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Original post by skittleo Quote: Original post by Tsixm Haven't I seen you somewhere before ;) ;) Me? You have seen me before?

He meant the guy in your screenshot...

Well...



It's a driving game, as sharp observer will notice from the picture, taken from my engine [wink]

I'm not sure if the radiosity simulation is going to be used in the actual game, since my implementation is quite slow at the moment. I may just use ordinary hemisphere lighting with occlusion factors, so it will run fast on older hardware also.

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Original post by skittleo Niko, That is so nice! The soft lighting looks absolutely beautiful. Congrats! Is there any chance you could send me a demo of it just so I could see this in person? My e-mail is bgunning@gmail.com if you decide to allow me this opportunity. So you are doing real-time radiosity at the moment? >>> very impressive.

It's similar to the Half-Life 2 dynamic lighting technique - render cubemaps to form a "light volume" grid, and weight&filter the contributions from the grid to calculate a surrounding light/shadow factor per pixel in the shaders. What makes this technique heavy is the number of cubemaps required for a good fidelity lighting representation. In the car case, though, the grid can be two-dimensional for optimization.

I may release the source when the contest deadline is over, but not sooner than that. I don't plan to release a separate demo version at all, but you can of course download the final game once it's done. It's going to be worth the wait [smile]

D'oh, that looks too nice! I'm just hoping you'll get no points because you've just painted the word 'Zombie' on a car, otherwise what chance have I got [smile]

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Original post by d000hg D'oh, that looks too nice! I'm just hoping you'll get no points because you've just painted the word 'Zombie' on a car, otherwise what chance have I got [smile]

The whole car is original artwork for just this project. My brother assists me with 2d graphics (textures and menu graphics), and we pour our hearts and souls into making the game (that is, during our available time for the project).

The "Zombie racing team" text is just a decoration among many. Much more intricate texturing detail is there, such as welding rivets, bolts and lamp diffusor patterns, they're just not visible in this picture.

Good luck with your entries!

Do you mind sharing how you managed to get the contest themes (zombies etc) into your game? Is it that each theme has a car to race, or is there a deeper complexity to it, like having to mow down zombies etc?

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Original post by d000hg Do you mind sharing how you managed to get the contest themes (zombies etc) into your game? Is it that each theme has a car to race, or is there a deeper complexity to it, like having to mow down zombies etc?

Each "faction" has their own special weapons: for example, the Zombies can drop tombstones behind the car and summon a zombie hand from the ground to attack other cars; the Robots have a homing missile and a control scrambler...

Mowing down zombies might be an activity at the zombie hometrack [wink]

Think Mario Kart [smile]

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Original post by skittleo .. and this game is free. Niko, your game sounds (and stylistically looks, so far) like Twisted Metal. Being one of my favorite games, I truly cannot wait to see how it turns out. I need a handicap now.

I didn't think about Twisted Metal at first, but you're right: the style does bear a resemblance to the series. However, I'm aiming for Mario Kart-style gameplay, with both traditional race tracks and multiplayer battle arenas.

Gameplay is of essence - graphics and sound always come in second. It doesn't necessary take ultra-cool graphics to make a great game; playing Nintendo games has taught me this, and it is the concept that forms the backbone of my game design. This is, in my opinion, the path that every game developer should follow [smile]

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Gameplay is of essence - graphics and sound always come in second. It doesn't necessary take ultra-cool graphics to make a great game

<-insert mark of agreement here->

Oh, and since we've somewhatcompletely derailed Robomaniac's thread, I took the liberty to start a new one. [wink]
[4E4]: Post Yer Screenshots

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Original post by Anonymous Poster On your graphics, are those screenshots from a 1.1-powered scene, or is that a higher-end rendering?

I took the shot from my home machine's Geforce FX 5600 Ultra. Since the engine, by default, uses the maximum shader version for any given card, the shaders were internally compiled with 2.a profile.

My PS1.1 rendering technique looks surprisingly similar, even though it uses precalculated light transfer factors. If I can't optimize the current high-end rendering enough for speed, I'll use this technique on the 2.a profile as well as it runs very fast.

I don't have any effects right now that absolutely require the usage of shader profile 3.0. However, the shaders automatically get the 3.0 optimizations if applicable, for example in pixel-level branching.