Brainstorming done

wezu on 2014/05/11 08:04 of Quest for Fire

Power to stage one emitters in three...two...one

8-bit is quite a bit of a challenge if one wants to use a 3D engine like Panda3D, one could go mad trying to do that... so I've gone mad before the start just to save myself some time.

The idea I had is to use 3D graphics, just like I would do normally and then use a filter to make it look like in the olden days. Here's a mock-up on how it should work (in GIMP for now, but the shader shouldn't be that difficult to make- even for me):

pyweek1

As far as gameplay goes I decided to do a caveman beat'em-up. I don't know where the idea came from, but when I think of old games I think of titles like Cadillacs and Dinosaurs(not 8-bit but well...) and Prehistorik... the Iron Maiden track 'Quest for Fire' could also be blamed.

The plan for today is:

Wish me luck.

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Comments

m0dem on 2014/05/11 13:47:

Thats one of the things I thought of when I heard 8-Bit > outdated > cavemen, but we're probably not going to do anything related to that. :) Good luck. -M0dem

wezu on 2014/05/11 16:57:

I don't mind if someone is doing the exact same thing as I do, in fact that makes me feel I'm doing the right sort of thing ;)

Anyways... I think I'm done for today. Thanks to MakeHuman I've got a player model ready(even with some animations!), a basic environment, a shader that makes things look 8-bitish. This is a in game screenshot:

The loader-setup thing isn't yet functional, but I think I got it looking bad enough (in a good, 8-bit sort of way):

setup

Didn't find any music I like yet, but I got a nice font. It's called PressStart2P and it's under the SIL Open Font License, 1.1, so it should be ok to use. If anyone is in need of a font like this, here's a link:

http://www.dafont.com/press-start-2p.font

richard on 2014/05/11 21:26:

Cool - I think you need the "posterize" shader as well though - the colour palette looks a little too high-def :)

Archwyrm on 2014/05/12 22:01:

Music? How about 8-bit Iron Maiden, uh.. cover? I guess there are copyright/spirit of competition issues. In any case.. Up the irons!

wezu on 2014/05/13 10:41:

The posterize shader can be customized, the above screen has made with (I think) 16 color 'areas', but if you crank it down to 4 you get this: screen2
The 'crt' effect can be replaced with a 'dot matrix' or droped, the pixels can be bigger: screen3

screen4

I think that's 8-bit enough.

For the music I found a Iron Maiden 'Quest for Fire' midi file, and it sounds not bad at all. But the midi file has an unknown legal status and I don't think I should use it. :(

petraszd on 2014/05/13 12:59:

That is so cool! Awesome shader work. I am glad that pyweek rules requires to show source code. I am looking forward of reading this shader's implementation :)

wezu on 2014/05/13 14:57:

The shader is very simple, and the techniques are just straight from the interweb.

Pixelization:
http://coding-experiments.blogspot.com/2010/06/pixelation.html
Posterization:
http://www.geeks3d.com/20091027/shader-library-posterization-post-processing-effect-glsl/

The last effect is just multiplying by a texture that simulates a old monitor.

//Cg
//Cg profile arbvp1 arbfp1

void vshader(float4 vtx_position : POSITION, 
             float2 vtx_texcoord0 : TEXCOORD0,
             out float4 l_position : POSITION,
      	     out float2 l_texcoord0 : TEXCOORD0,
			 uniform float4 texpad_tex0,
             uniform float4x4 mat_modelproj)
{
  l_position=mul(mat_modelproj, vtx_position);
  l_texcoord0 = vtx_position.xz * texpad_tex0.xy + texpad_tex0.xy;
}

void fshader(float2 l_texcoord0 : TEXCOORD0,
			uniform float4 k_param1,
             out float4 o_color : COLOR,
             uniform sampler2D tex0 : TEXUNIT0,
             uniform sampler2D scanline : TEXUNIT1)
{
	    
    float dx = k_param1.z;
    float dy = k_param1.w;    
    vec2 coord = vec2(dx*floor(l_texcoord0.x/dx), dy*floor(l_texcoord0.y/dy));  
    
    float nColors = k_param1.x; 
	float gamma = k_param1.y; 
	float4 texCol = tex2D(tex0, coord);
	float3 tc = texCol.xyz;
	tc = pow(tc, gamma);
	tc = tc * nColors;
	tc = floor(tc);
	tc = tc / nColors;
	tc = pow(tc,1.0/gamma);
    
    float4 scaneline_effect = tex2D(scanline, l_texcoord0);    
    o_color.xyz  = tc*scaneline_effect.xyz;
    o_color.w = 1;        
}