First, history. The original Zafehouse lacked many elements one normally expects from a game. Graphics, a proper tutorial. Sound. These are slowly being rectified in the sequel. Graphics are being taken care of handily, and a tutorial will be implemented once, well, the game is.

Sound… sound was an interesting one. There are many ways to play sounds in Windows and .NET. You can use the basic, in-built functionality in My.Computer. Or you can venture into the slighly more complex world of System.Media.SoundPlayer.

Both, sadly, are kind of garbage if you’re trying to make a game. That is, a game with more than one or two sounds playing at once. There’s also the problem of being limited to PCM as an audio file format. Hey, if I was willing to have Z2 weigh in at a couple of hundred megabytes, then PCM would be fine. Hilariously so.

But I think my download server (and everyone downloading from said server) would be upset. So upset they might convert from downloadees to “I-hate-you-Logan-for-wasting-my-download”…. ees.

So I started investigating Managed DirectX. MDX is a wrapper around the standard DirectX libraries so you can use them in C# and VB .NET, among other languages. DirectSound under MDX didn’t look too foreboding, and I went ahead and implemented a basic audio engine capable of playing multiple sounds and background music.

Now MDX will play anything that resembles a RIFF. Well, anything that resembles a RIFF and contains a PCM or ADPCM stream. Anything else and it will spit at you like a pretentious hydra being served broiled heads instead of boiled ones. Because hydras like boiled heads.

ADPCM isn’t really a compressed stream. It’s just PCM reduced from 16 to 4-bits. Other stuff happens to maintain sound quality, but essentially you end up with something many times smaller than the original PCM. The only problem is, to (barely) match the compression ratio of MP3, Vorbis or WMA, you have to cut out a channel.

Stereo to mono. Which ain’t so bad. Truly, it’s not. And, in some cases, ADPCM can produce audio that sounds better than what a psychoacoustic codec can crank out. As long as you don’t mind a bit of hissing.

But I wasn’t satisifed. I knew I could do better. I was particularly certain of this betterness when I read that Microsoft was encouraging developers to move from MDX to XNA. It gently encouraged this by flipping the bird to MDX.

Yes, I had just written an audio engine in an API no longer supported by MS. Sweet, I thought, and began searching for alternatives.

There are a bunch of free audio engines that work in .NET, but if you ever want to commercialise your product, then you have to fork out megabucks. And I didn’t want to lock myself into that sort of situation. The idea of using a pre-packaged solution didn’t tickle me the right way either.

I fiddled around with Vorbis, but had trouble tracking down a native implementation in VB .NET or C#. I did find one in the Mono repository, and even got it working. Problem was it was slow (Vorbis-to-PCM conversion, specifically), and it still relied on MDX.

Sucky? You bet. Extra sucky because I know squat about the inner workings of Vorbis and had no idea how to optimise. I didn’t really want to spend time doing it. I have a game to finish, after all.

XNA appeared my only option. After getting the libraries loaded, I realised it was too high level. Which means it didn’t give me enough control over what it was doing. Much sighing occurred.

Then… I found XAudio2. Its documentation was hidden away in MSDN, but there it was. XAudio2 is Microsoft’s replacement for DirectSound, and it’s the underlying tech for XNA’s audio stuff. XAudio2 is nifty. It would have been even more nifty if all the documentation wasn’t as verbose as a mute sports announcer. Oh, the documentation is for C++ only, so make that a mute sports announcer who only speaks Esperanto.

But XAudio2 supports xWMA out of the box. xWMA is a stripped-down version of WMA encased in a RIFF container. Yay! It was exactly what I was after. I grabbed SlimDX, which allows you to access XAudio2 (and other multimedia-related libraries) via a managed wrapper, and buried myself to the armpits in code for a weekend.

Eventually, I came up with something – dare I say it – sound. An audio engine blindingly superior to what I’d previously concocted. It plays up to 64 xWMA-encoded sounds flawlessly and with only a minor hit to memory consumption (much less than the MDX monster I was working with).

Only now I need to include SlimDX with Zafehouse 2. I went from a 9MB audio package encoded in ADPCM, to a 7MB xWMA one with a 3MB DLL. To be fair, the new audio is all stereo (which makes the music sound that much better), but I still feel like I’ve run in a giant circle.

The circle does crack out some fine dual-speaker tunes, though.

No related posts.

Update #4: Raven is looking into the problem!

Update #3: Grab v1.3. I’ve fixed a bug that was preventing backups from being created. I also added detection routines to make sure the Singularity path in the registry is correct. Thanks to those who were brave enough to test the patch and find this one for me.

Update #2: v1.2 is available now. I’ve added an undo capability (basically a glorified file copy). It requires backups of the original files created by the program.

Update #1: So some testing revealed that v1.0 had a minor problem… minor enough to make it not work. I’ve uploaded v1.1 which seems to do the trick.

Inspired by this hacktastic workaround for Singularity’s texture streaming issues on PC, I decided to whip up a tool to automate all that byte-changing and hopefully rectify the problem.

I don’t have the game, but I’ve tested the tool as well as I can with dummy files. It should work, but I’m not quite ready to release this to the world at large. If anyone wants to give it a go, I’d love some feedback. Mainly on whether it does anything. Don’t worry, it makes backups of the files before modifying them so it’s easily reversed if something goes wrong.

What it should do is open up Coalesced_INT.bin and increase the texture streaming pool size to 400. It will then calculate the SHA1 hash for the new file and write it to Singularity.exe. That’s it!

Note: I’m sure Raven will get round to fixing this fairly soon… but then, I thought the same thing about Mass Effect 2′s processor affinity problems.

Download Singularity Texture Streaming Patch v1.32 [Playwrite]

And, if you’d like to do it manually, here are the instructions.
Singularity Texture Streaming Fix [DEAR WANDY]

No related posts.

Whimsical metaphors aside, I decided to do something about my .NET focus and its destructive hold on my game development future. So, I present the above screenshot, a little piece I’m working on in Unity. It’s inspired by polyhedral dice and the excellent Dice Wars.

Unity is really, really good. Not only does it support three scripting languages (including C#, yah!), but you can switch between a “Game” and “Editor” view and examine the properties of objects at runtime. It provides an unprecedented level of debugging power, and problems that’d normally take hours to track down and fix can take minutes or seconds in Unity thanks to its potent visualisation abilities. It could do with a script debugger, but I hear that’s on the cards for Unity 3, due in… August. I think.

Unity also allows publishing to iPhone, PC, Mac, Wii and web. You need to make a few purchases to access the iPhone and Wii functionality, but there’s nothing stopping you from doing the gruntwork in the free version.

As for Zafehouse 2… I’m still keen to get a demo out by the end of July. I can’t say it’ll be fully functional, but it will give you a taste of what the game has become. I’ve reduced the scope and halved the length of the a Z2 day to 12 hours. I didn’t feel the intensity was there for 24, and the systems don’t allow for interesting gameplay for such a lengthy period of time.

Looking back at the code, there are a lot of things I’d have done differently. The one building/multiple floors idea was a good one and I’m not sure why I abandoned it. There’s also a heavy focus on combat, which is not what survival horror is about. The original intent was to make Z2 strategic, not tactical, yet that’s where it’s ended up.

I have some ideas for Z3 (yeah, yeah, finish the second one first, I hear you say) and I think Z2 has helped me focus in on what a strategic survival horror game should be.

No related posts.

Or, to put it another way: Too many.

I was going to find the time to editorialise my views on piracy and how it’s soured the attitudes of developers towards the PC as a platform – including my own. Before I could, the excellent David Wong over at Cracked has done it for me, using the Humble Indie Bundle as a launchpad.

From the last part of his article:

That [the Humble Indie Bundle] was a bundle of DRM-free independent games that, combined, would normally sell for $80. The makers offered the bundle as a direct download to the consumer – no corporate middle men – and let customers pay whatever they wanted… If ever there was a measure of the gaming community’s sense of entitlement, this was it.

US$9.18 turned out to be the average amount people were willing to part with for to own the bundle’s five games. Not a great return on investment for the pack’s US$80 RRP, but it’s been shown before that the income produced from a “pay-what-you-want-model” is mediated by what people can afford rather than perceived value.

This isn’t why too many gamers are spoiled idiots. No, it’s the next nugget that drives the point home:

More than a quarter of the downloaders stole it outright. That’s right. More than a quarter believed that even one penny was too much to offer in return for the hundreds of hours of labor it took to create the games.

Are we talking about P2P? No, no we are not:

…This is just the people who pirated the games directly off of the game maker’s server. In other words, they intentionally used the game developers’ resources so, in addition to paying nothing, they would actually cost them additional money on bandwidth.

At least going the P2P method you’re getting it via the path of least resistance. From a purely psychological perspective, it makes sense. But to grab it from the developer’s own hardware? As Wong puts it, you’re not only depriving the creators of well-deserved income, you’re reaching into their pockets and taking what they already have.

In short: You’ve gone from idiot to full-bird dickhead.

We need to kill the mentality of developers being “The Man”; a duplicitous and intangible entity you need to boycott or steal from to convince it of the evil of its ways. Developers are people. They have families and homes. And they need to make a living, just like anyone else.

If you want to make a statement, sure, don’t buy a game. But stealing and then playing it? Can you think of anything more hypocritical?

5 Reasons It’s Still Not Cool to Admit You’re a Gamer [Cracked]

No related posts.

But, I’ve been thinking over the last few days that the supply model could be folded into the item system. The result would be that supplies would no longer be counters with maximums, but discrete items, just like guns and furniture. In this way, a survivor could load themselves up with barricades, at the expensive of ammo, medicine and alcohol.

What makes me strongly in favour of this system is that it opens up more choices for a stronghold. If you think the hospital is your best chance at survival, you can now literally drop everything and cart barricades over from other buildings to fortify it, rather than a couple at a time.

The main interface would still keep track of how many of each supply type you have so the information is available at a glance, but the trade window would recognise them as singular items. The system would probably necessitate a weight system, and items like bullets and medicine would need a stacking mechanism… because I can’t see anyone staying sane with the prospect of moving 50 bullets from one inventory to another.

The risk is that trading and collecting supplies might end up with a Diablo-like inventory mini-game, but I believe this can be avoided.

No related posts.

As I mentioned in a previous update, the original combat implementation was ground into a fine, code-tasting dust and packed away, replaced by an infinitely deeper (and juicier) solution that uses firing arcs.

Entering into combat hasn’t changed – you still click on the event in the event window – and the representation of the room is similar too. The difference is that zombies are no longer shown as one large group, they’re now broken up into individual flesh-eating nasties. Weapons have also evolved, the far/close/melee profiles exchanged for variable firing arcs and shot modes. For example, the shotgun has a wide firing arc and shoots pellets in a spread, but it can only fire once per turn and has a short range. A submachine gun on the other hand has a medium firing arc and range, but you can shoot up to six bullets at one or multiple targets. Keep in mind that each bullet fired in the same turn reduces the accuracy of the shot that follows it.

Hit the jump for an additional screenshot which show projectiles in flight. Yes, I said projectiles.

No related posts.

* Fixed video hitching and crashes related to single core machines.

* Single core users may experience short periods of black screen that may last up a few seconds between level loads, cinematic transitions or movies.

* In rare cases, some single core users may notice dialog lines in certain conversations may be delayed up to a few seconds.

* Fixed an issue where it appears ammunition can be picked up, but can’t.

* Fixed an issue where all Codex entries were marked as ‘viewed’, even if the player chose not to view them.

* Fixed an issue where weapon icons are re-organized after downloadable content is used.

* Fixed an issue where pressing F9 after the mission completion screen reset Shepard to Level 1.

* Fixed an issue where remapping the right mouse button blocks camera control in the command HUD.

* Fixed an issue where remapping the ‘use’ command affects the decryption minigame.

* Fixed an issue where users were not prompted to restart when logging in to a different EA Online account.

* Fixed an issue where movies do not play in DLC.

* It is recommended that players reset their keyboard mapping to default values to ensure proper vehicle control.

* Added useful messaging during the ME1 save game import.

* Weapon icon for henchmen never changes from Collector Assault Rifle.

* Czech language – Issues with Czech localization (subtitles) were amended, all text was corrected and improved.

* Fixed an issue where the Mass Effect 2 launcher was being associated with files that have no extension.

* Fixed an issue where uninstalling the game under Windows Vista or Windows 7 might uninstall Mass Effect 1.

I’ve emphasised the fixes that relate to CPUs. While none of them explicitly state that the slow dual-core loading times (that MassAffinity nicely addresses) have been rectified, it’s not entirely insane to think one of the aforementioned singe-core tweaks may have done the trick.

Sadly, I haven’t found any conclusive evidence to suggest this is true. So far, I’ve only found this thread on BioWare’s Social Network, which seems to indicate that the slow load times are still present. It’d be great if any ME2 players out there could confirm whether they’re still encountering the problem, so I can update the original MassAffinity post.

On an unrelated note, I found the following bug hilarious:

Fixed an issue where uninstalling the game under Windows Vista or Windows 7 might uninstall Mass Effect 1

According to ME2 Technical Director Derek French, Windows itself is to blame for this nasty blighter:

That is actually a bug that Microsoft introduced in Vista and 7. We keep our uninstallers in a common location and if you don’t encase the full path to the Uninstaller in double-quotes, Windows will just pick another random executable from that directory and run it, instead of the executable the you explicitly entered. It is pretty crazy when you tell Windows to run ‘Uninstall Mass Effect 2.exe’ and Windows decides to run ‘Uninstall Mass Effect.exe’

Best. Feature. Ever.

No related posts.

Several requests for improvements prompted me to update the app to v0.2. Here’s a list of what’s new:

• Allows you to use an executable name other than the default (for those who have renamed MassEffect2.exe to enable anti-aliasing);
• Automatically detects your ME2 path via the registry;
• Shuts down immediately if ME2 is closed before MassAffinity can apply the fix (previously it would wait ten seconds);
• Added some graphics. Okay… one graphic;
• Added a “Help” button.

That’s it! The functionality remains unchanged, so no need to update if it’s working peachy already. No harm though if you do download it.

Download MassAffinity v0.2

No related posts.

I haven’t played Modern Warfare 2 yet, but is a class creator something people are desperate for? I’d be happy to investigate building one… though I get the impression people are looking for info on the class designer in the game, rather than an external planning tool. But I can’t be completely sure.

Drop a comment if you have some input, I’d love to hear from you.

No related posts.

Put simply, you’d have to be high or stupid to buy Modern Warfare 2 off Steam if you live in Australia.

While I was on Kotaku AU I reported a similar pricing disparity with Call of Duty 4. Before you get angry at Steam – don’t. This is Activision Blizzard’s way of playing nice with local retailers so, if you have angst (which you should), be sure to direct it at the publisher.

If you must have the game, buy it from Play-Asia.

No related posts.

Now, all I have is my laptop, a paltry device equipped with a 1.8GHz C2D and X3100 IGP. A beastly piece of hardware it is not.

Despite falling short of the minimum requirements by at least a billion fathoms, I decided to give Fallout 3 a go on my laptop. It refused to get past the intro movie. I wasn’t expecting much, but I would have thought the game proper wasn’t a big ask.

Apparently, it was. And I wasn’t alone. A bit of research uncovered Oldblivion, a hack to get Bethesda’s Oblivion running on older hardware at a decent click. If you weren’t aware, Oblivion and Fallout 3 use Bethesda’s version of the Gamebryo engine. Logic suggested to me that if a solution could be found for Oblivion, then Fallout 3 had an outside chance.

A few users at the official Oldblivion forum started a thread to toss around ideas on the topic. It became clear that while Fallout 3 was capable of identifying ancient hardware, it didn’t come with the software to support it. Specifically, the shader packages just weren’t there. The game however would still try and load them and, well, that’s why it would crash.

Copying another shader package sort of worked, but it revealed another problem – loads of shaders were coded to the SM2.0b spec. Not 2.0, 3.0 or even 4.0. But 2.0b. The makeshift team worked out a series of INI tweaks to get the game running, if you don’t mind headless characters, no decals and piss-poor lighting. The ultimate solution would be to redo all the 2.0b shaders in 2.0, but that’s a mammoth task for a problem that could be solved with $100 and a trip to your local computer store.

During this period of research, I must have read dozens of posts on various forums, and as I trawled through DirectX diagnostic reports, error messages and poorly-worded but incredibly emotional threats against Bethesda employees, it occurred to me that being a PC gamer is hard. I mean I knew, in a very specific context, why my laptop couldn’t run Fallout 3, and I had no grand illusions about its performance or playability. But this is because I’ve lived and breathed PCs for at least ten years.

Sadly, there are plenty of gamers who haven’t. I’m sure more than a few buy a PC like they would a console, and treat it as such. They also buy games and expect them to just work. But the reality is that PC gaming is a fickle bitch. Between the 30-minute install and the hours of gameplay is an hour or so of mandatory tweaking and troubleshooting because everyone’s PC is different. Even games like the original Counter-Strike continue to crash PCs the world over despite 10+ years of patching.

I hate to do a mammoth cut and paste, but Tweakguides’ Koroush shares a similar opinion in his piece for Fallout 3:

Indeed every single major game which is released these days is labelled as being the “buggiest game ever”, with hundreds of people flooding the game’s forums to complain about how shoddy that particular game is, demanding patches and refunds in angry post after angry post. I’m not exaggerating either, it’s now occurring for every single major game released, and quite frankly, it’s become somewhat of a joke in my opinion. When I play every single one of these games, and write guides for them, testing them for hours and hours, I’m thoroughly confused as to how people can claim they are so buggy when I see no evidence of it. Either I’m the luckiest person alive, or there’s something else at work here.

The simple truth of the matter is that PC gaming is a dual-edged sword. The very fact that a PC allows us so much freedom of choice as to what type of hardware we use, and what type of software we install on it, also results in much greater potential for a wide range of problems. PCs are not a ‘plug and play’ gaming machine, and never have been. If you want to just pop your game in the drive and play without a second thought, you’ll need to do your gaming on a console. As a PC owner you need to be under no illusion that a PC requires regular optimization, maintenance and great care as to what you install on it. That’s where I’ve tried as much as possible to give PC users the resources to do exactly that through my free guides. Ultimately however, as a gamer you have two choices: complain endlessly, blame the ‘greedy developers’, constantly beg for help and keep scratching your head over ‘mysterious’ crashes and issues. Or bite the bullet, learn more about your PC, learn how to configure, optimize and troubleshoot it properly, and wave goodbye to your PC gaming woes.

I couldn’t agree more. It may be a hard line to take, but it’s the truth. I can think of only a handful of games that have given me grief because of a bug. Otherwise, it’s all been solvable with a configuration file tweak, driver update or other workaround.

Will this ever change? Perhaps, but it would come at the expense of the PC and its flexibility. That’s not something I’d like to sacrifice, though I may have to if PCs are to continue as a viable gaming platform.

No related posts.

A noble effort, but eventually real life took over and I stopped at three titles. Zafehouse was my favourite, and proved popular with readers. Yesterday I pumped out a new version, 1.5, which you can download from the site.

Zafehouse: A zombie survival horror simulator

No related posts.

• The heroes can select from a number of characters.
• The Keeper can select a hero as well, evil of course.
• Minions will flow from the top of the map to the bottom, and attempt to destroy the town.
• Players must balance their time between protecting the town and killing bosses.
• The Keeper must balance upgrading his minions to keep them at the same level as the heroes, while making sure his ‘Bag of tricks’, as it were, stays potent as well.
• The Keeper receives gold every 45 or so seconds, the amount determined by the amount of bosses still alive. He also receives gold when one of his minions is killed. The amount of gold received is: Creature Level x 2.
• Heroes receive gold for killing minions. They also receive a small amount of lumber for killing bosses. This lumber, in combination with gold, can be spent on items. The small lumber quantity makes sure the heroes don’t access the more powerful items straight away (a pacing mechanic).

The original plan for the map was to allow the Keeper to select his hero along with the other four players. As I worked on the map it became the first thing I cut. The effort it would involve to add it didn’t seem time spent wisely considering I had the other heroes to balance as well.

The Bag of tricks is essentially a catch-all for any upgrade unrelated to improve the strength of minions. For instant, one researchable ability is called ‘Manifestation’ and allows the Keeper to teleport in, anywhere on the map, for a short period of time and cause havoc. Combined with a long cooldown, it would be up to the Keeper to use this ability strategically – say, when the heroes are about the engage a boss, or when they’re just barely beating back a wave of mobs.

I have to admit I didn’t plan all this out at the beginning – a mistake on my part. I had a rough idea and just went to work. It had been some time since I’d used the World Editor, and I had vague memories of exactly what was possible. Sufficed to say, one should learn the flexibility and power of their tools before wielding them. I got the hang of things through trial and error.

Early on in the piece I figured out a few problems with the gameplay of the map. Tom Cadwell’s game balance essay (http://www.gamedev.net/reference/design/features/balance/) was a huge help in this regard. Hunting for bugs was enlightening:

• The players had no incentive to traverse the map. By hanging back, they could farm creatures, increase their level, and then squash each boss (as boss strength remains static in relation to that of the heroes).
• Not that the first problem really mattered, as the Keeper had no reason at all to send out minions. Minions provide experience for the characters and, without it, the bosses beyond the third or fourth would pose too great a challenge for Level 1 heroes.

Both these problems were rather substantial as they not only resulted in a stalemate, I had already invested a lot of time carving out the systems they supported. In the end, I stared at the wall until I regained my will to continue. The solution, I knew, involved a major rework of the minion upgrades.

Originally, no minions would flow through the two ‘lanes’ of the dungeon – it was up to the Keeper to decide if his strategy would involve minions at all. He could choose to simply stuff his bag with tricks and deploy them as he willed, placing the burden of victory on his cunning. My previous design had four minion types, each with their pros and cons, and the Keeper could pick which would suit his style of play. For example, he could build lots of small Kobolds and overwhelm the players with a wall of weak creatures, or go for Orcs and Dragons and count on them pounding the heroes so badly they’d spend most of their time regenerating health and mana.

Ultimately I discovered this would simply not work - at least for my map.

The solution I settled on was to remove the ‘piecemeal’ creature upgrading and replace it with a ‘attack group’ system. Instead of sending each type of creature out on their own timer, a group of creatures would be sent out in waves. In addition, a basic group would be on by default, meaning the heroes would be gaining experience regardless of the Keeper’s actions. It made a lot more sense thematically as well. I whacked in a time limit for the heroes to prevent them from farming and bang – I had a working risk and reward system to motivate both the Keeper and the players.

Next: Hero power balancing, and other things that are painful to do alone.

No related posts.

Project: Keeper
Tech: Warcraft 3, Blizzard Entertainment
Tools: World Editor
—

Okay, that was surprisingly brief and almost skeletal in regards to information. So here’s a bit more.
—

Summary: Keeper is a multiplayer map for Warcraft 3. It requires five players for its optimal playing experience, however, it can be played with as little as two. Basic gameplay is that of a real-time strategy with the traditional top-down perspective.

The following explanations assume the player understands the gameplay of Warcraft 3.

Player 1 controls a force known as ‘The Dungeon’. While this force technically consists of two players – ‘Keeper’ and ‘Minions’ – Player 1 is only ever in control of the Keeper while the computer handles the Minions. Using various upgrades and indirect methods, the Keeper can mould the Minions to suit his style of play.

Players 2 to 6 control individual heroes. Four heroes are available at the beginning of the game – Blade Fighter, Barbarian, Sorcerer and Cleric – each fulfilling a particular role. The Blade Fighter and Barbarian provide melee support and damage, while the Sorcerer and Cleric back-line support and damage. Each role is further fleshed out using spells and abilities.

The game is limited to a single map, longer than it is wide. At the bottom of the map is the heroes’ town, defend by basic towers. The other two-thirds of the top of the map are the dungeon, populated by ten bosses.

In order for the Keeper and Minions to win, the Keeper must destroy the town by upgrading his creatures to defeat its defences or delay the heroes long enough for him to achieve his Ultimate form.

In order for the heroes to succeed, all ten bosses in the dungeon must be killed. When a boss dies, the players will be rewarded with the following:

• A small quantity of lumber, redeemable – in addition to gold – for equipment.
• The town’s defences will be upgraded.
• The Keeper’s periodic income will be reduced.

As the heroes destroy both bosses and minions, they will gain experience to increase their level. Higher levels provide access to better equipment and stronger abilities. Therefore, the heroes must moderate their progress through the dungeon, balancing the need to protect the town with that of killing bosses.

It is in the Keeper’s best interests to keep his bosses alive for as long as possible, to maintain maximum income and prevent his minions from being overcome by the town’s defences, delaying its destruction and forcing the Keeper to spend his income improving them.
—

I think that’s enough for today. I’ll start getting into the specifics tomorrow. If you have any questions (or suggestions), just post a comment and I’ll try to answer.

No related posts.