xdaniel

Yeah, I was a bit surprised myself actually. It looks, dare I say it, almost kinda professional, maybe? Also been working on that texture map node some; texturing is starting to come together: And on another note, once the basic program is done, I'm thinking of adding loaders for some model formats... or, well, for .obj at least, because I have a fairly good one already. Collada would be cool, but even though I added Collada exporting to that OoT3D viewer thingy with help from Peardian on Jul, parsing that format seems like a completely different story... EDIT: Much better:

...although the texture map node don't work yet

I mean shaders as in, actual vertex and fragment shaders on the PC side of things, used to emulate the N64's color combiner. Not the sets of display list commands in OoT that people call "shaders" for some reason. But if I ever do implement rendering of ex. GI objects (or more than just maps in general), I'll make sure to run those commands.

I skimmed through this article here and geometry shaders do sound quite interesting, yeah. Really should look into adding support for them. And by the way, this program's evolving into unexpected directions...

To start off with a bit of a summary, before Nintendo's Digital Event I was like "meh" about E3 in general this year. At that point, I had only seen Microsoft's press conference - not Sony's, nor other publishers' as I didn't care enough about those (plus IIRC Sony's was at 3, 4 AM local time or something) - and MS only had one game that really looked interesting to me, which was Ori and the Blind Forest. Well, I guess Sunset Overdrive looks pretty cool too, but neither of them is (nor are both together) enough to make me want an Xbox One. Then, Nintendo's Digital Event kicked off. I really wasn't expecting much from it, I guess just some news on Smash Bros., maybe the new Zelda, as well as other stuff already announced. But what actually happened is that they've pretty much sold me on the Wii U now! Smash Bros. I wanted to get for the 3DS - and still will, because it comes sooner and I'll only be able to get a Wii U next year at the soonest - but I also want it for Wii U. The new Zelda I honestly wasn't sure about, and maybe still am not, as I didn't like Skyward Sword very much, but that's another one that might shape up to be pretty awesome. I mean, a true open world Zelda, if they can really pull it off? Hell yeah, I take that! Now, Xenoblade Chronicles X I'm a bit divided on. Not because of it's quality, as what I've seen of it on Treehouse Live @ E3, which was the first 30-40 minutes of the game, seemed really impressive in all respects (visuals, sound, gameplay, world, etc.), but rather because I'm not sure if I'll be able to get through a game of that scope. Another game that just looks insanely fun is Splatoon, which has also been demo'ed extensively on Treehouse Live. It might also be the game I'm most excited about right now, for some logically unfathomable reason: all they've showed was 4-vs-4 online play, in a single game mode, on a single map. But that alone already had me wanting to play it that instant, and still has me wanting more. I do really hope the devs extend this one with more varied modes, etc., tho, and that Nintendo actually pushes this one with some marketing muscle. Otherwise, it has the chance to end up as a limited throwaway title, and I'd hate to see the ideas and the design in this go to waste. Yoshi's Woolly World and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse also look pretty fun and very unique visually. Granted, we did have the yarn style before in Kirby's Epic Yarn on the Wii, but Epic Yarn looked quite flat compared to the more "popping" Woolly World, with Yoshi, the enemies and bosses looking like actual three-dimensional plushies. Rainbow Curse I'm quite happy to see, just for the fact that it uses the indirect control scheme from the DS' Kirby Canvas Curse again. Pair that with the new game's clay look, and you've got an interesting game from both, the visual and gameplay perspectives. There's also been Bayonetta 2 and a new Star Fox for Wii U, as well as Codename S.T.E.A.M. for 3DS, all of which I haven't seen very much footage etc. of yet so I can't really comment on them, outside of saying that they might be interesting as well from what I have heard. Bayonetta 2 will also include an enhanced port of the original Bayonetta for free, so that's another plus for someone who hasn't played the first one yet (i.e. me). And while I didn't want to focus on Nintendo alone this E3, they've done a great job keeping people's attention on them and their products, with the aforementioned Treehouse Live livestreams every day of the convention. They've provided some, from my side very appreciated, additional insight into upcoming games from Smash Bros. over Splatoon, to Xenoblade, had developers on explaining things - both first-party and indie devs - and even engaged with them in multiplayer shenanigans - four of Splatoon's devs wiped inked the floor with four of the Treehouse guys, for example. That Smash Bros. Invitational tournament they hosted was quite the cool idea as well. I'm not into competitive gaming of any kind, thus including Smash Bros., I just know that it exists (and that they swear on GCN controllers for Smash), so I had no idea who was who in that tournament, but it was great watching players of that skill level, and I wouldn't mind seeing something like that again. Finally, as much as I was wary about their approach of forgoing the traditional press conference, I think they've done a great service to their fans and anyone else willing to watch and listen with their coverage this year. If this worked as well with non-fans and the like, I don't know - time will tell. (Whew, took a while to write all this...)

Aside from a future combiner rewrite, to properly support fog as mentioned elsewhere, there's one tiny thing I changed today: the camera's field of view. The actual game VS SceneNavi's new FoV: ...pretty close now, aren't they? And that very minor difference in angle (barely visible unless you switch back and forth between the two screenshots in another tab or something) comes from a not 100% identical camera position between the game's debug camera and SceneNavi. (Also, mainly as a note to myself: OpenGL camera position = -(in-game camera position * OpenGL scale))

Worked on the GLSL Tester some more..

As it turns out, some of Nintendo's E3 press assets have the perfect aspect ratio for 1920x1080 wallpapers... ...and damn, I'm already (almost, I'm trying my best not to!) fanboying over a game, of an all-new IP, that hadn't even been announced until some 8 hours ago... but I can't help it! It just looks so damn fun and I'm liking the style!

On the left is a piece of paper, on the right are two buckets of paint, and the two buttons are big paint rollers! ...well, joking aside, it's kinda like a sort of "construction kit" for shaders written in GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language). GLSL is one of the two ways in which I emulate the N64's color combiner in SceneNavi, the other and more complete one being comparatively ancient (and/or unsupported?) fragment programs in the ARB assembly language. The purpose of that construction kit thingy is to learn more about GLSL - by experimenting with the shader code live - and modern OpenGL usage in general. You can, for example, change the intensity of colors (sort of) by adding a multiplication to the "color = fragmentColor" equation in the fragment shader, as I've done in the screenshot above. You also do texturing, fog and a whole lot more - that is to say: pretty much everything - in GLSL. And that's where SceneNavi comes in again. That SceneNavi screenshot I tweeted, with the fog and draw distance derived from Hyrule Field's environment settings... right now, I cannot do the fog together with the combiner emulation, because I'd need to change the ARB and GLSL combiners to manually calculate and apply the fog, which, while not impossible with the current code, would be annoying at the very least. So, after learning more about GLSL, how to write shaders that run on as much hardware out there as possible, etc., then I will rip out the existing combiner emulation code and rewrite it with just GLSL, so that it'll be more compatible, easier to work with and (hopefully) cleaner than the relative mess I have right now.

Related to this SceneNavi screenshot I tweeted a few days ago, here's something that might help me with my GLSL adventures...

DQM Joker 2 plus two small flea market pick-ups - Pokemon Puzzle League and a Rumble Pak for the N64, both looking good and working perfectly:

I'm not sure I like the redesigns, Haruka's/May's in particular... It seems, uh, more "girly" in the details compared to her original design? Female protagonist or not, I don't like the designs and redesigns of the recent ones (DPPt/HGSS/BW2/XY) that much in general because of that, with BW's Touko (not sure about the English name) being an exception... Would be nice if 1) XY's trainer customization features are still in ORAS and 2) if the main characters' original outfits could be purchased or something.

No photo, but I bought Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 2 for the DS. I have this kind of hunch, that the store wants to get rid of their stock of the game, considering the perceived 50 copies of it on the shelves all priced at 5 €

If anyone wants to have a laugh about my C++ or my knowledge of the Dreamcast, here's the source to my DC project's "engine" part, i.e. Frenda: https://github.com/xdanieldzd/libfrenda It's not really documented at all, but hey, I guess this is mainly for personal reference etc. anyway, and the public being able to check it out is just a bonus

Super-late reply, although for a while I wasn't sure if I would drop SceneNavi or not... anyway: Antidote: I still don't know why that happened for you. I'll add some sanity checks to the code I mentioned back then, which won't help with the problem, but I really can't think of anything. Rinku: I'm pretty sure they should save, code for that is in place. I'll have to double-check if it actually does save, tho, or if I messed up somewhere... The replies aside, as implied I haven't dropped SceneNavi, and actually pushed a small commit to the repository yesterday: Table editor changes & versioning - References to "exit table" changed to "entrance table", entry numbers added to both tables, more tooltips; versioning code fixed for non-hotfix builds (i.e. without letter suffix)