The general technique I'm using to create an axis aligned billboard is to get the view matrix with glGetFloatv(), which works fine (I originally thought that this was the culprit).

I did a bit of brute force cout debugging, and eventually pinpointed the location of the problem: my calls to glVertexfv().

What it was, after a bit of prodding, is that ATI cards handle the W parameter of a vertice in a slightly different way than nVidia cards do. I really just needed to blank out the w parameter, and everything would be fine. And everything is fine.

I'll probably do a couple of these over the course of the competition, though not too many.

Anyway, I'm working in C++ for this one, using the old Exile engine. Fear not, there's no remaining game code; most of it was rendered useless between 2012 and present day, since I keep on changing map formats and the base Entity class. :P

As for the game, I spent a great deal of time last night thinking about what I wanted to make. My idea was, and still is for the most part, to create a game where magic is the primary weapon, and allow the player to 'create' that magic in various ways (Think Magicka).

Originally this was going to be a nearly pure puzzle/adventure game, but then I decided to cave in and do something I've been meaning to do for a while now: A 'sequel' to Exile.

So I present, in its current form, Exile 2:

And here's a comparison to the original (Not too long after I submitted it. Had already changed a few things, but the old lighting system remained).

Might look a bit odd at first, but that's intentional. I created a shader to essentially limit the available color palette for the game; it actually has the interesting effect of making the textures have more 'depth' to them as the light plays over them, with the darker parts of the texture 'darkening' first, and the lighter parts changing hue and brightness. Difficult to show without motion, but I"ll be livestreaming later, so I guess you'll see it then.

Basically, all I've done so far:

- Turned stock camera-view code into a 'player'

- Created three base textures

- Written and tweaked the shaders

Right now I'm thinking about what to do next. Maybe make a single enemy and a weapon I can start walloping that enemy with. I might take the chance to redesign my old enemy designs from scratch, possibly with a higher resolution appearance, and a darker feel to them. And less nose-punching/face-palming.

Good luck to the other competitors. :P