SyntaxBomb - Indie Coders

Just got my latest game approved by Amazon will be interesting to see how it fairs . And it's free as I didn't have the right bank stuff to hand when I submitted it . Probably gonna leave it free now as well . My latest is only running on my phone at 40 to 45 fps which is a bit of a concern .
I suppose it might be better on a higher end phone . I have a moto G7 power which is pretty ok ish I think. Might have to limit trees and grass and see what I can do when I finish the PC version . just need to make a few more dirt road circuits and I'm done . With every game I write the quality improves especially now I'm rocking AGK Studio. Think it's a matter of keeping the creative matter flowing . When my game goes live at some time today I'll try and post a link to it so you can take a look at it . Have a very nice day.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=marstheredplanet&i=mobile-apps&ref=nb_sb_noss

Really hope this works it's only a simple game.

Well been up 2 days and no downloads so far. Was really hoping great things from amazon . Oh well you live and learn.

Oh well at least I didn't put it on the play store or steam or I would of been paying for the privilege of being disappointed . Joined a job site today for freelance computer work quite a bit for unity and unreal engine and there were some I could apply for , people wanting Android apps making and ios . The site is called upwork guessing some of the programmers on here use them . I should imagine some of them are scammers the ones from Turkey and India are probably to be avoided unless they pay a deposit to prove they have the money to pay for the work. I downloaded Unity just out of interest and it really isn't my cup of tea but there you go . My latest project will be finished in a couple of days really thought it would be complete today but decided to mow the lawn today as it was nice out . Just a few loose ends to tie up . It's looking good and way better than any of my previous games . If I could get 1 freelance job using AGK Studio for an Android app the last three years would of been worth it . Don't see why that would be too much to ask. I might even put my own add on there if you can do that didn't think to look earlier. Have a peaceful evening .

ok hare's an answer in one photo:


as to you job stuff - my helpful suggestion would be to go to college and actually learn what you want to do. If it's anything to do with computers then you have a LOT to learn.

I noticed that you commented about "Bleak"
https://www.syntaxbomb.com/index.php/topic,8422.msg347049873/topicseen.html#new

And you mentioned your latest project took a few days to create and was brilliant - does that tell you something?

Bleak has been in production for many months and is Not finished yet.

Do any of your projects look like this and take this long? if not why not?

OK I am going to set you a very simple test.
1. go back and watch the first minutes of the Bleak video
2. open your 3d app and create a simple butterfly. no animation, just one that looks like a simple butterfly
3. it should be simple enough that anyone can see what it is and understand what might need to be done to animate it. or even reconstruct it
4. you've got a day, so post the result here tomorrow

you could use pico-8 theres a 3d plugin for that, or blender, or whatever. you could even draw it on a piece of paper (but it MUST show the 3d model and the paint texture). but it must be simple. just post the pic of your result.
DON'T CHEAT and (in the words of RuPaul) "Don't F*ck it up!"

Quote from: Pfaber11 on May 03, 2021, 00:43:12
If I could get 1 freelance job using AGK Studio for an Android app the last three years would of been worth it . Don't see why that would be too much to ask.

Open your eyes. Watch what you created up to now.
Answer the "why it would be too much to ask" on your own.


Maybe you are not a programmers guy (yet) but you have plenty of game ideas .... there are other job opportunities in game creation areas. Albeit of course "job" is not the right term then as it is surely hm.. uncommon to give an unlearned XYZ (withou any proofen training / history of successful projects) a job.



bye
Ron

ok. I didn't read that far when you mentioned about the add and 3 years. and just 1 job, etc.

so to help you here's a nice video to watch:



And the butterfly challenge still stands - although, as you are soo far advanced with your skills, I don't expect that you will lower yourself to do it?

interesting video

i would say that the beginners perception of knowing is smaller than the perception of the experts
and that the intermediates perception of knowing is smaller than the experts, but higher than the perception of the total noobs and of reasonable beginners.

and some intermediate persons use this knowledge to make the total noobs and beginners believe that they are experts. ( plenty of examples on forums, or on youtube, or on amazon kindle / book store, or in conferences / showrooms, in politics )

Right guys this took me hours and it is not the greatest model of all time but I quite like it . My best model Yet I think. Oh and I created this with Wings3D.

Well what do you think. From start to finish including taking the pics we're looking at six hours. Seems like a lengthy process , I guess you guys would do it a lot quicker. I have learned quite a bit about modelling today .

good luck with your game pfaber~...  My sons are in their early 30's and both are gamers with all their friends back to school days.....as for me I am retired..but I began with the ZX81, then C64, then PC, then Amiga....
My programming days were mostly side projects at first for work... a shipping label printing program for a busy LTL (less than total load) ammunition facility.... then a FORTRAN program to scan storage facility data for incompatible materials.... then a video 24 hour news and bulletin board in Turbo C..(last version including JPG/BMP color graphics.
Later on as a project planner I  wrote Visual Basic for Applications (Excel) to generate years long project scheduling of labor on ship repairs (some full project plotter printouts could stretch 20 feet horizontally!)...as well as charts derived from Oracle DB on personnel, supplies, warehouse inventory and other specialty data searches..
Re: going to college-  I agree that college data/programming/networking/html..(etc.) are a good foundation for careers... but I don't like the new programming flavor for apps (Java, C++, python -    
For you forum watchers in your 20's or 30's ... my son's are finding that Networking Certificates are the best chance to get a steady full time good paying job...game making is fun but not as a central career choice....A Certificate is a great way to get entry into computer tech jobs...

The reason I write games is for fun but even working on other projects I still enjoy it . I think it's all the ups and downs , stuck on something for days then finding the answer and on to the next problem . It sounds like you had a good career I do not intend to retire but to keep  up the programming for as long as I can .  I was asking google how many professional programmers their  were and it says about 26,000,000 so I guess the competition is fierce. I really would like a job doing this sort of thing but time will tell. I'm really too long in the tooth for college although I could enrol in an online coarse or something I suppose . Have a nice day..,

Well Adam there's my butterfly it's the first time I've really tried to make a model a decent one anyway and I think your little exercise has started the ball rolling for me . Oh and thanks for the you tube video it was very interesting .

@Pfaber>>if you goal is to become good at programming and making apps / games, keep learning and experimenting and you will surely improve your understanding and skills.

but to earn enough to pay for living expenses is another story...

Thanks Remid yes it's been my dream since my ZX81 and maybe i'll accomplish it one day . I've gotten a lot better from when I first joined syntax bomb .  Here is the mesh.

okydoky....

First: 10 out of 10.

You get 10 because you took the challenge, produced a butterfly, and without a complaint in sight. So Kudos to you. The time it took  has given you better skills with 3d and 2d too.

I also took the challenge. but I'll talk about that a bit later as I want to look at 3d for a bit because I feel it might help you

I am going to generalise, so some things might be over simplified, but its concepts and not the exact i'm trying to look at.

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the CPU is fast and can do anything, The GPU is faster but only deals with certain things. it really likes to eat 3d and 2d data, but feeding it is the slow part. But every time you give it ANYTHING takes a bit of time
E.G.
feeding it lots and lots of little things can be slower than feeding it one big thing
it takes longer to feed it a big bitmap than a small one. but quicker than lots and lots of little things

so keeping the GPU happy with the least amount of 'calls' and the right amount of data gives the best performance. and we can trick it too...

The GPU has a very big mouth. so you could package a lot of stuff into a few big chunks - it would love that

and you could give it lots of stuff to start with. tell it not to swallow, and keep chewing the same stuff. It would love that too.

or give it something tasty like a biscuit, and then tell there are 10 of them. They are all the same but theres 2 at the front, 2 at the back, etc... (this is called INSTANCING)


ok enough with the food comparisons, but it gets the concept over to you?

cpu has the food
gpu wants the food
cpu gives gpu the food
gpu gives the cpu the result - this is your screen output, sometimes its more than one screen. sometimes the gpu re-eats those screens
gpu finishes and poops - gets rid of the old data and waits for more tasty data

Let's call this whole process a FRAME 

The more FRAMES the better. FPS = Frames per second

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Now we are going to talk a bit about particles - bear with me, there is a good payoff with all of this.

What is a particle? It's a single point in 2d/3d space. every FRAME it might move to another position. or it might change even shape - size for example!

what is a particle system? Its some code that controls and keeps track of lots of particles.

Let's assume that this is 3d. and a particle is a QUAD (a quad is a 3d rectangle) - theres more to is, but i'm not going to get bogged down in detail.
we give the particle a position and we always see a quad on screen.

so the GPU needs information about each particle
so we send it the 3d quad data for each particle

a better way would be to send it the quad data once. and use an INSTANCE for each particle - much better - but we still need lots of INSTANCE calls and each call takes a bit of time...

An even better way, would be to use the CPU. construct a new 3d object using the quad as a source, and for each particle add this to the new 3d object. once you are done. just give the GPU the new 3d object (that has all your particles already placed) as a single call. Very tasty. but you are now starting to need a lot more information and skill to make the CPU do some of the chewing for you.

But this does have one HUGE advantage. you could do other things with the 3d data when you construct the new 3d object. (you can also do thing like this in the GPU with shaders but we are not going there - that's where HE lives...!!!!!!)

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Lets go back to what started all this: Bleak


You can see that there are lots of butterflies. and they are very simple, so we can probably assume it's some form of particle system. and probably CPU based sending a new single 3d object with new positions each FRAME....

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So what would be the best butterfly to use in this situation? something very low poly, related to a quad. don't model any bits just use the texture...



And here is the single 64x64 texture (notice on the left it's part of a single big texture of textures (remember what I said about packing things, sending them once and reusing?)


Notice how the drawn butterfly is grey, but the 3d ones are colored?
when you send 3d data, you can send color data too. each INSTANCE or part of the new 3d object can have a different color.


To sum up there is no right or wrong answer. But there are lots of things to think about. Lots of things you might not have known about. and lots of ways you can use this.

As an example
You were talking recently about grass. The particle system concept can be used for this:
you have lots of places to put grass (in clumps made from simple quads and textures), you create a new 3d object place them, and send the single result to the GPU...

How about rain?
instead of lots of single raindrops with a texture of a raindrop. we have a texture with lines drawn on it looking like rain. Each frame we only need a few of these bigger particles to move, but we get the rain effect...