I’m finally back from my Thanksgiving holiday at my parents’ house, and I can hardly believe it’s already December!  Where has this year gone?

Anyway, I had a couple of things I wanted to post today, the first being a duo of clips from The Simpsons, found earlier on Engadget (and which I assume aired last night), where Apple becomes the target of Matt Groening’s irreverent humor when the Springfield mall gets its first Mapple store.  The funniest part of the two clips is when Bart hijacks the audio system in the store and puts some (quite truthful) words into Steve Jobs’ Mobs’ mouth.  Good stuff!

Update - Well, the YouTube videos are down, but if you live in the U.S., you can watch for free on Hulu.

The next thing I wanted to post, also a video, is a new trailer released yesterday for the Black Mesa mod - a Half-Life 2 mod that is looking to recreate the original Half-Life with the Source engine, but with more content, higher resolution textures and models, and environments that take better advantage of the engine than Valve’s original port of the game.  Normally I don’t get too excited over Source engine mods, since they rarely make good on their promises, or even get finished for that matter, but the amount of polish that has gone into this trailer makes me hope otherwise for Black Mesa.  You can view the trailer below, and find out more about the mod at the official site.

I played through a huge chunk of Half-Life 2 this holiday weekend, so I guess I’m a little bit excited about Half-Life in general again.

I’m glad to see that people found my recent set of examples interesting too, and I hope to get a fixed GM6 version of the 3D Rain example up sometime tonight.  Sorry about the slow rain example, I’ll play with it and see if I can get something up that’s a little easier on the older machines soon as well!

That’s all for now - thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving (or just a good weekend if you’re not from the U.S.)!

Update - I’ve made a new GM6 file that should run better than the previous rain example, and which should load correctly in GM6.  The area that the rain covers is a bit smaller than the original example, and the rain is a bit more sparse, but you should get the idea.

You can download the new example here (1.26 mb).

One environmental effect I see many people have trouble with in Game Maker’s 3D is rain - how to create it and how to make it look like real rain (not just a bunch of textured walls).

I’ve seen some impressive rain in recent game releases, particularly Gears of War / Gears of War 2, and I wanted to try to create something like that in order to see if the effect is possible in Game Maker.  And of course, I also wanted to supply myself and others with a nice example.

After some fiddling around, I’ve come up with what I think is a good replication of the other rain effects I’ve seen in games like Gears, which runs reasonably fast, and isn’t too complicated under the hood.  My example uses large, moving 3D walls textured with rain, scrolling down repeatedly and rocking back and forth and side to side using sine wave-based movement.  The rain is composed of many objects placed around the level at the start of the game, and the camera disables objects dynamically as it moves around.  I’ve also thrown in a simple animated ground (could be better), and fake terrain backdrop (the same as the one in my night sky example), and a skybox (courtesy of Yourself).

The example also uses a rudimentary FPS-style of controls / mouselook as well, but I just threw this in there to help show off the scene, so if you find a problem with that, please disregard it.

You can download the example here (2.5 mb).

Note: This example, for whatever reason, if only working with GM7 at the moment.  As soon as I have a chance to figure out why GM6 hates it, I’ll update the link with a fixed GM6 file.

Please use this example for learning purposes only, and don’t pull anything directly out of it to use for your own work (including textures) without first asking me about it.  Anyway, thanks for reading and enjoy!

After spending some time reading a recently posted topic on the GMC asking about how to create a night sky in 3D, I decided I’d try my hand at making a simple example using a technique mentioned in that topic - using a model created as a pointlist to render stars.  I ended up liking the result very much, so I wanted to share it with everyone here.

Basically, at the start of the game (or more specifically, when the camera object is created), I’ve set up a script which creates models for a sky dome, a background pseudo-terrain, and stars.  These are drawn as you would draw a skybox, so they all appear in the background of whatever you’re doing in your game.

I’ve set up a simple FPS-style camera system for this demo, but it’s very crude, so don’t hold me accountable for that, please.  You can use your mouse to look around, and W, A, S, and D to move around.  F4 will toggle fullscreen mode, and ESC will exit.

You can download the example here (279 kb).

I’d appreciate it if this example were used for learning purposes only, and that you do not use any of the textures from it without first asking permission.  With that said, enjoy!

Over the last week I was busy boxing up all my stuff and trying to coordinate all my services (cable, internet, electricity, etc.) to have things ready for my move, and this weekend I got everything moved over - I am now officially moved out of my old apartment, and living with my girlfriend at the new one.  There are still a lot of boxes to sort through, but the computer is set up, the Xbox is up and running, and…  I’ve got no internet yet!

You see, me being the master planner that I am, only called up AT&T to transfer my existing phone and internet service on friday of last week.  This translates into my landline being moved today and my internet being reconnected on Wednesday.  Not an entirely raw deal, as I can go about most of my business without it - I’ve got plenty of games that need playing, and the aforementioned boxes to unpack.  Still, it has been an inconvenience when I’ve needed to get phone numbers and other information which I normally collect from the internet in about 5 seconds, but now have to obtain either by searching the phone book or calling up 411, both of which are expensive prospects in time and money respectively.

At first I was tempted to activate my cell phone’s limited internet capabilities (by adding a $5-a-month charge to my plan), but being through the bulk my time without the internet now, I think I’ll just wait it out.
Being without the worldwide time sink that is the internet, I’ve also had some time (between games and unpacking, of course) to think about some of the GM content I want to release here on my site in the near future, particularly of the example and tutorial flavor.  I still want to put together a simple tutorial about how to make that animated water texture I introduced in my 3D example, as well as an example for the fire particles I used in Sun Sun Der, and a few other small things.  I should have plenty of time to work on a couple of these over the next few days, so we’ll see what I can come up with.  If anyone has any ideas about what they’d want to see, please let me know in the comments below.

Anyway, I just wanted to write a little about where I am with my GM work, and offer an explanation as to why you might not have seen me on AIM / MSN / XBL / GMC / etc over the weekend.  Thanks for reading, and again, please let me know of any examples / tutorials you might want to see, preferably graphics oriented.

Image courtesy of TCWRC.org

October is drawing to a close, and I’m questioning the future of my newest project, as far as its status as a YYG Competition #4 entry is concerned.

I’ll be the first to admit that this is not an entirely unexpected outcome - my project was a bit ambitious.  I still want to complete it someday, as I think the game concept is a good one, and I really liked the way the game was turning out.  Unfortunately, with my trips to Vegas and BlizzCon, and lots of my free time being spent with my girlfriend as we search for a place to live together, I’ve not been able to devote the necessary time to Game Maker, and I don’t want to be stuck trying to rush the game out, since it is still going to require a lot of artwork and programming.

Not all is lost, however.

A few days ago I came up with a decent idea for a smaller game, and if I have the time, I’ll throw it together for the competition.

Since only a handful of people got a chance to play the other game, I’ll post a demo here later for anyone who’s interested in trying it out.  It’s nothing more than a driving engine with some simple collisions currently, but as I mentioned, I would like to expand on it eventually.

The whole year of 2008 has been like this for me, actually.  I’ve begun (and continued) many projects, including the site update for Reflect, a new version of the Reflect system itself, a few games, and some paintings;  disappointingly, hardly any of it has gotten finished.  I suspect that much of it has to do with my limited time for personal projects, an issue that’s been troubling me for quite a while now.

I don’t blame most of my day-to-day obligations, however - I enjoy spending time with my girlfriend very much, and I waste a lot of time playing games and surfing the web to wind down, which is absolutely necessary to my continued sanity.

Other things though, like my daily commute, are increasingly annoying to me - I lose almost two and a half hours per day just driving to and from work.  It’s quite frustrating that, as a creative person, I have such sparing time for actually being creative.

Ugh.  I hate that feeling I get when I have a project I’ve worked very hard on, but which I won’t be able to finish for now.  It’s all part of the process, I know, but that doesn’t make it taste any less bitter.

Anyway, I’ll be posting updates on my competition #4 work as (and if) it progresses.  Thanks to everyone who has supported me in my work thus far, and thanks for reading the blog!  I shall find the time to finish some of my projects - it just takes time!