Covii Challenge part 2 update log: Friday

Day 5-Thursday:
Update 1(2:12):

• The Final day! The Final Hour! The Final ... ok nvm
• I finished the project about 15 minutes ago and sent it for review. I'm fairly confident they'll like it even though I personally would add some things like transition effects, DoF and Anti-Alias. I would probably rework my particle engine to allow particle area segmentation with which I could add some more realistic water effect to the second program (I ended up making two programs since I don't have much time and couldn't implement the transition effect).
  And Here are the screenies!

As you can see I fixed the low saturation problem!

Yeah, I know the trail doesn't look perfect, but believe me, it's not at all that noticeable  when it's running.

• In retrospect I feel like I wasted far too much time resting, even though this project was a bit strenuous, as I must get used to working under such pressure if they are to keep me in the company for more than a few days. I also made a few rules that should help me survive and lead a healthier lifestlye when working:

1. Sleep Early,Sleep a lot!
   8 hours of sleep a day is a must, even if it means not playing my games or watching movies before going to sleep. Sleep deprivation and lack of a standard sleep hours were one of my biggest mistakes I did during this challenge. An afternoon nap and a night's sleep is a must!
2. Eat Healthy Food! (and longcat is long)
   As obvious as this sounds eating healthy things is actually a problem for me. Not because I don't like it, as I do enjoy a salad every once in a while, but because I don't find time to prepare proper food and resort to eating tuna or chocolate cream sandwiches all the time. I've noticed that in days I went out to eat in a restaurant I actually performed an incredible lot better than in the days I eat what basically is unhealthy garbage.
3. A rest from programming is a rest from computerI've learned that if I work for a few long hours and then rest by playing games or watching movies, I don't actually rest as well as if I have taken a walk, it's also a lot more difficult to come back to . I still fall into the trap of playing games or browsing websites when I should leave the pc alone for an hour or two, so it's something I'll have to work on.
4. Animation is Concentration! (but I'm programming!)Anyone who ever read Richard Williams "Animators Survival Kit" probably knows the quote "Animation is Concentration" inspired by Milt Khals' angry outburst  at Richard when he asked him if he listens to any music while working. This was Milt's response: "F-F-F-For Ch-CH-CHRIST'S S-S-S-SAKE, GG-G-GG-GODDamnit! WHAT A F-FF-F-FF SSSTUPID QUESSSTION!!! I'M NOT SMART ENOUGH TO THINK OF MORE THAN ONE THING AT A TIME!!".
   Yeah, Milt Kahl didn't listen to music while he was working and neither should you!
   Even though I'm a programmer this still holds. Music and any other sounds distract from work more than you realise and I've come to experience this first handed not only this week but along my life as well when I'm studying or working on my own projects.
   Turn off Messenger (or put it on busy and disable all notifications), close any youtube tabs you have open, close Winamp and listen to the silence.
5. Get InspiredMy biggest problem when working is that I easily change focus, however this also comes with another trait of personality: I get inspired really easily. Every now and then I look for videos made by game "celebrities" like some of Chris Hecker's presentations where he talks about the tech they developed for Spore, or interviews with indie devs like the Wolfire team. Those videos always inspire me to work harder so one day I could achieve what those people have achieved. I also read a lot of tech presentations, especially those made by Valve. Those are also a good source of inspiration and you gain invaluable knowledge even if you can't replicate it at the moment.
6. Keep things mixed up!
   There's one thing I'm prone to and that's fatigue. I can't work more than a few days on one thing. My solution to this problem was actually quite easy to come by: get a hobby in an area completely unrelated to programming. In my case I always liked to draw so this problem was solved by itself. Every now and then I grab Photoshop or Blender and just do something in it. Having activities spread in unrelated areas is really good for avoiding fatigue, and it even may bring advantages. I for example am more of an Game Engine fundamentals programmer, but being interested in modelling drawing and animation made me interested in graphical computing which in turn gave me this opportunity to work at CoVii!

• I guess that's all of them. Those are the rules I set for the future. Some of them I've been following already, other will take a bit of time before I get used to them, but if I manage to follow them all I should perform my best at work and avoid procrastination while I'm home!
• On Sunday I'll probably upload a video of the program in motion.

So, this series of updates is finally finished. I hope those of you that read it enjoyed it as well. From now on this blog is going to get a bit less active at least until Febuary which is when I'll move to a new apartement.
This was Mikolaj Kuta, AKA Spliter
Seeya!

Covii Challenge part 2 update log: Thursday

Day 4-Thursday:
Update 1(2:49):

• Almost  3 in the morning, I've been working for the last hour or so with brief rests to watch some youtube videos from my subscriptions. If I'm lucky Batman9502 will upload his LP videos for his Ocarina of Time and Megaman Legends 2 in less than half an hour, if not then it's off to bed  without a good-night cartoon :(
  Anyway, I digress. Here's what I've accomplished in the last hour and a half:

1. Cubes that light up softly 
2. When the mouse passes them not too fast and not too slow, they fly in the direction of the camera missing it by just enough not to notice any clipping.
3. Trail effect on the cubes is finally noticeable.
4. Added a very nice looking background that changes softly over time(only noticeable without cubes on the screen), I did this using a simple gradient background texture

• So, not that much done but these are the new accomplishments. As usual I also fiddled with the framebuffer order and some colour and opacity, the colours look too desaturated for me in the current state; changed the bloom effect settings so it's a lot more subtle; changed the way the particles render so the final image looks softer, but at the same time allows me to illuminate the particles I need above their texture color. I also removed the specular highlight. It was far too strong even on the lowest settings, so I'll just stay with the very subtle sphere map.

•  ANYWAY! Here's the product from few hours ago:

 Randomly Lit cubes with random rotations FTW!

•  And here's the product from a few minutes before I started writing this entry:

 You see what I mean by too desaturated?

• The background has a very nice color but the cubes, even though they have the same hue, are a lot more desaturated and I'm still trying to figure out why. I'll probably fiddle around with the light and the 2nd pass to add more red and blue

• So! I'd say this part of the project is quite close to being done, all I have to add now is to make the cubes rotate when you pass over them with the mouse! Then it'll be off to the second part of the challenge where I'll have to add the same water-y effects to the particles as in the Yellow Submarine from the previous challenge and create another particle system that creates the particles near the mouse to give a similar effect to the one in the video they gave me. If I'm done in the early afternoon then I'll add some extra flavour like the screen shattering into a hundred of small cubes when changing from one effect to the other. This would be quite easy to do if I had the time since I render most of everything on Texture-bound FBOs.
• I have one regret towards this challenge: I have to copy someone else's work. Not exactly, but since they gave me a reference I've been following it quite strongly so I don't sidetrack as I usually like to do. If I had more time I would've made some significant changes like adding Anti-Alias to the scene so it would look a lot more polished. I would've also added interesting physical effects to the particles, like visual effects like changing the hue of the scene or make the cubes actually behave "softer" using shaders (stretch them in the direction they're flying for example, and expand a bit when rotating really fast)

 Update 1(15:07):

• I sent my (hopefully) future boss two of the screens I had here on my blog and he liked it! In fact he liked it so much that he said he wants to close the deal! I'm going there to work with them for one day and if they like me I'll be working!! I'll be part of a team that makes awesome projects and lets me get better and better at what I love to do! YEAH!
  Ekhem. Now we resume our scheduled programme:

•  I added mouse speed dependent rotation to the cubes using cross product between the mouse current, and previous positions and the particle coordinates. Now the cubes rotate properly, if you pass the mouse over them slowly they'll rotate slowly in the direction the mouse is moving, if you pass your mouse a bit on the side it'll rotate on an angle perpendicular to the mouse movement in relation to the particle.
• I also render the trail above the particles but with much more subtlety. This gives them the appearance of delicate semi-translucency especially when they move fast around the screen, it also helps softening the scene giving it a more...uh... ethereal(?) look?
  Here are the screenies:

• There are still some thing I would like to try out like making a DoF effect using part of the blur shader but make the blur stronger the closer the particles get to screen, I'm not sure if I have time to do that since I still need to get working on the second part of this program which is making much smaller cubes that light up stronger the faster they go and behave like if they were in water. I would kinda prefer no to do that since I really need a good rest.
  Also I would follow my friends advice and add some anti-aliasing to the scene since it doesn't look that good on screenshots. Luckily this isn't such a problem when actually playing around with the program so most passers-by wouldn't notice any difference.
  One thing that popped up into my mind (even though unrelated to the challenge) is to make some effects using metaballs. I know it's made using the marching cubes algorithm but I'm curious how the actual mesh would be built from that.
• I just noticed I wrote "Tuesday" instead of "Thursday" in the title.
  Whoops!

Covii Challenge part 2 update log: Wednesday

Day 3-Wednesday:
Update 1(2:10):

•  Ok, I've spent three productive hours playing around with shaders, lighting, rearranging FBOs and generally playing around with everything. Here are the progress screenies:

Boring!

Basic textures, yay! Also, my eyes kinda hurt, red+blue=bad >:(

The beginnings of bloom. AUGH MY EYES!!!

MY EYES! MY EYES! MY EYES!!!

Ok, now it's not so bad, but still looks like crap.

• As you can see I didn't do much. But only the last one is a true bloom effect. Even though it looks like crap, and isn't as strong/diluted as I would like it to be. I'm starting to get the hang of the shaders, since I've taken a nap I'll probably work another few hours before going to sleep, but I'll take a little rest now from the project.
• Anyway, I updated my list of things to do. I also updated the list from the previous update here's the resume of what I did today:

1. Finally Added real bloom (even though I'm not completely happy with it)
2. 3D model particles
3. Working quaternion rotation lib
4. Added lighting
5. Played around with various effects.

• I can't say this is bad but I also would like to have made more both today and yesterday. Optimally I would have already achieved good looking bloom, added at least one of two physical particle effects and already added cube mapping. Still I'll probably achieve at least 5 out of 6 planned features by tomorrow noon so things aren't as hopeless as it seemed to me. However tomorrow is a big day since the basic functionality should be finished and I'll start making some more advanced stuff as well as fine-tunning.

 Mini-update: Disco Ball!! Well, sort of.

This calls for some awesome music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awzrax7UcV8
Only link since youtube won't let me embed the vid :(
Watch it anyway :D

Update 2(11:44):

• I fell asleep around 8:00, it's now 11:44. Damn cleaning ladies and their racket. Can't sleep now, I'll try to work, but probably I'll take a nap in the afternoon.

Update 3(14:55):

• So, after some time feeling dizzy and with a minor headache from sleep deprivation I started blaying around with various effects. The current state of things looks pretty close to the video they gave me as reference. I noticed though that in the video the presentation also used DoF shader. I made some additions on my own of course, like subtle sphere mapping to give a more glossy appearance to the cubes, I also added an overlay texture which scrolls slowly enough not to be noticeable but still gives a faint effect of movement to the scene. Most probably my final work won't look as good as the original but hey! I'm competing against someone sponsored by Toyota, with quite a few years of experience in the field and I'm not that far behind!

The scrolling effect I mentioned earlier:

• The sphere map is costing me some nasty bright seams on the chamfered edges I used to smooth the cubes, I'm not sure what to do, I'll either have to sacrifice smooth lighting or the sphere map... unless... hm... I might use the same model but with different normals for the sphere map pass, and a different one, with smoothed normals for the light pass!
• Edit: No, I can't do that, stupid blender and its automatic normals!
• Edit2: HAHA! being smart as I am I decided to export the cube model two times, first time with the chamfered edges but flat on the cube sides and another one with the rounded edges. Then I'll just copy the normals from the first one to the second one and voilà! I have two types of cubes :]
• Edit3: Once again: DAMN YOU BLENDER!!! I don't want any stupid optimizations! I want the normals and vertices exactly the same always!!! AGRH. Because of this I can't have fancy sphere map.
• Edit4: The seams are caused by the light, now I'm mad >:(
• Edit5: Ok! Finally got rid of the nasty seams, I removed some detail from the edges and it seems to work fine now and I didn't have to sacrifice neither the sphere map nor the smooth light!
• Also: sorry for anyone stumbling upon this blog with a 56k connection. I really do feel sorry for you.

 Update 4(23:00):

• I ended up taking a longer rest than I wanted, it's 23:00 now and I haven't touched the program :(
  I disappointed myself quite a lot with this, especially since I haven't even slept properly yet. I hope that I can at least have a productive night, or productive morning, anything as long as I can deliver the program by tomorrow afternoon!!

Covii Challenge part 2 update log

Long story short I'll be updating this post every now and then with the development info, thoughts and screenshots.
Edit: I moved the Wednesday updates to another post since the scrolling up and down to read anything is getting ridiculous.

Day 1-Monday:
Update 1(15:32):

• Started working on the project yesterday but only had half an hour for it because of uni projects, I added support for FBOs, it's pretty sweet, also added some basic trail effects.

• Today I woke up at 12, that's what I get for sleeping only 4 hours yesterday, I  started working on it almost immediately. Using a bit of tutorial help I made a blur shaders, works pretty sweet, today I should also be able to add true 3D objects to my particle system (so far it only supports 2D), this also means I'll have to rewrite the existing effectors.

• Added the blur effect to my previous FBO rendering. My first post processing shader! It looks pretty sweet and it's quite close to the final look I'm going for in terms of trails.

Here's how it looks

•  Damn, I noticed that if you look really close you can see a little crossing on the blur, it isn't noticeable in the movement through, but I'll once I finish the project I'll have to fix that.
• Also wasted about one and a half hour trying to make the RECTANGLE textures to work... wasted because they still didn't work even though I used someone else's code. Either FBOs don't work with NPOT textures (which I think is odd since I've read somewhere they work fine) or my graphic card doesn't support them (which would also be odd since it's on the supported extension list) 
• When starting to work on the new particle system I realized the particle rotation need to be quaternions to avoid gimbal lock. I don't have a quaternion lib compatible with my current math lib so I'm sad because I have to make one :(

Update 2(18:33):

• Added the quaternion support and supposedly the particle system should work with 3D objects (it still supports all the existing features so I didn't had to rewrite the 2D effectors). I'm starting to get worried I won't make it for some reason even though it's not that difficult. I've been trying to relax and stop working for a bit but having to do this project all day and then work on uni stuff all night isn't good for me. I really need this job so I can't just rest for a day or two, I want this working Wednesday midday at the latest, after that it's fine tuning and Thursday I'll probably deliver it at least to see what they want me to change. They liked the first program I made for them but if I don't get this job I'll have to go back to Poland since I don't have any money left. Yeah, I'm kind of depressed right now, it'll pass after I take a rest.

Day 2-Tuesday:
Update 1(10:21):

• I just woke up and I'm feeling a lot better now! Yesterdays depression most probably was only because I've been working on it a lot of hours straight without doing anything else. This is something I've learned to avoid in the past since it clouds your mind and you get into an Idea loop. Normally I rest every few hours for an hour or two to watch a movie, play a game or go for a walk to completely get away from my PC and get refresh my head. The reason I didn't stop yesterday is because this challenge is letting me a bit nervous since my life depends on this and all, but I should be able to avoid making the same mistake today.
• I made  a small list of features I want implemented until tomorrow noon. Here they are:

1. FBOs ready to write Post Processing shaders (done)
2. Trail Effect (done)
3. Particle System ready for 3D with quaternion rotations (done)
4. Bloom (almost there)
5. Requested particle effects (quarter way there, I could use my previous effects and add 3D support for them)
6. actual 3D modelled particles (done)
7. background movement highlight (I'm waiting for confirmation if it's necessary, I'll probably implement it anyway if I finish ahead of schedule)

 Update 2(14:24):

• Finally added 3D, model loading, display, lights etc.
• I discovered there's a problem with my quaternion lib and I'll have to redo most of it (on any rotation the entire scene disappears). I'm starting to wonder if I really need quaternions or would axis-angle be enough. Still I shouldn't have that much trouble since I know I had somewhere a working quaternion lib, I just don't know where. I'll have to go into my backup folder and spend some time looking....
• Made a screenie so you can see how it looks now:

I know the cubes don't look like much so far but at least it's something! 

Also I still have the grids I used to orient myself

• Can you believe me I spend over an hour before I could see anything? The beginning is always the hardest part for me when I don't know where I am and my references aren't drawn, since the problem could be anywhere from badly configured viewport with farclip too close, to camera orientation, to (in this case) drawing in a FBO instead of drawing to the screen!
• I'm gonna take a break now. I need to eat and rest, luckily I don't have any uni projects today night so I'll have a bit more time to work later. I really hope I can finish this for tomorrow noon, otherwise I would be really disappointed with myself.

  Update 3(19:39):

• I feel sick. Headache high temp and nausea... ugh... I don't think I'll be able to finish things until tomorrow. I'll take a nap and if I feel better when I wake up then I'll continue making the program, if not I'll wait until tomorrow.

  Update 4(21:56):

• just woke up, I feel a lot better now even though still a bit drowsy. Time to work!

  Update 5(23:17):

• GOD. DAMN. PRECISION. ERRORS!
• also stupid c=sin(aangle.angle*0.5); It's supposed to be cos @_@. Bot h of those have cost me over one hour of work that could have been spent making shaders or particle physics or anything at all other than rewriting my quaternion library!!

Covii Challenge part 1 and other updates

Hello!
Another blog update (yeah, I've been doing that a lot lately haven't I?).
If you've seen the video on my last post to the end you'd know I'm desperately looking for a job right now.
With extreme amount of luck I've found a job offer for the C++/OpenGL programmer!!!
The company name is CoVii from Computer Vision Interaction.
Basically they develop applications that allow interactive surfaces like an interactive wall or floor where the content responds when a person walks by.
I went to an interview there on Tuesday and apparently they liked me (either that or they pretended to like me),  but they wanted to test my skills out since my portfolio isn't that impressive as I've let the university and lack of money consume my will and time to work on my projects little by little (if I didn't have any financial trouble I would probably have made by now a graphical equivalent of Crysis).

They gave me two projects and so far I've completed one of them, it took me about 2 days. Considering I had classes during both of them and uni projects to do, I'd say I've done it pretty quickly. Maybe barely over 8 hours of coding.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Here's the video of the project in motion:
 

 

As you can see it went quite well and I'm happy with the results (and luckily so are they) but they want me to do another one. Now the next one is a bit harder not only because I have a ton of uni projects to do, as well as being chrsistmass time for which I'll go spend a day or two with my friend and his familly (with whom I've spent last years' Christmas and it was awesome), but also the seconds project covers more advanced OpenGL topics such as post processing and shader effects.
Now I've done some simple vertex and fragment shaders before, unfortunately what I've learned from them is not as much as I would need for this project (I really hope the boss isn't reading this blog right now, even though he said he's read it when he interviewed me...at least I think he's the boss, I forgot to ask him...).

What will happen in the next few days is that I'll have a couple of day long working sessions during which I'll be furiously studying the advanced OpenGL aspects. Today I've learned how to use framebuffer objects (finally! I've been meaning to learn about them for weeks but the damn uni has me doing chat programs and encryptions and stuff). FBOs are damn useful, I've managed to create trail effects without even changing any existing code nor touching shaders!
So far I've planned using cube mapping for very subtle reflections, shaders on models for stronger light effect, I'll also use shaders combined with FBOs to create post processing effects like depth of field, blur for the trails and bloom.

That's a lot of things to learn in such a full week, but considering I've done kind of similar things before, and understanding how all of this works, I'd say I have a pretty good chance of making them want me in their team!

oh... btw, I know this blog is displayed on the LudumDare through RSS, so sorry for the fellow LudumDarians that I don't make any actual game updates! I hope you're ok with life ramblings and mild programming stuff!.

I'm off!
~Mikolaj Kuta AKA Spliter

Urban Stroll

Hello!
Just a quick blog update to show I'm not procrastinating as much as it would seem.
This time it's actually a VIDEO blog update!
sooo... yeah
Enjoy


As I mentioned I'm looking for a job so until I get hired, or at least until someone will give me a job interview I won't be able to make a tutorial. I'm also extremely busy with university projects, If I want to do anything of my own it means to stay up till 4am.

That's all for this blog post.
I'll see you next time!

Learning GUIs and stuffs

So yeah, I decided to finally take learning a GUI seriously so I grabbed Win32 and started learning it:

Huh? What's That you say? That's got the wxWidgets logo on it? Yeah, you're right. Win32 is shite to program in by my standards so I grabbed Qt!

And so I started learning Qt. Unfortunately after one day trying to install it properly it still gave me errors about bad entry points for DLLs and shit like that so I decided to grab wxWidgets and the prebuild libs that you just instal and run (LIKE IT SHOULD ALWAYS BE WITH EVERY SDK!). But maybe it's just me that don't find the pleasure in compiling an SDK for half an hour then realizing it still won't run, and then comiling it again and again only for it to give you more and more elaborate error messages when you try to run your program.

Anyway. The point is: I'm learning to work with wxWidgets which means Soon I'll start working on Litterbox SDK per se (Level editors, animation editors, exporters, importers and converters, all with a GUI!).

There is a bad side to all of this: I'm gonna lose my scholarship for next year because of a new law that's been passed in detriment for immigrants like myself. So unless a miracle happens I'll have to quit University for at least one year and get a job, or two jobs.

If anyone has any experience with job hunting as an experienced but not yet professional programmer I would gladly hear it.

See you once I do something worth posting here like some progress on the editor.
~Spliter

Taking a break from Game Dev

Yeah... Like the title says I decided to finally take a break. The reason behind this is that mind have become saturated from thinking about how to integrate new parts, about what to do with my engine etc. I won't, however, take a break from programming in general. Two days ago I became interested in simple web development and started reading some tutorials on HTML as well as CSS. I might also learn PHP later on, as I believe this might help me out to create a site for my little one man studio, but that's reserved for future at least a year ahead. I won't need a site until I actually make a game I want to show instead of the little crappy ones I make to test my engine functions that provide no more than 10 seconds of entertainment....which is mostly because of the graphics, not the playability of it.
Today I found a download I made in summer when I desperately wanted a GUI library despite not needing it. It's called JUCE, so far it looks pretty great and I can definitely see the possibilities for it's use as it's cross platform, free and is open source! My plans for it involve learning how to use it and make some programs so my mind won't become saturated with working on my engine. Unfortunately I won't be able to use it if I go commercial since I'd have to buy a license for 400$ which isn't something I would be willing to spend right off the bad on one license until it proves to be valuable enough and if the game sells enough to let me use it.
If any of you know of a good GUI library that doesn't require me to be open source I would highly appreciate if you told be about it (especially if it looks just as sweet as JUCE does)

Here's an old post from Scientific Ninja
Make Games not Engines
It made a little discussion going on in my head and although it didn't made me stop making my engine and start making games, it cleared my head a little and I decided to write the functional version of Litterbox as fast as I could and add more features while I'm working on a game (which I'll either chose from my list of unfinished games or invent new one after I return to game deving).


That's all for today! I'll see you next time!
~Spliter

I love my life

It's so full of hope and joy getting crushed again and again and again....
Now everything is working, I bought the cable, I have a net connection... But I can't think of a single thing to program!! I don't want to make clones, they bore me with their lack of originality, I want to make a small game that's original and lots of fun. Or at least original! But I can't.
Whenever I sit in front of my pc with intent to make something I can't think of anything.
On top of that I discovered things aren't quite as easy as I thought at first. For once, I pay 120 Euros for the rent (which I already knew), then 170 euros for my uni (which I already new) and then 25 euros for water electricity etc... Or so I thought, I actually have to pay at least 40 euros for electricity and water and internet and gas and TV (which I don't even use) and it all accumulates into a pretty 330 Euros a month. If I get the same scholarship as last year I'll be getting 350 euros a month. which leaves 20 euros to live from per month (food,and other daily needs). So I have to look for a job. Actually I've already been on a job hunt yesterday and brought a few pamphlets with me, but it turns out that I have to have a documents which allows me to work here in portugal, funnily enough this document went missing when I sent it to DGES so I could go to university!!
Now I have to get a new one made and it can take quite some time. On tuesday I'm going to SE to ask for new one (luckily last year I needed the same document so I already have all the paperwork done to get the new one).

And if that wasn't enough a friend of my dad has my wacom in her house and she's outside the country now.

Things are going really sweet.

Spliter

PC problems

I've arrived to my new room full of hope and joy that I'm finally getting independent of my parents and that I'm going to be able to just plug my PC in and play, make games and browse internet.
OH THE IRONY!
First thing I noteiced after plugging my pc is that it's not quite turning on, sure the vents worked but nothing appeared on the screen, when I sat down near my pc to check what's wrong and I touched the box it jolted me! It turned out I haven't got a single socket with ground connection, and the electricity which would usually just got to the ground traveled by me if I touched the computer. So ok, I walked 3 km back and forth to buy a socked with ground, I turned off the electricity and began my work. You know... it's funny I've chosen that socked because the ground cable inside it was too short for me to be able to plug it in normally, and so I had to do some weird twists to push that cable into the socket ground.
Fortunately my pc started working and my troubles ended.
OH THE IRONY AGAIN!
It turns out that to connect to our net adapter I must have a RJ45 cable which I don't.
So now I have a working PC but I have to buy that stupid cable to have internet access in my room.
Apart from that i discovered our apartment doesn't have a washing machine so from now on I'll have to wash my things manually... oh and I have to buy laundry detergent, dish detergent, shampoo and Q-tips and something to wipe the dust off the shelves.

On the gamedev news I'm thinking of creating a small game that's about pollination with a little twist, but I still don't know how it will work(yeah, basically I have no Ideas at all, and I'm trying to make things up as I go).

...I'm out
Spliter

I'M BACK MUTHAFUKA!

So....yeah....
I'm back, I got a room pretty close to the uni, and I still can't sleep there tonight! Only tomorrow...
anyway, I'm thinking of changing the blog name to "CatBox Beta", which incidentally is the name I plan for my future company(except the Beta) (previously I was thinking of "Cat in a Box Studio", but I decided to use a simpler name) . The reason for change is that I kinda got inspired from other gamedev blogs, and since mine isn't as much about art as the gamedev and my life I kinda think it fits, so the next post won't be posted at spliterart.blogspot.com but on CatBoxBeta.blogspot.com
I'll save the rest of the news for my next blog update when I'll be writing on my pc sitting ona confortable chair and not on the undersized laptop and sitting on the floor.
cya!
Spliter

Going back to Portugal...

So....yeah....
I'm short on time so I'll just leave this here:
I'm going back for permanent now, I decided to rent a room in an apartement that a few of my friends live in. See ya on tuesday.
Spliter

Vacations Ending...

...and I still don't know if I'm accepted into my university!
My classes start 14 of September, and I don't even know WHEN I will know if I will be granted a condo by university.
In the best case in a few days I'll discover that I've been given an aparetement and that I'll have another schoolyear without much worries apart from the classes I failed last year (which can cost me going to uni this year).
Apart from that I'm making another small engine. After working with openGL and SDL, and making a 21.000 lines of code long engine doing this one is actually pretty easy, especially since I'm not making it for various games, but only the basis for some prototypes.
My current prototype is a simple 2D animation system, bundled with an IK system and ability to draw textured mesh on it. It's practically finished apart from few bugs and certain incoherence between parts which makes me correct the code I've written before, but apart from that it all worked. Now I want to make a very simple Animation editor that features: keyframe operations like moving, creating, deleting, and reasigning to another bone (yes, the keyframes are bone independent, they only store the angle of a bone, and the ease). IK based animation building. saving and loading the animation into and from a file. Undo-redo operations.
For now that's it. It's already difficult to make this program since I have little previous experience, and I'll have to make a small GUI (oh, this reminds me, I have to download and instal the openGL font creator and the png import library).
I think it's all for now. I don't have that much time here in poland to be on pc, so the work is going by little bits, and I generally can't be on the pc for more than 4 hours a day, including programming.
Maybe I'll come up with a cool and simple game Idea I'll want to make more than this (quite useless, apart from the experience) animation system.
I'm also interested in the GDC presentations lately, I've seen all of Chris Hecker's presentations and I have to say I must thank him a lot. I learned a ton of things, and he gave me the inspiration to start programming again with his and Chaim Gingold's Advanced Prototypig talk at GDC, which I can certainly reccommend if you have difficulty starting programming again.
That's it for now.
Cya later!
Spliter

Du di dam dam

Vomits, Spewing, Dripping, Splashing, Paint, Water and anything else I can think of, was the only thing I could think of for the last few days, in my free time from rummaging through cupboards, tables, and under the beds in search of documents I was supposed to deliver LAST MONTH!
Ah well...
I'm seriously thinking of implementing some cool looking spewing in my game, but It's really hard to find any kind of graphical and especially video resources for something like that (especially if you don't want to get grossed out, and looked funny at). I could do something like that at home if I had a few buckets of paint, or tinted water, a camera, and a place to do the footage, but although 1 and 2 are available, nr 3 is in short supply.
Apart of that things aren't getting much better. My brother's return to Poland is almost certain since I can't find a job. I'm going to stay here in Portugal, living in a University condo, but I still don't know what about my sister, She could stay here if she wants it, she's the only one of us three that has any working experience, and on top of that she's a girl, which means that getting any job for her isn't as much of a problem as for me and my brother (who is still too young to have a job).
But for now let's live bad things behind. Lately I wrote a bit of a story for my game called Alternate Gravity. I already wrote 4 chapters of a book when I was younger, and a ton of unfinished comic books I gave up on, so at least when writing for this game I have some previous experience. It's shaping up pretty well so far, and I've managed to fill in some of the holes I had from when I organized everything in my mind. Now I see why design docs are so important.
normally when I create a game, I write down all the technical stuff, and create a small technical design doc, thanks to which I can easily make all of that, unfortunately I never actually created any game design doc, so even though I had the technology, and the abilities I never quite knew how to put it together. The worst mistake I do when making a game is that I don't have a final product in my mind. I can see myself playing bits of it, but I never quite know how the entire game will be, and how do I sew those separate levels into one solid gameplay.
So far I can reveal some info about Alternate Gravity (I would hope this blog end up as a gossip source for my game in the future :) ).
1-You start in a lab complex called Newton doing beta tests for an exo-suit.
2-Newton is located at an unnamed part of the world that it NOT America.
3-The gameplay will revolve much around the gravity. The entire environment inside the Newton labs will have it's gravity twisted in various ways.

I'm still working on some of the bosses for the game, and on how will the player look, but I'll probably use an older design I did for a small experimental game with similar concept.
Here's Alternate Gravity in it's experimental form:
http://files.filefront.com/Alternate+Gravityzip/;13745447;/fileinfo.html
(filefront will be used only until I can find a safer location to upload in which I have more control over the content)

Okay! It's time to finish this post and get back to work finding that stupid document I need for my father to let me off the hook (for now).
See you later!
Spliter

Little update.

Hi!
Long time no see huh?
Well... since this blog is almost as dead as my hopes I decided to update it a little with how things are going.
First, I wanted to apologize for my continuous negligence of TTL2. I do some work every now and then but lately I have difficulties on concentrating. Even my Team Fortress 2 enthusiasm is starting to wilt. I think the obvious reason for that is my slight depression and tiredness. And me still not having a job isn't helping.
Luckily there's still one thing that keeps me sane: Alternate Gravity. So far my biggest programming project. It's a game that I plan on releasing commercially, and if it's not good enough at least I hope it'll give me a kick in the right direction. I have planned much, and much of that is being done. Right now I'm working on perfecting the lighting system, so far it works by brightening everything places that aren't in shadow, but I need something better, so I decided to try another method which consists of rendering the lights BEFORE the screen is drawn, then copy the final product to an offscreen texture, and then render that texture on top of everything simply darkening the places that are in shadow.
Apart from that I'm also working on the editor. I finally got the UNDO and REDO thing to work. but since I want the game do be easily modable I want the editor to parse the config from a file, so I can use the same editor for different projects (as far as those projects are 2D as well).

Every single time I post something on this blog I realize more and more how inappropriate and ironic the name is. Initially it was supposed to be a blog where I could upload doodles and drawings I do from time to time, but for the few past months I haven't done almost anything when it comes to art (Apart from the scarce TTL2 updates). So I was thinking of either changing the name, or go along with it and say that art is a expression of one's feelings, needs and hopes, and so even programming itself can be art!
...I'll most probably go with the second one since changing the name would be too much work :D

I also was thinking of starting a journal on gamedev.net where I could update my progress on alternate gravity and other programming projects and maybe even get some feedback (as opposed to this blog which no one reads ...).
Well... I have test today in about five hours and I've barely studied...
So i'll be going now and maybe soon I'll update this blog with how TTL2 is going and also I was thinking of starting a review column for both movies and games.
See you later!
Spliter

Limbo

yeah.... the title pretty much explains my condition now =_=
not as bad as when I don't have time, not as good when I have time, but want to do something....
I've got 5 free days, and I can't get myself to do ANYTHING!
It's not programmers block, it's not artistic block, it's frikkin LIMBO, and I can't do anything about it. As soon as I start doing anything purposeful I get distracted easier than a dog passing through a meat shop.
I never have JUST enough time!!! I either have too little, and I can't DO anything, or I have too much, and I get into the damn limbo mode!
Damn procanistration...
well... I'll maybe update this blog later when I've got some actual news.
See ya!