liamrudel.com - Latest Comments

Re: Game Design Mechanics: Light

Trent Sterling — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 18:35:30 -0000

I'll post here whenever I have something playable. I'll also take a look at Limbo. I've seen a lot of videos on Dead Nation, looks good.

Re: Game Design Mechanics: Light

liamrudel — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 05:43:02 -0000

Sounds cool, let me know when you have a prototype done, I'd like to see it. I think the XBA game Limbo also has a great use of light and dark. If you get it right it can be awesome! Also look at Dead Nation, Light is a very important gameplay mechanic in that too!

Re: Slow Physics in my games

Trent Sterling — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 21:59:59 -0000

Hah, I've also been duped by physics scale not matching the 3d world scale before. At least I learned something!

Re: Game Design Mechanics: Light

Trent Sterling — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 21:29:03 -0000

I'm actually working on a 2.5D platformer/shooter involving lights...and zombies. Most of the levels will feature darkness, and some flickering ambient lights throughout. I'm tempted to let your muzzleflashes be your main lightsource, but will probably end up giving the player a flashlight too.

Re: Slow Physics in my games

liamrudel — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 04:22:46 -0000

Thanks Robbie, I'm loving it so far!

We used to do the fixed timestep, but I assumed that the gaffer method would be better, but thinking about it, it doesn't need to be that accurate really. The only thing is, now that I have a job, I have less time to work on ragCat and my other projects. But thats not a bad thing is it!

Re: Slow Physics in my games

Robbie — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:54:39 -0000

First off congrats on the job dude. Hope you have a great time.
Anyway I was messing with Havok recently and another thing that might speed up your simulation is to use a simple fixed and constant timestep.
I assume you are using the Gaffers timestep for updating physics, so if your deltatime that you subtract from the accululated time is just for example say 0.25 secs and your frametime took 1.00 second then you call physics update multiple times that frame i.e. while (1.00 - 0.25 >= 0.25)
However you can just call Havok with a fixed timestep of 1.0f/60.0f once every frame like the Havok examples suggest it might help.
It might not be a problem for you but I found myself calling Havok update far too many times. Sure it is more accuarate to call Havok with smaller timesteps but anything over 60 times a second seems like overkill especially when the Havok documentation reccommends 1.0f/60.0f as a good timestep for a stable simulation.

Re: What the …..? #2

liamrudel — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:42:48 -0000

I mean most of the functionality is still there, it got moved around to the playState->update() and other places, I just think now it's a lot easier to follow whats happening in the code. I'm planning to release the source as example code for job interviews etc. in the near future so trying to make it more readable.

Re: What the …..? #2

Jerome Byrne — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:36:48 -0000

Well the ray casting is actually done in another class it's just being called here. Well we could have taken all the code and chopped it up into loads more different functions but we were calling this update 60 times a second so decided to leave it longer than usual.

Re: What the …..? #2

liamrudel — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:41:35 -0000

Thats true, but it was more to show case how messy it was. Also any stuff like the rayCasting now has it's own function. The zoom didn't work the best so I'm now using the Spring Camera for a very subtle zoom effect. Also that updateGraphics function name is probably a bit misleading, it's actually just getting the new positions and orientations from the physics for the player object. The frame is rendered elsewhere.

Re: What the …..? #2

liamrudel — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:36:12 -0000

Thanks for the tips Rob!

Re: What the …..? #2

Jerome Byrne — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:09:29 -0000

A little bit misleading. The old snippet you showed has more functionality contained within it. It does the ray-cast for selecting objects and also the zoom in precision mode feature among other things. Either your calling these functions in objectSelected() or calling them somewhere else so you cant really compare the code. It was decided to make the function longer rather than split it up as there is more of an overhead with extra function calls (Player->Update() was called every frame). Also I see you are updating your logic and graphics code in the same place :p

Re: What the …..? #2

Rob Allen — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:45:02 -0000

Hey Man,

you might want to look at Windows Live Writer for Posting to the blog.

http://lvildosola.blogspot....

This lets you embed code into the blogs in a friendly fashion, there are a number of other plugins there as well that help you do the posting.

As well , you might want to change wordpress to use the friendly URL setting, such as liamrudel.com/blog-post-name, makes it easier for google analytics as well to trawl the site. And Permalinking as well, took me a bit to get it working , I have it on www.y2kprawn.ie, don't blog much these days though.

Rob

Re: Slow Physics

liamrudel — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:49:31 -0000

Thats a possibility, I'll try some different values to see what happens.

Re: Slow Physics

Erik Hogan — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:58:04 -0000

Could the problem be that strict adherence to 'real world' physics just doesn't suit your game, and made-up physics would be better?

Re: Annoying piece of code

Robbie — Sun, 30 May 2010 13:17:54 -0000

Remember to seperate the frame timestep from the physics accumulator timestep. Something like this

delta_time = current_time - oldtime; // Get elapsed time since last frame
accumulator += delta_time; // Add time delta to time left over from last frame
frame_elapsed_time += delta_time; // Keep summing up time elapsed since last frame

if(frame_elapsed_time >= FRAME_TIME) // Control the frame rate
{
frame_elapsed_time = 0.0f; // Reset elapsed time for this frame

while(accumulator >= PHYSICS_STEP_SIZE) // Now use up all accumulated time
{
UpdateGameWorld(PHYSICS_STEP_SIZE);
accumulator -= PHYSICS_STEP_SIZE;
}

Draw();
}

Starting values could be

FRAME_TIME = 0.017f; // Roughly 60 frames a sec (1/60)
PHYSICS_STEP_SIZE = 0.01f; // Smaller values equals smaller physics steps and more accurate physics

Re: Seeking Advice

liamrudel — Thu, 27 May 2010 20:34:56 -0000

It's a plugin from disqus.com, very handy! They integrate the facebook,twitter connects.

Re: Tweaking Demo Reel

liamrudel — Thu, 27 May 2010 20:32:45 -0000

Ya Jenny also mentioned the wallpaper bit. Not sure how to do it though. Thanks for the suggestion!

Re: Tweaking Demo Reel

Rob Allen — Thu, 27 May 2010 04:48:05 -0000

Great demo reel.
Can you Get rid of the far Cry wallpaper in the video and zoom it a bit, the wallpaper is really LOUD and distracts from the mobile game.

Also , the Team Awesoem thing was great, and I saw it in the new prospectus as well, excellent work. Can you keep the fade a bit longer on the introduction bit, I was not able to digest the intro for the team and the Carow/Havok project ?

Re: Seeking Advice

Rob Allen — Thu, 27 May 2010 04:42:20 -0000

Well, I use www.stackoverflow.com, its very addictive.
Where did you get the facebook connect part for WordPress ?

Re: Seeking Advice

Big Dave — Mon, 24 May 2010 08:56:10 -0000

Trial and Error?

Re: Seeking Advice

Kane Caswell — Mon, 24 May 2010 07:36:31 -0000

The benefit of having gone to college is the fact that you can still contact the lecturers for advice :)

Apart from this, online forums are a great way for help :)

Re: Wellington Game Developer Meetup

Tim Knauf — Sun, 16 May 2010 19:33:51 -0000

Cheers Liam, was great to meet you too. I highly recommend continuing to work on your own projects; they'll pay you dividends in confidence and opportunities.

Re: Wellington Game Developer Meetup

Stephen Knightly — Fri, 14 May 2010 03:34:53 -0000

Congrats on the Meetup guys. When we started the Auckland Game Dev Meetups there were only 8 of us. 3.5 years later we now regularly get 30+, but it was a slow and steady growth. But always worth it - there is lots of talent out there.

Keep it up!

Re: Wellington Game Developer Meetup

Jenny Goodwin — Thu, 13 May 2010 22:28:11 -0000

Nice Post

Re: Wellington Game Developer Meetup

liamrudel — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:29:48 -0000

Just installed a new comment system, should allow for easier commenting.