Author Topic: New thing I am making. (Read 30083 times)

Shockwave · « **Reply #20 on:** July 09, 2007 »

Mmm. Cheers.

Mel actually said that the "wobbler" made it difficult to focus on one part of the intro so perhaps I need to think of some other way of making the text.

Perhaps a zooming text typer or summat.
In any case I'll see how the vertical scroll looks before I make a decision about it.

ninogenio · « **Reply #21 on:** July 09, 2007 »

i really like the way you work!

it really helps me to understand the thought process of making a demo peice by peice k+, i would stick with the vertical scroll as i think it will look much better when its finished.

slippy · « **Reply #22 on:** July 09, 2007 »

... or some cool typewriter text fx (zoom out / rotate / alpha fade aso.) instead of a scroller ... just a thought

nevermind m8

Jim · « **Reply #23 on:** July 09, 2007 »

Kinky! I like it. I think if the centre scolly thing is semi-transparent then it won't distract from the other fx.

Jim

Shockwave · « **Reply #24 on:** July 10, 2007 »

Yes, there are things to try out now. I'm in two minds about the scroll / text writer. I will have to try both!

Tonight I will work on optimising it (and making it look more pretty).

Also Stonemonkey sent me a nice code snippet that I think I'll use

Shockwave · « **Reply #25 on:** July 10, 2007 »

Funny thing is that I found my mind wandering onto this at times today while I was in work.
I try and shut my eyes sometimes (not when I am driving!) and try to visualise what the effect would look like, anyway I came home full of ideas and after I posted the above I went to sleep on the chair!

Hehe.

Anyway, there is a small update, the wobbler is disabled for now, however I have added something that I was sent by Stonemonkey, it is a nice little routine to add a sort of glow to the chess board, it works by brightening the whole buffer.

Unfortunately it uses MMX instructions so the final version will not have this nice glow if your processor does not supporet mmx.. for now the example doesn't check if your processor supports mmx. Would be interested to see what happens when some cpu without mmx tries to run this program

Oh, and most of the changes are under the hood. Chessboard drawing is now about 35% faster as anticipated, speed gain has been used on the brighten routine. Also I tweaked the colours a little bit.

taj · « **Reply #26 on:** July 10, 2007 »

That is beautiful! I preferred the earlier one where intensity of colours varied less but nonthless its great - best chessboards I have seen. Imagine this with the ambient occlusion spheres I did today Shockie! Would be awesome.

Chris

benny! · « **Reply #27 on:** July 11, 2007 »

Yeah .. really shiny now. Like it !!!

Shockwave · « **Reply #28 on:** July 11, 2007 »

Even though I probably only spent about 45 minutes on this today, it is dramatically changed now.

I decided that I did not like the resolution, it needed to be in 800 * 600 so that more colours could be displayed.

Of course, this means drawing more pixels so I added margins to the screen, these improve the look and also decrease the amount of pixels I need to draw in the triangle routine (the margins are taken care of with a little bit of asm for speed).

It also needed to do more so it rotates now.

For me, I am almost happy with the background effect, maybe I will tweak colours a bit, but the time to move onto the next part is almost here.

Next I will remove unwanted routines (the wobbler), tidy up the code and check to make sure it is all running as fast as possible, after this is done I need to think about the text routine (I already know I am making a zoom text writer).

So, exe for tonight attached to the zip, source will be posted tomorrow when it is cleaned up and then I will move onto the text writer

ninogenio · « **Reply #29 on:** July 11, 2007 »

shockwave you truly are the king of software pixel plotting/design that is stunning mate!!

probably the best i have seen from you yet and trust me it would have to be good to be up there k+

Stonemonkey · « **Reply #30 on:** July 11, 2007 »

Nice one Nick, looking pretty cool.

Shockwave · « **Reply #31 on:** July 11, 2007 »

Cheers Fryer, your code snippet makes this look nicer than it would be otherwise

Honestly Nino, you are too kind but thank you for the Karma

I always go through the same process whe I make something, I just thought it would be cool to post the progress as it goes along

In my honest opinion (and I mean this) there is only one production I have ever written that I am satisfied with.

THIS ONE And it all came together by accident. I have been trying to equal it ever since

ninogenio · « **Reply #32 on:** July 11, 2007 »

i love all the stuff you do and i try to learn your code completely so i can understand how stuff works but for me i have never seen a software effect quite match this, and coming from a coding point of view i can appreciate what goes into it

Shockwave · « **Reply #33 on:** July 13, 2007 »

Tonight I hope to code a routine that will let me draw a letter anywhere in the screen, which is simple but I want to be able to add a zoom factor, the ultimate aim tonight will be to have a zooming textwriter, this means that the letters must be scaled.

Traditionally it would have been pre-calculated but this time it is going to be done in real time.

I want to be able to provide the text routine with some interpolation value and the routine to automatically center the letter ie. if the letter is scaled to 16 * 16 from an original 32 * 32 image, the letter should be drawn with an offset of;

(32 - 16) / 2 = 8

This is quite important as it will give a better feel to the typer and make the letters easier to center.

Letters will be generated from a "floating source", some invisible point that moves around the screen and they will drift into place, zooming as they go.

The final impression will be of text that zooms into the screen from the distance.

So, probably a few hours work there for me, I will get into my IDE now and post back later

Hopefully with a working zoom text routine and typer.

Also I will tidy things up a little tonight if there is time.

slippy · « **Reply #34 on:** July 13, 2007 »

sounds great ... looking forward to see your stuff m8

Cheers,
SLiPPY

Shockwave · « **Reply #35 on:** July 13, 2007 »

Well, I've finished coding for the evening. I have a nice idea that I think will make this look a lot better, there is going to be a dynamic border effect, the borders will move around the chessfield leaving the centre static.. It's kind of hard to explain it but I can see it in my head.

Anyway, the zoom text was completed successfully and I made a text writer to zoom the letters in from the distance.

I am not sure about the effect I added to the writing, also I am not sure that there is enough oomph in my code to make this resolution possible on most computers, therefore if anyone gets a slow speed and reports it I'll have to drop the res to 640 X 480

Anyhow, here is the current exe

Stonemonkey · « **Reply #36 on:** July 13, 2007 »

Works well here, I really like the scaling but I'm not so sure I like the flicking between the black and white as the letters rotate around each other.

Shockwave · « **Reply #37 on:** July 13, 2007 »

Yep, I'm not sure I like that flicker effect either. I'll probably change it in the end.

Stonemonkey · « **Reply #38 on:** July 13, 2007 »

what about fading them between black and white so that at the point they cross they're both grey? or always have white on top?

slippy · « **Reply #39 on:** July 13, 2007 »

looks pretty cool - really like those oldskool text writer stuff ...

just one idea - think it'll look even cooler, when the zoomed-in character will fade from black to white - the nearer it is, the brighter it'll become ... so it would feel more "3D" ... hope you know what I mean ...