Progress Report

Chard on 2009/09/01 16:01 of Super Effective 9

Hi everyone!

Just to let you know that Super Effective have been very busy coding. We have excellent world geometry and physics in place as well as brilliant skeletal animation. I've finished writing a lovely 3d map editor and now we are getting on with the actual content, laying out the world, making models, telling the story. We're keep the use of the feather under our hat (rather than in it!) so to speak. Meanwhile here's a bunch of screenshots:


Designing a three dimensional map.


Running around in big open spaces.


Jumping over the balustrade.

(log in to comment)

Comments

alia on 2009/09/01 17:00:

Woah! NIce work!

Cosmologicon on 2009/09/01 17:52:

All right, 3D gameplay! Uh, based on the screenshots, don't count on that 60.22 being a 60.22 for everyone!

Martin on 2009/09/01 18:03:

At the moment I'm in the annoying position that I'd like to optimize graphics performance, but we don't have enough world geometry yet to be slow enough for optimizations to be measurable. I guess there are worse problems to have.

killdream on 2009/09/01 18:03:

Now that's some awesomeness. Are you generating the 3d stuffs on the fly?

nitrofurano on 2009/09/01 18:10:

what is 60.22, and why the same value appeared on different screenshots? weird... - curious for further news about progress on development! :)

eugman on 2009/09/01 18:17:

I'd imagine it's the frame rate.

nitrofurano on 2009/09/01 18:21:

yes, makes sense - i forgot that - so obvious..... :| - thanks!

RB[0] on 2009/09/01 18:22:

Are you using just pyglet again - or another lib?

Martin on 2009/09/01 18:27:

killdream: The player animation stuff is all precalculated by our animation editor (written in Python) - generating at runtime is just a bit slow. The world geometry is generated when the game loads, from a list of rooms, etc, generated by our map editor (the first screenshot above). This is probably the most tool-heavy Pyweek project we've ever done, but it's paying off.

nitrofurano: That's the frame rate. It's the same in both shots because Chard took them within a second or so of each other, so it hadn't updated. It's pretty stable at around 60fps though.

Martin on 2009/09/01 18:32:

RB[0]: Yes, it's just Pyglet. We were thinking about using a physics engine like ODE, but we decided it was more complication than we needed - the game doesn't have very many moving objects.

adam on 2009/09/01 18:33:

RB[0]: We're only depending on pyglet - the 3d graphics and physics engine, the procedural world geometry generator, the skeletal animation system and the level editor were all written by us since the start of Pyweek ;)

nitrofurano on 2009/09/01 19:23:

@martin: yes, it looks very stable, and simple enough to run on some 'slow' 3d boards as those intel900-like - i'm becoming more curious to play that! :) - and very curious also on one day being able coding a 3d pyglet game too... :)

riq on 2009/09/01 19:55:

your game looks promising!

Tiger on 2009/09/01 20:16:

just to play devil's advocate... where's the feather coming in?

tartley on 2009/09/01 20:32:

Beautiful, matey. Nice work.

richard on 2009/09/01 23:48:

Looks very interesting!

Geez I'm glad I'm only competing in the solo event :)

Chard on 2009/09/02 00:32:

Tiger: we have a feather, its a bit involved to explain right now.

saluk on 2009/09/02 01:30:

impressed.

gizmo_thunder on 2009/09/02 03:27:

amazing art style... really great stuff.. good work guys..   

nitrofurano on 2009/09/02 20:48:

seeing the last screenshot in wireframe mode - looks AWESOME (i just love wireframe 3d games!) - if the game is not planned to be ready in wireframe mode, please add this option for people who like that, like me! :)

Chard on 2009/09/02 21:09:

nitrofurano: Wireframe mode would rather destroy the point and atmosphere of our game. Besides it isn't a true wireframe. It's just changing the polygon mode so we can see if the geometry generation is working properly.

nitrofurano on 2009/09/02 21:16:

thanks! when ready, regreting the way you're planning the game development, please add a debug variable at code start for switching it, if possilbe - i'm really curious to see that working, even considering it may destroy the point and atmosphere of the game - i'm still very uncomfortable (as newbie) about how Pyglet and OpenGL works, and i don't know how and where in the code can i change the poligon mode - my point is i'm really curious about experiment doing similar wireframe game (i'm very fan of Rez, Kenta Cho's games, etc...)

adam on 2009/09/02 21:59:

We talked about the possibility of doing a post-competition release with the various tools polished up a little and included and access to some of the game's internals. We're not going to release an unfinished product, though, and just getting the main part of the game polished up and ready for release by the end of PyWeek is likely to take all our efforts as it is!

nitrofurano on 2009/09/02 22:11:

awesome! :)