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The Long Silence

Things have been a bit quiet lately both here and on twitter. There’s progress, but it’s not terribly interesting to hear about. Of course there’s been a few problems here and there as well – just nothing inspiring enough to mention here.

In the background of all that I’ve started toying with the basics of yet *another* thing. Yes, I am easily distracted. It will serve it’s purpose though and will have the framework of another project that’s been planned for some time. Both of these nebulous things are fairly small in the grand scheme and will happen in the background of The Viking Age, which is the main project. They’re both also useful for testing out ideas and code snippets that will eventually be used (or not depending!) in the main game.  My intent is to release both games ahead of The Viking Age, because they’re smaller and give me a much needed break from some of the more frustrating aspects of that project – which means they’ll be done quicker. The first is a little more intensive on the art side (good for brushing up my modelling and texturing skills) and a lot less code and the other is almost precisely the opposite. No idea what order they’ll get released in though.

Maybe some screen shots soon, as well.

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If you’re reading this then you can tell the server migration went swimmingly and all is well. But that was all *ages* ago. Let’s get current.

Work continues on the terrain engine. Recently I cracked a problem I was having with properly tracking the viewable terrain around the player. Last count was 4 iterations to get it from broken but basically correct, to optimised (for now) and pretty slick. So that’s good.

After a little house cleaning, the next step is to move on to displaying the terrain chunks in an intelligent order and getting the map’s data to apply cleanly to the chunks in view. That in itself will provide a bit of challenge as the edges of each piece of terrain will have to be blended together the first time they’re generated – something I didn’t have to worry about in the original terrain system because I was only building on a pre-existing 9×9 section of terrain; The heightmap was applied across the entire piece of land as one.

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Server Move Incoming

So, much more delayed than I had anticipated, but there you go.

Much has happened! Anyone following my twitter feed (either on twitter or the side-bar on the main page, plug plug) will have seen that the world map is still in progress. Much of December was lost around the Christmas shuffle as have parts of January been for other reasons. So far though, the noise generation approach has gone well. At the moment I’m working on getting the edges of the map to fade out so there are no land masses up against the edge of the world.  But more on that shortly…

As the title says I’ll be doing a server move shortly. I don’t have a date as I’ve been remiss in actually getting the backup files up on the new host for testing. Call it laziness, or life interference or what-have-you, but it hasn’t happened yet. It will, but it’s an involving process because I’m moving to a VPS. More work, but ultimately I feel it’s the best solution for the moment. It’ll be slightly cheaper than the renewal on my current hosting, but will offer more. Another item in this list is that it’s hosted in Europe. After the issues raised with the SOPA/PIPA debacle, I’ve lost all confidence that something like that won’t get passed in some form, and that threatens any site hosting within the US. Moving overseas was pretty much the only option as local Canadian hosting is twice the price for half the features. Decision made.

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Blacking Out in Protest of SOPA/PIPA

The site will be unavailable tomorrow in protest of the abhorrent and short sighted legislative toadying collectively known as SOPA and PIPA. In no way does Archaic Studios support this action and it’s my firm belief that it should be put down swiftly and decisively.

I urge anyone who values the internet for what it is to read these bills – ignorance here will lead us down a dark and scary road. If you feel strongly I encourage you to join the blackout – and if you’re an American, please contact your local member of Congress and make your voice heard. There are so many of us who don’t live in the U.S. but would be so negatively impacted by a decision made there.

We can only hope that the collective action of the internet can bring about the change that is so desperately needed here.

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The Same Old Ground: Re-Writing and Re-Thinking Terrains

Anyone foolish enough to follow me on Twitter will know that after getting AI to a basic usable state I opted to break from that and do something fresh. Well, refresh something old – the Terrain engine.

Years ago I stumbled on an article that showed a very interesting algorithm for creating terrains. At it’s core, it creates hills using a parabolic equation and places them on a flat surface. That description, while accurate, doesn’t do it justice as you can truly get some very beautiful terrains out it – if you iterate enough times. The problem here is that last caveat: you have to create hundreds of hills and add them onto the terrain together, one at a time. The math also isn’t particularly forgiving when compared to other, better known algorithms.

Of those other algorithms, Perlin Noise is by far the most famous. Initially I didn’t want to venture down into the depths of Perlin Noise because I was intimidated by the math involved and unimpressed by much of what I saw people creating with it. Everything looked a bit samey and too-smooth. Of course that wasn’t accurate – it’s all in the implementation as I’ve since learned. Still, Perlin Noise was a little too main-stream for what I wanted to do. I needed something sleeker, something lesser-known.

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