City Project: Proof of Concept Demo Video (HD)

I finished this 'Proof of Concept' demo of my 'City Project' a little more than a year ago but, with the software I was using at the time and my modest PC, I could only record a quite low resolution gameplay video of it. I now use a better program that, usually, lets me record videos at 720p and decent framerates, so today I thought maybe I should make another video of the demo using it.

 

link to the HD version

The demo is still the same, it's far from a finished game but, if you want to try it, you can download it from: http://www.indiedb.com/games/city-project/downloads/city-project-proof-of-concept-demo I programmed it using C++, DirectX 9.0c, OpenAL and Bullet Physics. I haven't worked on this project since then, although maybe some day I'll resume it. The goal back then was just making this 'Proof of Concept' demo and start working on a different game, High Entropy www.highentropy.net

The 'Proof of Concept' demo is now available

You can download it here. Keep in mind this is a very early demo, it still isn't much fun to play and there are tons of things that need improvements (the city is small, there are very few things to do, the AI is too basic, there are some bugs...). It's just meant as a milestone for the project, a 'proof of concept', a way for me of having something to show and test to see how things are developing and where I can take it from here, but I've decided to release it in case someone wants to check it out or help me test it.

I recommend taking a look at the README file before playing, it contains information about the requirements, controls, known bugs (there's one that makes the camera go blank that seems to happen more often than I thought), things I want to add in future versions, the credits... Note: from the feedback I've received so far, the demo doesn't seem to work too well with integrated/intel graphics cards (low or too variable framerates and strange behavior of the traffic), something I expected but didn't add to the README file.

Now, I'm going to take some time apart from this project, the last couple of weeks have been quite intense trying to include everything I wanted in the demo and make it work.

Video: 'City' Project: 'Proof of Concept' Demo

I've decided it's about time I make the first working demo of the project, and the last few weeks I've been trying to implement what I'm calling a 'Proof of Concept' demo, given the early state of the project, that includes all that I've made so far. Here's a video:

I'm planning on publishing the demo this week when I've polished it a little more, in case someone is interested in checking it out or helping me test it.

Indie DB page for my 'City' project

I decided to make an Indie DB page for the game, which I'm calling 'City' Project for now. It has been approved and you can visit it here.

Work in progress screenshots 30: The city is back

I'm putting the city back together. I want to have a working demo with all that I've made so far, which was my original goal, and take some time apart from this project to learn some other things, like Unity, and/or make a shooter...

Main things I've yet to do to have what I want for the demo: integrate back the pedestrians, the HUD and the taxi missions into my new code; plus some other minor details.

Work in progress video 53: Game menus

Here's a video of the first working version of the main menu's custom GUI I'm coding for the game (the sounds are just placeholders to test if everything works as expected):

Work in progress screenshots 29: Programming the menu's GUI

I've decided to program my own code for the main menu GUI, instead of using one of the libraries I've been testing. Buttons are mostly working, here's an image from a first test:

Work in progress video 52: New sound manager (using OpenAL)

I've created a simple sound manager using OpenAL (previously, I was using DirectSound/DirectMusic). Now, when a sound asks the manager to be played, a preallocated pool of channels (OpenAL sources) is checked to see if there's one available, in which case, the sound will use it. The manager is not finished, I've yet to implement priorities so a sound using a channel can be stopped to give it to a new one with more priority that needs to be played, but it's already usable:

Work in progress video 51: Vehicles + physics are back

I have the vehicles, with physics, working again (not the sound). With the new improved code it should be easier to create, destroy, customize and manage them. Also, now AI and players use the same interface to send them commands (accelerate, turn...), which will be cleaner than what I first implemented.

Testing GWEN

Today I've integrated another GUI library into my code to test it. This one is called GWEN. I've to make more tests to see how much it can be customized but I like it so far, it could be used to make an editor or some game menus, and it was quite easy to integrate.

Testing libRocket

I've integrated libRocket (a C++ user interface middleware package based on the HTML and CSS standards) into my code to test it. Although it is quite interesting, I probably won't end up using it to make the game menus. I may test another library called GWEN but, right now, I'm thinking about programming my own code to add simple menus...

Work in progress video 50: Customizable vehicle colors

Today I thought it would be nice to be able to change the vehicles' color in real time, to add more variety to the city's traffic. Here's a video of my first implementation:

Work in progress screenshots 27

I've found a couple of funny screenshots I made some time ago while I was programming some inverse kinematics code for the pedestrians (but hadn't got it quite right yet :D).

Photo of my desk

I made this photo of my desk for a website called Indies' desk:

Testing AntTweakBar

I'm rewriting the code of my game project (I want to improve and redesign some elements now that I know what I'm doing a little better :D) and adding some new things. Today I've integrated AntTweakBar into my code, a library that provides a simple GUI that could be useful to easily tweak some parameters. Here's a video of my first test:

From its website: "AntTweakBar is a small and easy-to-use C/C++ library that allows programmers to quickly add a light and intuitive graphical user interface into graphic applications based on OpenGL, DirectX 9, DirectX 10 or DirectX 11 to interactively tweak parameters on-screen"

Work in progress screenshots 26

Five new screenshots (click to enlarge):

Work in progress video 49: Accomplished in 2011

This video shows the state of my game project at the end of 2011. Now I'm going to continue developing the game. I'm happy with what I've accomplished these last months, I'm learning a lot, but it's still very far from finished.

Back to work & twitter

After a little holiday break, I'm going to continue developing the game. Things are getting more complex, so I have to redesign some of the code and program new elements, like a sound manager, read some game programming books I bought... it may take me a while. I'll try to update the blog whenever I have something 'visual' to show but, in the mean time, you can check my twitter account to know what I'm up to (lately, I've been using it to share, among other things, links to interesting game programming sites, tutorials, books and documents I'm finding).

Work in progress screenshots 25: Pickup truck

I found some free models on the Unity3D forum created by the people from ilp3d.com who, very kindly, made them available to use 'in any way you like'. I don't use Unity3D but I've managed to extract the pickup truck model from the Unity package that can be downloaded from the forum, made some modifications to adapt it to my needs, and loaded it in my game:

Work in progress screenshots 24

Just a quick update, I haven't made much interesting progress lately. I'm reorganizing some things in the code and thinking about modeling a few more buildings. Maybe I'll start making low poly versions so I have some variety quickly and then create more detailed versions... or the other way around, I'm not sure yet.