Archive
Welcome to the Riley Entertainment website!
"The Movies" is much more than just a video game for the PC - it's the medium with which I express my creativity.
This website will showcase all my creations, from my films to my artwork to my mods.
Revisiting Meshes
After a lengthy hiatus, I recently restarted work on the Riley AA-Prop Maker application.
Development has reached a point where I need to be able to load The Movies mesh files into memory.
While I'd obviously done this with many of my past applications, I'm looking at doing something of a reboot in the way I view meshes.
The principal reason for a "reboot" (which is more of a second stage in my "prototyping" development) is to further abstract meshes to fit with the DirectX paradigm.
The ultimate plan is to allow future applications the ability to import and export multiple file formats.
The new class structure will also have more complete support for bone weight data, making it possible to manage and manipulate animations.
The very first "brand new" The Movies animations will naturally follow from these code enhancements -- as basic as the initial ones may be (think objects spinning or bouncing).
Relating more directly to the AA-Prop Maker, the above won't have any real impact just yet, as I'll still need to figure out how to display animated meshes on screen.
However, I can say what prompted me to make these changes.
I reached a point where I realized that accessories (hats, jewelry, etc.) very often have additional options as part of the associated mesh itself.
These options come in the form of the texture to apply to the mesh (eg. different coloured hats).
While all the accessories that come with the game only allow a single texture option, I didn't want the AA-Prop Maker to adhere to such a strict limitation.
If you want to design your own accessories that have multiple texture options, you'll be able to do so, and the application will recognize this automatically.
The only requirement is that your mesh name the texture with "_v##.dds" at the end.
The Movies Review Archive
Earlier this week, The Movies Review Archive was launched.
This archive was generated by a small collection of Java applications I wrote: first to crawl through all the movie pages in the final few weeks of The Movies Online's existence, second to generate the movie and studio web pages, and third to upload it all to Norrie's TMO in High-Res web site.
Click on the link to revisit the 3 years of TMO history!
OMG! TMO is Closing!
Yes, TMO is indeed closing.
But this entry is actually about a surprise movie release from Riley Entertainment, coming this Tuesday or Wednesday!
The most profound, widest-reaching crisis during the Bush presidency yet has struck!
That's right - the closure of The Movies Online!
How will Bush respond to this unprecedented turn of events?
Is Bush himself responsible?
Will his Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, have a plan?
What do McCain and Palin think?
Or is this the dark side of the "change" that Barack Obama promised the nation?
And why in the hell do Americans think they have jurisdiction over a UK-based company?
From the creator of To TMO or Not To TMO, comes the zany, politically-incorrect, farewell-to-TMO short film from Riley Entertainment!
Development Journal - November 22, 2008
Eleventh entry for the Riley AA-Prop Maker application.
The Movies' Starmaker application is likely more powerful than you might have realized.
For example, were you aware that you can assign a single Starmaker two heads, and mix the appearance of them?
The application mixes the textures and vertices to give the actor a more unique look.
This effectively allows us far more choices than the 83 standard heads we're given.
(You can even mix together, say, a black male with an asian female, for example.)
The "breast size" and "trimness" attributes also have subtle effects on the actor's appearance.
For female actors, the effect is obvious.
For male actors, you'll probably only notice it when they're wearing underwear: their muscle definition is more defined.
I've figured out how I'm going to tackle all these issues, and am now ready to begin coding the visual portion of the AA-Prop Maker application.
I'm hoping that I'll have some screenshots ready by next weekend, where you'll actually be able to see the actor props properly textured.
For the handful out there interested in the technical details involved in blending textures together...
The following is some code sample of how you'd mix the base head texture with the "old" head texture, for an actor, say, 42 years old:
// ... set the render target to a temporary texture ...
// ... set the stream source to standard vertices from (0, 0) to (512, 512) ...
// Apply the base head texture
d3dDevice->SetTexture(0, baseHeadTexture);
d3dDevice->DrawPrimitive(D3DPT_TRIANGLEFAN, 0, 2);
// Set the alpha blend to a constant 50%, which is the amount of blend needed for a 42-year-old
// 100% would be an Alpha value of 255; 50% is thus a value of 128 d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState(0, D3DTSS_ALPHAOP, D3DTOP_SELECTARG1);
d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState(0, D3DTSS_ALPHAARG1, D3DTA_TFACTOR);
d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_TEXTUREFACTOR, D3DCOLOR_ARGB(128, 0, 0, 0));
// Enable alpha blending
d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE, TRUE);
d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_SRCALPHA);
d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_INVSRCALPHA);
// Apply the "old" head texture
d3dDevice->SetTexture(0, oldHeadTexture);
d3dDevice->DrawPrimitive(D3DPT_TRIANGLEFAN, 0, 2);
// ... set the stream source to standard vertices from (0, 0) to (512, 512) ...
// Apply the base head texture
d3dDevice->SetTexture(0, baseHeadTexture);
d3dDevice->DrawPrimitive(D3DPT_TRIANGLEFAN, 0, 2);
// Set the alpha blend to a constant 50%, which is the amount of blend needed for a 42-year-old
// 100% would be an Alpha value of 255; 50% is thus a value of 128 d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState(0, D3DTSS_ALPHAOP, D3DTOP_SELECTARG1);
d3dDevice->SetTextureStageState(0, D3DTSS_ALPHAARG1, D3DTA_TFACTOR);
d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_TEXTUREFACTOR, D3DCOLOR_ARGB(128, 0, 0, 0));
// Enable alpha blending
d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_ALPHABLENDENABLE, TRUE);
d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_SRCBLEND, D3DBLEND_SRCALPHA);
d3dDevice->SetRenderState(D3DRS_DESTBLEND, D3DBLEND_INVSRCALPHA);
// Apply the "old" head texture
d3dDevice->SetTexture(0, oldHeadTexture);
d3dDevice->DrawPrimitive(D3DPT_TRIANGLEFAN, 0, 2);
Note that the above is using multi-pass texture blending.
It's actually possible to use single-pass blending using multiple stages, which would run faster.
But the above is supported by more video cards (especially laptops), making it the better choice for tool-based applications.
Development Journal - October 20, 2008
Tenth entry for the Riley AA-Prop Maker application.
So I see that someone decided to get me added to the list of "cool sites" links on the TMOA/TMU forums.
I can only presume this was an attempt to ferret me out of hiding to give a status update. ;)
Progress on this application has admittedly been slow lately.
I work on bits of it every few evenings, but I've been both busy and distracted.
I've got a fair bit of the input controls working.
There's a ton of potential user options to consider, though, so there's a lot more to go.
I have most of the GUI going for the costume and head options, and am currently working on the hair options.
After that, I'll be dealing with accessory and animation options.
The accessory options will be somewhat tricky to deal with, as it involves dynamically creating input controls based on the costume choice.
I'm putting strong consideration into including a more complex "chooser" interface for costumes, heads, and hair styles.
Currently, the user can choose these from a big long drop-down list; but can also filter the list by era, type, or gender.
These filters work reasonably well for costumes, but don't really give much visual information when choosing heads or hair styles.
My plan is to include a little button next to the drop-down list, which would open up a dialog box that actually displays all the choices.
Since the game already has thumbnail images for its own interface, this shouldn't be too difficult -- just that it adds some more time to development.
There was one other complexity that I hadn't fully accounted for when I started this project: Age.
Actors in the game are given an age, and it has a significant impact on the actor's appearance.
I've figured out how I'll be dealing with this, but it too adds some time to development.
Essentially, it involves mixing textures at the correct ratio for the skin, head, eyes, and hair.
(For example, look at hair_20s_f1.dds and hair_20s_f1_gy.dds... for a 45-year-old actor, you have to mix these at about 50/50.)
Texture Manager Not Starting?
I've now had two people indicate that the Texture Manager fails during startup.
The application works for most of you, but for those unlucky among you, here's a little something that will help me figure out how to get it working for you.
Download this file diagnostics application.
Extract the EXE file, run it, and then copy and paste the results displayed in the window into a comment here on this post.