Dark Bit Factory & Gravity
GENERAL => General chat => Topic started by: TinDragon on July 23, 2009
-
While looking over my coding archives I came across several projects that I started but for one reason or another never finished and wish that I had. Of all the little games, demo effects and apps that I have made as well as the ones that I never finish the one that each time I look at it I wish I had is my giana sisters remake in blitzbasic (pre-blitz3d era), I spent many hours on that project which did include playing the amiga and atari ST versions alot :D
I actually got fairly far in some respects, while I had for the most part ripped the gfx from the 16bit versions and rescaled and touched up a few so that I had something to use in game, the game was playable, has several levels mapped out. Features enemy's, collectables and even some of the bonus blocks. It lacked a little something in the movement as I had no momentum and you couldn't headbash blocks to break them at the point I stopped work on it but at the time I was doing very well. I am not sure why I stopped work on it, probably to code my entries to the 2003 retro remakes comp, but for some reason I never went back to it.
Now when I look at the code I can hardly believe that I even wrote it, there's hardly any useful comments and I didnt have a single function/procedure in the entire code, everything is done with gosubs. It's such a mess that I would be much better off starting again from scratch if I decided to give it another go, but this was one of my very early coded games and its cool to see how much my coding standard has improved over the years, some of which is thanks to people on here and the old ezboard site from wayback when :D
Any of you have a project like this were you started but never finished and wish you had?
Oh and here's a screenie from the giana game, maybe 1day i will have another go at it ;D
-
That looks like a really nice Giana Sisters remake there Jon.
It's a cool topic too, I have been affected by this problem myself many times, before DBF started I'd often work on routines to do all kinds of things, I'd have over ambitious ideas for something and they never came to fruition.
The advent of this forum kind of solved the problem for me though because everything I work on that comes to the end of its useful life(when I realise that I dont have the skill to conclude it, or that it is not as cool as I thought, or even when I lose interest in it), invariably all that source ends up on this forum, it's been so useful for me too.
Sometimes I might have another idea and realise that I could reuse something I had partly done and put on the forum so I am forever nipping on here and pinching bits of my own programs so I can argue that nothing I ever do is finished :)
The worst ones that really stick in my throat are collaberations between other coders.
I've never had much success on joint productions, the only one that I ever finished (as far as I can remember) was a little intro I made with Ferris or Blitz Amateue (cant remember who it was, sorry!). I made a plotball and he made a vector scroll, I dont have a copy of that any more.
The most notable failures were:
The forever doomed RPG project on the Yabasic forums (I made an engine for it but nobody completed it, this was in development for years!).
Dark Bit Factory Book Of Visions, A colaberation between me, Stonemonkey, Wham and Roly. This was sad because it actually was looking really promising, It was using stonemonkeys engine, a few effects by me, music by Roly and gfx by Wham... It began well but the project ran out of steam and just ground to a halt.
Again I don't have any of the stuff for this project any more.
-
Yeah this is just a fact of life when you program. I've been working on an interpreter for a toy language for over a year, I still go back to it from time to time. I have completed a Brainfuck interpreter in around 140 bytes. That gave me a little break away from the bigger project and made me feel like I had made some progress.
I've also got a raytracer on the back-burner it's got reflections and texture mapping but I never did manage to get my head around the maths for refraction. So I left that in a semi work-in-progress state.
But my biggest "wish I had done that" was a physics engine with swept collisions and proper rigid body dynamics. Only limited glitchy success was ever made there. I do still go back to it from time to time but my ambitions are no longer as high as they once were. Still as Shockwave said these experiments have given me a wealth of code that is applicable to many common problems.
-
The worst ones that really stick in my throat are collaberations between other coders.
Heh, must be the opposite with me. Me and loopy's colab managed (against all odds) to win us our only 1st place!
The most notable failures were:
The forever doomed RPG project on the Yabasic forums (I made an engine for it but nobody completed it, this was in development for years!).
Most notable failure? Bull and shit. That was actually the first bit of code I ever understood (thanks in part to your in-depth commenting on the engine). For about 2 years after find that, I worked on and off on it as my skills improved, and (with the help of the yabasic regulars) managed to half-finish the thing before I moved onto Blitz. I had about 30 different tiles, 3 NPC's, a couple of different dungeons and buildings, weapons and spells, a HUD, speach engine, the basics of the a turn-based combat engine AND an archery minigame. As far as I'm concerned, everything I learnt over that two year period was in part from what I learnt studying your engine, and I question if I would have ever gotten so far without it.
Everything I have ever released since is therefore in some way a product of that engine.
-
Everything I have ever released since is therefore in some way a product of that engine.
So Nick's responsible for...
Me and loopy's colab managed (against all odds) to win us our only 1st place!
-
Everything I have ever released since is therefore in some way a product of that engine.
So Nick's responsible for...
Me and loopy's colab managed (against all odds) to win us our only 1st place!
In that case the honour is all mine.
Seriously though Slinks I hadnt realised that that unfinished thing had benefitted you so much! I am quote happy about that.
-
I am quote happy about that.
I'm quote happy too!
I have a software engine much like hezads' on this forum that I really want to get to some time, and an rts game.
-
Heh, I just found your old engine: http://members.iinet.net.au/~jimshaw/Yabasic/yabres/games/shockwave/rpg.txt
Hopefully I'll be able to post up my version of the code later (I went back to the yabasic-yuku thing, but the thread appears to stop halfway.) I should have a backup on the old family computer (with a bit of luck!).
Also on my almost never-ending list of unfinished projects, there is;
Gir's Candy Quest
A game featuring Gir, the robot side-kick from the TV show Invader Zim. Had an alpha demo going, most of the sprite work done and a few really cool effects. Then a computer meltdown finally killed it. All I have left is one animated gif.
Un-named dungeon crawler/top-down shooter
I got a girlfriend, and my coding time dropped significantly :) still have the code knocking about, might be able to do somethign with it.
Random People Killer
A minamalistic GTA clone for yabasic. Got a silly little demo up and running, then moved to Blitz
-
Hopefully I'll be able to post up my version of the code later (I went back to the yabasic-yuku thing, but the thread appears to stop halfway.) I should have a backup on the old family computer (with a bit of luck!).
I've attached a version here.
I also attached a version of my ray tracer, I have alot of the folks on this forum to thank for it, I've ripped apart all the raytracers on this forum to see how they work, so thanks to Voltage, StoneMonkey and of course Ferris. There is no end of sites out there that will show you the equations you need for ray tracing but unless you can read maths they really aint that helpful. You guys filled in the parts I couldn't figure out.
-
I am grinning from ear to ear.
Thanks for uploading those programs Rain Storm :) I had never seen your ray tracer, I think it looks great!
As for the RPG, well, I had no idea that someone had actually gotten quite far along in making a game with it.
The amount of work you must have put into this is considerable slinks :) It's really nicely presented too.
-
Uggh, just looking back on that source code gives me a headache, what a mess! I'm so glad I learnt to start cleaning my code up a bit and commenting a little better -.-
Far too ambitious for a first project, but still, I tried.
-
You got further with that RPG than anyone else did :)
-
@Jon, Good looking Giana Sisters game :)
I can surely relate to projects not getting done. I have a good number of halfway finished games. A ton of demo related effects never used and lots of other code that never got finished. My problem is probably a matter of loosing interest in something once I get it working, then wanting to make something else and so I keep starting new projects all the time. I do not have anything specific that I regret never completing, but at times I do think about various old projects and I never really delete anything, so its not like its totally lost, I could come back to the projects at some point, should the interest resurface.
-
Interesting thread.
Damn, I guess everyone has ambitous projects halfly finished on
their harddiscs. I have seen so many threads on various coder
forums which cool projects. They all started highly motivated but
only 1% (or so) were finished.
From my experience, the first 80% of your projects are relatively
easy. The last 20% are the hardest of a project.
I will browse my HD and check what I can post here ...
-
Those of you who remember my gfx demo adventures with Blitz Basic, may remember a series I had started called Dimensions. I had started soon after the sequel, a third one. Now who wants me to continue it, as I wish I had done! ;)
-
Two projects I wish I finished:
- The Writer 3.0 : a cross-platform noter with human typing feature and sid/mod/xm music support.
- EvilEngine : a novel 3D engine ... read more http://users.telenet.be/freedom.systems/snippets/evilengine.txt (http://users.telenet.be/freedom.systems/snippets/evilengine.txt)
The Writer 3.0 is like 90% finished ... hmmz ... maybe if I have some time left this month, I might pick it up again :)
Maybe I could put it on sourceforge/google-code/savannah and we could see it as the first open-source demo project.
I often wonder why this is not done more often?
-
...
The Writer 3.0 is like 90% finished ... hmmz ... maybe if I have some time left this month, I might pick it up again :)
Maybe I could put it on sourceforge/google-code/savannah and we could see it as the first open-source demo project.
I often wonder why this is not done more often?
Yeah, show it to the world.
-
Demos need more exposure. .... That's why the scene is dead ;)
-
Have been trawling my code archives and found alot of effects done with various versions of vector engine code from my blitz2d days, and a couple from a version of the ttdvectorlib. Thought I would post up some shots, might try turning them into something at some point but some shots for now.
1st up is a Vector cityscape, I wasnt happy with this at the time but it was actually pretty good. (pre-vectorlib days)
2nd is me trying to push the borders of software rendering in blitz with a 12K poly object with maths based directional lighting.
3rd is a nice big glenz cube.
4th is one of those inside a torus spinning around things, was going to be part of a demo with no.5
5th a nice spinning double vector checkerboard, this effect I actually had 2 versions of, the second has a realtime light float in across the board lighting it in a small radius but it was never finished :(
Hope they maybe inspire some stuff, there's a few of my old effects I wouldnt mind bringing back :)
-
Screenies are looking awesome. Put them in a row/sequence and you
have a great oldschool dentro.
Personally I favor cube cities (screenshot 1) and those endless dungeon
chessboards (screenshot 5). Hope to see more stuff by you done !!!
-
Nice collection of effect shots there Jon. I do seem to remember seeing all of them in motion except the second, not sure I saw that one before. I am fairly certain that I have a good number of unused effects in my archieves. I should one day restore my backup folders and take a ride through the past :)
-
The second shot looks really great, but I dont remember seeing any of these things released by you, it would be great to see them all in action :)
-
The biggest problem with trying to combine them together is the fact that there 3 seperate engines so it wouldnt be all that easy to get them all together. There also all coded in blitz3d using the 2d commands and software rendered so some need some optimizing and tweening code or they will be all over the shop on various hardware.
I think zawran is the only person who would have seen exe versions of the effects but most were unoptimized or crude tests of the ideas. I would feel much happier trying to recreate the feel of the effects in one of my newer engines than trying to get them going in the old b2d stuff, but they would lose the software rendering side for polydrawing then :D
-
I actualy realize that some of the forum members like Benny probably have never seen any of my old blitz demos/intro's as there are not any hosted anywhere that I know of and most were from before this version of the forum exsisted. Perhaps I should dig them out and post then up for people to view, most have a nice oldskool vibe. Mind I dont know if all the old DBF stuff is up anywhere or zawrans stuff, for a while we had alot of stuff between us :)
-
It looks like I haven't gotten around to delete these 24 demos/intros yet: http://zac-interactive.dk/demos/ (http://zac-interactive.dk/demos/) No idea if they work on Vista/Win7, but they are there if anyone fancy a look.
I have restored my blitzplus code folder from my backup hdd, so I will be taking a look through the files and see if there are any unused effects worth showing.
-
Well of those intros/demos you linked they all seem to work fine under vista apart from the copper one which dont show the scroller for some reason hehe, you made alot more intros than me or should I say you made alot more worth releasing for others to see :D
Ypu should put up a webpage for them there still cool oldskool style stuff imho.
-
I managed to fix the copper demo so that it now shows the copper scroller as it should. For some reason the credit screen and effects does not work, and I have no idea whats wrong. Its been a very long time since I last used blitzplus, I cannot remember how everything works :(
I will consider making a webpage with the demos/intros and screenshots. I used to have one, and I think I might have backed it up as well, so I will take a look to see if the html code files are still to be found. If I find it, I might compile some of the unused effects and upload those as well since I am looking through all that old stuff anyways.
-
That would be great Zawran.
I am halfway through watching your old demos right now and I am enjoying the nostalgia.
-
@zawranSounds like a plan. :kewl:
The only other one I had a real problem with was retroized which has a effect that again isnt drawn but everything else seems to work, a couple seem slower than i recall them but all the vectorized demos run nice. For anyone whos trying to watch them, some require the spacebar to move on, some use esc key and some move on on there own to the next effect, it can be alittle confusing at first cos you will hit esc and the demo end ;D
I seem to have most of my old intro/demo files but a couple seem to lack the source code :(
I will have a look at see if I can squish them down to decent sizes and maybe make an archive post in the showcase with them all listed with some small screenies if thats ok with shockwave, since i dont have any hosting atm.
Oh and I have started work on getting some of those effects going in bmax, so hopefully I can get a nice intro or two out of some of them, tho hopefully with more style than some of my old stuff.
-
I actualy realize that some of the forum members like Benny probably have never seen any of my old blitz demos/intro's ...
Yeah, that would be indeed cool.
-
I have uploaded all the completed demos/intros I have found so far. And they are all available on my blog page where I have made page for the demos.
http://zac-interactive.dk/blog/?page_id=95 (http://zac-interactive.dk/blog/?page_id=95)
I hope all the links are correct, I am too tired to verify everything right now, but I am 95% sure they are ok. I will make another page for unfinished/unreleased stuff and start compiling a collection which I will upload as I find and collect them.
-
The one I like the most is Wired.
Having said that, I was always surprised at how fast your library was in blitz, it's no mean feat in a language as restricted as this.
-
Yeah wired is a cool intro, had a real oldskool 16bit feel to it.
Getting the speed in blitz was never easy, blitz+ had the advantage of locked pixels and I used towards the end the locked pixels lib someone made for b3d tho it was never quite as fast as in blitz+. I think that the locked pixels thing might be what breaks some of the demos on certain hardware as the more modern cards/drivers are less tolerant. When 1st trying out freebasic with tinyptc I was amazed at the difference that made to some of the old code and it was pretty easy to adapt to.