Blokworld
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Post by Slaihne Wed Apr 27, 2011 1:43 pm

I've made a version available for download.


You first need to download and install the RUNTIME from...

http://slimdx.org/download_june10.php


Then download the engine from...

http://www.blokworld.co.uk/techtest.zip

And unzip it into a folder of your choice.

You can then run the engine by double clicking BLOKWORLD.EXE (or SLIMDX.EXE if i've forgotton to rename it)

I decided against the whole login thing atm and this version is pretty rough and ready, but have at it anyway.

Note : do not resize the window by dragging it's sides (it locks up)
You can maximise the window using the normal maximise button, and then restore it too.



****

Basic Instructions

Hold the right mouse button down to change the camera angle with the mouse.
WASD move forward, backward, and strafe left / right.
Mouse Wheel moves through the block selection.
Left mouse button digs.
Left mouse button + Left shift builds.
Space jumps (you can jump 3 blocks high).

F togggles between flying and walking (Flying is God Mode, you start in flying mode).

Q - wireframe mode
P - toggles night / day cycling (it's on a fast cycle)
L - Flashes lightning (Pulses the sunlight value)
G- toggles fullscreen mode

By default the engine runs with a view distance of 160 blocks.

If you create a shortcut to blokworld.exe and add a command tail of a number, then thats the view distance you should get. The number is the number of chunks, or 10 for 160 blocks, 16 for 256 blocks, 5 for 80 blocks etc.

If it runs too slow, then try using a lower view distance. I don't recommend running a view distance of over 22 since it can cause errors due to arrays being too big internally.


Last edited by Slaihne on Sun Jul 17, 2011 11:47 am; edited 4 times in total (Reason for editing : showing how forgetful i am at renaming exe's)
Slaihne
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Post by Slaihne Wed Apr 27, 2011 1:48 pm

Known Issues...

The save format is on the large side, completely uncompressed, so make sure you have a good bit of space on the drive you unzip the engine to.

There can be an issue when you go to an area with loads of trees. This causes an out of memory error. I'm not sure if this is a memory leak or the garbage collector not releaseing stuff fast enough so please bear with me on this one.

The update logic is a bugbear of mine and is basically working at the moment but i am far from happy with it. There are times you can briefly see 'gaps' when you build or dig and the light can visibly update over a few frames. The infrastructure is in place to rework this and it will be something i undertake in the near future, hopefully to get it back to instant updates with no gaps or partial updates.

I have noticed that on occasion the light doesn't look right, and when you build or dig a block in the wrong looking area it corrects itself. Again, this is the update logic problem and hopefully will be fixed soon.

Oh, nearly forgot. While in walk mode there is no collision detection above the player, so you can jump up into overhangs and get stuck. Just use F to go into fly mode to get back out.
Slaihne
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Post by Slaihne Fri Apr 29, 2011 2:15 pm

The current version is available from...

http://www.blokworld.co.uk/techtest.zip

It fixes the 'I see white sticks' bug.
It is much leaner on texture resources.
The sea should now fill down to it's proper depth.

Any other updates will be listed here. Any other files will be removed as they were for test purposes only and will get confusing as time goes on.
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Post by Slaihne Sat Apr 30, 2011 9:34 am

Uploaded a small update.

Resizing the window works now. The game loop used to be in a a thread seperate from the UI, now it is in the UI thread. Previously something was going wonky when the user resized the window and the gameloop thread tried to sync with that. So now i'm using the SlimDX recommended way of doing things. The downside is that the gameloop pauses when doing things like right clicking the title bar.

Tidied up the movement a little bit so that the mouse hides when you hold the right button down, and also changed the draw order so that the build / dig box shows underwater while you are above the surface.

Fixed a couple of bugs with the new texture load routine and also added an onscreen counter for the amound of Video memory used for vertices / indices.

The download is available from the same location as before.
Slaihne
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Post by Slaihne Tue May 03, 2011 2:33 pm

Fixes

Lighting for chunks that came into view was plain wrong.
This was caused by my transition to a front / back lighting buffer without double checking the math.
This has been fixed now.

When you built up high there would be a big permanent shadow formed until you restarted the game.
Fixed - This shouldn't happen anymore.

Lighting looked a bit banded, caused by the transition to 4 bit lighting.
I was averaging the 4 bit values rather than the final values from the lookup table.
Fixed now - the lighting should look a good bit smoother.


Changes

Re-organised assets folder. Now smaller download.
Fixed texture calculation to take into account mipmaps.
Finally got compressed textures to actually use the lowest rez mipmaps (less shimmer in distance)



Current issues

(Building up high is still a bid rough and ready, i need to go back and check some bounding conditions)
Collision detection is ropey.
On larger view distances an 'Out of memory' error can occur on exit of the program. Trying to hunt this one down.


Next work item.

Rework Update code. Most of the infrastructure is in place now i think.
This will include the code to handle updating liquids when they come into the camera view.

Considering converting leaves to a block format rather than the 3 planes i currently have.
They currently eat video ram like a video ram eating hungry thing that wants seconds.

Download available from same location as above.
Slaihne
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Post by Slaihne Fri May 06, 2011 1:19 pm

Fix

Transparent Textures should now be lit properly.


Change

Altered glass texture. Still not happy with it though Sad
Added a "proper" light. Should stick to the block face you are pointing at.
It's the black block at the bottom of the selector at the moment (need to update the selector to handle transparent and model blocks)
Need to change build indicator to show model if that's whats selected to build
Need to implement a 'can build off' flag for the blocks to stop building off lights/leaves etc, cause it looks and feels weird doing this.

Download from same location
Slaihne
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Post by Slaihne Sun May 08, 2011 10:53 am

Changed

Selector now works properly with all block types.
Extra pages added to selector (press 1..4) to access these pages.

Light works a bit better with glass textures.

Build Indicator now shows which way directional models will be built
(Shows which face the light etc will stick to)

Implemented "Can build off"; can't build off lights and trees atm.


More blocks to mess around with, including many colored lights.
Better glass texture, and a glass texture inspired by MrFast. Smile

Download from the usual location.
Slaihne
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Post by Slaihne Fri Jun 10, 2011 2:34 pm

New version available for download.

There's 2 exe's. One with slopes and one without. The same command tail detailed above should still work to change view distance.

The slopes need lit properly which means a bit of faffing about with my vertex format since i now need normals and bi-tangents. So, the terrain is sloped but the lighting is horrible on it.

Both exe's use a more resource hungry pixel shader setup and loads more texture maps so the download is a bit bigger. Also, there, currently, aren't as many blocks to play with Sad

I'm currently working on getting more blocks setup but unfortunately it's a bit like pulling teeth. I've got my brother press ganged into doing some GFX work for me so that will help.

I've kept it as a seperate download since it may need a beefy GFX card to work properly. The original download is still there.

The textures are currently only 512x512 pixels since i didn't want a huge download.

Here's the link...

http://www.blokworld.co.uk/techtest_hd.zip
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Post by Slaihne Sat Jun 11, 2011 10:23 am

New version available for download.

http://www.blokworld.co.uk/techtest_hd.zip

Only a sloped version this time. I've gotten the math to basically all work for the slopes though they are still a tad too dark. Also, the slopes are currently done automatically each time a chunk is processed. So if you build something, then restart the game, you will find your building 'sloped'. More control over this process will come next.

I've also increased the range of the player light, some of the underground areas are starting to look quite good now.

There's a couple more blocks added too.
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Post by Slaihne Sun Jun 12, 2011 12:36 pm

New version available for download.

http://www.blokworld.co.uk/techtest_hd.zip

Again, only a sloped version. Lighting should now be improved for the sloped sections and the pixel based lighting should work properly on them.

Apart from more textures i think my next port of call will be to actually add a start screen so that various options can be set so that this will be the only version, with a setting to change the renderpath over to the simpler, older version.
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Version Available Empty I would love to support your efforts.

Post by TheiKing Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:24 pm

Blockworld seems pretty amazing from what ive seen on youtube. I would love to help you out in any way that I can. Well besides monetarily, but I could build you a website, a real official looking website. I just want to be involved with this amazing project.

Check out www.iKingsSGC.com for one of my wordpress 3.1.3 designs.

Thank you
theiking

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Post by Slaihne Sat Jul 16, 2011 10:06 am

New Version Available

Added full menu system (only available at start, not ingame).
Controls redefinable as is mouselook.
View distance changeable (ignore the Pixel Lighting option).
512 texures included (i think, i need sleep).
Some sparse sound effects
World height doubled (there may be some issues at the top of the world).
Can toggle slopes (i'm still working on proper collisions and building with them).
Collision detection more robust (apart from with slopes)
Can build / dig repeatedly by holding down the relevant key.
Some music. (You can turn it off in the options, i did and i wrote the thing Wink )

Here's the link...

http://www.blokworld.co.uk/techtest_hd.zip


Oh and before anyone notices...

YOU NEED DOTNET 4.0 installed i'm afraid.
Also, you need to install the Dotnet 4 version of the SlimDX runtime from here...

http://slimdx.org/download_mar11.php

(Select the Dotnet 4.0 download)


To cut a long story short.
With Dotnet 2.0 loads of "Out of memory errors"
with Dotnet 4.0 ZERO memory errors.

Because of the doubling of the world height to 256 i use quite a lot of RAM. The Dotnet 2.0 grabage collector seems fine with not releasing blocks of ram that i've freed up and then bombing out with a memory error. Dotnet 4.0 goes ahead and releases that memeory properly and never (at least in my testing) gives me a memory error.
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Post by elijahpederson Sun Jul 24, 2011 8:12 am

whats with the balls you find around the level?
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Post by Slaihne Sun Jul 24, 2011 8:17 am

they're just test models.

don't fiddle with them Wink
Slaihne
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Post by elijahpederson Sun Jul 24, 2011 4:33 pm

Slaihne wrote:they're just test models.

don't fiddle with them Wink
oops i was messing with em constantly.


why don't you make it so when you destroy one there is an alien invasion?
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