Red Brick Games

I went jogging this morning, for the first time in over a year. Wish me luck — and for my knees to hold up.

Particle effects have been fun. I’m designing a system in Orcs vs. Martians that allows up to three different particle effects for each game action.

1. action particles - particles that are a function of the action (attacking, building, paving, etc.)
2. ejecta particles - particles that are a function of the action target (to model flying debris)
3. impact particles - particles that are a function of the combination of action target + impacter (laser).

In other words, I’ll be able to produce particles specific to actions (e.g. paving kicks up some road dust), particles specific to the target (brick bldgs eject stone debris, wood bldgs eject splinter debris), and particles that vary with both the target and whether a Martian laser was involved (for sparks when striking metal, an energy corona from a laser, etc.)

One of the more fun particle ideas I’ve thought of is, when workers chop trees, make leaves drift down from the trees. The leaves would be particles. That effect seems like it would be a really nice touch - can’t wait to implement it!

I’ve been experimenting with a new tile set for Orcs vs. Martians. Here’s “Mordor”:

I think it’s a nice, stark contrast to OVM’s other tile sets, which are all rather lush.

I’ve also been adding detail to the human character models. One of those details being: hair. Initially, I tried blond hair only…

…to which, my initial reaction was, “Gee, everybody looks Scandinavian now!”

Also, I’ve started looking at Torque’s particle engine. For the first time in any depth, really. I’ve heard lots of people praise Torque’s particle engine, and from what I’ve seen so far, I have to agree — it looks to be quite nifty.

More good thing are a-happenin’ with Orcs vs. Martians:

Further optimization

I’ve spent the last few days doing numerous, small optimizations. Their effects have added up. New results for my stress-test case:

• roughly 8 framers per second (was 6)
• about 71% of time spent rendering (was 60%)

w00t. I was already pretty happy with 6 FPS, on my laptop’s weak graphics system. And now 8? that’s practically playable.

And another good thing: most of my current 3-D models are not optimized for an RTS. So when I get final art, I expect that number to go up further.

Considering that this is the stress-test, I believe Orcs vs. Martians‘ code is now sufficiently optimized to put this puppy up for sale!! (but I’ll still shoe-horn in a few more optimizations before release.)

Networked games are working again

I’m now testing networked games between two PCs. It’s been a long time since I’ve done such testing, and so far, I’ve only found two crashes. And I just fixed those crashes.

I’ve successfully played one networked game, from start to finish, with no serious network problems.

Improved arrows

Up to now, I’ve just been using “particles” to render arrows. So the arrows have looked like white streaks:

Now, however, I’m using a true 3-D arrow model:

I like the the new 3-D arrow model much better. On top of that, I think the 3-D model renders slightly faster than the particles did. ??? Now that was a surprise.

…And a funny bug

Apparently, I did an OpenGL no-no somewhere: on my second computer, the building and tree shadows are rendering as grey squares:

Oops. Also, you can notice that the unit portraits have a black background. That’s wrong, they’re supposed to be transparent.

)-: I must’ve done something non-portable. My development laptop is ATI-based, whereas my 2nd computer is Nvidia-based. Up ’til now, I must have been lucking out with ATI’s OpenGL driver.

But that bug should be easy to fix.

Lately I’ve been optimizing Orcs vs. Martians‘ run-time performance.

My stress-test test case is:

• largest possible map (90×90 tiles)
• maximum number of players (9)
• maximum number of trees
• maximum number of ore deposits
• no fog-of-war, so that
  • everything’s rendered, stressing the rendering code
  • everything’s in-scope, stressing the networking code

In addition, all players start with a big pile of resources, enabling them to immediately build big armies.

I start profiling 45 seconds after the game starts. The 45-second delay allows the players’ armies time to reach each other. That way, there are multiple battles raging while profiling is in progress.

Current results:

• roughly 6 frames per second on my 3-year-old laptop (2.4 GHz cpu, ATI X300 gfx (ack))
• about 60% of time spent rendering, 40% doing everything else

I’d say that’s pretty good. I consider my laptop’s graphics to be weak by today’s standards (I mean, ATI X300? come on, the ancient Egyptians used that chipset). And the test case intentionally stresses the game as much as possible.

A “typical” game on this laptop tends to run more like 30 frames per second.

Results were obtained using Torque’s excellent built-in profiler.

This blog is mostly about game development, so I realize its readers are of all demographic, political, and religious persuasions, and therefore I don’t expect anyone to agree with my own political ideas. Still, I want to comment about the upcoming U.S. presidential election, and why I’m already happy about it.

I think that Senators Obama and McCain are, simply put, both pretty good candidates.

Honestly and truly. I feel like we’re briefly in a bright spot, in modern American political history. Both of these guys are pretty good. I think the country is going to “win” next November, no matter who gets elected.

Now, some people might respond, “How can you say that! Don’t you know that political party XYZ is evil! They drown little baby kittens!”

I’m all in favor of being passionate about political ideals and voting by them, but I also think the United States has a serious problem with partisanship. By “partisanship” I mean viewing one political party as all-good, and the other parties as all-bad. I don’t think life works that way. No demographic group is all-good and the others all-bad; no person is even all good or bad. I certainly don’t see myself as all-good; I have plenty of faults. I know because I have to own up to them from time to time :-P So I argue, how much more it’s true, of a demographic group, or a political group.

So I dislike partisanship. The “other party” is not evil. Even if I don’t agree with their philosophy, they may still have some good ideas. But partisanship discourages people from evaluating ideas based on ideas’ merit. When that happens, everybody loses. People turn their brains off. Bad ideas get passed into legislation, merely because some lobbyist or special-interest group got the ruling party to endorse the idea, and then people blindly followed the endorsement of their political party.

I also hate the ideas of “party discipline” and “party loyalty”, where, if politicians think independently, they face potential recrimination from their own party. That’s definitely bad for the nation.

But I digress… the point of all that is why I think partisanship is bad.

Anyhow, in past times, I have voted for President Bush. But like many people, I feel betrayed by him. I’m upset about the lying that occurred prior to our involvement in Iraq, and about the torture issue. Whatever happened to “compassionate conservatism”? Last election, I wasn’t a happy camper. I was increasingly uncomfortable with Bush, but on the other hand, I didn’t much like John Kerry, either.

What a positive contrast this election is.

On the one hand, we’ve got John McCain. He’s made a career of thinking and voting independently. He has a track record of reaching across the aisle and cooperating with Democrats whenever possible. Which, as I am arguing, is a good thing (actually, IMHO, a wonderful thing). He has openly opposed the Bush administration on the torture issue. He’s been critical of people in the Bush administration that I, too, dislike (*cough* Rumsfeld *cough*).

McCain has also pledged to run a fair, non-mudslinging, election campaign. He seems to have had a little trouble with that pledge, but by and large, has done pretty well. I’d give him a “B” or “B-” grade on that effort.

And on the other hand, we’ve got Barack Obama. He, also, is explicitly trying to run a campaign while being respectful of his opponent. And on that point, possibly doing a better job than McCain. After the news media did a lamentable feeding frenzy on Sarah Palin’s daughter, Obama himself cried “foul”. Way to go, man. I also like Obama’s positive message of hope. If elected, I’m not sure he can sustain the “hope” message in the face of Washington politics. But it’s better than simply villainizing the “other party”.

I’d also argue that another positive about Obama is his race. I believe, as pretty much everyone else does, that there’s still lingering racism in America. I’ll make no attempt to be politically correct here: what better way to address subtle racism, than for a racial-minority President to be elected? Racism nowadays can be hard to spot, but a President who’s a minority would know about such things first-hand. I think a President Obama would be empowering in that respect. Fair point, no? I’d also argue, the USA has a past history of slavery and overt racism, and while most Caucasians don’t approve of what our ancestors did in the past, we still feel some responsibility and regret, particularly where past sins are still causing problems today. For like-minded people, it’d be a real joy to see a member of a minority to assume the highest office in the country.

Two good candidates. I’m already breathing a sigh of relief about this election. Good things can happen.

I do prefer one candidate over the other, based on values about a few key issues. But if my favored candidate doesn’t win, I’ll still be happy.

Work done in August:

A.I.

• made the AI analyze the terrain and fortify strategic bottlenecks!!!
• made the AI recover squads after a successful attack.
• made the AI respond more intelligently when out-ranged by attackers.
• made the AI prioritize engagement against attackers that damage a base.
• made the AI not avoid enemy towers while they’re still under construction.

gameplay

• made it easier to preview windmill yield before building.
• made upgrades progressively more expensive.
• made it impossible to attack a bldg behind the fog-of-war (player must see it to attack).
• made units face & aim vertically at their targets.

audio

• added menu music.
• revamped the option gui volume controls.
• pulled in many audio bug fixes from Torque 1.5.2.
• fixed a Torque audio bug where game music got corrupted during big battles.
• fixed a bug where death sounds weren’t being played.
• added more bldg death sounds.

crashes

• fixed a crash when telling a unit multiple times to go to an unreachable tile.
• fixed a crash that resulted from attack targets would occasionaly get mixed up.
• fixed a crash due to order of data initialization.
• fixed a crash due to a race condition in switching worker modes.

general

• fixed a bug where AI workers could accumulate too many guards.
• fixed a Torque bug in rendering the selection rings.
• fixed various bugs that gave away terrain heights of fogged terrain.
• fixed some spurious error msgs that briefly appeared.
• fixed some memory/resource leaks.
• fixed glitches in the display of resources / tools carried by workers.
• got switching to/from fullscreen working, while in-game.