GTX Titan Upgrade, Dogecoin and a New Domain Name!

A couple of interesting things, firstly I have registered the markmmiller.co.uk domain name so this blog can now be found at blog.markmmiller.co.uk. As well as this my main site is still a work in progress but I have been experimenting with Linux and have set up a Raspberry Pi to act as a web server for hosting. Again the main site at www.markmmiller.co.uk but if you head over the site is being hosted from my Raspberry Pi as we speak! 

In other news I applied for the Nvidia Academic hardware donation program a few weeks back for a GPU to help with my research into parallel programming and to much surprise I managed to get approved for a GTX Titan. The Titan finally arrived today and, for once, managed to install it without too much bother.

Figure 1 - GTX Titan

Figure 2 - GTX Titan

This was a significant upgrade to my ageing GTX 460 so hopefully I will be able to levy a lot more performance in my applications and I will attempt to benchmark both give a comparison of the performance gap between the two. Although the Titan isn't a mid-range card, hopefully it is an indication of the levels of performance that will become mainstream in years to come.

Figure 3 - MSI GTX 460

The other thing I have recently embarked upon is altcoin mining, mainly Dogecoin for now. With my GTX 460 I managed to achieve a 120 K/hash rate but the Titan on the other hand doesn't work with my app so I shall update when I find out. As for the temperature, both the Hawk and Titan are running around the same temperature idle but currently the Titan is having trouble turning its fans on when it gets hot. I will look into this later. Anyways, I shall get to bench marking soon but first is a matter of installing the programs. Check out the photos below to see what it's like in the case!

Figure 4 - Case Interior

Figure 5 - Titan Closeup

Be sure to click on the above photos to see them in HD. Anyways, back to more University and Honours project work for me, I'll update you guys soon!

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Email: markmmiller@hotmail.co.uk
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3D Tilt Virtual Reality App - Unity3D

This post is a bit late but I only just realised I never made it!

Last year I worked on a group project developing an application designed for mobiles that was meant to demonstrate a "3D effect", the idea being we could bring 3D virtual reality to the masses via smartphones and gyroscopes. The main inspiration for our client was a video of a ballerina inside of a box. The video can be seen below.

From this vague description we were to research and make our own application that demonstrated a similar style of 3D effect. During the project we went through several different iterations and drastically different ideas before the final product was implemented. The first view versions focused mainly on being a game where you fly around the universe, go to different planets and space stations and witness all sorts of interesting and scripted events. Sadly when we approached the client with what we had made the 3D effect wasn't so good or prominent due to the set up of the scene. This resulted in a big change where we decided to try and create a holographic projector type set up.

A video of the application so far can be scene below:

To get this effect we made use of camera distortion technique known as the offset projection matrix. This is where the camera view frustum is distorted allowing various visual effects to be achieved. A regular view frustum is uniform in shape as can be seen in the image below.

Figure 1 - Example View Frustum

The view frustum in most cases is defined simply by the distance and sizes of the far and near planes, they are usually centre aligned and thus symmetrical giving all the objects in the world the correct appearance. For our phone application the users perspective relative to the phones screen has changed, what we wanted to do in this case was alter the frustum relative to the rotation of the phone so that we maintain the users perspective and distort the objects in a manner which would be correct from their point of view.

Figure 2 - Far plane shifting (I apologise for the use of paint)

In the above image we can see how the far plan must be shifted relative to the users position where the near plane is fixed and still parallel with the far plane. This is required because of the users change in position, simply rotating the camera on it's axis will not achieve the required distortion, feel free to attempt this and you will see exactly what I mean.

The only major problem that was not solved over the course of this project was the drift caused by the gyroscope on the mobile device. This drift meant that when the phone was righted back to it's original position it wouldn't quite be right or perhaps when rotating upon any axis it would detect false movement ruining the illusion if the application was used for too long. For just now we implemented a reset button that allowed the user to reset the view which helped alleviate most of the problem. As well as this I kept meaning to add in more of the application to bring it up to a complete level, the original idea being to create an "educational, hologram viewer" application, this would include information about each object that was shown but this is still a work in progress whilst I am at University.

Anyways thanks for reading. I will upload an APK of the application when I can.

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Email: markmmiller@hotmail.co.uk
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DirectX - Geometry Shader (Lot's of cubes and particles!)

Just posting a quick update for my geometry shader experiments. I managed to increase the particle count by a crazy amount to just above 450,000 ! The first program I made to do this created just plain old particles, billboarded towards the camera and with basic blending.

Be sure to click to view in HD

This was pretty cool and I easily managed to get above the 450,000 target. At this amount the system runs smoothly and gets a nice steady 52 FPS. This is at fullscreen 1920*1080 resolution.

Look at those pretty particles!

 After this I played about with multiple emitters and pumping up the emission rate but none of these gave me any satisfaction. Then I remembered  the geometry shader isn't just for particles, I could create any geometry from a single point, so what about cubes? I then did some jiggery pokery inside the shader, spent far too long working out how to create a cube using a triangle strip and voila, the cube demo was born.

Over 450,000 of the finest cubes known to man

Now for this system you would think it would run 6 times slower due to the extra faces, dropping from 52 to about 9 fps. You'd be wrong though, with this system the application still manages an impressive 28 FPS at fullscreen 1920*1080, this is all without any form of instancing, culling or other optimization techniques.

For a bunch of cubes they sure are colourful

Although this program isn't a significant achievement in the realms of computer technology it goes to demonstrate the significant power of the Geometry Shader as well as the GPU. This level of geometry would simply not be possible on the CPU in real time. Anyways, check out some realtime videos of this stuff below, be sure to watch in full HD for the best quality!  Due to the way youtube compresses videos down I had to alter the brightness which is why there is a colour difference with the screenshots above. I really should modify this in shader but that would be sensible.

Also check out some random cool patterns I made below.

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Email : markmmiller@hotmail.co.uk
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DirectX - Particle System

Made some changes and upgraded my particle system. Finally set it up so it works on the geometry shader which has improved performance by quite a lot. I get around 680 fps with around 80,000 particles.

Looks almost like snow!

The main problem I'm having currently is separating the emission rate from the frame rate, just now every frame it emits a new particle so it does this as fast as it can. This means that when the frame rate drops the number of particles emitted per second will be less.

Spiral particles

Currently my goal is to fix this, I've already got it generating 10 times as many points but there are some problems with actually getting them all to render in the same pass. Other than that, hopefully I will get finished up this week then can do some data analysis next week, comparing this system against the older CPU based one.

Still gets 680 fps with most of them visible

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Email : markmmiller@hotmail.co.uk
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Gaming Discussion - The Free-To-Play Model

Free-to-play mobile games are pretty rubbish. Here is why.

Recently, even more so than in the past. The free-to-play model for video games has become an increasingly popular method of marketing your game. In today's economic climate, why would you drop £40 on a so called 'AAA' title when it is just a rehash of previous game ideas or another sequel in a never ending saga.

You can have any character you want as long as he's brown haired and in his thirties

Originally the popularity of the free-to-play was due to several Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPG), such as Neopets and Maplestory as well as their ease of access. Practically anyone with a computer could play. Things got even better for free-to-play with the creation of Runescape by Jagex, a web based RPG with great graphics and sound gameplay. These games are still amongst the most widely played of the free-to-play games out there, and what they lack in sheer graphical fidelity and immersion that mainstream 'AAA' titles might have they make up for it in being wide reaching, affordable and not requiring advanced technology to run them.

It was no surprise then that the mobile gaming platforms of iOS and Android lapped up this model and soon a whole host of developers churned out so called "free-to-play" games like there was no tomorrow. This has led to a mass of games which are all identical in but name and graphical style. How naive was I to think that Jurassic Park Builder, The Simpsons : Tapped Out and Tiny Tower would have anything but identical gameplay. (I would mention many others as well but sadly I have no space here to list them all) They all follow the same format of building things, early on they emphasise the fact everything you do takes time (real time) and that you can speed things up with the use of money (real money). This inherently has nothing wrong with it, if your user is impatient why not give them the option to speed things up a little bit? That itself is fine, but when it gets to the point that a game is pretty much unplayable because you are sitting and waiting for the game to let you play then I think it is unreasonable. I got to a stage where the time it took to build a new floor was something along the lines of two real life days (48 hours), there is nothing else to do in that game other than collect rent and change the uniforms of your staff. There are no tactics, no thought. Nothing that can go wrong other than your lack of efficiency. It's matter of order building, collect money and then wait. Rinse, cycle and repeat. This can be said for every single of those games in those formats and is what I call preventative gameplay. Where a game actively tries to stop you from playing.

Another notable example is CSR Racing, a game in which you participate in drag races against other AI controlled cars. Each race requires a certain amount of fuel and you start off with around 10 units of fuel. Each race results in credits which you can then spend upgrading and buying new cars so that you can win bigger and better races, thus rewarding you with more credits. The main gripe I have with this game is the 10 units of fuel limit and the inability to just play races for the fun of it. If I use up all my fuel I have to pay real money to restock or wait through the timer. It's not like I can even play skirmish races that don't result in extra money but allow me to hone my skills. Of course, developers have to recoup their costs somewhere but I don't think it's fair for a game to advertise itself as free-to-play when in reality it's free-to-play (for a bit). It's not impossible to take this model and make it work.

Look at all those races I can't play 

Take for example World Of Tanks, a free-to-play tanks battling game much in the same way as CSR Racing has cars in it's garage you are instead filling up your garage with tanks. The main notable difference I find with World Of Tanks is that it does not restrict you from playing the game. At no point does it actively stop you from playing and ask you for money. Each tank battle nets you credits and before you head out into the next battle you need to repair and rearm your tank with credits. The amount you earn from a battle, even if you lost is usually more than enough to recoup the costs. I'm pretty rubbish and my tank finances are still in the black. Now is this model so hard to do? One of the incentives that the wargaming.net team always said was paying allows you to progress faster through the game. Double XP/Credits plus rarer tanks (which don't necessarily mean superior). Even other mobile games like Zombie Gunship don't stop you from playing just to ask for money. 

Not a single fuel indicator in site

There are many notable games out there that follow this free-to-play model that I would be more than willing to invest money into and have already done so in the past. Games such as Hawken, Age of Empires Online, Planetside 2, World of Tanks and Firefall stand at the forefront of my mind. Even notable games such as APB and Star Wars : The Old Republic switched from being subscription based to the free-to-play model and have been just as successful if not more so than in the past.

I think showing the player what they could get for subscribing but not forcing them too is always good.

The thing to note is all these games I have mentioned are PC games. Even Runescape and MapleStory are PC based games. Where are all the mobile games? Who knows my friend. Currently on my mobile device I have these free-to-play games; Zombie Gunship, Curiosity, Jurassic Park Builder, Showdown, Checkers and Wordament. Of all the games in this lot the only one I would put money towards are Checkers and Wordament and for those two I can't even work out how.

Do I think free-to-play is bad? Of course not, just certain ways companies and marketers push it out there harm it's effectiveness, sometimes even to the detriment of the game itself. This is what I think needs to change in free-to-play mobile games.

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Email : markmmiller@hotmail.co.uk
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SIE App Jam Day - Super Trolley 2

On the 27th of February I participated in the very first App Jam hosted by the Scottish Institute for Enterprise at Napier Univeristy. The task was to make an application for mobile devices in less than 9 hours.

I decided to make a game in which you had to run around a supermarket and try to cram as much stuff into your trolley as you could within a certain time frame. (If you've ever seen Supermarket Sweep you will understand where the inspiration comes from)

I developed the game in Unity3D with the aim to get the core gameplay elements in and then port to Android. Since I didn't have much time I avoided spending too much time in sourcing or creating assets, instead finding the main items free online. I figured getting the game playing well was most important.

Figure 1. The Player's Character.

After setting up the scene and setting up a system for spawning different items along the shelves I had to create the player. My original plan was to have the player attached to the trolley via their hands, left clicking with the mouse would lift up the left arm and right clicking the right arm. This would mean that the player had to maintain control over the trolley whilst trying to swipe as much stuff off of the shelves as possible. Sadly though I couldn't get the arms acting the way I wanted in the time I had so I instead opted to attach the player to the trolley through the use of a spring and have the arms fixed in place, extended.

Figure 2. The player after collecting lots of items

After trying to get the arms working which was my main goal, I realised I'd spent too long on this part which meant other parts of the project suffered. I finally added in a method of counting up the players score and measuring time. The game so far includes 2 items but adding more won't be too difficult.

I have many places I wish to improve this game, people at the Jam seemed to enjoy the parts they played despite numerous glitches so I will work on this some more when I get a chance to. Hopefully with more time I will be able to get the arms working!

Anyways that's enough from me, I haven't slept enough over the past few days so I better catch up this weekend. See you guys next time. 

Oh and here is a quick gameplay video where you can see how it works as well as numerous problems, I will upload a version for webplayer soon when I get some of the problems fixed.

Also thank you to Darren Whigham for organising this event check out his twitter here for some cool game development stuff. Thank you also to SIE as well as Informatics Ventures and Codeplay for attending.

Collaborative Map Making in Minecraft

So today I decided to do some experimentation with Minecraft, using it as a tool to create objects and analyzing it's potential to be used as a multiplayer map maker for games other than itself.

The building we are going to export

JMC2OBJ allows you to export segments of a Minecraft map as an .obj file. For this test I created a simple building (see above) and will attempt to export that into Blender.

Blenders Rendition of the Exported Building

Once the building has been imported to blender we can see a fairly accurate rendition of the building. Minus the correct textures. After adding normals and putting this into a format that my OpenGL program understands we can then try and run it!

OpenGL with SDL

My current application for reading in .obj files for OpenGl sucks and has no camera controls but we can see here that the building itself has rendered correctly. It doesn't have the correct shading but it is a start at least! Also, the .obj can be successfully imported into other programs such as Unity with ease.

.obj with Unity

Although this only gives us simple shapes and basic objects. using this allows us to create simple version of our 3D levels that we can explore and interact with firsts, we can then test the game without the use of artists. At a later stage we can forward these to map artists for texturing and to redo in our own visual style. 

The use of Minecraft as the tool for map creation also allows the team to collaborate on a single level whilst being at many different computers, making edits in real time and seeing the changes immediately.

MemOK!

Got around to giving my computer a good dusting out today and finally installed those new memory modules that I got yesterday.

16GB of unforgettable memory!

So far everything has gone smoothly. Not much of a noticeable difference between 16GB and 4GB but I'm sure things will become more evident in time. 

Back to Blogging

So, now that third year of game development has begun it is finally time to start this blog!

Well, let's get down to business.

Tech
Bought 16GB of memory to add to the rig tomorrow. Hopefully this new addition will mean I can run everything I need to at the same time! Pics tomorrow...

OpenGL
Currently learning about Shaders and Lighting, trying to build a magical wonderful scene from scratch for coursework.

Movie Madness
Watched "Moon" not too long ago. Amazing film. You should check it out when you get chance to...