Projekt "W" on current c't magazine issue
Posted on November 10, 2010
| Sascha
Upon opening my letterbox (yes, the real one) this morning I found a free copy of the current issue of the german c’t computer magazine. Why I got this one for free? Because it features the last release of Projekt “W” (Phase 1, v1.2). Back in september I got a mail from the editorial staff of the c’t magazine telling me that Projekt “W” (which is listed on their online download portal) made it into the preselection for the next c’t’ software collection to be featured in one of their future issues.
[Read More]
"Phase 2" status update
Posted on October 28, 2010
| Sascha
As promised some (long) time ago (but better late than never) here is a new status update on the progress for “Phase 2” of Projekt “W”. Although my spare time is getting more and more limited due to some real important real life things that I have to take care of I still somehow manage to make progress on what now seems like my personal swansong, and actually a lot of things happened since my last status update, so this one is getting a bit longer this time.
[Read More]
PlayStation Move
Posted on September 18, 2010
| Sascha
Don’t worry, this is no advertisement, and no, I don’t get any money or so from Sony for this, but it’s something I wanted to talk about since all this motion gaming stuff seems to be the future (though it’s been here for a long time now, just think of the EyeToy camera for the PS2). But this week (wednesday here in germany) Sony released it’s new Move controller for the PS3 which is based on the PS-Eye camera and which claims to be better than what the competition has to offer.
[Read More]
New user interface in motion
Posted on July 20, 2010
| Sascha
As promised some weeks ago I finally got around capturing a video of the totally new user interface that I decided to put into “Phase 2”. As mentioned earlier it’s not only a visual “upgrade”, making the UI more sleek and futuristic but also adds a lot of information to the default view and also brings in lot more usability. As you can see in the video most parts are already done, though there is still some work to be done before I can call it finished.
[Read More]
"Phase 2" running on Linux (using WINE)
Posted on July 8, 2010
| Sascha
After releasing “Phase 1” (which was actually quite some long time ago) several people were asking for Linux support, but actually I wasn’t keen of having to port the game over to Linux (and I haven’t changed on that since then), so there never was (and never will be) a port for Linux. And as it seems it was also not possible to get the game running using WINE due to the fact that it used GDI+ for doing several imaging related things.
[Read More]
Quick interception
Posted on July 5, 2010
| Sascha
Time flies by, and so the last posting is already collecting dust. As usual I’m not getting much time to work on “Phase 2”, but I’m making steady (though little) progress on an (almost daily) base. So the new user interface I’ve been talking about in my last posting is in (with a few minor things to be done and sorted) and it looks stunning, adding a lot to the game, both in terms of visual style and usability.
[Read More]
The old GUI is history
Posted on May 5, 2010
| Sascha
Yes, you read that right. In a “shocking” turn of events I decided to scrap almost the whole old GUI for “Phase 2” in favour of a new and better one. Most of you might now ask if I went insane or so, but to counter this I’ll elaborate on why I scrapped the old GUI and decided to put a new one in : When I’m not in front of my PC and working on “Phase 2” (that’s actually the only thing I’m doing in front of the PC nowadays, no more gaming or such, spare time is rare for me) I always have pen and paper in close range so I can put down and work on new ideas anytime they hit me.
[Read More]
Some words about "Phase 2"
Posted on April 13, 2010
| Sascha
My first posting on “Phase 2” for Projekt “W” in three months does not mean that I haven’t been working on it. Actually although my spare time is very limited (it gets worse and worse almost every month) I still try to squeeze out some spare time each day to do at least minor things related to “Phase 2”. And since event small steps sum up I got several things done towards a first release of “Phase 2” and so I decided to upload some screenshots and talk about what I’ve been doing.
[Read More]
Omni-directional lights using cubemap shadows
Posted on March 4, 2010
| Sascha
It looks like my dungeon crawler prototype isn’t actually evolving into a game, but much more into a personal testbed for more-or-less current rendering techniques (due to Projekt “W” I’ve been lacking in the field of recent rendering techniques a bit). And so one of the things I always wanted to implement were shadows for omni-directional light sources. I’ve been doing that with stencil shadows years ago, but stencil shadows aren’t the preferred way of doing this nowadays due to their limitations, including sharp edges (yes, there are ways to get around this, but they’re expensive in terms of computing) and a high demand for fillrate.
[Read More]
First dungeon crawler prototype (HD Video)
Posted on February 26, 2010
| Sascha
Although it took me longer than expected I recently got a first prototype of a dungeon crawler, based on my recenlty published random dungeon article, polished up far enough to show it to the public. Actually one of the biggest issue holding it back were the textures. It uses parallax (bump) mapping for giving flat surfaces a realsitic 3D look (it’s pretty much an extension to bump mapping), and for that technique you not only need a color map and a normal map but also a heightmap for each texture.
[Read More]