Dark Bit Factory & Gravity

GENERAL => Projects => Topic started by: syn9 on June 20, 2009

Title: Strand Complex Zero
Post by: syn9 on June 20, 2009

no sound. and doesnt change scenes. just something pretty to look at XD. hope you enjoy. please let me know if you have any problems running it.

(http://syn9.thingie.net/download/strand7.jpg)

http://syn9.thingie.net/download/strand_complex_zero.zip

Title: Re: Strand Complex Zero
Post by: Shockwave on June 20, 2009

Very slick.

I love the colours, the ribons look excellent.. Why not add a tune and release it? :)

Title: Re: Strand Complex Zero
Post by: Clyde on June 20, 2009

thats brilliant Syn9 mate; it defo deserves a tune and interacting with a drum sound; perhaps Bass or FMod, as it teases at that at the mo.

Title: Re: Strand Complex Zero
Post by: stormbringer on June 20, 2009

really impressive visuals here!!! congratulations

I do however have some comments about the size of the prod... it's just too huge! You can improve a lot by:

1) using a 256 colors texture (just convert the file bg0.tga to paletted mode, it would look just as good, I just tried that under Photoshop, no quality loss)

2) maybe you could reduce the resolution of the textures by a factor of 2 in each dimension, you will have a slight loss of quality, but you can use a bilinear filtering and combined with the motion, your eyes will be fooled

3) about Freetype.... I used it everyday and I do not understand why your freetype6.dll is so huge!! freetype is really made to be used for small portable devices... maybe you should check how you compile your DLL.. is it in Debug mode?

4) are you planning to use the whole set of characters in the fonts included in the prod here? if not you can just extract bezier shapes of the glyphs you are interested in and just render these. It will save some precious space... This also applies if you do not need all the info stored in the font files.. FreeType has nice APIs to do this

5) maybe a single file version?? freetype can be easily embedded in your .exe just as the fonts (freetype can load from memory, not only files)

6) as other said, add a cool tune and release it. It kicks ass, seriously

Title: Re: Strand Complex Zero
Post by: syn9 on June 21, 2009

thanks for the feedback guys. i'd like to include the dlls and resource files into the exe, but i have no idea how

Title: Re: Strand Complex Zero
Post by: benny! on June 21, 2009

Great production:

+ The design/colors are very goodlooking
+ Ribbons and movement is smooth
+ Distortion effect looks good too
+ Add some tune and sync distortion to it (like Clyde dude said)

Good work, mate!

Title: Re: Strand Complex Zero
Post by: stormbringer on June 21, 2009

@syn9: here is an explanation on how to use your TGA files as arrays of bytes directly in your C/C++ source code (I assume you code using these laguages):

http://www.dbfinteractive.com/forum/index.php?topic=3258.msg43572

regarding FreeType, go to www.freetype.org, it's all there. Maybe I should write a tutorial about this great 100% FREE lib..

Title: Re: Strand Complex Zero
Post by: syn9 on June 21, 2009

thanks for the link. i can just make a texture for the text that way i dont need to include the freetype code. seeing as how there is only a tiny bit of text

Title: Re: Strand Complex Zero
Post by: hellfire on June 21, 2009

A really neat screen!

Quote

the size of the prod... it's just too huge!

Or you're just too oldschool  ;)

If the file-size is of any concern, the two textures can be generated from a few lines of code.

Title: Re: Strand Complex Zero
Post by: ferris on June 23, 2009

It was a very nice effect :)

But needs glow and more effects and music :D

Title: Re: Strand Complex Zero
Post by: Pixel_Outlaw on June 28, 2009

Very very cool1
The screen shot doesn't do it justice.