DL Games

Poemetric

2008-11-04T10:45:00.000-05:00

How can we tell them
what they already know

there is nothing left

the end is past
we are already dead
but we will never know

how it ended

more at poemetric.blogspot.com

What have I been doing?

2008-04-06T16:00:00.006-04:00

I have:

started several small projects that died very quickly
gone to school
learned a bunch (not from school, though)
made my first meager contributions to the Unify Community wiki
learned a bit of ShaderLab and CG
dabbled in C++

Most importantly, I also got a job! That's right, I will be working for Jeff at Visual Inspirations Inc for the next five months. I'm (obviously) very excited about this! Unfortunately, this means I won't be able to work on anything else, especially Off Roadin', for a while. I probably won't be posting here much, either.

See you then!

This is what happens when I'm bored

2008-02-08T16:59:00.000-05:00

Long story short, I made a very rough draft of a format for storing 3D mesh info. This is the data for a single cube:

vertices [
0 [-1.0,-1.0,1.0]
1 [-1.0,1.0,1.0]
2 [1.0,1.0,1.0]
3 [1.0,-1.0,1.0]
4 [-1.0,-1.0,-1.0]
5 [-1.0,1.0,-1.0]
6 [1.0,1.0,-1.0]
7 [1.0,-1.0,-1.0]
]
object [
worldPosition [0,0,0]
face 0 [0,1,2,3]
face 1 [3,2,6,7]
face 2 [4,0,3,7]
face 3 [2,1,5,6]
face 4 [7,6,5,4]
face 5 [4,5,1,0]
]

Next step: write a simple importer/exporter!
Admittedly, this won't be very useful, but it was a very good learning experience, at least so far.

Tree Generator Started

2008-01-26T20:02:00.001-05:00

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)

Off Roadin' Alpha download available

2008-01-19T22:38:00.000-05:00

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

Download Off Roadin' Alpha now!

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.

Off Roadin' Alpha available soon

2008-01-13T18:11:00.000-05:00

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!

Rendering is suddenly a lot more fun

2008-01-11T22:22:00.000-05:00

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

School Sucks

2008-01-02T21:34:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-02T12:59:00.000-05:00

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?

Off Roadin' WIP Screenies

2008-01-01T18:21:00.001-05:00

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

2008-01-01T16:54:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-01T11:42:00.000-05:00

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!