If Quake 2 was 2D

[AntonioR]

Using Eclipse I managed to compile and run the game on Ubuntu/Linux inside VirtualBox.
I have little experience using Eclipse, virtual machines and not to mention Linux, but it works more or less:

- I can't load shaders and make FBOs, but that is probably because in VirtualBox I can only get OpenGL 2.1.
- FMOD doesn't work in the game and even the examples provided with the API don't work. It plays a sound for only one frame and turns it off. It could be a problem with the library, the way I installed the library, or the audio drivers in VirtualBox.
- Game crashes randomly.

[LedZep]

AntonioR,

I happen to have a well-underway, halted Java game engine that uses OpenGL + JBox2d (direct Box2D port for java). Called it Slayertech, then Slayrtech (to avoid Kerry King suing us ) and now just JPhysGear. Me and a bunch of friends were actually gonna make a game called Elemental Fury with it. Long story, sad story; we ended up splitting and didn't finish it. I now have the engine, my friend has the assets. Funny thing is: one of the IndieGoGo admins kept mailing us after we halted saying that it's a shame and that he really wanted to see the game being done. So apparently physics platformers are at least a bit demanded out there.

Anyways, about Box2D: do you handle (n>5)-gons? I'm sure you already found that Box can't handle hexagons or greater, concaves, etc. If you want those, you'd need to triangulate or better, pentangulate (Bayazit decomposition method?), break it up into fixtures per body. I'm curious about how you're gonna/did approach that. Also, do you keep your units large (i.e. to pixel dimensions) or do you have a virtual metric system? Apparently Box2D gets jittery with large unit amounts.

Nice work, btw.

[AntonioR]

AntonioR,

I happen to have a well-underway, halted Java game engine that uses OpenGL + JBox2d (direct Box2D port for java). Called it Slayertech, then Slayrtech (to avoid Kerry King suing us ) and now just JPhysGear. Me and a bunch of friends were actually gonna make a game called Elemental Fury with it. Long story, sad story; we ended up splitting and didn't finish it. I now have the engine, my friend has the assets. Funny thing is: one of the IndieGoGo admins kept mailing us after we halted saying that it's a shame and that he really wanted to see the game being done. So apparently physics platformers are at least a bit demanded out there.

Anyways, about Box2D: do you handle (n>5)-gons? I'm sure you already found that Box can't handle hexagons or greater, concaves, etc. If you want those, you'd need to triangulate or better, pentangulate (Bayazit decomposition method?), break it up into fixtures per body. I'm curious about how you're gonna/did approach that. Also, do you keep your units large (i.e. to pixel dimensions) or do you have a virtual metric system? Apparently Box2D gets jittery with large unit amounts.

Nice work, btw.

Hi. Not sure about Java, but in C++ version of Box2D convex polygons can have up to 8 vertices by default. You can however increase that number in the source code, in C++ it's maxPolygonVertices in b2Settings.h. I personally try to stick to the 8 vertices limit, and I use Poly2Tri library to triangulate the polygon if I need to
http://i.imgur.com/OYheXSo.gifv. Triangulation often makes triangles with sharp angles which can cause problems for Box2D collision handling, so I try to avoid it.

Speaking of object size, I try to keep things realistic as possible. Player is the size of a normal human, so 1.8-2 meters tall. On screen he is around 80 pixels tall, that means I use a conversion where 40 pixels on screen is 1 meter in Box2D world. So, whenever I create new objects in Box2D world or get data from it I need to convert the values; pixels to meters, or meters to pixels by this factor. In the manual it says "Box2D has been tuned to work well with moving shapes between 0.1 and 10 meters. So this means objects between soup cans and buses in size should work well. Static shapes may be up to 50 meters
long without trouble." I may eventually increase the size of the player in the Box2D world because individual body parts are very close to that 0.1 meter limit. Maybe make him 3 meters tall, and use something like 1:30 ratio. I will try to test it more.


Speaking of Box2D, I also use it for my new dynamic 2D light system. Here is a video showing it in action. You can find the technical details on my blog

http://antonior-software.blogspot.hr/2015/12/dynamic-2d-light-and-shadows.html

<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/b1xP75VsOc8/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b1xP75VsOc8"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/b1xP75VsOc8" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/b1xP75VsOc8</a>

[LedZep]

Speaking of object size, I try to keep things realistic as possible. Player is the size of a normal human, so 1.8-2 meters tall. On screen he is around 80 pixels tall, that means I use a conversion where 40 pixels on screen is 1 meter in Box2D world. So, whenever I create new objects in Box2D world or get data from it I need to convert the values; pixels to meters, or meters to pixels by this factor. In the manual it says "Box2D has been tuned to work well with moving shapes between 0.1 and 10 meters. So this means objects between soup cans and buses in size should work well. Static shapes may be up to 50 meters
long without trouble." I may eventually increase the size of the player in the Box2D world because individual body parts are very close to that 0.1 meter limit. Maybe make him 3 meters tall, and use something like 1:30 ratio. I will try to test it more.

Heh, that's exactly the kind of thing I had going. My meter was 16 px, but same difference. As for triangulation, yeah, the acutes tend to make things jump out of whack; especially if they shear something right with that side. But try to look into the Bayazit decomposing algorithm - those concave pentagon angles would be way less sharper than triangles for sure.

Nice d-lights!

[quakeulf]

That is awesome!

Sad how this video has less than 1000 views for all that work he put in. 5 seconds of youtube tits yields more views than a billion hours of coding does. 

I know, right. It's a shame. 

[AntonioR]

It's been a while since I posted any updates. I completely lost motivation and haven't made any progress lately. Last thing I worked on was a new particle system and I stopped working on it in March. I finally managed to force myself to work on it a bit and made a video showing the particle system itself:

<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/c9Pwl61xkPM/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c9Pwl61xkPM"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/c9Pwl61xkPM" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/c9Pwl61xkPM</a>

It is not fun when you have to force yourself to do something. I don't have any big fancy features to add to the engine except some form of AI, so the next update, when or if it comes, will probably be something actually playable. Probably one test map showing of enemy AI.

[quadz]

It's been a while since I posted any updates. I completely lost motivation and haven't made any progress lately. Last thing I worked on was a new particle system and I stopped working on it in March. I finally managed to force myself to work on it a bit and made a video showing the particle system itself:

Really nice!

How are you implementing the 'flashes' at the moment the fireworks explode? (Is it an effect that's separate from the particle system?)

P.S. have you tried your hand at https://www.shadertoy.com/ ? From the looks of your particle video, seems like you could make some fun shaders.



Regards,

quadz

[AntonioR]

It's been a while since I posted any updates. I completely lost motivation and haven't made any progress lately. Last thing I worked on was a new particle system and I stopped working on it in March. I finally managed to force myself to work on it a bit and made a video showing the particle system itself:

Really nice!

How are you implementing the 'flashes' at the moment the fireworks explode? (Is it an effect that's separate from the particle system?)

P.S. have you tried your hand at https://www.shadertoy.com/ ? From the looks of your particle video, seems like you could make some fun shaders.

Regards,
quadz

Thanks for the reply. The particle effects can be made of several emitters. In this example the flash is actually just a separate particle emitter that creates only one big particle that lasts for just a moment. Emitters and particles can also have a light object attached to them, so I could use that to create a flash, but since the background is empty in this example you wouldn't see it.

I heard about shadertoy, but I am not sure what it has to do with this. I am not using shaders for this, these are all just small textured quads, very basic, it doesn't work via shaders.

[quadz]

I heard about shadertoy, but I am not sure what it has to do with this. I am not using shaders for this, these are all just small textured quads, very basic, it doesn't work via shaders.

Right, I know they're different approaches.

It was based on the artistic stylings of your particle video, that I was reminded of some things people do in shadertoy.

E.g.

ShaderToy: Particle Fireworks

ShaderToy: Magic Particles Multi-Pass

ShaderToy: Synaptic

ShaderToy: Camera Obsession #1

ShaderToy: Firework Show

ShaderToy: Particle Tracing

etc.

[AntonioR]

Just to remind a random reader this project is still not dead...

I added a simple animation frame interpolation, with basically single line of code, to make the animations smoother:

current_angle = last_frame_angle  + (time_elapsed_since_last_frame/frame_time)*(next_frame_angle-last_frame_angle)

Left is old animation, right is with interpolation, slowed down.



I'm using the Bionic Commando dude here, and not the Quake guy, because the skeleton is a bit higher resolution.

[AntonioR]

It's been 4 years since the last post and almost 5 years since the last demo, but here it is. This video shows big update in destructible physics. I will spare you the details and let the weapons and destruction speak for themselves.

<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZugWhTfs7vE/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZugWhTfs7vE"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZugWhTfs7vE" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/ZugWhTfs7vE</a>

If you want you can download it on my blog or ModDB:

https://antonior-software.blogspot.com
https://www.moddb.com/engines/broken-mug-engine/downloads/tech-demo-destructible-2d-terrain-and-objects

[0rbisson]

That's so cool. Nice job

[AntonioR]

Here is something you have never seen before; Captain Quake, a mix of Quake 2 and Claw, the ultimate 1997 game that never was.

<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Xgr8R7aC5Rw/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Xgr8R7aC5Rw"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Xgr8R7aC5Rw" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/Xgr8R7aC5Rw</a>

This is a little project mixing Claw and Quake 2 with a bit of Metal Slug on top. It was supposed to be quickly finished in summer 2019 and has been sitting on my drive for 2 years. It is a very short demo, but it is running on my own Broken Mug Engine written in C++ and using SDL 2, OpenGL, Box2D, FMOD and some other libraries.

The idea was to test how fast I can prototype a simple game in my game engine and to spark my interest in this hobby again, unfortunately it didn't end as planned and I am releasing it as-is and unfinished 2 years later. All maps, characters, animations and particle effects are made using the built-in editor and everything is highly customizable using external XML files.

You can download the playable demo from the links in the video description and look around if you wish. Don't expect anything more than you see in the video.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the textures and sounds I borrowed from other games. This is just a hobby project, not commercial.