Omnimaga
General Discussion => Introduce Yourself! => Topic started by: coelurus on January 27, 2012, 09:20:53 am
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Hiya 8)
Stumbled upon Elimination today, thought nobody was going to use the Gemini source code. Glad so see somebody decided life wasn't gonna get any better ;D I haven't touched z80 since Gemini, the first TI83 infinite plane demo (I see there's a Zero-Wing thing going on, goodie) and some hopeless excursions in 6 DOF 3D culling. Still, would be glad to help if there are any questions about the Gemini code. Tried to post in that sub-topic, but wasn't allowed to so I'll just copy-paste my post here.
Few things about me for those who haven't met me (I do not recognize many of the nicks around here): I'm cynical, glad to offer constructive criticism but I hardly ever pat people on the back unless they're about to pass. So let me get this over with: Looks nice. From now on I'll run in cold mode.
Skimmed through some topics, I do agree that far away sprites look a bit blocky compared even to the ancient Gemini. Remember to design levels taking into account the crappy resolution of the TI84, long distance encounters need some space. I hardly ever did, in fact I never even played through map 3 in Gemini IIRC, but I figured after I had released the game. Turned out alright.
It seems you have a way to store loads more data on the calc than Gemini ever did, so I would suggest mipmapping for all sprites. Use pixel-wide details, select a mipmap by the projected screen size and only ever scale up, never down except maybe beyond the smallest mipmap. If you go for 32x32, 16x16, 8x8, the scaling-code should be fairly trivial to update.
The perspective projection looks very harsh now that you have the caster fullscreen, I would suggest generating new perspective LUTs to get larger walls for a longer distance. I don't remember if I used "f * x / z" of "f * x / (z + z0)" with z0 being a hand-adjusted parameter. Try the latter option and play around with z0 to get a "beefier" perspective projection.
The gun perspective looks odd in fullscreen. Don't settle for a Doom approach, they did that back in '93, just do it right.
I remember there was a bug with the hit detection in Gemini, which was the bug that was mentioned in the dev docs in the Gemini zip. Did anybody find this and fix it?
Personally I think the background esp. on level 17 looks terrible :devil: Your decision entirely and if people want it, by all means go for it. I seriously thought you had introduced a bug in the graphics code when I saw that vid on yt...
I may not be super-responsive, but ask questions or whatever and I'll try to answer them in due time. Try PMs if I go silent.
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Welcome! I see you're very interested by Gemini and Elimination.
Also have some peanuts.
!peanuts
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welcome! hope you enjoy your stay! :)
!peanuts
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hello
morepenuts
!peanuts
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Heya and welcome here. I do remember you from the old and new MaxCoderz boards as well as Revsoft (I believe you were part of Drubu too, right?). Nice to see some old faces around again. :) Also I played Gemini a lot in the past back and enjoyed it a lot. My only issue was the RAM requirements (someone discussed updating the game to be split in two files like Desolate with one remaining archived a few years ago, but I never heard again about it) and the random crashes on exit, but otherwise it was one of my favorite ASM games for the 83+ series.
By the way since you stopped calc programming a long while ago, what have you been working on in recent years? Also didn't you also create music in the past? I remember going on your personal website back then until it became a porn site, but it was so long ago that I don't remember.
Tried to post in that sub-topic, but wasn't allowed to so I'll just copy-paste my post here.
That is strange, maybe there are permission issues for new members for that sub-forum or it was due to spam a few months ago. I reported it to an admin on Facebook and hopefully it should be fixed now so you can repost your comment there. (Hot Dog never checks the Introduction section, so he will most likely never notice your criticism otherwise D:)
Few things about me for those who haven't met me (I do not recognize many of the nicks around here): I'm cynical, glad to offer constructive criticism but I hardly ever pat people on the back unless they're about to pass. So let me get this over with: Looks nice. From now on I'll run in cold mode.
Actually there is still Chickendude and tr1p1ea passing by from time to time, but they're more active on MaxCoderz and Revsoft respectively. I used to be Kevin (not Rezek/KevinJB) then xlibman then later DJ Omnimaga until I stopped running this site. Besides that there is Lionel Debroux and ExtendeD, but I doubt you ever met them before because they were mostly TI-89/92+/v200 programmers before switching to TI-Nspire. As for criticism you are welcome to provide some to people around here to help them improve. Just make sure to do it politely and in non-biased ways lol (since Omnimaga team tends to primarily focus on community friendliness and avoid language/OS/browser wars)
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What's the deal with the peanuts?
You remember my past better than I do, I had completely forgotten about Drubu.
I'm currently a Ph.d. at CERN, writing my mid-term thesis in nuclear physics on my project on polarizing beams of exotic nuclei :hyper: I have been busy with programming on my spare time too, been doing a lot of 3D programming alongside some excursions into safe C++, testing, coverage etc. I wish one day I will realize I was born to write code for computer graphics, it's the one thing I can think about in any situation I'm in. In fact I have started a programming company with a good friend of mine back in Sweden. For game development eventually of course.
I'll try and post something in the Elimination thread then.
Never really got a hang of what Chickendude did back in the day, but tr1p1ea I remember well. I thought Maxcoderz was dead. Talked to Gergely not long ago, he hasn't touched the calculator for ages either.
I treat everybody without bias, good enough? ;)
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Yeah, the peanuts. That's the Omnimaga way of welcoming new users :P
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What's the deal with the peanuts?
You remember my past better than I do, I had completely forgotten about Drubu.
I'm currently a Ph.d. at CERN, writing my mid-term thesis in nuclear physics on my project on polarizing beams of exotic nuclei :hyper: I have been busy with programming on my spare time too, been doing a lot of 3D programming alongside some excursions into safe C++, testing, coverage etc. I wish one day I will realize I was born to write code for computer graphics, it's the one thing I can think about in any situation I'm in. In fact I have started a programming company with a good friend of mine back in Sweden. For game development eventually of course.
I'll try and post something in the Elimination thread then.
Never really got a hang of what Chickendude did back in the day, but tr1p1ea I remember well. I thought Maxcoderz was dead. Talked to Gergely not long ago, he hasn't touched the calculator for ages either.
I treat everybody without bias, good enough? ;)
Yeah the peanuts are some sort of long-running gag here on Omnimaga (dating back as far as Spring 2006 or so). Kinda like some internet memes elsewhere but only for Omnimaga intro section. And yeah I've been on Drubu for a while but it lasted for a so short amount of time so I did not get time to be active very much. They were never really active much either.
And nice, I'm glad you still code. Also I remember your old C++ raycasting demo that looked like a calc screen. Variable wall heights would have been nice on calc. Benryves was working on something like that a while ago, but I have no clue what happened to it recently. http://benryves.com/journal/tags/Nostromo/all
As for MaxCoderz it's still around, but it's barely active anymore since all staff moved on to non-calc stuff over the last 4 years and no new staff joined. :( URL is still http://www.maxcoderz.org . Chickendude was working on a Monopoly clone actually.
As for bias I meant how on certain forums users of certain programming languages (most notably TI-BASIC and Java) or people who created any calculator game that is larger than 15 KB and have more than one file were treated as inferior people years ago. That type of thing hasn't happened much here, although I do remember certain episodes of Ruby fanboyism last Summer on IRC. <_<