Hello!

We've been working hard for the last couple of weeks, trying to polish some of the techniques we implemented, as well as tweaking the game mechanics. We're quite happy with the final result, after 3-4 months of part-time work in this game.

Well, for now, at least, this is it! We submitted our project (that was developed as a course project of our master's degree in Computer Engineering). We're not prepared to completely say goodbye to Phyzell, so we're dubbing this version as Alpha, hoping that in the future we get enough time and resources to improve this concept and turn it into a real game. Nevertheless, we will definitely use our engine in our future projects for XNA, from which you might be hearing about in the upcoming months.

For now, we leave you with the gameplay video and the installer of the alpha version, so you can try it out for yourselves.

Hi there!

We're very excited with the improvements that Phyzell had over the past couple of weeks. You can watch a gameplay video (here in HD) of the the second pre alpha version (yes, that's what we're calling it).

Just a quick reminder of the techniques we're using in this game:
- Deferred Shading
- Deferred Shadow Maps
- HDR - High Dynamic Range Rendering
- Distortion effect for camouflage
- Particle system for the blackhole graphical representation
- Everything running on a custom made engine that is using PhysX.NET and XNA.

Please, share your thoughts and critics.

Hi again,

I know that this is probably the most antecipated post of this new blog, so check it out=D

Please read README.txt and help us to improve this sample. This uses a very very high resolution shadow map (2048x2048) to obtain excelent results. PCF is nice to handle with aliasing problem of shadow maps, so turn it on (1-4 or G key).

Use WASD to move and press the left mouse button to rotate camera and T to enable/disable shadows.

My work here was very simple, so look at CombineEffect.fx to see how the mix between deferred shading and shadow map is made.

The guys who really did the hard work were:

Deferred Shadow Maps in XNA By Matt Pettineo (mpettineo@gmail.com)
http://www.ziggyware.com/readarticle.php?article_id=235

Deferred Shading in XNA - Implementing a deferred renderer in XNA GS 2.0 by Catalin Zima
http://www.ziggyware.com/readarticle.php?forum_id=18&thread_id=12743&article_id=155
or
http://www.catalinzima.com/?page_id=14



HERE IT IS:



Thanks

Today we gave a presentation in which we talked about some of the techniques and special effects that we're implementing for Phyzell, including Deferred Shading and Deferred Shadow Maps.

You can check out the slides and watch the following videos.

Hey,

Today we got shadow mapping working on our sand box :D

We based our efforts on two tutorials:

Deferred Shadow Maps in XNA By Matt Pettineo (mpettineo@gmail.com)
http://www.ziggyware.com/readarticle.php?article_id=235

Deferred Shading in XNA - Implementing a deferred renderer in XNA GS 2.0 by Catalin Zima
http://www.ziggyware.com/readarticle.php?forum_id=18&thread_id=12743&article_id=155
or
http://www.catalinzima.com/?page_id=14


Here's a glimpse at our results:

If you are having problems achieving this, send us a mail or comment this post:D

We've been working hard on Phyzell, trying to implement the engine and all the gameplay. Today we had our second presentation and we're also happy to show you the first pre alpha gameplay video (here in HD) and, if you would like to, you can try it out for yourself!

Hey!

Sorry about our absence since the end of March, but we are working on projects for other courses and the major changes we made to Phyzell engine didn't have anything to show until now.

So, we are currently progressing on two fronts. We're programming both the black hole gun and the traditional fire arms behavior but today we want to show you our AI tests. We're working on a nice AI, nothing too much advanced, though.

To do this, we are starting just with the fuzzy logic samples from XNA creators Club and adding a new behavior, Path Following. So our entity (a tank) will chase some mices (like in the original sample) and aditionally it will have a fixed path (based on the Curve Class) to follow when it doesn't have nothing to do. Like soldiers, when are guarding something like warehouses.

You can see the video above or/and check the source. What add some waypoints to make the path and wait for the thank to finish its work and go back to the path.

Controllers:
A - Adding a waypoint
Space - When you add all waypoint press space to create the path (dont press it before you have at least 2 wapoints, we don't handle exceptions:p)

Q - Add a mice
W - Remove a mice
Tab - Iterate fuzzy properties
P and L - increse/decrease fuzzy properties

That's all, stay connected. We'll post our black hole gun sample very soon! =D