What's new?

14.11.2005.

Monstrumo: Just some progress info. This weekend I concentrated on two aspects : performance and better visual experience.

1) fullscreen - go to options, and select it (it is default option). Around 40% better FPS in fullscreen mode for me!
2) roll over effect in menus so that player knows when will something happen if he click the mouse button
3) increased movement speed. Now running and exploring the island is more dynamic, I think.
4) A little darker exterior, for better mood.
5) If someone is interested in little stats (fps, camera pos...), press F10 to see them.

6) I discovered that my think() class that I call every frame for each visible enemy could have been improved. So i've done that. On some places performance was 100% better than before !
7) Besides that I added some colorful bushes, more realistic looking palm trees and smoother pirate's animation.
8) I really don't know why I didn't add more sounds to the game earlier. I just recorded some hey's, steps, scary laughs ( , don't laugh at me if they are not scary, I'm peaceful man). Gameplay is much better actually when you can HEAR you enemies patrolling around and when you KNOW that they noticed you!

9) Pirates get bloody when you hit them hard (and enough)!

10.11.2005.

Monstrumo: I repaired that bug to get stuck when walking over dead enemies. Also, I did some performance tune and gained 50% faster framerate!

07.11.2005.

Monstrumo! is now webstarted, for Windows, Linux and Mac OS platforms. All you need is a Java Runtime Enviroment (JRE 1.4+). You can play it here immediately!

02.11.2005.

I added some info on our new project : Monstrumo! It is already in playable state. Follow this link to find out more... Webstart will be added soon.

21.09.2005.
I got tired of bad- looking trees in project. Also, I was much determined not to make trees in some 3d tool and import them into world. Instead, I decided to use my brains, couple of math functions and creative inspiration for drawing leaves. Somethimes I got lost in Translation3fs and Rotation3fs, but... I made tree and few branches out of cylinders. Not very realistic, but if clever covered with leaver, it should do the trick. Then I made three layers of leaves, textured polygons rotated for 60 degrees next compared to first, so that in one layer I have 6 polys. Also, I made two different types of tree, with dofferent bark and leaves textures. Some three hours later, I couldn't believe the result. My World became so much realistic, that I fooled my friend and told him I got new game. And he believed. So, what I am trying to do here is to share my happines and results with you. This is REALLY looking better and better each day!

There is more... I decided to put some melee weapon in game. That meant writing a whole new classes for handling weapon such as that. But obviously game framework is flexibile enough since that didn't turn out like big job. You can notice my first weapon - a stick with a stone on the top in latest screenshots. For now, that is the only melee weapon. With mouse 1 button you can swing it and crush the enemy, bahahahahahaha!

15.09.2005.
Until late this night I played a lot with spell, particle and smoke effects. Not bad at all, for now I am satisfied. Also, I added another skybox a little futhrer from the first, so that I could have affects like multiple layers of clouds on sky.

14.09.2005.
A lot have happened last three weeks. The team is obviously growing - now there are two of us. My friend will stick more to the effects, graphics and sounds, while I will be coding the core. The engine looks pretty nice now. A large step forward from Java3D, I must confess. See, for example this screenshot:

There are fire effects, moving grass, moving trees, reasonaby looking HUD... Now that I made a level editor, things should develop even faster!

26.08.2005.
Finally I made some efforts to port MagicWoods project in LWJGL graphic library. See products page for more details. For now, I am glad that I managed to render terrain, multitexture it, and that I have WASD moving with mouse rotations (classical FPS behaviour). I am most proud on my grass which is partly transparent and is slightly moving in different directions (let's say, on wind). There is a skydome for first time. Great, it is slightly moving so that looks like clouds are moving. I will play more with the effects in the future, though...

19.08.2005.
For first time, MagicWoods is top game at javagamesfactory! Check it out and play it via webstart.

17.08.2005.
I am back in this project after a while. The thing is, I am porting whole project into LWJGL library (openGL). It seems to be faster and gives me better control of game engine. Nevertheless, I developed some terrain changes in Java3D version. You can select among 3 landscapes each with different terrains (plains in snow, hills in dust and one canyon with grass and stone). There is also another random enemy - an skeleton. Enjoy!

24.05.2005.
I resolved some of the performance issues. Now spell casting is smoother because I developed a spell pool and loaded it in the memory first. WhiteFireSpell (SPACE) can still damage the trees, but now have parabolic motion. That is, I included gravity. If you hit left mouse button, you'll se a change - now there is devastating (and mana consuming) cluster spell! It consists of 8 small balls... Enjoy!

11.05.2005.
Lots of news and improvements... New options at the beginning of the game  -  you can also choose the number of stones (which I add). New grass type, for better visual impression (2 types for now). New flowers, grouped together. !!!BIG!!! improvement - SOUNDS. I really don't know why I waited so long before implement some sounds. Now you just have to hear it - when you walk, run, fire a spell, hit a ground, hit a tree, wind is blowing, birds are singing... It's beautifull atmosphere! Collision improvements - when you hit the tree with whiteSpell, it will slowly fall down! It could be really fun to destroy a whole woods if you like! I add an enemy, too! (thanks to 3d Caffe for free 3d model and sounds) - it's a werewolf capable of the same spells as you are so watch out! There is no animation yet and the model is without texture, but things are obviously getting better and better. So go download new JAR file and try to beat a werewolf in my MagicWoods!

02.05.2005.
I added dialog for end user in the beginning of the game. Now you can choose among 4 different terrains, adjust number of trees, flowers and grass that will be randomly distributed. Moreover, you can adjust height scale so the same terrain will look very different with variation of these. If you have better and faster computer, you can set view distance to larger and screen size to 1024x768, in the opposite leave distance default or smaller than that. Of course, there are mouse sensitivity and  invert mouse checkbox. Enjoy and play with these parameters!

21.04.2005.
Multitexturing is finally working! Now I am able to tile detailed texture over whole terrain, add large - scale noise with second texture and above that, I give every vertex a color depending on height. So downmost places will be more brown, than comes variations of green, and finally grey and white.

 
28.04.2005.
I just begin these pages. My main interest now for future development of game is coloring the terrain properly, adding multi - texturing with help of alpha - masked textures, not just with tiling a detailed texture and then make some "noise". If anyone could help me with info how to implement alpha texturing, please contact me... I also have some problems when texturing TriangleStripArray: triangles share points, so I couldn't properly map Texture coordinates on each vertex.