Into alpha land

Well, that was an experience!

I released the Alpha version of TileMax containing the ParticleFX system, Timing, Anim, and Graphics systems. But little did I know that I had two deep seeded bugs that were going to haunt me.  Shortly after releasing the particle system, particles would just start randomly disappearing... sometimes they looked grouped.  But I began pulling my hair out trying to find it.   Finally... I discovered that I was running old array packing code (forgot to comment it) and my new one... so I got the disappearing particles problem ironed out!

Of course, shortly after that one of my alpha testers (samah) created a sequenced animation of a bubble that would cause a null reference error.  Again.. the bug was not obvious.  in fact, the bug did not surface until a specific combination of sequencer nodes is created.  But, looking back... i'm not sure how it worked at all!  So those are ironed out!

So, initial steps into the alpha were interesting.  I was wise to step into it with the Particle System and not the whole system... because now that certain aspects of the particle system are ironed out and proven.. I can go through each of the next sections a little slower and prepare for the next alpha release featuring...whatever makes the most sense.

I can see the light

I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel... there is still quite a bit to do but I am now calling for alpha testers.

Details can be seen http://www.blitzmonkeys.com/index.php?topic=310.0;topicseen

This site is hosting a private forum for alpha>beta testing.  If interested, contact me via email or comment.

Somethings don't always go as planned

So I got the Particle System working and it was fairly nice but I was not happy with the performance nor with the flexibility... So, I rewrote it from scratch!!

Thankfully the new version is an order of magnitude faster and much more flexible.  I'm maintaining over 60fps with over 1100 particles flying around, phasing out, spinning etc on my laptop!  A tester was able to get 60fps with over 3800 particles flying around on his AMD64 2400+GeForce.  Those are some nice numbers!

I'm going to do one more demo that makes fireworks and then its off to other areas of the framework!

Excited!

I'm getting excited and thats something I need to keep at bay for the time being.  Playing with the new particle system is fun, but distracting me from my goal to have this whole package wrapped up and documented for others to use as well.  Being able to enable others to make games has been part of the goal as well, and to keep it inexpensive enough be be reachable for most but also to give me some fun money for game resources 8)  right now I have NO budget!

Anyway, I now have all the pieces necessary to make a game, but I don't want to get overly excited and start delving into making a game out of it until its performing to my satisfaction.  Several areas need additional functionality and some optimization.  The foundations are there, but need improvement... such as the GUI system which just consists of fully functioning button types but no extended types yet - just the basics.  The TileSystem is working very well, that I am extremely happy with!  Actor management and the polygon collision system is working wonderfully as well.  The sound system is weak, but workable for now.  I do want to add other sound options from packages like FMOD but perhaps later on down the road.  FMOD has licensing costs ergo there is no immediate need to add support for it.  What else?  The scene control system and save/load need to have all the new items supported.  Right now all you get is your saved map... no actors, no spawn points, nothing of that nature.  I realize that is more towards the "Game Creation System" side of TileMax instead of just the BlitzMax mod side, but in my mind necessary for both.

Company coming... more later.

A Change of plans

Well, I got TMParticleFX working but I was having a functional grievance with the emitters.  While it seemed like a good idea in the design phase, the practicality of it was not so good.   So, I changed course and created launchers instead and that solved all my problems.  Launchers attach to anything else, particularly particles and allow much more flexibility than the original emitters idea.  Launchers carry a Magazine of particle templates which get fired off in turn.  They also have a burst mode that really benefit explosive moments!  The launchers allow for a rotatable offset from the attached point and there can be many launchers attached to one thing.  So, for example, if you had a spaceship with two engines, you would have two launchers offset to the back of the engines that create the jet stream and trailing smoke if you wish.

The naming difference between launcher and emitter is somewhat semantical in truth, but I shifted names to help me ensure I covered all the bases.

Its all looking pretty snazy now.. and working like a charm.  I can't at this point think of any special effect I would not be able to achieve.

But.... Christmas is here and my children would probably appreciate me being more family focused over the next few days.  Thats no problem... it will give me time to solidify some optimization ideas I have.  One optimization I believe will speed up TileMax entirely as it should reduce calculations down by an order of magnitude.. not that its slow... but there is always room for "faster" :)

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year.. I know I will!

Loving it!

This working an hour a day at work thing is really working out.  I bring my laptop in and set it up at lunch time to do some coding!

Well, I've managed to completely code the TMParticleFX system and got it working to the point where I am now playing with special effects :)  By far particle effects are the most fun to code.

The system I've got working, is working exactly as designed.  Particle Parameters are controlled by "ghost" values that can be made into Sequencers.  The Sequencers work by passing from a start value to an end value in a given amount of time.  For example,

TMSequencer=TMSequencer.Create(0,1,5) would create a value that would increase from 0 to 1 over a period of 5 seconds and then stopped there ( ModeOnce).  There are options as well, they can be set to "ModeBounce" to go back and forth 0 to 1 to 0... , ModeRoll which is 0 to 1 to 0... and even more, they can be chained together by adding nodes... as many as you wish.. so long as they all total up to the set life of the particle (in seconds as well)

All the particle system does is keep a list of active sequencers, updates those, and then when the particle is updating, it uses for example...
If Self.dVel then Self.Vel=dVel.Value()  ' quite efficient really.

Also, Particles have been extended to Emitters... the emitters keep a loaded array of particle definitions, and even emitter definitions.. the spread, rate, angle, and velocity of the emitted particles are sequence controlled as well... As is the array positions

The possibilities are endless and so far is works sweet!  Now just to reign in the chaos that level of control creates and make some really pretty special effects :)   I already have a missile launching to the middle of the screen, exploding into 32 animated particles, and then those again explode and scale large while fading to 0 alpha.

Tomorrow is another day...

Optimize TileMax but more importantly my time!

I've been really busy lately... busy working on TileMax and I'm really super happy with how things are progressing.  My compartmentalizing of TileMax has continued making reusable code chunks that sit independently from the Tile Engine... I separated out graphics management, complex math code, condensed some more timing related code such as the FPS manager, and these really cool new multi-node sequencers... those are so cool!  To summarize, they attach to any float and control a start to finish value based on % per ms and have 3 modes... Pass through, Bounce, and Roll.... Pass through is used to go from one node to the next, Bounce goes from 0 to 100% and reverses back and forth... unless there is a chain of nodes in which case it progresses back through the chain leading up to it... Roll.. well that goes from 0 to 100% and back to 0... or back to the start of the chain if there are several nodes.

TileMax now looks like this:

Import "TMAnim.bmx" ' Animations Control
Import "TMTileEngine.bmx" ' Tile Map System
Import "TMPoly.bmx" ' Polygon Transforms and Collisions
Import "TMGUI.bmx" ' Graphical User interface & Hud
Import "TMTiming.bmx" ' Delta time controls
Import "TMMath.bmx" ' Math repository
Import "TMGraphics.bmx" ' Extra Graphics commands
Import "TMScene.bmx" ' Contains controls for switching screens
Import "TMSound.bmx" ' Music and Sound FX
Import "TMParticleFX.bmx" ' Particle Effects and Emitters
Import "TMInput.bmx" ' Input Controls
Import "TMLanguage.bmx" ' For Creation and use of language files
Import "TMFonts.bmx" ' For displaying fast text

The other thing I've done is discovered a gold mine of time! My work day is busy... and during lunch hours I was just sitting back and wasting an hour away doing either nothing, watching the news, or more recently, working on a new TileMax logo... but, I had to bring my personal laptop into work today and realized that I really like locking my office at noon and pulling out my laptop to have a go at TileMax... today I accomplished ALOT!  So every weekday now I am garanteed an hour for TileMax... SWEET!

More to come... baby need me