Tuesday 9 December 2008

Some more shader work

Last time I showed the spot light that was working this time round Normal mapping and Parallax mapping are also working.
First up normal mapping:

And parallax mapping:

The only thing the images show off is though that the specular component isn't calculated correctly and that is the next fix. The thing after that is creating a cube map in the application so we can do reflection mapping.

The application I am creating is actually a countdown timer till new year and I want to add a reflection map to the 3d text that is now hidden by this cube.

Wednesday 3 December 2008

spot light shader

And finally I got my spot light shader to work. The problem I actually had was that I didn't realize that the cos function in HLSL needed a radian instead of degrees, grrrr. It now looks as it should, finnaly got this damn light equations out of the way.

Tuesday 2 December 2008

Side project

I finally got a spot light shader working. This bugged my last year at this time when I was doing my space sim and is one of the reasons why I didn't include shaders in that project.

In the new year I will probably redo that project based upon a completely shader based render system this time around. This means I can much easier include effects in to this project like parallax mapping. But for this to be able to be put in my light shaders first have to work.

Here is a screen shot of the spot light so far, i still need to add the fall off in between the inner and other cone.

Tuesday 11 November 2008

MSc.

Yesterday I found out that I have passed my MSc. Games Programming with an average if 67.1. My dissertation actually got a higher point than I was expecting so that is always good.

Next to that the job is progressing good as well, I feel at home there and like the job I am doing. ALthough this week I am most likely sitting home sick as I have a bad flu at the moment.

Wednesday 17 September 2008

Schools out forever

Well last Friday I handed in my dissertation and the report for it and on Monday I had my last day of uni for the foreseeable future. Had to do my demonstration on Monday of the virtual paint brush I had created.
All my goals are now complete which I had set myself 10 years ago, now I have no clue what to do.
My immediate problems now are to find a house in Leamington Spa, or arround Southam, where I'll be working from now on. That's a scare and pleasant thought needing to go to work, it means my free time is over and need to buckle done. But on the other hand I am looking forward to do my job at Codemasters.

Wednesday 20 August 2008

JOB

Well all the hard job hunting and dozens of emails I sent out finally paid off this morning. I got a phone call this morning from codemasters telling me that they were going to offer me a job.
Later today they called me again and said that they were sending out my contract later that day.
So from October my student life is finally ending :P

Monday 4 August 2008

Job hunting Continued

Codemasters just gave me a call that the phone interview I had Friday went well. They called me to tell me I got an in person interview with them this week or early next week. That's two confirmed in person interviews, hopefully one of them will employ me.

Wednesday 30 July 2008

Job hunting

So far my quest for a job is going well, today I woke up with a nice email from Ninja Theory in my mail box inviting me for an interview. Yesterday I was called by Codemasters telling me they wanted to do a phone interview on Friday. Hope I get an interview at the company out of that.
And then there is the full fat offer off course from which I still haven't heard a word when the interview is.

Well wish me luck, now it's back to my virtual paint brush again.

Monday 28 July 2008

Looking back at a (almost a)year(now) of almost full time coding

Tonight I had an epiphany, and so how much I have developed over the last year as a programmer.
I was looking at some screen shots I made in the beginning of the year as I was starting my first game project. I started this project with no idea how a game engine worked besides of the knowledge of a rasterizer in a game engine.

Some Screen shots of the early development of my space simulator game
This knowledge however gave me a little advantage though as I knew how the graphics pipeline worked. It did not however prepare me for the task of gameplay programming, which is basically the hart of everything. It connects the players input to all the other stuff that is going on like rendering of the scene and physics, to the event system that triggers doors and particle systems.

Some screen shots of the end results of my space simulator game
After this project came three others in the same time span that we had gotten for the first one. This was our very first decent taste of what life as a real game programmer would be like, and I can tell you it's though. Game programming is one of these professions which in the first year or two are not for the faint of harted.
In this second semester we had a Physcis/Network engine to write, do a team project (of which the actual specs came from a real studio, Blackrock Studios) and a shader and AI assignment.

Screenshots of the shader asignment
These four assignments let me learn a lot in managing my own time, doing multiple different tasks at the same time. And increased my coding knowledge and potential a lot.
So yeah after a year I am actually glad I decided to leave my own country and safety net and did this MSc. What I learned was that the game industry is a place where people have to work very hard, but it's also a very rewarding place to work. Imagine you squeezing just that last frame out of your code so your game will run at a constant 30fps, or getting the physics interaction of colliding objects just right so the game looks realistic. These are all techinical achievements which are good in reinforcing your own self esteem.
Then ofcourse there is the showing of to other people this is probably the most rewarding aspect of the whole job. Thats also the reason why I sneak in these pictures of my work. If you want to see more pictures and more details about the actual projects I have done or just want to see if the executables work on your machine go here, or follow the link to my portfolio site.

Friday 25 July 2008

Applications continued

As of now I have heard back from two companies to which I send my CV two weeks ago. One is Rebellion and they sent me a test which I messed up and so got no employment opportunity. The other one is Pivotal Games saying we aren't looking for people anymore. So far no luck so today I decided to send out another wave of applications.
They went to:
So far I had one reply from this list already from Full Fat they invited me to an interview with them.
So lets hope I´ll get a job now so I can stay here in England and do what I like most make Games/Software related to games.

Tuesday 22 July 2008

Painting on a 3D model

Well today i got the disseration in such a state that I can start thinking about painting on a 3D model with a soft brush.
Here is a screenshot of the hard brush i am using currently for painting on a 3D model, and the generated rendertarget:

The rendering is done by moving a brush over a 3D model and drawing a circle at the texture coordinates under that point in a shader.
It's not yet anything advanced but the next one is going to either use joint springs or particle systems to achieve a brush like effect.

Wednesday 16 July 2008

Dissertation Shaders

Ok I found out what went wrong yesterday.
First of all the circle radius is so big that it encompasses the complete model so we won't see a nice circle, that has no been fixed.
Second was that the origin most likely was passed wrong which is now fixed as well. To do here is to get the actual collision point to be circle origin but that isn't a big problem.
The actual thing now looks something like this:

It's input is still all slider based but at least the shader works as I had expected it to work. And the color passing is a bit off but that is an error in bit shifting I think I made.

Tuesday 15 July 2008

Effect rendering

Today i fixed the effect and shader rendering part of my dissertation it now should look like this:

The fx file adds a circle arround a certain point in the texture passed on parameters like:
  • Circle origen in texture coordinates
  • Circle Radius
  • Circle Color
But the actual end result more look like this, circle color is turqoise in this version:


So my next step is too see what the hell is going wrong in the shader that isn't going wrong in RenderMonkey. :(

Friday 11 July 2008

Dissertation

As far as the dissertation is going I am now trying to implement shaders through DX effect files. I am doing this as the paint brush is much easier to create inside a shader. After talking to my supervisor we both agreed that the pipeline approach which I was using before wasn't a good idea.
It isn't a good idea mostly because it's slow to develop, when using shaders you can use packages like rendermonkey and fx composer.
Besides the goal was to create the virtual brush using shaders anyway in the end.

Send your application day

Today i decided it was time for another round of applications, I hope this time round I will get some more positive responses. This time I send my CV and stuff to Rebellion (Alien vs Predator), Rockstar North (GTA of course), Curve Studios (PSP games now stepping over to X360 and PS3), Stainless Games(Xbox Live arcade games) and Pivotal Games (conflict series). Tomorrow I will be sending some more applications to companies like Sumo(Virtua Tennis) and Ninja theory(Heavenly Sword).
So wish me luck in my quest for a job.

Saturday 5 July 2008

Welcome to suburbia

Yesterday I moved from 79 Cranbrook Avenue to 500 Inglemire lane to live for the next 3 months.
The packing of my old room actaully went swift in 3 hours I had everything boxed up and out of the place. It always boggles me that when you think you don't have that much stuff in a room how much it actually is. And this is just basic stuff and the stuff I collected here over a year.
I moved in now for a day and it's a bit adjusting because the walks to uni are a bit longer but also to the pubs. I now need to walk for about 15 minutes to get a pint instead of 5. So I kinda am getting a bit more of movement then I had before. The other thing is the house I am living in now is a lot smaller so that's gonna be a big adjustment as well.
The the nice thing though is that this neighborhood will be a bit more secure than the last one I lived in. This house is smack in the middle of a suburb.

Saturday 14 June 2008

Dissertation progress update

After another ten days the dissertation is finally looking like the end product should. The application now loads an .x file on command and we can change the mesh at run time. The collision detection for the mesh is implemented and the vertex color is changed when the mouse moves over the mesh.
The next tasks to do is to actually render the pen color in to a texture and display that instead of using vertex colors.
Here is a screenshot:

Thursday 5 June 2008

Projection errors

OK the error I had in the previous post has a very easy solution the projection matrix was setup wrong.
Instead of setting it in "OnD3D9CreateDevice" part of DXUT it needs to be set in "OnD3D9ResetDevice".
It now looks as following:

X files rendering

After a week wrestling with DX 9 again I got an x file to render. When I tried this last Christmas it wouldn't render for the world of me. Apparently the tutorial in the DX sdk are a bit out of date. When I started looking at the function calls involved I found that I wasn't supplying everything. It now renders although I have minor camera problem with the rendering so thats the next step to figure out.
Remeber in the following screenshot light is on in the first and off in the second to show that textures are also working:

Monday 5 May 2008

Resurrection

Today we finished the team project which this time has an installer so you all can try it out at home.
Do read the readme though as this installer needs to install OpenAll first if it isn't present on the machine and if it has to you need to run it again to install the game.
Link is here. And link for the redistributable msvcrt.dll is here. Copy the contents of the folder in the second zip over to the installation directory.

Monday 28 April 2008

AI

I finally found the bug in my AI ACW last night after 3 solid days of working on it, as I fixed it I am now at a winning rate of 5/5 for no, 1 and 2 ghost 4/5 for 3 ghost and now testing 4 ghosts. At least is can win now it didn't do that for the last couple of days.
The first version I had could complete the no ghost one, but the next versions couldn't even do that. And i think i still have a minor bug in the path finding when it can't find a path with a value now it always goes to the left bottom corner instead of searching the full grid to see if it can find a path with a dot in it. I also think I need to decrease the value for the bonus when there aren't that many dots left. It will now almost always go for the bonus. I definitely have a problem in the full search as you can see from a the screen shots.
Ah well here is a screen shot:

Monday 14 April 2008

Applying

Today I applied for a job at Bizarre Creations and Blackrock Studios (formerly Climax). Now it's hope and wait until I get an answer. Later this week I will also be applying at Rebellion, Codemasters, Ninja Theory(although they dont have an opening they do however understand the importance of cake) and Frontier.
Tomorrow I have to go to a Game Republic event and a showcase in the morning. I have to go to this showcase because my professor couldn't find any volunteers to go. So he figured while Sam and me have to be at the event in the evening anyway why not make them go, Sam is a fellow student who like me has gotten a Game Republic Bursary. The showcase isn't all bad luckily there are cash prizes involved for the winners and it's a good way to show game studios that are there what you can do. Lets see if I can do some shameless self promotion there and score some interviews with some other companies.

On a side note I finally handed in my Shaders project for some more screenshots go to this website. And go to the shaders thing, as of now that are the only screens online later this week I'll put some more up that so the final product.

Wednesday 19 March 2008

Portofolio, Family Visits

Well today and yesterday i have been working on my portfolio site, which is now almost done and the link to it can be found on the right.
From tomorrow on till 25th of March I will finally be having a bit of vacation as my Mother and brother are coming over from NL. This semester is even worse than last one as they have given us so much todo and not enough time to do it in. Well at least i got my Shaders almost done and Physics is coming along nicely as well.

Monday 10 March 2008

Shaders Continued

I changed the shader i showed you yesterday into looking a bit more realistic. This is done by actually texturing the terrain with its approriate texture instead of assigning colors to heights, although that approach is still used for the water color. I also added a transparent reflection map for the water implemented as a pixel shader, i later still wish to add refraction to it so it looks more realistic. Here is a current screen shot:

Sunday 9 March 2008

Birthday and Shaders

So last Friday i held my birthday party here at Cranbrook Avenue, it actually turned out to be a better party than i had expected. I got so drunk that i cant even remember the last part of the evening, its all a blur now. And to finish the birthday we went to a metal club last night, which is always good as the drinks there are cheap.

On another note i have been doing a bit of shader programming and here is a screen shot of a procedurally colored terrain:

Tuesday 26 February 2008

Earthquake

About 30 - 40 minutes ago (no is 1:35 UK time) we got hit by an earthquake, 4.7 on Richter scale. Was kinda funny, I just thought who the hell is running down the corridor like a elephant. But apparently a lot of people felt it because the streets here filled up with people to see if anyone else felt it.
It wasn't very heavy just a minor tremor, still a girl next door got very scared and didn't dare go to bed again, and asked the next door neighbor to stay in his room (Damn!, she is quite hot).
In other news happening here my professor (the one of the bursary) said Rockstar Leeds was interested in speaking to me, so I am now waiting foor their invite for a interview for an internship.

Sunday 17 February 2008

Marks and Distinctions

Well i got my marks from the previous semester and scored two distinctions (C++ and real-time computer graphics). The average is also still a distinction luckily :P.
C++ Programming and Design = 76 / 100
Game Development Architecture = 59 / 100
Real-Time Graphics = 79 / 100
Average 71.3 / 100
So all the hard work has paid off luckily.

Friday 15 February 2008

Ice Hockey

Next week I have to match to play.
One is in New Castle where we are going on Tuesday, match time is at 00:00. On the bus back we are gonna have the skinny man drinking contest which is going to be a good laugh. The contest consists of an endurance drinking race, its who can down the most bottles. The contest is between our two skinniest members of the team.
Then on Friday we have normal practice and on Sunday there is another away match.

Wednesday 13 February 2008

New Video of The ACW

I uploaded a new version of the video of my game today this is the final version and high and low quality versions are found at http:://paul.walterheck.com/

Saturday 9 February 2008

First Ice Hockey Match

So yesterday was our first ice hockey match, which we won with 9-6. We played against a team that already had played two matches so for a first match this is a nice result.
I stopped two slap shots and got one shot at goal, sadly I didn't score.
After the match we had a team social in Pipers and they did some rewards. Basically the rewards were just an excuses to have everybody down a pint of beer.
After this I went to a house party again because well it's Friday and that means heavy drinking here.
The plan for tongiht is gonna be spiders and that's gonna be a lot of fun as well.

Sunday 27 January 2008

A week of parting and partying

This week was a week of say goodbye, because all the students that are here on Erasmus scholarships are going home. So we had a goodbye party for Peter a Polish friend of mine on Tuesday, which actually turned out to be a good party.
Friday was the birthday of another friend of mine, which we celebrated in Spiders, the only metal club in town here. And they were actually playing good music this time not too much gothic and more metal. We all got very drunk there, price for shots and cocktails there are ridiculously cheap.
And last night there was a major house party, it was organized to celebrate the end of exams, which we did in style. Good party we came in and after a few minutes a couple of guys were already dragging in a Christmas tree to burn it in the back yard.

This week I'll put my game up for download, i still have to figure out how to run it on other pcs. So when that is done I'll put it up for download with some description of the controls.

Friday 18 January 2008

So we'r back

I have been in the UK for a week and a half again, I just couldn't find time to post earlier. Preparing for an exam i had took up most of my time.
About the exam I am not so sure if I passed it I hope I will because it was kind of a strange exam. The problem is in how i wrote stuff down, it's kinda hard to structure your answers in a different language when you have a time constraint for writing it.
Ice hockey has started again, today was the first practice and it was a good one. I was kinda dreading on going there but I had a really good time so I am glad I joined the team. We are going to enter a league here so that means I am going to play competitions in a lot of places in the UK. Finally I am going to see something from the UK, without having to do too much effort for it.
Last night was the first party like night, drank too much vodka there but that's what you get when you go drinking with Polish people. Tomorrow is the first house party of the year and I am looking forward to it.
Now I only have to write two reports, do a presentation and design a poster and next semester will begin again. Which will probably mean I'll be talking about coding again and party's, oh I will also keep track of how we do in the league here.