Archive for the ‘ Video ’ Category

Trailer for Nordenfelt 0.6

In preparation for the Desura/IndieDB presence I had to make a trailer for Nordenfelt.

Have a look:

I’m quite new to the trailer/video maker club. So if you have some tips for improvement please tell me.

Cheers,
Thomas

Nordenfelt Dev Log 5

As mentioned in dev log 3 I was chasing a strange particle system bug for many days now. Watch the following video to get an idea why it was so annoying. Look at the boat’s exhaust fumes (the black dots) and the emission direction rendered as red line:

It looks totally wrong! The fumes don’t go along the red line but “swing” left and right. What the hell is wrong here?

My first intention was a failure in my own particle system orientation code. After absolving my code I started demonizing the SPARK particle library. Day after day I was decomposing the lib without success. Everything was right, nothing to blame.

Around dev log 4 I paused. Maybe some time off would give me new access to the problem.

Some days of fun & booze later I went on debugging. Reseting my mind did not help. There was still no answer. Until yesterday.

Question: How can something mathematically correct look so wrong?

Answer: You have to ask the right question. Try again!

OK: What do I expect to see? How should the particle emissions look like? How to falsify wrong results? What affects the particles?

Question: What are the parts of the expected particle emission model?

Answer: That’s the right question, young lad! You forgot to include the level scrolling and the boat velocity.

That was the problem. I started searching the bug too close to the base. Missing high level effects made the emissions look wrong. Humans tend to compare game physics with real life physics. Therefore I expected the level scrolling and boat movement to be included in the particle emission calculation. But they were not.

Lesson learned: Know what to expect from code before you judge it.

That’s it for this Wednesday. After this debugging odyssey I can go on with the fun stuff. Subscribe to Nordenfelt’s RSS feed or follow me on Twitter at @black_golem if you’re curious what the fun stuff is. 🙂

Cheers,
Thomas

Feed Strips Screenr Videos?

If you read the last post in your feed reader you may have been puzzled what video I was talking about. The embedded Screenr video was stripped from the RSS feed, at least in my reader application. Therefore I’ve copied the video over to YouTube and try to show it to you again:

Please tell me if this post neither contains a video. You know bugs appear in swarms… those damned, little bastards!

Cheers,
Thomas

Video: Particle System Preview

I’ve just finished the basic version of the particle system preview in Nordenfelt. This new mode is for dev purposes only and just can show predefined particle effects. They can be altered in any external XML editor while the preview is running. A mouse click creates a particle effect at the cursor and a context menu allows to change the active particle system type and background color:

I wanted to keep this stuff as simple as possible. Visual feedback is imperative when you want to create particle systems that don’t suck. The shortest path here was to build the preview into the game. It’s primitive but it works – just like me. 🙂

The video was made with Screenr so its quality is rather bad. I don’t know if Screenr or my workstation has to be blamed. I just wanted to test this video recording service. Nevertheless, the choppy video should give you an idea what the preview mode is all about.

Cheers,
Thomas

I’m tweaking the last few bits of Nordenfelt 0.2. If everything goes right it should be available this weekend. Subscribe to the Nordenfelt newsletter (right side on main page) or to the RSS feed if you want to get informed when it appears.

In the meantime I’ve made a game play video for you. Enjoy!

Cheers,
Thomas