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Work in Progress / RPG - Geisha House. Image intensive!!

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Xenocythe
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Posted: 19th Mar 2007 16:48
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It's cool After I'm finished the quest sytem I'll work on the battle system. I think it's similar to yours. My idea- just place the weapon at an animation bone thats in the hand. It'll be pretty easy that way.

Keep it up, can't wait to see a weapon switchin system!

-Mansoor
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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 19th Mar 2007 18:19 Edited at: 20th Mar 2007 11:50
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@Xenocythe -
Good idea, you can do that with the Limb Position and Limb Direction commands. However, the catch is that it is actually much slower than simply gluing the object to the joint. Of course, when you glue it, you lose the ability to use collision on it. It's a deal with the devil either way.

Another difference is that gluing an object to a limb eliminates any possibility of lag between the joint and object. In a large complex project, that can definitely become a problem. I still have minor lag issues.

***********************************************


Here is the newest video. I hate to post on the end of a page, but I should have something much better soon anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73kxXtq06fw



I absolutely love my combat system now. Before I felt it was rather BLAH. If you faced off against a stronger creature, you could get killed with one good stab. Likewise, weaker creatures were too easy to kill.

Now, shields work to block blows. So do swords. They'll clink and clang and make sparks. I like the effect. One problem here is the shield I used is too big and his sword keeps poking through. Forgive that, I'll scale it down a touch.

I'm using a different shield and sword in this video just to add some variety. I'll have weapon swapping soon. Right now I just changed the character in the script file to change his weapon.

I've set it up so that you can hold a sword and a shield. Or, if you like, you can hold a second weapon as a shield item. Much less coverage. The difference will be that you can shove a shield in someones face and deal some damage. With a sword or knife you'll have limited range and limited blocking ability, but you'll get the full weapon damage if you shove it in their face.

The nicest thing is that the sword/shield/sword collisions are accurate and fast. You can block a blow by spinning around. You also open yourself up when you take a swing. Very action oriented now.

Hope you guys like this video. I think it's one of the most fun to watch so far.


Come see the WIP!

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Roxas
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Posted: 19th Mar 2007 18:32 Edited at: 19th Mar 2007 18:36
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Heh. Ill need to wait few minutes before i can see the vid And is this game inspired by Ulitma Online or Ultima series? Just wondering ..

*EDIT* OH MY GOD I WAS TOTALLY WRONG THE NEW BATTLE SYSTEM IS AWESOME!!!!



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Ugh
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Posted: 19th Mar 2007 19:18
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That video, its wonderful.. Nice work

Dont be a PINHEAD
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Inspire
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Posted: 19th Mar 2007 21:30
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That's awesome! I also love how when you saw the skeleton it said "Oh no it's Nicole Ritchie". lol

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Benjamin
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Posted: 19th Mar 2007 21:53
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Very nice! This is turning out to be something quite special indeed.

Tempest (DBP/DBCe)
Multisync V1 (DBP/DBCe)
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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 20th Mar 2007 05:24
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@The Full Metal Coder Roxas -
It actually is inspired by Ultima. Ultima VII and VII part 2 to be more specific. Of course, being 3D, I want to enhance the experience if possible

Quote: "OH MY GOD I WAS TOTALLY WRONG THE NEW BATTLE SYSTEM IS AWESOME!!!!"

Heh Not sure what you were totally wrong about, but thank you!

@Ugh -
Thanks!

@Inspire -
Glad you liked that Did you see what he said after he killed the boss skeleton?

@Benjamin -
I appreciate that! I definitely want this to be a good, fun game. I think I should have waited longer to introduce it to WIP though, it would probably get more attention right now if I had. Oh well, I just have to make it more awesome...

******************************************


Minor updates, I added shield shoving and I also added weapon combos for all enemies. It looked a bit silly when a skeleton kept hitting the shield over and over again with the same move. Now they randomly pick attacks if they hit your shield or sword. Much nicer.

My next big task will be to port as much of this game over to Purebasic as possible. I'll even move For...Next to a plugin if I can


Come see the WIP!
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Kieran
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Posted: 20th Mar 2007 11:24
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YAY! you finally got the different attacking styles in as for the Video it is looking nice but it was very very boring to watch.

This may sound mean but watching you run away from a skeleton holding your shield up while he bashed you, well it wasn't pretty. Maybe just block now and again so you don't bore me so much

sorry if that sounded rude but im just saying...


RPG Engine Work in progress!
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dark coder
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Posted: 20th Mar 2007 11:37
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Looks a lot better than before, dunno if the animations are just temp but it looked like he was dragging his feet quite a bit especially when his sword was drawn.

The skeletons animations bug me a bit as they don't look fluid enough, it looks a bit like they attack you, you hit back etc until someone dies. My main crit is the effects you used for the impacts, the blood and skeleton impact ones look very animated, having perhaps a few animations plains moving around would add some more variation to them, you could even have blood splatter on the floor.

It looked like the movement was based around the center of the screen rather than the players position too, and when moving about near the end you can see that the shield/sword doesn't follow the characters animation exactly, almost like there's a slight delay.

I think the skeletons could be a lot more sinister and look better if they broke apart when you hit them and then they build themselves again then attack you, as striking you multiple times until they die looked rather stupid, making them look like they actually want to kill the player would be better.

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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 20th Mar 2007 11:38 Edited at: 20th Mar 2007 11:47
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@Kieran -
Damn Kieran kind of harsh I thought that the sheer fabulousness of the engine outweighed the monotony of not participating in that battle.

It's okay. Next time I'll add strippers and gambling (no, for real).

Remember though, this is still in engine phase. It won't really be interesting until it gets into game phase. I have to perfect the engine, the scripting system, and make it compatible with my RPG Creator, which will be released shortly after Geisha House.

@dark coder -
Very true about the impact animations. Humans and animals do have blood spatters already, I guess I need to turn up the frequency so that they'll get seen more.

Some of those blood and impact animations are junk, I'm definitely going to fix those as well. Some of the skeletal impacts looked particularly odd and out of place. I'll probably have a random selection of blood effects that can occur.

I definitely want to make the skeletons reassemble, I just haven't approached this problem yet. I'll give it some thought and see what I can come up with.

Right now I'm relying greatly upon Dark AI for the enemy combat AI, but I do need to modify what's going on there a bit. I still have a couple things to do with the combat system. I want it to be good because it needs to be one of the strongest features of this game. I can't exactly compete on the commercial RPG level, but I think that if I mix enough action and RPG then I can be successful.


Come see the WIP!
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Kieran
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Posted: 20th Mar 2007 11:41
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no its just make the videos look more interesting to make people LOVE your engine instead of blocking attacks forever... and maybe you could get killed once in a while to give me a laugh so i can start talking crazily to myself, things like "MUHAHAHAHA shame! cash curtis died " lol jokes thats sad, but it would give me a good laugh if you died sometmes


RPG Engine Work in progress!
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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 20th Mar 2007 11:49 Edited at: 20th Mar 2007 11:51
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The problem is the animations for this knight aren't quite finished. There is no death animation. I've died in other older videos though with the other knight.

I know, it was a lot of the same stuff. I had fun making the video though, because when I'm actually engaged in combat I feel like it takes a bit of skill to make it work.

@DC -
I replied on the last page.

***********************************************


I'll repost this here, because people might miss this video on the last page.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73kxXtq06fw



Quote: "I absolutely love my combat system now. Before I felt it was rather BLAH. If you faced off against a stronger creature, you could get killed with one good stab. Likewise, weaker creatures were too easy to kill.

Now, shields work to block blows. So do swords. They'll clink and clang and make sparks. I like the effect. One problem here is the shield I used is too big and his sword keeps poking through. Forgive that, I'll scale it down a touch.

I'm using a different shield and sword in this video just to add some variety. I'll have weapon swapping soon. Right now I just changed the character in the script file to change his weapon.

I've set it up so that you can hold a sword and a shield. Or, if you like, you can hold a second weapon as a shield item. Much less coverage. The difference will be that you can shove a shield in someones face and deal some damage. With a sword or knife you'll have limited range and limited blocking ability, but you'll get the full weapon damage if you shove it in their face.

The nicest thing is that the sword/shield/sword collisions are accurate and fast. You can block a blow by spinning around. You also open yourself up when you take a swing. Very action oriented now.

Hope you guys like this video. I think it's one of the most fun to watch so far."



Come see the WIP!
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zeddex2
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Posted: 20th Mar 2007 18:13
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1 word for the youtube video

WOW

If you can, I can!
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DB newbie
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Posted: 20th Mar 2007 19:58
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i see you have a diffrent shield on and i like the effects with the sparks and stuff


Come see the WIP!

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Gil Galvanti
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Posted: 21st Mar 2007 00:25
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Wow, the combat looks great .


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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 21st Mar 2007 04:49
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Glad you guys liked it I have a different sword armed, a rusty broadsword.


Come see the WIP!
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Steve J
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Posted: 21st Mar 2007 05:00
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You, You Went Beyond! It is unbelievable!

pleading and needing and bleeding and breeding and feeding exceeding..where is everybody? trying and lying defying denying crying and dying..where is everybody?
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Agent Dink
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Posted: 21st Mar 2007 07:37
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Wow, this has come a long way since I saw it last! The models are all looking excellent. That Knight is amazing looking! Good luck with the rest of this project. It looks like it's gonna be a real winner!

I have no signature...
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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 21st Mar 2007 15:10
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@Steve J -
Quote: "You, You Went Beyond! It is unbelievable!"

Thanks! It's quite nearly to the place that it started out in my head when I first began. There's nothing quite so satisfying as seeing a game come to life in exactly the manner that you imagined it, right down to the main character.

@Agent Dink -
Quote: "Wow, this has come a long way since I saw it last! The models are all looking excellent. That Knight is amazing looking! Good luck with the rest of this project. It looks like it's gonna be a real winner!"

I appreciate that The knight has a death and get up animation now, so you'll be seeing him do more stuff. After that will be his fancy, specific, animations. I can't wait!!!

****************************************************

Minor update, more of a heads up. I finally got Purebasic!!! So now I'm recoding the animation controller into a DLL. It's going quite well, Purebasic is very easy to use.

This isn't like Wolf's animation plugin. In fact, in my next game (a 3rd person space shooter) I'm going to use both. The problem with DBP's existing animation commands is that it just plays the animation through. They aren't timer controlled, meaning if your FPS are at 15 then it will run at half speed. Plus, you don't get feedback for animation starts and stops. Plus, interpolations are a pain.

I wrote a beautiful animation controller that solved all of this. I can tell exactly when interpolation is going on, exactly when an animation starts, exactly when it hits a hotspot, and exactly when it ends. No matter the speed, it will animate correctly, and it will always hit those keyframes.

Now, in plugin form, all of that floating point math will be very fast. Can't wait to see how it turns out.

I'll try to make the next video more interesting, since Kieran found the last one boring


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Escaped Ape
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Posted: 21st Mar 2007 16:19
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The look of the game is getting better and better, I'm sure at release this game will have commercial quality

You said, you want to recode the animation controller in purebasic as a dll - that sounds quiet interesting for me, do you know a tutorial for dll programming with purebasic?

I'm looking forward to the game, dont' stop working on it!

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Roxas
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Posted: 21st Mar 2007 17:16
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You are really showing us what DBpro can do! And i belive it can do more too if used like you use it! Oh and can i ask you.. How did you get the normal mapping looking that good in game? And are you exporting normal map as diffrent image/texture and then texturing in dbpro? And the other question was is this inspired by Ultima series ?



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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 21st Mar 2007 17:32
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@Escaped Ape -
Quote: "You said, you want to recode the animation controller in purebasic as a dll - that sounds quiet interesting for me, do you know a tutorial for dll programming with purebasic?"

I'm using PurePlugin. The nice thing about that is that Freddix has encapsulated all of the DBP and popular 3rd party commands in PB code. CERTAINLY worth the time that would be spent in doing so yourself. PB is pretty easy to use, the biggest obstacle most people will face is the $99 price tag.

@The Full Metal Coder Roxas -
Quote: "How did you get the normal mapping looking that good in game? And are you exporting normal map as diffrent image/texture and then texturing in dbpro?"

Well, it is a combination of things. Most characters aren't even normal mapped, I shaded the characters with their textures to match the normal mapped characters. However, all weapons are normal mapped.

I used the Ultimate Shader pack and piced a Normal Mapping shader by Evolved. I settled on one that was fairly fast and produced a good effect. Basically, in my scripting file, I have an option to normal map any entity, then the engine handles it if necessary. I allows great flexibility for me.

Quote: "And the other question was is this inspired by Ultima series "

Most definitely!!!


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Kieran
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Posted: 21st Mar 2007 20:37
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it was only the repitition in it cash...thats all


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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2007 17:29 Edited at: 22nd Mar 2007 17:30
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Okay, death animation has been done. Hope you're happy Kieran, I'm dead



I've also ported all of my animation controls over to a plugin. Not only is it a bit faster, it is much more powerful. This will allow great flexibility with the RPG Editor. People can have as many animations as they want (well, up to 100) per character, rather than a list of animations predetermined by me.


Come see the WIP!

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Deathead
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2007 18:05 Edited at: 22nd Mar 2007 18:22
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Thank god his Sheild isn't upside down.LOL
The graphic is better than the earlies good work.
And for some reason i think u could touch up the skeletons to a more detail face like ur character. Not ur actual Characters face because that would be to funny.

PLS JOIN I really do
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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2007 18:30
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Thanks. Although...
Quote: "And for some reason i think u could touch up the skeletons to a more detail face like ur character."

I already did. They have pretty detailed textures right now.


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Roxas
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2007 19:03
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Quote: "
I already did. They have pretty detailed textures right now.
"


Sometimes i think that are you machine.. lol



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Freddix
AGK Developer
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2007 19:26
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Your project look really great Cash Curtis II

Gandalf said: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us"
Odyssey-Creators - X-Quad Editor - 3DMapEditor
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Kieran
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Posted: 22nd Mar 2007 20:24
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im really happy

HAHA! IN YOUR FACE!!! YOU DIED!!!

lol jokes good work on the game cash


RPG Engine Work in progress!
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Deathead
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Posted: 25th Mar 2007 00:03
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Muhahahah! U Died in ur face!LOL!
Can't wait.

PLS JOIN I really do
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Shadow Coderer
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Posted: 26th Mar 2007 22:30 Edited at: 26th Mar 2007 22:31
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Quote: "Another difference is that gluing an object to a limb eliminates any possibility of lag between the joint and object. In a large complex project, that can definitely become a problem. I still have minor lag issues."

This is probably an obvious answer, that you already know about, and I dont pretend to be an expert but: Coulld you not have a hidden object positiond where the sword would be for collision purposes and then have the weapon itself glued to the hand limb? Then a small amount of lag wouldnt make any difference, you would have your collision via the hidden object, and your weapon wouldnt float behind the arm.

"If I die, tell my wife 'hello'"
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Peter H
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Posted: 27th Mar 2007 01:17 Edited at: 27th Mar 2007 01:17
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Quote: "The problem with DBP's existing animation commands is that it just plays the animation through. They aren't timer controlled, meaning if your FPS are at 15 then it will run at half speed."

well, you can always set the speed of the animation each frame... that's what i've done...

but yeah, interpolations are a mess... so really the enhanced animation plugin rockzorz (wish i had it)

looking good btw.

One man, one lawnmower, plenty of angry groundhogs.
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Jerok
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Posted: 27th Mar 2007 01:47
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Quote: "
This is probably an obvious answer, that you already know about, and I dont pretend to be an expert but: Coulld you not have a hidden object positiond where the sword would be for collision purposes and then have the weapon itself glued to the hand limb? Then a small amount of lag wouldnt make any difference, you would have your collision via the hidden object, and your weapon wouldnt float behind the arm.
"


Or you could just make the positioning of the weapon the last thing you do before you sync.
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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 27th Mar 2007 04:15 Edited at: 27th Mar 2007 04:17
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@Shadow Coderer -
Quote: "Coulld you not have a hidden object positiond where the sword would be for collision purposes and then have the weapon itself glued to the hand limb? Then a small amount of lag wouldnt make any difference, you would have your collision via the hidden object, and your weapon wouldnt float behind the arm."

If you double the weapon objects, then you double the poly count unnecessarily. If you wanted to do that, then you could use a hidden cube instead.

I did this at first. However, it is not ideal. You still have to query the limb position and direction of that cube in order to position the weapon object. For slightly less overhead, you can just directly query the limb data of the joint.

@Peter H -
Quote: "but yeah, interpolations are a mess... so really the enhanced animation plugin rockzorz "

The Enhanced Animation plugin is very awesome. I'm not going to be using it in this program though, as it presents too much overhead for some fabulous features that I won't be using. My next game, a 3rd person shooter, will definitely see Wolf's plugin.

I just got finished writing my own animation DLL. It allows me to set a different framerate for every animation, blends between animations, and gives me 100% accurate feedback about the frame position. Every 1/4 of the way through the animation it returns a different integer value. That allows me to easily sync events to animations without having to test for frames at all, and the event will never get skipped. It also takes care of the culling and optimizes offscreen animations. And, of course, the plugin is very, very fast.

I'm currently working on adding LiT's limb culling code to the plugin. So far it is looking very promising. Both of these plugins will give me a significant FPS boost.

@Jerok -
Quote: "Or you could just make the positioning of the weapon the last thing you do before you sync. "

You could, but then you would have to loop through all of the characters again in order to do so. And then, you would need to recalculate collisions and weapon damage at that point in order to keep the combat collisions synced with the weapon positions. I want to keep combat accurate and exciting, so I definitely need the collisions to be on point. It should be an easy matter of rearranging some code. I might even put that into a plugin and see if I get a speed increase.


Come see the WIP!
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Shadow Coderer
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Posted: 28th Mar 2007 21:21
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Quote: "If you double the weapon objects, then you double the poly count unnecessarily. If you wanted to do that, then you could use a hidden cube instead.
I did this at first. However, it is not ideal. You still have to query the limb position and direction of that cube in order to position the weapon object. For slightly less overhead, you can just directly query the limb data of the joint."

Yeah, I didnt mean an exact copy of the weapon, just a cube or something, like you say. I actually meant for the weapon object to be glued to a seperate animatated bone, like xenocythe said he did, and then the collision object would be positioned by that limb, not the other way around. (when I said collision object, I meant for the intersection of the enemy, not for the position of the weapon) This will likely be the method that I use, so I would appreciate any knowledge on this matter from you with regards to its efficiency and suitablility. Thanks!

"If I die, tell my wife 'hello'"
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Kieran
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Posted: 28th Mar 2007 21:58
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or even better, use a plain and reduce ur poly count by 10


http://tree3d.co.nr
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Alquerian
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Posted: 30th Mar 2007 03:33
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Cash's animation plugin is pretty sweet. I know you guys are going to love it. I can't wait for LiT's culling to be implemented into Cash's dll too, that is going to be significantly faster than it's dbp counterpart and likely a bit easier to implement.

It is really cool to see Cash working on 3 different things at once, while showing progress on all fronts. Not many people can do that, hat's off to ya Cash.

Also, Kieran, your wip is coming along nicely

Perhaps someday I will make an actual contribution to this community
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Kieran
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Posted: 30th Mar 2007 07:53
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alquerian, i wouldn't boast about this dll without posting any features, screenies and stuff like that.

ALSO i'll have you know that its mine as well as DB user 2006+'s WIP so don't give me all the credit


http://tree3d.co.nr
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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 30th Mar 2007 08:06 Edited at: 30th Mar 2007 08:07
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@Alquerian -
I appreciate the good word I'm writing the help files for the culling commands, I'll send the updated plugin to you after a while.

@Shadow Coderer -
Glad I could be of help! I'm a stickler for efficiency, so I test most things pretty thoroughly before I decide what I'll use. For a game like this, efficiency is of the utmost importance. The first RPG makers (Ultima, more specifically) were truly pioneers with vision.

@Kieran -
Quote: "or even better, use a plain and reduce ur poly count by 10 "

Or use no object at all and reduce your poly count to 0.

Quote: "alquerian, i wouldn't boast about this dll without posting any features, screenies and stuff like that."

He's tested it for me and seen the demo. He knows what it can do. The animation plugin is extremely easy to use, very efficient, and very powerful. The amount of overhead is very minimal, and is very well suited for a game like this.

The limb culling commands will further increase my FPS. It is LiT's limb frustrum culling, exported to a DLL, and it works great. Since it is a plugin, I've increased the interation and functionality of the plugin.

Pretty soon, I'm going to add a lightmapper to the plugin with Alquerian's assistance. And after that, I'm going to add my vector sprite collision commands, which allow you to define a sprite collision as a box, sphere, point, pixel perfect, or convex shape.

The end result will be an extremely useful and powerful plugin that will greatly speed up existing games and facilitate the creation of new games. It will be an invaluable addition to both Geisha House and my RPG Creator.

Now, I suppose I can see why you'd be doubtful, but we're talking about me. If I say I'm going to do something then it's going to get done. If someone doesn't believe me, that's their loss.


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Aaron Miller
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Posted: 30th Mar 2007 10:46
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Quote: "Or use no object at all and reduce your poly count to 0."

Or better yet, keep stuff like that to yourself. ^_^

That aside, this is looking good. Cant wait to see some more vids.



Cheers,

-db


"We arent terrible people.... Horses are terrible people." - Peter Griffin
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Kieran
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Location: Hamilton, New Zealand
Posted: 30th Mar 2007 13:20
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Quote: "Or use no object at all and reduce your poly count to 0."


ummm your not supposed to try and outsmart sarcasm....


http://tree3d.co.nr
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Cash Curtis II
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Location: Corpus Christi Texas
Posted: 4th Apr 2007 23:54 Edited at: 5th Apr 2007 12:23
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Visually this is a very minor update. There is a lot going on under the hood though.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP6WycqDqFk


Enemies don't just stand in front of your shield and accept the fact that they're eventually going to die. They'll strafe around and approach you from different angles. Enemies can also hold a shield now, and all enemies can use attack combos just like the player. It is a much nicer effect. In the last video, the skeletal warrior looked like he was scraping his sword against my shield most of the time.

Geisha House is now using the plugin that I wrote. I ported all of my animation handling to plugin form, and the result is absolutely terrific. The control is essentially the same, but far faster and more powerful. Animation feedback is much more developed as well. I forgot to add footstep sounds, but the new animation system will notify me of 1/4 animation increments, which will make it very easy to add animation dependant sounds without having to test for frames. I hate testing for frames, it is sloppy and unreliable.

Also being used is LiTs limb culling, in plugin form. It works nicely, and I added a save feature for the limb data so loading is extremely fast. As soon as he finishes the 3DW importer, we'll add that and get another FPS boost.

The final result of all this is about a 15 FPS boost. That might not sound like much, but I'm operating in a very tight margin with this game. I've got a map full of entities, animals, water, particles, animations, and just pure fabulousness. Every single frame counts at this point. Since the engine is essentially finished, there are not more FPS vampire surprises. My code is good, but there are various CPU expensive things that I can port to plugin. So far I've only ported things that other people will be able to use. Next, I'll port GH specific functions that require lots of calculations or looping.


Come see the WIP!

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Alquerian
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Location: Reno Nevada
Posted: 5th Apr 2007 01:32
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Cash - a 15 FPS boost is actually tremendous with your current constraints, I know others may shrug 15 FPS off, but I sure wouldn't. I like the way you provided your enemies with a bit of intelligence too, that is nice that they now actively find ways to attack you, just don't make it too hard I want to beat the game! hehe

I will talk to you more when I get back from my trip.

Terrain Generation has a whole new face.
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Game King
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Location: Naples, FL
Posted: 5th Apr 2007 02:51
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Wow man, this looks tight as hell. Props. Any tips on model making? do u make each part of the character's body seperate, then put em together using the limb code? thanks!
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Kieran
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Posted: 5th Apr 2007 06:29
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Quote: "Cash - a 15 FPS boost is actually tremendous with your current constraints"


actually no it isnt really


http://tree3d.co.nr
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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 5th Apr 2007 07:01 Edited at: 5th Apr 2007 07:02
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@Alquerian -
Thanks I'll do what we talked about pretty soon and post a demo of the animation and culling demos, and perhaps the math demo as well. I just have to secure the plugin first, I just haven't taken the time to do it yet.

I'm glad you like how the enemies work now. They do feel more intelligent now. Combat is pretty difficult with a tough enemy, but the thing I like about it is that through careful tactics you can beat a much tougher enemy. Before, you were just automatically dead. Things will become more difficult when weapons and shield can break, I think I'll add that next

@Game King -
Thanks!! The models are limbed meshes, created in CharacterFX and Milkshape. Bone animations look great and have very little overhead. If I were to join the limbs together manually, sort of like Dark Matter 1 models, seams would be visible between limbs, and I would have a lot more overhead. DBPs limb commands are pretty slow. It's enough of a burden having to query two weapon limb positions per character every loop.

@Kieran -
Quote: "actually no it isnt really"

You have no idea what you're talking about. My entire engine is extremely efficient. Lots of things are going on at once. I've carefully profiled every function and procedure and have sought to increase efficiency wherever possible. I've optimized my DBP code to the fullest. On top of that, I am still increasing the efficiency of the game, and still have ways to improve. I consider adding 15 fps to a nearly complete engine a big deal. If you don't, then say something more constructive than what you did.


Come see the WIP!
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Kieran
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Posted: 5th Apr 2007 07:23
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and you think other peoples games don't have as much going on as yours? well they do and they can raise FPS alot and optimise their code and still have it running effeiciently so why do you seem to think that geisha house is sooooooooo special that its the only project that requires this?


http://tree3d.co.nr
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Benjamin
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Posted: 5th Apr 2007 07:36 Edited at: 5th Apr 2007 07:44
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Kieran, seriously, don't be a noob.

Looking very nice Cash.

Edit: To everyone talking about this 15fps increase, the amount of difference this makes depends on the framerate you get to begin with. If Cash was getting 30fps before, then this is a 50% increase, which is big. If he was getting 60fps before, then it's a 25% increase, which while still being big isn't quite as big. See what I mean?

Tempest (DBP/DBCe)
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Alquerian
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Posted: 5th Apr 2007 07:36
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Quote: "and you think other peoples games don't have as much going on as yours?"


I am not taking sides or anything, honestly most other games don't have as much going on as Geisha House does. I am going to be generous and say that perhaps a fraction of 1% of anything ever made with DBP even comes close to the amount of work that has went into Geisha House and even less can display results even close to Geisha House.

Quote: "they can raise FPS alot and optimise their code and still have it running effeiciently so why do you seem to think that geisha house is sooooooooo special that its the only project that requires this?"


Again, I am not taking sides, I am just pointing out the facts. Of course other games can raise FPS by 20 or 30 by doing things correctly, which sadly enough is an uncommon trait amongst many programmers; including myself, I tend to do it wrong 20 different ways before I find out what works best, and that may only yield a few FPS gain. With as much as Geisha House has going on under the hood, a 15 FPS boost is absolutely phenomenal. You are wrong in assuming that his is the only project that requires such effort to scrape an extra 15 FPS out of. My projects and many others on the forum would be absolutely thrilled to have such a large gain so far into development. Sure a 15 FPS gain is nothing when you only have a few thousand lines of code, however some projects go far beyond that. Additionally, the plugin that Cash worked on to achieve this is of use to anyone who is serious about game creation, that is why he intends to offer it to the public.

Terrain Generation has a whole new face.
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Bizar Guy
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Posted: 5th Apr 2007 07:40 Edited at: 5th Apr 2007 07:56
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@Kieran, Considering the typical frame rates are 30 and 60, 15 fps is a huge deal. for some it will mean the difference between a playable and non playable game. And this game has far more going on than most projects here, but that's besides the point. Of course other games require efficiency, but this thread happens to be a bout this game. Cash says 15 fps is a big deal, and it is. If you don't think so, then you haven't made games with a whole lot going on... If I could give another 15 fps boost to my game Dream while still using dbc, I might die of joy... But alas I am not yet a good enough coder to do so.

Quote: "I am going to be generous and say that perhaps a fraction of 1% of anything ever made with DBP even comes close to the amount of work that has went into Geisha House and even less can display results even close to Geisha House."

This statement shows you haven't seen many dbpro projects. I can tell you while Geisha house is one of the best, it's far from being worked on a hundred times more than any other project in dbpro. I can't say it's not the most worked on in dbpro (I just don't know), but there are a few who I believe in dbc have worked more. Ex would the The Star wraith games, which are each built upon the last, which must make it one of the most worked on engines in db overall. Like seven builds or something. And if you've seen the most recent build you can really see it. It must be one of the most efficient projects in any db, considering the language and how well it runs. I'm not disputing your point, just the "fact".

@Cash, that was really good. I'm not crazy about the way the enemies seem to slide a bit along the walls instead of in the middle of the path, but the fighting looks quite good now (SHOW US THE MAGIC AGAIN SOON!!!)

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