I finally decided to check this place out. My username at the GMC is EyeGuy (which I never particularly liked), but I don't post too often, and when I do it's only in the Advance Q&A, so you probably don't recognize me. Anyway, I've recently been temporarily liberated from educational responsibilities (i.e. Winter Break came), so I've been wanting to work with GM a little. I figure this place is the perfect place to show off my progress since I'm not fond of early WIP pages or releasing things before they're ready. Anyway, on to the projects:

Main Project: Unnamed Project

(for now called "Sphere")

Sphere Development Journal

12-14-06:

I decided to start a project in which the only goal is to create a simple, but completely 3D game at all costs. One of the points of this project is to simply code without too much focus on efficiency or perfection, the idea being that if I'm able to get some practical experience, I'll be able to make a better/more efficient and precise 3D games next time. Anyway, I borrowed a few lines of code from an earlier project and coded three basic levels. I intend on making collision detection and level construction substantially more complicated in future versions, but for now I simply have a basic 3D-Block collision system that somewhat works with moving blocks on all 3 axises (the ball does not yet stick to the moving blocks). 3 extremely simple levels are programmed. Right now the collision system only works with the vertical speed/position component, and so running into a wall will make you jump to the top of that wall.

Anyway, since this is the first entry, I want to state a few goals: Ideally, I want to incorporate some real 3D physics complete with normal slopes and projection-based collision detection, but as of yet, I have no scale to imagine how much computations the computer can really handle. With that, I want to make ramps and perhaps even a quarter-pipe. Perhaps some Marvel Madness-esque obstacles or maybe some puzzle elements, but all around, it's going to be ad hoc programming. As far as number of levels/when I know I'm done? I'll call that by ear.

Enjoy these screenshots:

12-16-06:

I've got a pretty considerable amount done in the 3 or so hours I've worked on it since last time, though the code needs a little bit of cleaning up and re-organizing. Collisions for rectangular blocks are now 99% complete, fairly efficient, and very accurate. The only thing that needs to be done with these collisions is deflecting the speed vectors whenever you hit a corner of the wall. I've also added a system for various doodads. So far I've got ugly-looking, but perfectly working Springs in place as well as a button that, when pressed, will create a block where/how you tell it to. That could do for some fancying-up, but works just fine, gameplay-wise. Lastly, the shadow of the ball is no longer a flat square glued to the bottom of the sphere, now it projects onto the blocks bellow correctly. Except it has that age-old problem of going through walls and appearing on floors with floors between them. No big deal, as I plan on maybe adding block shadows in the future (perhaps optional as this could hog up resources). The camera's still the same as it was before, I'll plan on working on a more dynamic camera system (especially to help with the springs).

Enjoy these screenshots:

Side Project: Surface Examples:

This, I'm just polishing up these two/three examples which I've had an my hardrive since GM 6.1 came out. They're global, real-time motion blurring and plain old blurring that are simple to implement in any non-3D, single (or non) view game. They use surfaces, so they have a single relatively low overhead cost. In other words, the time spent for the motion blur is the same no matter how complicated your engine is, so chances are it won't be the thing slowing down your game (though it might push it over the edge). Anyway, here are some screenshots:

Ah, what a long and pointless post. I guess I had a bit of a backlog of information.