KaM Remake -> Multiplayer Demo out!

[Nick]

amazing work! especially for doin this with only 2 people and for no money!
Keep going plx :p

[artanis]

no locked surfs hurray!

[Lithuanian guy]

guys i really want to check your game out but there is small problem ....

the game doesnt start - i think its probably because my Open gl is only 1.2 (acording to what Mplayer says ) how can I really cheak ( that there will be no doubt ) what open gl i use ? and where to get newest wersion ?

I have ati radeon xpress 1100 ( an integrated in to main-board video card )
as i see i have newest drivers from ATI ( or i looked bad ) but still open gl is old . shouldn't i get it with my video drivers ?

[Krom]

I tested the game on RivaTNT2 (OpenGL 1.1) and it did worked like a slide-show (1 frame per second), but it did worked!
So check you drivers, maybe you can make it work after all

[Thunderwolf]

@Lithuanian guy: What OS do you have?

lol, I had a Riva TNT2 as well a few years back. Quite a fun card back then. Ran GTA3 (minimum settings and only if looking down (so it had to draw less xD))

[xzaz]

mm whats the idea behind the whole non-flat terrain? I am using a Texture2D list is that the right way? So i mean this:

How can you make the depth in the ground?

[harold]

mm whats the idea behind the whole non-flat terrain? I am using a Texture2D list is that the right way?

No.

The proper way (highly likely) is to index gouraud.dat with the palette index at that pixel and the slope at that pixel, and then use that value as the new index into the palette.

It looks "right" if you do that, and gouraud.dat wouldn't be needed if it wouldn't work that way. It's also the only way to avoid shadows on the water without significant hacks.

Pre-calculating textures for every possible slope won't work since it's the slope that should be interpolated between two vertices, not the resulting colour (try it if you like, it looks odd), and especially not the palette index (that looks completely messed up)

KAM probably does the shading on the CPU and only the final palette lookup on the GPU, since at the time it was made, there were no fragment/pixel shaders yet. (they first appeared in DirectX 8 which was released in the year 2000, 2 years after TSK was released)

Edit: a slope of 40 (in gouraud.dat) maps to the original colours of the palette (so "all flat" should map to 40), lower values make it darker, higher values make it lighter

[xzaz]

mm whats the idea behind the whole non-flat terrain? I am using a Texture2D list is that the right way?

No. [...]
Edit: a slope of 40 (in gouraud.dat) maps to the original colours of the palette (so "all flat" should map to 40), lower values make it darker, higher values make it lighter

mm thanks for the information. I think i need to read some more about shading and how to control this. It's something i never worked with and prop isn't the first thing you learn. Well again, thanks i'm looking into it.

[harold]

Well keep in mind that this isn't normal shading, this is precomputed paletted shading, this type of shading is just a few multiplications and a few texture lookups - nothing about surface normals and lightdirection or stuff like that.

[Krom]

KaM Remake uses alternative shading solution - without look-up table and pixel shaders. Default diffuse shading just isn't strong enough, so there's a walkaround.

Terrain is rendered in layers, first goes base layer without any shading - just textures. Next goes lighting layer (glBlendFunc(GL_DST_COLOR, GL_ONE)) with per-vertice opacity corresponding to terrain height, highlighting the slopes. Then same thing for shadows but with different blend mode (glBlendFunc(GL_ZERO, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_COLOR)).

The looks are tuned to match KaM very closely - you can see that in KaM Remake by yourself

P.S. To solve water surface we plan to render water flat irregardless of height value. Sand dunes will be seen-through corresponding to height value. This will be done through one more texture layer.

All-in-all layered design is slower, but is more versatile - it works on old GPUs.

@Harold: how do you sample look-up table per each pixel? Isn't that performance costly?

[harold]

Just a normal tex2D would do (I'm actually using a tex3D instruction because I include the player colours in the same lookup)
It reaches over 1000 FPS on my computer, most of the time is spend in state changes and render calls, the shading takes almost no time compared to those (it's only 2 texture lookups, the second one depends on the result of the first which is "not good" for performance but it's still very fast)

[FallenLeader]

you should recompress the files into a more compatible format. not many free programs can run .rar

i like .7z or good 'ol .zip
i use the programs 7zip, alzip, winrar.

why does it crash with the whole music loading?

absolutely beautiful, but i had no lumber to build anything on the outer colony. and i had to move around the map with my keyboard, no mouse map movement?

[Krom]

7z is more rare than RAR, which in turn is less common than ZIP.

Music loading is done through Windows TMediaPlayer, hence we can't fix it without changing player.. which is not very easy since MP3 is a commercial format and there are few free decoders for gamemakers.

Mouse map movement is there, no idea why it's not working..

====

Development is paused.
On my side: I have a full-time job since October, not much free time left for anything else..

[FallenLeader]

lucky, i have been looking for a job for a year, since i was laid off.
i used 7z as example because it's free. didn't know it was less common.

is there anything special required to play the game with music, i have xp home but trimmed a lot out, i have windows media player and often listen to mp3's with winamp. i may have cut something needed out of the OS though.

either way, amazing work, DONT DITCH THE PROJECT, either work on it on the "pot" when you have free time or make sure everyone else has the resources required to complete the game development.

too many good things go poof when the developer leaves and keeps all the stuff needed to further development. :evil:

maybe switch to .wav or .midi? or another free one?

Edit: the mouse thing works, on the edges of my screen, not edges of my game window.

[Lewin]

I thought I should post a status update to let you all know what's been going on.



Over the past week or so I have resumed programming the remake. I made the fisherman work, and it's even better than KaM! (it detects if there are no fish left in the water and sends you a message/stops fishing)
Today I fixed a major internal issue that has been bothering us for a while to do with freeing memory when units/houses are destroyed. There is no visible effect but now when a unit dies the memory is deleted. (before it was being kept to retain pointer integrity) I also added messages a while ago, (can't remember if I told you) which are displayed when houses are unoccupied or resources run out.
Anyway, the point is that I'm working on it again so maybe we'll have another demo in a few months. (depends how long I stay interested for)

Krom and I have also been working on our new project, the KaM FontEditor which we hope will make the life of people like Litude much easier. (and will allow for better/new fonts to be made for the translations) We should have at least a beta in a few weeks.

Krom doesn't have much time any more because he has a job and I am near exam week at school so we haven't been working on these projects as much as we would like to. But once I've finished school for the year I should be able to get lots done.

Just thought you might like to know what we've been up to.
Lewin.