The new faster renderer is working now. I have also created new textures that use pre-multiplied alpha. Behold the beauty of the sun!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Leaving the Home World
Galactic Throne's map generator now generates an empire for the player and automatically centers on Earth, the Human Empire's capital planet.
It also now keeps the empires' knowledge of the galaxy separate from the actual galaxy data, allowing the player and AIs to have incomplete knowledge. We might know a star's color simply because it is visible from Earth, but we need to explore it to determine what kind of planet there is. Some stars will not be visible from Earth, due to astronomical dust clouds for instance, and will need to be discovered with space craft or seen from another planet.
I have switched over to pre-multiplied alpha in the renderer, but the textures are not ready for that, so no screen shot today. I have also made a plan to speed up the renderer. It runs very well on slower graphics cards, while ironically going slow on my very fast PC. I think this happens because it sends a separate polygon batch for each star. I have decided to render everything with little square images and pre-multiplied alpha, so I can send them as a single batch of quads.
It also now keeps the empires' knowledge of the galaxy separate from the actual galaxy data, allowing the player and AIs to have incomplete knowledge. We might know a star's color simply because it is visible from Earth, but we need to explore it to determine what kind of planet there is. Some stars will not be visible from Earth, due to astronomical dust clouds for instance, and will need to be discovered with space craft or seen from another planet.
I have switched over to pre-multiplied alpha in the renderer, but the textures are not ready for that, so no screen shot today. I have also made a plan to speed up the renderer. It runs very well on slower graphics cards, while ironically going slow on my very fast PC. I think this happens because it sends a separate polygon batch for each star. I have decided to render everything with little square images and pre-multiplied alpha, so I can send them as a single batch of quads.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Nation Builder - Now with ramps!
I have made extensive modifications to the texture generator. It can now create images for ramps and also contains multiple procedural shape generators.
Unfortunately, the ramps still look a bit cliff-like. A have some ideas that I can still try out, though.
The generator used to create the 'rock' texture that I use in the image above is based on a variant of the fault-lines method, but adapted to be tiling and three-dimensional.
I also have a 'sand' texture, using the same algorithm, and 'glass' and 'crystaline' textures generated with an algorithm based on Voronoi methods.
The next task is to create a mouse cursor and to allow the user to interact with the terrain. This will allow me to enable the user to designate digging areas and similar orders.
Unfortunately, the ramps still look a bit cliff-like. A have some ideas that I can still try out, though.
The generator used to create the 'rock' texture that I use in the image above is based on a variant of the fault-lines method, but adapted to be tiling and three-dimensional.
I also have a 'sand' texture, using the same algorithm, and 'glass' and 'crystaline' textures generated with an algorithm based on Voronoi methods.
The next task is to create a mouse cursor and to allow the user to interact with the terrain. This will allow me to enable the user to designate digging areas and similar orders.
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