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| RGB HSV Color Conversion |
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Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 02:44 PM EDT, Matthew
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The stock Virtools BBs have no means to get and set color components through their hue/saturation/value representations. Some BBs are aware of HSV, such as Interpolator BB, and the Rainbow Color paramop apparently takes hue and value as its inputs.
Here are two VSL blocks to convert an RGB representation of color to HSV and vice versa. Example of this in action here.
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| Easy Fireworks |
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Monday, July 18 2005 @ 02:40 PM EDT, Matthew
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Here's a quick way to get a two-stage fireworks explosion. It'll take a few seconds on the example before they start to kick in:
Example fireworks
Source CMO is available as always.
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| Particle Streamer |
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Wednesday, February 23 2005 @ 11:27 PM EST, Matthew
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I've been doing a lot of particle work on our projects lately, and had an itch to try out a curve emitter that snakes behind the mouse.
Have a look:
Normal tail length
Super-long settings
As usual, here's the source CMO. Enjoy!
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| Virtools Ogg Plugin |
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Thursday, November 11 2004 @ 07:26 PM EST, Matthew
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I finally was able to finish an .Ogg media plugin for Virtools. Ogg is a fantastic open-source audio compression codec, and a no-brainer replacement for MP3: low-bitrate files sound better, it's license-free (are you paying for that MP3 license? I didn't think so), and it's ubiquitous. There is absolutely zero reason to use MP3 when Ogg is a possibility. Just listen to these compression tests from one of our projects.
Disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. One of my friends helped out with the core of this plugin, and I fumbled it into a working state from there. I make no guarantees about its robustness. If you do improve upon it, though, please send your updated version back my way.
This goes in your Virtools (or player) Plugins directory:
http://devlab.flashbangstudios.biz/tests/ogg/OggReader.zip
Here's the [very messy] source:
http://devlab.flashbangstudios.biz/tests/ogg/OggVirtoolsPlugin_source.zip
The above DLL is compiled for Virtools 3.0.
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| First 3rd-Party Submission - Projectile Aiming with Gravity |
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Thursday, June 24 2004 @ 03:57 PM EDT, Mark Wegner
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I've made a VSL script in the open source spirit of DevLab; it is now posted for anyone interested in the techniques and use of what I have created. It is my answer to the question of how to aim a projectile of a given initial speed and location, affected by gravity, in such a way that you can hit a stationary target.
The VSL script uses the position of the shooter, the target, the magnitude of gravity in the y direction, the speed of the projectile to compute the position relative to the shooter to apply an impulse towards such that the projectile will hit the target and the time until impact.
The test level demonstrates the success of my technique by randomly spawning balls and shooting them at a set speed of 30m/s so they will intersect the center of the torus. The next logical step for the test is to modify the iterative techniques to allow aiming at linearly moving targets, or to modify the technique to use error feedback to find theta faster.
The web version is posted here, and the source .cmo is available here.
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| Physics Parameter Workaround |
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Thursday, June 24 2004 @ 03:46 PM EDT, Matthew
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Thanks to an observation by Chris on the Swapmeet Forums, a working solution for the physics parameter problems has been found. To use special physics parameters--constraints, motors, and springs--in a dynamic fashion, simply store them in strings rather than their custom counterpart. If you're using arrays, make sure to set the column type to parameter and the parameter to string (don't use the string column type).
Aside from that simple caveat, everything else works. Check out this simple test for an example; left click to break springs, space to set them as long. The source CMO is available, as always.
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| Spam Cleared Out |
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Tuesday, June 01 2004 @ 04:02 PM EDT, Matthew
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Geeklog has had some problems lately with anonymous spamming. I cleared out the wave that came through here and upgraded to the latest version. Anonymous posting is now disabled, too.
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| Where Does the Time Go? |
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Monday, May 10 2004 @ 02:40 PM EDT, Matthew
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I might've jumped the gun a little bit on my previous post. Obviously, I haven't had much time to update DevLab; certainly nowhere near the time I spent on it last summer. Here's what I've been up to lately:
GDC/Independent Games Festival
We were at the GDC as an Independent Games Festival finalist with Beesly's Buzzwords. The show was great--it was an awesome amount of exposure, and we certainly made a lot of contacts. We were also the recipients of the "Project Goldmaster" award, which was announced as a pseudo-prize alongside the IGF award winners. Project Goldmaster is a collaboration between Cartoon Network and AOL, where we'll be creating a game for a Cartoon Network show/property and record our development progress on an AOL blogging-esque service. We're really looking forward to it, since it's both a paid contract job and a huge opportunity to get our name out there.
Some links:
[that's me on the podium]
Upcoming Flashbang Titles
We're currently working on three titles, although two will be put on hold as soon as development begins on the Cartoon Network game. All three are targeted at the same casual market as Beesly's Buzzwords; although we're beginning to take more risks. The project farthest along is looking extremely promising and should be released in late July. Here's a quick screenshot (sorry about the size--geeklog limit of 300 pixel width; too busy to change for now):
The other two games are looking very promising, as well. The second will be released in late August, if possible, but the release date will obviously be variable relative to the Project Goldmaster workload. The third is a our first 3D casual game, which is a recent project we started along with a recent contractor. All told, Flashbang is now four guys working full-time as well as three part-time/contractor audio workers.
Anyway, Back to DevLab
I do have plans to continue work on DevLab, although I'm not sure exactly when yet. I have some more physics ideas to try (especially if Virtools fixes a few bugs in the physics pack). E3 is this week, though, and I'm moving to an apartment later this month; I'm a single man again after 6.5 years with my now-ex-girlfriend. As soon as things settle down again look for some new DevLab work. Honestly, I really will post some new stuff fairly soon.
In addition to physics tests I plan to release some beginner tutorial-style documentation on learning the fundamental concepts of Dev's schematic scripting. I feel it'd be useful to a lot of other people, and certainly useful for us internally (our intern would love to learn, could always have the artists be doing more on their end, etc). Look for the first of the tutorials to start showing up sometime over the summer.
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| New Host, Free Time Again |
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Wednesday, January 28 2004 @ 09:53 PM EST, Matthew
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My apologies for the lack of activity here lately--I've been busy with organizing our next company projects. Beesly's Buzzwords still takes up more of my time than I expected, too (even did a radio interview this last weekend). The good news is our time is becoming more structured, so I should be able to do some work on DevLab in the next few months.
The Game Developer's Conference is bearing down, which will be especially busy, but I should be able to do the occasional test along with the usual source. I recently made this new test (ESDF, R for controls), but I need to clean up the code a little before I post it. I should have it online this weekend. The site has been moved over to our new dedicated server, too, which should make things consistently speedy.
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| Smallball Redux |
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Thursday, December 04 2003 @ 05:57 PM EST, Matthew
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I couldn't resist the design challenge of incorporating the blob into a remake of the venerable Smallball. What I wanted to add was a new gameplay element based around flexing the blobs. It's still fairly early, but there's an early WIP available (ESDF and IJKL controls).
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| Submit Tests |
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Interested in submitting your own test to DevLab?
Click here.
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| About DevLab |
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DevLab contains Virtools Dev experiments, examples, and musings by Matthew Wegner of Flashbang Studios, LLC.
For more information on Virtools, check out their website.
Feel free to email me with any comments or suggestions for the site.
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