gfx status

5/30/01 - More Updates!! Much of this week was dedicated to sorting out bugs and implementing the game cycle. Here are most of the graphics updates.

Final Room layout updated. Now we can start building up the first level.

Moving and stationary scenery objects.

Room Builder: Arbritrary Door Widths. Seemless texturemapping across walls.

Added a number of new models. -

Improving frustum culling. (Work in progress)

5/22/01 - Cyrus

Newly Added:

Frustum Culling:

Now the roommanager takes into account which rooms are within the viewing frustum. This also applies for any world objects. This fixes the "blacked out room" problem we were having earlier. Also, keeps the frame rate up as more objects are placed in the world. I still have a little more work to do to optimize the code.

Reflective surfaces:

Now the room floors have a reflective look. This adds a bit of realism to the scene. This will be a toggle option.

Heres a screen shot showing some reflection on the floor:

Reflect1.jpg (34121 bytes)

Splash screen during engine loading:

All initializing is displayed with this splash screen. The GL menu is not drawn until everything else is good to go.

Heres a screen shot:

Splash_Shot.jpg (35874 bytes)

Menu Font Effect:

Added a blurring effect to the menu items. Kinda boring right now but I'll fix it up.

5/9/01 - Cyrus & Daryl

The graphics engine can now manage static (couches, tables, etc. ) and dynamic objects ( projectiles, players ) correctly. !! As long as the objects are registered to the correct rooms as they travel everything else is taken care of for free. We also now have a memory efficient way of importing models into our scene. So basically now its just a matter of getting cool models.

Collision detection on boundaries and portals is pretty much done. We had some unique bugs but they are pretty much sorted out now. Daryl has done a great deal of work with collision detection between objects in the world, i.e. other players, static objects, etc.

Stay tuned for some new cool screenshots.

5/2/01 - Cyrus Jam

Well, everything is coming along pretty well... check out the SpudMedia for some more screenshots.

In general the backbone of all the game graphics is complete. The next phase in where things get even more fun. Populating the world with static object -> tables, tvs, remotes, lava lamps ,, etcetc... , improving on collision detection... a map building file format ( currently the world is built with a series of calls to the roombuilder class). Shouldn't be to hard to implement and will give much better expandability! etcetc.... possibilities endless.... to bad we only have a few more weeks...

04/30/2001 - Nick Castin

Graphics and networking have been merged. Both clients and server can be in the world, and all updates to objects in the world are regulated by the server. There is currently no code to display other players that are in the world at the same time as you, but this isn't too hard to add and should be in by Wednesday's meeting (Cy/Daryl?). The only things you can do in the new "networked world" are move forward, move backward, look left, and look right. There is a problem in that you move really slowly left and right when you're running the host/server version of the game, and really fast left/right when you're running the client version. Looking into this...

4/24/01 Cyrus Jam

Well the graphics is coming along pretty well.

Below is a brief overview of what I have implemented so far.

Overhead Game Tracker:

New feature: Toggle on/off map of the world which tracks the player. blended with the main game window.

Room Manager/Room Builder/Room : All working together. ! Navigatable level implemented. Portals work very well. Using very primitive collision detection for the room walls. Still need to work on that.

4/22/01 Cyrus Jam

Room Manager:

The room manger class helps track the current room as a player is moving within, other visible rooms, and doorways within the world. I decided to use the portal method to draw the world.

Any room object can be registered with the room manager. A room object holds information specific to this room. For example, the texture maps on the walls, the dimesions, portals (doors) and portal locations, ceiling height, etc.etc....

I have also implemented a room builder helper class. This class constructs a room object and registers all of its components with the room manager.

Model Loader:

I'm using 3D explorer to export model data into the game. Currently I have a pretty primitive wrapper to simplify the model loading process. Something I need to work on this week.