Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Yes. That's an idea. Wasn't actually thinking that, but ok. I meant a tutorial that takes you through the various force powers, saber skills, etc. if you watch any videos to do with the force unleashed's training modules that proxy (the droid) gives, then you'll understand. If you can't get any vids, I'll do one. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: 10 December 2010 21:22 To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Ben, Like what exactly? You need to be a bit more specific here before i can say yes or no. If you are talking a simple level with something like a Jedi training remote that you have to train saber skills against I suppose that can be done. If you are thinking something else you need to get more specific. Cheers! On 12/10/10, Ben wrote: > Ok. Just to ask... could you have a training level (tutorial) at the > beginning of the game? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Ben, Like what exactly? You need to be a bit more specific here before i can say yes or no. If you are talking a simple level with something like a Jedi training remote that you have to train saber skills against I suppose that can be done. If you are thinking something else you need to get more specific. Cheers! On 12/10/10, Ben wrote: > Ok. Just to ask... could you have a training level (tutorial) at the > beginning of the game? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Ok. Just to ask... could you have a training level (tutorial) at the beginning of the game? -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Darren Duff Sent: 06 December 2010 20:56 To: 'Gamers Discussion list' Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Yeah but it would still be fun I say do it grin. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 3:22 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Ben, Hmmm...Well, I could record it, but for the moment it is just the extremely early stages/outline of a game. Obviously, the actual game won't have hundreds of rounds of ammo but 25 to 30 per weapon like the original game. At this point it is basically just a large empty room, a practice area, where I can add AT-STS, storm troopers, probe droids, and various other baddies and test them against various weapons and so on. The purpose is to fix bugs and help balance some things before actually creating the game proper. So this isn't really a game per say. Just a bunch of test code. On 12/6/10, Ben wrote: > I so! Want! To! Hear! This! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. _ NOD32 EMON 5679 (20101206) information _ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system http://www.eset.com _ NOD32 EMON 5680 (20101206) information _ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system http://www.eset.com _ NOD32 EMON 5680 (20101206) information _ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system http://www.eset.com --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
That would be very usefull. But vaders would be interesting as well. Its really for a mod of light battles, but I might do some others as well... -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: 09 December 2010 22:28 To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi, Hmmm...WellI have Sith light saber sounds, mostly Darth Vader's, but I don't know that I can get Darth Maul's that easily. Darth Maul's light saber is unique in that it was a duel bladed weapon and the ignition was also a bit unique. I might be able to create one that sounds similar, but for Darth Maul's actual saber effects I'd probably have to get Star Wars Obi-Wan and wrip the sounds. I'll look and see what I can do. On 12/9/10, Ben wrote: > Hi. Just a question... can you get me the sith lightsaber ignition like the > one featured in the movies (like the phantom menace)? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi, Hmmm...WellI have Sith light saber sounds, mostly Darth Vader's, but I don't know that I can get Darth Maul's that easily. Darth Maul's light saber is unique in that it was a duel bladed weapon and the ignition was also a bit unique. I might be able to create one that sounds similar, but for Darth Maul's actual saber effects I'd probably have to get Star Wars Obi-Wan and wrip the sounds. I'll look and see what I can do. On 12/9/10, Ben wrote: > Hi. Just a question... can you get me the sith lightsaber ignition like the > one featured in the movies (like the phantom menace)? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi. Just a question... can you get me the sith lightsaber ignition like the one featured in the movies (like the phantom menace)? -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: 06 December 2010 23:42 To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Cara, Okay? How exactly do I add a low-pass filter to the game. I'm not sure how to implement one. On 12/6/10, Cara Quinn wrote: > Thomas, this is the low-pass filter idea I was mentioning. I got it from > Quake, as sounds in other rooms are muffled, or sent through an EQ or > low-pass filter to simulate being behind a wall or door. > > Smiles, > > Cara :) --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Indeed! -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: 06 December 2010 23:54 To: Philip Bennefall; Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Philip, Well...That too is the classic catch 22. According to the License Agreement that came with Mysteries of the Sith, I just reread it, it says you can freely create mods for the game but under no circomstances can you use the sounds, musick, or graphics from this game. Question is what's the frickin' point of creating your own Star Wars mod if you have to create your own blaster sounds, Star Wars music, and draw your own graphics? Once again, that's the entire problem with the whole copyright issue for me. Yeah, I could probably could come up with lame sounds for the light sabers, blasters, stuff like that but if it doesn't sound like the official Star Wars sounds I'm not going to bother creating the game. It is not Star Wars unless a light saber sounds like a light saber and a blaster sounds like a blaster. Although, I am a musician I'm nowhere in John Williams class so I can't even begin to create music as inspiring and grand as the Star Wars music. If I go through all that work with new sounds, music, I might as well call it Space Wars. Grin. Cheers! On 12/6/10, Philip Bennefall wrote: > Hi Thomas, > > Ah yes, that does sound like a nice idea though as you say, more than a > little risky. I think the biggest issue for them may not be the fact that > you use the Star Wars brand in a free product, but rather the fact that > you're technically stealing sounds from an existing game. That may get them > a whole lot angrier than if you had, say, tried to make your own blaster > sounds. Of course it wouldn't sound nearly as good, but still; this is my > primary guess. > > All the same I shall be looking forward to giving it a try and attempt to > offer some constructive critisism if I can. > > Kind regards, > > Philip Bennefall --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Tom I have xp pro. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: 07 December 2010 11:34 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Nicol, What version of Windows are you running? I notice on XP Shades of Doom works fine, but on Windows 7 the sounds don't work correctly. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Nicol, What version of Windows are you running? I notice on XP Shades of Doom works fine, but on Windows 7 the sounds don't work correctly. On 12/7/10, NIcol wrote: > Hi Tom > You said: > "As soon as you open a door you can hear the monsters and equipment in the > room when it was silent before. As you pointed out even though you closed > the door again you can still hear the monsters moving around in there, > but they are muffled." > I tried out all the speaker settings in the game like 3d, sterio, etc. > Well, I do not know if there is something wrong with my pc, but when I > played shades of doom, if I close a door with monsters inside, I cannot hear > the monsters at all. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Dennis, Right. I'm aware of how a lot of mainstream developers do it, and when we are talking any kind of game using graphics using a 3d coordinates system is essential to make sure if the player has encountered a wall, door, whatever. On the other hand the way I'm doing it currently using an array has a lot of advantages as it gives me instant access to the information i need without performing a bounded box calculation to see if the player has encountered anything. It has disadvantages too as it has limits and is good for spheres and other shapes that aren't square or rectangular in design. On 12/5/10, Dennis Towne wrote: > Thomas, > > Using a fixed set of arrays like you've mentioned below allows you > instant access to any element in the array, but it really limits what > you can do in terms of large scale constructs with many small items. > > I'd recommend taking a look at how first person shooters construct > their game world, because they have arbitrarily large environments > with small sections that have very fine detail. As I understand it, > they simply have an infinite coordinate system, then they put walls > and objects where they're needed to make things like the ground, edges > of the map, ceiling, etc. > > The down side of doing a coordinate based system is that you have to > do some kind of edge or bump detection, so you know when you run into > a wall. But for that cost, you get rid of the scaling issues you've > encountered, and you can make things arbitrarily free-form. > > Good luck! > > Dennis Towne > Alter Aeon MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com > > On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 6:42 PM, Thomas Ward > wrote: >> Hello everyone, >> >> I was wondering if some gamers and especially other game developers >> could give me their input on this matter. Tonight I am sitting here >> doing a bit of work on the Genesis 3D engine when it ocurred to me I >> might be doing things the wrong way, or at least I don't have to do >> things the way I'm currently doing it. >> >> You see, when I draw a map of a game level I draw everything in it >> completely to scale. Like if I draw a chasm or lava pit, and let's say >> it is 10 feet in length, it ends up using at least 10 elements of the >> array to hold it in memory. Now, obviously the larger the level the >> more memory the game is going to use because everything is drawn >> completely to actual scale. This would be fine for games where the >> levels are small, where the levels are restricted to a 2d world, but >> tonight while working on the engine and creating a test level for Star >> Wars Mysteries of the Sith I soon realized that in order to draw 3d >> levels according to actual scale would be huge. Oh, the computers of >> today can certainly handle it as memory is no object its just the >> principle of the thing why create a (100, 100, 100) 3d array to store >> the game level when I could acomplish the same thing with a (10, 10, >> 10) array that has everything scaled down by a factor of 10. >> >> So to use my earlier example the chasm that is 10 feet in length would >> be reduced to 1, and therefore would only use up 1 element in the >> array. Therefore instead of the player taking a step of 1 he or she >> would move only 0.1 units per step. Things like that basically means >> that I could make the level 10 times smaller, saving memory, and still >> draw large objects and rooms. >> >> However, scaling things down isn't without its problems either. For >> example, since you can't store anything in an array that is smaller >> than 1 unit in size a door that would normally only be two or three >> feet wide would now be 10 feet wide because that is the smallest I >> could make it and store it in the array. Same would go for chasms, >> fire pits, and anything else. Basically, I'd have to make the jumps >> longer in order to clear a trap that was only three or four feet >> accross, but thanks to the weird skaling and technical issues with the >> array would be no smaller than 10 feet. Any thoughts on this? >> >> Cheers! >> >> --- >> Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org >> If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to >> gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. >> You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at >> http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. >> All messages are archived and can be searched and read at >> http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. >> If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the >> list, >> please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. >> > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the mana
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Nicol, I don't recall ever hearing the equipment after closing the door, but i know you can usually hear the monsters in that room even with the door closed, but they are muffled by a low-pass filter. On 12/7/10, NIcol wrote: > Hi Phil > You said: > "Then even if you close the door, the sounds in the room are audible." > Well, I cannot comment about sarah as I played sarah too long ago, but I > can comment on shades of doom as I played it a lot. > IN version 1.2, if I go out of a room containing equipment and I close the > door, I cannot hear the sounds of that equipment at all. > Unless David updated the GMA engine after releasing shades of doom 1.2. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Thomas, Using a fixed set of arrays like you've mentioned below allows you instant access to any element in the array, but it really limits what you can do in terms of large scale constructs with many small items. I'd recommend taking a look at how first person shooters construct their game world, because they have arbitrarily large environments with small sections that have very fine detail. As I understand it, they simply have an infinite coordinate system, then they put walls and objects where they're needed to make things like the ground, edges of the map, ceiling, etc. The down side of doing a coordinate based system is that you have to do some kind of edge or bump detection, so you know when you run into a wall. But for that cost, you get rid of the scaling issues you've encountered, and you can make things arbitrarily free-form. Good luck! Dennis Towne Alter Aeon MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 6:42 PM, Thomas Ward wrote: > Hello everyone, > > I was wondering if some gamers and especially other game developers > could give me their input on this matter. Tonight I am sitting here > doing a bit of work on the Genesis 3D engine when it ocurred to me I > might be doing things the wrong way, or at least I don't have to do > things the way I'm currently doing it. > > You see, when I draw a map of a game level I draw everything in it > completely to scale. Like if I draw a chasm or lava pit, and let's say > it is 10 feet in length, it ends up using at least 10 elements of the > array to hold it in memory. Now, obviously the larger the level the > more memory the game is going to use because everything is drawn > completely to actual scale. This would be fine for games where the > levels are small, where the levels are restricted to a 2d world, but > tonight while working on the engine and creating a test level for Star > Wars Mysteries of the Sith I soon realized that in order to draw 3d > levels according to actual scale would be huge. Oh, the computers of > today can certainly handle it as memory is no object its just the > principle of the thing why create a (100, 100, 100) 3d array to store > the game level when I could acomplish the same thing with a (10, 10, > 10) array that has everything scaled down by a factor of 10. > > So to use my earlier example the chasm that is 10 feet in length would > be reduced to 1, and therefore would only use up 1 element in the > array. Therefore instead of the player taking a step of 1 he or she > would move only 0.1 units per step. Things like that basically means > that I could make the level 10 times smaller, saving memory, and still > draw large objects and rooms. > > However, scaling things down isn't without its problems either. For > example, since you can't store anything in an array that is smaller > than 1 unit in size a door that would normally only be two or three > feet wide would now be 10 feet wide because that is the smallest I > could make it and store it in the array. Same would go for chasms, > fire pits, and anything else. Basically, I'd have to make the jumps > longer in order to clear a trap that was only three or four feet > accross, but thanks to the weird skaling and technical issues with the > array would be no smaller than 10 feet. Any thoughts on this? > > Cheers! > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Phil You said: "Then even if you close the door, the sounds in the room are audible." Well, I cannot comment about sarah as I played sarah too long ago, but I can comment on shades of doom as I played it a lot. IN version 1.2, if I go out of a room containing equipment and I close the door, I cannot hear the sounds of that equipment at all. Unless David updated the GMA engine after releasing shades of doom 1.2. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Phil Vlasak Sent: 06 December 2010 02:32 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Thomas, I think the GMA engine keeps sounds inside a room quiet until you open a door between the two regions. Then even if you close the door, the sounds in the room are audible. So the sounds are triggered by opening doors if there is one instead of walking into a region. If no door, then the distance fades sounds, but in a 2d you never hear sounds from rooms above. You could put a variable on each door to identify that it was between region 1 and 2 and if opened, then that would trigger the visited flag and turn on the sounds to region 2. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Tom You said: "As soon as you open a door you can hear the monsters and equipment in the room when it was silent before. As you pointed out even though you closed the door again you can still hear the monsters moving around in there, but they are muffled." I tried out all the speaker settings in the game like 3d, sterio, etc. Well, I do not know if there is something wrong with my pc, but when I played shades of doom, if I close a door with monsters inside, I cannot hear the monsters at all. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: 06 December 2010 10:09 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Phil, Yeah, that was what I was thinking. i just played through a couple levels of Shades of Doom to get a handle on what David Greenwood did, and it seams sounds are triggered by the doors themselves. As soon as you open a door you can hear the monsters and equipment in the room when it was silent before. As you pointed out even though you closed the door again you can still hear the monsters moving around in there, but they are muffled. I'd have to figure out how to code this into the engine, but it sounds like a good idea. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Cara, I guess I have to look at the DirectSound tutorials and user docs as I honestly don't remember what DSP effects it has and how to set them. I usually don't mess with DSP effects, and now it looks as though I should. Plus I'm not acccessing DS directly and using Philip's Streemway library. I don't see anything in his documentation on setting DSP effects. I'm not sure if that is because they aren't supported in Streemway or it simply hasn't ben documented yet. Cheers! On 12/6/10, Cara Quinn wrote: > Hi Thomas; > > quite honestly, the last time I looked at DX was DX8 but I believe you could > simply effect any sound individually as it had DSP for each source. I seem > to remember seeing EQ / high and low pass filters being among the properties > one could set / enable or disable for a sound source. > > Is any of this sounding familiar? :) > > Smiles, > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Thomas; quite honestly, the last time I looked at DX was DX8 but I believe you could simply effect any sound individually as it had DSP for each source. I seem to remember seeing EQ / high and low pass filters being among the properties one could set / enable or disable for a sound source. Is any of this sounding familiar? :) Smiles, CQ :) On Dec 6, 2010, at 3:41 PM, Thomas Ward wrote: Hi Cara, Okay? How exactly do I add a low-pass filter to the game. I'm not sure how to implement one. On 12/6/10, Cara Quinn wrote: > Thomas, this is the low-pass filter idea I was mentioning. I got it from > Quake, as sounds in other rooms are muffled, or sent through an EQ or > low-pass filter to simulate being behind a wall or door. > > Smiles, > > Cara :) --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Philip, Well...That too is the classic catch 22. According to the License Agreement that came with Mysteries of the Sith, I just reread it, it says you can freely create mods for the game but under no circomstances can you use the sounds, musick, or graphics from this game. Question is what's the frickin' point of creating your own Star Wars mod if you have to create your own blaster sounds, Star Wars music, and draw your own graphics? Once again, that's the entire problem with the whole copyright issue for me. Yeah, I could probably could come up with lame sounds for the light sabers, blasters, stuff like that but if it doesn't sound like the official Star Wars sounds I'm not going to bother creating the game. It is not Star Wars unless a light saber sounds like a light saber and a blaster sounds like a blaster. Although, I am a musician I'm nowhere in John Williams class so I can't even begin to create music as inspiring and grand as the Star Wars music. If I go through all that work with new sounds, music, I might as well call it Space Wars. Grin. Cheers! On 12/6/10, Philip Bennefall wrote: > Hi Thomas, > > Ah yes, that does sound like a nice idea though as you say, more than a > little risky. I think the biggest issue for them may not be the fact that > you use the Star Wars brand in a free product, but rather the fact that > you're technically stealing sounds from an existing game. That may get them > a whole lot angrier than if you had, say, tried to make your own blaster > sounds. Of course it wouldn't sound nearly as good, but still; this is my > primary guess. > > All the same I shall be looking forward to giving it a try and attempt to > offer some constructive critisism if I can. > > Kind regards, > > Philip Bennefall --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Cara, Okay? How exactly do I add a low-pass filter to the game. I'm not sure how to implement one. On 12/6/10, Cara Quinn wrote: > Thomas, this is the low-pass filter idea I was mentioning. I got it from > Quake, as sounds in other rooms are muffled, or sent through an EQ or > low-pass filter to simulate being behind a wall or door. > > Smiles, > > Cara :) --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Cara, Right now I am basing my calculations on my maps regions. However, it sounds to me like I need to look at the code for Jedi Quake or Audio Quake and see how ID Software resolved some of these technical issues. Any chanse you could mail me the JQ or AQ source off list to get a look into the wworkings? Thanks. On 12/6/10, Cara Quinn wrote: > Good point! > > I was assuming here that Thomas's maps are immutable, but destructible (is > that really a word? lol!) maps would definitely present this kind of issue. > -So here we get back to the multiple approach sound manager paradigm, which > to me at least, seems like really the only way to ensure a good audio > representation of more than one environment coming into contact with each > other. > > As far as being expensive though, Quake 1 was doing this fourteen years ago > on really slow 486's so it's definitely doable. :) > > Out of curiosity, are you by chance using a particle type system to check > for line-of-sight / path-finding, or basing your calculations on your map's > regions?… > > Again, thanks for the cool thread!… > > Smiles, > > Cara :) --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Good point! I was assuming here that Thomas's maps are immutable, but destructible (is that really a word? lol!) maps would definitely present this kind of issue. -So here we get back to the multiple approach sound manager paradigm, which to me at least, seems like really the only way to ensure a good audio representation of more than one environment coming into contact with each other. As far as being expensive though, Quake 1 was doing this fourteen years ago on really slow 486's so it's definitely doable. :) Out of curiosity, are you by chance using a particle type system to check for line-of-sight / path-finding, or basing your calculations on your map's regions?… Again, thanks for the cool thread!… Smiles, Cara :) On Dec 6, 2010, at 1:24 PM, Philip Bennefall wrote: Hi Cara, Sound cones are definitely a good idea, though with a small potential problem that springs to mind. What happens if the player blasts a wall? The sound from the other room will still be muffled right outside that hole, where as with the pathfinding approach it would immediately detect that hole and react accordingly. Of course, if the developer can forsee that this will never happen in game play then this is not an issue and sound cones are by far the best approach. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: "Cara Quinn" To: "Gamers Discussion list" Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 10:03 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Thomas; Another approach might be to use a low-pass filter on sounds outside your current region. This way you could effectively combine the radius approach and your regions. I.E. If sounds are happening in the next room, apply a low-pass filter to them so you can still hear them but then when you enter the next room or open the door, the filtering could be stopped and the sounds would be heard with all of their normal fidelity. I'm actually wondering if OpenAL has this capability, myself, at the moment, as it's looking like I may need to use some native Mac DSP processing to accomplish this rather than just relying on OpenAL. Anyway, while this doesn't really address increasing overhead in resources during the game, this can really make for a nice smooth way of transitioning between audio environments. A second approach that also might work well is to use sound cones, which both DirectX and OpenAL support. This can save on some of the processing that Philip B was mentioning in terms of calculating line-of-sight or a connection between audio environments in a game, in that you can simply set the direction the sound cone is facing and the source will automatically be smoothly attenuated in the proper scheme as the player moves around it. I.E. YOu could simulate walking past an open door simply by properly directing the sound cone of the sound source, without needing to do any calculations yourself to achieve the effect of deciding which sounds will be heard from another room. Does this make sense?… Anyway, thanks for sparking such a great discussion!… Smiles, Cara :) On Dec 5, 2010, at 10:57 PM, Thomas Ward wrote: Hi Phil, Hmmm...I see. Well, you are right it is definitely too late for something like that. We are talking a massive rewrite of the engine to make the rooms and the sound regions separate objects. The way it works now if you assign an item or enemy to room x sounds are not triggered until the player enters that room. The code to randomly place items and monsters, create the rooms, and the sounds all use the same region objects for various purposes. One is tied to the other so that it would take a massive rewrite of everything to undo all that. The easiest solution would be to rewrite the UpdateBackgroundAudio() function to stop sounds based on distance rather than sound region. Problem is that there are times when this could be and would be undesirable. If you happen to be walking under a room with stuff in it you will here levers, torches, etc from the room above the one you are in. Not cool at all seeing as you would want that stuff to be silent until you entered the room. So perhaps a compromise would be to have a boolean flag that says in effect if sound region is not visited keep sounds silence, and if it is visited play the sounds. That way even though you entered a new room the fire pit whatever still could be heard from the previous room where sounds in the new room wouldn't be triggered until you entered it. On 12/5/10, Phil Vlasak wrote: > Hi Thomas, > It is definitely too late to do this for MOTA, but I would have the door > designated as a sound region itself. > It could be about 4 foot thick, and the door between room 1 and 2 would play > the sounds of both room 1 and 2 but at 40 percent volume. > > Phil > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave t
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Cara, Sound cones are definitely a good idea, though with a small potential problem that springs to mind. What happens if the player blasts a wall? The sound from the other room will still be muffled right outside that hole, where as with the pathfinding approach it would immediately detect that hole and react accordingly. Of course, if the developer can forsee that this will never happen in game play then this is not an issue and sound cones are by far the best approach. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: "Cara Quinn" To: "Gamers Discussion list" Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 10:03 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Thomas; Another approach might be to use a low-pass filter on sounds outside your current region. This way you could effectively combine the radius approach and your regions. I.E. If sounds are happening in the next room, apply a low-pass filter to them so you can still hear them but then when you enter the next room or open the door, the filtering could be stopped and the sounds would be heard with all of their normal fidelity. I'm actually wondering if OpenAL has this capability, myself, at the moment, as it's looking like I may need to use some native Mac DSP processing to accomplish this rather than just relying on OpenAL. Anyway, while this doesn't really address increasing overhead in resources during the game, this can really make for a nice smooth way of transitioning between audio environments. A second approach that also might work well is to use sound cones, which both DirectX and OpenAL support. This can save on some of the processing that Philip B was mentioning in terms of calculating line-of-sight or a connection between audio environments in a game, in that you can simply set the direction the sound cone is facing and the source will automatically be smoothly attenuated in the proper scheme as the player moves around it. I.E. YOu could simulate walking past an open door simply by properly directing the sound cone of the sound source, without needing to do any calculations yourself to achieve the effect of deciding which sounds will be heard from another room. Does this make sense?… Anyway, thanks for sparking such a great discussion!… Smiles, Cara :) On Dec 5, 2010, at 10:57 PM, Thomas Ward wrote: Hi Phil, Hmmm...I see. Well, you are right it is definitely too late for something like that. We are talking a massive rewrite of the engine to make the rooms and the sound regions separate objects. The way it works now if you assign an item or enemy to room x sounds are not triggered until the player enters that room. The code to randomly place items and monsters, create the rooms, and the sounds all use the same region objects for various purposes. One is tied to the other so that it would take a massive rewrite of everything to undo all that. The easiest solution would be to rewrite the UpdateBackgroundAudio() function to stop sounds based on distance rather than sound region. Problem is that there are times when this could be and would be undesirable. If you happen to be walking under a room with stuff in it you will here levers, torches, etc from the room above the one you are in. Not cool at all seeing as you would want that stuff to be silent until you entered the room. So perhaps a compromise would be to have a boolean flag that says in effect if sound region is not visited keep sounds silence, and if it is visited play the sounds. That way even though you entered a new room the fire pit whatever still could be heard from the previous room where sounds in the new room wouldn't be triggered until you entered it. On 12/5/10, Phil Vlasak wrote: Hi Thomas, It is definitely too late to do this for MOTA, but I would have the door designated as a sound region itself. It could be about 4 foot thick, and the door between room 1 and 2 would play the sounds of both room 1 and 2 but at 40 percent volume. Phil --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Thomas, this is the low-pass filter idea I was mentioning. I got it from Quake, as sounds in other rooms are muffled, or sent through an EQ or low-pass filter to simulate being behind a wall or door. Smiles, Cara :) On Dec 6, 2010, at 12:08 PM, Thomas Ward wrote: Hi Phil, Yeah, that was what I was thinking. i just played through a couple levels of Shades of Doom to get a handle on what David Greenwood did, and it seams sounds are triggered by the doors themselves. As soon as you open a door you can hear the monsters and equipment in the room when it was silent before. As you pointed out even though you closed the door again you can still hear the monsters moving around in there, but they are muffled. I'd have to figure out how to code this into the engine, but it sounds like a good idea. On 12/6/10, Phil Vlasak wrote: > Hi Thomas, > I think the GMA engine keeps sounds inside a room quiet until you open a > door between the two regions. > Then even if you close the door, the sounds in the room are audible. > So the sounds are triggered by opening doors if there is one instead of > walking into a region. > If no door, then the distance fades sounds, but in a 2d you never hear > sounds from rooms above. > You could put a variable on each door to identify that it was between region > 1 and 2 and if opened, then that would trigger the visited flag and turn on > the sounds to region 2. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Thomas; Another approach might be to use a low-pass filter on sounds outside your current region. This way you could effectively combine the radius approach and your regions. I.E. If sounds are happening in the next room, apply a low-pass filter to them so you can still hear them but then when you enter the next room or open the door, the filtering could be stopped and the sounds would be heard with all of their normal fidelity. I'm actually wondering if OpenAL has this capability, myself, at the moment, as it's looking like I may need to use some native Mac DSP processing to accomplish this rather than just relying on OpenAL. Anyway, while this doesn't really address increasing overhead in resources during the game, this can really make for a nice smooth way of transitioning between audio environments. A second approach that also might work well is to use sound cones, which both DirectX and OpenAL support. This can save on some of the processing that Philip B was mentioning in terms of calculating line-of-sight or a connection between audio environments in a game, in that you can simply set the direction the sound cone is facing and the source will automatically be smoothly attenuated in the proper scheme as the player moves around it. I.E. YOu could simulate walking past an open door simply by properly directing the sound cone of the sound source, without needing to do any calculations yourself to achieve the effect of deciding which sounds will be heard from another room. Does this make sense?… Anyway, thanks for sparking such a great discussion!… Smiles, Cara :) On Dec 5, 2010, at 10:57 PM, Thomas Ward wrote: Hi Phil, Hmmm...I see. Well, you are right it is definitely too late for something like that. We are talking a massive rewrite of the engine to make the rooms and the sound regions separate objects. The way it works now if you assign an item or enemy to room x sounds are not triggered until the player enters that room. The code to randomly place items and monsters, create the rooms, and the sounds all use the same region objects for various purposes. One is tied to the other so that it would take a massive rewrite of everything to undo all that. The easiest solution would be to rewrite the UpdateBackgroundAudio() function to stop sounds based on distance rather than sound region. Problem is that there are times when this could be and would be undesirable. If you happen to be walking under a room with stuff in it you will here levers, torches, etc from the room above the one you are in. Not cool at all seeing as you would want that stuff to be silent until you entered the room. So perhaps a compromise would be to have a boolean flag that says in effect if sound region is not visited keep sounds silence, and if it is visited play the sounds. That way even though you entered a new room the fire pit whatever still could be heard from the previous room where sounds in the new room wouldn't be triggered until you entered it. On 12/5/10, Phil Vlasak wrote: > Hi Thomas, > It is definitely too late to do this for MOTA, but I would have the door > designated as a sound region itself. > It could be about 4 foot thick, and the door between room 1 and 2 would play > the sounds of both room 1 and 2 but at 40 percent volume. > > Phil > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Yeah but it would still be fun I say do it grin. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 3:22 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Ben, Hmmm...Well, I could record it, but for the moment it is just the extremely early stages/outline of a game. Obviously, the actual game won't have hundreds of rounds of ammo but 25 to 30 per weapon like the original game. At this point it is basically just a large empty room, a practice area, where I can add AT-STS, storm troopers, probe droids, and various other baddies and test them against various weapons and so on. The purpose is to fix bugs and help balance some things before actually creating the game proper. So this isn't really a game per say. Just a bunch of test code. On 12/6/10, Ben wrote: > I so! Want! To! Hear! This! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. _ NOD32 EMON 5679 (20101206) information _ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system http://www.eset.com _ NOD32 EMON 5680 (20101206) information _ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system http://www.eset.com _ NOD32 EMON 5680 (20101206) information _ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system http://www.eset.com --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Thomas, Ah yes, that does sound like a nice idea though as you say, more than a little risky. I think the biggest issue for them may not be the fact that you use the Star Wars brand in a free product, but rather the fact that you're technically stealing sounds from an existing game. That may get them a whole lot angrier than if you had, say, tried to make your own blaster sounds. Of course it wouldn't sound nearly as good, but still; this is my primary guess. All the same I shall be looking forward to giving it a try and attempt to offer some constructive critisism if I can. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: "Thomas Ward" To: ; "Gamers Discussion list" Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 9:48 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Philip, Ah, yes. What I'm basically considering is releasing a free accesssible clone of Star Wars Mysteries of the Sith which was released by Lucas Arts back in 1998. Of course getting around the legal copyright issues is going to be a nightmare and I'm probably going to post it to Sendspace, Dropbox, etc or somewhwere anonymous so Lucas Arts doesn't breath down my neck for trying to create a game that I enjoyed playing when I still had some sight, and can't play any more do to physical disability. At any rate I spent a few hours this weekend during my free time to write up a rough draft of my ideas and created a very simple level to begin testing things with. For example, i drew a large room, kind of like a fighting arena, and then placed various enemies in the room like storm troopers, AT-STS, probe droids, torture droids, etc and then practiced using Mara's light saber on them. Plus I added a few weapons I intend to add to the game like detonators, trooper rifles, blaster pistols, etc and used the enemies for target practice. As this is all pre-alpha stuff ththe AI, such as it is, is pretty much a dumb bot that walks around the room until I come into range and then it gos into attack mode and gets slottered. The finished game will have a more intelligent AI for each of the enemies, but the code I added was just temperary to get them to do something besides stand around and look stupid as I shoot them or slice them up. As I told Ben earlier the purpose here is just to get the basics working like force abilities, weapons, inventory menu in place, asign keyboard commands to certain functions, etc. All very basic stuff. Once the core of the game is done I can add actual levels to play around with. Fortunately, with an existing game engine creating this game won't take that long because I have already a basic draft of the Alpha working without more than two days of work. On 12/6/10, Philip Bennefall wrote: Oh I was refering rather to the 3d game that I was under the impression that the original question was about, something with Star Wars if I have been skimming list traffic properly. Smile. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Philip, Ah, yes. What I'm basically considering is releasing a free accesssible clone of Star Wars Mysteries of the Sith which was released by Lucas Arts back in 1998. Of course getting around the legal copyright issues is going to be a nightmare and I'm probably going to post it to Sendspace, Dropbox, etc or somewhwere anonymous so Lucas Arts doesn't breath down my neck for trying to create a game that I enjoyed playing when I still had some sight, and can't play any more do to physical disability. At any rate I spent a few hours this weekend during my free time to write up a rough draft of my ideas and created a very simple level to begin testing things with. For example, i drew a large room, kind of like a fighting arena, and then placed various enemies in the room like storm troopers, AT-STS, probe droids, torture droids, etc and then practiced using Mara's light saber on them. Plus I added a few weapons I intend to add to the game like detonators, trooper rifles, blaster pistols, etc and used the enemies for target practice. As this is all pre-alpha stuff ththe AI, such as it is, is pretty much a dumb bot that walks around the room until I come into range and then it gos into attack mode and gets slottered. The finished game will have a more intelligent AI for each of the enemies, but the code I added was just temperary to get them to do something besides stand around and look stupid as I shoot them or slice them up. As I told Ben earlier the purpose here is just to get the basics working like force abilities, weapons, inventory menu in place, asign keyboard commands to certain functions, etc. All very basic stuff. Once the core of the game is done I can add actual levels to play around with. Fortunately, with an existing game engine creating this game won't take that long because I have already a basic draft of the Alpha working without more than two days of work. On 12/6/10, Philip Bennefall wrote: > Oh I was refering rather to the 3d game that I was under the impression that > the original question was about, something with Star Wars if I have been > skimming list traffic properly. Smile. > > Kind regards, > > Philip Bennefall --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Oh I was refering rather to the 3d game that I was under the impression that the original question was about, something with Star Wars if I have been skimming list traffic properly. Smile. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: "Thomas Ward" To: ; "Gamers Discussion list" Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 9:15 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi, Actually, MOTA doesn't use any path finding for the AI. The reason is when I wrote it that enemies were randomly generated per room and bound to that region much as the sounds are. So it is impossible for enemies to leave that area. So I never got around to updating it with a more complex AI with some path finding etc to actually leve the rooms and follow you into another room etc. This is imho one of those things I was putting off for an upgrade down the road when i have more time to focus on details like that. On 12/6/10, Philip Bennefall wrote: Hi Thomas, Yes, the bulk of the implementation is very close to your example. It was the only way I could think of to get a good compromize between a realistic sound image and a well performing application. I assume you already use some sort of pathfinding for your AI? I have an optimized AStar implementation with some extra features and tweaks that I use on this end. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Ben, Hmmm...Well, I could record it, but for the moment it is just the extremely early stages/outline of a game. Obviously, the actual game won't have hundreds of rounds of ammo but 25 to 30 per weapon like the original game. At this point it is basically just a large empty room, a practice area, where I can add AT-STS, storm troopers, probe droids, and various other baddies and test them against various weapons and so on. The purpose is to fix bugs and help balance some things before actually creating the game proper. So this isn't really a game per say. Just a bunch of test code. On 12/6/10, Ben wrote: > I so! Want! To! Hear! This! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi, Actually, MOTA doesn't use any path finding for the AI. The reason is when I wrote it that enemies were randomly generated per room and bound to that region much as the sounds are. So it is impossible for enemies to leave that area. So I never got around to updating it with a more complex AI with some path finding etc to actually leve the rooms and follow you into another room etc. This is imho one of those things I was putting off for an upgrade down the road when i have more time to focus on details like that. On 12/6/10, Philip Bennefall wrote: > Hi Thomas, > > Yes, the bulk of the implementation is very close to your example. It was > the only way I could think of to get a good compromize between a realistic > sound image and a well performing application. I assume you already use some > sort of pathfinding for your AI? I have an optimized AStar implementation > with some extra features and tweaks that I use on this end. > > Kind regards, > > Philip Bennefall --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Phil, Yeah, that was what I was thinking. i just played through a couple levels of Shades of Doom to get a handle on what David Greenwood did, and it seams sounds are triggered by the doors themselves. As soon as you open a door you can hear the monsters and equipment in the room when it was silent before. As you pointed out even though you closed the door again you can still hear the monsters moving around in there, but they are muffled. I'd have to figure out how to code this into the engine, but it sounds like a good idea. On 12/6/10, Phil Vlasak wrote: > Hi Thomas, > I think the GMA engine keeps sounds inside a room quiet until you open a > door between the two regions. > Then even if you close the door, the sounds in the room are audible. > So the sounds are triggered by opening doors if there is one instead of > walking into a region. > If no door, then the distance fades sounds, but in a 2d you never hear > sounds from rooms above. > You could put a variable on each door to identify that it was between region > 1 and 2 and if opened, then that would trigger the visited flag and turn on > the sounds to region 2. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Thomas,
Yes, the bulk of the implementation is very close to your example. It was
the only way I could think of to get a good compromize between a realistic
sound image and a well performing application. I assume you already use some
sort of pathfinding for your AI? I have an optimized AStar implementation
with some extra features and tweaks that I use on this end.
Kind regards,
Philip Bennefall
- Original Message -
From: "Thomas Ward"
To: ; "Gamers Discussion list"
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 8:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Philip,
Ouch! Basically, what you are telling me is instead of picking any
single method to handle sounds you have decided to implement all three
of the methods in order to insure a realistic environment. Sounds
reasonable, but it also sounds like a lot of work. As I sit here
typing this message I'm trying to think of how that would look like in
code. Perhaps something like this?
// Get the player and object location
x1 = player.GetX();
y1 = player.GetY();
z1 = player.GetZ();
x2 = object.GetX();
y2 = object.GetY();
z2 = object.GetZ();
// Get the region and distance
region = player.GetRegion();
distance = GetDistance (x1, y1, z1, x2, y2, z2);
open = GetDoor (region);
// Play or update sounds
if ((distance <= 25 &&
open == true) ||
(region == object.GetRegion()))
{
// Start/update sounds
}
// Stop the sounds
if (distance >= 25 &&
open == false &&
region != object.GetRegion())
{
// Stop sounds
}
I'm not sure I got this right, but I think that is a rough idea how
you would go about checking distance, pathways, and region all in one
place without driving yourself crazy. If so it doesn't look too bad.
I'd be interested in seeing your method for handling this thorny
issue.
Cheers!
On 12/6/10, Philip Bennefall wrote:
Hi Thomas,
This exact problem struck me also when I started developing my current 2d
game. The way I'm solving it is to have the distance calculations that
stop
sounds, but also to divide things into regions as you say. Then, I use
pathfinding to see if there is an audible path between the player's
current
region and region x. If there is, play the sound based off of that source
such as a doorway, or all over the stereo image if you find that there are
plenty of open space between the two such as a large coridor leading into
another. Pathfinding is obviously quite expensive so you will need to
buffer
and reuse rather than recalculate except when absolutely necessary, but I
think you get the idea. I do not know whether you consider this to be too
much of a time investment, but that's the approach that I'm going with in
order to get both nice overlapping and efficient CPU usage.
Kind regards,
Philip Bennefall
---
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Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Muhammed, Well, I've decided to just go ahead and draw the levels to scale. Not only is it easier to conceptionalize when drawing the levels with the engine all the code in the engine is already designed around true scale rather than having everything reduced in size to say 10 times less its normal size. As Philip pointed out it probably isn't worth rewriting a bunch of stuff just to save a few KB or so of memory. On 12/6/10, Shiny protector wrote: > Hi Thomas, > I'd say which one is the best one for you. We will wait, but choice is yours > to be honest. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Philip,
Ouch! Basically, what you are telling me is instead of picking any
single method to handle sounds you have decided to implement all three
of the methods in order to insure a realistic environment. Sounds
reasonable, but it also sounds like a lot of work. As I sit here
typing this message I'm trying to think of how that would look like in
code. Perhaps something like this?
// Get the player and object location
x1 = player.GetX();
y1 = player.GetY();
z1 = player.GetZ();
x2 = object.GetX();
y2 = object.GetY();
z2 = object.GetZ();
// Get the region and distance
region = player.GetRegion();
distance = GetDistance (x1, y1, z1, x2, y2, z2);
open = GetDoor (region);
// Play or update sounds
if ((distance <= 25 &&
open == true) ||
(region == object.GetRegion()))
{
// Start/update sounds
}
// Stop the sounds
if (distance >= 25 &&
open == false &&
region != object.GetRegion())
{
// Stop sounds
}
I'm not sure I got this right, but I think that is a rough idea how
you would go about checking distance, pathways, and region all in one
place without driving yourself crazy. If so it doesn't look too bad.
I'd be interested in seeing your method for handling this thorny
issue.
Cheers!
On 12/6/10, Philip Bennefall wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
>
> This exact problem struck me also when I started developing my current 2d
> game. The way I'm solving it is to have the distance calculations that stop
> sounds, but also to divide things into regions as you say. Then, I use
> pathfinding to see if there is an audible path between the player's current
> region and region x. If there is, play the sound based off of that source
> such as a doorway, or all over the stereo image if you find that there are
> plenty of open space between the two such as a large coridor leading into
> another. Pathfinding is obviously quite expensive so you will need to buffer
> and reuse rather than recalculate except when absolutely necessary, but I
> think you get the idea. I do not know whether you consider this to be too
> much of a time investment, but that's the approach that I'm going with in
> order to get both nice overlapping and efficient CPU usage.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Philip Bennefall
---
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Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Thomas, I'd say which one is the best one for you. We will wait, but choice is yours to be honest. - Original Message - From: "Thomas Ward" To: Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 11:42 PM Subject: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hello everyone, I was wondering if some gamers and especially other game developers could give me their input on this matter. Tonight I am sitting here doing a bit of work on the Genesis 3D engine when it ocurred to me I might be doing things the wrong way, or at least I don't have to do things the way I'm currently doing it. You see, when I draw a map of a game level I draw everything in it completely to scale. Like if I draw a chasm or lava pit, and let's say it is 10 feet in length, it ends up using at least 10 elements of the array to hold it in memory. Now, obviously the larger the level the more memory the game is going to use because everything is drawn completely to actual scale. This would be fine for games where the levels are small, where the levels are restricted to a 2d world, but tonight while working on the engine and creating a test level for Star Wars Mysteries of the Sith I soon realized that in order to draw 3d levels according to actual scale would be huge. Oh, the computers of today can certainly handle it as memory is no object its just the principle of the thing why create a (100, 100, 100) 3d array to store the game level when I could acomplish the same thing with a (10, 10, 10) array that has everything scaled down by a factor of 10. So to use my earlier example the chasm that is 10 feet in length would be reduced to 1, and therefore would only use up 1 element in the array. Therefore instead of the player taking a step of 1 he or she would move only 0.1 units per step. Things like that basically means that I could make the level 10 times smaller, saving memory, and still draw large objects and rooms. However, scaling things down isn't without its problems either. For example, since you can't store anything in an array that is smaller than 1 unit in size a door that would normally only be two or three feet wide would now be 10 feet wide because that is the smallest I could make it and store it in the array. Same would go for chasms, fire pits, and anything else. Basically, I'd have to make the jumps longer in order to clear a trap that was only three or four feet accross, but thanks to the weird skaling and technical issues with the array would be no smaller than 10 feet. Any thoughts on this? Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Thomas, I think the GMA engine keeps sounds inside a room quiet until you open a door between the two regions. Then even if you close the door, the sounds in the room are audible. So the sounds are triggered by opening doors if there is one instead of walking into a region. If no door, then the distance fades sounds, but in a 2d you never hear sounds from rooms above. You could put a variable on each door to identify that it was between region 1 and 2 and if opened, then that would trigger the visited flag and turn on the sounds to region 2. - Original Message - From: "Thomas Ward" To: "Gamers Discussion list" Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 1:57 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Phil, Hmmm...I see. Well, you are right it is definitely too late for something like that. We are talking a massive rewrite of the engine to make the rooms and the sound regions separate objects. The way it works now if you asign an item or enemy to room x sounds are not triggered until the player enters that room. The code to randomly place items and monsters, create the rooms, and the sounds all use the same region objects for various purposes. One is tied to the other so that it would take a massive rewrite of everything to undo all that. The easiest solution would be to rewrite the UpdateBackgroundAudio() function to stop sounds based on distance rather than sound region. Problem is that there are times when this could be and would be undesirable. If you happen to be walking under a room with stuff in it you will here levers, torches, etc from the room above the one you are in. Not cool at all seeing as you would want that stuff to be silent until you entered the room. So perhaps a compromise would be to have a boolean flag that says in effect if sound region is not visited keep sounds silence, and if it is visited play the sounds. That way even though you entered a new room the fire pit whatever still could be heard from the previous room where sounds in the new room wouldn't be triggered until you entered it. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Thomas, This exact problem struck me also when I started developing my current 2d game. The way I'm solving it is to have the distance calculations that stop sounds, but also to divide things into regions as you say. Then, I use pathfinding to see if there is an audible path between the player's current region and region x. If there is, play the sound based off of that source such as a doorway, or all over the stereo image if you find that there are plenty of open space between the two such as a large coridor leading into another. Pathfinding is obviously quite expensive so you will need to buffer and reuse rather than recalculate except when absolutely necessary, but I think you get the idea. I do not know whether you consider this to be too much of a time investment, but that's the approach that I'm going with in order to get both nice overlapping and efficient CPU usage. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: "Thomas Ward" To: "Gamers Discussion list" Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 7:57 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Phil, Hmmm...I see. Well, you are right it is definitely too late for something like that. We are talking a massive rewrite of the engine to make the rooms and the sound regions separate objects. The way it works now if you asign an item or enemy to room x sounds are not triggered until the player enters that room. The code to randomly place items and monsters, create the rooms, and the sounds all use the same region objects for various purposes. One is tied to the other so that it would take a massive rewrite of everything to undo all that. The easiest solution would be to rewrite the UpdateBackgroundAudio() function to stop sounds based on distance rather than sound region. Problem is that there are times when this could be and would be undesirable. If you happen to be walking under a room with stuff in it you will here levers, torches, etc from the room above the one you are in. Not cool at all seeing as you would want that stuff to be silent until you entered the room. So perhaps a compromise would be to have a boolean flag that says in effect if sound region is not visited keep sounds silence, and if it is visited play the sounds. That way even though you entered a new room the fire pit whatever still could be heard from the previous room where sounds in the new room wouldn't be triggered until you entered it. On 12/5/10, Phil Vlasak wrote: Hi Thomas, It is definitely too late to do this for MOTA, but I would have the door designated as a sound region itself. It could be about 4 foot thick, and the door between room 1 and 2 would play the sounds of both room 1 and 2 but at 40 percent volume. Phil --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
I so! Want! To! Hear! This! -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: 06 December 2010 04:21 To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Dark, Lol! I take your meaning. I always did think the knife in Shades of Doom was a bit too long. Its like a ssmall sword their. For example, this weekend I spent a little time playing around with a possible clone of Mysteries of the Sith, and created a sample level for testing out some game mechanics. I set Mara's saber range to 6 feet which is probably pretty close to the actual length of a saber with someone's arm extended. Even though it is a close range weapon as wapons goes that didn't help the poor storm troopers I used as target practice. I have already got the code in place to block blaster bolts which worked most of the time, and I just basically walked up to them and chopped off their heads with the light saber. Lol! Oh, and I might add that wasn't the worst thing I did. I'm creating a weapon cclass for the rail gun, that's a type of rocket launcher in the Jedi Knight games, and gave Mara 100 rockets, yes 100 rockets to start with. I basically walked around the level blowing troopers apart wwitch didn't stand a chance with their puny blaster rifles. One rocket alone was enough to kill them instantly. Talk about over kill. Lol! As for drawing things to actual scale I think it helps me personally conceptionalize the level bettr if things are drawn to actual scale rather than reduced in size. Using 30 elements of an array to represent a 30 foot wall makes more sense than using 3 elements of an array and saying it is 30 feet of wall is a bit harder to conceptionally imagine when drawing the level maps. Although, drawing the level itself is easier/quicker because you don't have to do as much work drawing the maps if it is smaller. Cheers! On 12/5/10, dark wrote: > Hi tom. > > I always personally thought of things as scaled relative to the characters > anyway. Afterall, if you thought about it logically, in a game like metroid, > you'd be jumping 14 feet (over twice your hite), in the air anyway, and > about 25 feet with the high jump boots. > > Then, you'd be falling down shafts hundreds and hundreds of feet high with > no injury, and jumping across gaps that are roughly 20 feet long. > > Realistic? probably not, but in the contex of a 2D exploration game it works > fine. I've not played many things in 3D, but I'd say the same principle > applies, objects exist scaled to, and with reference to the mechanics of the > game world only. > > Look at shades of doom. I've always been rather amused that your fists can > reach things seven feet away, and a long knife five feet (a knife that long > is usually called a sword isn't it?), yet, we don't mind, because in the > context of the game, for navigation purposes such measurements make sense. > > I'd say the same principle applies here, so just go with whatever is > easiest. > > Beware the Grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Indeed. That's what he does best... and if they don't trust him... "I find your lack of faith disturbing!" lol --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Phil, Hmmm...I see. Well, you are right it is definitely too late for something like that. We are talking a massive rewrite of the engine to make the rooms and the sound regions separate objects. The way it works now if you asign an item or enemy to room x sounds are not triggered until the player enters that room. The code to randomly place items and monsters, create the rooms, and the sounds all use the same region objects for various purposes. One is tied to the other so that it would take a massive rewrite of everything to undo all that. The easiest solution would be to rewrite the UpdateBackgroundAudio() function to stop sounds based on distance rather than sound region. Problem is that there are times when this could be and would be undesirable. If you happen to be walking under a room with stuff in it you will here levers, torches, etc from the room above the one you are in. Not cool at all seeing as you would want that stuff to be silent until you entered the room. So perhaps a compromise would be to have a boolean flag that says in effect if sound region is not visited keep sounds silence, and if it is visited play the sounds. That way even though you entered a new room the fire pit whatever still could be heard from the previous room where sounds in the new room wouldn't be triggered until you entered it. On 12/5/10, Phil Vlasak wrote: > Hi Thomas, > It is definitely too late to do this for MOTA, but I would have the door > designated as a sound region itself. > It could be about 4 foot thick, and the door between room 1 and 2 would play > the sounds of both room 1 and 2 but at 40 percent volume. > > Phil > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Dark, Hmmm...Well, fortunately MOTS takes place about 6 years after Return of the Jedi so Vader and Emperor Palpatine are ancient history. That said, seeing as the main character for MOTS is Mara Jade Vader would have to be pretty stupid to mess with her. After all she was trained by the Emperor to be a Sith assassin and was initialy given the task of assassinating Luke Skywalker before she got turned to the light side of the force. I don't think Palpatine would have been to happy about Vader picking a fight with one of his enforcers. Grin. Anyway, as I recall Lucas Arts set MOTS to be about one year after the Jedi Academy was setup on Yavin IV. So I'm not quite sure who the Imperial leader was at that point. It might have been Admiral Dolla, but she wasn't very successful. She definitely wasn't a warlord like Grand Admiral Thrawn. Definitely wouldn't be high on my list of super villains. Smile. On 12/6/10, dark wrote: > Ah, poor storm troopers, I hope the empire gives good injury pay ;D. > > Then again would you really want to end up against darth vader in court? I > can see it now. > > "you will drop the case!" > > "I --- will --- drop --- the --- case" > > "You will award the empire huge compensation bonuses!" > > Either that or he'd just subject the oppositing lawyer to the choke ;d. > > Beware the Grue! > > Dark. > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Ah, poor storm troopers, I hope the empire gives good injury pay ;D. Then again would you really want to end up against darth vader in court? I can see it now. "you will drop the case!" "I --- will --- drop --- the --- case" "You will award the empire huge compensation bonuses!" Either that or he'd just subject the oppositing lawyer to the choke ;d. Beware the Grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Thomas, It is definitely too late to do this for MOTA, but I would have the door designated as a sound region itself. It could be about 4 foot thick, and the door between room 1 and 2 would play the sounds of both room 1 and 2 but at 40 percent volume. Phil --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Dark, Lol! I take your meaning. I always did think the knife in Shades of Doom was a bit too long. Its like a ssmall sword their. For example, this weekend I spent a little time playing around with a possible clone of Mysteries of the Sith, and created a sample level for testing out some game mechanics. I set Mara's saber range to 6 feet which is probably pretty close to the actual length of a saber with someone's arm extended. Even though it is a close range weapon as wapons goes that didn't help the poor storm troopers I used as target practice. I have already got the code in place to block blaster bolts which worked most of the time, and I just basically walked up to them and chopped off their heads with the light saber. Lol! Oh, and I might add that wasn't the worst thing I did. I'm creating a weapon cclass for the rail gun, that's a type of rocket launcher in the Jedi Knight games, and gave Mara 100 rockets, yes 100 rockets to start with. I basically walked around the level blowing troopers apart wwitch didn't stand a chance with their puny blaster rifles. One rocket alone was enough to kill them instantly. Talk about over kill. Lol! As for drawing things to actual scale I think it helps me personally conceptionalize the level bettr if things are drawn to actual scale rather than reduced in size. Using 30 elements of an array to represent a 30 foot wall makes more sense than using 3 elements of an array and saying it is 30 feet of wall is a bit harder to conceptionally imagine when drawing the level maps. Although, drawing the level itself is easier/quicker because you don't have to do as much work drawing the maps if it is smaller. Cheers! On 12/5/10, dark wrote: > Hi tom. > > I always personally thought of things as scaled relative to the characters > anyway. Afterall, if you thought about it logically, in a game like metroid, > you'd be jumping 14 feet (over twice your hite), in the air anyway, and > about 25 feet with the high jump boots. > > Then, you'd be falling down shafts hundreds and hundreds of feet high with > no injury, and jumping across gaps that are roughly 20 feet long. > > Realistic? probably not, but in the contex of a 2D exploration game it works > fine. I've not played many things in 3D, but I'd say the same principle > applies, objects exist scaled to, and with reference to the mechanics of the > game world only. > > Look at shades of doom. I've always been rather amused that your fists can > reach things seven feet away, and a long knife five feet (a knife that long > is usually called a sword isn't it?), yet, we don't mind, because in the > context of the game, for navigation purposes such measurements make sense. > > I'd say the same principle applies here, so just go with whatever is > easiest. > > Beware the Grue! > > Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
In a 3D game, the idea of sounds fading out seems logical, but in a 2D maze game with walls like Mota, I'd deffinately agree on the room method. Obviously for Q9 this wasn't necessary, sinse there are no walls and you just walk along continuously so it makes sense for sounds to have a long fade in and out rather than to be limited by area. Beware the grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: "Thomas Ward" To: "Gamers Discussion list" Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 2:29 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hi Phil, Well, one of the reasons I actually added the sound region idea is back in the early development days of Montezuma's Revenge people complained that they could hear warp platforms, ropes, lava pits, etc through walls even though they were in a totally different room or area of the temple. Plus as Philip mentioned leaving all the sounds running at once like that dramatically increases CPU usage and effects system performance. I found using the sound regions does dramaticly improve system performance as only the sounds of the objects in the same rregion or area with you get played. So I'd be interested to here your idea how to solve this problem. Yeah, I can do as Philip said by setting a maximum distance a sound will be attenuated before stoping a sound, but I also can see a case where chasms, fires, enemies, etc can be heard through walls, doors, etc and that isn't always desirable either. On 12/5/10, Phil Vlasak wrote: Hi Thomas, The one thing I feel lacking in MOTA is how you limit the sounds to just the room you are in. In reality once you open a door to the next room you should hear the sounds in that room even though you are in the previous room. And once the door is open and you go through, the sounds in the previous room should get quieter. You could get this effect by having more than one room in a sound region. In other words region 1 would include room 1, 2 and 4, since 2 is part of 4 . I guess that could get complicated as sound regions would overlap. Phil --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi tom. I always personally thought of things as scaled relative to the characters anyway. Afterall, if you thought about it logically, in a game like metroid, you'd be jumping 14 feet (over twice your hite), in the air anyway, and about 25 feet with the high jump boots. Then, you'd be falling down shafts hundreds and hundreds of feet high with no injury, and jumping across gaps that are roughly 20 feet long. Realistic? probably not, but in the contex of a 2D exploration game it works fine. I've not played many things in 3D, but I'd say the same principle applies, objects exist scaled to, and with reference to the mechanics of the game world only. Look at shades of doom. I've always been rather amused that your fists can reach things seven feet away, and a long knife five feet (a knife that long is usually called a sword isn't it?), yet, we don't mind, because in the context of the game, for navigation purposes such measurements make sense. I'd say the same principle applies here, so just go with whatever is easiest. Beware the Grue! Dark. - Original Message - From: "Thomas Ward" To: Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 11:42 PM Subject: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hello everyone, I was wondering if some gamers and especially other game developers could give me their input on this matter. Tonight I am sitting here doing a bit of work on the Genesis 3D engine when it ocurred to me I might be doing things the wrong way, or at least I don't have to do things the way I'm currently doing it. You see, when I draw a map of a game level I draw everything in it completely to scale. Like if I draw a chasm or lava pit, and let's say it is 10 feet in length, it ends up using at least 10 elements of the array to hold it in memory. Now, obviously the larger the level the more memory the game is going to use because everything is drawn completely to actual scale. This would be fine for games where the levels are small, where the levels are restricted to a 2d world, but tonight while working on the engine and creating a test level for Star Wars Mysteries of the Sith I soon realized that in order to draw 3d levels according to actual scale would be huge. Oh, the computers of today can certainly handle it as memory is no object its just the principle of the thing why create a (100, 100, 100) 3d array to store the game level when I could acomplish the same thing with a (10, 10, 10) array that has everything scaled down by a factor of 10. So to use my earlier example the chasm that is 10 feet in length would be reduced to 1, and therefore would only use up 1 element in the array. Therefore instead of the player taking a step of 1 he or she would move only 0.1 units per step. Things like that basically means that I could make the level 10 times smaller, saving memory, and still draw large objects and rooms. However, scaling things down isn't without its problems either. For example, since you can't store anything in an array that is smaller than 1 unit in size a door that would normally only be two or three feet wide would now be 10 feet wide because that is the smallest I could make it and store it in the array. Same would go for chasms, fire pits, and anything else. Basically, I'd have to make the jumps longer in order to clear a trap that was only three or four feet accross, but thanks to the weird skaling and technical issues with the array would be no smaller than 10 feet. Any thoughts on this? Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Phil, Well, one of the reasons I actually added the sound region idea is back in the early development days of Montezuma's Revenge people complained that they could hear warp platforms, ropes, lava pits, etc through walls even though they were in a totally different room or area of the temple. Plus as Philip mentioned leaving all the sounds running at once like that dramatically increases CPU usage and effects system performance. I found using the sound regions does dramaticly improve system performance as only the sounds of the objects in the same rregion or area with you get played. So I'd be interested to here your idea how to solve this problem. Yeah, I can do as Philip said by setting a maximum distance a sound will be attenuated before stoping a sound, but I also can see a case where chasms, fires, enemies, etc can be heard through walls, doors, etc and that isn't always desirable either. On 12/5/10, Phil Vlasak wrote: > Hi Thomas, > The one thing I feel lacking in MOTA is how you limit the sounds to just the > room you are in. > > In reality once you open a door to the next room you should hear the sounds > in that room even though you are in the previous room. > And once the door is open and you go through, the sounds in the previous > room should get quieter. > You could get this effect by having more than one room in a sound region. > In other words region 1 would include room 1, 2 and 4, since 2 is part of 4 > . > I guess that could get complicated as sound regions would overlap. > Phil > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Personally. You're better off drawing everything to scale. Will make math easier, and computers have no problem processing it. -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 5:43 PM To: gamers@audyssey.org Subject: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hello everyone, I was wondering if some gamers and especially other game developers could give me their input on this matter. Tonight I am sitting here doing a bit of work on the Genesis 3D engine when it ocurred to me I might be doing things the wrong way, or at least I don't have to do things the way I'm currently doing it. You see, when I draw a map of a game level I draw everything in it completely to scale. Like if I draw a chasm or lava pit, and let's say it is 10 feet in length, it ends up using at least 10 elements of the array to hold it in memory. Now, obviously the larger the level the more memory the game is going to use because everything is drawn completely to actual scale. This would be fine for games where the levels are small, where the levels are restricted to a 2d world, but tonight while working on the engine and creating a test level for Star Wars Mysteries of the Sith I soon realized that in order to draw 3d levels according to actual scale would be huge. Oh, the computers of today can certainly handle it as memory is no object its just the principle of the thing why create a (100, 100, 100) 3d array to store the game level when I could acomplish the same thing with a (10, 10, 10) array that has everything scaled down by a factor of 10. So to use my earlier example the chasm that is 10 feet in length would be reduced to 1, and therefore would only use up 1 element in the array. Therefore instead of the player taking a step of 1 he or she would move only 0.1 units per step. Things like that basically means that I could make the level 10 times smaller, saving memory, and still draw large objects and rooms. However, scaling things down isn't without its problems either. For example, since you can't store anything in an array that is smaller than 1 unit in size a door that would normally only be two or three feet wide would now be 10 feet wide because that is the smallest I could make it and store it in the array. Same would go for chasms, fire pits, and anything else. Basically, I'd have to make the jumps longer in order to clear a trap that was only three or four feet accross, but thanks to the weird skaling and technical issues with the array would be no smaller than 10 feet. Any thoughts on this? Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Thomas, The one thing I feel lacking in MOTA is how you limit the sounds to just the room you are in. In reality once you open a door to the next room you should hear the sounds in that room even though you are in the previous room. And once the door is open and you go through, the sounds in the previous room should get quieter. You could get this effect by having more than one room in a sound region. In other words region 1 would include room 1, 2 and 4, since 2 is part of 4 . I guess that could get complicated as sound regions would overlap. Phil --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Philip, Yeah, I get what your saying. The mixer is definitely a huge factor in over all game performance. In fact, that is one reason why I switched bakc to Streemway for the Windows releases. When I used OpenAL for Windows it used a massive amount of memory to load the same amount of sound data that I had in DirectX and performance went way down. Switching back to Streemway performance went way back up. Plus reducing the sound quality from 44100 KHZ to 22500 KHZ made a massive improvement in over all system performance as well. As for stopping sounds when they are out of range i already do that. Basically, what I did when creating the engine is when you initialize a sound you define a sound region, area, where the sound can be heard. For example, if you asign it to room 5, that room and only that room, is a sound region. If you enter room 5 the sounds start playing, and if you leave room 5 all sounds in that room are stopped and the sounds for room 6 are started. This keeps the game engine running smoothly as it takes a lot of the system load off the mixer as it is usually only dealing with say 5 to 10 sounds at a time rather than 50 or 60. I appreciate your comments/suggestions. Yeah, I think spending the day or two to modify the engine and game levels to scale things down probably isn't worth it. As I said before memory usually is no object these days as the least amount of ram I have on a computer is 1 GB, and most of the computers my wife and I own have at least 2 GB or more. Anyone here going to buy a computer today will have an extremely high performance processor and ram and saving the ram by chopping things down to size probably isn't worth the work to save a few thousand KB of ramm. Besides that I noticed when trying to redesign the MOTA levels using the new scale my brain wouldn't work. I couldn'tthink of a chasm as a single unit being 10 feet in length or 30 feet of wall being 3 units long. I see things in my mind as actual scale, do my math that way, and what I'd have to do is write it down as its actual scale and then divide to come up witht the actual code that would get put into the engine. Sounds too much like work. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Shaun, Ahem...The game does dispose of levels before loading a new one after all. Besides loading the new level map it has to dispose of sound and music objects as well as other game objects and recreate them with the new level data. On 12/5/10, shaun everiss wrote: > hmmm making things to scale would be something I'd like to keep. > Though I wander if you could have things in modules then load what > you need on demand and unload what you don't need. > You probably don't need all levels loaded, and after the logo has > played and the menu and after all that you can probably unload that > load the level, run that load and unload the next one and so on. > >>Hello everyone, >> >>I was wondering if some gamers and especially other game developers >>could give me their input on this matter. Tonight I am sitting here >>doing a bit of work on the Genesis 3D engine when it ocurred to me I >>might be doing things the wrong way, or at least I don't have to do >>things the way I'm currently doing it. >> >>You see, when I draw a map of a game level I draw everything in it >>completely to scale. Like if I draw a chasm or lava pit, and let's say >>it is 10 feet in length, it ends up using at least 10 elements of the >>array to hold it in memory. Now, obviously the larger the level the >>more memory the game is going to use because everything is drawn >>completely to actual scale. This would be fine for games where the >>levels are small, where the levels are restricted to a 2d world, but >>tonight while working on the engine and creating a test level for Star >>Wars Mysteries of the Sith I soon realized that in order to draw 3d >>levels according to actual scale would be huge. Oh, the computers of >>today can certainly handle it as memory is no object its just the >>principle of the thing why create a (100, 100, 100) 3d array to store >>the game level when I could acomplish the same thing with a (10, 10, >>10) array that has everything scaled down by a factor of 10. >> >>So to use my earlier example the chasm that is 10 feet in length would >>be reduced to 1, and therefore would only use up 1 element in the >>array. Therefore instead of the player taking a step of 1 he or she >>would move only 0.1 units per step. Things like that basically means >>that I could make the level 10 times smaller, saving memory, and still >>draw large objects and rooms. >> >>However, scaling things down isn't without its problems either. For >>example, since you can't store anything in an array that is smaller >>than 1 unit in size a door that would normally only be two or three >>feet wide would now be 10 feet wide because that is the smallest I >>could make it and store it in the array. Same would go for chasms, >>fire pits, and anything else. Basically, I'd have to make the jumps >>longer in order to clear a trap that was only three or four feet >>accross, but thanks to the weird skaling and technical issues with the >>array would be no smaller than 10 feet. Any thoughts on this? >> >>Cheers! >> >>--- >>Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org >>If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to >> gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. >>You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at >>http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. >>All messages are archived and can be searched and read at >>http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. >>If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, >>please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Thomas, In my experience, simple number lists like game environments, however large, isn't what consumes resources in a game. The real crook is the DirectSound mixer. If you really want to save on performance, make it so that in your sound positioning code you calculate the total distance and resulting volume decrease effect for each sound as either the player or the sound source moves. If the volume level is lower than some threshold you have decided like -5000 or -6000 in DirectSound, you simply stop the file. Of course you start it again once the player comes within this threshold again, making sure it is just low enough so that it's not noticeable. That's how I sped up Q9 so much between 1.0 and 1.1, so that it could even run on a horrendous netbook. Q9 is not nearly as large as what you're describing, of course, but the same principle still applies. I don't think all the recalculation and array nightmare work is worth it just to save a tiny bit of ram. Instead, make sure the data for each square is compact and stored as efficiently as possible; e.g. with the smallest datatype that will work and bitfields for flags etc Hope this helps some. Kind regards, Philip Bennefall - Original Message - From: "Thomas Ward" To: Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 12:42 AM Subject: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale? Hello everyone, I was wondering if some gamers and especially other game developers could give me their input on this matter. Tonight I am sitting here doing a bit of work on the Genesis 3D engine when it ocurred to me I might be doing things the wrong way, or at least I don't have to do things the way I'm currently doing it. You see, when I draw a map of a game level I draw everything in it completely to scale. Like if I draw a chasm or lava pit, and let's say it is 10 feet in length, it ends up using at least 10 elements of the array to hold it in memory. Now, obviously the larger the level the more memory the game is going to use because everything is drawn completely to actual scale. This would be fine for games where the levels are small, where the levels are restricted to a 2d world, but tonight while working on the engine and creating a test level for Star Wars Mysteries of the Sith I soon realized that in order to draw 3d levels according to actual scale would be huge. Oh, the computers of today can certainly handle it as memory is no object its just the principle of the thing why create a (100, 100, 100) 3d array to store the game level when I could acomplish the same thing with a (10, 10, 10) array that has everything scaled down by a factor of 10. So to use my earlier example the chasm that is 10 feet in length would be reduced to 1, and therefore would only use up 1 element in the array. Therefore instead of the player taking a step of 1 he or she would move only 0.1 units per step. Things like that basically means that I could make the level 10 times smaller, saving memory, and still draw large objects and rooms. However, scaling things down isn't without its problems either. For example, since you can't store anything in an array that is smaller than 1 unit in size a door that would normally only be two or three feet wide would now be 10 feet wide because that is the smallest I could make it and store it in the array. Same would go for chasms, fire pits, and anything else. Basically, I'd have to make the jumps longer in order to clear a trap that was only three or four feet accross, but thanks to the weird skaling and technical issues with the array would be no smaller than 10 feet. Any thoughts on this? Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Cara, Yeah, that makes sense. I actually do that anyway as the engine still keeps track of length, width, and hight of any object regardless of what values are stored in the array itself. The array is basically there used to tell what surface the player is walking on or to define the size and shapes of walls etc. On 12/5/10, Cara Quinn wrote: > Hi Thomas, one thing that comes to mind initially, is simply to use actual > 3D coordinates. You can still store objects or object descriptions in an > array, but add two coordinates to each which can define (on a gross level) > its size. I.E. a door might be defined as existing from -1.5, 0.0, -3.0 to > 1.5, 0.0, 3.0 where coordinates are measured in feet and are shown as x,y,z > for width, length and height. > > so you'd have a door that is three feet wide, six feet tall, and zero feet > long so to speak. In this example, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 is in the center of the > door, so you could move the door anywhere as its coordinate definition is > only relative to itself. > > This would actually define the door and any other objects as axis-aligned > bounding boxes so would have real dimensions in the game, but could still be > stored with a very small amount of data. > > Hope this helps… > > Smiles, > > Cara :) > On Dec 5, 2010, at 3:42 PM, Thomas Ward wrote: > > Hello everyone, > > I was wondering if some gamers and especially other game developers > could give me their input on this matter. Tonight I am sitting here > doing a bit of work on the Genesis 3D engine when it ocurred to me I > might be doing things the wrong way, or at least I don't have to do > things the way I'm currently doing it. > > You see, when I draw a map of a game level I draw everything in it > completely to scale. Like if I draw a chasm or lava pit, and let's say > it is 10 feet in length, it ends up using at least 10 elements of the > array to hold it in memory. Now, obviously the larger the level the > more memory the game is going to use because everything is drawn > completely to actual scale. This would be fine for games where the > levels are small, where the levels are restricted to a 2d world, but > tonight while working on the engine and creating a test level for Star > Wars Mysteries of the Sith I soon realized that in order to draw 3d > levels according to actual scale would be huge. Oh, the computers of > today can certainly handle it as memory is no object its just the > principle of the thing why create a (100, 100, 100) 3d array to store > the game level when I could acomplish the same thing with a (10, 10, > 10) array that has everything scaled down by a factor of 10. > > So to use my earlier example the chasm that is 10 feet in length would > be reduced to 1, and therefore would only use up 1 element in the > array. Therefore instead of the player taking a step of 1 he or she > would move only 0.1 units per step. Things like that basically means > that I could make the level 10 times smaller, saving memory, and still > draw large objects and rooms. > > However, scaling things down isn't without its problems either. For > example, since you can't store anything in an array that is smaller > than 1 unit in size a door that would normally only be two or three > feet wide would now be 10 feet wide because that is the smallest I > could make it and store it in the array. Same would go for chasms, > fire pits, and anything else. Basically, I'd have to make the jumps > longer in order to clear a trap that was only three or four feet > accross, but thanks to the weird skaling and technical issues with the > array would be no smaller than 10 feet. Any thoughts on this? > > Cheers! > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.ma
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hi Thomas, one thing that comes to mind initially, is simply to use actual 3D coordinates. You can still store objects or object descriptions in an array, but add two coordinates to each which can define (on a gross level) its size. I.E. a door might be defined as existing from -1.5, 0.0, -3.0 to 1.5, 0.0, 3.0 where coordinates are measured in feet and are shown as x,y,z for width, length and height. so you'd have a door that is three feet wide, six feet tall, and zero feet long so to speak. In this example, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 is in the center of the door, so you could move the door anywhere as its coordinate definition is only relative to itself. This would actually define the door and any other objects as axis-aligned bounding boxes so would have real dimensions in the game, but could still be stored with a very small amount of data. Hope this helps… Smiles, Cara :) On Dec 5, 2010, at 3:42 PM, Thomas Ward wrote: Hello everyone, I was wondering if some gamers and especially other game developers could give me their input on this matter. Tonight I am sitting here doing a bit of work on the Genesis 3D engine when it ocurred to me I might be doing things the wrong way, or at least I don't have to do things the way I'm currently doing it. You see, when I draw a map of a game level I draw everything in it completely to scale. Like if I draw a chasm or lava pit, and let's say it is 10 feet in length, it ends up using at least 10 elements of the array to hold it in memory. Now, obviously the larger the level the more memory the game is going to use because everything is drawn completely to actual scale. This would be fine for games where the levels are small, where the levels are restricted to a 2d world, but tonight while working on the engine and creating a test level for Star Wars Mysteries of the Sith I soon realized that in order to draw 3d levels according to actual scale would be huge. Oh, the computers of today can certainly handle it as memory is no object its just the principle of the thing why create a (100, 100, 100) 3d array to store the game level when I could acomplish the same thing with a (10, 10, 10) array that has everything scaled down by a factor of 10. So to use my earlier example the chasm that is 10 feet in length would be reduced to 1, and therefore would only use up 1 element in the array. Therefore instead of the player taking a step of 1 he or she would move only 0.1 units per step. Things like that basically means that I could make the level 10 times smaller, saving memory, and still draw large objects and rooms. However, scaling things down isn't without its problems either. For example, since you can't store anything in an array that is smaller than 1 unit in size a door that would normally only be two or three feet wide would now be 10 feet wide because that is the smallest I could make it and store it in the array. Same would go for chasms, fire pits, and anything else. Basically, I'd have to make the jumps longer in order to clear a trap that was only three or four feet accross, but thanks to the weird skaling and technical issues with the array would be no smaller than 10 feet. Any thoughts on this? Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
hmmm making things to scale would be something I'd like to keep. Though I wander if you could have things in modules then load what you need on demand and unload what you don't need. You probably don't need all levels loaded, and after the logo has played and the menu and after all that you can probably unload that load the level, run that load and unload the next one and so on. Hello everyone, I was wondering if some gamers and especially other game developers could give me their input on this matter. Tonight I am sitting here doing a bit of work on the Genesis 3D engine when it ocurred to me I might be doing things the wrong way, or at least I don't have to do things the way I'm currently doing it. You see, when I draw a map of a game level I draw everything in it completely to scale. Like if I draw a chasm or lava pit, and let's say it is 10 feet in length, it ends up using at least 10 elements of the array to hold it in memory. Now, obviously the larger the level the more memory the game is going to use because everything is drawn completely to actual scale. This would be fine for games where the levels are small, where the levels are restricted to a 2d world, but tonight while working on the engine and creating a test level for Star Wars Mysteries of the Sith I soon realized that in order to draw 3d levels according to actual scale would be huge. Oh, the computers of today can certainly handle it as memory is no object its just the principle of the thing why create a (100, 100, 100) 3d array to store the game level when I could acomplish the same thing with a (10, 10, 10) array that has everything scaled down by a factor of 10. So to use my earlier example the chasm that is 10 feet in length would be reduced to 1, and therefore would only use up 1 element in the array. Therefore instead of the player taking a step of 1 he or she would move only 0.1 units per step. Things like that basically means that I could make the level 10 times smaller, saving memory, and still draw large objects and rooms. However, scaling things down isn't without its problems either. For example, since you can't store anything in an array that is smaller than 1 unit in size a door that would normally only be two or three feet wide would now be 10 feet wide because that is the smallest I could make it and store it in the array. Same would go for chasms, fire pits, and anything else. Basically, I'd have to make the jumps longer in order to clear a trap that was only three or four feet accross, but thanks to the weird skaling and technical issues with the array would be no smaller than 10 feet. Any thoughts on this? Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
[Audyssey] Creating game levels to scale?
Hello everyone, I was wondering if some gamers and especially other game developers could give me their input on this matter. Tonight I am sitting here doing a bit of work on the Genesis 3D engine when it ocurred to me I might be doing things the wrong way, or at least I don't have to do things the way I'm currently doing it. You see, when I draw a map of a game level I draw everything in it completely to scale. Like if I draw a chasm or lava pit, and let's say it is 10 feet in length, it ends up using at least 10 elements of the array to hold it in memory. Now, obviously the larger the level the more memory the game is going to use because everything is drawn completely to actual scale. This would be fine for games where the levels are small, where the levels are restricted to a 2d world, but tonight while working on the engine and creating a test level for Star Wars Mysteries of the Sith I soon realized that in order to draw 3d levels according to actual scale would be huge. Oh, the computers of today can certainly handle it as memory is no object its just the principle of the thing why create a (100, 100, 100) 3d array to store the game level when I could acomplish the same thing with a (10, 10, 10) array that has everything scaled down by a factor of 10. So to use my earlier example the chasm that is 10 feet in length would be reduced to 1, and therefore would only use up 1 element in the array. Therefore instead of the player taking a step of 1 he or she would move only 0.1 units per step. Things like that basically means that I could make the level 10 times smaller, saving memory, and still draw large objects and rooms. However, scaling things down isn't without its problems either. For example, since you can't store anything in an array that is smaller than 1 unit in size a door that would normally only be two or three feet wide would now be 10 feet wide because that is the smallest I could make it and store it in the array. Same would go for chasms, fire pits, and anything else. Basically, I'd have to make the jumps longer in order to clear a trap that was only three or four feet accross, but thanks to the weird skaling and technical issues with the array would be no smaller than 10 feet. Any thoughts on this? Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
