Posts by zfoxfire

  • (Gaming Voids) - Gaming Development Missing Features

    It's worth noting that audio hardware is better than it used to be or atleast due to CPUs being so powerful these days there's no reliance on wave samples for making music.


    For added historical perspective here's a popular Amiga computer demo from 1991. The disk image size for this is 471 KB (much larger than the executable for Mercury) but the music was not procedurally generated and relied on wav samples that a sampler program would play back. the samples take up a lot of space. The tune in the below is a favorite of mine. the music component is a tracker file containing wav samples of each instrument and the sheet music to play it all. That file is 181 KB in size so that leaves the graphical component of the compressed executable to under 200KB. Modern CPUs and GPUs have hardware-based APIs of sort (basically what assembly language interfaces with). Old computers could not natively produce 3D graphics so much of the bloat in this compared to modern demos was simply implenenting 2D approaches to generating 3D graphics. Now there's so much 3D stuff baked into the GPUs that makes the assembly code smaller.


    By relying on modern hardware where even the sound samples are procedurally generated as well as modern compression algorithms its easy to get a modern demo like above into 64KB executable file. Again, demos show off hardware capabilities. The point i was making above is that diversity of hardware makes programming for multi-platforms more complicated. hardware APIs help with this but that combined with cheap modern hardware allow for developers to take the easy route and not worry so much about efficiency of code. This causes game bloat. And that combined with the Online gaming era makes for rapid but buggy development cycles and that (unlike the Rising World updates) which seems to be what more gamers are used to nowadays and expect: quantity over quality.


  • (Gaming Voids) - Gaming Development Missing Features

    I will say there's a special breed of developers who develop creatively in limited hardware available at the time. Hardware has become powerful and relatively inexpensive. As a result big development studios can get away with grabbing off-shelf assets that are bloated but they assume their audience will upgrade their hardware accordingly. This is probably why console developers are still a respectable crowd since they are given limited hardware specs to work with. To develop for specific lower end hardware code can be written in assembly language and this may still be done today since compared to PC games, they are working with specific hardware. Programming on modern engines for PC gaming involve trying to be compatible with a variety of hardware which means programming against the hardware API, not the hardware directly.


    Also online gaming has made it less critical to get the code perfect on the first time. Before online gaming it was very expensive to get a game to retail where the game was written to cartridge. Nowadays developers can merely patch a game at any time and distribute it to players. This is probably the main reason AAA games nowadays cost the same as they did in the 1990s. Premium Super Nintendo games cost around $50 to $60. Adjust that for inflation would double that sticker price.


    So there is less demand for perfection. This is why I have a lot of respect for Red51 since he behaves like an old time developer who stresses quality work while still taking advantage of modern amenities.


    Regarding that special breed, they are very much alive today and still do 64 kb demos (meaning the entire presentation is a compressed into a 64KB executable). All graphics are procedurally generated by algorithms instead of bitmaps made in a graphics department that add up to several GB (lets say 8 for comparison) in size


    64,000 bytes vs

    8,000,000,000 bytes


    64 KB is a special number as its the same amount of memory in the Commodore 64 computer that was popular in the 1980s. Assembly programmers have been doing demos for that hardware and still continue to do so today. Others have moved on to PC hardware.


    Now bear in mind this is a non interactive demo. designing a game interface on top of this would add to complexity but shows you what the pure hardware is capable of producing without massive graphical and audio assets.


  • Behind the game

    Quote from Ash_lee

    Perhaps have a live Q&A for curious players? You’d set up a way for players to submit any questions, and then you’d answer them in a live steam on YouTube or something. You may want to speak german, but have English subtitles?


    I, myself am very curious and eager to see more about how you both make the game!

    red51
    I think a lot of us are just curious what you look like and wanna see your workstation ;)

    I like the idea of live sessions. I know that I and others have brought this up before but maybe a Patreon channel? :-D

  • Poll: Ability to change block shapes or separate items?

    Quote from red51

    In this case, I'd probably prefer to rely on a recycler which could give me back the original resources (or at least some of the original resources) so I can craft a new stack.

    Yes this! recyling of unused or old construction is a very natural way. like i said above, storage for raw materials and recycling (rather than a trashcan which despawns objects) is probably the way to go, especially now when dropping an object no longer despawns it (like in real life).

  • Poll: Ability to change block shapes or separate items?

    Quote from yahwho

    This has my vote. Circumvents problem caused by incorrectly create blocks, sometimes even wrong textures. But maintains immersive survival mode. :thumbup:



    P.s. Maybe option on workbench/blockbench to deconstruct blocks back to stone/wood etc.?

    Personally I feel the grinder is heavily under-utilized in the old version. The sledgehammer is great for recovering from a mistake but we still need a means to destroy blocks and recover raw stone again or maybe turn it all into gravel. And when I see the objects and mechanics in the unity demo I get the feeling we are moving away from the minecraft style storage chest which I felt was never the Rising World way in the first place. The new chests seem to let you have objects in them placed as if you would place them in the world. Perhaps we need to move towards more specific storage solutions for raw materials. I have never played Medival Engineers but from what I have seen they have storage devices for wood and for stone. i get the impression from the hay-filled animal feeder that Rising World will eventually go this way. so maybe we just store raw materials, recycle building materials and keep chest storage to a minimal.

  • A quick video of the new demo!

    Quote from MommaT

    Nice video! I couldn't figure out how to make the paint roller work. What were you clicking to get to paint? Or does it work only in creative mode right now?

    I don't recall creative mode being required but I think there was a bug in the first release (which is now patched) where the paint roller would not work but still allowed cycling of colors. its RMB to change color, then hold LMB to start painting an object. It only works on certain objects such as furniture.

  • Planks, beams, and logs

    Just curious when these might be added, not that we need them now apparently since the new object scaling feature allows one to substitute with doors, tables, chairs, dressers, and log benches. :D