homeworld 2 like engine and other happenstance

So if you’ve never played Homeworld 2, then too bad for you because you missed out.  Big time.  That being said, when attempting a mod of it, I was immediately inspired by how unbelievably modular and streamlined it was.  It’s a space combat simulation with incredible levels of detail and realism, and it was modded in to a naval combat sim with the same level of detail, and graphics to make it look like it’s own game.  This is with no actual access to the engine source code.  So I’m like:  DAYUM SON.

I am attempting to create a modular engine of the likes.  You could also compare this engine to the Cortex Command engine, but CC is a totally different beast, because of it’s focus on pixel graphics and physics.

I’ve had one false start already, because I hadn’t thought the iterface through entirely.  Abstracting a camera as an actor makes sense, but only if you can unify it under the controller class, which would be a horrible mess.  Also, in order to get the root entity crap to work, and still have a new entity add itself to the singleton engine, I had to derive an otherwise worthless class to do this, in order to keep GetSingleton() from locking up the first time it’s called.

In other words, a disaster of bad code.  I’ve taken a few lessons in engine design away from it though, and I will start a new one, hopefully with less fail.  I’m drawing up a new inheritance tree right now.

And in terms of life, it’s being something of a bitch and something of a thing which is awesome.  I let slip about how I’m a rollercoaster of genetic disorders that will crash and burn before my time, and Travis just said, “well, we’ll make it a time ’till then, brother.”  Which I found extremely heart warming but also extremely sad.  Sigh.  It bugs me that I still can’t tell if I’ll be leaving anything behind, and it’s a loss for someone no matter what the case.

You should all check out Inhuman Comic, because it’s more baller than your mom’s genetalia.  OOOOO BURN.

That’s about it for now.

RAVEN materials + inhuman art + freaky art

I have to say it’s quite awesome that my Grey fanart wound up on the Inhuman site’s fanart page.  I did a thing with grey killing people/trees with a menorah.  That’s because he loves the slaughter portion of the holiday season.  heah yo go my buddayo…

Okay then.  Now that that’s over with, let me tell you about a sweetass development with the engine.

I got simple materials and lighting to work in Direct3D and OpenGL!  Transparent in terms of which API of course.

This next screenshot is simple proof you can choose which:

u can choose d3d or gl zomg

NOW.  Direct3D:

Direct3D 9 HW L&T in RAVEN

And in OpenGL.  OpenGL’s glColorMaterial(GL_AMBIENT_AND_DIFFUSE) appears to give me a slightly brighter ambiance than Direct3D’s D3DRS_COLORVERTEX and D3DRS_AMBIENTMATERIALSOURCE / D3DRS_DIFFUSEMATERIALSOURCE set to the first vertex color FVF.  Not sure why, maybe it has to do with how D3D mixes the ambient color?  Or is that part of the HW L&T pipeline?  I can’t remember T_T.  Whatever, I’ll get this figured out.

OpenGL HW L&T

Oh hey.  I made another art picture yay!

Gynophobia by ~ninjarat1 on deviantART

non sleep forever lawls

I feel very sleepy. But I can’t fall asleep. It’s 2:30 in the morning, because that’s how I roll. BLLAAAARRRGHGH.

I’m not to sure why I started this post, except that I’m idle while I fail at sleep. In the meantime, if you don’t think this whole comic is kickass, there’s something way too ungeeky about you for me.

shadow town, it’s where shading of unlit areas goes down, doo de doo

I’m trying to implement them!  So, shadow volumes are kinda slow with any graphics hardware, because they have to be calculated on the CPU, then passed to a shader/fixed-pipeline.  Also, doing per light occlusion shadowing (the accurate per light shadow method) must be done in multiple passes.  This is why I want to do shadow maps.  Shadow samplers can be easily accessed from GLSL fragment programs.  I can do it in one rendering pass, as the shader can receive the information for each light and it’s shadow map all at once and simply add/clamp the results easy as pie.  Ultraaaa banananana creeeeeam piiiie!  Right.

Anyway, I have been looking for a good sample for quite some time now, and Imma like “whaaat, they nothin’ heah!”  I found some good ones on directional and spotlight mapping, but that’s easy because it fits in one simple perspective projection.  I really need an example for point lights: omnidirectional shadow mapping using cube maps specifically.  I’d like to use shadowCube samplers if possible, but it’s fine to pack depth info in some advanced way and do the comparisons manually in the shader.

Sooo, I’m a little frustrated right now, ’cause I can’t find the poop on it.  But I’m still looking, and I’ve ordered the OpenGL Orange Book, it should be arriving shortly.

Siiiiggghhhhh.  You should check out the Inhuman comic.  It’s made of awesome.  No, they’re not furries, they’re aliens.  And stop calling me gay already.  That was only for those of you who look at this and say “that’s gay.”  I’ve been informed that the supreme Overmind known as “Common Sense” wants you all lined up and shot.  If I only I could order someone to do that.  Oh well.

So, shadow maps anyone?  pleeezzz halp omg ur mom.

t3h b4lling3st f0h3v4r bitches

Bye.