I think I'm finally done with this and fiddling with engine code. Time to move on to something else!



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And I cannot believe how the overt racism in not posting a vast majority of malays (based on observation) to support and other arms units (combat engineers, artillery, armour, signals etc.) goes unchallenged in the SAF.

I'm alive
And I keep my cool one more time
And you just keep on walking by

Figured an anecdote from Feynman on bio might be appropriate 5.5 hours before bio paper 3.

I had always had some interest in biology, and the [biology] guys talked about very interesting things. Some of them invited to come to a course they were going to have in cell physiology.

...

The next paper elected for me [to present] was by Adrian and Bronk. They demonstrated that nerve impulses were sharp, single-pulse phenomena. They had done experiments with cats in which they had measured voltages on nerves.
I began to read the paper. It kept talking about extensors and flexors, the gastrocnemius muscle, and so on. This and that muscle were named, but I hadn't the foggiest idea of where they were located in relation to the nerves tor to the cat. So I went to the librarian in the biology section and asked her if she could find me a map of the cat.
"A map of the cat, sir?" she asked, horrified. "You mean a zoological chart!" From then on there were rumors about some dumb biology graduate student who was looking for a "map of the cat."

When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles.
The other students in the class interrupt me: "We know all that!"
"Oh," I say, "you do? Then no wonder I can catch up with you so fast after you've had four years of biology." They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.

- Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Slacky physics students have probably been gaming the whole weekend away while the rest of us were cramming for bio :( blym, cow, peng and weilong crashed last fri after chem mcq and ended up watching a movie (too lame to name) and playing worms / swat 4 lol. Next time gimme more warning so I can exercise my internet connection and dvd burner to get better movies for watching on a tv instead of a lousy computer monitor =p And install wc3.

So I did some slacking of my own too =p Rediscovered my itch for game programming while cramming error- and typo-filled econs notes (inspiration comes from weird places) and coded a rudimentary rubik's cube game last thurs. Took 12 hours, but I started from my old game engine so it wasn't created from scratch. Coming up with a control scheme that's intuitive and yet allows for speedy manipulation of the cube is hard. The mouse is out if you want to achieve any sort of speed. So with my clunky keyboard control scheme I ended up taking 30 mins to solve the cube on the computer. Depending on how much time I have before NS enlistment (haven't gotten the date yet wth) I might be able to work on some other stuff.

Never thought I'd like electronic music but Discotech is so addictive!
Attack, we keep it on the dance floor.
Discotech, meet me at the back door...

Have been extremely n00b lately.

The first incident was during VBC (Virtual Business Challenge), where my group pretty screwed up during the 1st period. We tried to grab too much market share through massive advertising and customer service, but ended up severely underestimating demand and were severely understocked. We probably lost at least $18000 in profit from that alone. Blah. Good thing this is just a game. And we were already trying to avoid that. But in period 1 we hadn't the foggiest idea about market demand figures, because there's no clue whatsoever as to what to expect, except "real world" figures. Which would vary widely for clothing stores anyway. We were prepared to accept a loss in the first period in order to gain market share, but I think that ended up backfiring because we were unable to meet demand and thus failed to grab the market share that our advertising was potentially giving us.
The lack of revenue came back to haunt us in period 2, when we had much less capital than our competitors. Therefore, we faced the same old problems of not having enough cash to beef up our inventory, and having to cut spending on advertising and customer service. Am hoping that we don't get sold out again especially *cough*sources*cough* say we were underpriced again. Bleh. We did take up a loan in period 2, so that allowed us to aggressively expand this time round. But I feel we screwed up here as we should have got the loan from the start to maximize our capital and profit potential. As long as the marginal profit afforded by the loan exceeds the interest, it is rationally advantageous to keep that loan. Oops. We should have stocked up more in period 1. Hmm. I think we were struck by the aversion of loan interest back then. Is this (risk aversion) just us, or really a typically Singaporean trait?
Nevertheless, I'm rather satisfied that we managed to improve our performance ranking substantially, again according to certain *cough*sources*cough. Still ranked quite n00bishly though :p

The other n00b incident was when I was doing some OpenGL coding over the weekend (at the expense of studying for tests and homework :p). I was working on a 3D model loader for the OBJ file format, and the texturing on the models was turning out all wrong. Cue extended cursing and swearing.

This is supposed to be a textured sphere without lighting, btw.
So at first I was thinking it was a problem with the export of the 3D model from 3dsmax, because stupid 3dsmax doesn't have native support for exporting to the OBJ format and I had to use a converter. Maybe the converter screwed up, right? Always easier to blame someone else :p Then after a long while I tried to use Blender, because it could export 3D models straight to the OBJ file format. *drumroll* Same problem.
Finally, with a good night's rest in between, I tested out a simple model of a cube hand-created in the OBJ format (ie had to work). Oops. The texturing was wrong. Which meant that my code was screwed. Wow. Duh, I hadn't even tested it before and expected it to work. So I realised that I had mixed up the code and was passing OpenGL vertex coordinates before texture coordinates. That's a really stupid mistake. It's nothing complicated to fix, just switching around two segments of code:

glVertex3f(blah blah blah);
glTexCoord2f(blah blah);

to:

glTexCoord2f(blah blah);
glVertex3f(blah blah blah);

*smacks forehead*
Well other than that I managed to make considerable progress on the game, pretty much finishing up the main graphics rendering code for 3D geometry, and refining some parts of the user interface code. I've already managed to integrate a physics engine with the game engine. Next up is to get a scripting language in.

I managed to start homework at 9pm on Sunday. What a productive weekend :)

Bah nothing much to say. On the programming side I implemented a camera and camera rotations two weeks ago, using quaternions (which I confess to knowing nothing about on the theoretical side). Then last week for the terrain engine I implemented frustum culling, which was hell to debug, and geomipmaps, which is still screwy. Basically with frustum culling the engine doesn't try to render terrain thats outside the camera view, giving a massive performance boost. Geomipmaps is also for performance, basically it renders less detail for parts of the terrain that are far away from the camera, as long as the visible error in reducing detail is below a certain threshold. Unfortunately this didn't bring much of a performance benefit, and when the terrain switches between detail levels, the difference is very obvious and visible. Arg.

Have stopped playing around with code and gone to the design stage. My primary objective in designing the game is making it fun, something which Ages of Lore was not, because I didn't design it properly from the beginning and therefore didn't realise until a month ago. And I really envy the top game designers who manage to come up with such inventive gameplay. Katamari Damacy for example is freakin fun to even watch.

Played DotA and watched Narnia yesterday. First time I didn't get majorly pwned in DotA (0-21 the first time I tried) and I actually got 1 kill :D But I still managed to get killed more haha. Narnia was entertaining, but somehow it didn't give me the same feeling (I dunno what exactly... Magical? Enchanting?) as LOTR. I haven't read the book, as cowvin_89 says I should, so I won't comment on the story anymore. Nevertheless, the Narnia countryside is beautiful, Aslan looks convincing as a lion and is voiced wonderfully, and the beavers are simply cuuute:) ( Possible spoiler )

Christmas is 2 days away, and everything feels different from past years. Right now I just feel guilty for passing by 5 Salvation Army donation booths without giving anything, and still having the nerve to have Christmas wishes :/

So it's been 1 week since I last blogged about taking a change of direction. In between rounds of badminton (I really can't smash properly!) and stoning, I have ventured toe-deep into the murky waters of 3D graphics and math.

So far, graphics-wise, I've got a terrain heightmap to render, with texturing. Basically a terrain heightmap is just a 2D representation of terrain: a 2D array of integer values specifying the terrain height at fixed intervals. Here's what it looks like (forgive the slacky textures:p)

It's got altitude-dependent and slope-dependent texturing, meaning the rock (it looks like rock, doesn't it?) only shows up on steep slopes, and the grass doesn't appear at high altitudes, etc etc.

( Technical )

Going to some grid computing camp Tuesday and Wednesday. Will see if I can sneak in some coding *cough*if*cough*it*cough*gets*cough*boring*cough*.

I had been meaning to blog the game vision since last week, but last night (technically this morning) I felt worse about the game as a whole than I ever have in a long while. I have grown sick of the limitations of 2D and of the crushing requirements of RPGs. As I recall, each time I have torn my hair out while working on the game, it was due to the problems and tediousness of 2D, and with character animation in particular. The tile-based nature imposes too many limitations, even on gameplay. The game simply wasn't being fun. And I wasn't having much fun creating it either.

Therefore, I am going on a sabbatical:) Still developing games in my free time, though. This time, I'll be venturing into the unchartered (to myself) territory of 3D graphics and games (so much for my earlier post against 3D, huh?). And away from anything that requires modelling anything organic / human. So that leaves out zombies, pirates, and ninjas. *wink*.

I am disappointed with my fickleness. At the beginning, I vowed not to give up on this. I'm not too sure now. And for some reason I sound more negative than I'm actually feeling now. Perhaps because I was writing this in my head earlier.

Well since I am stuck on both engine and game design I will blog.

Yes like dnwq commented I need artists for the project. So I shall kope the gamedev.net template and use it below:

( Help Wanted )

Currently am looking for artists only. If you're interested in the positions feel free to drop an email. Alternatively if you know anyone who might be interested there's no harm in pointing them here:D

Allow me to plug the latest release, v0.3, rather belatedly.
0.3 features graphical improvements: character animation is smoother, items can be equipped on characters, there're more tile graphics, and multi-storey buildings and roofs are supported. Functionally, what's new is the inventory system. There's also lots of internal reworking and minor fixes here and there; shan't bore you will details.
Download link:
Windows
Unix
Source

Mandatory screenie:


The next release v0.4 is targeted to have character melee combat and one village complete with characters, objects, etc. Underneath there's going to be a massive reworking of engine code (it's really ugly inside) and the scripting system. Target release date is mid-December. Depending on how it goes I might cut some stuff.

Aside from that, ThinkGeek has interesting stuff. People like chuan_y001 should get this keyboard with 100% blank keys:D And why not show your school spirit with this Singapore Technological Free University (STFU) T-shirt?

Have been disinclined to blog over the past 2 weeks, being too caught up in massive guilt-at-working-on-my-game-induced chinese mugging sessions. Surprisingly managed to finished both papers before time, in contrast to the EOYs where I only half-finished my zuowen. Horrifyingly, I got 4/20 for close passage, breaking my past record of 6/20. Randomly picking answers would have given me a higher score statistically o_O.

After that went for a mini movie marathon (2 movies only lah) with jeriel & leejs. Transporter 2 was exciting for what it's worth. Some scenes were absolutely outrageous! The protagonist actually drives the car up a ramp into the air, flipping upside-down so that some crane hook pulls a timebomb off the underside of the car. The Legend Of Zorro was also rather interesting. I suspect that most of the female audience was there to see Antonio Banderas. Didn't manage to guess the chemistry in the plot until they revealed it though. ( spoiler )
Will be looking to go for a midnight movie marathon over the holidays:D Anyone interested?

( Game-related )

So I've finally started my own blog, which I guess is pretty lag amongst HCI Sec 4 iSparkians. Anyway, I believe it's quite a useful medium for communication, especially since our batch is more or less going to be split up next year. Aside from that I also see this as a way of overcoming my normal reticence - an unfortunate(?) result of my rather introverted self.

This is supposed to be a personal blog, but I expect to talk mostly about the game I'm working on (see below). If you noticed my interests list, you'll probably noticed that it's quite imbar towards game development, and yes it's pretty much what I do at home now. I shall however attempt to steer my entries away from WTF??? technical details and talk more about design/art/management issues (notice I mention game development not programming).
If I feel so inclined I'll also blog about other topics. cjqsg's post on national service in particular has rekindled my resentment towards it (grr :( ).

( What I'm doing now )

On a slightly related note, TES IV: Oblivion totally pwnz. If you've got unlimited bandwidth and plenty of patience go download their preview video (this http://files.filefront.com/Oblivion20minGameplayavi/;4201955;;/fileinfo.html should work but might be a long wait). I dare you to watch it and not be blown off your chair. Beautiful graphics and texture; procedurally generated forests; detailed object and character models with lip-synching; great SFX and voice acting; superb NPC AI; a real-time physics engine (somewhat like HL2) that allows arrows you shoot to stick into buckets etc. Their developers actually had time to take a geology course to learn to create more realistic terrain...