Everyone is afraid of boogie-men: Those mysterious creatures of an unknown nature, which no man has seen and lived to tell of their encounter. The entity that lurks in the shadows, watching, waiting for any opportunity to pounce -- to sink its deadly fangs into an arbitrary body part... or maybe just tickle you until you wet yourself...

Then there is the wooly-booger: The redneck variant of the boogie-man. The wooly-booger is like the boogie-man. But probably with a Southern drawl.

But there is some other sinister creature out there, prowling for hapless victims upon which to feast (or manhandle)......

It is the...

WULABUGR!!! (Cue screeching violin)

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That is a bit of flavor-text to give you an idea behind my most-recently current project. WulaBugr (which is basically how "wooly-booger" sounds when pronounced by a proper redneck) is akin to a graphical-Roguelike-on-steroids, with a pretty non-serious theme (since Roguelikes aren't taken seriously by pretty much anyone ).

Most of WulaBugr will be akin to your typical Roguelike, but with some extra graphical effects, such as: Alpha-channel-based lighting (tiles in the dark will actually *look* darker, and vice-versa); animations (primarily for GUI stuff, although combat sequences will be animated to an extent); and other goodies.

There will also be a feature that will allow worlds to "transition" to various locales. For example, you could be traveling through a forest, and then find a dungeon area, which leads to a desert plain, etc.

* BTW, the "Creating complex polygons" thread is related to this project: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11228

I plan on posting updates on the development of "WulaBugr" to this thread on occasion. Keep yer peepers peeled.

In the meantime, here is a screen shot of the main menu very early into the development of the game:

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Very cool. Looking forward to some new featured image material.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

already v.7 sweet

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Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

Note that the actual text reads, "Alpha v.7" -- in other words, the 7th iteration of the Alpha. So, it's not like it's a sequel to anything.

Of course, I put a *ton* of groundwork into the behind-the-scenes stuff. The main menu screen alone uses several of the sub-systems in the game engine (a "display" module that handles rendering and such; the "graphics" system which is used for animation (yes, the menu is animated... it just doesn't translate well in a still image ); and of course the input system (you can use the mouse and/or arrow keys to highlight and/or trigger a button); and I dare not neglect to mention the game-state system that allows the transition from the splash screen (which is currently just debug info) to the main menu itself)...

The code files total to 84KB of plain-text. 40KB of it written completely from scratch -- since January 26. That's not counting the code I wrote for the algorithms used to trace the walls (which currently runs almost 30KB (not counting all the "gunk" code I wound up culling), all by its lonesome -- and I only started on it January 30!).

So, it's not like I just mocked up a menu screen and just stuck a random number on it.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Lol, awesome dude.

A redneck boogeyman. I'm picturing Boomhauer with sharp teeth.

"Man I tell-u-what I'moan-gitYa tonite I'l be hidin' in ya gawd-damn-old-closet goan bite ya n'eatcha 'nstuff yeah that's f'real man."

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"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment." -Jonah Orion
http://tankzgame.blogspot.com

Nice.

I'm constantly amazed by how many times I've had to explain what a "wooly-booger" is. Around here, people throw the term around like it's nothing, and everyone just "gets it." Everyone with whom I've conversed regarding the subject anywhere else, though, didn't seem to have a clue what it was -- or had even heard it before!

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

I've been working on FOV (Field Of Vision) in WulaBugr, and have a few images to demonstrate.

The FOV is based on what I call a "visibility map" -- simply a 2D grid that stores information on the visibility and lighting of a tile. Visibility is "can this tile be seen?", while lighting is "how much lighting is on this tile?" (of course, if a tile has too much darkness on it, it will affect the visibility aspect). Of course, walls will affect visibility. As for lighting, that is affected by the ambient lighting of an area, light sources, and distance.

Ambient lighting is area-specific, and indicates the "default" lighting of the area. This can be anywhere from 1.0 (blindingly bright light) to -1.0 (pitch-black darkness). Light sources (a flashlight, torch, or whatnot) increase the lighting of an area by a certain amount, and their light fades back to the ambient lighting within an area over distance.

The following image is divided into eight sections. The upper-left section shows the layout of the demo map, with no visibility map affecting the view. The rest of the images show the visibility maps in action -- areas with green tiles are 'outdoor' areas with ambient lighting of 0.0 (normal lighting); areas with bluish-gray floors have an ambient lighting -1.0 (pitch-black darkness); and the player has a light source with an intensity of -0.15 (which means the light source produces light that is slightly less intense than the outdoor lighting). The location of the player is represented in each image, excluding the first, by an icon that resembles an eye.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Pretty cool stuff
You deliberate choose to have a low resolution fog? Theres some neat tutorials i found some time ago on smooth 2d shadow casting. I could dig them up if you're interested

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Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

Very cool stuff!

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

Looking good. Keep it up!

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Bored? Head on over to my blog and see what I'm up to.

Microsoft XNA MVP

Yeah, I'm doing visibility and lighting on a per-tile basis. I could probably manage to make the visibility have a smaller granularity than that, but I am unsure yet whether I want to do that (primarily due to performance reasons... I know this is a turn-based game and all, but there will be some degree of animation in places).

I'm *pretty* sure that I can just adapt my current traversal method for visibility to make a smoother FOV. Of course, I wouldn't turn down a helpful link in this case.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Sure thing, here you go

http://www.catalinzima.com/2010/07/my-t ... d-shadows/
This is somewhat advanced to get really nice shadows, not sure if this is something you are aiming for

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8803.0
This might be a tad more fitting for your case

Let there be light \o

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Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

I actually just finished adapting my FOV algorithm to use finer coordinates. It was pretty simple to do with what I had (basically a ray-casting system that was made to "snap to grid" more or less). I simply adjusted it so that instead of defining the FOV map as a grid, I defined it as an array of X/Y points.

Of course, I still need to adapt the lighting bit to work in a similar fashion... but that will have to wait until I've had some sleep, so it seems.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Awesome! Coincidentally, days ago I was thinking about this kind of player vision.

What language(or tool you are working with) are you writing this?

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"Life finds a way." - Ian Malcolm
My WebBlog: PixelDeveloper
English is not my native language, so excuse me for any writing mistakes.

nice work!

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"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment." -Jonah Orion
http://tankzgame.blogspot.com

I'm using HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript. It's truckin' along really well so far... not long ago, if you would have told me you could do all this with HTML, I would have cussed you out for being an idiot.


I've been working on fine-tuning this aspect of the game... and it is coming along *extremely* well. Not only does the FOV plane now have a much smoother appearance, the lighting aspect (which I completely reworked) is looking freakin' SWEET. I had to pull a few tricks out of my sleeve to get the look right, but MAN it was worth it.

Of course, that's just a tease. I would post a screen shot of the lighted lusciousness, but alas, I am still putting the final touches on the FOV overhaul. So, no screen shots for today.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

ass!

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Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

Well, after spending an entire day fiddling with the FOV algorithm, I've gotten sick of the way it is currently set up, and will dedicate the next day to completely rewriting the FOV function. I was hoping I could post some screens of the system running the full FOV with lighting setup today, but instead, you will just have to settle for a few screen shots of *just* the lighting portion. It looks a little gimpy with FOV disabled, though.

Top-left screen shot shows the full map with lighting disabled. The other shots show the lighting enabled, with the player in different locations. The player is represented by an icon of an eye (and has a light source). There is a light-source on the lower-right of each screen: This is represented by an icon resembling a sun.

Behold!

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

That is pretty.

One thing that breaks it is the global lightness of the outdoor areas.
I'd try lighting them with with lightsources aswell, so it doesnt looked as blocked out, and there would be some light shining into the rooms from the outside aswell, that would be sweet

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Long pork is people!

wzl's burrow

The original plan is to have "normal" lighting be 0.0, with blindingly bright light at 1.0, and pitch-black darkness at -1.0.

The way certain things work (things beyond my control, as they are independent of my own code), I'm thinking maybe of changing my lighting range from 1.0 -> 0.0 -> -1.0, to something more compatible: 1.0 -> 0.5 -> 0.0.

That change (which I have been considering apart from the suggestion you presented) would certainly make something like what you're talking about considerably easier. Currently, the light sources work as a modifier to ambient lighting -- if a light source has less brightness than the current area, it is simply ignored (but can still affect nearby areas in which the light source has greater brightness than the area). On the other hand, a light-source with greater brightness than an area will affect that area, making it lighter.

That much is an easy assumption; but, it gets kind of goofy when you use 0.0 as your "default" setting for ambient lighting. The outside area pictured in the lighting demo images has ambient lighting of 0.0. I have it set so that the lighting is rendered based on the absolute-value of it. So, if you have a lighting of 0.25, and a lighting of -0.25, they are handled in exactly the same way -- the only difference is that if you are in an area with "default" ambient lighting (0.0), it throws things off.

To achieve the effect as it stands, I test whether light is above zero or below zero: If it is above zero, fill the area with white; if it is below zero, fill the area with black. Then I use the absolute-value of the brightness setting of lighting to determine the opacity of the area's lighting. So, an area with 0.25 lighting shows up brighter (as it is drawn-over by a white fill with 0.25 alpha) than an area with -0.25 (as it is filled with black, at 0.25 alpha).

Works, but like I said, it does cause some issues in certain situations. I would probably be better-served using 0.5 as the median value and just adjust for that when needed, rather than stick with what I'm doing now.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."