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Work in Progress / Sports Fiction ®

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Chris Tate
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Posted: 21st Nov 2018 14:53
At this current stage I am implementing the new geometric-hardware based instancing system by Revenant Chaos which dramatically improves the performance of DBPro's rendering system.

Three of the most major components of Sports Fiction are the behavioural A.I. system, the comic strip and a new feature which will expand the range of experiences and possible strategies in Sports–Fiction's range of battle sports and arena.

The work on this final piece of the puzzle commenced a month ago and is showing promising results. I have decided to reveal what the feature is in the actual pre-alpha release and its supporting video footage.
seppgirty
FPSC Developer
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Posted: 24th Nov 2018 14:43
Glad you're still working on this.
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Arbrakan
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Posted: 24th Nov 2018 21:21
Great news !
Chris Tate
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Posted: 25th Nov 2018 10:30
It has been a painful challenge; but thanks to your therapeutic support, I have almost made it, almost made it half way up the mountain.

At the half way point (after spending my personal cash on the necessary server equipment and an internet connection great enough for the demand) I will finally be able to be able to begin the more interesting part of the journey, where the concept and state of the game will no longer have to be kept secret.

The next journey up to the top of the mountain in 2019 will be based on player feedback, research, improvement, expansion and support on other platforms, the latter of which did not seem possible before.

For now, during what tends to be the best time of year for getting things done, I will hopefully complete this new system, which is of a very interesting subject of gaming. There are a wide variety of battle arenas and battle royale games; on top of sports, behavioural A.I. and comics, Sports Fiction must have an area of speciality within those genres.
seppgirty
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Posted: 25th Nov 2018 13:42
Got to say, that it would be a great victory for us (and Lee) to see such an epic game made with DBpro. Happy coding.
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 26th Nov 2018 12:40
It would be lovely indeed. I hope that it inspires a Direct X 12 upgrade project.
Dimis
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Posted: 28th Nov 2018 11:05
I am glad that things are going so well. Indeed a DirectX 12 upgrade project would be nice and maybe another official Dbpro upgrade as well, although i doubt about the second. Still i feel that i owε a lot to Rudolpho for his 9Ex upgrade.
Chris you mentioned support on other platforms. Now that will be an achievement for a DBpro based project! Are you talking about other operating systems or maybe consoles?
Chris Tate
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Posted: 29th Nov 2018 18:42
Some consoles and platforms implement Direct X, others Open GL. DBPro would only work on a Windows based system straight out of the bat, but can provide the necessary back end features to connect with Open GL / Direct X clients on any platform using the server-client/cloud computing models.

For offline games, a full port would be required; perhaps to AGK.

Another thing that could be done is to create a Visual Studio extension for DBPro; being able to create DBPro applications in Visual Studio would enhance the development experience greatly. Sadly do not have the time to create it, but the opportunity is available through 'custom languages' and tools.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 14th Dec 2018 13:29
Update

I am currently optimising the server based in the UK, and the required net-code which will be used to host a closed pre-alpha release of the game environment and a number of test sports. It will be desirable for the server to run at as sufficient a frame rate as possible, with the network code optimized well enough testing and reliable feedback. For a desirable experience, the flow and feel of character movement must be organic and consistent.

After a few days of optimization, I will be working on the client which will represent the local copy of the game for the player. This will implement the character and environment rendering system, the audio effects, comic UI and the new game feature I recently started implementing. It is being kept as streamlined as possible for improved reliability and resource efficiency.

I am planning to host the gaming environment for a number of hours for each designated session, along with access to test sports, and a few story arcs. Each subsequent pre-alpha closed release will run on the limited hardware and connection I can afford, and will be improved based on the performance and feedback. Screenshots and footage will be provided at the pre-alpha phase, and during each subsequent release.
seppgirty
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Posted: 15th Dec 2018 13:36
great news. can't wait to see some screen shots.
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 28th Feb 2019 01:06
Greetings.

I had 2 months off to dedicate my time to preparing the game for testing which started off pretty well. Then I experienced problems. The server app code which is based on two DBP apps and a .NET CLR application was causing major lag spikes due to background process called 'Garbage Collection'. This is a memory management thread found in Microsoft CLR based applications which organizes managed code objects into a number of generations step by step to be later removed to free up memory. It is taking quite some time to work through so much code to optimize this process (amongst other things).

I have a choice to complete this and either skip working on my level editing features for a later version of the game and make do with simple game levels for now, or proceed as planned and implement the ability to manipulate aspects of the level from the very first release. The little child in me wants to skip and get straight to the part where I put out a release; but my heart is telling me to be patient and put out the game I designed the way it is intended to play.

I will see how it goes with the memory management on the server, and will then decide whether to skip the level editing facility, or implement it before first release.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 14th Apr 2019 22:05 Edited at: 14th Apr 2019 22:11
So having started my new day job and having just completed software and web sites for some clients after a few months away from Sports Fiction, I have officially levelled up into a legit C# programmer, and can work with Word Press template development with PHP. These new skillsets will prove useful.

A little bit of history about me would indicate that I first learned QBasic, then Visual Basic, then Dark Basic, then HLSL then PHP, then VB.NET and now C# with a little bit of Regular Expressions, and various HTML5 principles.

Working on this project has also helped me develop other skills, particularly server development and management with Ms SQL Server and Visual Studio, which brings us to the topic of discussion and my next mission.

Back in December 2018 right up until January 2019 I ‘attempted’ to take complete the pre-release game and start a YouTube channel about the game, but this fell flat. It was due to what was discussed earlier this year; too many lag spikes from the server; which happens to not be related to the Dark Basic application on the client side.
At first in December I was planning to implement a new terrain system based on the fantastic hardware instancing tool, and here are some screenshots of the work, from the early roots of the prototype to were I am now. Do you notice something familiar?












Some of you would have noticed immediately that this concept is based on the kind of stuff used in Minecraft, called voxels, where the terrain and various entities in the world are organised into a grid, similar to the pixels on your screen, except that voxels are arranged in 3D space, rather than 2D.

These are more complicated than what is used in minecraft because we are going to be smoothing things up and making things look more realistic and comic book like.

Sadly, my journey was cut short in mid December when I attempted to play fight the A.I. in the version of the game I was planning to showcase and provide access for. The focus in December was simply filling up the void. I will be working on improving the resolution, looks and editability after the first pre-alpha.

The lag coming from memory management and garbage collection was causing things to look really bad. So that’s where the voxel system was left. I will in future decide whether the voxel system will be on the client or server side. It seems it will depend on performance and ease of implementation.

So in the next chapter of this journey, starting from this month, I will attempt to tackle the game breaking issue and get rid of what is causing the lag spikes. A long job, but I much prefer it to be a problem now when no one has it installed, I will get back to finishing my voxel terrain so that there isn’t void belief my buildings, and move forward towards the many plans for the game.

Looking forward to seeing what happens next.
seppgirty
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Posted: 27th Apr 2019 19:34
thanks for the updates Chris. Sounds like you got your hands full.
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 16th May 2019 20:48
Very full, very full.

Things are starting to improve on the performance side, after optimising the engine, should be working on the actual game quite soon. Most frustrating 4 months of the project, and it does not help that I am in the middle of changing jobs.
JLMoondog
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Posted: 28th May 2019 06:16
7 years in development...I gotta say, your commitment to this project is inspiring to say the least! Looking forward to the next update.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 28th May 2019 20:06
Woah, lovely to see you posting here. Sometimes one can neglect who might be observing way down here in the cave of struggle.

This has been a 9 year on-and-off part time commitment, but a commitment it certainly is and will continue to be.

2 years prior to making the thread was spent coming up with ideas of what kind of game and subject matter to deal with. Most of the work was done in the past 2 years to be honest.

The past 5 months being the worst thus far, May has been a continuous Brexit negotiation distraction, June will be a month of focus on Sports Fiction - pun most certainly intended.
JLMoondog
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Posted: 31st May 2019 04:03
Wow 9 years! Even better.

I think the step allot of people skip when producing a game the most is the pre-production phase. Sounds like you were thorough. cheers!
Chris Tate
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Posted: 17th Jun 2019 11:55
I wanted to make sure I work on something I would enjoy playing, and working on for a long time.

What are you working on now?

This month I have been back into the daily development grind. It feels good to be working on the game again.

The performance is being improved, currently optimizing how entities are rendered; essentially aiming to have more GPU based calculations and have 2 or 3 objects to represent the visual, collision and optimisation of 1 square kilometer of the game world. Whether you exclude or not, the object count will limit the performance of the thread running your DBP process. For the past year Sports Fiction was using 2 DBP processes, this month I am introducing a 3rd for exclusively optimising and converting architecture geometry data and terrain data from cache to active objects.

There is a lot to squeeze in now with the voxel terrain, which itself is a good way to chunk the building systems into optimised rendering and collision hierarchies.

From this point onward I will also be learning more about AppGameKit so that from a year from now I can start working on a mobile viewport client for phones and tablets. I do not know whether I'd be best using AppGameKit or Unity for that client, but I will let the tests and research decide.

As for the main cause of lag, garbage collection, I am refactoring the multithreaded .NET process to make more use of the stack with local variables and structures over classes for small chunks of data.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 18th Aug 2019 10:20
Minor update.

The executables and the project have been refactored for more flexibility for memory and thread management. During this month I have been working on the terrain and buildings which for the most part will use parts of the grid system and aspects of vector based and point based entities. This is the current focus for bringing the visuals up to standard. After completing a small game for a client, I will be using the extra time to focus on this project throughout this month and September.
Dimis
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Posted: 19th Aug 2019 20:02
Still amazed by the way you organize your project!, I wanted to ask, how is the game coming along, from gameplay aspect?
seppgirty
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Posted: 20th Aug 2019 23:40
glad to see you are still going.
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 21st Oct 2019 17:05
Hello there.

Quote: "how is the game coming along, from gameplay aspect?"


It was not a very good year; I built a ranged combat and melee combat system with the A.I. fighting back using unanimated characters and all of the placeholder material; but I hit a brick wall with too much of the system being placed on the same process handled by Microsoft .NET. This process called Garbage Collection (GC) is used to clear memory of expired resources accross 3 generations (tiers of memory resources usually based on how long stuff should reside in memory).

Essentially garbage collection halts all functions on ALL THREADS, regardless of using multithreaded functions, and caused delays of up to 1 second when you try to run, jump, kick, punch and shoot. For this reason I had to perform a surgical procedure on the gameplay, and use a dedicated process for handling user input and time dependant gameplay.

Because of having to redesign the engine, I decided it would be an impeccable opportunity to build a better one, something that allows for players to build aspects of the level (like in Rust, 7D2D and Fortnite), and for the engine to be portable; or in the case of sports fiction be interpreted by different engines such as AppGameKit and SharpDX.

Which brings us to the Summer and Autumn (or Fall depending on where you are); I am finishing off the foundation of the interpretation system, and will be testing it in a small game I am building for a client using AGK.

AGK Basic is quite similar to Dark BASIC syntactically, whats more it appears to be run as an interpreter language, so when you hit compile, it runs immediately; no wait for a compilation. Quite a splendid, advantagous tool indeed.

Now when I hit any brick walls, I can change the 'script' of Sports Fiction, rather than having to rebuild the system itself. I will also be able to build an AppGameKit viewport for mobile users to play some of the sports online with PC players. That's the developmental end game.

Quote: "glad to see you are still going."


Still going, in my spare time.
seppgirty
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2019 14:59
Wow. so this will not be completed in DBP. That's kind of a bummer. Was really rooting for you. Keep us up to date though.
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Chris Tate
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Posted: 25th Jan 2020 13:47
Hello there

I have not posted for quite some time. I do apologise for the less than favourable level of feedback and gameplay footage.
Quote: "
Wow. so this will not be completed in DBP. That's kind of a bummer."


To the contrary, after spending quite some time working on both tools, with a release of another (much smaller game) on Google play in the works, they are both exquisite tools for an special use. My investment in writing all my DBP code and becoming more proficient with its use is for use in Sports Fiction and any further games and desktop apps to come.

The strategy is to build the main Windows client with DBP, and to later, create a mobile/cross platform client. Both the DarkBASIC and AppGameKit tier 1 languages share similarities with many interchangeable keywords so I do not feel that I have left DBP, however AGK's editing environment, conveniences such as arrays in arrays, mobile support and almost instantaneous compile time, it would be prudential to include the asset in my development toolbox.

The SportsFiction structure is server-client, cloud based, so our development stacks may differ.

This game and my calf muscles share a rather bothersome characteristics, they take years to develop, but will be a blessing to have built.
fubarpk
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Posted: 11th Mar 2020 07:09
looking forward to seeing what you do with it through agk
the agk showcase thread would be a great place to showcase it when your ready

fubarpk on Itch...………...https://fubarpk.itch.io/
fubarpk on googleplay..https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=fubarpk
Chris Tate
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Posted: 26th May 2020 16:18 Edited at: 26th May 2020 16:20
Greetings.

It is a pleasure to be back.

With sincere wishes for all to get through these difficult global circumstances and to keep yourselves prepared, mentally supported and in good health — all in accordance with your local regulations and requirements.

I must say after a great deal of paradigm shifts in occurance in the New World of Facemasks and Hand Sanitisation, it is clear that things will never be the same again.

Quote: "looking forward to seeing what you do with it through agk
the agk showcase thread would be a great place to showcase it when your ready"


@fubarpk, with AppGameKit I look forward to bringing the best of both worlds where the new school brings remote access and the old school DarkBASIC toolset brings mouse and keyboard play paired with the vast libraries and plugins available for it. Only possible thanks to improved mobile bandwidth.

Pretty good with AppGameKit now; although since the Covid-19 business closure of my key clients I have not touched AppGameKit or DBP.

Sports Fiction.

A frustrating pattern of attempting to continue, only to have to stop to deal with an earth shattering situation. Everytime.

With a complete work related U turn by chance and necessity, I have had to change many plans for income and spare time for my project. A reoccurring thought that I am taking into consideration is for me to be delegating more tasks in the future, and to focus on bringing some finance to support the delegation.

The latest project is much more easier to collaborate with; but I won't accept free help.

Only until my current activity is out of the way, will I be able to continue, starting with the bringing together of my components.

Current activity

I am currently freelancing during the Covid-19 outbreak, building websites, databases for a few local business, some real estate apps for sales monitoring etc.

It will be a necessity for me to acquire a new job to replace freelancing; most likely a full time project requiring C# / VB.NET WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) Microsoft Office VBA with UI, web & graphics design and English writing as a perk. (Maybe some PHP / MySQL stuff, maybe Python sometimes)

It is clear that I will most likely to acquire work providing modern UI presentation, MVVM assets and support for scalability for a big migration project. The only constant in software development is change, as a point of fact we do not know what business logic is to be implemented in the near future let alone in 5-10 years, thereupon the systems built 20 to 30 years ago are being migrated to modern development stacks which promote workflows and cultures that react well to change in business logic, changes in economy and global climate amongst other issues to be adhered to in a way that can be accomplished by common efficient development teams.

It is likely that the other type of job I may seek will involve me handling the vast majority of the database systems used for internal or customer use for a small business which seeks to start up or rebrand and present assets to clients frequently in a way that attracts and inspires. I am stronger with UI design, WPF front end development than with Ms SQL, Azure and Microsoft Office solutions; but it is rear for a UI and graphic designer to be hired who can also get databases running from the server to multiple clients.

It is good time to be a C# / (£££) Python ($$$) coder right now; for different reasons (mostly for migration and simplification, i.e. stricter design patterns). It has occurred that numerous Office VBA coding jobs are now available for businesses seeking to adjust their Microsoft Office automation solutions for remote workflows and e-commerce — so many shops must close down and downscale. Quite sad, but quite interesting for Microsoft stack programmers who are similar to me.

The boardrooms of the big corporations are waking up to the need to accommodate for change which is inevitable and home working that is now ubiquitous.

...

A few pieces of advice there for any coders who have a similar background to me.

Next activity
It is certain that when things return to a state that is more free and secure, I will continue where I left off, bringing together the newly built components to bring the viewport to life for video footage. Could do with a YouTube channel. Fingers crossed.
Ortu
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Posted: 5th Jun 2020 04:56
Hey Chris, wish you well.

Dreams don't die, they just take a backseat for a while sometimes
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 1st Jul 2020 15:21
It is most delightful to see a comment from you once again Ortu. With gratitude I hope all is well with all of your endeavours, and many thanks for the uplifting note

With a great deal of eagerness and delight, tomorrow will be the first full day working on Sports Fiction since winter and all of what has been going on in the world, and I am rearing to go. I cannot wait to get started piecing this together. Full steam ahead.

Dimis
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Posted: 27th Jul 2020 07:44
Hi Chris, I'm glad to see that you still continue the project! Keep it strong. Looking forward for updates.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 29th Jul 2020 15:33
Thanks for the encouragement Dimis.

I hope that all is well, and look forward to seeing more of your game development and stylish artwork.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 29th Jul 2020 15:54
For the advancement and security of this milestone of the Sports Fiction project, today I am bringing the world of Test Driven Development to the DBPro project.

Unit tests and integration tests.

For the past 2 years, such tests have been a game changer for my other projects. It is a shame that this standard was never popular in DBPro culture from the early years, would have made a positive difference. I do not seem to see any TDD plugins for AppGameKit yet either.

A TGC search for unit test yields only one resulting post from 5 years ago. Oh well. It is not uncommon for TDD to be overlooked.

Such much better for the CPU to find route causes of problems at a touch of a button a few milliseconds, instead of you having to spend days to find but a clue using manual labour. . The test routine is also a lovely place to quickly track your progress.

So much better to run a series of commands which asserts (perhaps with Matrix1 utilities) something such as: DO_ALL_PLAYER_MODELS_HAVE_WALKING_ANIMATION() --> Success; You do not even have to check a log file.

Better than trying to figure out why a player walking animation 'is not working'. These are the manual debugging questions which one would have to ask: Why the punching animation playing when the character is running? Did I set the animation to punch instead of run? Is the character in running mode, or the wrong mode? Did I bind the wrong keys to the running command? Etc, etc, on and on and on and on for many of such issues.


One other desire I have is to integrate the DBPro (and hopefully the AppGameKit basic) compiler into Visual Studio IDE which supports custom programming languages; I just need the time. It would be lovely development experience to use Microsoft's coding and refactoring tools with these languages.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 6th Sep 2020 13:30
Greetings.

This is a minor update on my progress after refactoring the code projects. With great emphasis on avoiding thread blocking issues to make the animation and movement as smooth as possible, the game code has been structured so that the CPU affinity can be optimized. Processor affinity, or CPU pinning or "cache affinity", allows you to bind a DBPro process or .NET loop to a thread to a central processing unit (CPU) or a range of CPUs. The trouble with the previous effort was that certain types of entities are prone to block ALL threads in .NET if in the same process. These entities will now be handled by a remote server, and a separate local process.

Commencing from today I am working on world generation code for drawing shapes of object form, limb form, hardware instancing and vertex groups. With this range of options, the world can be optimised more freely by selection of best drawing method for particular terrain, clouds, buildings or similar visuals for best performance for a variety of contexts.
starhannes
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Posted: 1st Oct 2020 07:11
Hi Chris,

Just created an account here to say that I've bookmarked this thread and I've been logging in every 3 months to see what the latest post is. At this rate I'm considering making it a family tradition to check in on this development so that my child and eventually their child too can continue monitoring the progress.

Joking aside, I've been dying to see any visual demo and if you need any beta testers let me know.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 4th Oct 2020 20:14 Edited at: 4th Oct 2020 20:23
Hahaha, that is so funny.

This is a WISP; WORK IN SLOW PROGRESS! A bit like going to the gym, gotta stick to it or no one will not see progress.

Since starting back on Sports Fiction this year, I have been working on it for at least 25 hours a week. So I am rather pleased with myself. I tend to get most of the work done in winters, and the winter has yet to commence with a few months to go.

Sad thing is, had I not chosen to put it aside and made a certain choice, I would have finished it by now; at the time I felt I should focus on my job[s], low and behold, some of the large corporations and businesses I worked for are no more, or where never leading me anywhere, and in comes covid-19; but Sports Fiction and its message is still looking at me with angry eyes in my mind like an unsettled disappointed wife. The only thing I am pleased with at the moment, is that I am better at this than before, and will do a better job this time.

Footage of concepts
In the beginning I was freely open to posting images and videos of the inner workings; but now there is a certain standard for any image or video of this project that must be kept. Once I get past that standard, things will be getting a lot more lively and open.

It is very clear to me know that the story, and its psychological challenges, its questions, my ideas of the future of sport and survival in a competitive computer-dominated environment amongst other sports players, the governments, the rules, the law enforcement and the impact of these elements on the player's character are very emotional, touching and potentially educational; The subject matter has gotten deeper from the early days of balls and explosions, I simply cannot come to represent these important messages without the necessary artwork and design standards which are to deliver the message accurately; with the impact of social media in mind.

There will be some work to be done on the terrain tiling and buildings. From this point I think I will start posting videos.

60,000 times faster to read an image than text; which tells you how important the look of the game is to me.

I do have temporary character models from last year, but these are will no longer be shown. I want to show the real deal after 2 or 3 months of work on the character system.

The look
The game will be structured as comic, the message, the dopamine, the chills and suspense will be emphasized. realism, trivialized OR perhaps left to your interpretation.

Last month
Last month I rewrote the material system so that shaders and textures can be created more quickly. More procedural methods. And for the first time, the materials have unit tests.

Current progress
This week I am working on the 'Systems' entity. Something new specifically for the Dark Basic processes. Previously, the game loop was written as hard code; now the game loop itself will work as a collection of systems and sub-systems. Why, because it simplifies the process further simplification, the act of 're-wiring' and reusing the components of the game, without having to change the code.

Rather than writing code for all functionality; by simply having the systems wired a certain way, their adjacency and flow of information as set by database models (drag and drop) will provide such functionality with maintainability and networking in mind. Because saving, shutting down and compiling again to add one line of code is not what it is about anymore. More live structures, more WYSIWYG, more testing and keeping complexities at bay.

Systems unit tests next week, then the sky and clouds the week after it seems.
Kevin Picone
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Posted: 31st Oct 2020 15:08
Dude ... you're way down the rabbit hole on this one !!

Can help feel that you might want to look into building a DBPRO (to some else) translator. You'd win back a lot of performance and can emulate how the compiled EXE handles the command sets.

PlayBASIC To HTML5/WEB - Convert PlayBASIC To Machine Code
Chris Tate
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2020 10:19
@Kevin Picone

I agree. I have already started using other tools, however this project, at least its first version will be done in DBPro + .NET, because most of the what I need and have learned to use is there.

That major slow down was actually coming from .NET's garbage collector, so things should be fine. The problem was it blocks all threads, so my comic strip panel resources where making all threads pause for 200s to 300ms every 2 to 4 seconds. It is one of those subjects that are not quite at the forefront of .NET literature , so I learned the hard way that you cannot rely on multithreading to integrate with the vector graphics and animation features .NET framework expecting it to not impact the player's movement ability. I also built that engine, prior to when the new plug-ins came out, so I just had to start over.

DBPro's new plug-ins and shader techniques where added a few years by ago by Revenant Chaos to boost DBPro's performance, taking over its object update pipeline, and for using a single object to simulate 10s of 1,000s of objects, so no worries.

But I have definitely got other ideas and projects for other tools; including AppGameKit for a version of this game; and stuff like Sharp DX, Unity, Cry Engine and maybe I'll have a go using your tools for something too. I like using a variety of tools to feel them out.

Update

The systems entity have been completed. I have to complete a few more unit tests, maybe 2 or 3 days; culling tests for systems to start or stop when the player goes into or out of rooms, caves or vehicles etc.

Then over to C# to write the database code for loading and saving the first entity system, the sky. Not the most exciting thing to come, but very important. The sky will need to include cloud particles, some minor weather systems and fog systems. The weather will affect the behaviour of characters, the state of the terrain and the performance of vehicles.

I also need reference my comic strip library for putting it together into a user interface inspired by comic books.
This was done before, however, this time the systems are coming from the server, rather than hard coded; and are to use the new shading techniques for optimal performance.
Kevin Picone
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Posted: 4th Nov 2020 13:28

Quote: "
I agree. I have already started using other tools, however this project, at least its first version will be done in DBPro + .NET, because most of the what I need and have learned to use is there.
"


Cool, wasn't trying to dissuade you from that ends, just wanting to see you get more bang for you buck. What I was thinking was more along the lines of replacing the DBpro compiler with a like for like compiler/translator that was specifically aimed at what your doing. So you'd still using the DBpro libraries just generating a different main program that loads and calls the functions as DBpro normally does.

Worse case scenario would be even if it's only marginally faster at runtime, the compile times would obliterate it...

Something to think about.

PlayBASIC To HTML5/WEB - Convert PlayBASIC To Machine Code
Chris Tate
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Posted: 30th Nov 2020 18:58
Quote: "Cool, wasn't trying to dissuade you from that ends, just wanting to see you get more bang for you buck. What I was thinking was more along the lines of replacing the DBpro compiler with a like for like compiler/translator that was specifically aimed at what your doing. So you'd still using the DBpro libraries just generating a different main program that loads and calls the functions as DBpro normally does. "


This is a splendid idea. Will take it into consideration. I have flexibility and interchangeability in mind.

What you state is similar to what I am doing, except rather than a process, my own DBPro plugin specifically for Sports Fiction is in place to implement my C# libraries under an app domain I like to call the 'Viewport', sending delegated actions backwards and forwards, although there will still be legacy DBPro coding to deal with low latency situations and unusual plugin features and idiosyncracies. With C# being interpreted, there is not much compiling required. Although, such ideas are a plus.

Update
Currently working on ocean, clouds and basic entity development tools. In a much better place this time round. Learned how to use Entity Framework, so database development will be easier. The classes are now test driven, loosely coupled and will be much better equipped to deal with performance challenges down the road. Writing DBP code in VisualCode now, much nicer with automated snippets.

Very pleased, things are getting easier, looking forward to the new year.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 1st Feb 2021 05:20
Greetings to all.

It is of sincere hope that you are all well and pressing on with what needs to be done during these difficult times. Not in my lifespan thus far as there been a more miserable Xmas and New Years period for the vast majority given the political, financial and medical climate.

To keep this log brief, I wish to state that most of this period has been spent coding SF and paying the bills by designing and coding business solutions, as well as using my taking my skills to the next level; and wish to encourage all in the field to use these moments to inspire solutions for advancing and shielding one-selves past all obstacles towards a more secure future for you and your families.

Press on efficiently but with belief and prioritisation, excel with planning of specific and of intelligent nature.

Chris Tate
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Posted: 7th Apr 2021 07:17
Just a quickie.

The new structure of the engine is starting to mature.
The garbage collection will take place in separate processes, preventing lag spikes from interfering with game controls
The back-end and viewports decoupled; depending on the version, eventually some players could be running the old DBPro viewport, why others can run something modern bound via network.
Changes to the game require far fewer compiles, speeding up development, although thus far I have taken the liberty of spending a couple hours a day, what would normal require 5 or so. I spend more time reading and testing so as to catch bottlenecks early.

Currently working on Octrees and the blocks at the edges and nether of a given world instance.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 17th Jun 2021 05:18
Job
A rather unusual experience during these times over the past 2 months. I have been focusing on getting into my new .NET development day job, migrating core systems into Azure Functions and WebAPI from languages I used to play with during primary school such as Visual Basic 6 and the old Win32 APIs, almost 2 decades older than DBPro… (When was DBPro first released?)
Glad to not be having to use MSDos in this job. Fancy that…

(MSWord spellchecker thinks MSDos is an unrecognised invalid term but MSWord is. For those who do not know what MSDos is. It is the Microsoft Disk Operating System. Think of it as a full-screen CMD command prompt and that’s your operating system. If you wanted to play Worms, write commands to get into the Worms directory, then type the name of the game followed by its extension. The mouse had to be implemented by executables, there are no Icons in DOS. A number of Windows operating systems ran on top of DOS and therefore it was possible to run from Windows, however, some games ran best without running Windows in the background during the good old days.)


Good for your C.V. to work the ‘old’ stuff, while pioneering the new.

World Generator Update
After dedicating most of my spare time studying for the day job, I am now getting back into the swing of things.
There is a problem in the .NET end that I am working on this morning at 5am with regards the time it takes the generators to place content in the world. In one debugging circumstance, it takes 2 minutes to generate the most basic blueprint of a world; and in some debugging circumstances and most release builds it takes 5 seconds. The profiling tools (which record method call times and other metrics) are not revealing any bottlenecks in my code. I am struggling to find out why.

Viewport Client Update
I am migrating the shaders, comic controls and other assets from the previous engine into the new DBPro and .NET projects.
Each aspect is being decoupled, focusing on one area of the gaming system. In the end, viewports from other gaming libraries will need to ‘plugin’ to the Sports Fiction project to provide the game in other technologies. I can also use this model for future projects.

Stuff like WebAPIs are something I am looking into to make this more efficient, efficiency is key, so I can get to the fun parts sooner rather than later. Anything that can send HTTP requests, can be integrated into your cloud software.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 3rd Sep 2021 08:23
Update

It is always nice to be told by Visual Studio that my world generator is too slow, only to find out that the route cause of the delay was Visual Studio. It turns out that the attached debugger makes a 15 second generation process of a 'tiny world' take 3 minutes. I am going to take inspiration from file and video compression compression format to represent similar patterns of rock and terrain as formulas instead of arrays, providing the illusion of millions of land entities but with fewer resources. In my old version I used different sized tiles, this time I am using a variety of optimization models.

After a few boring weekends migrating to Azure, and configuring my equipment for remote work, I will be finding ways to improve my debugging process and will perhaps upgrade my system.

The winter is on the way which is my favourite time for working on the project, and will be focused on rendering and making use of the character generator tools available out there, tailoring the characters for the theme of the game and future projects using the same framework I am building.

I will be moving property which is going to be lots of fun.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 14th Nov 2021 13:49
Update

I've migrated much of the project over to Azure over the past few months. While I've not had the most desirable amount of time, I am now approaching the winter holidays where I tend to spend the most time working on the project.

My current focus is the conversion of world generator data into visuals. Similar to what was done previously except with the infrastructure developed in .NET 5 for the future, while using the DBP viewport work for efficient visuals.

Learned a great deal about building things in separate libraries and working with Azure and am looking forward to having fun with geometry. Now entities like trees, terrain and clouds are built as sub-projects, allowing the solution to expand quite nicely. My software engineering day job has provided the benefit of improving my skills for the task.

Graphics Card stock is still low from all the world events and semiconductor shortage, so upgrading equipment has been a challenge. I'll need an upgrade for this next phase. The graphics card I purchased 6 years ago went down in price, now it's gone back up in price.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 2nd Feb 2022 16:07 Edited at: 2nd Feb 2022 16:08
Update

Got more code written for my project in the past 2 months than the whole year last year. Very pleased about that.

Things are starting to get hectic with the 'return to office' requirement at the job, and my planned change of residence.

The game environment runs more smoothly than before, and I will benefit with easier level development now that I have building generators well underway.

Windows 11
OS upgrade had me worried, but it turned out much easier for me than Windows 8.1. I did not even need to install Direct X 9.0, it was all there by default. Got DBPRO working with no issues. Unfortunately, I've not been able to use my purchased plugins due to activation, but most of what I need is in .NET and C#; there is plenty of DBP available for use, and is doing fine, with me rather spoiled with 1,000+ FPS for what at one point would have dropped to 30 FPS.

Characters
I have to generate these again, not the best news, but I'm up for the challenge.

Terrain
This went rather well, got caves and cliffs generated, but is awaiting textures and shaders.
Dimis
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Posted: 16th Feb 2022 12:35
Always a pleasure to read your progress. Good to know that there are no problems with the windows 11 upgrade, i kind of hesitate to upgrade my windows 10 OS to 11.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2022 16:56
I'm loving Windows 11. I tend to be critical of the Windows operating systems since the days of Windows 3.1.

Zero problems in Windows 11 thus far after 4 months of use.

I recommend obtaining a new system, with which to start afresh. If that is not an option then it there might be less risk if you wait for its level of support to mature, I can only provide an example from having started anew.

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Posted: 4th Mar 2022 17:15 Edited at: 4th Mar 2022 18:43
Quote: "Unfortunately, I've not been able to use my purchased plugins due to activation"


you can copy the certificates folder that is available on github to the compiler folder and plugins can then be used without activation. Unless Im misunderstanding.
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Ortu
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Posted: 9th Apr 2022 03:45
I hate the changes to start menu and taskbar in 11, but I haven't found any major breaking issues either.

Glad to see this still progresses, looking forward to seeing the reworked characters

For the plugins, you can also copy from your old machine if you've still got it. I find this tends to be a cleaner setup than trying to pull from the open source stuff if you are working with the original paid dbpro version
http://games.joshkirklin.com/sulium

A single player RPG featuring a branching, player driven storyline of meaningful choices and multiple endings alongside challenging active combat and intelligent AI.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 30th Apr 2022 14:49
Hi Ortu

I left the weird Windows 11 start menu settings alone to experience the logic and reasoning for moving its position. Still trying to weigh the pros and cons of that part.

As for characters, unfortunately, or perhaps for the better, I have to rebuild my characters with part-time development in mind. More generators and less manually crafted character models, clothing and animations, and game overall. Just for this type of game, for another type of game, the compromise would differ. Facial expressions will be a big deal for me.

Good point about copying the plugins.

A small note about my current activities in the project. I'm currently generating roads and buildings, and will be putting together some terrain smoothing. Will be letting the screenshots and videos do the talking in the near future. Optimistic about the efficient code framework I've ended up with.
Chris Tate
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Posted: 10th Jul 2022 10:59
Update
The whole development process has become much more efficient and desirable to work with so that I will have a great deal of flexibility when issues arise. Aspects of the game are broken down into multiple projects that can be tweaked or swapped out when a need arises.

The whole point for designing the projects this way was to avoid the problem I faced where a few issues in one area of the system can break the performance of the whole system.

Buildings

Today for the first time I will be making use of mark-down language to describe buildings in the code while the game is running, instead of going back and forth between the 3D modelling program, the code and relaunching the game just to add a door, like I used to have to do back in the day.

Terrain
The terrain on which the buildings will need to stand is much more flexible now as we are not using a height based terrain but rather something modular. I've got to spend more time on the buildings and roads before I finish the job, but it looks like terrain, road and building systemization is one course for completion.

Screenshots and Videos
I will be preparing some webspace, screenshots and footage of the environment as soon as the above tasks are complete. I have still got to redevelop physics and characters, but at least there will be interesting environments to refine over time while I prepare the new dynamic entity systems.

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