This is completely game unrelated post, but I just thought this is worth sharing ...

I finally got the new NIN cd year zero. Glued to the back of the CD was the following, which I found quite amusing:

---

USBM WARNING:
Consuming or spreading this material may be
deemed subversive by the United States Bureau
Of Morality. If you or someone you know has
engaged in subversive acts or thoughts, call:

1-866-445-6580

BE A PATRIOT - BE AN INFORMER!

---

I don't think that there's much to add to this ... because it just might become reality sooner or later ...

nGFX

Ha! The title says it all, yet again a text only post ...

While working on the current game (the same project Squize is working on, see his last post), I needed way to be able to paint an area in a real life fashion (that is, the paint on the brush runs out just a few centimeters before the end of the wall).

I must admit, that I didn't have much play with f8's BitmapData before, I just don't needed it. Until now.

I just hate it to get into something "new" in the middle of a project, but unlike some of Flash's other new things BitmapData is fairly easy to get into. Except the part where you start to mess with matrixes. I had some great examples which showed a lot of the stuff I thought I need, but I just wasn't in the mood to dig into using matrixes for creating the desired effect.

But there is hope ...
Using 3 BitmapData objects, 2 PNGs and copyPixels with alpha ...

Part of the code:

---

var bmpAlpha:BitmapData = BitmapData.loadBitmap("brush_shape_and_alpha.png");
var bmpBrush:BitmapData = BitmapData.loadBitmap("paintpattern.png");
        
// mod alpha
// iPaintAlpha is a value from 0 (paint it) to -255 (paint nothing)
bmpAlpha.colorTransform(bmpAlpha.rectangle, new ColorTransform(1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, this._iPaintAlpha));
        
this._bmpPaintArea.copyPixels(bmpBrush, bmpAlpha.rectangle,
    new Point(this._xmouse, this._ymouse), bmpAlpha, new Point(0,0), true);
      
this._iPaintAlpha--;
      

---

Et viola ...

Instead of using some matrix stuff, I just "alpha" the alpha chanel mask with a ColorTransform and use this to copy the "paintpattern" into the painting area ...

I'll upload an example file once I've reached my current milestone ...

nGFX

The controller is well under development now, and over the weekend I hit the first real snag(s).

In the good old days when as1 was king, you'd create an movieclip and load your external swf into that, and then just call a function directly. Nice and easy.
In the slightly meaner days of as2 it's a bit trickier. Let's load the swf in, now where the hell is the main class that I need to get to ? Arse.

Now I'm sure there is an easy way to do it, a way I've totally missed, but this is the solution I've come up ( And it's as long winded as you like ).

I've made a CrossSWFInterface class, which the controller brings in and creates a new instance of. Now by being cunning I know that packages/ classes are placed in the _global name space when they're created. So, each loaded class just passes it's entry point singleton to the CrossSWFInterface class via _global, eg
        _global.Interface.CrossSWFInterface.setLoadedAPIClass(gameControllerObj);
And because the controller swf is the first one loaded, I know these methods are going to exist in _global by the time the loaded swf sends it's goodness to them.

Then by using static properites in the CSWFI class, the controller class can get all the info it needs from the loaded swf, and visa versa.

Now I'm sure there's got to be a easier, cleaner way, but it escapes me and we're badly up against the clock on this project, so it works and I'll happily admit I'm a dumb arse when someone explains how to do it correctly, but until then I'm happy with this approach.

I did mention snags at the start didn't I ? In my vain attempt to be a grown up Flash coder I use mtasc ( Which is so sexy ). The one issue with it I found this weekend was that you can only ever have one entry point to a swf ( ie, mtasc expects a class called "main" to be there, it's what it calls to run the code in the swf ). You can't change it to anything else, that's set in stone.
This is all cool normally, but I want to create seperate packages within my project file for the games themselves, but I can't have a different main class for each of them ( eg, main_game1 won't work. mtasc just wants main and nothing else will do ).

Cosmic.

But this bad boy came to my rescue, hamtasc. Basically it's a "hacked" version of mtasc which allows you to define the entry point. Never has something so out and out geeky made me so happy.

I'm hoping tomorrow to have the controller in a useable state so I can start focusing on the game I've got to do ( "Souper Bowl". Tell me that's not genius ), so it'll load in and hand over control to the game etc.
I'm getting so close to doing something fun...

Squize.

The project has finally been green lighted, we're off and running.

Completed the road map tonight, so all the dates for deliveries are set, which is nice 'cause we know how much time before we have to panic.

The project has grown ( They never seem to shrink do they ? ) but because of the delay in getting the concept signed off it's going to be split into 3 distinct phases for release ( It was two previously ).
It's good in many ways, it means the quality won't suffer because of trying to cram too much stuff in before the deadline ( Which is set in stone, it's got to coincide with something, and there's no moving it ), and I've done my share of episodic games, it's always proved to be a nice way to work when you're dealing with a lot of different games.

As to the code, the "controller" movie's development has already begun. Doesn't do a great deal atm, loads in a bit of xml, displays some buttons and not much else. The start of a project is always slow where you're arranging classes and spending as much time thinking as coding to ensure you don't code yourself into a corner.
One aspect of this project is that it's got to be translatable, so I've done a button class which resizes to match the text inside. No biggy, but just one of many things which need to be thought about when the text can change.

I really need to have an interesting blog entry soon, it's all very worky right now :)

Squize.

Inspired by a recent thread on fk's game forum here's a brief description how the day scene was actually built:

Usually it starts with a *very* simple sketch, whith very littly detail. Most 3d artists I know do extensive and detailed drawings, but for me it works best to directly do it in 3d.

more ugly than beautiful

Once I have this I start by modeling parts of it as single object that I later can link into the final scene, this time it's only the tower:

A detail of the main tower mapping:

Now I start composing the scene, here just the linked tower with the landscape set up. In the foreground I've placed some noised up spheres to be used as rocks.

Now adding some depth:

Final step: adding real light and shadows and setting up the atmosphere ...

After the scene was done, I decided to add two wizards to the final image so I quickly built a low poly one from this sketch (done by Chrsitof) and did two very simple texture maps:

Done!

nGFX.

As promised in an earlier post here two (still working on a third one) stills from the intro of my "private" game:

Both rendered at a resolution of 5120x2880 px (ugly to lose all this detail in those resized images, though), taking about 19h rendertime each. My plan is to use the way smaller version (my hope is to get it rendered at 480x270 (16:9) in a moderate filesize, using some 250 frames per shot (a day shot, a night shot and the secret third one)  in order to tell the story. Some earlier tests have shown that the animated clouds, the moving sun/moon and some wind moving all the grass and the leaves simply looks incredible. Yep and I know this is a bit much for a flash game - but hey - one should have dreams.

I hope I get the third shot done by Thursday this week and then start to lay out the animation.

Oh, you might noticed that this isn't quite the way it works usually (first doing a *lot* of artwork and later do the game), but this time I decided to do all the frontend stuff first and then add the game, call me stupid, will ya?
Ok, one of the reasons is that I needed to get my head away from flash while working on the code for the client's games and applications, and doing 3d is the way to keep me sane at the moment.

While typing this, I forgot to mention that the game as a name now, though this is for the next post.

nGFX

ps: happy easter :)

So all the design docs have been done, some more vague than others, but they're done and sent for sign off...

The client has come back with quite a hefty amount of feedback already which is going to alter how we go about developing the project, and has expended the scope of it quite a bit, which we're going to have to factor in ( Both budget and time scale wise ).

To touch on the project itself, it's a collection of mini-games which follow you as you go through life, from toddler to retirement age.

And that's about it for now. Hoping to get final sign off on the concepts soon so we can start the actual coding.

( Yeah its a boring blog entry, but projects aren't all flv clips and moving sprites, but hey whilst you're along for the ride you're going to have to take the rough with the smooth along with us ).

Squize.

Hopefully going to go back to what the stimunation blog used to be, and focus on the actual development of a game from start to end.

It's always tricky 'cause everything has a NDA these days, so it's often a period of 4 weeks or so when you can write very little about what you're actually working on, and then ta dah, here's the game everyone, let us know what you think ( And retroactively answering questions about its development ).

With this project there is still going to have to be a slight viel of secrecy, but I'm hoping we can still give you some ins and outs of it's development along the way.

So I guess we can call this day 1. And day 1 is... writing up the design docs day. Not the most fun thing in the world, and to be honest I'm a firm believer in games evolving rather than being planned out to the nth degree, but this is a game made up of lots ( Around 12 ) of sub-games and a five week turnaround so we really need that structure in place.

This project is a first for me too, in that I'm more project manager than coder ( Due to prior commitments rather than a huge desire to wear that hat ), so more of my time is going to be spent making sure our client is happy, ensuring that olli and Elliot ( Our artist on this project ) know what's going down and when and other such organisational feats.

I think that's about it for this post. I've still got 11 docs to write today which should keep me off the streets, and hopefully they'll be signed off without too much alteration so olli can start getting down and dirty with the code as soon as possible.

More soon...

Squize.