Hi there. Thought i'd share a little sample of the project i'm working on with people here seeing as i'm developing this on DBPro and since I've solved a few issues I've had in development by browsing the posts from a lot of good people on this forum.
Global Vacation is intended to be a realistic looking and feeling fruit machine simulator based on the machines commonly found in the UK.
The following features are already in place or are wip.
-The game is designed in 1920 x 1080, is rendered in 1080 and is intended to be played at 1080 for best gfx quality.
-There is an included "configurator" panel pre launch for selecting multiple display resolutions, vsync, windowed mode, audio adjustments and there's even a slider for setting the max pay out percentage of the machine.
-The gfx core is designed to be extremely fast on all machines, despite using mammoth, detailed hd textures and thousands of polygons. More specific details of the performance later in the post.
-Realism is emphasised any ware I can manage it. For example, the main board has clear glass covering it. On that glass the is greasy finger prints, smears, dust build up, scratches, hairs and even specs of dandruff etc all backlit and glowing from the main board lights. The reels are warped and wobble slightly during spinning etc, etc, etc...
-Its clever layout keeps the jaggies to a min and negates the need for anti aliasing and anisotropy.
-The core engine of the machine is based on the real maths used to rig and control real machines and includes all the secrets and features of the real machines. It will include a ton of set pieces on top to keep you playing, draw you in and give an overall feeling that you are playing a real machine (without the real money outlay of course lol)
-Its based on a common design found in a lot of machines here in the UK. Ie £6 jackpot with a main board and feature bored with pots etc and a ton of features.
Gfx specifics:
-The entire simulator is built using 3d objects that are either scripted or pre rendered by hand. It then uses extremely detailed hd textures that I have created myself.
-The gfx are 80% my own creation with the rest being community free licence gfx that are altered from the original and custom tailored for need.
-The engine animation rate updates at 60 times per second however the fps can either be vsynced or left unrestricted without effecting the speed of the game.
Audio specifics:
-The full game will use a massive array of loops and sfx created by me that are custom tailored for the game itself and that add to that feeling of realism.
-Again, 80% of the audio is my own original works. The rest is my remixes of royalty free, licence free audio tracks or freely available and usable samples.
-I'm actually creating multiple full lossless dance audio tracks with the intent of only using specific parts of those tracks as loops at various points. The full tracks will be available with the game however. I'm considering adding a music player to playback the full tracks.
Current development specifics and performance details:
-The machine currently has full, not yet final, gfx for the mainboard with 40% of the main board scripting in place.
-Current project time at point of posting is 3 weeks in.
-Performance has been gauged on 3 separate machines. Lowest end being a laptop with an amd dual core cpu at 1.4ghz and mobility radeon gfx. Cpu usage of the simulator sits at aprox 14% with gpu usage at 20% and aprox 350mb ram used at 1366 x 768 resolution. Now that is vfast and makes this game playable on almost any modern machine running windows.
Here's a few screenshots but these arn't the best due to capturing at its lowest res in windowed mode. To get the full benefit of the detail, you must view the game in 1080 full screen.
Configurator panel:
Main board:
The Demo:
I've knocked together a little demo of the game for you to play around with. Download link included at the end of the post.
Specifics of the demo:
-The game itself is currently locked out for good reason. I've supplied you with a tech demonstration of the engines etc for now. I fully intend to provide you with a fully working main board demo in aprox 4 weeks time to have fun with.
-Currently it works like a flasher test with animation and audio tests thrown in.
-Controls are left mouse = alternate speed of spinning reels. Right mouse, alternate speed of flashers. M key to alter music track playback between 4 complete audio track loops. Escape to exit back out to the configurator.
-The demo includes 4 of my audio tracks for you to play with. Please note the track called psychedelic fuzz is hugely wip and is by no means a finished article. (still requires fade ins/outs, base lift off, further synth and sampling)
-Known issues with this demo are that the buttons can have clipping issues on certain resolutions or with certain gfx. This is because the buttons are not final. They were hastily thrown together temp for testing and development purposes. Proper buttons coming soon.
-Another known issue. On one of the machines I tested on it failed to load initially due to "msvcp71.dll" being missing. I have included the one from my own computer from my syswow64 folder and placed it in the root folder of the demo. If you don't feel safe, delete it. Its only there to make sure it boots for everyone.
Global Vacation 0.02 Alpha tech demo link, hosted on media fire. 97mb:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/l3x42sc3bzwycv2/GV_Sim_0.02_ALPHA.rar
