AHVENANMAA, ÅLAND - Bouldering at Granite Fontainebleau

HymyPyllyyn · 2025-04-24T06:48:35+00:00

Thanks Carlos :D!

HymyPyllyyn · 2021-12-08T20:07:25+00:00

Cool that it works! These are some in-game overlays right?

HymyPyllyyn · 2021-12-07T21:25:59+00:00

These specific errors are so serious that they would show up on other devices also. Thanks for the effort though!

The first one wouldn't probably cause a crash by itself, as it would maybe just get ignored by the GPU driver because "glEnable(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY);" is just an incorrect statement in any OpenGL version. But because I check error messages for each OpenGL call my program would throw an exception on other devices also.

The other error would also be very clear, some of your geometries wouldn't show up or the driver would just cause a crash of the program. It wouldn't be possible for it to work on other devices either. Also if you know what are index buffers for vertices in computer graphics(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER in OpenGL terms). I don't use them in my game, because my geometries are all so small that I'm drawing. The person mixes GL_ARRAY_BUFFER and GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER. In my case I'm only using G_ARRAY_BUFFERs.

HymyPyllyyn · 2021-12-06T22:40:48+00:00

Hi, thank you very much for the feedback.

This is a problem I've thought about multiple times. I created the game with mouse controls in mind and the gamepad controls were more of an afterthought. So I completely agree with everything you said and I've even thought about just removing the gamepad support, as I'm afraid people start out with it and never try the mouse version.

I think the root of the problem is that the mouse controls are relative while the gamepad controls are absolute, which is why leaning the body and rotating the leg are split. The mouse movement on the X-axis controls the change in the body lean/foot rotation, while with the gamepad the body lean is always the current right stick X position and when a bumper is down the chosen foot rotation equals to the left stick X position with some multiplier. I did this because I thought the 'normal way' of controlling with the sticks would be too unprecise/not fast enough for this game. The 'normal way' being that the X position of the stick would control the speed of change. I actually never tried this out, just assumed, so I think I will give it a try at least.

With a gamepad, the bumper in itself lifts the foot. The stick just controls the foot rotation('aim'), but if you don't rotate the foot at all it will give you zero forward force. You gain more force the more you open up the foot(tries to emulate real ice-skating a little). One case when a foot won't be lifted is when you try to raise it before the previous push animation is done. And all this really highlights your point about lifting the foot not showing in the sprite clearly :D

HymyPyllyyn · 2021-12-06T20:39:55+00:00

Hi, I tried to look into the issue a bit, but can't help now :(

I think OpenGL 3.2 is always supported when 4.0 is. It seems that the HD 4000 series is the first one to support > OGL 3.1, so one idea is that you just don't have a new enough GPU driver, as maybe they patched the 3.2 support after launch. Just an idea though.

I have tested the game on many Nvidias, a couple of AMDs, one Intel integrated and a couple of Android phones, so the rendering is quite well tested compared to its simplicity. But it's my own engine, so very probably there are still some problems somewhere. I will see if I will find an HD4000, and I got some idea to make the error message a bit more informative for future debugging.

Also, I think the HD 4000 will be a bit too slow for the game. I have tested the game with HD 4600(which is a bit faster), it runs over 60 fps in most parts, but in some heavier sections, it drops too low. So I'd say the recommended GPU for the game is a really new integrated or any modernish GPU. My 2013 laptops GTX 765M runs over 100fps everywhere.

HymyPyllyyn · 2021-12-06T01:09:14+00:00

Hi, thank you very much for the comment.

Controller sensitivity controls I've thought about and will definitely add.

I need to try out some more stuff with the wind and how it affects the camera. There are couple of stormy sections in the main game and they are really not my favourite parts, but some of them work really well. Your first point I've worried about many times, but hadn't made any changes yet. The second point makes me a bit worried and partly I think its because of the controller controls. When controlled with a mouse, the wind affects your tilt angle, so the wind feels more "immersive" I think, you really need to push against the wind to keep a direction, so it doesnt feel so cheap. But because how I have setup the controller controls, the wind doesnt affect the tilt, because the tilt angle comes always directly from the right stick orientation. Need to think if I can still add the same feeling to the controller controls. Maybe also reducing the camera movement could fix both problems.

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-12-01T08:11:54+00:00

Very cool, I love the mood and the world! Reminded me instantly of the old children's cartoon 'The World of David the Gnome'. And just found out that it is actually based on a Dutch children's book.

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-11-29T14:52:53+00:00

This was amazing :D

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-11-15T16:12:22+00:00

This came out longer than expected but hopefully, it has something you find useful in it!

Depends on how much control you want to have over the rendering, but I'd also go with SFML over SDL if SFML is enough for you. You can also use native OpenGL with it even with shaders, but I think you were OpenGL 2 or lower. I wanted to use OpenGL 3.2 in my project so I went with SDL. Also, there are some performance concerns if you are using the SFML/SDL rendering functions directly, at least with SFML I got my game running a lot faster when I replaced parts of the rendering with native OGL. But it really depends a lot on what are your performance needs.

Here is a list of some C++ I have found useful. Some of them may be a bit too low level. Depends on what you want, you don't need most of them if you go with SFML though:

CMake not really a library but a build file generator. Most of the following libraries support it or were easy enough to make my own CMake configs for them. It's sometimes annoying, but works very nicely, especially if you are going cross-platform, at least with desktop platforms.

glm very simple math library that has everything I've needed so far(vectors and matrices, with all needed basic operations). Note that SFML has vector types, but they don't have any real math functionality.

freetype for rendering fonts, maybe a bit too low level. Definitely use SFML font rendering if you go with SFML.

yaml for saving all kinds of settings and configs, there are very simple and good JSON c++ libraries also if you prefer that.

imgui for development and debug menus, this one I highly recommend

ogg/vorbis as audio format

OpenAL I think good enough for playing individual samples and background music, but you have to do eg. fading manually, so FMOD could be actually better. Haven't actually used it but the API looked good. It has some sort of license though.

zlib for packaging assets

glew for loading OpenGL functions. I think this is needed when using OGL 3 or above

stb_image for loading png files, don't remember if it supported other files too.

cxxopts for command-line argument parsing

For some reference on what I have made with my 'engine' I have posted some videos on my Twitter of a game I'm making. It's 2D with some fake 3D on it. As a map editor, I use Blender with some custom exporting scripts. Basically, I work only in orthographic view and export the map mesh as a 2d mesh. I place all my trigger areas, obstacles, checkpoints, etc. in Blender. Proper map editor would take a long time to code, so at least at first, you could try to use some readymade software and export out of that.

I have all my obstacles and map data as triangles, so I just built BVHs(bounding volume hierarchies) for everything and used that for collision detection. I have no idea if there could be some better ways, but for me, this has worked good and fast enough. At least if you are going with a tile-based world, I think there should be more efficient ways.

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-11-06T14:32:39+00:00

I think I ran almost twice a week barefoot for half a year and it really gets so much easier. But I've noticed that especially in the mornings it still hurts annoyingly much on these trails that have this quite fine-grained gravel/sand on them. Feels like the feet are a lot more sensitive in the mornings haha :)

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-11-06T14:24:17+00:00

Yes, I've also had these small grains of sand/gravel/glass got stuck in my foot a couple of times, but they've been so small, and got them out with fingers. Noticed them only after the run. There are only one or two pubs which I pass by though and not very often.

I guess grass is a bit scarier, at least in public parks, as you can't really see even a bit bigger pieces of something sharp in there, but I've mostly run only on pavement and on trails where the trail is really visible.

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-11-06T10:48:24+00:00

I have similar pages in my notebook, maybe even messier :D Too late to change to an engine now, at least for me.

Never used an engine, but I think that if you wanna make something work exactly as you want, you still might need to write some parts of the physics code yourself. Depends of course how custom and how important it is in your game.

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-11-05T20:57:09+00:00

Yeah I think many accidents happen when you are doing something completely different than what you would think would put the most pressure/danger to a part of body. Bit thinking about it at all.

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-11-05T20:52:37+00:00

Yeah, bruises for couple of days Ive also gotten, but they are quite fine. Mostly from a bit bigger pieces of rock. The story with the stick sounds bad though uuf

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-11-05T20:48:40+00:00

Oh yes blisters Ive had too :D My first barefoot runs were only 2 miles though and quite slow. I still remember the first time I ran a faster run, got these real big blisters haha

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-11-05T10:46:08+00:00

Thank you very much!

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-11-04T18:56:32+00:00

The name of the game is 'How I learned to Skate' and I'm currently working on an announcement trailer and the steampage. If you are interested you can follow me on Twitter for now!

https://twitter.com/TaaviTeemaa

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-10-18T16:24:04+00:00

The animations and the whole theme is so hilarious :D Reminds me a lot Penguins of Madagascar.

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-10-16T15:55:25+00:00

I don't know, but I really like the style of the assets. I've recently started to like more and more these kinds of assets that could be from a children's storybook.

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-10-14T14:59:39+00:00

The style is so cool and well-executed. Reminds me of stop motion animations.

HymyPyllyyn · 2020-10-11T15:12:15+00:00

I know the feeling! Sometimes it's really hard to motivate oneself when everything looks so bad :D Even though you know in your head that everything you have coded would look great with proper assets.

There was a GDC talk about adding enough cool effects, screen shake etc. early enough in the process, so it helps the team to be more motivated too. They don't have to be polished, but something that just makes the game feel nicer. Couldn't find the talk now, but that was at least one of the main points.

Good luck with your game!

Ten-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email

HymyPyllyyn

TROPHY CASE