TSO's terrain map development (as of Apr 17, 2008)

[danielfyhchan]

I are am interest of game. I can have play depend of my job?

[SubliminalPeni]

I am a psychologist trainee. I have read much of your website and am very interested in you because you are unlike anyone else I have ever met. You are a very special man. If you ever want to talk about life and/or life's problems please feel free to message me.

[jingfongjimmy]

i find you incredibly interesting, ulillillia. you provide a very public look into what would have been a very private life if we didn't have the internet.

[crushkill]

yeah im interested to see your developments recently!

[ulillillia]

I haven't made any further progress since I completed the terrain. I'm involved with FF7 (I've already got more than a dozen videos of it, and a few more still remain - Ruby weapon and, probably, a tutorial on how to get a gold chocobo using the breeding method.

[tooplex]

No updates lately to your game ulillillia?

[ulillillia]

I'm involved with Final Fantasy 7 at the moment so it'll be a while, again. I have a lingering problem with the character involving rotations where curved parts are jagged upon the rotation. I've also got motive toward my story as well. I've had similar bursts and stalls with the 2.4 version as well and I'm expecting this to happen.

[Brock2097]

Game looks like it's going to be a lot of fun, great work!! Wish I could make something like that. Can't wait to see the finished game.

[ManfredMitchum]

I suggest not having the character abruptly stop when you let go of the arrow key because it might be a bit too much. just in my opinion, maybe make it so that the character does not stop, but it becomes easier to make him stop and doesn't slide as much. also, will there be more games/challenges in this version??

[ulillillia]

The character's motion is intended to be roughly that of the 2.4 version, though with enhancements due to both water and slopes. Stopping (slamming on the brakes) has 100 mph per second deceleration. I only have it abruptly stop here for ease of control for doing this. Version 2.4 only had 8 challenges, but 3.x, so far, has 48 with a > 99% chance of 56 being available (planned ones). Read the overview document for 3.x for details (for the unclassified features and for what I have planned).

[dirtbaglol]

Do you still use Odd A City for modifying the audio to your videos?

[ulillillia]

Very rarely. The only time Audacity is used now is when I record vocal tracks for video game videos. The second stage, Virtual Dub, has all the rest of what I need in the "audio" menu. Virtual Dub Mod is too confusing for working with audio.

[BrandonJ33]

You may want to look up what a bong is, U.

[BrownsRtheBest]

bong hit at :09

[ulillillia]

??? I'm totally confused as to what you mean by this? Do you mean the sudden loud sound? That was one was because I was moving my microphone to more easily get to my keyboard.

[crushkill]

great video! thanks for sharing... cant wait to play the final release

[superstrakflikflak]

Hello ulillillia,

Apologies if you mentioned this somewhere before, but can I download your cool game somewhere? I would love to play it. It reminds me a lot of Sonic 3.

[ulillillia]

I only have the old, flawed 2.4 version available. The 3.x version is still at the beginning phases of development and will be several months before it is finished. At the moment, technically by the definition of a game, it's not a game at this point.

[sweepstakes]

Great video. I'm wondering, though - you say the clouds are slowing the rendering down. Would it be faster if you had, say, 3 to 5 cloud layers, each with many clouds but a single shared alpha setting (like a big bitmap instead of many small sprites), instead of hundreds of individual cloud sprites all with different alphas? Anyway, just a thought, keep up the good work.

[ulillillia]

The biggest problem isn't the fake clouds (~340 draws; keyword: fake) - the ground (~600 (quality 10)), text (~400) and landscape (~10,000 when done, ~50 here; based on 1440x900 resolution, as I had in the video) have a much bigger impact. Instead, it's the lack of a drawing function faster than AlphaBlend (3600 draws/frame max). My 2.4 version has something 200 times faster (~800,000 draws/frame). The final clouds will use significantly fewer draws (~150), 40% of the fake ones.

[smaptey1]

You sound like a young Carl Sagan

[froomeh]

Your game is looking nice now, and your method of editing is pretty good. I really liked the darkened lake effect.

As I suggested in the last video though, I would definitely recommend a random method. You could quite easily put a function in where you enter "[length],[grad],[amp]" and it generates [number], trending with [grad] and offset with [amp].ahead of you. This way you could generate a nearly-flat area by 100,0,2. If you wanted to generate a straight slope, 5,1,0. Would save some time.

[ulillillia]

And as stated in the previous video, I'd like full control over everything. Also, a straight vertical slope is impossible - what's the tangent of 90°. The X spacing is based on 60 pixels. The steepest slope is 80°. "60*tan(80)" gives the Y change needed. Vertical slopes can be still be done, a different method is needed for that though. The game is still in very early development so there's plenty of room for enhancements and once I find that function 200x faster, I can add many decals.

[gwogwo123123]

Very Interesting. Thank You.

[ohnoitsryan]

So who's your target audience for you games?

Looks like a straight to Java title then to some site that gets 4 visitors a day whom have clicked there by accident.

[ulillillia]

For the most part, pretty much anyone. I keep the violence and adult content out. I don't know Java. I only know C, HTML, SHTML, and CSS, the latter for webpages.

[ecksyz]

"Sorry, microphone decided to go down."

"Thanks to gravity."

Hahaha. Great work so far, I'm impressed. Can't wait to see the finished product.

[ulillillia]

I found that "Sorry, my microphone decided to go down, thanks to gravity" part funny myself. I've got a few problems to resolve at the moment, some mentioned in this video, a few others were not. The big ones were included, but minor ones such as one with keyboard input are not. I know the fix for that, I just haven't gotten around to it, but it's not important at the moment. It will be when I add in the character and main movement.

[tooplex]

A few questions here

1)What do you use to record your desktop?

2)How did you manage to drop your microphone?

3)What else do you do in your spare time except code this game? Any secret projects in the works.

Cool updates. Hope you enjoy what your currently doing.

[ulillillia]

1 - Virtual Dub, the reason I was able to get this video as GameBridge stopped working.

2 - It's in a screwy, unlevel spot (for best reception) and I pressed too hard on the flexible surface and the slope got too great. The center of gravity shifted too much and it then fell.

3 - I watch TV (often muting ads) while working on the terrain, but, lately, I've been working on my story (instead of playing SMB2). I'm on scene 13 as the time I posted this and at least it's productive progress.

[sicmunkychamber]

Nice to see more updates on how your game is going. Looks like you're making good progress. Also, I just lost The Game.

[ulillillia]

"The Game"? I'm confused. Are you referring to the old 2.4 version?

[froomeh]

The Game is a silly game where the aim of the game is to forget that you're playing it for as long as possible. If you think of The Game, you lose, and must announce your loss. It can be amusing in real life, but online the "must announce" rule causes a lot of spam.

[Blooenterprise]

Why are you using Gamestudio?

Are you new to programming?

[ulillillia]

The 2.4 version used Gamestudio (untouched for 19+ months), but the 3.0 version, the one shown here, does not. I can program pretty much any effect using my own functions (except robots as I don't see how that's possible), but, when it comes to functions not of my own, like AlphaBlend, then that's where I'm at a loss. While I can change image data (very slowly), I otherwise can't get it on screen without using functions not of my own creations.

[JackiePaquito]

great!