Holiday Project

[Starglider]

Motion blur and subscale rendering are contentious topics. My original design for the Windhaven 3D rendering was a classic forward renderer running at physical screen resolution (720p on Xbox) direct to backbuffer, with no motion blur, HDR or fancy postprocessing, hoping to avoid the need by making 60 FPS nearly all the time. In practice it made 60 FPS unless you flew through a forest or had a lot of particles effects and terrain in view, in which case it drops to 30 FPS. This is a bit juddery.

On the Xbox forums the sentiment seems to be 'all the cool kids i.e. AAA titles are running at 600p or less, locked at 30 FPS, with upscaling and lots of blur'. They do this so everything can be dynamically shadowed specular postprocessed HDR etc.

This is an alternate version of the renderer, running on PC but with Xbox settings, using 'smart motion blur'. The landscape is rendered at 640p and the water is only 500p, but I refuse to compromise on the HUD or the foreground bird, which are still 720p. Variable four to eight sample motion blur is deployed using viewport manipulation on the landscape and vertex interpolation on the bird;



The Microsoft guy was probably right about the subscale rendering, static images are slightly blurry but that removes some single-pixel noise and allows me to have a higher terrain resolution anyway. At 60 FPS the motion blur is also a clear win, the virtual frame rate of 300 FPS is just uncannily smooth even on a 60 Hz monitor. At 30 FPS I'm not so sure. Basically it has the 'Transformers' look of any hard camera movements severely blurring the scenery, and even normal flight adjustments wipe out fine detail on the landscape.

I think I'm still going to go with it. Console gamers are probably more used to and tolerant of blur than judder. On PC any halfway decent graphics card will easily maintain 60 FPS all the time, and a decent card (5870 / 6970) can now do 1080p with high detail and moderate software supersampling on the landscape. There was some serious concern from one of the testers about this (it pretty much went : motion blur? nooooo!! less than 720p?? noooooo!!! turn it off turn it off horrible console awfulness aaaargh....). I will be including a reasonable amount of configurability in any PC release though.

The bird body still looks wrong, but I will eventually implement normal mapping on the contour feathers, which should fix it. The 'dust' lines aren't blurred because they have an important game function; letting you know your airspeed and drift velocity; and I want them to be working in hard turns at 30 FPS even if it means looking less nice in stills.

Also while I'm here, the cutscene compositing code is coming together;

[Sarevok]

is that Windhaven here http://www.liveindiegaming.com/UprisingNominees.aspx ?

I was looking for a place to submit a game I made and look who I see before me.

[Starglider]

I was looking for a place to submit a game I made and look who I see before me.

Yes, why what were you planning to submit?

[Sarevok]

This basically. It's a hybrid between Breakout and platformer games. Unfortunately I don't think I will be able to meet the June 27th deadline. The PC version is ready and fully playable. The XBox version ? I have not even aquired a Xbox dev kit yet. So game is going to be restricted to PC, Android and Symbian for the moment.

[Starglider]

This basically. It's a hybrid between Breakout and platformer games. Unfortunately I don't think I will be able to meet the June 27th deadline. The PC version is ready and fully playable. The XBox version ? I have not even aquired a Xbox dev kit yet.

XNA isn't that hard but there's no way you can learn the API, port and fully test in two weeks.

To be honest the Uprising submission list has a lot of very polished games, I think it would be very hard to get into the top eight with relatively basic graphics / gameplay. I suspect Windhaven won't make it either due to some combination of not being complete enough and flight sims not appealing to a wide enough player base.

[Sarevok]

Windhaven is pretty unique compared to the competition which are mostly quirky platformers or puzzle games. Your game is going to stand out and I think if the judges are fair you should get a good result.

As for my game it's actually a quick game I did from last saturday to wednesday. I was completely bummed out from FPS development and decided to take a break by doing some little games. Even if this little fellow does not find any market on PC I am hoping it will do better on smartphones.

[Starglider]

Even if this little fellow does not find any market on PC I am hoping it will do better on smartphones.

It is a huge market, but on the downside puzzle games seem to be very popular with devs due to the low hardware requirements and touch interface compatability, so there are a great many of them out there. I suspect commercial success will depend primarily on how good you are at getting lots of social network exposure. I'm really not a fan of social networking which will is probably bad for eventual sales of my game.

Speaking of which, according to testers (ok, a tester) the ugliest bit at present is the very simplistic bird body rendering. There are limits to what I can do with the time and hardware available, but I have added bump mapping to make the surface slightly less boring;



I also alpha blended the covert edges to make the transition into the body a little less jarring.

[Starglider]

I have started porting one of my (very) old projects to XNA; it was only about 20% complete, originally used software rendering.



I find it amusing that with modern technology, doing the stippled fake transparency effect is actually much harder than proper alpha-blended translucency.

[Starglider]

My original design for Windhaven's cover art looks like this (final art but temporary typography - based on my sketch but I commissioned an artist to make the art);



However some people on the XNA game dev forums said 'I hate this art, it looks like a generic RPG' and to be honest I was not entirely happy with it myself. Here are a couple of alternate concepts for Windhaven's cover art;



Are these an improvement? Should one be develped into a new cover and if so which one? What should the colour palette be?

[Zaune]

Is the admittedly very attractive scantily-clad blonde actually relevant to the plot? Which you have incidentally said very little about so far.

[Starglider]

Is the admittedly very attractive scantily-clad blonde actually relevant to the plot?

Yes, she is one of the four main / playable characters.

Which you have incidentally said very little about so far.

Honestly I was working under the assumption that the plot wouldn't be relevant to the vast majority of players, since people don't play AAA titles like Ace Combat for the plot. I have tried to include interesting characterisation, since in story mode the main characters talk to each other in combat and I'd like the player to connect with them. The plot involves an invasion of a fantasy world by extradimensional monsters, which turns out to happen every few hundred years, a religious cult trying to make it easier for the monsters to enter and hence cause the end of civilisation, the start of a war due to one nation being convinced that another deliberately triggered the rift, a few fairly standard twists etc. I will probably post the revised script in the Writer's Guild for review before we do another voice recording session.

[HMS Sophia]

I like the bottom left one, a lot. Well, except for the tentacle monsters in the back. Drop them, and it looks awesome.

[Vendetta]

The bottom left one is very good. It's also the kind of clean art that'll stand out well on the XBLIG cover gallery lineup.

[Dave]

Is the human-bird transformation process central to the plot? I'm not sure I see the relevance of the humans in the cover art if 95% of the game and plot is flying a bird.

Like the others, I like the bottom left design, but I don't really like the luminous human figure in the foreground. I guess it is because I'm not sure what it stands for, what it represents, and how it (seems to) relate to the game / the bird in the middle ground / whatever that triangle-obelisk is. I don't see the point of the human, I guess I'm trying to say.

[Starglider]

Is the human-bird transformation process central to the plot?

Plot yes. Gameplay no. However this is why I can have birds having dialogue, defending cities, activating magical obelisks etc in the story mode.

I'm not sure I see the relevance of the humans in the cover art if 95% of the game and plot is flying a bird.

I agree, that's why I requested the bottom right concept, which involves more 3D and birds. Alaysia appearing on the first cover is outright eye candy; sad to say, this does draw people (well, young males) in and get them to look at the game details.

[Scottish Ninja]

I agree, that's why I requested the bottom right concept, which involves more 3D and birds. Alaysia appearing on the first cover is outright eye candy; sad to say, this does draw people (well, young males) in and get them to look at the game details.

Of course, the problem with that is that video game promotional materials are already saturated with that kind of imagery, especially those of cheap games. My eyes just slide over that kind of thing now; I almost automatically write off games which seem to be touting as their main selling point attractive, scantily-clad women as cheap crap, at least in web advertising.

[Zaune]

Honestly I was working under the assumption that the plot wouldn't be relevant to the vast majority of players, since people don't play AAA titles like Ace Combat for the plot. I have tried to include interesting characterisation, since in story mode the main characters talk to each other in combat and I'd like the player to connect with them.

You'd be surprised. There's a non-trivial demographic that actually appreciates characters, plot and dialogue and will forgive bugs or iffy gameplay mechanics more readily if they're present.

[Dave]

Of course, the problem with that is that video game promotional materials are already saturated with that kind of imagery, especially those of cheap games. My eyes just slide over that kind of thing now; I almost automatically write off games which seem to be touting as their main selling point attractive, scantily-clad women as cheap crap, at least in web advertising.

QFT.

I think we understand why you did it, I just think it's a dumb move from the perspective of a customer (seriously, if I wanted to play a game for the scantily-clad women, I'd do so. But that's not why I play games.) and a dick move from the producer perspective (Look at the babe! She shows up in one-and-a-half cutscenes, but I'll plaster her all over the cover so you can think she's a major character.)

[Starglider]

You'd be surprised. There's a non-trivial demographic that actually appreciates characters, plot and dialogue and will forgive bugs or iffy gameplay mechanics more readily if they're present.

Perhaps, but I don't think many of them are buying Xbox Live Indie Games.

I think we understand why you did it, I just think it's a dumb move

Unfortunately there are in fact many crap games plastered with babes are selling well on the channel. However I am trying to be somewhat different with this game regardless of the fact that a lot of my efforts won't help and may actually hinder sales. Thus I am reconsidering the cover art (at significant cost).

[Zixinus]

I like the first alternative. I didn't really think that the human figure is a woman, I like it because it's so straightforward and tells so much about the game.
Except for one bit about it: change the monster's color, metallic gray or some other omnious color. That way, it'd be clearer that the monsters are enemies rather than part of the city.

[Starglider]

Feedback from the various places I posted this;
* Essentially all the artists prefer the concept on the bottom left.
* Essentially all the game devs and potential players perfer the concept on the bottom right.
* Only a couple of guys obsessed with cute girls wanted to keep the first cover.

I have demanded that the artist who made them combine both concepts into a third concept, using MAD SCIENCE, regardless of the consequences.

We shall see if the result is fair or fowl.

[Agent Sorchus]

The third (aka bottom right) has the best raw composition. The other two look like they are created as layers on photoshop. The blending of elements into the distance is what draws me to the third and into the imagery, and thus the game.

[Starglider]

Mostly fixed the Enterprise mesh, for F/A-18 AGGRESSOR (working title...). I confess that I work on this when I am too tired from commercial / AI stuff to work on Windhaven.

[Starglider]

Some more cover art concepts;



Which should be the final cover?

[Hawkwings]

I like C the best, but they're all quite cluttered. How big of an image are people going to see when they page through the game library?