Not that long ago I attended the Flash Gaming Summit (FGS) in San Fransisco where I met many new people and sat through some pretty interesting sessions. One of which was a presentation by Sean Cooper (Boxhead) where he discussed some of his development techniques on the Boxhead games. He showed us a few impressive demos, but one in particular had hundreds of AI characters on screen all at once using bit blitting, and it ran beautifully.
Now I’ve done bit blitting in flash before and I’ve seen it’s benefits first hand in particle engines, but I’ve never really thought about ways to use it outside of particle engines. But after seeing that demo, it got me thinking about a particular problem I seem to have. Most of my physics games use a lot of rigid bodies, and one of the bottle necks I always see is rendering each one to the screen. It just reaches a point where all of those bodies on the screen makes Flash cry, and when Flash is sad, I am sad. Bit blitting could very well be my answer to a happier Flash.
This is a demo of bit blitting each object to one bitmap. Click on the swf and press SPACE to start the demo. As you can see, the results are impressive. A good 3+ frames per second better than adding to the display list directly.
Now as impressive as this, it does have and Achilles heel. Memory usage is quite high when using different graphics for different rigid bodies. In fact, this might only benefit a game that uses a small number of graphics for each body. This is because for every body needs an image for each degree of rotation (360 total).
Demolition City 2 is under production right now. I’ve been working on it for the last few weeks here with Nick from Bomtoons. He’s incredibly talented and he’s the one that came up with the awesome logo. I can’t tell you all about it, but I can tell you to expect more of a “bang” (see what I did there). Should be out before the end of the month.
On another note, Crush the Castle: Players Pack should be coming out by the end of next week at the latest *crosses fingers*. With over 1400 castles submitted, CTC:PP was made by the fans for the fans. The King thanks you for your amazing work! In return, he has expanded his kingdom across more lands, come up with a new “reward” system, and touched up your favorite patch of land with some minor enhancements.
So I’ve recently taken a large interest in the Ghost in the Shell series, with the most recent being the Ghost in the Shell: SAC: 2nd Gig series. I’m about a third of the way through and I’d have to say that the story is incredible enthralling. I’ve seen pretty much every other iteration of Ghost in the Shell, so this should be the last of it until a new version pops up somewhere. The series is so detailed and intertwined that I find it very easy to lose my place if I’m not careful. I very much enjoy movies or shows like that though, as it is all too often you see movies sacrificing plot to make way for action.
In other news, I just recently saw the new Ponyo movie trailer this weekend. I am very excited and looking forward to seeing it in theaters. I just hope that it is not in select theaters and I have to drive somewhere remote to see it. I’ve seen no mention of it being everywhere or in select theaters so I’m crossing my fingers.
I decided that I wanted to make a point light shader this weekend in Pixel Bender so I looked up some algorithms and came up with this. Nothing that hasn’t been done before, but I think I’d like to make a game that utilizes it. Like cave diving or something where there are few light sources. We’ll see…
Saw a few movies this weekend as well; Cowboy Bebop and The Evil Dead. For starters, Cowboy Bebop was pretty good. Animations were great, music track was even better, and the story doesn’t disappoint. An all around good movie. The Evil Dead was also great. I remember seeing bits and pieces a long time ago and hearing about the great gory scenes in it from somewhere so I’d thought I’d give it a full watch. I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I think the slight unintended humor coupled with claymation gore was what made it so great.
Because I haven’t really had much time or energy to do any coding posts, I’ve decided to post about my latest escapades which is watching a lot of movies.
In the last few months here I have probably watched over 100 films off of my netflix account and still going. Most of which came from my recent interest in japanese anime, where I’ve watched almost all of Studio Ghibli’s films. I’m fascinated with the work that gets put into them and how detailed they can get. I just recently watched Kiki’s Delivery Service, which was surprisingly better that I thought. Now I’m probably not their target demographic for that movie, but I enjoyed it.
Anyways I decided to watch and older movie based on a book that I partially read called Dune. Now I decided to get the extended edition thinking it would be better, but boy was I wrong. Now I appreciated the story immensely as Frank Herbert created an amazing universe with that series of books, but I just felt bored most of time during the movie. The story just might be easier to read than it is to watch I guess. In fact the funniest parts of the movie were the battle scenes towards the end where the warriors used the sound guns to defeat the Harkonnens. Just the battle cries from them were hilarious and oh so cheesy. That was probably the best part thinking about it.
Anywho, I’ll probably be doing more of this as I have more energy to watch movies than code at home.
Here is my new blog where I can post everything and anything I’ve ever wanted to talk about. I’m sure it will be mostly programming related, but I will do my best to friends and family updated as well.
