We went back to using XNA because of the previously mentioned issues with OpenGL. I knew it was over when I got confirmation on the official OpenGL forums that its not to be used for the consumer desktop (its only really useful for higher end gaming and engineering applications).

We’ve been putting a lot of work into a framework for defining and using resources, the design goal is as stated before, to allow user extensions to define new full featured resource types. More on this later. The current challenge is reading/writing resource data without each resource explicitly defining a save/load mechanism. Serialization in .net 2.0 falls short of this.

Once that’s finished, I hope to create some rough resource definitions for things like scripts and images, a rough compiler, and have a runnable build online so we can reopen discussion.

1: Its a screaming mess. A zillion extensions only a tiny percentage of which have been formalised by the ARB while the rest remain basically unusable as cards may choose to not support them or implement them in strange ways that don’t do what they should.
2: Tried to run shaders on my netbook (its sm2 compatable). Got a crash, something about lacking opengl 2. Well, it is a netbook and an early one at that, so its a nonissue on any half decent computer, right? Wrong.

Turns out that Intel, the guys whose video cards are in nearly 50% of all computers out there, don’t give a fuck about OpenGL and simply don’t write drivers beyond supporting GL 1.4. This is so bad that I can’t even use surfaces/rendertargets/FBOs on my netbook; a feature that’s nearly 10 years old. Needless to say, I’m rethinking about using XNA again.

It all boils down to this:
XNA:
+Xbox and Zune depoloyment paths
+Lots of plug-and-play code on CodePlex
+Decent framework included on top of low level stuff
-Users must download and install a ‘redistributable’ before playing a game. Size varies. Less of an issue on vista and win7 mahines as they auto meet most prereqs.

GL:
+Awesomely cross platform. At least by itself.
+Tiny footprint, exe will work without any extra downloads
-Tings like shaders and surfaces don’t work on nearly 50% of all computers even though the hardware and DX drivers support it
-Workload to rewrite things already provided by XNA

As for Aziel itself, a few things have happened
Firstly, I’m in touch with the maker of game creator (http://code.google.com/p/game-creator/) and we think we’ll be working together.

Secondly, I have chosen to drop XNA because the dev team has indicated that they’re not going to do much about the current deployment issues with the framework. This was always a big turnoff for me. The worst case scenario for setting up XNA redistributable is more than 50 megs of downloads. Instead we’re going to go with OpenTK which I’m happy to say is also cross-platform. The same .exe file will run on windows, linux, mac, and anything else that has Mono.

This does mean a new learning curve for me though. I’ve never worked with OpenGL before and I had fairly little experience at working at this low level. Its going to take some time to recreate the features that we’ve been relying on from XNA.

Once we roll out something that can run and do stuff, I will set up our svn server to automatically compile stable code and update it so that testers will have access to the most up to date builds. Its probably at this point that I will put effort into fixing the forum spam issue if its not trivial.

GFFI is a dll that allows you to call functions from other dlls.
It is much more flexible than external_call, supporting
all the basic data types in C, as well as providing advanced features for
working with structs and arrays. There are no restrictions on the
number of string arguments (or any other argument type for that matter)
other than Game Maker’s 16 argument limit (this can be worked around
in future if the need is there). The functionality provided is similar
to Python’s ctypes module and .NET’s P/Invoke system.

The speed should be comparable to external_call. There is slightly more overhead
due to the dynamic nature of the code, which uses transparent type conversion
and intelligent assembly code. Through the use of Gmapi, all the
functions available for use are inserted as a builtin GM function. There is no
interpreted code involved once you call a GFFI function. Nearly all the scripts
provided are placeholders to avoid syntax errors, they also contain documentation.

I hope people find this DLL useful, I used it as an opportunity to learn some C
(and then hastily tacked on a C++ library).
I’ve included a few basic examples of usage – it’s perfect for making a few
WinAPI calls without writing an ad-hoc wrapper dll.

Update: I released this just before GM8 came out. I just added support for GM8 as well.

GFFI 1.1

The idea for this game dates back to when I first started messing around with game maker, and I shall be explaining more about it in future posts. In a nutshell, its an overhead ‘tactical’ shooter with heavy emphasis on light as a gameplay element. Some enemies will lurk in the dark waiting for you to stray from the illuminated areas, others will set up a perimiter and have you lurking in the dark to get an advantage.

As I wrote earlier, I’ve chosen to go with a deferred rendering approach to handle the number of lights required for this idea. The above screenshot is the current lighting testbed, and its getting close to what I imagined the game to look like. The challenge is going to be to push as many dynamic shadow casting lights as possible. Given the overhead camera view I’m sure there are some speed-boosting constraints I can impose on how shadows are done, but I haven’t thought of anything yet.

PS: WT has put up a page for his ongoing art practice. As I understand it, the idea is to spend 90 minutes a day every day to draw pictures inspired by random ideas. Be sure to check it out, link is at the top.

This is when I finished implementing the basics. Normal mapping, point lights, spec highlights.



Then I decided to have a shot at shadows, this is something that always looked scary and out of reach for me. After an evening of reading the theory and another evening of trying to implement it, I had it working.


Next was soft shadows. I used variance shadow mapping because its very simple to implement and gives great looking results.


And this is just several lights in one scene. I think it looks pretty incredible for a few days of work.

One person with views in direct opposition to the views of many, is allowed to make a decision for the many. How did we get to this? I personally have no idea. I’m not sure who represents me politically and how its possible for Conroy to impose something that nobody wants. Individuals and businesses and technology analysts alike are ringing all the warning bells in all the communication media of the country, and yet the government proceeds as if all is well.

There are all sorts of arguments against the filter floating around but the ones that concern its technical feasibility worry me. We should not be forced to defend our freedom of speech on the grounds that it just so happens that today its not technically achievable without a big nationwide drop in internet speeds. We should never have to defend ourselves by saying ‘we don’t have the hardware to do this’. Just saying ‘we don’t want this’ should be enough.

If I could question Conroy on national TV, I would ask these questions:
There are plenty of client-based internet filtering options available for those who want to use them. They cost nothing to the tax payer, they don’t enforce censorship on those who don’t want it, they do not put strain on our already weak broadband networks. Why not promote those? If they have failed in some regard, why would an ISP-wide implementation succeed?
The filter’s purpose is supposedly to prevent the distribution of child pornography. How can this be justified when the leaked blacklist was only half made up by child porn sites. Furthermore child porn is mostly trafficked over peer to peer networks, trusted networks, or dark-nets. How is the filter supposed to be effective when it can handle none of those?
Why is the blacklist secret? How can someone be fined by linking sites of the blacklist if they have no way of knowing what those sites are?
What is to prevent this or future governments for using the filter to censor political criticism or any views they do not agree with, especially if the blacklist is kept secret?
What justification is there for trying to implement the filter in the face of massive opposition from the nation, at the expense of their tax dollars and freedom of information?

Wrong.

The lovely lady on the phone informed me that there are only two ways that they will help me: either I must earn 18 thousand dollars (aka work full time) or I must show that its unreasonable to live at home, which by their definition is only the case if you’re getting raped or beaten up or something along those lines. Nevermind that I got practically kicked out, nevermind that my parents live 3 hours from where I work and study, nevermind that parents are not legally obliged to support their children after 21. No, Centrelink looks past all that and sees me as receiving financial help from them – help which they couldn’t provide even if they wanted to because they’re so deep in debt.

Apparently I’m not the only one in this ridiculous situation, and it has driven students to cheating the system or living in poverty or even resorting to prostitution to pay the bills. What the hell is wrong with our government? Why do lazy dole bludgers, who never worked in their life and never intend to get support from the government while the youth that chooses full time tertiary education gets ignored?

The worst thing is that it is us, the students, who will go on to well paid jobs which will attract the high taxes that will go to drive the system that screwed us over when we needed it most. I don’t think I’ll have any moral dilemma about doing everything I can to evade taxes after this.

So moving on, with and idea from GearGod, I started using a program to scan the processes (after carefully checking that there wasn’t any silly sounding processes, of course.) for win32 mouse calls. Nada.

Two hours later, and feeling rather insane after two hours of the mouse cursor running away -every second-, I casually peer at the tablet I have sitting beside me. Plugged in. I unplugged it.

Problem solved.

ARGH!