Starling Stress Test [Passed]

Below, you can see something that would be impossible without the hardware aceleration, almost 700+ units running at a constan 30 FPS  (at least on my machine)

107KG no Loader… if you dont see anything, wait:

Starling rocks!!

Days Of Blood

I just uploaded my 4th game (and 1st game in a looooong time) to the Newgrounds portal.

This is the link http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/603125

And dont forget to read more info about the game!

Steering behaviors: Path Following

I’m studying the so called “steering behaviours” described by the paper writen by Craig W. Reynolds. Another good resource for more on this subject are the serie of posts found in http://rocketmandevelopment.com/category/steering/ very nice examples and pseudo code. Without to mention the awesome Java Applets found here: http://www.red3d.com/cwr/steer/

Intro…

This behaviours are aimed to simulate inteligent movement of moving objects. Starting from one simple -mother of all- behaviour (“seek”), you can stack several or one into an objects moving pattern and the resulting product will look like if the object had some kind of decition making behind it’s movement. What you basically do is to apply forces to an object’s velocity, with the intention of “steer” from or to a specific point in space. At it’s core, regardles of how complicated the calculations get, the resulting product is a force vector that one should apply to one or more objects.

SEEK BEHAVIOUR

The most basic behaviour it’s called “Seek“, which makes the object seems like if it were following a target. You always work with vector operations.

Steps to apply the seek behaviour to an object (pseudo code, assume a Vector class available):

1. Calculate the desired velocity = Vector(target.positionVector – vehicle.positionVector).normalize().multiply( vehicleMaximalSpeed );
2. Calculate seek steering (the force used to make the vehicle steer) = Vector( desiredVelocityVector – vehicleVelocityVector )
3. Add this vector to the current speed: CurrentSpeedVector.add( seekSteeringVector )

Now you just move the object: object.position += velocityVector. This si the basic stuff. As an extra, you can for example, scale the steering force based on some factors, like, the mass of the object, or the distance from the target to the vehicle, etc… but the basics are done in thouse 3 steps. In every other steer behaviour, the calculations will turn arround finding an imaginary ideal position for the vehicle and then, make the vehicle seek that position.

 

PATH FOLLOWING

Here what you basically do is to create a path, find the closest point form the “vehicle’s position in the future” to the path, and check if the distance from that point to the vehicle is greater than some distance you decide. If it is, then that means that the vehicle will eventually leave the path’s segment in which currently is, so we “seek” the vehicle to the farthest point in that future offset to the path. In the image below, that point would be the closest point in the red lines to the path.

So you basically calculate this imaginary point and then, back to the “Seek” behaviour. So you work here with two behaviours one on top of the other. Being the “path following above” and the “seek” bellow (in order of execution).

Only let the vehicle get X far form the path, if it goes beyong, then seek to the fartest point allowed.

I attempted to implement this in flash / actionscript 3 (my weapon of choise) and this is what i got (you need Flash player 10)

My implementation in flash (just for learning): https://dl.dropbox.com/u/400263/steer.swf

This is one made in java by someone else: http://www.red3d.com/cwr/steer/PathFollow.html

That’s it, more to come.

Game Update: Massive Obstacle Solving test #4

Lots and lots of Archers. When i finish this i will probably make all the sprites animated GIFs or something, because this kills my computer.

Game Update: behind the developer’s eyes

This video shows how i have everything setup so i can easily create units and formations without spending hours coding. Also i show here that the units has very few lines of code because everything is a composition of many individual parts.

Game Update: Archer Walk Animation

Testing the walk animation of the Archer Unit + a complete change in internal architecture of the code. Now it’s easyer to experiment.

Internally, all Units (Warriors, Archers, etc) are defined by 3 objects now. The Unit Settings Object, the Unit Behaviour Object and the Unit Sprite Object. All these 3 objects interact with each other to make the Unit work.

Behaviour Objects uses Tasks Objects to make diferent stuff. Tasks uses a variable number of actions implemented as a Strategy Pattern.

Game Update: Projectile System #1

The base of all the fun in the game, the projectile system!

Image from Myth: The fallen lords

Super early test, i just finished this, just a prototype.

Game Update: twit

Ok, time to some refactoring and optimization before doing anything else. I will be posting the ‘attack behaviour‘ preview in 1 or 2 days if i have time this weekend to work on it, or next week if i dont.

Game Update: Chasing the enemy #1

Simple behaviour, or i should say, Warrior behaviour: just go after the enemy, no fear 🙂

So now they can walk, move from obstacles, chase enemies, now they need to attack them. This system will be interesting because i will use an approach that i never used before. It’s gonna be fun 😀

Game Update: Obstacle Solving test #3

A little better, more fluid.

Yes, i was gonna do the attack behaviour, but decided to finish this behaviour first. Now the next step is “attack behaviour”.