non-commercial use.. a small "buy you a beer or two" fee
of $10 for commerical games ;) What is it? Optimized Tile based texture mapping Terrain System Real-Time Capabilities ---------------------- Real Time or Virtual deforming Real-time or Virtual texture rotating Stretch textures across multiple "cells" Built in Wave-function (New to version 1.1) Non-Real time Capabilities due to Blitz not being able to delete Verticies/Surfaces from a mesh Turn cells on and off - Circular and irregular shaped TerraScapes are possible Paintable with various brushes with dynamic surface addition (this function is not Real-time as verticies have to be deleted) Small variable height lakes are made possible with the irregular shaped TerraScapes on Blitz Terrain.. looks sweet! Skully Anth800 w/128Mb Ati All-in-Wonder 32DDR P3-450 w/128Mb TNT2 P3-450 w/128Mb i740 & Voodoo2 |
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| Things have been pretty busy here but nothing abnormal I supposed. After working alot with the Blitz terrains I have come to the conclusion that they are just not suited to games that are up-close-and-personal to the landscape. I have therefore created my own Landscape system that has the following Features: Tile based texture mapping Real-time deformable Real-time Rotatable texture mapping Paintable with various brushes with dynamic surface addition All operations can be virtual for speed purposes and then applied in one statement Im going to be adding in the ability to stretch textures across multiple "cells" for maximum flexibility and "prettiness" as well as the ability to turn cells on and off so that circular Landscapes would be possible. This is all heading towards my next Project tenatively named "ThunderBlast" Skully Anth800 w/128Mb Ati All-in-Wonder 32DDR P3-450 w/128Mb TNT2 P3-450 w/128Mb i740 & Voodoo2 |
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| Well, the Christmas Competition is done so its on to bigger and better things. Ive gotten back to my UDP code and it didnt take long after reviewing it that I realized that I was doing it the hard way... so I am revamping it for GalaxyBlitz3D... Anth800 w/128Mb Ati All-in-Wonder 32DDR P3-450 w/128Mb TNT2 P3-450 w/128Mb i740 & Voodoo2 |
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| I just have to enter the competition... Hey, why not! its fun! and the UDP coding I am doing at the moment is not so fun... so life is about balance so I have to have something fun to do while I do stuff that is not-so-fun :) I think its a little too early to let everyone know what its going to be about yet... but suffice it to say that a MAD MD2 modeler is involved! :) Aaaa hahahaha... oh, a MAD coder too LOL! Skully Anth800 w/128Mb Ati All-in-Wonder 32DDR P3-450 w/128Mb TNT2 P3-450 w/128Mb i740 & Voodoo2 |
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Well, as my first entry I'll just say that I doubt many people are
going to find my projects fasinating or anything but just in case anyone
is interested here is the status of what I am up to: Work on GalaxyBlitz3D: This project is under way but has boiled down to the network layer for the time being. I believe that you cannot make a good multiplayer game by jamming the network stuff in after the fact.. it needs to be in there from the ground up... just look at the Civilization series if you question that <- and on a personal note, whats which Civilization 3 not being multiplayer once again! not buying that one. But I digress. Since I have decided to make that Network layer transportable between projects, I have issolated the code into an include and am working on the internals. I am using UDP as DPlay and TCP was just too slow for this type of project. As well, I dont know many multiplayer games worth their salt that use Dplay, other than turn based ones. The commands that would mean anything to you right now are : HostUDPGame, JoinUDPGame, QuitUDPGame SendUDPBcst, TargetUDPMsg, and UDPTimeSync There is still much testing to do including developing data rate and queue size dynamic adjustment for the highest network performance. I'll be coordinating that with those on the #blitzPC DALnet irc channel that consumes more of my time than it should. Every project that I have in the queue is on hold for UDP networking... including BlitzChat3D which needs UDP for the speed ;) Skully Anth800 w/128Mb Ati All-in-Wonder 32DDR P3-450 w/128Mb TNT2 P3-450 w/128Mb i740 & Voodoo2 |