Marc's Techdemos

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Marc's Techdemos

Postby Marc » Fri Jun 24, 2005 4:22 pm

Hi !

I worked with this lib over the last 6 months and think now it is time to show you some of my work. :)

I release two techdemos, both basically based on the same system. However, the first one has more gameplay while the second looks better.

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Techdemo 1: download here: http://rochel.s83.deinprovider.de/w3d/download/w3dsetup.exe approx. 30 MB

Download it and run the updater, it loads the current version. This demo connects to a server of one of my friends having a server running. So if you are lucky and someone else tries the demo when you do, you can "multiplay"...
Ah, don't forget to read the readme, otherwise you might not figure out how to shoot/kill something.

Known Issues: If your connection speed is quite slow or heavily used, the connection fails. You don't get a message about that. But you notice it if the initial view of the scene stays for more than 15 sec.

Screenshot:
Image

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Techdemo 2: download here: http://rochel.s83.deinprovider.de/w3d/_forums/Marcs_Techdemo.exe 47 MB

Because this version is more work in progress, I didn't upgrade the online server to this version yet. To run it, you have to start
the server locally for yourself. So just run server.exe, wait a little bit and run client.exe afterwards. Again read the readme, (This time it's even worse. I bet if you don't read the readme, you won't be able to move ;) )

Btw. I've just noticed that I forgot to mention the c-key for switching between 1st and 3rd person perspective in the readme.


The map you see in this version is from a friend of mine who made it initially for a mod of another game. He allowed me to use. :)

Screenshots:
Image
Image
Image

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Have fun trying my demos :D

Marc
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Postby martinw » Fri Jun 24, 2005 6:09 pm

I noticed on the credits you used opcode and newton ?

Does opcode provide something newton doesn't ?

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Postby martinw » Fri Jun 24, 2005 6:10 pm

I already posted this in the ogre forums but I think it's worth reitterating.

Very Cool 8)

M
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Postby The unProfessional » Fri Jun 24, 2005 6:34 pm

Out of curiosity, what made you guys decide to user BSP versus an octree/PVS implementation?
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Postby Marc » Fri Jun 24, 2005 6:58 pm

martinw wrote:I already posted this in the ogre forums but I think it's worth reitterating.

Very Cool 8)

M


lol, ok. It seems like the set of Newton forums reads and the set of Ogre forum readers have many entities in common. *g*

This is a somehow dangerous topic because Julio seems not to like talking about this topic, I don't know why exactly. The reason why I use Opcode additinally has to do with getting Newton deterministic and still being fast. I figured out that you have to restart Newton's simulation from time to time to keep it deterministic in the way I need it. It's quite cheap to reinitialize 100 bodies from time to time. But what takes more time is building the static collision mesh in Newton. Even if you serialize it and unserialize it, it is a lot slower than bulding a collision mesh in Opcode only once at the beginning and using a custom collision in newton. If there was a way to fast reinitialize the static collisions in newton, that'ld be more optimal. I'm not sure how much performance I could gain, but it would be simpler/much nice code of course :) But since this requires some changes in Newton, it's out of my scope, and, depending on newtons internal scene management perhaps quite complicated. Anyway, Newton is already better than everything else I tried before in combining with my networking system regarding performance and stability.

Besides, I have some additional thoughts/feature wishes I'ld like to see in a physics engine that would improve my current method for sychronizing a state over networks. That would require Newton to expose information of the clustering it internally does of the scene. I don't know how far Julio wants to do that. I only know that no other physicsengine offers functions like this and the first one allowing sychronization of lots of things in games grandscale, well ... One could work around that of course like I did with Opcode, but this would be somewhat noticable slower. I'm open for in depth discussions if someone wants to :)

Personally, I'ld like to see those things, from my programmer point of view. But for the enduser of ones application, those things are probably not so visible. So adding new features to Newton that are visible is more important atm. E.g. I'ld prefer an easily to set up raycast car over the suggestions from above. I bet I could integrate it in one of the demos above quite easily :)
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Postby Marc » Fri Jun 24, 2005 7:14 pm

The unProfessional wrote:Out of curiosity, what made you guys decide to user BSP versus an octree/PVS implementation?

I haven't decide much on that topic. All you see is just the default Ogre Octree scene manager with a clipping plane at some distance. No BSP, no PVS. Only generated LOD for the enemies.
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Postby Julio Jerez » Fri Jun 24, 2005 7:50 pm

Ha it is very nice to see new people showing demos.
Very nice demo, I think the ants or what there they are new to align to the terrain normal.
Also you may want to implement the buoyancy on the ocean, so when the crate are pushed the float.
It is ok to use another collision query with Newton that is why there is a user define static collision in the API.
Very nice. keep it up
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Postby Marc » Fri Jun 24, 2005 8:35 pm

Julio Jerez wrote:Ha it is very nice to see new people showing demos.
Very nice demo, I think the ants or what there they are new to align to the terrain normal.
Also you may want to implement the buoyancy on the ocean, so when the crate are pushed the float.
It is ok to use another collision query with Newton that is why there is a user define static collision in the API.
Very nice. keep it up


rofl. See what I mean? Completly ignoring my feature wishes. hehe. But what is new for me is, that he must have filtered me completly because he called me "new people" while already having posted some feature requests. Oh I should add a feature request to this paragraph, otherwise he might actually read this. Well, old but good and simple one: Please add a function for forcing i87. :)

I already thought for myself that the ants up vector should be alligned to the terrain normal. Just haven't done it yet as well as caring about buoyancy.

It's nice to get positive responses :)
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Postby martinw » Fri Jun 24, 2005 9:29 pm

Thank you for the reply Marc, keep up the good work :D
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Postby The unProfessional » Fri Jun 24, 2005 11:04 pm

Just FYI... on both my work and home computers, the second tech demo runs fine. But, on both systems, the first demo just freezes on a black screen. Both systems are on DSL. Just FYI :)

System 1:
P4 2.8
Geforce4 MX (DX 8.1 hardware)
1gb ram

System 2:
P4 2.6
Radeon 9800 Pro (DX 9 hardware)
2gb ram

Also, I dont' think Julio ever ignores feature requests. He's got alot on his plate, so I believe he's just trying to prioritize the work. Chances are he's keeping track of requests, and based on how many people need it he queues 'em up.
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Postby Marc » Sat Jun 25, 2005 8:13 am

Oh, my friend rebooted his server a few hours ago, well good timing ....

I restarted my server-app. It should work again. :)
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Postby Julio Jerez » Sat Jun 25, 2005 7:20 pm

I did not mean to offend you when I said new people, If I did, I am sorry, but I was referring to the fact that it is a new playable project in the showcase forum, as opposed to images, or work in progress.
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