Nostalgia and Inspiration

I took a trip down memory lane this week; I played the original Sid Meier's Colonization and the original Stronghold.

Sid Meier's Colonization

Stronghold

I was probably about 15 years old the last time that I played these, and really quite bad at strategy games.  Now that I play them again, I can really start to appreciate them.  It was pure luck that I played these two at about the same time; I started thinking, and they blended in my mind: I could see the similarities and the differences and the good ideas and the bad ideas, and suddenly inspiration struck.

Nation Builder would no longer be just another Dwarf Fortress clone; it will be something new.  It will bear some similarity to Dwarf Fortress, Colonization and Stronghold, but it will be a game in its own right.

Going Faster

I have been working on Cyclopean again.

I have modified the texture loader to be compatible with OpenGL 1.1, and to use direct buffers for sending the texture data to OpenGL. The compatibility issues were caused by my use of GL_UNSIGNED_INT_8_8_8_8_REV as the data type parameter. GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE works just as well, even though the buffer is an IntBuffer.

The process for creating a Vertex Buffer Object from map data now also uses a direct buffer, and I fixed a problem in the calculation of the size of the buffer, so there are no weird gigantic intermittent polygons anymore.

The rendering speed has increased dramatically now that everything is working right, so I am considering using a variant of this renderer for Nation Builder, instead of my shader-heavy normal-mapped high-detail 2-D renderer. The problem with the 2-D renderer is that it will take a lot of time to create good images for all the objects and creatures, and I just don't have the resources for that. Even if I decide to still use the 2-D renderer, I will have to downgrade the images to pixel-art level for practicality and remove the then-no-longer-needed shader programs.

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.

Walls and floors

I was thinking of a way to do ramps and stairways. After a lot of thought I found a way, and, in the process of adding it, I also made it separate the walls and floors properly, and the walls are now more upright.

My next task will be speeding up the renderer. It is going at about 5-7 FPS at 800x600 at the moment, but I think it can go much faster.

I might also experiment with adding ramps.

Texture alignment

Though you might not see much difference, the changes that I made are important during gameplay. All the stone type boundaries were off by a half cube along all three axes.

I had to modify the terrain shader program extensively, and unfortunately doubled the amount of texture memory required. This means that, to run on computers with 64MB texture memory, the application would need to use lower resolution textures. This is not a problem though, since I believe such graphics cards would not support my shader program anyway.

Again with the rocks

I made the texturing work properly. Just look at this beautiful red sandstone.

Afterward, I added the support for multiple rock types. It is not working nearly as well as this screenshot might lead you to believe. I think I should have stuck with red sandstone, rather than this yellow type. Also, the limestone is looking very blue due to the depth cue. I should fix that.

I am still deciding between using natural stone colors, classifying stone colors, or abstract stone colors.

Stealth ninja stone

I implemented terrain material texturing today, and created some bright orange stone with which to test it.

Rocks that rock

I made the rock more rock-like and irregular, increased the texture detail and experimented with adding color to the rock.

I also experimented with making the rocks less round, but did not meet with success. I will leave this for much later; there are more important things to focus on.

I will either add soil and sand next, or modify it to allow different kinds of rock with different colors and patterns.

Depth and clarity

Today I added the depth cue. It makes it easier to see what is behind what and how far behind it is.

I also managed to make the inside of the rocks black.

Some visual upgrades

I have made the stone a bit more matte and fixed a bug in the texture generator. The bug was causing some warping, stopping stuff from fitting nicely.

I have been experimenting with different strengths of my current procedural detail-adder, but I think I should try to create a more rock-like procedure.

Procedural detail strength = 0.15:



















Procedural detail strength = 0.5:



















The lower strength gives a clearer image, but the higher strength looks more rocky. I'll be going with 0.15 for now, but I will reevaluate this when I have added some depth cues and created a more rock-like procedure.

Introducing Nation Builder (working title)

Since my game, Nation Builder (working title), is starting to take shape, and I think that blogging my progress will make me more devoted, I have created this blog.

The game was originally invented by my brothers and myself and was supposed to be a city-building game with ant-people, medieval technology, trade, warfare, magic and some machines. Back then I called it Formicarium.

Meanwhile, many many years have passed, and Tarn Adams and his brother Zach envisioned their own, similar, idea, and have actually implemented it. If you haven't tried Dwarf Fortress already, I recommend that you try it at your earliest convenience.

Having played Dwarf Fortress, and learned from it, I have decided to create my own game. While it won't be Formicarium, it also won't be Dwarf Fortress 3-D. Compared to DF, my development process will be more focused on tangible-during-gameplay results, rather than nifty tiny details.

Here is a screen shot of what I have so far. This terrain is full 3-d, like Dwarf Fortress would be with graphics, but not 2.5-d like most games. This means you can dig tunnels and build bridges as part of the terrain, rather than as separate objects. (not pictured)