SABRE - (Stable Actor Based Raycasting Engine) - UPDATES!

[lcl]

Haha alright PLEASE make sure you keep backups T3T

Good idea. O.O xD Happily my computer hasn't had any problems yet, so I'm pretty sure my files are safe on it too, but it never hurts
to have some extra copies on other devices.

[Hblade]

Yeah lol It'd suck for all that work to go down the drain o3o

[Hblade]

I forgot to mention, maybe slow down the walking speed a bit? And make that speed a running speed? ^_^

[lcl]

I forgot to mention, maybe slow down the walking speed a bit? And make that speed a running speed? ^_^

When the main parts of the engine are done, I will begin working on these smaller things.
For this, I will make a simple function for changing the movement speed, would be silly if everything made with Sabre would have the exact same movement. I have that fast speed in the use now because I've had to do a lot of testing and I got annoyed by the slowness of the walking.

[lcl]

Hello everybody!

I got back to this project today, and I played around with the mouse look, and it begins to work as I want it to.
I would make a youtube video to show it to you, but my computer seems to be too powerless to run sabre with mouse look while recording..
Anyway, this is once again one step closer to finishing this. Next thing will be to get the sprite drawing to function correctly.

[Lacotemale]

Awesome Lcl! Can't wait to test the final version out!

[Jagmaster]

Great news! =)
Can't wait to see that sprite drawing function working!

[lcl]

Awesome Lcl! Can't wait to test the final version out!

Great news! =)
Can't wait to see that sprite drawing function working!

Thank you guys! I think I'll try to write the sprite drawing tomorrow. I've tried it already twice,
but I've always made some mistake I've not been able to find, and the results have been bad.

It seems that things can get complicated even if you are following a good tutorial.

[sonicforvergame]

This remeind me a lot of doom 1 since the player can move in a 360 view type,and the demo is pretty cool
well i still have some qwestion :

1- since the player can move in a 360 view type, i would like to know if you can find a way to add a feature that represent the player like an arms or staff or anything,
Here is a photo that represent what i mean

2-is raycasting only based on moving around in a map or is it possible to add new action like in 2d :for example :jumping, shooting, ....ect

[lcl]

@sonicforvergame:
1) Well, that is a very easy thing to do. You just create a new actor and place it to the correct place, and give it some actions. No need to find a way, since it's very straightforward basic using of GE.
2) Raycasting is not a gametype, it's the way of rendering the levels in 3D. There is no point creating a game in which one can only walk around..
Remember, that Sabre is not a game, it is a raycasting engine, and it's purpose is to become an engine everyone here can use to make 3D(-ish) games.

Please note that Sabre is still incomplete, and I am currently working on optimizing the engine, and lately I've been working on adding mouse look support, and next thing will be the ability to draw items around the map. With items I mean everything from barrels and pillars to enemies. After the mouse look and all the drawing functions are ready, I will begin working on adding in functions for all basic gameplay elements, such as the ones you mentioned. I already have found a way to add jumping and crawling, and I am going to add shooting too, since I've been thinking about creating an FPS-style game with Sabre when it's ready.

[lcl]

Hello!

I thought to give you a little update on what I've done with Sabre.

First, I have to say that I've been extremely busy the whole summer, so my plans of making great progress with Sabre
did not come true. But I've still made some progress, and I believe that now I will have more energy to concentrate on Sabre again.

To the progress updates -->

I've played around with the mouse look and it begins to (mouse) look nice.

And I made a somewhat interesting discovery concerning the graphics once again..
The current version of Sabre uses two images for each texture, one in which every vertical stripe is one pixel
wide, and one in which the stripes are two pixels wide. The second one is needed when drawing distant walls, because when distant,
the walls become smaller. I use draw_from() with a height factor for drawing the walls in the desired size, and when that size is small, the
height factor gets so little, that if one used the one-pixel-wide texture image, nothing would be drawn, because the factor also affects the
width the image is drawn in, and thus makes the stripe less than one pixel wide. This is why I need the second image file, in which the stripes
are two pixels wide, one pixel gets cut off, but there still is the other one left.

And now to the point.

So, I have been testing the engine with nice quality textures, mostly 256 x 256 and it looks nice when you're near to the walls.
BUT, when you get farther from the walls and the walls get smaller and lose pixels used for drawing them, the textures, because of their high level of detail
start to look messy and ugly. So, what I found, was that if I take the second texture (one used for drawing the distant walls), scale it down to 1/4 of it's size,
and then scale it back to normal, the level of detail in the texture is lowered greatly, but the main shapes remain. And when using lowered-detail-level
texture for drawing the distant walls, the result is much nicer than with the high-detail-level textures. The small details are gone, but the main shapes
are more visible.

Here's a picture to represent the difference:


It looks really nice when playing, and because only the texture file for drawing the distant walls has been changed, the small details are there when they are needed,
when the player is close to a wall! It looks nice, but I think the change is too noticeable when you walk towards a wall and it changes the graphic. That's why I think I might
add support for one or two more optional textures, so that people could add mid-detailed textures also, and thus make the change less noticeable.

And for all of you waiting for updates on the sprite drawing... I'm sorry but I haven't had time for trying to realize it.
But soon! You just have to wait a little.

[lcl]

TIME FOR A TRIPLE-POST!
4 smilies so far (EDIT: lol, I kept counting the smileys of the message because of the limit, and it seems that I accidentally left my calculations here for everyone to see xD)

Hello everybody! I have good news!
I was playing around with the mouse look because I felt it was somewhat rough.
And then I opened up Minecraft to see if mouse look was rough in it, too ( ) and noticed that it wasn't.
And I also noticed the reason. There was this tiny little small delay in it. And that made it smoooooooothh!
And I went back to GE and added two more actors and casted a delay spell on them and now the mouse look
of Sabre has also a tiny little small delay in it! And it's adjustable..! TAKE THAT MINECRAFT!

So yeah, the small delay makes the mouse look much smoother and nicer for playing.
I think I'm going to make a "Mouse look tutorial" to show how to implement mouse look into other games too.



This is a huge thing for me, because the non-delayed mouse look started to seem so ugly to me that I was going to cancel the mouse look
option for Sabre. I thought I had tried everything for making it better, and was already ready to give up, but then those two pacmans stepped in an saved the day!

That's all folks!

[sonicforvergame]

does that mean that the Mouse look or little cross hair here kinda change depth between wall for example:

[lcl]

does that mean that the Mouse look or little cross hair here kinda change depth between wall for example:

I don't quite understand what you mean, but I'm pretty sure you have understood mouse look's concept a little wrong.
What mouse look does is to make one able to look around using the mouse instead of turning around by pressing some keys on the keyboard.

EDIT:

Here's a video showing this new mouse look in action!

[Lacotemale]

Man.. that was so funny! xD Looks really smoooth and awesome though! Now add that floor dammit!

"Nothing else important touché!"