Also, if you understand the modern standard graphics pipeline model GPU's follow everything is going to be rasterized at some point.

So when I say vector-graphic I mean techniques similar to what happens in Adobe Flash, with points and filled shapes, tessellated then sent to hardware and rasterized.

But the raster standard u talk of, i'm guessing u mean jpg, png, or something else.

While I love Game dev (one of my biggest hobbies), Nairaland hasn't been so welcoming to game devs. Maybe because of the "all plan and no result" game dev groups that have come and gone, you know the similarities between all those groups/people? They don't ever finish. I tried igniting another one with a project that had all the backbones/skeleton implemented and needed some more hands for co-creation, got no response.



I think this should be a new group, but the question is are we ever going to finish what we start?



Here's what I can do (Incomplete, barebones):

www.nairaland.com/3246699/3d-pc-mac-linux-game

#NOTE: This should have been posted since but I was even banned for trying.

reggie02:

I don't believe pc doesn't sell as much. If that were the case, there wouldn't be so many indie game developers emerging. Also there are publishers that focus on indie games (Devolver Digital) which really helps in commercializing them. As for consoles, MS and sony are beginning to realize the potential of indie games, so they are making it easier for these developers to push there games to consoles because it's always good to have a bigger selection of games for consumers. See spelunky, limbo, towerfall, don't starve, and the vast collection of indie games on steam/ps store/xbox store.
Our African homies are realizing this as well (see Aurion [by kiro'o games, Cameroon], broforce [by free lives, south Africa]).
As for where the money is coming from... Peoples' wallets? I'm not sure what you're asking.
I feel there is a huge misconception regarding non-mobile game development in Nigeria.

While I love Game dev (one of my biggest hobbies), Nairaland hasn't been so welcoming to game devs. Maybe because of the "all plan and no result" game dev groups that have come and gone, you know the similarities between all those groups/people? They don't ever finish. I tried igniting another one with a project that had all the backbones/skeleton implemented and needed some more hands for co-creation, got no response.



I think this should be a new group, but the question is are we ever going to finish what we start?



Here's what I can do (Incomplete, barebones):

www.nairaland.com/3246699/3d-pc-mac-linux-game

#NOTE: This should have been posted since but I was even banned for trying.

dueal:
Also, if you understand the modern standard graphics pipeline model GPU's follow everything is going to be rasterized at some point.

So when I say vector-graphic I mean techniques similar to what happens in Adobe Flash, with points and filled shapes, tessellated then sent to hardware and rasterized.

But the raster standard u talk of, i'm guessing u mean jpg, png, or something else.

Obviously.

Nairaland bots didn't allow me post here since...

reggie02:
Hi all. While lurking around the forums, I noticed the lack of a topic where [aspiring] video game developers interact with each other. I feel this is important to further promote the indie game dev. scene in naija. I found none though... so if there is one, can a kind person direct me towards it? If not, let this be it then

I'm a strong believer in the video game dev. potential of naija, so I'd love to be able to communicate with others like me so we can motivate each other, critique our works or maybe work on something together

SO if you feel you're a dope artist, 2D/3D animator, programmer (with unity, game maker, unreal, etc), designer or sound person, come link up at this game developers' post! (if there isn't one already that is).

Here's a sample of what I can do. Thanks guys

-reggie02

While I love Game dev (my biggest hobby), Nairaland hasn't been so welcoming to game devs. Maybe because of the "all plan and no result" game dev groups that have come and gone, you know the similarities between all those groups/people? They don't ever finish. I tried igniting another one with a project that had all the backbones/skeleton implemented and needed some more hands for co-creation, got no response.



I think this should be a new group, but the question is are we ever going to finish what we start?



Here's what I can do (Incomplete, barebones):

www.nairaland.com/3246699/3d-pc-mac-linux-game

I need a dynamic, passionate and talented mobile apps developer in Lagos who will work with me on a ground-breaking new project to create a tech company from concept to Live. If you can invest energy in a project and have the skills to create exciting apps, contact me pluralcode@gmail.com or inbox me on Facebook 'Nduka Severus' is the name

@appcypher wow I didn't see your character until just now :s that looks sweet man

Welcome to the thread guys!!
@DanielTheGeek I've seen such threads with dope sounding ideas and even assets in some cases. They usually never finish though, as you said. I believe this might be partly because of the scope of these projects. It's easy to get excited over an idea, and the planning phase is the sweetest part but as time goes on, the people begin to realize the project is bigger than they planned so they slowly abandon it. I was fortunate to learn this early on, so I've been designing games with a smaller scope in mind. I just checked out your zambisa (abi sambiza?) game and it sounds interesting but it seems like a large game. I'm not sure of the scope you have in mind but if it's too big, it might get abandoned. So in order for this thread not to be like the others, I say we try smaller projects to gain XP. All plan and no result will be broken in Jesus' name!
@severus wassup? It might help to be more specific about what kind of developer you seek (programmer, artist, sound person, jack-of-all-trades)

dueal:
Also, if you understand the modern standard graphics pipeline model GPU's follow everything is going to be rasterized at some point.

So when I say vector-graphic I mean techniques similar to what happens in Adobe Flash, with points and filled shapes, tessellated then sent to hardware and rasterized.

But the raster standard u talk of, i'm guessing u mean jpg, png, or something else.

I know what you mean by vector graphics. And yes, the raster images I talk about are jpg, pngs etc., the pixel-based non-scalable images you can pass to OpenGL/DirectX directly. You can't do that with vector graphics. Lots of computations will be done before those points, beziers, fill, stroke, etc. are converted to polygons which are then passed to a graphics API. And that is why I can't consider them now.

Guys a new game dev group is up. If you wanna join.
https:///DnZJjT0VCWAHdG9MTkxiLi

appcypher:

I know what you mean by vector graphics. And yes, the raster images I talk about are jpg, pngs etc., the pixel-based non-scalable images you can pass to OpenGL/DirectX directly. You can't do that with vector graphics. Lots of computations will be done before those points, beziers, fill, stroke, etc. are converted to polygons which are then passed to a graphics API. And that is why I can't consider them now.

If I get you correctly, your assumption is you can make a 2d skeleton system with just images(jpg,png) and that's cheaper than using vector-graphics techniques which you assume will be more computationally expensive? It's actually the opposite.

Let me explain. The thing your gpu api(opengl/d3d) processes first are vertices(points) not bitmaps, bitmap images get painted on polygons. So, using vector-graphics techniques which are lines defined by points is a natural thing for d gpu. These are scalable with less aliasing effect than scaling a texture images, they are controllable with joints/matrix-pallets than trying to figure the boundary of a bitmap character and rewriting the new image/snapshot of animation as another texture. Computationally it's cheaper cos you are working with less data(vertices vs texels).

dueal:

If I get you correctly, your assumption is you can make a 2d skeleton system with just images(jpg,png) and that's cheaper than using vector-graphics techniques which you assume will be more computationally expensive? It's actually the opposite.
Let me explain. The thing your gpu api(opengl/d3d) processes first are vertices(points) not bitmaps, bitmap images get painted on polygons. So, using vector-graphics techniques which are lines defined by points is a natural thing for d gpu. These are scalable with less aliasing effect than scaling a texture images, they are controllable with joints/matrix-pallets than trying to figure the boundary of a bitmap character and rewriting the new image/snapshot of animation as another texture. Computationally it's cheaper cos you are working with less data(vertices vs texels).

I know you know graphics pipeline. I do too. I know the benefits of vector graphics, but performance is definitely not one of it. Just like you said bitmap images are passed as texture to polygons and that's the end of the story. If you are rendering just an image you do not need more than the 2 triangles that form a quad around the image. For vectors however, its a different story. Graphics APIs only understand 3 base primitives: points, lines and triangles. Vector images contain a lot more than that. They use bezier curves, they allow specifying stroke width, filled color can have varying gradient, etc. Those require conversion into something OpenGL/D3D understands and that is a lot of computation considering you will have a game world composed of these stuffs. And at the end of the day a vector use more tris than a raster image, since the curves and strokes have to be resolved into triangles.
The overhead of conversion is totally not worth it. Vector graphics are mostly used in GUI rendering, logo design, or only for little parts in a game that needs a scalable image.
And texel count is less a problem, since it is handled parallelly by the GPU. But vector to polygon conversion is done on the CPU. And again a vector image use more vertices than a raster image, just as I pointed out above.
I implore you to check this out:
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/191472/why-have-hardware-accelerated-vector-graphics-not-taken-off

appcypher:

I know you know graphics pipeline. I do too. I know the benefits of vector graphics, but performance is definitely not one of it. Just like you said bitmap images are passed as texture to polygons and that's the end of the story. If you are rendering just an image you do not need more than the 2 triangles that form a quad around the image. For vectors however, its a different story. Graphics APIs only understand 3 base primitives: points, lines and triangles. Vector images contain a lot more than that. They use bezier curves, they allow specifying stroke width, filled color can have varying gradient, etc. Those require conversion into something OpenGL/D3D understands and that is a lot of computation considering you will have a game world composed of these stuffs. And at the end of the day a vector use more tris than a raster image, since the curves and strokes have to be resolved into triangles.
The overhead of conversion is totally not worth it. Vector graphics are mostly used in GUI rendering, logo design, or only for little parts in a game that needs a scalable image.
And texel count is less a problem, since it is handled parallelly by the GPU. But vector to polygon conversion is done on the CPU. And again a vector image use more vertices than a raster image, just as I pointed out above.
I implore you to check this out:
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/191472/why-have-hardware-accelerated-vector-graphics-not-taken-off

There seems to be some confusion here. I am basing these arguments on what you intend to do I.e 2d skeletal system.

Yes, 2 tris equals a quad, but that isn't enough to model a humanoid character with a skeletal system. From what I get from ur point of view you are assuming hardware accelerated vector-graphics. I mean vector-graphics techniques, some which will not be needed.

Take for instance, the hand of a biped character. The one place u need cubic-bezier curves will be at the elbow. The rest is just a polygon, u can also run the animation in gpu via shaders and still have parallelism. This is the natural way. Gpu's see ur simple mesh and you do what u want with dat. Cubic Beziers are cheap even when you want to subdivide to get something the gpu can use(lines/tris).

The way you explain ur system it seems like you draw one character in png then position joints/bones and animate that. What do you run interpolation on to animate the xter? Texels? On which processor, CPU or GPU?

dueal:


There seems to be some confusion here. I am basing these arguments on what you intend to do I.e 2d skeletal system.

Yes, 2 tris equals a quad, but that isn't enough to model a humanoid character with a skeletal system. From what I get from ur point of view you are assuming hardware accelerated vector-graphics. I mean vector-graphics techniques, some which will not be needed.

Take for instance, the hand of a biped character. The one place u need cubic-bezier curves will be at the elbow. The rest is just a polygon, u can also run the animation in gpu via shaders and still have parallelism. This is the natural way. Gpu's see ur simple mesh and you do what u want with dat. Cubic Beziers are cheap even when you want to subdivide to get something the gpu can use(lines/tris).

The way you explain ur system it seems like you draw one character in png then position joints/bones and animate that. What do you run interpolation on to animate the xter? Texels? On which processor, CPU or GPU?

I think I get what you are trying to say. The way you explained how a human biped will be created makes me assume that you are mixing stuffs up. In that case you are not talking about vector-graphics (and they don't use cubic beziers BTW. It's quadratic), you mean the use of just vertices and vertex colors to create a character. Even though they are scalable, the problem with that proposition is that you won't have as much details as a texture can provide. All those pixel-level details cannot be created with vertices. That will just be plain expensive.
Let me just give you a simple breakdown of how the 2d skeletal system is supposed to work.
- You import a series of raster images that make up the movable parts of your character.
- You draw out bone gizmos on each image.
- You control (rotate, translate or scale) the bone gizmos and use that to animate the images.
- The series of animations are saved in a file.
- The images are packed in a texture atlas.
- Each image becomes a texture to a quad. And using the animation provided, each image is animated as appropriate.
For a simple workflow like this, the vertex animation can be done on GPU. But its not always this simple.
And using only vertex colors instead of textures might work for some low-detailed elements in the game. It is however not a replacement for textures.
This is not just me coming up with stuffs. This how other 2D skeletal animation apps implement it.

appcypher:

I think I get what you are trying to say. The way you explained how a human biped will be created makes me assume that you are mixing stuffs up. In that case you are not talking about vector-graphics (and they don't use cubic beziers BTW. It's quadratic), you mean the use of just vertices and vertex colors to create a character. Even though they are scalable, the problem with that proposition is that you won't have as much details as a texture can provide. All those pixel-level details cannot be created with vertices. That will just be plain expensive.
Let me just give you a simple breakdown of how the 2d skeletal system is supposed to work.
- You import a series of raster images that make up the movable parts of your character.
- You draw out bone gizmos on each image.
- You control (rotate, translate or scale) the bone gizmos and use that to animate the images.
- The series of animations are saved in a file.
- The images are packed in a texture atlas.
- Each image becomes a texture to a quad. And using the animation provided, each image is animated as appropriate.
For a simple workflow like this, the vertex animation can be done on GPU. But its not always this simple.
And using only vertex colors instead of textures might work for some low-detailed elements in the game. It is however not a replacement for textures.
This is not just me coming up with stuffs. This how other 2D skeletal animation apps implement it.

You talk tech i'll give that to you. But quadratic bezier means restrictions to 3-control vertices and conic-shapes and not flexible as cubic curves(4-cv), update on that and it's still within the realm of vector-graphics techniques.

As I presumed, your implementation is similar to say the analogy of what game biped xters were in the PS1 era of disjointed parts with transformations. If your aim was to make as flexible a skeletal system as dat used by UbiSoft, well it's still crude.

Also, you are not restricted to using vertex colors and have a mono-shade on ur character...you can use UV's.

dueal:


You talk tech i'll give that to you. But quadratic bezier means restrictions to 3-control vertices and conic-shapes and not flexible as cubic curves(4-cv), update on that and it's still within the realm of vector-graphics techniques.

As I presumed, your implementation is similar to say the analogy of what game biped xters were in the PS1 era of disjointed parts with transformations. If your aim was to make as flexible a skeletal system as dat used by UbiSoft, well it's still crude.

Also, you are not restricted to using vertex colors and have a mono-shade on ur character...you can use UV's.

If you have used Illustrator/inkscape, you will notice, while creating a vector image, that each curve is provided with two handles. This allows for S-shaped curves. That's quadratic (has 4 control points). Even though a vector format can use cubic beziers (which I find easier to use BTW), they simply don't though. ai, svg, eps all use quad bezier.
UbiArt is doing exactly what my app is going to do. They might have used vector graphics for some aspects, but the lush environments were texture (i.e. raster) based.
Using raster images doesn't mean the animations have to be rigid or robotic. They can be deformed. All it takes is increasing the vertex count near areas of the texture where deformation will happen. So squash and stretch animation with an image is very possible.
Check this interesting Spine FFD tutorial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dd2M8XBTo0
And I can bet my last kobo that the mobile version of Rayman Jungle uses texture-based animations throughout. Vector-based animations are just too expensive to be throwing about on mobile.

appcypher:

If you have used Illustrator/inkscape, you will notice, while creating a vector image, that each curve is provided with two handles. This allows for S-shaped curves. That's quadratic (has 4 control points). Even though a vector format can use cubic beziers (which I find easier to use BTW), they simply don't though. ai, svg, eps all use quad bezier.
UbiArt is doing exactly what my app is going to do. They might have used vector graphics for some aspects, but the lush environments were texture (i.e. raster) based.
Using raster images doesn't mean the animations have to be rigid or robotic. They can be deformed. All it takes is increasing the vertex count near areas of the texture where deformation will happen. So squash and stretch animation with an image is very possible.
Check this interesting Spine FFD tutorial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dd2M8XBTo0
And I can bet my last kobo that the mobile version of Rayman Jungle uses texture-based animations throughout. Vector-based animations are just too expensive to be throwing about on mobile.

Just so we are clear on d quadratic(3cv) and cubic(4cv) bezier curves.

Also, you won't need skeletal systems for d environment,thats 4 characters or waving trees. Like I said and propose, UbiSoft used vector graphics techniques for their 2d skeletal system so does Spine. If you paid any attention to my point you'd notice I mention tesselation, separate parts, vertices, curves, UVs. All what Spine uses are vector-graphics techniques. The images are UV textured on those vertices.

I believe the back-to-back started with; To use sprites or not to use sprites.

dueal:


Just so we are clear on d quadratic(3cv) and cubic(4cv) bezier curves.

Also, you won't need skeletal systems for d environment,thats 4 characters or waving trees. Like I said and propose, UbiSoft used vector graphics techniques for their 2d skeletal system so does Spine. If you paid any attention to my point you'd notice I mention tesselation, separate parts, vertices, curves, UVs. All what Spine uses are vector-graphics techniques. The images are UV textured on those vertices.

I believe the back-to-back started with; To use sprites or not to use sprites.

I admit I was mixing up cubic and quad bezier.
If by vector graphics you mean using UVs, then that's exactly what my app is doing. UVs are the coords on a texture. Textures are not scalable, they show their flaws when you zoom on them too much. Why? because they use raster images. And that's what I've been saying all along.
I use Spine. The images it allows are raster images. What it does, for a simple workflow, is use the images as texture to a quad, this is called texture mapping. And it passes that to the GPU to be rendered to the display.

Hey guys, do any of you know the exact day WAGE (West African Gaming Expo) will start?

So... nobody's interested in the WAGE? I feel it's a great opportunity to network at least but it seems no one thinks so. Oh well.
Anyways, I'd hate for this thread to die like the rest, so here's a picture of my first 3D character, modeled with blender. I also animated him some but I don't think I can share vids on nairaland. Share your stuff if you think it's better than mine

hi.is anyone still here

making money on pc game development is extremely difficult. its not a one man job.also extremely high marketing strategy is required. American publishers won't even bother with you except u are willing to travel over there and meet them face to face. pc gamers want quality so know in the back of your mind that your game should be competing with AAA titles not even indies.we at smartolivegames ltd have been developing and published pc games for 4 years. its not an easy task at all.Most indie titles released this year haven't even sold up to 20 copies due to oversaturation of the pc market

This is exactly why I left the gaming industry back in 2016. It's still not a feasible career path as of today in Nigeria. You can be lucky of course, but I would say 90 out of 100 game developers in Nigeria end up quitting.

If you really need to become a game developer, you are better of moving to more developed country to hone your skills. Make a lot of money and maybe one day you will gather a team that create games you've been dreaming of.

I still love game dev. It's a creative exercise, but I'v adjusted to reality. I'd love to go back at some point when I'm super comfortable and money ain't a problem. Just creating content to make people happy.

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hi am also an aspiring game dev with no games sha, i started using blender about a year ago and am also learning unity.

Hi,if you are good at using blender and can do game design. we are currently recruiting. contact me for more

appcypher:
This is exactly why I left the gaming industry back in 2016. It's still not a feasible career path as of today in Nigeria. You can be lucky of course, but I would say 90 out of 100 game developers in Nigeria end up quitting.

If you really need to become a game developer, you are better of moving to more developed country to hone your skills. Make a lot of money and maybe one day you will gather a team that create games you've been dreaming of.

I still love game dev. It's a creative exercise, but I'v adjusted to reality. I'd love to go back at some point when I'm super comfortable and money ain't a problem. Just creating content to make people happy.

I'll freely admit you are right... I also know it'll take a while before our animation and game industry in Nigeria develop, we're all still focusing/facing web and app development. I also used to be a game programmer myself, when I was a freshman and talking to my fellow computer science classmates about my interest in being a game programmer a lot of them didn’t really like the idea of making video games. Most of them were way more interested in developing apps whether it be mobile or web based. Others were more interested in working for big companies like Microsoft, Google etc. Other people didn’t even like to play video games let alone make them.

So in short I found the majority of computer science undergraduates or graduates in Nigeria that I spoke to actually don’t want to be game programmers. They have no real interest in it

appcypher:
This is exactly why I left the gaming industry back in 2016. It's still not a feasible career path as of today in Nigeria. You can be lucky of course, but I would say 90 out of 100 game developers in Nigeria end up quitting.

If you really need to become a game developer, you are better of moving to more developed country to hone your skills. Make a lot of money and maybe one day you will gather a team that create games you've been dreaming of.

I still love game dev. It's a creative exercise, but I've adjusted to reality. I'd love to go back at some point when I'm super comfortable and money ain't a problem. Just creating content to make people happy.

^^^Kickass post, no BS!