Like... you can only flag 5 posts as spam per day?

ic

Well that's good

well I deleted that user with all the spam

o

yay

Common coffee, start working already

Yay, my gamedev rep is finally higher than my SO rep, :D

Yeah, the only reason my SO rep was higher is because I didn't know about this part of SE until recently

I expect the trend to continue, :)

hehe, quite true

yeah, games are much more fun than "enterprisy crud"

hello

can somebody help me with 3d modelling issue?

@snape What's the problem?

I am building the game as shown in the video youtube.com/user/stanfordcs248

but I don't how to model the playfield shown in the game

as it contains many dynamic components and also i have little experience with modelling tool :)

Usually, a level is composed of many different modeled objects.

Specifically, dynamic components tend to be their own model.

ok so i need to model each and every component separately and then club them together in my opengl program?

From the video, the levels look pretty simplistic--a modeling tool would probably be overkill.

so what do you suggest?

I would imagine that the creators of that game created a level editor, which exports information about the various rectangles/spheres (I didn't see any other primitive), which the game then understands to turn it into basic openGL (or other API) calls.

any suggestion how can this be done?

From what I understand, a pretty common workflow (especially for 3D platformer games) is to create a level definition using basic geometric primitives to define the playable space (and physics interactions, etc.).

Once that is in place, it basically becomes a skeleton into which all the rendered objects are placed.

I just read your question

it sounds like you have no idea where to start

yeah exactly!

have you created any game before?

never

:<

i only have experience with opengl programming

thats all

you might want to take a detour through some framework tutorials

@snape Consider this: a simple room can be drawn in OpenGL using six quads. Each quad is defined by four points. Re-using points, you can define a room by eight points.

after you decide on a framework

@Jimmy can you point me to some good framework tutorials?

well, what framework are you going to use?

what languages are you comfortable coding in?

opengl , c++ and c .. probably i can handle python too

hmmmm, are you planning on using an engine or coding your own?

if java with opengl is possible then that would be great

java with opengl is possible

how do you think Minecraft is done :P

:p

it's possible, but if you've never touched java before, it's probably a silly place to start.

ok

although i have no idea about minecraft :P

yeah I always advise people to use what language they are most comfortable in

assuming it's a reasonable language

But I like assembly

@thedaian i am pretty comfortable in java . its just that i havent used opengl with java

ok, you didn't mention java, though, hence the comment

@all so how do i get the job done? :P

for java and open gl, the typical library is this one: lwjgl.org

hard work

seriously.... the easiest way to get your first game done is to keep bashing your head against it until it's done

if you have openGL experience, you know enough to be able to figure out how to draw VBOs on a screen.

hopefully with textures

@Jimmy thanks for the advice but the only problem is that i have midterm evaluation of my project on friday!

@Jimmy i know about VBOs

?

but how would they help me with creating the playfield

okay, one fast way to go about this

is it supposed to be a 3D project? or a 3D game?

so... um. you want to make a game like the video you linked by friday?

is to create the playfield in blender or something

by inserting a bunch of cubes

@JohnMcDonald yeah it is supposed to be a 3d game

export as .OBX and get it loaded in your OpenGL program

the texture you can just do as a texture

yikes

@thedaian not the game but i want to complete the playfield by friday

a .PNG with a 10x10 Grid or something

ah, just the playfield. that is still a lot of work in a very very short amount of time....

@Jimmy some one suggested that its simple playfield and doesn't need models

yeah, so there's two fast ways to get up and running

@thedaian i noe ...... but ..

if you have some confidence in figuring out blender, you can go the model route

because the modeller at least lets you preview the look of everything

i don't want the blender route unless necessary

frankly, if you go through some tutorials, then you can get a simple cube or set of cubes up by friday.

Or Sketchup

if you don't want to take the risk of getting stuck modelling

you can generate your cubes in code

sketchup sucks for 3d models unless you pay money

@thedaian You can export to .X for free

and probably other formats that I have no idea about

@JohnMcDonald how is the texturing in SKetchup?

What does OpenGL want?

@Jimmy Very basic

well, all you need is to set UV coords for this project

Regarding doing everything in pure code: to render a cube, you just need to generate 24 vertices

free sketchup only export KMZ, DAE 3d models

4 for each corner of a face

You can make a new texture from a png or other image, set a scale for the texture, then only apply the texture to a mesh. As far as I know you can't even align the texture

@thedaian There are at least a handful of free plugins that let you export to .X

sketchup really really sucks for 3d modeling unless you configure plugins

and it can be annoying to configure plugins if they're not the right version

Anyway, are models the way snape should be going anyway?

I guess I'm a bit biased since I can actually use Blender, so I'd have that level set up pretty quickly, but Blender (and most 3D programs) has this ridiculous learning curve at the beginning

models aren't the best option here....

@snape the best option is to pick a language and read through tutorials

@Jimmy You're not kidding about the learning curve. It would take until this Friday to make a rectangle and texture it

yeah, regarding no models: just draw 6 quads... glTexture2D it up with a PNG of a grid

if you really are familiar with OpenGL, then you should be able to get stuff up and running pretty quickly

if it doesn't matter WHAT program you use, you could also look into Unity, since that's really the quickest way to get a 3d game made right now

If you want to be cool you could write the grid entirely in a shader but the game in the video almost certain uses a texture

@Jimmy I'm guessing a texture with a shader over the top, for the heat-wave effects.

@Jimmy Challenge Accepted

@snape For a Friday deadline, I would probably draw out a level by hand (using only quads). Define the vertices, and for each quad, enter the coordinates into a text file.

yeah... actually I don't know the first thing about shaders

Other than they execute on the GPU

I know about shaders

Make each line a quad, and separate the 12 numbers into groups of three.

@JohnMcDonald: the reason I even brought it up is because it seems like a really easy shader to write. it's basically just a small script that looks like "if close to a integer value of x,y,or z return white else return black"

and @john i have no idea about blender but if you can create a model of the playfield then i would happily accept it ;)

heh, yeah

@snape: whether you should use blender kind of depends on are you currently capable of loading and displaying model files in whatever code you have so far

i just came up with an idea .. why don't we have an xml file specifying different components of the playfield like stairs , walls or moving steps

well, I'm tired, and am going to head home, ttyl

@snape For Friday's deadline, does your project need anything more than static components?

@Jimmy i can easily load and display models in opengl

@TreDubZedd i don't think its necessary

@JohnMcDonald thanks for your help

can you? opengl doesn't come with model loading and displaying built in, from what i understand...

@snape You're kinda up against the wall. Do the simplest thing, for now.

@thedaian i use an open source library assimp to do that

@TreDubZedd yeah i guess that would be the best thing to do

well the absolutely simplest thing to do is to try it out in immediate mode. draw a cube with a texture. the texture being a glTexture from an image of a grid

nehe.gamedev.net/tutorial/texture_mapping/12038

one more thing can i apply some effects (bloom effect ) to a texure before mapping it to the cube?

no

that looks bad

you want to write the effect as a shader

as applied to the screen afterwards

ohk!

if you simply use a fuzzy texture, then the geometry edges are still sharp

cool

one more thing is there any good free GLSL shader editor/ debugger for ubuntu?

might want to ask that as a question -- I don't know of any