The Business Traveler

No games, nor programming today. Instead, I wanted to put down my first trip to the States, goddamn 'Murica, Stars and Stripes and bold Eagles. Everyone has an opinion about our infamous cowboy friends. Varying from an example of freedom, technology and overall Coolness, to arrogance, war-seeking and financial crisis causers. Whatever you think, the overall trend hasn’t been a positive one in general.

With a bit of common sense, you can understand the average American isn’t directly responsible for big shot bankers screwing up, or its blood thirsty policymakers with double agenda’s. Just like the average Iranian isn’t responsible for its malicious regime, or average Russian for their corrupt not-so-Gay leaders. Of course, we vote for such leaders and people sometimes say “A nation gets what it deserves”. Western greediness reflects in its policy, narrow mindedness will bring scary leaders, and overall lack of IQ didn’t do much good in this world either. But what I’m trying to say is, it isn’t all black & white. Europe having a bunch of greedy crooks in Bruxelles doesn’t mean the average European supports them. Hence we didn’t even democratically vote for them.


Moon Shiners
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But when I think about America, the words “Dumbness”, “Overdramatic” and “Shallowness” come to my mind. And not just “thanks” to MTV shows such as Jersey Shore or Supersweet 16. Man, I truly hate MTV. A few millennia ago you could watch nice music clips on that channel, but nowadays only the stupidest of the stupidest show their stupidity on MTV, compiled for ADHD children with a maximum concentration span of 4 seconds. But not just MTV, even Discovery or National Geographic turned from informative into nonsense documentaries. I don’t give a crap about crap talking crab fishers. What exactly is informative about a bunch of guys buying garage junk? If you aim a camera at some Dutch folks in an office, they will nervously giggle and hide for the camera, not knowing how to behave. But in America it seems as if everyone was born on (sex)tape. Shameless arguing all the time instead of just working, and sharing their deepest emotions with the camera. It’s as if the average American person could switch their emotional state from “I’m like soooo happy” to “Oh my God, Oh my God, oh my God!” to “I hate you, I want to die” in a split second. What a ridiculous show.

Right. These kind of TV shows imply a shallow, instable American character. Add Hollywood on top where action hero’s jump of buildings on a daily basis or music stars inspiring our kids while walking half naked on the stage. All in all, a weird bonanza, and you understand the rest of the world has kind of a weird image(mainly caused by Americans themselves) of the USA. The scary part is that, despite its dumbness, we (European) still swallow and copy this “lifestyle” regardless.

Well, time to visit America and see if it’s really all about hamburgers, big mouths, crying pregnant teenagers, and Duck Dynasty.


As you may know, I program harvesters for a living. This lady comes from our American partners. For a change not a million times bigger than its European counterpart, but big-ass nevertheless.


The “Yank Tank”
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If I had to book a vacation to America, I would probably visit a big city, visit touristic spots, and still don’t really know what America is all really about afterwards. Well, I definitely want to make a Hangover road trip with friends one day, but basically the expensive flight tickets stopped us from doing that so far. Fortunately, you don’t have this cost consideration when such a trip is work-related. And neither will you see much of the touristic spots. 99% of the American landscape is filled with wild nature, farms, and widely scattered tiny villages. Cities like New York or L.A. are definitely important as an American “export product”, but we easily forget about the rest.
For work, we were visiting a partner company (Oxbo). You might have seen their machinery on cornfields for example. So, you can probably guess that these meetings didn’t take place in a big city. Swap the Devil Advocate skyscrapers for Countryside & construction plants in the middle of nowhere. Well, almost nowhere. Minnesota doesn’t have a dense population, but small cities or Minneapolis were still within reach with only 45 to 90 minutes driving… Which sounds like an infinity for a typical Dutch guy like me. If you drive for an hour in Holland, chances are very big you crossed a border and speak a different language.

We often make jokes about Americans and their obsession for oversized cars plus additional oil thirst. We wooden-clog-cheese-windmills know everything better; we pick the bicycle. Good for the environment, good for our health. But we tend to forget that the Netherlands is a miniature compared to most other countries in the world. In contrary to Holland, most of the American infrastructure wasn’t designed for cyclists. Hence not even for walking. But even if it was, I don’t see you carrying shopping bags for more than a mile, or going to work if you had to bike for more than 40 minutes. Cities or larger villages might be different, but the country side is really a far stretched version of what we are used to. And probably due the low population density, facilities like shopping malls or schools are combined as big buildings somewhere on a central location. Whereas we have lots of small shops and little schools spread all over the place. In other words, you won’t be anywhere without a car in America. At least not if you prefer to arrive in time on your job and rely on goods from a shop.

The size of the cars on the other hand might be a bit ridiculous. Not just the landscape is stretched, everything is stretched. The very first thing I noticed in America when leaving the airplane was the toilet. It was made for a Brachiosaurus. Then we rented a car. I was just explaining my colleagues I was looking for a car after many years of being carless. Not too big, not too small. Volkswagen Polo or something. Well, that would look like a joke in America. Every single car in that airport garage was at least twice as big. I can imagine a pick-up car is useful on the countryside, but c’mon. Also the automatically opening/closing doors and Kingkong sized cupholders (not one but two) in the car doors confirmed my prejudice about ordinary “bigger better fatter”. Even though the majority of the population is still sort of religious, Modesty is difficult to find sometimes.

Where we say “enough is enough”, they aren’t ashamed to step further.
Don’t hold on back on comfort.

Speaking of big vehicles, games, and our work. Received a nice email about a game called “Landwirtschaftssimulator” (agricultural-machine-simulator). Seems that a company called “Giants Software” made this game in 2008, and also used some of our Ploeger machines. The German guy who mailed was busy upgrading the 3D models of our machines in Blender. I don’t expect this game to beat GTA V, but it fills me with proud to see your work back on the field, Youtube, or even in games by enthusiasts. Maybe I should stop T22 and start helping them hehe.


Pork-stuffed Fries with crusty lard please
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BUT! We drove quite some days before we had to refill the tank. So for such a beast, it wasn’t that consuming. And as for fat… I may have to watch my mouth. Because from all people I have seen there, I was probably one of the fattest myself. And no, I’m not THAT large either (big boned, you know) so the average person just wasn’t really obese. At least not where I visited.

Yet America is dangerous when it comes to easily gaining those pounds. As you saw, we take the car for pretty much everything. And although these area’s weren’t crowded with homo sapiens, the letter M occurred more than just once. It seems to me, that "having a good time" is really about stuffing yourself here. In (North) Europe, kids gather in narrow streets filled with bars to get themselves drunk (and get annoying). In America kids gather in plaza’s filled with restaurants to stuff themselves (and get fat). Again, this subtle cultural difference probably has to do with factors such as population density, norms, or a 21 age limit for alcohol.

Anyhow, the food wasn’t automatically hamburgers only. Actually, I had tasty & creative meals most of the time. And you can grab an orange with your breakfast, eat a banana at work, have lettuces with diner, or order water instead of Cola. But the problem is the temptation. I had a normal breakfast with juice and cornflakes. And… an extra doughnut or syrup wafer. Just a little one, but still. Lettuces have a fattish dressing, and the extra cheese on an otherwise healthy pasta doesn’t help either. On top, the proportions are fairly big. In Europe you pay a goddamn fortune for 2 thin sauce stripes on an empty plate. In America you get more than you can eat for a fair price. Same with the drinks. They really seem to love Cola. A guy next to me in the airplane ordered a Diet Coke. Sounds ok. But you can skip the word “Diet” if you order another 6 in a row like he did.

All in all, the extra yummy calories are everywhere, and since ordering food or going to a restaurant is so normal here, you can quickly fall in bad habits. You don’t have to, but it requires some discipline. So, it kinda surprised me to see the average person not being chubby in this region.

Bone apetit. Barf.

Land of the Free
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“Fat” isn’t the right word here, but “Big” applies very well when talking about pretty much anything else. Obviously, there is space enough on this continent so why don’t make the roads wider, the parking spaces bigger, the buildings larger, the ceilings higher, and the toilets bulkier? At least it fits with the landscape, which is impressive. Of course I only saw a tiny, rural portion of America. It wasn’t very hilly, but the large cornfields, dusty roads, forest patches and rivers running behind the houses deliver a much more adventurous landscape compared to the boring Dutch one.

Don’t get me wrong, I can really enjoy seeing our cows graze in the green grass on a foggy morning. But it’s all tiny, and very “man-made”. Holland is absolutely flat, and tiled in a systematic way. Every square inch is used for something, and it’s nearly impossible to find a random point where you can’t see another house, road or lantern. We adapted the landscape to our needs. Truly a specialty of the Dutch, and very efficient. But at the same time, not very exciting to explore. Hard to find some wild nature here in the first place. America on the other hand adapted to the nature, and that gives some spectacular sights now and then.

What I liked is the variety of houses in America. Not a single one looked the same. Most made of wood and a bit old fashioned maybe, but I like that. In Holland we have qualitative good stone houses that can survive a storm. But they all look exactly the same, and the tiny fenced gardens aren’t exactly what the Americans would call “freedom”. It’s a bit ironic when we are accusing the Americans for playing Big Brother and spying the world. While we are being watched every single day. Maybe not by shady agencies, but by our very own neighbors, in our silly little gardens. If I give a party or fire an air rifle, the neighbors could complain and call the police. Which is why we have dozens of, sometimes absurd, rules to regulate everything. No campfires, no fireworks, no noise after 22:00, can’t paint your house in any color, can’t just plant a tree in your garden or make a shed that raises above the fence, no this, no that, argh.

And then I hear an American guy in the car talking about he bought gunpowder or likes to shoot with a real gun in his garden. Not a problem, because he can’t even see his neighbor houses. Now who is free really? Of course rules differ in the cities, and every pro has its con. Freedom isn’t for everybody. But I understand more and more why Americans are keen on their privacy, and patriotic about their forefathers who made this all possible in the first place. When talking about the Weapons Act, it’s quite obvious that there is a correlation between the quantity of guns and accidents. Obviously, one shouldn’t have access to a gun when he or she is in an emotional state of mind. But at the same time, it’s a deep rooted American principle to be “Minding my own business.“. He should be able to whatever he Goddamn pleases to do, whether that is owning a gun or making a rocket launcher in the shed.

We European want freedom like anyone else, but at the same time we don’t resist while one after another prohibition gets added to the book. Really, we, and especially Dutch, are tame sissies compared to the American in some of these aspects. Think whatever you want about war, but saying I’m ready to fight and die for my country –believing in its principles- really is something. Sure there is hypocrisy and stupidity about quite a lot of things in America, and their foreign policy hasn’t been honest I think. But we European shouldn’t forget that our wealth and privileges didn’t came from nice talks either. Rakes, fire, wars, exploration, colonies, protecting our believes. Pacifists can be pacifists because blood was shed to make a foundation first. Americans might be a bit too dramatic, we on the other hand might be too naïve.

Working all day and having early sunsets, it was hard to capture a "real American" scene. But basically this shot could have been taken anywhere in Europe just as well... Except in the Netherlands then, where you'll find a house or pig-shed otherwise every square meter.


Average Joe
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Hamburgers, big cars, patriotism, a little bit more comfort requirements than really needed. But more important, how is the average American? Well, on our meeting I met Americans from West, East and mid-north America. Way too little people for making up reliable statistics, but nevertheless. I didn’t recognize any Snooki, George Bush, Hulk Hogan or Honey Boo Boo behavior at all. Which is a good thing. Well, not a surprise really, but they were all just normal guys. No emotional shouting and hugging at work, just capable people devoted to their work. Most are open, and have a good sense of humor. Neither did I found them shallow. The guys who I met before remembered a lot of what I told them in earlier conversations about family, hobbies, et cetera. “How is Tower22 going?” for example. Just a signal that they were actually listening and also the new faces I met were genuinely interested.

The funny part is that these guys were talking about shows like Duck Dynasty or MTV Cribs with the same kind of disbelief / amazement I have. In other words, those TV shows really don’t represent an average American. Although, at least that was what one of the guys told me, it can vary quite when going to the cities. They considered the Las Vegas people for example “crazy”. Course, every country has differences between provinces, rural and urban, or layers of society. And in America those differences might be a bit more extreme. But don’t forget the country is huge as well. I think an East coast American is a lot more similar to a West coast American than a Western Europe Frenchman compared to a Eastern Europe Bulgarian. Cultural differences are a lot bigger in Europe really.


Another detail I noticed was the company hierarchy. In Holland it’s not uncommon to have the CEO eating sandwiches with the warehouse guy. Hence I’m not really high in the company hierarchy (though I’m the only programmer in Holland so I’m in sort of an exceptional situation), but I can walk in the director’s office any time and make a joke. Which is quite different than neighbor countries such as Belgium or Germany, where (as far as I know) the hierarchy is far more strict. I expected the same from our American partners, but it really wasn’t. Big chief shaking hands with the intern boys, remembering my name and have a chat, et cetera. Obviously, I like that. Although I believe in respect for the higher ranks, and discipline is sometimes dangerously low in some (Dutch) companies, people feel more involved and thus more productive when being embraced by the “big guys”.

Quite different from what I can remember from the movies, although one of the guys I talked with again confirmed differences between urban and rural companies. What we see on TV is often based on the cities, a different cup of tea. Anyhow, the point is, I didn’t feel like an Alien or “Englishman in New York” as Sting would say. We could laugh at each other’s jokes, have a nice talk with everyone, and learn from each other.



All in all, America isn’t a bad place to live. And neither is Europe (or at least the places I have been). Probably my body weight would quadruple when living in America, and I sure think they can be hypocrite or over-reactive on certain things. But sometimes I also wonder what the hell I’m doing here in a small boxed in house while I could have some serious “get off my lawn! + shotgun” property in America for the exact same price. Anyway. We shouldn’t complain. Neither should we found our judgment on movies and all of those stupid TV shows. We American and Europe have a lot in common (hell, most Americans came from Europe, didn’t they?). Too bad our leaders and other big shots sometimes almost remove the worldwide-relation-grenade pin when screwing up with needless conflicts, Financial crisis or other dumb policy. But at the bottom line, we can get along I’d say, so let’s keep it that way.

Global Illumination in T22

Let's get techno again: Global Illumination. Maybe you noticed, maybe not, but T22 has some sort of realtime G.I. I probably told that a few times before, but I never explained how it worked. All right, here you go chap.

T22 uses a technique that has no name, because I made it myself (though others probably tried similar things). Or well, I copied ideas from existing techniques, mangled it with my own countless attempts, used some other advice, and added some poohah on top. But if I had to give it a name... "Ambi-Volume-Texture-Cone-Tracing"? Doesn't sound very neat... Anyway, let's explain how it works. Oh, and don't expect a perfect solution. It doesn't look as good as Crassin's VCT (Voxel Cone Tracing), although you could say they "cheated" a bit with powerful computers and a simple scene. Sponza Theatre a simple scene?! Sure, it has quite a lot polygons, but it doesn't have very thin walls (sensitive for light-leaks), and above all, it's just a single scene. In practice, game-worlds are much bigger. For example, you can't bake a whole GTA city into the (GPU) memory, so you have to chop the world in chunks and only process the geometry that is nearby the camera. That is possible with VCT, but updating the Octree that is required for this technique is very expensive.

In practice, all realtime G.I. solutions have problems. Either they won't work very well with moving objects (imagine a door closing & blocking light) / destructible geometry, they only work on fixed small worlds, they require too much power, lack accuracy, or just look terrible. Or all of that. Pre-calculated solutions on the other hand are much faster and offer better quality, but well, they aren’t realtime. That means the lighting won't adapt for shit when the environment or lamps change. Unless you exactly know which lights will change and pre-calculate multiple situations. Don't know how GTA V handles G.I., but I can imagine they bake the lighting for a couple scenario's (day, night, cloudy, ...), based on dominant lightsources such as the Sun, Moon, and pre-defined (street)lights.

For T22 I'm urged to fall back on pre-baked lighting as well. Simply because it looks better, performs better. And an often forgotten argument; it gives a better degree of control. Especially in an unreal horror game like this, you want to play with atmospheric settings. Make rooms much darker than they should be, use high contrasts, or add a stinky orange ambient to a corridor while there are no orange lamps at all. With realtime G.I., it's hard to tell what the result will be exactly. Especially if the results aren't exactly 100% accurate either. Sometimes it looks good, sometimes it doesn’t and you’ll be adding cheap tricks, completely bypassing the (expensive!) G.I.. But nevertheless... making realtime G.I. for games is as attractive as finding the magic recipe for Gold. It's a prestige thing.


Sponza Theatre, not rendered but a real photo for a change. Notice the whole structure is litten more or less, even though the light only comes in via the open roof. That's the kind of lighting we want to achieve. Realtime.


Not quite yet the real thing, but still one of the most promising realtime G.I. attempts so far, Voxel Cone Tracing by Cyril Crassin. Seems UDK 4 is adopting this technique as well.



Voxel-Cone-Tracing convinced me again that realtime G.I. is possible, and with good results. So I gave it a try. The idea in a nutshell:

1- Voxelize geometry - put geometry in octree (in GPU memory, using Compute Shaders)
2- Light voxelized geometry - add outgoing light in octree cells
3- Mipmap octree
4- For each pixel on the screen, sample bounced light with a couple of cone-shaped rays from the mipmapped octree

1- Voxelize your geometry
Like making a lower-resolution Lego/Minecraft block variant of your scenery & objects). Store those blocks in an Octree. Octrees provide storage and searching trees for 3D data. To avoid needing tons of memory, the octree will reduce resolution over distance (thus bigger blocks for distant geometry).


Excuse the lousy drawing, I was too lazy to get the perspective right. But you can see how a scene would get "voxelized" roughly. By rendering the "whole" (whatever could affect the GI in your view) scene in slices, you can get the whereabouts of your geometry and their properties such as normal and diffuse/specular/emissive colors. Note that I skipped the plant leafs and puppet. Of course you can voxelize those too, but be aware! It would constantly change the Octree as the puppet moves.

Why Voxelize & Octrees? VCT is based on Raymarching. Any given pixel on the screen will sample incoming light by sending some (cone)rays into the scene. We need to check where our rays intersect geometry. Octrees are a sufficient way to quickly test collisions. Memory is limited though, so we can't store each and every tiny molecule. Instead we store bigger blocks and use an octree so we only reserve memory for locations that actually contain geometry, rather than each and every cubic meter. Once we have an Octree, we can insert geometry data, light fluxes, and other data we may need to know later on.



2- Compute the direct lighting on those voxels
As you would normally apply lights on 3D stuff, you compute the direct lighting for every voxel. You calculate how much light a voxel would reflect back in the world ("diffuse light"), so another surface can pick it up again (indirect lighting).

Papers never explain how they handle big amounts of light, usually you only see 1 or 2 big lightsources, that stupid Cornel box, or an outdoor scene with the sun only. But you could handle multiple lights of course, and the good news is that there are relative little voxels (unless you use very fine resolutions). For each octree cell that contains geometry, you calculate the incoming fluxes from the 6 main directions. Eventually you could use Spherical Harmonics to reduce the amount of floats needed to store this information. So, now your octree cells contain this info: geometry yes/no (or density%)? Diffuse RGB reflected into the -X, +X, -Y, +Y, -Z and +Z directions. In other words, you have a low-res representation of your world, directly lit, into your video card memory. This is updated each cycle btw.





3- Mipmap the octree
On a 2D texture, Mipmapping means you half the size and for each new pixel you take the average of 4 pixels from the original resolution. On a 3D texture, the idea is the same except that you take pixels from layers above and/or below into account as well. And well, you could do the same for an octree. When constructing an octree, you subdivide a cell into 8 smaller cells if it contains anything of interest. So you can do the reverse thing as well. 1 to 8 Minecraft blocks get replaced with 1 bigger Minecraf blocked, made of the averages.

Why we need to Mipmap? So we can "cone trace". See next step.



4- For each pixel on your screen, sample indirect light with Cone Tracing
The key of G.I. is to gather light coming from all directions, bounced off by other surfaces. Simple theory, but extremely hard to do in realtime. A major problem is that we need to sample light from an infinite amount of directions. Imagine you were a piece of concrete wall; everything you can see around you is reflecting light towards you.

At least every pixel on your screen needs to gather this information, but we can only use a very limited amount of rays per pixel, as raytracing or raymarching is expensive in general. Just using 16 rays for example will lead to “undersampling”, as you might have missed vital parts from the surrounding scene.


We can reduce this a bit by letting each pixel look in slight different directions and blur the end-results. But the results are still grainy (as you often see with older 3D software), and you need an awful big fucking amount of rays to get real proper results --> slow.

The idea behind Cone-Shaped rays is that you only need a few rays to sample a lot. For each couple steps that the ray marches forward, we look into a lower resolution of the mipmap we made in step 3. So, as we travel further and further, we sample averaged light from bigger blocks in the octree. Of course, the accuracy will suffer, but it's an efficient way to avoid missing important lightsources & win speed. After all, we need a realtime solution, and big speed drops won't justify the few benefits we gain compared to much faster(and nicer, and easier) pre-baked solutions. Plus, fortunately, G.I. means "low frequency lighting" , so the result is a blur of many incoming light fluxes anyway. For an ordinary spectator, it’s hard to figure out how G.I.should look so its forgivable to make errors… usually.


By sampling from lower (averaged, blurrier) levels over time, we get a cone shaped ray.

So, for each pixel on the screen will fire a couple of those "cones". We check where the cones hit geometry in the mipmapped octree, and then sample the light that was bounced into our (global) direction. The advantage of screenspace techniques is that we sample for all pixels visible on the camera; nothing more, nothing less. Eventually we can do it on a lower resolution to get a significant speed gain. And then upscale the image with some smart blurring finally. Another advantage is that any pixel on the screen can gather light, including objects that weren't involved in the GI pipeline so far.


Glossy reflections
A cool feature of VCT is the ability of adding 1 extra ray to sample specular lighting, giving glossy reflections. The cone-angle would depend on the material glossiness. Highly specular surfaces would use very narrow cones, meaning that we keep sampling from the higher-resolution mipmap levels for a longer time, leading to less blurry results.

T22 doesn't use VCT, but the same technique can be used for sampling glossy reflections. Advantage is that it works on any surface, and it can sample behind the camera. Disadvantages are the low level of detail and the lack of G.I. in the portion that gets reflected; voxels that were not directly lit, won't appear in the reflections either.



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T22 Adjustments

Cool and the Gang. But I said T22 doesn't exactly use VCT. What is wrong with it then? Well, 4 things:

A: The octree requires a lot of memory (you can win a lot by reducing the level of detail though)
B: Updating the octree is very costly
C: Traversing the octree to sample data during the raymarch isn’t that fast
D: Goddamn difficult to implement correctly. I might be too dumb to do it all right.

The Octree is needed to store the world representation, required for raymarching and gathering light. It can help speeding up the raymarching, and moreover, it’s pretty much the only way to store a lot of geometry up to a relative detailed level. But at the same time, this octree is the Achilles heel of VCT, coding it is nasty, and maintaining the octree is expensive, especially when having to deal with big, roaming worlds. Another in-detail issue is sampling. When doing ray-marching, we have to dive into the octree and check from which cell we are sampling on any given XYZ position. It’s not that bad, but there are faster ways.

When I finally got VCT "working" in T22, the framerate crumbled from a lousy ~18 fps to a terrible ~4 fps. Some nuance, my code isn't very well optimized probably, and it runs on an old 2008 laptop. Anyhow, such a low framerate is unacceptable, and the results weren't exactly great either. The problem arises when mipmapping. Tiny blocks are combined into bigger blocks, but what if 50% blocks are "vacuum" (not filled with geometry), and the other half are walls, floors, or whatever? I decided to give a density value to cells. Now later on, when raymarching, you have to decide where and when to sample. If we hit a 50% occluding block, should we immediately stop sampling, or continue until the sum of occlusions is 100%? The first option prevents light-leaks, but it doesn't work very well in narrow environments. Rays will get stopped at narrow passages (doors, windows, ...), so light from a bright corridor won't get into a darker room. That is exactly NOT we want to achieve, G.I. should bring light to darker places!

Option B isn't optimal either, as it may happen we stop too late (or not at all), and thus gathering light from places we can't actually see. The VCT demo's probably hides this by using a high resolution Octree, sufficient rays per pixel (the less narrow the cones, the less errors), and who knows what else.

Got to mention that the same light-leaking problem occurs in pretty much any grid/cell based solution. CryEngine "Light Propagation Volumes" has this problem, and so does T22's "Ambi-Volume-Texture-Tracing" or whatever you want to call it. At most times, this isn't that much of a problem since it's hard to tell whether the G.I. is incorrect anyway. But at some points, it leads to undesired situations. As said before, you have little control over realtime G.I. so masking such errors can be nasty. And if we are so busy with powders and creams to hide ugliness... shouldn't we just drop the whole technique then? I wouldn't be surprised if games like Crysis actually (partially) did.


Anyway, what we did do in T22, is simplifying the whole VCT process and getting rid of octrees. I picked up something I did before, voxelizing the world into 3D textures instead of a complicated octree, and then adopted the cone-trace idea to fix undersampling issues by mipmapping the 3D textures. So the pipeline is pretty much the same as VCT:

1- Voxelize geometry
2- Light voxelized geometry - put results in 3D textures
3- Mipmap 3D textures
4- For each pixel on the screen, sample bounced light with a couple of cone-shaped rays from the mipmapped 3D textures

A whole lot of effort for a bit of blurry light smeared all over the corridors...

The advantage of 3D-textures is that you can directly insert voxels on the right places bby simply using their 3D world positions. Same thing for reading the textures, all we need is a coordinate. And because the march sequences usually read pixels located at the same spots, we benefit from hardware caching. Raymarching through a 3D texture is faster than traversing an octree, and much easier to work with. But it also has disadvantages: 3D-textures consume a lot of memory. This will force you to reduce the level of detail (thus bigger voxel lego blocks, less sharp reflections, bigger hit detection inaccuracies), and keep the boundaries close. That means the 3D textures will only cover a limited (cubic)space around the camera. Distant geometry must fall back on other GI methods.

Likely, 75% or more of your world will be vacuum, unfilled space. With octrees, you don't sub-divide cells that don't contain any geometry, keeping the memory consumption low for open spaces. With 3D textures, each cubic meter will require the same amount of pixels, whether it’s filled with geometry or not. Could be devastating for large/outdoor scenes, but note that you can stretch 3D textures over a wider space if needed. When the geometry is stretched over a wider area, you can generally do with a coarser grid as well.

Well, T22 will be indoor mostly, so we aren't dealing with huge spaces. Yet it's still possible we may look beyond the area covered by the 3D textures. So what I did is baking the GI into the geometry vertices (note that the world is tessellated to some degree). Lower-end computers or distant geometry will use the pre-baked GI. And otherwise we compute it realtime. Or both. Medium-end settings will add a realtime bounce with a pre-baked bounce. So that makes it half realtime. Or something. Sounds cheap maybe, but hey, got to think of something. Also VCT would eventually bump to its limits, as you can't make a super-octree that covers the entire world. I believe the relative small Sponza Theatre uses many hundreds of megabytes (or even over a gig) video memory already, though that is a highly detailed octree. Anyhow, you need a back-up (also counts for Light Propagating Volumes).

Another change, or actually cheap hack, I made was in the voxelizing process. Rather than voxelizing the scene each cycle, I pre-calculate the voxels for all geometry. Each chunk of the world has its own array of pre generated voxels (voxel = a position, color, normal, ...). Also dynamic objects have pre-calculated voxels. As the object moves or rotates, the voxels will transform with it. Note that small objects don't have voxels, only objects big enough to really make a difference in the lighting, or doors that block light from another room.

The final raymarching step works pretty much the same as in VCT, except that we sample directly from 3D textures (much simpler). Each few steps we march, we sample from a lower detailed mipmap level to get the cone-effect. And we can also make glossy reflections if we like, although the sharpness isn't as great as VCT's, since the 3D textures contain less detail than octrees. Despite the speed gains, this process still requires a lot of horsepower. So I do it on a much lower resolution. The situation is somewhat workable on my old laptop, but the result is too blurry. You don't see it that much in bright areas, but darker parts that don't catch direct light are smudgy.


Note how the red carpet reflects on the walls. Another nice thing about screenspace techniques is that it will also work naturally for decals we pasted on top of the geometry, such as the top-right hole.

Too bad the buffer is blurry though. Possibly I could get better quality by using a smarter upscale process (UDK does that for their VCT variant), but I'm more hoping my next computer can cope with a higher resolution.


================================================================
Conclusion

The conclusion is that I don't have a conclusion yet. The results I have now are the best I had so far, but still crappy compared to a good pre-baked result. The 2 biggest problems are the blur in dark area's (I already smell the complaints when the next demo will be released), and light-leaks + other imperfections. The results are sometimes unpredictable / incorrect. In other words, I still have to add secondary lights and other tricks to get the lighting as desired. Probably I can fix some bugs with fine-tuning. And the blur can be reduced by using a higher resolution for the final screenspace gathering step. My Desktop is dead so I haven't tried T22 on a faster computer for a year, but another guy from the team had proper framerates (40+), so I expect a modern computer can do miracles when it comes to reducing the blur. It’s very necessary, because despite high-res textures, T22 isn’t sharp compared to most modern games. The G.I. and somewhat poor SSAO are part of the cause.

The real question is, how hard does T22 really need realtime G.I.? Indoor area's aren't much affected by day/night cycles, you won't destroy walls, and there is little movement in general. On the other hand, typical dark horror area's may benefit from full dynamic lighting when playing with flashlights, damaged lamps, or torches. The new UDK engine (which uses VCT or some sort) seems promising when it comes to G.I. but I still wonder how good it really is. Is the effect correct enough, fast enough, flexible enough, and adjustable enough to be used in any situation? I doubt it. Besides, the goal of T22 shouldn't be beating a UDK or Crysis engine on tech features, because that is never gonna happen. The game just has to look good. Or scary actually, whether that requires realistic graphics or not. If pre-baked solutions will do a better job achieving that, we should use those instead. Yet it's so attractive to keep trying realtime G.I. and as the hardware keeps getting faster and faster, we might be able to upscale the current solutions to better looking, more accurate versions...

So, I can't decide really. Which isn't good, because such techniques have a big impact on the end results. Each time we jump to another G.I. system, the looks of the rooms we did so far will (completely) change, and have to be tuned again. "Fortunately" we didn't make dozens of rooms yet, but at some point we have to decide and trust the technique will still look ok X years later when the game is supposed to be finished. It sucks to have multiple options.

Abstraction V

Puberty
-------------------------------
And? Finished GTA V already? Dan and Sam Houser sure are happy you and I bought a copy. At my age (I'm 104), you don't get carried away with game-hypes anymore, but GTA V was one of the few titles that made me a bit nervous just before its release. Didn't want to sleep between 16-year olds in the Shop entrance, neither wanted to download the game for the PS3. Downloading sure is a good invention, but I wanted to revive some nostalgic youth struggles; waiting impatiently forever for a game, reading the same game-(p)reviews sixty times, hopping on the bike for a 10 km ride to a nearby city, wasting all the money your grandparents gave on a holy CD-Rom. Then bike 10 km back, faster than the wind, install the game on a PC slower than a turtle, and then.... bang, not enough hard-drive space + video-card driver not supported. Teenager rage.

Patience comes as you age, so I waited one week before taking the good old bike again. The madness and endless-16-year-old-queues storm should be over by now, so after work on a lovely autumn evening, I stopped by the shop and then... bang, sold out. Lots of shops with the GTA bad guys on billboards, but no discs. Next shipment would be in 4 days. Arh, same old shit again. Now I remember why they invented internet again. Seems I can bike home 10 km again, on that lovely autumn evening, empty handed. Adult rage.

The "charm" of being a kid + birthdays / Christmas (or "Sinterklaas") is having to wait for your present. Not just a few days, but weeks or even months. It eats your patience alive, it's a crude test. Vivid fantasies of how cool the game would be, making others tired with your talks about it, sleepless nights. But then, when unwrapping the present finally... priceless. In the end it doubles the pleasure and unforgettable memoires of your game. But anyway, I just downloaded GTA V as soon as I got home. I'm not 14 anymore.


So, booted the PS3, went to the online store, purchased the game, and then.... bang, not enough hard-drive space. Whut?#! What kind of 1998 message is that? I just purchased that shitty game, and now it won't install? It's as if this game isn't meant to be played by me. The rest of the world plays it, but apparently I can't. Well nerds, if you have a PS3 and stumbled over this post because of the same bullshit, here's what to-do:

1- Steal your little sisters laptop (or grab another old one) - must be FAT32
2- Remove its 2.5" hard-drive
3- Back-up stuff from your PS3 / write down your passwords / store login info
4- Open the panel at the bottom of the PS3, unscrew, and remove the disc
5- Hey shit, that HD looks almost the same as my little Sister's laptop HD!
6- That's right, just swap them
7- Download (on your PC) the latest PS3 system update and put it on a (FAT32) USB
8- Boot the PS3. It will come with a warning message. Insert the USB, press 2 buttons as told.
9- PS3 will reformat the hard-drive and installs the update as it would usually do
10- There you go big boy, a PS3 with a BIG hard-drive
11- Put the old PS3 HD back in your sisters laptop, she'll never know what happened

Be aware that everything on the old laptop HD will be removed. You can also buy a 2.5" HD, they're cheap. Another note, read about the maximum RPM the HD should have before putting it in a PS3. Forgot the exact number, but it seems that faster HD's may overheat the PS3! Don't say I didn't warn.

It took some swearing, but the game was downloading now. And then... bang, bedtime. And another day of work first. Next evening I could finally enjoy the game. Or no, I couldn't. At least not right away because smacking hobo's, stealing cars and blowing up prostitutes is not exactly the kind of thing you should do with a 5 year old daughter on your lap. Had to wait a few more hours. Then finally I could play my goddamn game. It didn’t go exactly as planned, but the waiting and bit of stress just might have increased the value of this game. If you never fight for the good things in live, you don’t know what good is.

Who would have thought that THIS(1997) would grow to a 270 million dollar production?


Serious Reality
-------------------------------
Verdict? Well, I leave that to yourself, countless other game-websites, and maybe for a future post. Besides, I’m far from finished. But in short, yeah I’m quite happy with it. It was worth the struggle (and price). Didn’t expect less either by the way, although GTA IV was a slight let down compared to GTA San Andreas (one of my all-time favorite games). Sure the physics were a lot more fun, the graphics were up-to-date again, and it offered a whole new package of missions and absurd crook dialogs. But… it didn’t have the warm atmosphere and humor GTA:SA had. It looked a bit cold, the protagonist was a bitter Eastern European, and the virtual city transformed from a over-the-top ridiculous nineties ghetto neighborhood, into a more sober and serious world. GTA IV took itself too serious. Or maybe… GTA IV got too realistic.

And that (finally) brings me to the topic; games & realism. And I’m not talking about the correlation between virtual and reallife-violence. If you can’t understand the difference between hurting virtual people and real people, you’re a nutt case. And that counts for idiots inspired by games (or movies/book/music/...) committing crimes, as well as “professional” paid criticizers that fail to recognize that humanity just isn’t all about flowers and humblebees. Freaks will get their inspiration whether there are games or not, and the most violent places in our history and present, aren’t well known for their Playstations, gory horror movies and internet porn. Violence is in your head, upbringing, culture or environment. All a game might do is making the spark. Our ancestors played football with human heads long before FIFA came out. Period.


As said, I found GTA IV a bit too realistic. Not just the (outstanding) visuals, also the way how your character or pedestrians reacted on the environment was all a bit too “normal”. It seems GTA V took a bit of the arcade element back into the game, and I find the atmosphere as a whole more humoristic and laid-back then its predecessor. Maybe the setting just leaves more space for happy feelings and over-dramatic characters. Los Santos is based on Los Angeles, whereas Liberty City from the previous GTA is based on New York. Never been in America, but based on prejudices and stupid television shows, I’d say the northern west-coast folks are a bit more ‘normal’ than their southern east-coast counterparts. Add the absurdity of Hollywood (Vinewood in GTA) and sunny weather giving sunstrokes to people, and you’ll get the clue.

(GTA San Andreas, PS2) Thanks to realism, you won't likely see this again in modern GTA's; the character on the bike (you) doesn't look cool enough, and AI would tell the homies in the background not to walk in the middle of the streets. A bunch of street thugs teaming up isn't very 2013 anyway. Oh, and the two left guys are identical twins?

However, GTA V is still more serious and realistic compared to its older brother GTA: San Andreas. Obviously it looks twenty times better… or should I just say twenty times more realistic? Because what exactly defines what looks good or not? What is it with “realism” anyway? I see realistic landscapes and interiors all the time, in real life I mean. But I’d only label a few of them as “good looking”. Nevertheless, in game graphics, “good looking” is often related (or confused) with “photo-realism”. Achieving this is a big, technical, challenge. Being able to code an engine that renders correct lighting, awfully real characters or beautiful reflecting oceans, breaths quality. It has become an indicator for what is good and what not. Even though good looking games still might be boring as hell actually!


Mondriaan, you rascal
-------------------------------
Maybe this somewhat weird indicator comes from the childhood. I’m not a pro, but I can draw pretty well (on paper, not digital). Back at elementary school, the challenge was to draw stuff that looked more detailed and realistic. Yep, without understanding shaders and physics, we already learned how to draw a reflective water-pool, or a shadow casted by a tree. You learn which colors can be used to draw a realistic scene, and which to avoid. You spend a lot of time figuring out how to get the perspective right, instead of having the cars floating above the grass on a white background with purple clouds. The closer a drawing comes to a photograph, the better you could draw. In my little world at least.

This is quite different from abstract art. And as a realism-fetishist that spends too much time on tweaking shaders and implement G.I., it may not be very surprising that I’m not a big fan of abstract art. Correct lighting and tiny details are a proof of craftsmanship in a painting. Can’t exactly see those skills in a very abstract painting, containing some splatters and vague stripes or simplified versions of objects. To me, those who paint abstract, are either genius (or psychotic), or they just don’t master the techniques. Unfortunately, the latter is true for quite a lot hobby painters. Hey, if you can’t draw, just throw some shit on the canvas and come up with a silly story about emotions and deeper meanings to mask the lack of skill.

Of course, this bold statement needs some nuance. To stay in art terms, it isn’t all black and white. A photo-realistic image still doesn’t have to be interesting at all. As much as I admire craftsmanship, the definition of art isn’t necessarily the technical quality. Art is art if it manages to trigger emotions, thoughts, a feeling, or if it amazes. A blurry warm orange canvas that brings you in a summer evening mood is a success. A tile-comic hanging in the bathroom, making you laugh while having a dump, is a success. Music that makes you think about your beloved ones with a little tear, is a success. A cruel war-scene photograph, making you think “Damn I’m happy I wasn’t born there”, is a success. Sort of.

That means an abstract piece of art can be good just as well, as long as it manages to trigger that emotion it was supposed to trigger. But honestly I often can’t see the relation between some angry purple discontinued streaks and the dock workers that work 16 hours, leading to broken families caused by an evil consumer-##society. An indefinable mess of metal bended pipes in the center of a roundabout isn’t a success either if no one understands what it is. Maybe we “normal people” just don’t get the clue, but neither does every so called experts. It’s like tasting wine. A few really know what they are talking about, others just want to distance themselves from the beer drinking plebs, but wouldn’t taste the difference between a Merlot Duc du La Prevert 1897, and Pißwasser with strawberry flavor. Being high-society or a rebel takes some faking sometimes.


I shouldn't have a too big mouth, my skills aren't that awesome either. Though I made far worse things on a drawing tablet. The background is kinda abstract by the way.


Imaginary friends
-------------------------------
Anyhow, games aren’t that abstract in general, simply because they would become unplayable at some point. But not all of them try to achieve photo-realism. Nintendo for example never did. Zelda Skyward Sword (Wii) looks a bit as if it was drawn with aquarelle, having slight blurry streaks instead of sharp high-detail textures. Well, in the case of the Wii this was probably needed to mask technical capabilities as well, because the Wii hardware is well… not so good. But they did a good job putting down this different style. So did “The Windwaker” with Cell-Shading by the way. No hi-tec graphics, but both games managed to suck you in a fairy-tail fantasy world. And thinking about that… would a fantasy world still look like a dream if it was rendered über realistic? I guess not. Another example. Remember the movie “Sin City”? This movie is black & white for most of the time, except for the blood effects that make an extra gory contrast this way. This filter gives a dark and raw atmosphere, but also keeps the movie closer to its inspiration; a comic book. In other words, good graphics means they represent the theme well, and drag you into a certain atmosphere. Advanced techniques and shaders don’t necessarily produce interesting graphics, though they are often required to achieve the wishes of an artist.

A very good pencil drawing? Or a movie with a real decor and real actors? Whatever it is, it's not the exact definition of photo-realism. Sin City preferred to stick with the comic theme.

As mentioned with violence & games, there is a difference between fiction and reality. Games are supposed to be fiction, giving you capabilities or bringing you to places you would never encounter otherwise. Unless you took a good amount of drugs, there is no way you can jump and fly around tiny planets like Mario did in Mario Galaxy. Unlikely you ever climb a 60 meter tall colossus and slay it, as you did in “Shadow of the Colossus”. Games are all about escaping from the boring reality for some hours. Now here is the crux with Grand Theft Auto. Asides from a few lunatics, you won’t steal helicopters, survive 150 kph head-on-head collisions, and beat up cops every 4 minutes in real life. That’s fiction. Yet at the same time the game tries to be more and more realistic. After all the theme and goal is to create a breathing, real city. Fiction and reality start overlapping here. And I’m not so sure if that is actually a good thing. Although GTA V took a step back to absurd humor, arcade gameplay and just having fun compared to GTA IV, it’s still a different experience than GTA San Andreas, or Rockstars more recent Red Dead Redemption which took you back in your cowboy boots (= fiction).

Some people prefer books over movies, because it triggers your own fantasy to fill the gaps. A book gives instructions, you do the decorations. You decide how the characters look like, the sounds of their voices, or how a scary basement should be pictured. You try to imagine how cold it is if the book describes the Battle of the Bulge. The lack of visuals forces you to use your imagination, which creates a stronger bond between you and the characters / situation. Movies on the other hand will do the thinking for you. All you have to do is sit and watch. Games still require your input of course, but maybe the imaginary portion is getting reduced as well, as the ever increasing graphical quality closes the voids that would require your own fantasy to spice things up. In GTA V, for some reason, I’m feeling less connection with the city, it feels less summery and warm than the GTA:SA world (which used a cheap dose of orange lighting to simulate warmth), and even though the world looks better than ever, I’m less curious to explore every inch of it.


Right... and your point is?
-------------------------------
Well, the point of this story is getting as vague as an abstract painting, and probably my age is an even bigger limiting factor when it comes to getting absorbed into a game. And yes, GTA V is a fine game, don’t worry. Just thinking that increased realism doesn’t automatically make a better game. Certainly not when it comes to game mechanics. Imagine the GTA V character would be tired after climbing 3 stairs, and would be in coma after a head-on collision… Nah that doesn’t work. But I’m not so sure if realistic (not to be confused with “stylish”!) graphics are always the best choice either. Imagine Link would be a bored pimply teenager in the next Zelda game… As explained in other posts, also shooters like Doom or Duke traded their impossible absurd level designs for more “physical-correct” worlds, which doesn’t always please the atmosphere or gameplay element. And how about Silent Hill… the ultra-dense fog which hides 90% of the surroundings (and helps a lacking PS1 processor) makes the world feel like a claustrophobic nightmare, and disorients the player. Probably it wouldn’t be such a good idea to enhance realism by removing the very unrealistic fog.

As for T22 then? I’m still urged to endlessly improve the graphics. But ultimately, the world should look stylish, interesting, old, dirty and especially scary. But not necessarily photo-realistic. The lack of sharpness and an overdose of blur in the demo movies so far has generated some negative comments. Though the motion blur was more a technical problem rather than a well thought design decision, I’d say it contributes to a nightmarish unreal atmosphere. Don’t know about you, but my dreams aren’t rendered in HD quality. That’s not an excuse to keep things ugly and blur the shit out of it, but one shouldn’t compare a nightmare themed game with the looks of Crysis. Different worlds, different themes, different goals. As with art, whatever it takes to trigger that emotion.

Status report

Made a little quick change to the Blog. The original dark lay-out was suddenly changed by Blogger into a clean white lay-out. Not that bad really, but certain functions randomly worked or didn't work. Anyhow, the textual content (and moreover the screenies) is what matters here, right? Well, I still can't show you anything new, at least not something nice-and-new. But let's cover the progress and explain what is holding things up.

As explained in another post, the lack of progress is partially due a busy summer. Lots of programming work for new prototype machines at work, besides the usual trouble-fixing when the harvesting season starts, swallowed many night and weekend hours. Remaining hours in the weekend were used to help friends with their "new" houses (read having to rebuild the whole joint), birthdays(+hangovers wasting the Sundays), and later on fixing our own garden. Got a metal chain + ball around my ankle, and had to dig sand the past month. Oh, and even though the new pavement tiles are finally placed, we still have to move a whole Himalaya of sand again, to its final container-destination this time. That's the problem of having a relative small garden boxed in by a bunch of other houses; no space, can't easily reach it, and you'll be moving the same pile of junk hundreds of times.


Yo Rigger
But you probably aren't interested in my summer struggles. To the games then. Actually there has been some interesting progress, but it's secret. I could show you some cool shots, but it would spoil things... But let me lift my burqa just a little bit then; a few monsters have been modeled, a player model is being sculpted, and one of the monsters has reached the "rigging & animation" stage.
And this is where the shoe pinches. I can assist quite well with environments, modeling and textures. Not that I'm very good at it, but I know how it works, and what I want. Animating on the other hand is a foggy terrain for me. Did some Parkinson animations in Milkshape, but I barely knew what the word "Rigging" means. You neither? Well, rigging is preparing a model to be animated. The process of making a skeleton and binding the model to those bones and joints. When you rotate a joint, limbs and parts of your skin will rotate/stretch with it. If you are anatomically correct at least. So, a Rigger first constructs a skeleton, eventually defining joint restrictions and Inverse/Forward Kinematic properties (how a chain of bones affects each other when 1 moves) to help the animator later on. Then he connects each model vertex to one or more bones.


Gunfire/smoke FX. Got to add "soft-particles" to mask the particles intersecting the (gun) geometry though.

Once the rig is done, an Animator can start playing with the bones to create sequences such as walking, breathing, jumping, weight-lifting, abusing wife, whatever. The idea is pretty simple, for each bone you define some key-frames. That means for example that your left knee is placed at position XYZ at 0.5 seconds, then pitched 20 degrees at 0.7 seconds, and so on. The computer will interpolate the movement and rotation between those key-frames as the clock ticks. Making a fluent animation is extremely difficult though. No wonder that the 3D animations in many (cheaper) TV productions or kids series look as if the character shat its pants. T-Rex walking with the legs of a retired Scout Walker, humans expressing either stiff or very overdone, and also the speed and timing is often far from realistic. The pro's make use of Motion Capturing studio's, but we mortals still have to do an old fashioned handjob. Moving the bones by hand on a computer I mean. Besides, some of the T22 monsters don't exactly look like the average human anyway, so how to Motion Capture that sir? I hope stuff like this cool action doll gets affordable one day though.


Well, luckily we have a Rigger(Stephen, and he’s white) and an Animator(Antonio). Yet the process, flow and tools are kinda new so it takes some time to acclimatize. One of the major issues (for me), is providing a good importer. Damn, I wasted quite some hours with that. You can talk crap about Milkshape, but at least their MS3D file format was well documented and very easy to integrate in your game. But leaving that boat, we had to find another file-format. One that provides everything we need, but also being supported on a wide range of platforms. Joe uses Maya for animations, Timmy uses Blender, Muhammad digs Max, and so on --> We need an interchangeable format.

My first bet was on Collada, which has been invented for exactly doing that. But as often with "standards", it ain't so standard after all as packages deliver different exports, have faulty importers, and the Collada format itself is so goddamn bloated you can export elephants with it. It tries to be everything, and so it became (too) difficult to quickly write a wrapper for it. Just loading meshes was fairly easy, but the animation part completely sucked in my opinion. Animations and their whole hierarchy are complicated enough already, and Collada makes it even worse for making a whole forest of data-nodes, where I couldn't figure out all the meanings and relations. Maybe I'm impatient, but I just don't want to spend more than half a day on writing a stupid file loader. I'm not interested in file formats, I'm interested in end results!

The (Autodesk) FBX format then. Seems to be supported by quite a lot 3D packages as well, but I ran into the same problems. At a first glimpse, the textual file format seems pretty easy, and again loading a mesh was childsplay. But the animation part was ruined by utterly weird matrix transformations and other additional math. Why?! I noticed Adobe offers a FBX SDK though. So I tried that one. Just finding my way around their 700(!) MB maze of files, examples and other poohaa was frustrating. 700 Megabytes of "stuff" for a freaking file format? Well the SDK is more than just a file-loader, but the sheer size isn't exactly helping to quickly figure out what you should be doing. I managed to make a FBX file importer, but it's one of those programming tasks you want to get rid of and don't look back. Unfortunately, this is also typically the kind of tool that works for 10 files, and then crashes on the 11th because of some differences you didn't take into account. I hate file-readers. Boring work, and too much research.

Too make a long story short, we're kind of experimenting with the animations, rigs, and putting it all into the engine. And you're not quite done yet when its loaded. GPU skinning is the common path, so you also have to write (compute) shaders to perform all the bone-matrix math, and eventually store the transformed vertices back into a secondary buffer so you can reuse it for multiple rendering passes. Hopefully it all works, but practice will tell. We sure didn't pick the easiest model to animate for a start! You'll hopefully see it soon in a demo movie!



There you go, soft particles.

ParticleEd, the Speaking Horse
Another development from the past weeks, is our new ParticleEd ("Particle-Editor"). Particles have been in the engine for a while, but they always made me nervous. Sometimes you just code things that feel like they can fall apart like a dusty mummy any moment. Fragile porcelain, starving Panda, Soviet quality, bone disease code. Several things were wrong or outdated about the code. Though the particles were already handled on the GPU, I never liked the OpenGL “Transform Feedback” way of storing results back into a buffer. Also the memory management wasn’t 100% robust (which is important for effects like particles that come and go all the time).

But even more important was the lack of a proper editor, and the way how particles(motion) were defined. Virtual Effects such as particles are complicated, because the way how they behave can vary a lot. Just think about the way how water-drops in a fountain would move compared to cigarette smoke or Dragon Ball Z Destructo-Discs. Though particles often just drop down due the laws of gravity, the way how they move, fade in, colorize, grow, shrink, collide or get their initial velocity can differ a lot. Puke particles would fall straight into the toilet. A bird feather on the other hand falls down with a gentle “wave”, eventually affected by a breeze, and certainly doesn’t splatter on impact. Just that you know!

It’s up to a (vfx) artist to define such things. Making particles is not only about drawing some (animated) sprite textures, it’s also about playing with physics, timing, speed, blending, and so on. A lot of parameters that can completely differ per effect… and GPU’s don’t like that. GPU’s shine when they can batch, and do the same stuff en masse. You earn more money letting machinery print 1$ bills non-stop for 10 minutes, instead of having it print 10$ but requiring changing components halfway. You could write a special shader for each possible particle, but it will lead to tons of different shaders, long loading times, more switching, and more sweat to code & maintain them. We’d like to make “universal” shaders that are capable of everything… Or no, actually that isn’t the preferred way either, as that kind of code gets a lot of overhead, doing stuff you don’t actually need. If only one out of 100 particle effects require a tornado-spin motion, it would be a waste to implement code + parameters for this in every shader by default. It’s all about finding a good balance somewhere.

One of the next improvements is lighting the particles somehow again. Right now they are too bright or dark compared to the environment, as they don't catch light at all.

So, the mission briefing:

- Upgrade code
- Make a more flexible system that can deal with any kind of particle, BUT without adding additional overhead
- Make an editor the artist can actually use

An editor the artist can use… hehe. As a one man army doing most of the T22 stuff, including importing many of the assets the artists made, the editors are usually only used by myself. Which isn’t exactly great for the robustness and user-friendliness. I know how they (won’t) work, so the priority on making good tools is low. But of course, on the longer term the artist really has to be able to use such tools himself to get a good understanding of the capabilities, and also getting direct feedback from the tool, instead of a mail from mister with a screenshot filled with red arrows, pointing bugs.

I began with replacing the Transform Feedback shaders with OpenCL Compute Shaders. These shaders will spawn & evaluate all the particles (and eventually sort them on depth later on). So basically they initialize (recycling dead) particles, giving them all kinds of randomized attributes such as a start position, color or velocity. Then each particle moves, grows, colorizes, collides and eventually dies, calculated by the same shader. I chose Compute Shaders here because they are more flexible, and better readable. You can grab a particle-struct from an array, modify it, and store it back in the same buffer. Even cooler, you can look fetch other particles in the same way, and let particles follow, attract or rebound each other. Not often needed, but if you want magnets, smoke trails, or planetary systems…

To prevent overhead, the Compute Shader is a collection of chunks. In the editor, the artist chooses which options he wants to use. Does it use gravity? If so, add a chunk of code that pulls the particle down over time. Most of the options are pretty common though. For the real advanced effects, you can add your own custom chunks. Yes it requires the artist to know a bit OpenCL, but since he can always look in the code, there are plenty of examples. This isn’t the most user-friendly way ever, but at least we got rid of restrictions, and the code-base remained pretty small and powerful. In practice most effects can do without custom code, and for the exceptions I’m happy to give a helping hand.


ParticleEd. The (OpenCL) code gets automatically changed when picking other options. If that doesn't suit your needs, feel free to add code in the empty boxes below.


So, now you know again what we're (supposed to be) doing. Animating badguys and smoking particles. If those tasks are done, expect a new Demo soon!

Its automatic Its systematic Its hydromatic!

How is that psychological condition called again, people being office-housefathers one moment, a smoking cowboy sheriff another moment? Cheerleaders thinking they are Elvis Presley sometimes, people behaving like wrestlers during the morning, murderers during lunch, and badgers during night. Split souls... Oh yes, it's called schizophrenia.

I might have a very mild (innocent) version. No, I'm not Abraham Lincoln, neither an airplane. I'm a conservative grandpa with little knowledge of the modern world, trapped in a boys (well, man, almost damn 30 now) body that happens to be pretty good at programming modern things. It's a contradiction because I'm not really good in math. Hence, I wasn't a star in any Beta study. Math, chemistry, science, making gold with leprechauns, whatever. Though the somewhat poor results may have to do with the fact that drinking beer and smoking stuff with friends caught more of my attention those days. Nah, I was more about eerhh... using my fantasy and such. Drawing a bit, writing stories, thinking how games could be even cooler.

Yet programming grabbed me, and somehow I did understand it. Probably not really because I enjoyed the technical aspects so much, but the ability to "create things" felt good. Always been drawing, claying, lego-ing or in some other way creating my own worlds. Often together with a friend, which certainly wasn't a Beta either. No, unlike my little brother or other friends who can write down technical specifications, explain how a Wankel engine works, why farts explode in flames when being heated with a lighter, or calculate the kinetic energy when falling down drunk, my mind is much more fuzzy. Not that I dislike National Geographic documentaries about space or seeing harvesters at work doing muscular things. But I just forget all mechanics, precise numbers and statistics within four seconds. Apes just can't hang on a slimy rock.

Yep, I'll just recycle shots. The current progress is on a new particle-editor & characters/animations that are not meant for your eyes... yet.


Back in my time!
With other technical aspects or interests, I notice I'm "behind" a lot of people as well. New mobile phone? Pfff, just let me look outside the bus window instead of breaking my clumsy fingers on touch-things during the ride. Mac / iStuff? Never tried it, nor interested. Widescreen TV? 99% on TV sucks, and otherwise I fall asleep during the commercial breaks. I can do with a monochrome 8" TV. Playstation 4? Sounds like fun, but the hours I spend on the PS3 is equal to the amount of Polar bears in the Sahara (though GTA V is coming…). Switch the house lights/heaters with your telephone? For God sake why? Facebook? Don't need virtual friends, the few real ones I'll see occasionally in the weekend is good enough for me. Can't imagine what another person would like to know about my personal life anyway, get lost. Apps? I can wipe my ass without an App. LED lights? What's wrong with my petroleum lamp? Twitter? I can't even read those listings of short messages, cropped with cracktags or whatever they are called. Like!? That is the fucking laziest way in the world to show appreciation.

If you expect super hi-tec gadgets on my computer, or Androids walking in the house, you're wrong. Though I enjoy making microchips for making your own thermostat for example. Not because I need it, but because it’s fun to create it. But regarding technical tools, I basically only have what is really needed for work, or for T22. That's it. My Polish girl grew up without internet on sort of an old farm, so she isn’t the brightest star in the techno galaxy either. Too bad or house is too small, but otherwise a cow would be standing in the living room, listening to the pickup-player, with a hot cup of potato soup.



The Haunted office
Of course I exaggerate a bit (really?), but I wonder what drives people to spend so much money on being “online” all day, being “the first”, buying each shiny hi-tec gadget even if it doesn’t add anything. In my opinion, the virtualization, digitalization, and automation just doesn't always make things better. And I'm saying that as a programmer who earns money with automating factories, making vehicles that drive by themselves, and creating user interfaces that require as little knowledge as possible.

Let's take my new office at work as a first example. To begin with, I don't like modern architecture. Not that my office is that boring, but I'm misusing this to point out that I find the sci-fi, sleek style, cool colored, glassy, super-functional houses or buildings boring and cold. Yeah sure it sucks to live in an old house where the toilet doesn't flush and the ceiling falls down, but at least it has some character. I'd rather live in an old castle together with the ghost of Sir Spencer mcSausager, than in one of those new "blocks". It’s nice to be surrounded with noisy machinery, pipes, cooling units and other metal stuff at work. But at home I want small illogical stairs, dark corners, wallpaper, old wood, and cases filled with books that no one reads.


But to the point about that new office. That building is fully automated - and not by me this time , otherwise it would have worked better. Don't go looking for a light switch, because you won't find any. The lights go on automatically when something moves (there are sensors in the ceiling everywhere)... so if you fall asleep the lights will nicely go out after a while, telling co-workers to be quiet. Hmm, pretty smart actually. But wait, there is more. The heaters work automatically. And don't ask me how to change the temperature. Because you can't see any radiators or good old rotary dials. Luckily I’m a guy, but women that are obsessed with turning the knob all day would go nuts. Yes we have some sort of digital remove control, but as pointed out earlier, too difficult / too lazy to learn it.

When the sun shines, blinds will lower automatically. Or the curtains close. This is where the automation gets really annoying. After a long dark winter, I'm happy to see the sun, and hey, we can leave the lights off = good for the environment. But no, the building decides the blinds must go down. And the lights must go on of course, otherwise you won't see shit. Three minutes later a cloud appears, and the blinds will go up again. Five minutes later the sun shines again, but not strong enough to lower the blinds. However, someone parked his shiny car so the sun reflects as a laser in my eyes. Got! to! Close! Curtains! I grab and pull, but the building slaps me on the hands and moves the curtains back in position. Really? I can’t even move the curtains?!

Blast. I'll grab a coffee then. The good old push-button device that turns frozen coffee blocks into liquid has been replaced by a state of the art, coffee "terminal". With a touch-screen. That sometimes badly calibrates itself, so when pressing "stronger" it adds "more sugar" instead. Anyway, we ran out of white plastic cups, so I placed a transparent cup instead. Now that bewitched thing refuses to give me coffee, because its sensor shines through the plastic, and keeps telling me to place a cup first. Do I look like an idiot?! Maybe it works if I put my hand below the sensor and... arh burning hot coffee! No more coffee for today. Driving home sad, with the car warning and beeping all the time because my backpack on the passenger seat is not wearing a seatbelt.



Printf( “Unable to comply. Asshole.” );
Another example. At work, through the years, I learned “try not to outsmart the user (even if they are stupid)”. Fully automatic –“smart”- applications can become a real pain in the groin if they override the user, or refuse tasks for unclear reasons. Didn't learn that in the office behind the computer. No, on paper my ideas would kick ass. Just the idea of having green 3D wireframes driving around, communicating in the field with XBee, informing the driver with Crysis Nanosuit robot voices, machine making coffee for you while plowing the ground, shooting lasers, ...

A sturdy wake-up call comes when meeting people that work with your products. Preferably people that are - like me - old, clumsy, or just too lazy to dive into new technologies. If a system halts for no apparent reason, its considered uncontrollable. If a system refuses while the operator sees no danger, its considered over-sensitive. If a (sub)system contains more than a few adjustable parameters, its considered complex, and a non-technical guy doesn’t even dare to change a number. If a system crashes once –even if it’s a pilot-, its considered unreliable => trash.

In general, software systems aren't very well understood, nor are repairable if something fails. Just look at your own car. Didn't get any easier with all those chips, right? And sometimes, automatic intervention is just plain annoying. Got called by a client. Asking me why his machine suddenly stopped driving. "Are you sitting on the driver’s seat?" "No, eh... why?". "Because a machine shouldn't drive without a driver in the cabin sir.". Well, maybe that isn't such a bad piece of automation, but do you really think it will stop farmers from jumping out of their machinery to inspect things? Then suddenly they are technical enough to rewire things. Or just to put a heavy bag of potatoes on the driver’s seat.

Machines telling people what (not) to do, who the hell do they think they are?! Automation is needed, certainly when it comes to safety related issues. But don't make it any more difficult than really needed. Your awesome programming skills won't be appreciated by people that have to dig through thick manuals when something has to be adjusted. If you can just as well use a sticker and a simple button or valve to control things, you shouldn't directly replace it with software unless it really adds something. Americans have a nice development term for this by the way: KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid!

Ok ok. This might be a more interesting screenshot then. The work-in-progress torso of the T22 protagonist. Work cloth and a beer belly? I'm sorry, no Hentai chicks in this horror game!

Social zombies
Maybe the worst of all digitalization side-effects, is this Virtual Society. When I travel with a train or bus, I can enjoy the view. Just do nothing for a change. No computers, no talks, just sit down and capture bits of the environment. But this certainly doesn’t count for the majority of (younger) people. If the bus would be driving in a volcano, they wouldn’t notice because the focus is 101% on their Smartphones.

Nothing wrong with playing Snake or checking email to kill the time. But the usage is beyond that; people are obsessed. Two friends sitting in that bus, non-stop chatting with friends, but saying nothing to each other… I wouldn’t call that social. A couple sitting in a restaurant, both with their heads down staring at the phone, it’s just sad. Girls screaming on the news that they can’t miss internet for more than a day. C’mon. Cool boys immediately grabbing their newest phone to fact-check whenever we have a question during a discussion. Just drop that thing and enjoy your beer man, I really don’t care in what exact year Darwin took his first crap in Micronesia.

It’s called “Social media”, but people are actually getting anti-social. I may sound like old vinegar, but there is some truth in it. I’m shy as well, but at work I see many (young) people have become afraid to confront another person. People mail instead of calling or asking face-to-face. As you all know, being funny, sharp, or aggressive is much easier on the internet, as we stay safe & anonymous behind a virtual wall. But once they find their selves in a real meeting or confrontation, they don’t know how to behave, are distracted by the phone all the time, or turn out to be less heroic than their forum alter-ego’s would imply.


I think a lot of other grandpa's, or at least grandpa's trapped in boys bodies, agree with me that automation isn't always a step forward. Many people use it just for the sake of using it. As a status symbol or something, while a virtual status still isn't worth much compared to some real-life status. People with 600 virtual friends feeling lonely, what is a "hit" worth really? I would lie when saying I'd never check the blog reader statistics, or how many people have seen the T22 movies on Youtube so far. But in the end, it doesn't make you feel richer, happier or better. In fact it might do the opposite when noticing your reader or "like" counts start dropping, signaling you that your youtube movie or Facebook account is getting old, people losing interest. And on the internet, things age very fast. We all want to be liked, but listen to 'ol Pops for one minute: The love of your girl, family, or some good friends is an infinite more worth than a thousand likes.

Click and Play

Just wanted to share a hint if you are looking for a click&play adventure. Normally I'm not really into Indie or Casual games. A: because I grew up with large/long/hard games, and B: as the Duke would say, I don't have time to play with myself. Even not if the games are small. Oh and C: because I'm just not familiar with the "scene". Hundred years ago I used to read games magazines or the internet scouting for new hot stuff, but these days I only know about the super-announcements, such as a GTA V.

Anyway, about a year ago, one of the guys at T22 gave me a "HumbleBundle" link (a download of some games) as a gift for my daughter. The two main games on the bundle were "Botanicula", and "Machinarium". Both click&play puzzle games from Amanita Design. Quite a while ago we finished Botanicula, and during the last vacation we finally finished Machinarium as well. Well, we... I did the thinking, and Julia sat on my lap instructing me. The puzzles are way too hard for a little kid, but that is not the point. What really charmed both of us -Julia young & open minded, me old & boring- was it's design. Despite the ultra budgets and teams behind games these days, you don't see them coming like this anymore. It was like watching a classic Disney movie over the shoulder of your kid, weeping a tear, remembering how you once sat their with an open mouth staring at the television.



Those who played Monkey Island or something similar, know that the click&play adventure has died a long time ago. Well, pretty much any game that involves thinking died. Maybe not totally in the Indie game scene, but as said, I have no idea what's on the market there. For those who don't imagine a hint-label when hovering the cursor above the word "Click & Play", this style of adventure game usually gave you control over a character, using the mouse only. You would walk from one to another, usually hand drawn, (static) scene, solving puzzles by clicking the right area's on the screen. Clicking would let you pick up an item, have a look, use an item from your inventory on the environment, or start a conversation with one of the characters on the screen. Often in a cartoonish, humorous context. Though the horror genre produced games like Phantasmagoria, Myst or 7th Guest. But most famous is probably the Lucas Arts line up, including Monkey Island and Grim Fendango. The puzzles in these games varied from extreme hard to extreme ridiculous (use "bubblegum" on "dog" to get the jail door open). And including that with the lack dodging bullets or other fast paced gameplay, maybe that's one of the reasons why the genre died a bit. Nevertheless, I bet quite a lot (older) gamers have fond memories.

Botanicula and Machinarium aren't exactly follow ups on Monkey Island. They play a bit different, and aren't as lengthy (but you don't pay a full wallet for these Indie games either). Nor very humorous. More a bit scary actually, but in a way how some older cartoons could be a bit dark. Botanicula lets you take control of a group of, eh... twigs, nuts, and other kind of tree tiny stuff. Your world (read a tree) is being attacked by giant spider like creatures, so you'll be on your way fixing this situation somehow. I can't really explain the plot because it's well... weird. The game feels, but especially sounds (listen!) like a mushroom trip. You'll be walking around between twigs and leafs, saving your other tiny tree friends. Away from button mashing, concrete buildings, blood, machineguns, sniper rifles, mega jumps, monsters, aliens, humans.

Machinarium focuses more on solving puzzles on devices, but a more obvious difference is, of course, the style. Instead of trippy nature world, you'll be walking in a somewhat depressing robot populated city. The beautiful hand drawn backgrounds and animations will make you love it. And even though the puzzles are a bit hard, your kids will love to watch it too. A very healthy fantasy impulse in days where hyperactive 3D super-nonsense is bombarding our kids on TV.


Of course, both games are a bit short, but they come at fair prices. So if you want to taste something different, or if you look for something you can show to your kids on the widescreen without getting battered by your wife, try this. And no, I'm not paid to promote their game, although I do hope people with such fantasy & drawing skills join Tower22 hehe.



Anything else to report related to the game? Not really, except that I'm working on a new particle editor. T22 already had GPU particles, but I wanted to use a more efficient Compute Shader solution. And more important, a better editor that allows the artists to produce the VFX themselves.