The room in the bottom-left should not be effected by shadows, should it? There is a light there!
If you look closely, the shadow is blending with the light I believe, compare it to the one on the right. I could be completely mistaken though.
Those shadows make me feel lightheaded. Good job!
Will there be a download out at any point soon?
You’re correct, the shadows are just so much darker than the light that it’s overriding it. I haven’t gotten the shadows and lights blending with each other yet, once I do that shouldn’t happen anymore. I did correct it a little bit since posting that gif though, but it’s not quite how I want it yet. 
I might release a basic tech demo soon, but since there’s no real “gameplay” yet it would be just a technology demo, with controls to play with day/night cycles, add mobs/villagers, etc. I was hoping to get resource gathering and basic building done before I released a tech demo, that way you can at least plop buildings down and watch the AI run around, even if there’s no real game play yet. But we’ll see. 
Started working on the basic GUI, still a bit rough. But the sidebars on the left and right swoop in and out and it’s starting to have some basic functionality.
The current plan for the GUI:
- Top tab shows all your current villagers, and a clickable dropdown box listing the all in order of their character level, clicking on one will take you to him on the map.
- Right tab is your build tab, controls all building of all kinds.
- Left tab is your resources tab, listing all the various raw materials on hand.
- Bottom tab will be your minimap/information panel.
Lights!!! -
How did you do the dinamic lighting?
Library or self-made?
Any link you can provide?
Thanks
Self-made, it’s based on a variation of my pathfinding system’s search pattern, just instead of finding a path, it assigns a light level at all the places it checks. The distance it checks is based on how “bright” the light is.
[quote]Self-made, it’s based on a variation of my pathfinding system’s search pattern, just instead of finding a path, it assigns a light level at all the places it checks. The distance it checks is based on how “bright” the light is. Wink
[/quote]
Do you really only have 1 year of experience as your profile says?
You do very cool stuff.
Do you really only have 1 year of experience as your profile says?
You do very cool stuff.
[/quote]
Well, I guess it’s closer to 1 and a half years now, but I spent about 4 or 5 months in the middle somewhere not programming at all while I was working on my minecraft resource pack (http://resourcepack.sixtygig.com). So total actual hands on programming experience is probably still about a year~.
I’ve decided that TilEd and Slick2d’s build in TiledMap class just wasn’t cutting it for this project, so I have completely scrapped the core tile engine, and have started work on my own custom tiled engine written from scratch to handle maps for this project. No worries though, all the other fancy code is safe and sound, I’m just making a new engine to handle the maps themselves. Once the new engine is complete, I’ll plug it back into the original game and be right back on track.
One of the biggest benefits to this is now I have to make my own map editor, and that’s great for you guys because I plan to integrate it directly into the game engine. So now the game will launch packaged with a full featured map editor you can use to make your own maps, and it’s built right into the game!
Currently, there isn’t much to show off with it. Almost all the current work is under the hood, but so far I’ve got:
- Up to 2048x2048 maps rendering at 60FPS (Even though a large game map will be 512x512)
- The entire map is stored in only one int[][][] array, making serializing(saving) and loading simple and straight forward.
- The save system runs in another thread (Wohoo! Multithreading!!), so you can continue to work on your map while autosaves run.
- The map editor can already handle map layers and auto transitioning, the terrains screenshot below were made when one brush (per terrain of course), and the engine handled piecing all the transition tiles together.
- Due to the map editor being integrated into the game directly, this opens up a huge Pandora’s box of possibility in the actual game, the ability to actually change the terrain while you play is a possibility now (Villagers cutting down trees, slicing through mountains, terrain changing based on seasons, etc)
- Random map generation is also a possibility now (but currently not planned)
Few screenshots of the progress, the first is the first day’s work, setting up the rendering and handling different tile IDs, the second is much later in development (Today, actually, 2 days later) showing off the terrain-brush tool that handles transitions automatically for easy map making.
This all looks jolly good. Let me know when you want the Steampuppy library 
Cas
Assuming I get greenlit (or approved however steam will be doing it by then), I’d love to take a look at it when the time comes! How hard was it for your guys to write? If it’s not too terribly complicated of a process I may attempt to write my own. Although I’d love to have an all-in-one package to get my game steam-ready. If I use it, I’ll be sure to credit Puppy Games in whatever way is reasonable. Maybe I can push a few sales your way.
Seriously don’t bother writing your own… it’s tons of crappy boilerplate and so on, and ours works perfectly and we’ve got a vested interest in keeping it maintained
btw Greenlight will be gone in about 3-4 months time. Drop me a line…
Cas
I’ve got the map maker starting to come together. Mostly GUI work, with a few tweaks here and there. You can now select layers, brush sizes and various terrains. Most of the basic tools work, like the eraser and grid tool. Hopefully I will have the entire editor completely ready to output maps for the game here in a few days. But I still have a few more complicated features to add. (Like a minimap, and the Dark Mode tool) So it may take longer than expected.
But! It’s coming along nicely.
Map editor is almost ready to actually develop maps. I’m still hammering out the last few features (Like Undo/Redo, proper saving, the minimap and cleaning up the GUI) but now all terrain transitions are working for both light and dark texture variations, all the tools that are added work fluidly, it’s all extremely easy to use! This scene in this screenshot was made in under a minute.
I’m planning to release the first tech demo as just the stand alone map maker, to let you guys test it out. Currently the map maker runs at 60FPS at 1080p on all the machines I’ve put it on, including my Ultrabook that only has IntelHD graphics. (Keep in mind, this editor is running within the game engine, so all the fancy lighting and shadow systems are working live/in real time!)
It’s good that you’ve put so much effort (I think) into optimising the game so that it runs well (that means it should run on mine, as I have a HD graphics chip too).
That’s one of the reasons I’ve been working on the Map Editor/Tile Engine for almost a week straight. My hope is that the final game will be a “run on anything” type of game, where people can stick it on their business/school laptops and play the game in their down time on the go. I’m not sure what specific intelHD chip you have, but here’s the specs of the Ultrabook:
CPU: 1.7gz Intel i7 (Mobile version of the i7 basically)
Ram: 4Gb
Harddrive: 128gb SSD
GPU: Intel HD 4000 Graphics
Display: 1920x1080 (Ran game at this resolution)
So at least as of now, if you have me beat (or have around that) you should get 60FPS as well.
I also have one more optimization I have to do, currently the map is made up of 7 layers. But if you place a tile on say, layer 4, and a tile exists on layer 3, it’ll still render both tiles even if the tile on layer 3 is no longer visible. If I add a check to detect what tiles can completely cover the tiles below them and hide them in that event I can probably reduce the total tiles needing rendered on screen about 30-40% in a heavily decorated area with multiple layers of tiles all over the place.
I actually removed the FPS cap on the game and ran it on my desktop, without the latest tweak, in a maxed out area (all layers used) I get 190FPS… With the tweak I get about 240. But it’s not finished yet, as of now it just stops rendering any tile that’s under another, even in the event that tile doesn’t fully cover the tile below it. The final version of that optimizing will know the difference and know when is the appropriate time to hide the tile. But still, the ultrabook was running it at 60FPS without the tweak. So I’m already overjoyed! But I’d love to make it even faster, because other elements of the game will no doubt bog it down anyway.
Please enable stream storing so that someone like me who wants to watch some footage when you are not streaming, can.
Should be somewhere in twitch settings…
Can-do, next time I’m at my desktop I’ll look for it.
Ah, that’s where we differ a bit. Mine’s only a 1.3GHz i5, but because my resolution is 1440x900 it might scrape through.
Looks interesting, keep me updated!