I Am Horse Game. · 8:10pm Mar 30th, 2014
Most of you are probably unaware that I'm a game programmer. I'm in the third (second?) year of my Computer Science Bachelor's, hoping to get a coop at a game studio in another semester or two.
Game Website: http://horsegame.ca/
Alpha footage:
Follow on Twitter: @SprakleDev
I joined the team as a writer/graphics programmer. Game programming was already something I did quite a bit on the side in addition to writing, so hopefully this won't take away from how much I post/update on here. So far my main contributions have been a restructuring of the (still loosely) planned story, and rewriting the game's shaders to allow for transparent objects. Yesterday, I also wrote a pretty nifty shader we're we're planning to use for the magic auras.
The spaceship model has a lot of sharp edges and complex geometry making it really bad for toon shading, so expect something closer to the sphere.
Also, I'm getting an Oculus Rift DevKit 2 sometime in July. A friend of mine jokingly asked me to make a game where he could hold a virtual applejack, so I'm totally going to do it.
I'm pretty excited about the Rift and VR in general. I've been following its development closely, and a lot of what devs are discovering is that there's a shift towards atmospheric and exploration based games. Journey still stands out as possibly my favorite game of all time, and I'm a huge fan of Shadow of the Colossus and Dark Souls. If I had to be honest, the thing that excites me most about VR isn't the actual experience itself, but how it's going to shift designs. I've always loved the sense of wonderment environments can invoke and the stories they can tell of the past. I tried to invoke that sense of wonderment in Equestria from Dust, and I hope to invoke it again in the next multichapter I'm working on.
Are you taking any game dev classes as a part of your degree?
1967043
Nope. Can't say I'd want to, either. I took a 100 level elective course where you make a game and the things I heard in that class... I think it was a negative net gain. So many bad practices and incomplete truths. I swear, if I heard one more presenter say how 'profitable and easy' the mobile market is...
Most computer science degrees don't have very much aimed specifically at game development. Degrees from places that specifically teach game development are considered pretty second-rate in the industry, as those places are less likely to produce a well-rounded computer scientist. Programming in almost any capacity involves having a basic set of skills and then learning how to do things project to project.
I love this! It was adorable before they started killing each other, though I really laughed when she brought out the laser canon and wiped everypony out.
This reminds me a LOT of what my brother in law has done in the past (minus ponies). He started out at Cal State Northridge many years ago and is now a developer for one of the Big Massive Gaming Companies.
1967119
Funny enough, my highschool friend and roommate is working at EA for 8 months on the next NHL title, but he's jealous of my other roommate who got a coop at more medium sized studio. So far the roommate at EA has written 'barely' any code (although with how much he writes, that could still be several thousand lines) and the other one is actually getting to code fun, significant things.
1967127 Yeah, I'd say it's more or less the same for my bro-in-law. He worked for smaller companies for a long while and had his hands into everything start-to-finish, which I know he found very satisfying. I know he'd be much happier being in that position again, but then the money he makes is very, very good.
He ran into the same thing you mentioned: He pretty much had to teach himself game programming over the years, as there was little to go on at that time, either. Doesn't sound like much has changed since then.
I earlier found this on reddit (r/mylittlepony) but didn't know you were the developer, keep it up! It looks cool!
Make a pony simulator in Oculus!
well that looks pretty epic, SLP
1967694
A developer. I kinda only realized afterwards that the title might read wrong in that sense...
Also, at first I'm just going to make an applejack that runs around and has a bunch of animations and ai (like those pet games). Later I'm probably going to make an underwater diving game, space exploration game, or cave spelunking game (basically a cool environment to explore).
Awesome! I don't know why, but I never expected to be following someone who was into any kind of programming, let alone game programming. I'm only just starting out in programming in general, so everything I see here just makes me go wide-eyed and slack-jawed with amazement like a little kid who wants to be an astronaut watching the shuttle launch.
For me, I really do enjoy the thought of operating system development. If I wasn't keen on doing that, though, game programming would easily be my next choice. Heh, I say all this like I'm actually majoring in CIS. Currently, I'm on track to becoming a structural engineer, but I'm not so far into my schooling that it would be too late to switch majors (this is causing a considerable amount of indecision and panic on my part).
Though you have made one thing easier for me: your comment about schools that offer degrees specific to game programming and development has at the least made me more cautious about it. I live in California and I know I want to attend a UC (currently at a junior college for GEs and lower division work and will most likely transfer in 2016). One of the UCs I'm considering is UC Santa Cruz; I know that they have a major specific to computer programming for game design and I thought that implied it must have been just as good as their regular computer science major since they would have many of the same foundation courses in programming regardless of the major.
In fact, I think they share the same lower division coursework and the differences only appear at the upper division undregrad level. But at least now I won't go around thinking "it must be good" and have a bit more of a reserved judgement like I try to normally have about things, so thank you.
1968622
There are one or two exceptions to the rule. If their first two years of courses are identical to a normal computer science major, then it's really more of a computer science major with a game programming option
3rd and 4th year computer science is usually where a normal computer science program opens up into electives and you start to specialize (or take various things that interest you).
Tip: To prevent that issue where you can see bits of the geometry through itself with transparent stuff is quite easy to fix with the z buffer. If you're ordering your stuff back to front, you can render each magical effect with 2 passes. On the first pass turn off colour write but leave z buffer write on, then in the second pass turn colour write back on and you'll avoid that issue at the bottom of the object on the right.
1969517
Thanks! I implemented that and it seems to work:
i.imgur.com/GBRjbkk.gif
Things shouldn't look like the spaceship, mind you. I'm using it for testing because its design works really poorly for the shader. The mesh for the magic effect is separate from the main object, so the magic can be made whatever shape we need (for things like magic around the handle of a sword).
Seeing as the second pass redoes everything, could it cause a hit to performance?
1970432 No, unless you're rendering a ton of magic effects it'll be fine. Also, if you're going to have an outline like that, I would suggest using the stencil buffer to remove all parts of the outline inside the shape.
1. Turn stencil buffer write on to a value unique to each effect (you're limited to 255 here before you'll need to clear)
2. Render the effect like you've done
3. Turn stencil write off and stencil culling on for the value in step 1 and draw the outline.
This should work fine because I'm assuming for this magic effect you only want it to outline the entire magic shape.