A Healthy Chicken

This week I got the VoxyEngine/Editor working with the loading and displaying of Shionn’s dotmodel files. This will allow reuse of the already generated files that came with the source, as well as the ability to make use of the Dot Modeler as the program to use for generating models for the game. With the help of people from the JMonkey Engine forums  I made  some changes in the back end to allow for the use of arbitrary RGBA values for block colors where previously colors came from a predefined set of textures that was simply wrapped around each block. The result: improved efficiency and flexibility. We now also batch the cubes for each of the VoxelObject objects together which has resulted in a 1560% increase in frame rate performance of the game. Yes!

I also played around with the bloom effect. What do you think? 😀

Our first attempt at loading dotmodels with no color, along with a stress test. Notice the abysmal frame rate of 5 per second.

Close up of the shaded chickens. Looking good!

First attempt at coloring the chickens. But alas there is no shading!

The final result after applying vertex coloring and batching of cubes. Look at that low object count and high frame rate! Now that's a healthy chicken! 😀

So in the end everything worked out well. Two last optimizations that we could make with one being easier than the other are:

1. Only add cubes to the scene node that are not completely surrounded by other cubes (easy!)
2. Render only the surfaces that can be seen on the outside (harder!)

Once we have one of the above done we will finally have a near-perfect, or perfect chicken!

Estimated time worked: 1 and a half days.

Implemented this round:

• Loading of unexported dotmodel (.dot) objects.
• Vertex Coloring
• Batching
• Enabled bloom effect (minor).

TODOs:

• Hollowing out of objects so that unnecessary internal cubes are not added to the scene node.
• Add a TerraMonkey terrain to the game engine.
• Camera following of player.
• Player controls.

We may not bother about the following for a while since we can always use the Dot Modeler…

• Better VoxyEditor controls.
• Rotation of voxel model in VoxyEditor.
• Loading of DotModeler model files.

Designer Shapes

It’s been yet another busy (or not so busy) week of development, and a lot of things have happened over the course of the week. Shionn, the creator of DotModeler which I mentioned last week has since contacted me with the source code for his project and should help development of this project along, which was very kind of him. Although due to his project being implemented directly with LWJGL I may not directly integrate the projects together, but they will be useful references nonetheless, and I will continue implementing this project with JME3. The .dot models are bound to be useful as well, and I plan to allow the import of them in to the editor as well.

Apart from that I played around with NiftyGUI (which I must say is very nifty, and is integrated with JME3) and easily allowed me to create a simple user interface for the editor.

Designer Shapes in Design

I did design a sample voxel object of a hippo which due to an error was not saved properly (I may have closed the window too quickly while it was still saving. Hopefully it’s not a bug!) I ended up settling with testing my new functionality with some “Designer” objects created by me (:

Designer Shapes

Estimated time worked: 2 days and a bit.

Implemented this round:

• Color selection for voxels (including menu options).
• Saving of voxel object (including menu options).
• Loading of voxel object (including menu options).
• Deletion and replacement of voxel blocks.

TODOs:

• Better VoxyEditor controls.
• Rotation of voxel model in VoxyEditor.
• Loading of DotModeler model files.