Terrain Contour Generation

On my monday back from camping I decided to jump back into things with a fairly random and mostly unnecessary project : generating contour lines for an arbitrary height map. I first clamp pixel values into ranges based on the number of grid lines I want. Then I do pixel by pixel edge detection that generates a GL_LINE_STRIP.

Bryce terrain and texture results.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

GUIification

Scroll bars are not nearly as hard as one would think. Here is the console system I've been improving with command entry and scroll-ability. GUI widgets have gotten a lot of work lately as I started the game editor and game exporting abilities. When it's done I'll be able to load xml game files into the editor, make changes and save the resulting file again. Since this regenerates the xml file from the in memory game, it's possible to lose things like comments in the xml file and elements I forgot to re-export. So that'll be a fun source of bugs. But an editor is necessary for my brain to comprehend coordinate spaces and relative positions.

Also I've made an important discovery relating to the three dimensional world we live in - the fourth dimension is art! The fourth dimension is art!

3D brain fuck

Yes, I said brain fuck. Because this is my blog and it is rated F.

I haven't posted for a while because I've been working on a rotation problem. Rotation problems are the kind where you spend all day scrawling figures on grid paper and your head hurts. And you are no closer to solving your problem than when you started. And you go to bed but can't stop thinking about rotations. Sometimes I wake up with the answer though. Makes you wonder.

But that's not what happened this time! This time it just took foreeeeeeevvvvvvvvveeeeeeerrrrrrrr.

So, now my turrets can finally target objects even when they are attached to rotated ships and are attached at their own orientation. My brain is going to the playground now...

A few interface changes.

I've been doing lots of soul work lately - OpenAL source management for one, and as a result haven't had much new graphical stuff to post. But tonight I spent a few moments cleaning up the interface elements - fun stuff for a change. I evolved the target display to draw the current object, and expect to revamp the keys to something more useful in the near future. I envision targeting systems to be a major cool factor down the road. Currently the unguided blasters are the most effective weapon, but they're very difficult to master. Adding a cross-hair would be a good place to start I suppose.

Oh and I just found out my terrain crashes on Panther. Frack!

Tetris in Space?

Terrain Editor

As a side project and yet another excuse to learn more Cocoa I've been writing a terrain editor. It can generate heightmaps using a faults, hill or perlin noise based algorithm and create a terrain texture by blending seed textures based on elevation or slope. It's kind of a work in progress but the 3D preview is pretty cool.