Well, two and a half more weeks to go before we are finished coding...Its getting close. The past few days have seemed to drag on in class and the main reason is that the Incredibuild trial version we had expired. Incredibuild has been a godsend for our class and has cut-down 17min build times to around 2-3mins. Luckily Roy managed to score us an extension and we were up and running again by the end of the day.
We were pretty lucky this week to get a visit from Phil Mayes from Krome Studios in Australia. He gave us some helpful insight into what we, as budding game developers, can expect when we take our first steps into the industry. The fact that he was smiling constantly did provide hope for the near future. He was also kind enough to give us feedback, tips and criticism for our game which was much appreciated. One cool suggestion was making things "sink into the ground." At the moment, when a player absorbs anything in the game, it simply disappears. I had hoped to hide this using a particle effect but he suggested we just make it slowly go under the ground and then remove it. Simple and effective. That will probably be my task for tomorrow morning.
I have been working on the Reaper melee attack and also trying my best to fix a pure virtual function call I've been getting with the AI agents. I have tracked the problem down. One of the things I hate about PhysX is that if you set the orientation of a shape so that it is now entirely inside a trigger volume, the trigger callback does not register that the shape has entered the trigger. The same thing is true for exiting trigger volumes as well. The agents themselves use triggers as sensors. Shapes are recorded as they enter and exit certain sensors so that the agents can steer away from them. Sometimes, not all the time, if debris is destroyed while in the sensor, and the agent begins steering away from it, a pure virtual function is called because the shape knowledge that the agent has contains the wrong information. Getting this to happen has been such a mission.
Anyways, I'll probably continue looking at that problem. I've also got to get the mother attacking when a target comes in range using one of three melee attacks. Fun times ahead....Later days.
We were pretty lucky this week to get a visit from Phil Mayes from Krome Studios in Australia. He gave us some helpful insight into what we, as budding game developers, can expect when we take our first steps into the industry. The fact that he was smiling constantly did provide hope for the near future. He was also kind enough to give us feedback, tips and criticism for our game which was much appreciated. One cool suggestion was making things "sink into the ground." At the moment, when a player absorbs anything in the game, it simply disappears. I had hoped to hide this using a particle effect but he suggested we just make it slowly go under the ground and then remove it. Simple and effective. That will probably be my task for tomorrow morning.
I have been working on the Reaper melee attack and also trying my best to fix a pure virtual function call I've been getting with the AI agents. I have tracked the problem down. One of the things I hate about PhysX is that if you set the orientation of a shape so that it is now entirely inside a trigger volume, the trigger callback does not register that the shape has entered the trigger. The same thing is true for exiting trigger volumes as well. The agents themselves use triggers as sensors. Shapes are recorded as they enter and exit certain sensors so that the agents can steer away from them. Sometimes, not all the time, if debris is destroyed while in the sensor, and the agent begins steering away from it, a pure virtual function is called because the shape knowledge that the agent has contains the wrong information. Getting this to happen has been such a mission.
Anyways, I'll probably continue looking at that problem. I've also got to get the mother attacking when a target comes in range using one of three melee attacks. Fun times ahead....Later days.
I reckon the laughs were real... by the end of it! Good post here Luke and nice effect of things sinking into the ground. Was lucky to see it in action and it does look good!
ReplyDeleteJust under two weeks now. Go guys go!