Week 5 Round Up


Interactive 3D

 This week I worked on some Terrain Generation; mainly loading from a height map. To begin with I need to generate the heights, for this I read a 1280x1280 ‘.raw’ file containing a 4byte value. I then  make a grid of vertices and load them into a single dimensional array, whilst I set up the vertices I pass in the corresponding height value. I can then calculate the indices and set up the index array, and one I have the indices I’m able to calculate the normal’s which will be used for lighting.

Once I had a completed ‘TerrainNode’ I looked into forms of procedural generation. So far I have implemented ‘Perlin Noise’ (http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/models/m_perlin.htm) which interpolates a value from a Sin Wave. The results were pretty good. I can change up to 5 values to get more varied height; more mountains; smoother terrain etc. I also added a Sky Dome for additional effect.



Mobile Development

This week we were given samples of a List View and told to implement our own versions; since this was going to be a feature in my assignment I decided to implement my recipe classes I used last week. Building my own View was a bit trickier as I wanted 3 bits of information laid out in a particular way. I wanted a name along the top with a description underneath, and a rating on the right. To do this I had to create an XML of how I wanted the rows to be viewed, and then pass that into my own List Adapter which took a list of Recipes as its parameters. Even though it took some time and a lot of reading samples, I finally got a result I’m happy with. Note, this is only for functionality at the moment, once I have all the features implemented, I’ll start to look at aesthetics.



Team Development

We’ve had to keep records of all our work as part of the module, and one way we do this is always by working at the same time, this generally is a 4hour slot on a Monday afternoon (we have students from 3 different courses so it’s hard to find time). This means my progress isn’t going to be much each week. In the last post I actually showed the work that other team members have already done for Week 5, today I can show the ‘Boss’ entity, which isn’t much yet but has the required basic functionality.



So far it comes in from a point (default set to above but can be changed) and then follows a path once It hits a particular point. Health bars and incoming messages have also been included. The goal for next week is to add projectiles emitting from the boss.

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