Saturday, January 26, 2008

Tree Generator Started

On top of all of my other projects (a whopping 2!), I recently started working on a random tree generator tool, which will hopefully be standalone and export trees ready to use with Unity's terrain engine. My first not-so-hot tree was generated today:


More to come! (Hopefully)

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Off Roadin' Alpha download available

It's here, what you've all been waiting for...

Now features:
- Dynamic Cloud generation and atmosphere simulator (thanks especially to Alpha-Loup, who designed the system)
- Basic engine sounds
- Many other small features and improvements
Enjoy,  and feel free to leave constructive criticism/give me money. (Please?)

Thanks,
Danny L.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Off Roadin' Alpha available *soon*

NOTE: Alpha now available. See above post.

Off Roadin' currently features:
- Interactive AI car control systems
- Dirt trail particle systems
- Functional menus
- Realistic physics - uses PhysX engine
- FPS counter
- Terrain made with Unity 3d terrain engine
- And much more!
Soon to come:
- Checkpoints
- Lap counters
- Graphical improvements
- And more!

Thank you!


Friday, January 11, 2008

Rendering is suddenly a lot more fun

I used Wings 3D to create car models for a long time. While I still prefer this to any other program I've seen so far, its rendering capabilities are awful. I was able to purchase Cheetah 3D recently, and I've been playing around with its raytracing features. I rendered this image of a model created in Wings:

- A Pagani Zonda F, probably my favorite car ever.
Looks like a lot of fun will be had over here.

Cheers,
Danny

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

School Sucks

The first school day of '08 is tomorrow.
That's messed up. The twelve days of Christmas aren't even over! I wanted to skip tomorrow and Friday and say it was against my religion to go to school because they were fast days... or something. I can't wait for summer vacation.

I especially wish school was less jumping through hoops and more relevant learning. As it is, most of my classes seem to be set up to punish every mistake of every student. Everything is hopelessly quantitized and numbered. There seems to be no room for abstract thought... but I suppose that's what blogs are for!

I also wish we got more than five minutes between classes. There is no way someone can walk between the farthest ends of the campus with a locker stop in the middle. Total BS.

In closing, Happy New Year.

I Want a New Video Card

It's true.
I'm on an Intel GMA 950, which is possibly the worst graphics card a Mac ever shipped with. As a game developer, I think it's fairly important to have (at least) a decent video card.
I looked around NewEgg.com and the best deal seems to be the EVGA GeForce 8600GTS. I'm not sure if this will work with my Macbook, though. Can anyone shed some light on the subject?

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Off Roadin' WIP Screenies

My current WIP is an off-road racing game cleverly named "Off Roadin'". There isn't too much to say about it, but there are a couple screenshots:

Ragdoll Fun v1.2 released

Ragdoll Fun is a small game in which the player can drag a ragdoll around, create explosions, or place mines. It's the most fun with physics you'll ever have.

Download: Right here.

What's new:
- Solver Iteration Count and Timestep settings optimized. (Meaning: the ragdoll won't go through walls, and his arms won't stretch unnaturally.)
- Graphics upgraded and optimized! (Added bumpmap for ragdoll, now uses specular shading.)

Note: Requires Unity 2.0 Webplayer.

DL Games Blog Started

DL Games is an extremely small, non-official, start-up 3D game development studio. We (I, actually) use an awesome tool called Unity 3D to create games. I hope to create some great online, freeware and shareware games with Unity.
Welcome, and enjoy!