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dislekcia
13-08-2008, 06:08 PM
This is the game that QCF is putting out for Dream Build Play this year... Been wanting to start a thread for it for a while, but today something rather funny happened:

Aeq started messing with adding bloom on the edges of our objects of interest while he's waiting for me to finish some framework stuff so he can populate the bosses with nasty fire patterns.

So he suddenly bursts out laughing and shouts "Hah! I've made the game 8-bit!"

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/944/messyns3.jpg

http://img395.imageshack.us/img395/5066/sillyoverlayyx8.jpg

Chippit
13-08-2008, 06:28 PM
Unintended effects ftw. It's the only reason the ice in UQ2 looks the way it does.

Azimuth
13-08-2008, 06:30 PM
That looks frickin' sweet.

Fengol
13-08-2008, 06:31 PM
Frickin awesome Aeq! The 8bit legend will never die while we have dev's like you around :D

Thaumaturge
13-08-2008, 08:25 PM
Heheh, that's a pretty cool effect - will you be keeping it, or removing it?

FuzzYspo0N
13-08-2008, 08:55 PM
easter egg ftw

edg3
14-08-2008, 05:03 PM
Talk about awesome! :O

I havent quite worked out how to use shaders yet...

DukeOFprunes
14-08-2008, 06:17 PM
Didn't Darwinia's pixel effect do something in this vein? Looks cool!

dislekcia
14-08-2008, 08:11 PM
Didn't Darwinia's pixel effect do something in this vein? Looks cool!

Yeah, it did. We can pretty much duplicate Darwinia's look now, all we have to do is turn the blur on the bloom effect down and change the texture filtering and it'll look all pixellated :)

But I prefer having glowing edges on important things, it makes the game a lot more alive.

Gazza_N
15-08-2008, 08:27 AM
Well, with a second pass (and speed allowing) you could have pixellated graphics with extra bloom... >.>

dislekcia
15-08-2008, 01:13 PM
But smooth particles are sooo neat :(

Just read the thread about the D3 health drops vs potions idea... I've been doing health drops since the first prototypes of this game over a year ago. It feels better, mainly because movement is the main player action in the game, so movement over something that's going to heal you provides players with very attractive 10 second goals.

dislekcia
15-08-2008, 01:55 PM
Some more screenshots, I'm stressing out the game and profiling it to find slowdowns at the moment. Which means I've switched over to a windows build and I can take screenshots for a bit :)

You can see the random ship generation and a test particle trail which we totally stole off Geometry Wars 2. Aeq's working on new modules and I have to make sure we don't get slowdowns with 200+ enemies anymore...

http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/2095/200808151bq2.jpg

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/7097/200808152dk0.jpg

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/9845/200808153yg5.jpg

Coolhand
15-08-2008, 03:33 PM
Did you get nProf running yet D?

FuzzYspo0N
15-08-2008, 03:44 PM
This is looking awesome Dis and Aeq. I love this style of game art. makes me wanna play rRootage again... The bloom looks more win!

Cyberninja
15-08-2008, 03:49 PM
The game looks awesome D. :)

dislekcia
15-08-2008, 03:54 PM
Did you get nProf running yet D?

Yeah I did, thanks to your detailed instructions! (I felt like such a tool ;)) Next thing I knew it was 3am...


This is looking awesome Dis and Aeq. I love this style of game art. makes me wanna play rRootage again... The bloom looks more win!

rRootage was a definite inspiration for how the enemies are generated. Kenta Cho is a hero of mine :) So if we can produce something that reminds people of his work, I'm going to be really happy.

dINGLE
15-08-2008, 06:08 PM
looking good ...

after you have entered the comp, will it be publicly released?

Coolhand
15-08-2008, 06:38 PM
Yeah I did, thanks to your detailed instructions! (I felt like such a tool ;)) Next thing I knew it was 3am....

lol :)

I told you 3 months ago that it was not only simple, but ALSO super cool ;) Drop me an email if there are an XNA-side functions that are killing you and I'll let you know what I may or may not have to sort them our on our side (ie. the craziness that is 'IsSphereInFrustum()').



after you have entered the comp, will it be publicly released?

I'm guessing if all goes well it will... for a cool 800 (give or take) MS Points ;)

dislekcia
15-08-2008, 08:04 PM
lol :)

I told you 3 months ago that it was not only simple, but ALSO super cool ;) Drop me an email if there are an XNA-side functions that are killing you and I'll let you know what I may or may not have to sort them our on our side (ie. the craziness that is 'IsSphereInFrustum()').

Right now our main slowdown is a really stupid (N!) collision hack I did on enemies and good old Effect.Begin() :(

I'm probably going to have to dump meshes that share the same effect in buckets instead of brute-forcing it. Although on the 360 it doesn't seem to give a **** about rendering at all... My slowdown on that side appears to be from churning through long lists. I think.

I really wish I had something like nProf for 360. The remote performance monitor is kinda useful, but pales in comparison to the awesome that nProf is capable of diagnostically...


I'm guessing if all goes well it will... for a cool 800 (give or take) MS Points ;)

Ding! Got it in one. Although we might go for a lower price-point to give people something to snap up when they don't have a ton of points to spare. Not sure yet.

Coolhand
15-08-2008, 09:14 PM
good old Effect.Begin() :(

Good times...

I think that and parameter uploading are our biggest ones. There really is no way to zero it out, but there are ways (ie. buckets...) to reduce it. Too bad you can't see if it is actually a culprit on the 360 though...

I just put a new system in that for every mesh loaded, it checks the effect (combination of an EffectID which I store as a .FX parameter, and the TechniqueID for that EffectID), and for every unique combination (like only 10 or 20 or so in our stuff), I do a single Effect.Clone(), and keep a list of these cloned effect around, and give each mesh a reference to the one that matches it (if a mesh requests an existing "cloned' effect, I just up the reference count and return an existing one).

Then at render time, I do ye-old-bucket-sort for the mesh of each object in Mr. Frustum, with a simple Effect.Equals() between existing bucket entries and each mesh/effect combo. Once this is done, just go through the bucket, set up the effect for rendering, then for each mesh that uses that effect just upload the unique parameters manually that change from mesh to mesh (matrices, textures, etc.). Then wash-rince-repeat for each bucket entry.

The effect setting and parameter uploads still take up a large percentage of the time, but if I remember correctly, a sample scene for us on my laptop went from like 10 fps to 60fps or so. Not that is of any kind of empirical value though.

But I'm sure you know all that already... I'm just rambling :)


Careful though... as I learned with this, Effect.Clone() is uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuber-slow on PC at least... like a level load that should take 10 seconds takes 40 for us if I just ALWAYS clone every effect loaded (was only test code, but still scary...).

Oh snap, also be careful of running in windowed mode. The EndRender() (or whatever it is called) takes up huge amounts of time when running in windowed mode, so make sure you ignore that function in nProf. Again, the difference on my laptop between running windowed / fullscreen is something close to 100% (ie. 25fps to close to 50fps in one case I remember...).

Thaumaturge
16-08-2008, 06:15 AM
It looks very cool indeed. ^_^

If I may ask, what sort of game is it, and what gameplay does it include? From the title and screenshots, I'm guessing that it's a space-based action game; the title also reminds me of NetHack, and you've mentioned random ship generation - are the RPG ad Roguelike elements, by any chance?

dislekcia
16-08-2008, 12:57 PM
It looks very cool indeed. ^_^

If I may ask, what sort of game is it, and what gameplay does it include? From the title and screenshots, I'm guessing that it's a space-based action game; the title also reminds me of NetHack, and you've mentioned random ship generation - are the RPG ad Roguelike elements, by any chance?

Hack-and-slash space action roguelike. You don't have RPG skills and progression per se, instead that kind of stuff is shunted to modules that you collect and can mount on your ship. Some modules have upgrade paths that either substantially change the way the module plays or make it more effective in certain situations. At the moment I prefer playing with modules that enhance my mobility and auto-tracking weapons, Aeq prefers firing hordes of missiles at things and I'm just waiting for him to make some sort of sniper-equivalent module ;)

The game is set up in a way that means we can just keep adding modules, set their difficulty and they'll get dropped by events and enemies automatically at the corresponding difficulty curves.


Good times...

I think that and parameter uploading are our biggest ones. There really is no way to zero it out, but there are ways (ie. buckets...) to reduce it. Too bad you can't see if it is actually a culprit on the 360 though...

I just put a new system in that for every mesh loaded, it checks the effect (combination of an EffectID which I store as a .FX parameter, and the TechniqueID for that EffectID), and for every unique combination (like only 10 or 20 or so in our stuff), I do a single Effect.Clone(), and keep a list of these cloned effect around, and give each mesh a reference to the one that matches it (if a mesh requests an existing "cloned' effect, I just up the reference count and return an existing one).

Then at render time, I do ye-old-bucket-sort for the mesh of each object in Mr. Frustum, with a simple Effect.Equals() between existing bucket entries and each mesh/effect combo. Once this is done, just go through the bucket, set up the effect for rendering, then for each mesh that uses that effect just upload the unique parameters manually that change from mesh to mesh (matrices, textures, etc.). Then wash-rince-repeat for each bucket entry.

The effect setting and parameter uploads still take up a large percentage of the time, but if I remember correctly, a sample scene for us on my laptop went from like 10 fps to 60fps or so. Not that is of any kind of empirical value though.

But I'm sure you know all that already... I'm just rambling :)

We've already got an effect manager that serves different effects to meshes when they want them, it also sets up most of the initial camera/lighting stuff once per frame. I'm not looking forward to bucketing meshes because pretty much everything in the game is transparent in some way, so we need to be really sure of ordering.

I'm having a ton of fun trying to build a more advanced datastructure at the moment. And by fun I mean issues. And by ton I mean "I want to be working on gameplay really badly right now" :(

Careful though... as I learned with this, Effect.Clone() is uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuber-slow on PC at least... like a level load that should take 10 seconds takes 40 for us if I just ALWAYS clone every effect loaded (was only test code, but still scary...).

Oh snap, also be careful of running in windowed mode. The EndRender() (or whatever it is called) takes up huge amounts of time when running in windowed mode, so make sure you ignore that function in nProf. Again, the difference on my laptop between running windowed / fullscreen is something close to 100% (ie. 25fps to close to 50fps in one case I remember...).

Oh so that's why we were spending so much time in that function! I was starting to wonder if it was all the rendertarget switching...

I'm really hoping that we get something that can do similar levels of reporting on 360 at some point. I want to know what's slowing my game down on that box, it really shouldn't be stressing at all.

Aequitas
16-08-2008, 01:55 PM
And this is what happens when you turn up the bloom really high.

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7991/bloom1ke0.png

*headasplode*

01DT!m3r
16-08-2008, 02:16 PM
OMFG!DAm good-looking!well done!....I really want this now:)

Cyberninja
16-08-2008, 04:01 PM
And this is what happens when you turn up the bloom really high.

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7991/bloom1ke0.png

*headasplode*

That. Looks. Awesome. 0_0

Will you guys be placing that effect onto your interface as well? I think that would look really cool.

Thaumaturge
16-08-2008, 07:46 PM
Ooh, that does look pretty... if perhaps a little much to play with for very long, I suspect. ;P


Hack-and-slash space action roguelike. You don't have RPG skills and progression per se, instead that kind of stuff is shunted to modules that you collect and can mount on your ship. Some modules have upgrade paths that either substantially change the way the module plays or make it more effective in certain situations. At the moment I prefer playing with modules that enhance my mobility and auto-tracking weapons, Aeq prefers firing hordes of missiles at things and I'm just waiting for him to make some sort of sniper-equivalent module

The game is set up in a way that means we can just keep adding modules, set their difficulty and they'll get dropped by events and enemies automatically at the corresponding difficulty curves.

Aah, that sounds very good indeed - by the sounds of it there are some ideas in this game that I think that I would have loved to have had for Planar Depths.

Thinking of which, how are you providing incentive for the player to engage with enemies? I found with my last version of Planar Depths (which I've decided to drop, by the way) that it was too easy for the player to just fly past enemies, and that there was too much incentive to do so in the way that I was spawning them...

Aequitas
16-08-2008, 08:38 PM
Just got the particle system optimization done ..... and I'm so happy, that you all get a screenshot

I like to call this one "40000 particles onscreen at once"

http://img394.imageshack.us/img394/18/particlemessgg6.png

and it runs like this with no slowdowns, while spewing out 50 more particles per update (lots)

Thaumaturge
16-08-2008, 08:58 PM
Wow, that is very impressive indeed!

Is that on the X-Box, or the PC? If the latter, what hardware are you running on?

dINGLE
16-08-2008, 11:45 PM
damn it, now I'm looking forward to this, even though I don't have an XBox!

dislekcia
17-08-2008, 02:59 AM
Thinking of which, how are you providing incentive for the player to engage with enemies? I found with my last version of Planar Depths (which I've decided to drop, by the way) that it was too easy for the player to just fly past enemies, and that there was too much incentive to do so in the way that I was spawning them...

Enemies drop stuff. The only way to get modules and upgrades is to kill stuff or open space-chests (when we finish those).

Some levels will have events controlling their exit portals that mean you need to enter combat or solve some sort of puzzle/survive a situation to get the portal to spawn.

If you run straight to an exit the random generator will assume that the level was too easy and up the difficulty for the next level quite a bit :) So players might notice this and rush every now and again to get that Diablo2 "players 8" feeling, which I'm perfectly ok with, TBH.

Thaumaturge
17-08-2008, 05:51 AM
Fair enough, and thanks - it sounds like a good combination. ^_^

I had some of that (all items and points were cropped by enemies, including the portal-spawning item), but I didn't have the difficulty alteration, and didn't have any real "situations", aside from random combinations of enemies. Perhaps, aside from general balancing, I was primarily missing a large enough variety of items and enemies and some sort of "encounter"/"puzzle" generator (the latter of which was planned at one point, as you may recall).

Ah well, enough about Planar Depths - I've hopefully learned from it. ^_^

I look forward to seeing and hearing more about your game, and perhaps getting to try it some day. ^_^

Aequitas
17-08-2008, 11:34 AM
Is that on the X-Box, or the PC? If the latter, what hardware are you running on?

The screenshots are from PC, I'm running an 8800GT. But i'm pretty sure the game can do that on Pixel Shader 2.0 hardware ;)

Coolhand
19-08-2008, 01:58 PM
I'm not looking forward to bucketing meshes because pretty much everything in the game is transparent in some way, so we need to be really sure of ordering.


Yeah, alpha sorting is fun stuff... remember though if your stuff is done with Additive instead of Multiplicative blending (ie. SRCBLEND = ONE, DESTBLEND = ONE), then you don't need to sort those objects, but only have them rendered after your solid, ZBuffer objects. So if you can get away with your translucent objects being "hot", then that can save you a lot of render sorting issues :)

dislekcia
19-08-2008, 02:40 PM
Sorting is no longer an issue :)

I'm using the fact that newly-created objects are deeper in our structure than old objects and the fact that fast moving objects are shunted to the tail-end of lists by the quadtree to make sure that bullets are always rendered after enemies and bosses.

Just still wish I had more of an idea of what was going on in the 360: The game runs like a greased weasel on PC, but on 360 there's this annoying framedrop when we've got a lot of dynamic objects. I think it may be churn in the List<>s I'm using to store things in the quadtree. Memory loading maybe? Any ideas for tests to nail down the problem?

Coolhand
19-08-2008, 03:19 PM
Could also be the GC on thte 360... I don't know much about it, but I do know that it runs differently than on PC. I think on the Xbox it collects when a certain amount of free memory is left or such, so perhaps you just have too much dynamic allocation happening and you keep going back and forth over this bound?

Dunno... it more than likely isn't the case, but see if you have much dynamic stuff happening and rather see if you can pre-allcoate a bunch of stuff and then just move them between Active and Inactive lists if possible :)

Only other thing I know that is quite different between the 2 is how RenderTargets are handled WRT their surfaces being valid. There is a type of surface you can define the RT to be, something about it being constantly valid or only being valid until the next render target is set (or something like that...). If you're using other RTs for things and don't have this set up correctly, it could run quite slowly on the 360 as there will be more memory copying happening and such when you change render targets. Just another thought :)


As for tests:

1) Are the results the same if all of the enemies are the same (ie. less Effect setting) compared to having many different types of enemies (ie. more Effect swapping)? How about creating a dummy generic effect and only setting this once and forcing everything to render with it? Try both a complex effect (lighting, etc.) and a simple effect (just transform and put pixel).

2) How is it if you disable the quadtree and either just process everything at the same level, or just do a simple radial check for proximity in order to process / render?

3) Does adding more or less levels to the quadtree make performance better or worse (really depends on the size of your world... like 2km squared vs. 500km squared).

4) Are you using multiple threads on the 360? I read once about threading priorities causing problems for people there... do a search on the xna forums about 360 thread priority and check it out...

5) Make sure that any IDisposables are actually getting disposed when no longer in use, especially when it comes to dynamic allocations. An example would be creating 1000 enemies that each have some kind of disposable like a VertexDeclaration or RenderTarget or such, destroying them, then creating 1000 more through 'new' calls while the 1st 1000 sit around in a list still or are no longer referenced, but the Dispose() methods on their unmanaged resources were not called before their references were lost.

6) Disable everything that you think would not have an effect on the slowdown. Things like sound, post processing effects, particles, etc. just to make sure that you can narrow down what it is that is really the culprit. Sometimes it may be an accumulative effect (ie. lots of enemies + particles just taxing the system too much), and sometimes it may be something that you don't think that it is (ie. too many sounds playing at once because each enemy is actually playing 4 different sounds at once).


Ok, that's about all that I can think of for now. Let me know if anything works for you :)

Aequitas
19-08-2008, 03:47 PM
If you're using other RTs for things and don't have this set up correctly, it could run quite slowly on the 360 as there will be more memory copying happening and such when you change render targets.

I looked at this while doing the glow stuff. We actually do all our RT switching before the main renders happen, and then apply the processed texture on top of everything .... so essentially we're doing some preprocessing. We're doing it this way so we can use the "correct" way of switching RT's, keeping everything in the backbuffer until we pop it to a texture.

The other way to do it is make all the new RT's in separate memory space. This method is fine for PC's, since they have tonnes of memory to throw around, but keeping it all in the back buffer is the fastest way on xbox.

dislekcia
25-08-2008, 11:21 PM
I've been working on enemy movement behaviors today and I had a bit of an "oooh, pretty" moment after adding some particle trails:

Here you can see the AI state switching from a calm movement state to an aggressive one. There's a boss just offscreen to the right lobbing some of Aeq's nastier bullet concoctions at me:
http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/3945/200808251lc7.jpg

This just looked nice... The behavior manager gave the enemies a related calm and aggressive movement module, so you can't see the difference when they get angry - except they come after you instead of arbing around!
http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/9696/200808252eg1.jpg

FuzzYspo0N
26-08-2008, 12:48 AM
Very very nice guys. I love how it looks. The mass amount of things visible make it seem so much more epic. Like there is something happening :D The trails are cool, Do the enemies swirl in circles as the trails depict or do they float randomly? it looks like short burst of movement in the screens so i cant tell.

What is that background plane thing for? just to give depth to the scene or does it play a part in gameplay?

Keep it up, its looking great.

Thaumaturge
26-08-2008, 01:36 AM
It does look good, although I'm not sure of whether a few elements are particle trails or enemies in this static image (the medium-sized green objects in the first image, for example), and it's hard to judge how it might look in motion, I think.

dislekcia
26-08-2008, 02:36 AM
Very very nice guys. I love how it looks. The mass amount of things visible make it seem so much more epic. Like there is something happening :D The trails are cool, Do the enemies swirl in circles as the trails depict or do they float randomly? it looks like short burst of movement in the screens so i cant tell.

What is that background plane thing for? just to give depth to the scene or does it play a part in gameplay?

Keep it up, its looking great.

Yup, that movement type has enemies swirling around just like their trails show. The little "puffs" of particles given off by the enemies close to the white player ship in the top shot are what random movement looks like. I'm trying to give each type of motion a unique look and feel so that players can immediately know what to expect as soon as something goes aggro.

The plane in the background is the actual map. The player can't move out of the boundary, although we have had some testers use the catapult effect from going outside to good effect for dodging hordes of bullets or getting across the map faster ;)

Aeq's actually working on a particle effect to make the edge of the play area more distinct at the moment. After that he should start messing with a couple of shaders we want to use to make the map background look rather interesting... :)


It does look good, although I'm not sure of whether a few elements are particle trails or enemies in this static image (the medium-sized green objects in the first image, for example), and it's hard to judge how it might look in motion, I think.

The green things in the first shot are bullets from a boss. We still need to go through all the boss modules and give them more obviously understandable effects... The green bullets are a test Aeq knocked up that spawn more bullets in the player's direction over time. They're ok to deal with when there's only one source, but two bosses on the same screen can get really hectic sometimes ;)

All interactive objects glow, while particles don't have glows applied to them. Makes it a lot more obvious what's what in motion... I hope.

Thaumaturge
26-08-2008, 02:40 AM
Aah, fair enough, and thanks for the explanation. ^_^

The glow isn't terribly obvious to me, although that might just be the image size or my monitor, or, for that matter, my eyes. ^^;

dislekcia
26-08-2008, 11:36 AM
No worries. As with any shmup, visibility and immediacy are very important. The last thing we want to do is frustrate the player...

Aequitas
29-08-2008, 05:22 PM
So I've been messing with the meshes (for an unrelated effect actually), and found a neat way to "explode" meshes into their constituent triangles. So now when enemies die, they "break apart". I think it looks pretty cool

http://b.imagehost.org/0291/splosion1.png

http://b.imagehost.org/0782/splosion2.png

http://b.imagehost.org/0601/splosion3.png

http://b.imagehost.org/0314/splosion4.png

edg3
29-08-2008, 05:36 PM
I would just like to say, I want to play this game. kthx.

Its looking more awesome with every screeny

Thaumaturge
30-08-2008, 05:49 AM
Ooh, that does look very cool indeed, Aequitas - nicely done, I believe. ^_^

Aequitas
10-09-2008, 06:04 PM
So I've been working on making things "grow"

The first thing to get this applied is textboxes.

Also ... i made them asplode instead of just disappear :)

http://b.imagehost.org/0314/textbox1.png

http://b.imagehost.org/0059/textbox2.png

http://b.imagehost.org/0192/textbox3.png

Thaumaturge
12-09-2008, 05:37 AM
The idea of having the textboxes explode instead of just disappearing does indeed sound cool, in keeping with the style of the game, from what I've seen thus far, and looks in the last screenshot as though it does indeed work.

However, what are those odd collections of triangles that appear to be attached to the textboxes, if I may ask?

Tr00jg
12-09-2008, 06:28 PM
Woot. Looks sexy!

dislekcia
14-09-2008, 01:38 PM
Ok. So last night Aeq and I were having this conversation about random things when an idea popped up about slowing things down in space...

15 minutes later there was a new module in the game, a HypoInertial Field that does exactly that: Slows everything in a certain radius around the player down. It is hax.

Really enjoyed adding that... And this means the game is finally starting to come together when adding new elements is that easy.

dislekcia
15-09-2008, 03:14 AM
Story events have been spotted in the game Cap'n!

Gah... A wall of asteroids with stuff to kill on the other side!
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/9631/200809153xi8.jpg

Hah, a gap! Prepare to die, blue hobos! - Wait, why is a portal opening? Huh?!
http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/3479/200809154hx6.jpg

Boom! Bad place for a por- Wait? WHAT?
http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/1377/200809155hl3.jpg

W... T... F?!
http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/452/200809156wh5.jpg

What just happened?

That's the feeling we want to leave our players with ;) These shots just looked pretty, enjoy:

Slowdown is FUN!
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9864/200809151lw3.jpg

Cyberninja is indeed hax (Thanks!)
http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/1672/200809152bq6.jpg

edg3
15-09-2008, 02:24 PM
http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/1672/200809152bq6.jpg
QFE

THAT looks amazing....

Cyberninja
15-09-2008, 02:40 PM
That's not the final artwork. ^^ I'm still working on those. :-)

dislekcia
15-09-2008, 02:45 PM
That's not the final artwork. ^^ I'm still working on those. :-)

This is what happens when perfectionists work together ;)

Heh.

Gazza_N
15-09-2008, 02:47 PM
Well, a few hundred more scripted sequences like that, and you're sorted. ;P

It's coming together very nicely indeed, and Cyber's artwork is a pleasant surprise. Strong contender is strong. ;)

dislekcia
15-09-2008, 02:52 PM
Well, a few hundred more scripted sequences like that, and you're sorted. ;P

It's coming together very nicely indeed, and Cyber's artwork is a pleasant surprise. Strong contender is strong. ;)

Yup, that's the plan... Although you actually know what's going on in that event. Kinda. It's changed a little ;)

Miktar
16-09-2008, 05:15 PM
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9864/200809151lw3.jpg

Win.

Kensei
16-09-2008, 05:17 PM
I love the starfields :D
Does this mean I have to pay your royalties to use the starfield as a background, cyberninja?

Edit: This might have been asked and I missed it - is this done with XNA?

Aequitas
16-09-2008, 06:11 PM
This might have been asked and I missed it - is this done with XNA?

Yeah it is. XNA so far is proving to be a very nice API to work with.
XNA is also what the game needs to be made with in order to compete in Dream.Build.Play.

Now.

I've been working om making the boss weapons more interesting. We're trying to make boss encounters like bullet hell from shmups, and I've got some screenshots to show off the first day of doing this:

A Boss as I aggro him, he's just fired the first volley:
http://c.imagehost.org/0355/boss_screen1_resize.png

Same boss, a couple seconds later:
http://c.imagehost.org/0341/boss_screen2_resize.png

Some patterns are easy to dodge:
http://c.imagehost.org/0414/boss_screen3_resize.png

Using the hypoinertial field just saved my bacon:
http://c.imagehost.org/0454/boss_screen4_resize.png

This boss likes rocket launchers apparently, also .... the green on his weapons is them being healed:
http://c.imagehost.org/0910/boss_screen5_resize.png

Kensei
16-09-2008, 06:46 PM
i really need to start looking into the XNA API -_-*

This game is looking REALLY good so far :D

Tr00jg
16-09-2008, 07:08 PM
Honestly guys! This looks really awesome!

Cyberninja
16-09-2008, 07:51 PM
Those sprites look awesome guys. <<<

Cyberninja
16-09-2008, 08:56 PM
This is the direction we are going in. It's still being worked on, but this is basically how the game will look. Opinions/suggestions?

http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/229/03dv0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

FuzzYspo0N
16-09-2008, 10:25 PM
i love it. One artistic note, with hordes of sprites and things, the stars seem way way too many perhaps. OR, they are too prominent. Otherwise its damn cool.

dINGLE
16-09-2008, 10:48 PM
that artwork is looking really impressive ... its all looking impressive!

but maybe its just me, but I liked the geometry of the ships against the minimalist backgrounds too

I suppose I'm in the "less is more" school of thought ... although I have no visual design skill to speak of :D

I'm looking forward to see if it plays as well as it looks :)

Any chance we will be able to play a build at rAge?

dislekcia
16-09-2008, 11:39 PM
that artwork is looking really impressive ... its all looking impressive!

but maybe its just me, but I liked the geometry of the ships against the minimalist backgrounds too

I suppose I'm in the "less is more" school of thought ... although I have no visual design skill to speak of :D

I'm looking forward to see if it plays as well as it looks :)

Any chance we will be able to play a build at rAge?

I'm also a less-is-more person ;) I liked the single-colour backgrounds in a lot of ways... But I always intended to have a parralax effect going that's a little -unique- in what it does.

Suffice to say that the backgrounds while stationary are a 10th of the what they're all about: When moving, the backgrounds actually isolate the things on the same plane as the player even more, pointing out what's important and what isn't. It worked far better than I'd hoped it would, to be honest. Mainly because the game is all about movement, the player is hardly ever still.

And yes, we'll have playable builds on Xboxes at rAge. As will Ultimate Quest 2 :)

dINGLE
16-09-2008, 11:48 PM
Awesome, will definitely come and have a look :)

Thaumaturge
16-09-2008, 11:55 PM
The quality looks very good indeed - I am impressed. ^_^

Of course, as you point out, Dislekcia, it's hard to comment usefully on its effectiveness in motion. The one question that I have is that of what the player's experience might be if they were to stop, even if it weren't a common state. Could a player stopping to gain his bearings distinguish objects without moving about just to separate the layers?

Aequitas
17-09-2008, 12:01 AM
At this point, everyting in the foreground that can affect is based on lines and geometric shapes, whereas the backdrop is stars, planets, nebula ... round, organic things. I feel the distinction is quite obvious when playing :)

Also remember the screenshots are at half-res, so they do lose some fidelity :P

dislekcia
17-09-2008, 12:02 AM
The quality looks very good indeed - I am impressed. ^_^

Of course, as you point out, Dislekcia, it's hard to comment usefully on its effectiveness in motion. The one question that I have is that of what the player's experience might be if they were to stop, even if it weren't a common state. Could a player stopping to gain his bearings distinguish objects without moving about just to separate the layers?

Good question... I think so. Everything else is moving, after all - plus they're usually moving to be able to kill you... Also, all the background objects are in Cyberninja's inimitable style, whilst everything is the foreground (and thus player-interacting) is geometric, uni-coloured and glows ;)

I reckon particle effects can sometimes get confusing, but we're actually using that to our advantage in some parts of the game. Especially when the player (or enemies) enter the edge of a map. We also tend to use particles to attract attention or convey state info, all our pickups glow like mad and have a particular type of particle effect on them that you won't get anywhere else.

Also, note that the player is locked in position at the bottom of the screen. Everything else moves around you, relative to screen real-estate ;) I'm not sure if that's obvious or not.

Thaumaturge
17-09-2008, 01:01 AM
Aah, good points, both of you. Fair enough then, and thank you for the answers. ^_^

dislekcia
17-09-2008, 02:11 AM
Aah, good points, both of you. Fair enough then, and thank you for the answers. ^_^

Well, we're kinda going "Nuh-uh! It totally looks better when it's moving!" Which isn't all that fair, really :(

Gazza_N
17-09-2008, 08:06 AM
Also, note that the player is locked in position at the bottom of the screen.

That's good to hear. One of my misgivings about "OMGPATRTICLEZ" games is that you can lose track of the player avatar very easily, especially if the enemies are flashier than you are.

Squid
17-09-2008, 08:18 AM
This is the direction we are going in. It's still being worked on, but this is basically how the game will look. Opinions/suggestions?

http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/229/03dv0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Only thing I can see is that the seams between backdrop polies need some work. Other than that it's pretty damn awesome.

dislekcia
17-09-2008, 08:49 AM
That's good to hear. One of my misgivings about "OMGPATRTICLEZ" games is that you can lose track of the player avatar very easily, especially if the enemies are flashier than you are.

Well, we've purposefully kept things colour-coded to try and prevent that. The player is one of the few things in the game that's white. All player projectiles are white to go with that, using particle colours to indicate secondary effects. All enemy bullets are colour-coded according to movement type and damage scale. And anything important glows "through" particles, no matter how many there are. Not to mention the player being in the same place on the screen all the time.

Hopefully it won't get confusing ;) I've been worried about things getting busy and losing that early clarity. Thankfully that doesn't seem to be happening, although I'd like to test that with users.


Only thing I can see is that the seams between backdrop polies need some work. Other than that it's pretty damn awesome.

Nope. Those seams are there for a very, very good reason... I guess we can't really explain the background effect properly in text and screenshots. All I can say is that you'll have to see it in motion to get it.

Kensei
17-09-2008, 11:04 AM
And yes, we'll have playable builds on Xboxes at rAge. As will Ultimate Quest 2 :)

Annndddd the chance of your wonderful Game.Dev fangirl in London getting access to this build? (If I join the XNA Creator's Club can I play it?)

:: bats her eyelids convincingly::

dislekcia
17-09-2008, 03:12 PM
Annndddd the chance of your wonderful Game.Dev fangirl in London getting access to this build? (If I join the XNA Creator's Club can I play it?)

:: bats her eyelids convincingly::

Once we start doing testing I'll be sure to lob the ccgame at you ;)

Do you have C# Express and XNA installed? Cyberninja's been having problems getting a build running...

Kensei
17-09-2008, 06:55 PM
Do you have C# Express and XNA installed? Cyberninja's been having problems getting a build running...

Not yet.

My new laptop arrives tomorrow :D So I'll likely have an environment set up by this weekend (events, soberness and tiredness dependant).

Thaumaturge
17-09-2008, 08:01 PM
Well, we're kinda going "Nuh-uh! It totally looks better when it's moving!" Which isn't all that fair, really

I don't know - that seems like a reasonable response to me, given that it is the case.

Of course, as you say, user testing is the thing to do. ;)

dislekcia
20-09-2008, 07:15 PM
Another frenzied cycle of development, another batch of screenshots to garner your ooohs and aaahs so that we stay motivated ;)

We've spent time polishing the interface and adding splash-screens (seeing your company logo come up on an xbox has to be one of the best things ever). Interface coding is universally known as one of the bastardly parts of game development, I think my interface scene has about 6 times as much code as the mesh generation system. It's nearly as long as all the player modules combined...

New HUD, makes seeing active modules much easier. Also, we're inside the safe-zones now, so no more clipping off your health on certain TVs. Aeq did a really good job with this, it's now a lot less intrusive and obscuring, but it tells you so much more. That's design in action...
http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/9480/200809201vj0.jpg

Assigning modules and managing your loadout in the new inventory screen. you've now got another slot on A, totally killed the need for a tractor beam or other such "pick things up for me" button...
http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/3042/200809202kl5.jpg

Check out the charging modules in the top right:
http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/6057/200809203cc2.jpg

So... We've settled on a style that goes with the game and uses our skills and unique points (read: doesn't force us to make tons of interface art because we can generate it on the fly too, hah!). All the crystallisations on the interface elements grow when they first pop up - Every time you go through a portal your HUD grows different protuberances and the inventory screen regrows too. Things actually explode in the inventory view, heh :)

It's funny how much of a difference a nice-feeling interface can make. Sure, I'd like to do something a little different for the module assigning (and I might do that if the current system proves frustrating when we get other users to test it) but as it stands now, I'm back to hitting the major story arc and making cool things for the player to do.

Thaumaturge
20-09-2008, 09:19 PM
I really like the idea of an interface that is grown and re-grown, and it sounds as though you have at least most of your interface looking good and working well, which I'm glad to hear. ^_^

And of course, the game remains very pretty indeed. ^_^

*chuckles* The "Carmack effect"? "Macross Missiles"? I like some of your names. ;)

("Pea Shooter"? XD I hope that this is the starting weapon, or some ironically named weapon for which "pea" is an acronym for something along the lines of "Penultimate Enemy Ablator" ;P)

Chippit
20-09-2008, 09:30 PM
("Pea Shooter"? XD I hope that this is the starting weapon, or some ironically named weapon for which "pea" is an acronym for something along the lines of "Penultimate Enemy Ablator" ;P)
For this name, good sir, you win a complimentary internet. I likey.

dislekcia
20-09-2008, 09:49 PM
("Pea Shooter"? XD I hope that this is the starting weapon, or some ironically named weapon for which "pea" is an acronym for something along the lines of "Penultimate Enemy Ablator" ;P)

Starting weapon ahoy:
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/2896/200809204yo7.jpg
;)

The Pea Shooter and its upgrades have a rich and storied history:
http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/5352/200809205lo1.jpg

edg3
20-09-2008, 10:02 PM
Starting weapon ahoy:
IMG REMOVED FOR BW LOVERS
;)

The Pea Shooter and its upgrades have a rich and storied history:
IMG REMOVED FOR BW LOVERS
This thread makes me **** bricks. The gamne will be even better.

Miktar
20-09-2008, 10:16 PM
http://clip2net.com/clip/m6496/1221941768-clip-42kb.jpg

Thaumaturge
20-09-2008, 10:37 PM
*laughs* Well-played, Dislekcia, on both counts - well played! XD

Aequitas
20-09-2008, 11:02 PM
Sometimes while testing we come across a boss that was generated by a slightly overzealous boss generator.

I present to you "The Behemoths"

http://b.imagehost.org/0192/behemoth1.png

http://b.imagehost.org/0688/behemoth2.png

http://b.imagehost.org/0326/behemoth3.png

http://b.imagehost.org/0386/behemoth4.png

Thaumaturge
20-09-2008, 11:52 PM
Wow! 0_0

Those are staying in the game, right? It could be great to encounter so impressive a boss every so often, I think - in fact, if you have a means to detect them, you might even be able to use them to good advantage by building in gameplay (and perhaps story) consequences and effects related to them...

dislekcia
21-09-2008, 01:19 AM
Wow! 0_0

Those are staying in the game, right? It could be great to encounter so impressive a boss every so often, I think - in fact, if you have a means to detect them, you might even be able to use them to good advantage by building in gameplay (and perhaps story) consequences and effects related to them...

Oh they'll randomly crop up... I like the idea of doing a pass over the generator to see if any huge bosses exist and then splacking in "huge boss OMG" events. Although I probably won't get to do that before DBP.

Gazza_N
21-09-2008, 11:44 AM
I present to you "The Behemoths"

O_O

Words fail me.

Who do I bribe to get exclusive access to one of the X360s running this game at rAge again?

01DT!m3r
21-09-2008, 01:14 PM
I will give my left baby toe to play this game at rage!

edg3
22-09-2008, 06:11 AM
Gazza_N: Im quite sure that there will be enough access to spacehack and uq2 at rAge, esspecially considering that dis spoke about having a pc version (albeit for testing) and if i remember correctly it was mentioned for uq2 :P

dislekcia
23-09-2008, 03:01 PM
Just got the SpaceHack gameplay video uploaded and approved... Enjoy :)

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=9f963399-f9a6-4e9c-8dfc-2085ed1c6233

edg3
23-09-2008, 04:15 PM
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=9f963399-f9a6-4e9c-8dfc-2085ed1c6233
4:06 of pure awesome.
I really must say you've really put it all together!

Squid
23-09-2008, 04:18 PM
Video rocks. It just needs some sound and it will be perfect!

dislekcia
23-09-2008, 04:43 PM
Video rocks. It just needs some sound and it will be perfect!

Yeah, sound fell off the list of stuff that we didn't get around to doing... That's how neglected it was.

We do have vibrate though, which is awesome ;)

Kensei
23-09-2008, 05:16 PM
Video is awesome :) It looks like lots and LOTS of fun :D


We do have vibrate though, which is awesome ;)

I bet the command using the XNA API is like controller1.vibrate(200); :p

Gazza_N
23-09-2008, 05:46 PM
O.O

It's puuuuuuuuuuurty,,,

Might I add that the refractive-parallax-distortion-thing that you use in the backgrounds is pure awesome?

Aequitas
23-09-2008, 08:42 PM
Might I add that the refractive-parallax-distortion-thing that you use in the backgrounds is pure awesome?

Thanks :)

That's one of the hardest things to show in screenshots .... only really works in motion :P

The shader for that took a lot of work ... but taught me oh so much :D

Thaumaturge
23-09-2008, 09:22 PM
It looks like your choices do indeed work very well in motion, and you have some very pretty special effects there - I'm especially fond of the background effects (as others have noted) and what appears to be a teleportation effect on the part of the large yellow enemies.

Aside from playing it at rAge, I think that I'd be very interested indeed to attend a talk about the development of the game, in particular the design side of things and how you came up with the ideas behind the game, as well as your story-generation system.

I'll admit that the player's weapons look perhaps a tad bland to my eye, being monochrome, it seems, but it does look as though it helps one to distinguish them from enemy fire, as I seem to recall that you've previously said.

Kensei
23-09-2008, 09:53 PM
My mom says that the game looks pretty, and beautiful and like a dream :p

(No, seriously, she said that)

FuzzYspo0N
24-09-2008, 12:25 AM
This is pure win guys. seriously beyond win.

Very Very huge congrats on the achievement of making such class!
I really love the weapons previews and i especially love the style of graphics. this is ultimate.

dislekcia
26-09-2008, 08:48 AM
Well. That's done and dusted now... SpaceHack is up and what happens in DBP now isn't up to us anymore ;)

We ended up doing some playtesting on the 24th and making a few additions to the game (including a complete re-code of the interface) to make it work better. Aeq also re-balanced the enemies, making the regular little guys more of a challenge. So, that's that. I leave you with the screenshots that we submitted for the competition in full res (apologies for the h-scroll) and a link to the Xbox ccgame.

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/2950/mainmenuyi8.jpg

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/6578/gameplayju9.jpg

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/3315/interfacemy3.jpg

Download the Xbox installer here (http://www.gamedotdev.co.za/files/SpaceHack-Xbox360.zip) - Warning! You will need access to the Creators Club on 360 to deploy the game to your console. If you don't know what that is or how to do it, you probably don't have access.

Yes Chippit, Azi, new version - more fun too!

Kensei
26-09-2008, 10:44 AM
WWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I will download it tonight and give it a go :D

FuzzYspo0N
26-09-2008, 11:25 AM
COMPILE FOR PC! GO!

01DT!m3r
26-09-2008, 08:21 PM
Frigging coolness, its amazing ,Well done Gents!Looks good ,By watching the video it seems to play well(I would still like a hands on to confirm that) one snag,How do I get it running on a pc if it's possible?I have downloaded it,I just need to know what software is needed to run it?

dislekcia
27-09-2008, 01:02 AM
Frigging coolness, its amazing ,Well done Gents!Looks good ,By watching the video it seems to play well(I would still like a hands on to confirm that) one snag,How do I get it running on a pc if it's possible?I have downloaded it,I just need to know what software is needed to run it?

I did expressly say that the file was only the Xbox 360 build...

You have to have Creators Club access on your 360, stick it in connect mode and run the ccgame on the PC paired to the box. It'll install and then you can play it from the Creators Club blade.

THAT'S NOT A PC VERSION!

We don't even have a PC-friendly interface because we weren't targeting it for the contest.

FuzzYspo0N
27-09-2008, 01:40 AM
Any future plans on making a PC version?

Thaumaturge
27-09-2008, 05:27 PM
Congratulations on getting it done, and on making so good-looking a game! ^_^

BlackHawk
29-09-2008, 01:34 PM
*applauds*
Well done, guys! My jaw still hurts! :D Hope you do very well in DBP.

Kensei
29-09-2008, 03:29 PM
Yay! I have been paid so I can finally buy a Premium membership to the Creator's club :D
Will finally get to play SpaceHack :p

edg3
01-10-2008, 10:49 AM
Ok, so I was playing Spacehack and after playing for almost 45 minutes I noticed that there was lag after each teleport I made. It went away fairly quickly after I kill the first enemy I find. Also I then recycled a whole bunch of items I didnt need and then it crashed/closed, with nothing seeming to be wrong. The whole xbox was fine, only Spacehack closed and it took me back to arcade. Any ideas as to the cause?

(also I was listening to music streamed from my pc while playing for background music in case that could also be a factor)

Kensei
01-10-2008, 11:37 AM
Yay! I have been paid so I can finally buy a Premium membership to the Creator's club :D
Will finally get to play SpaceHack :p

Or not :( Need to watch how much I spend atm

(I hate being ****ing made redundant without any real warning)

dislekcia
09-10-2008, 01:21 AM
http://www.lazygamer.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/13.jpg
^ Local developers Mark Luck and Danny Day of QCF Design. They were proud to show off their new title “Space Hack”. We will have an interview with them up on the site in the very near future.

http://www.lazygamer.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/14.jpg
^ A fight over company shares quickly led to Danny pulling a massive “Hadoken” on Mark. I dare not show you the photo’s. It was a real mess.


http://www.lazygamer.co.za/features/huge-lazygamer-rage-2008-image-gallery

I look tired and imported from GTA4 in the first pic. Gah.

Cyberninja
09-10-2008, 07:02 AM
Bwahahah! Epic. ^_^

*I love the QCF logo btw. ^_^

FuzzYspo0N
09-10-2008, 09:28 AM
nice shots :>

Higushi
09-10-2008, 10:15 AM
Hey guys!

This looks frikken flippen amazingly awesome!!! :D

I want to play it! I want to play it NOW! I want to, I want to, I WANT TO I WANT TO I WANT TO!!!... (I should get off the coffee...)

*Dig your co. logo too! Sweet design!

Once the comp is all said and done, MAKE PC VERSION! plz :)

Good luck guys. I hope you do awesomely well in the comp!

DukeOFprunes
09-10-2008, 12:58 PM
I look tired and imported from GTA4 in the first pic. Gah.

Sweet-ass Nico Bellic hairstyle, dude.

dislekcia
09-10-2008, 01:13 PM
Sweet-ass Nico Bellic hairstyle, dude.

It's actually just a texture ;)

Squid
09-10-2008, 03:05 PM
I look tired and imported from GTA4 in the first pic. Gah.

Apply blooooom!