Sunday 30 November 2014

Invisible But Substantial!

Here's an invisible but quite substantial update. There are 2 improvements regarding the player sprite sheet graphic.

1. Instead of loading 20 (1 for each player) textures into memory, the player sprites now all share the same texture.

2. Instead of having the team colors in the image, thus requiring a whole  new sprite sheet image for each different kit color, the sprite sheet is key coded and the colors are changed in-game via a palette system.

Next we need templates for different kit designs.

This will allow for changing/creating kits in game.

Implementation of the shared texture is rather trivial. We let the team own a shared texture object and simply point all player renderable textures to this.

offside!
For the color palette, we make a list of pairs indicating the old color (from png image) and the new color to replace it with. For example, replace all instances of RGB(255,0,0) with RGB(0,0,255). Add a pair for each of the shades of red, and this results in the above sprite sheet magically changing to a blue kit... w00t!

Monday 24 November 2014

Z-Order

A small but nifty enhancement: graphics are rendered in the correct order from the camera perspective. For example, here's the ball going "behind" the player instead of always on top.

Saturday 22 November 2014

Thursday 20 November 2014

Player Values

This is an interesting one.

The Daily Mail reckons that, adjusted for inflation, an Alan Shearer in his prime would be worth 72 million squids today.

The sensi soccer algorithm valued him at 70.9 mil.

For Sheringham, DM says 28 million, sensi calculated 27.1 mil!

Ian Wright: 46mil vs 41.2mil.

Spooky!

The biggest discrepancy is the Mail valuing Robbie Fowler at 36 mil whilst sensi says 67.7 mil. Obviously sensi got it right - simply the greatest goalscorer of all time.



Thursday 13 November 2014

Wednesday 12 November 2014

Custom Wrestlefest Monitor Bezel


Building an Arcade Machine

Start with an old 4:3 monitor and Dell Optiplex for about $90

Case removed and programming the software!


Arcade joystick, buttons and an I-pac keyboard encoder

Speaker and amp
Assembling the cabinet - step 1!

Ikea?:p

Getting there...

Almost done!

Now just need lifted up...

Shell cab complete!

View of the back side

Wiring in the controls

Microswitched buttons/joysticks (unwired)
Wiring in the ipac keyboard encoder

Controls done


A sophisticated plan to mount the monitor :p
Monitor mounted



PC mounted to back door

Designed in Gimp and printed at the local copyshop :p


The finished article

Monday 10 November 2014

First Goalie Save!

Sidetrack

Gave this a quick go on an impulsive whim - real time zooming feature. Worked out better than I thought! It might be interesting to play with for goal celebrations or replays... but tbh it was more a proof of concept for an idea I want to implement in my next project! ;)

 

Sunday 9 November 2014

Small Update

- new pitch type
- tweaked ball physics
- goalkeeper diving progress
- perfect A.I. for current Liverpool back 4