Moral Boost!

Woha... it dont happen very often, infact... for me, it was 7-8 years since last time.
and i have been behind evryone else ever since, bearly hanging in there, limited in evrything i do.

But now it is finnaly time for a change, I get a brand new computer within a few days! total awsomeness! Highlight in my life for atleast 5 years back :D

Ofcourse, this has little to do with Liero3d, but it do give me more options and more resorces to create a good looking game, and it also boost the moral for evrything i do on my computer, nobody likes to work with an old and crappy computer.

It is not a state-of-the-art or super expensive one, infact, it is the chepest one we can get, but still has some serius gamer performance, and it makes it possible to play any new game on the market with good settings :)

for anyone interested, here are the info:

• AMD Athlon II X2 250, 3,0Ghz, AM3, 2MB, 65W, Boxed
• DDR3 1333MHz 4GB KIT, CL9, Kit w/two matched DDR3 2GB, 240pin
• GF615M-P33, Socket-AM3, m-ATX, GeForce 6150se, DDR3,SATAII, GbLAN, PCI-Ex16
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express 2.0, DVI-I, native-HDMI, HDCP, Lite-Retail
• Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 500GB SATA 7200RPM, 16MB Cache

So this ofcourse means that performance requirements might increase on Liero3D, since my primary testing platform has more horse powers, but i will try to keep it as fast as possibly even in the future.

Im hoping this huge moral boost with give me more insperation, and i'm hoping that a video demonstration would be done before xmas(nice present for you guys?), but im not promising anything.

I guess one bad side-effect might be that i now can play all the 9 milion nice looking games i never could play before, and that would take all my time insted *sigh*
time will tell... ;)

sweet progress!

After several very productive days, things are relly starting to shape up, the new engine has almost reached the state of the old one before i started the re-write.
and i must say, im very happy with how things are currenly going :)

There are a few issues i need to fix, and then i will implement a new Octree to replace the old one.
after that i think i might implement a few experimental weapons to use for a future tec-demo video :)
Hopefully this is something that i will manage to produce in a near future!

Even the new engine has a few glitches(see image abouve), and im not sure what the problem is just yet.
it might partly be a normal-issue, and i know there are loads of texture stretching, witch makes it look like some triangels might be wrong even if thay are not.
however, i suspect a few triangles are still a bit wonky... so i have some work to do here :3

Ofcourse, you might also notice that im experimenting with a new texture for the mud, im still not sure what people would prefer, this more "realistic" one, or the old-school Liero style texture, so leave me a comment on the subject.

[Edit]changed some of the content and flow in the text, it was poorly written from the start :(

New Ideas, new ways

Oky, its been a looong time since i posted a message, and by now, im guessing people are thinking this project has been terminated...

however, im writing this post to tell you all that this is not the case, this project is still my main project and the one project i am still most pasionate about.

i should say, this project has not come without its fair share of pain and head bashing, it is proberbly the most complicated game i have ever worked on, possibly the most complicated project i have been involed in the 15 years i have been interested in programming.

This whole project started a long while ago, i had this idea of how to -in a rather simplefyd way- making 100% destructable terrain, as it turns out... this way, as simplifyd as it was, had more problems than solutions, and it took me 2 re-writes to figure out that it would simply not be possible to solve the problems using the old ideas of 'how to digg'.

a while back, i posted a comment on "new digg algoritm", even this one was based on the old ideas of doing things, and ofcourse, again it turns out the issues could not be solved.

things started to look rather dark, several times i doubted if this project was even possible, and then... it happend...

My friend Mr Lago, had a new idea of how to solve things, it was totaly different from how things was previusly handeld, and i had some serius doubts about implementing the changes... or, should i say... almost completly rewriting the project! ... *yaiks!*

but the previus 2 attemts; trying to change and tweak the old ideas, seemd to have prove it could not be done with the current ideas, i HAD to make the hard choise, i had to let the old ideas go, i had to let the source go... and after some wry face, so i did.

as it turns out, rewriting the project whent much faster than expected(a few miner things like Camera control could be reused), and here are a few things you people might find interesting:

• New ways of rendering seems MUCH faster, this should give longer rendering view. Infact... the tests i have renderd almost always hold 60fps, where the old one was rearly over 30.
  

• New ideas should make it rather simple to implement LOD, something that was almost impossible before, this ofcourse gives even longer vision range!

So how do i know it all wont just come crashing down around me again? ... truth be told, i dont.
but i do have a good feeling about this new solution.

I have also learnd loads from previus misstakes i did in the previus 2 prototyps, so even if this project has had a slight stepp-back, i will still say it was well worth it.

for the future of Liero3D!

NOTE: I think it might be important to note, that since i complitly change the way holes are created and renderd, it might not look at all like the previus screenshots, i have yet to deside if holes will be smaller aswell, something that will make them a bit more square-ish.

New digg algoritm!

Admit it, you where a bit worryd for a second there huh? well, to be honest... so was i ;-)

I started to think this project had problems impossible to solve, it turns out i was partly wrong(thank god!)

I have never had any interest in changing to voxels, and when i started to get the feeling this project might have to serius issues that might not be able to be solved, i started to loose all the creativity and interest in this project, for some time i even thought "oh well, i guess this is it then...*trash*"

But it would seem fait had other plans, after several weeks of bashing my head bloody aginst the wall, i finnaly got the break i was looking for, and it was so simple... why did i not see this before?

The solution: Totaly change how the world is being deformed, invent new algoritm :P

it might be a bit slower than the old one, but it also gives loads of more power and flexebility with NO of the pointy triangels and it never destroys the cube like the old one did way to much.

now, admetedly it is not perfect, and there are still a few senarios where it simply wont make the world 100% correkt, the result is small cracks in the walls in some places...

anyway, new algoritm is many times smarter!
Say goodbye to pointy triangles, mangeld walls and weard looking surfaces!

picture abouve demonstrates a prototyp i did in BlitzMax (i always do 2d prototyping in bmax) to see if the new algoritm was working before implementing it in Liero3D engine, and it would seem it does so very well :)

EDIT: the last picture was a bit booring as far as digging goes, and containd a few errors, so i made a nicer one, and edited the text to mach :-)

This game do open up a few creative possibilitys!

Spiraling tunnel!

oky... i was relly not planning on posting a new blog message alredy...

but after playing around in the engine for a few minuts, i manage to create this awsome looking spiraling tunnel.
its relly to bad it has loads of pointy triangles(I seriusly need to fix those!), but other than that, it looks fracking sweet!

Tunnels are a creepy place!

Admiterly, the previus pictures dident relly show much of what the game might look and feel like, hopefully these new images will give you a bether idea of what you can expect :)


It made me a little bit sad at first, but I was forced to add FOG out of necessity...
The huge ammount of vertices making up the tunnel walls was far to great...
And performance is still one of my greatest conserns, even with FOG the framerate on my system(as crapy as it is) is very bad... around <15-20fps.

There is still room for optimazion, so there is still hope :-) But on the bright side, it do gives a creepy and mysterious feeling when you walk around, not knowing what might popup from the black foggy caves!.

now ofcourse, the original liero did not have fog, after all... you had only -one screen field of view-, but this is also why i Dont think the fog destroys to much gameplay, you are not supose to have vision all over the map.

so maybe fog is the way to go anyway. :-) You may also have noticed, some of these pictures contains a few mangled triangles, I'm still struggeling with this problem, im not even sure it can ever be solved 100%, I have a few ideas i want to try, but unless i totaly change the way mudd is removed, mangled triangles are here to stay.

so... to all of those asking me "will to wholes make a tunnel?", i hope the pictures abouve give you a satisfying awnser. This was running on a rather crapy machine:

XP2100+ CPU(damaged, so it identifys it self as 1500) running at 1.29Ghz.
1Gb of RAM.
AGP ATI ASUS X1650 256mb
Note:Motherboard is old, only capable of AGP4, so half speed.

Some screenshots? ;-)

I thought it was time to show some sneak peaks of what things look like when you digg holes, just to keep people interested and to prove this project is infact real and not "vaporware".

as you can see, even in these small tests, things look rather nice alredy, and the engine does it's jobb well, some tweaks are still needed ofcourse... but overall, im happy with how things work :-)

It should be noted that this sample only shows an 8x8x8 sub area from the total level, wich is ment to be 128x128x128.

and only for the purpace of this demonstration, all cubes are renderd to show the walls outside, this is however not done normaly.

and yeas, that is a part of the original liero texture i'm using ;-)

I am delibertly going for a very retro 3D feeling, trying to just add an extra demension on the original liero game, I am afraid that if i start adding high resolution textures of sand and stuff, things wont look and feel like liero anymore.

so im keeping it as much as possible as the original :-)
after all, we dont play liero for the awsome graphics, we play it for the sweet gameplay!

I also want to wellcome an old friend and skilled programmer who recently joined this project, and have speeded up the devolepment time immensly, ladys and gentlemen: mr Andreas Lago! *warm applause*

oky, thats all for now

Liero3d should be freeware?

Oky, so i have been doing some thinking about the future of this project and the multiplayer aspects during the last few days.

now... in true Liero spirit, it should be important that a Liero game is freeware(extra so if i use data from the original, like sounds files for example), and this feels important to me aswell, however... spending loads of time on a project and never ever get a penny on it, is both depressing and unmotivating.

so if i find a way that would keep the liero fans happy, and me inspired to continue and make the game blossom for several years to come, that would be ideal.

so... here is what im thinking, what if the whole game is 100% free to download and play as much as you want with no limitations*, including both singel play, local LAN and direct IP2IP.

however, if people want to play with each other in groups, teemworks aginst random people on the internet(evrything that needs a remote server), you could subscribe for like 10 euro a month(?).
it seems only fair that i can take money when people is using my servers and broadband, stuff that needs maintenance and work to keep running.

this also keeps the game totaly free, and yet gives the project some money for future devolepment. the best of both worlds. just the way i like it ;-)

Great progress! :-)

Well, i have been working hard on this very interesting engine, and things is relly shaping up nicely!

infact, i'm rather impressed with the current state of the engine, and as soon as we have fixed a slight issue and added textures, i will make a public tec-demo movie and upload to youtube!
i'm sure it will dropp a few jaw's ;-)

now... it should be mentiond, that textures is a big pain in the a*s, due to the nature of this engine.
since texture cordinates constantly changes on evry explotion, making textures look good and seemengsly fitt together wont be simple, but i have a few ideas of how to go around this.

this is starting to look like the most interesting project i have ever been working on in my life as a programmer, wohow! :-)

Liero in 3d?

i'm reserving this blog spot adress for a future use, more comments will be added when i have more time and something interesting to show on this project :)

but as you might have guessed, this blog is all about the devolepment of Liero3D, and here are a few things my new game engine will do:

• 100% fully destructable terrain (not that worms3d-block-crap), if you want to digg spiraling tunnels, nothing is preventing you.

• Since game is written in C# and XNA, we can expect to se the game on XBox360 in the end.

• Graphics and feeling of gameplay will be exactly(or close) to the original, except in 3d(first person shooter-view), I always think of Liero like a mix betwin Worms and Quake, well... this will still be the case.

• Most original weapons will be implemented, depending on what the engine can handle performance wise, it is not clear how much i can digg in realtime before i get performance issues.

• Not sure about multiplayer just yet, MudDigger(current engine code-name) is my only priority at the moment, but hopefully an AI that can match the original ones, possibly also split screen for hot-seat.

only limitation in the engine currently is a rather limited level size, with a rather HUGE ammount of memmory usage, i hope to solve this(at a slight performance cost)
in the future.
if you have any questions, or sugestions on gameplay and features, pleas post a comment.