DevLog: The making of Giru!

[Wrymn]

You load texture of ship with 100% hull. You draw the texture as normal. Then when hull gets bellow 60%, you destroy the texture for given ship and free it from memory. Then you allocate new texture to that spot. This texture will be texture with hull a bit damaged.

The same goes for other percentages. Don`t see why it would take GPU memory, you are still drawing one texture. Only this texture is in memory and this texture needs to be send to GPU. Only thing that would get bigger, is entire project or installation of final game since it needs more high quality textures or .pngs.


But ok you are the developer of Galaxial this is just an suggestion how it could be done with almost no performance decrease xD

What you are suggesting is wrong and is not how rendering works.

Textures are loaded (uploaded to the GPU and sit in texture memory) when the game starts. If you want to render 100 identical ships, they all use the same texture.

Constantly allocating and freeing texture data for each ship would be extremely slow.

I don`t believe it`s not possible to change texture for the same object/ship You render the stored texture for given ship. Then you change that texture to another one and render that one.
You store different textures in ram memory, then switch texture you want to draw. If this wouldn`t work, then I don`t know how was I doing it for past years

[Dan]

Hey Stuart!

Awesome update and devlog! I wont comment in using damage indicators via new graphics since that entails new features and work. Better keep it simply and go towards release and then add these extra layers of depth in future releases / tweaks.

What I wanted to ask you is, if it's possible and easy to do, could you maybe post a picture with the ships tree, ie from frigate to bs and so on, to have a nice breakdown of the ships currently in game / still to come. It would be a nice holistic view of the ships in the game.

Something similar like this EVE pic:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =128384910

[StuartMorgan]

Don`t see why it would take GPU memory, you are still drawing one texture

I don`t believe it`s not possible to change texture for the same object/ship You render the stored texture for given ship. Then you change that texture to another one and render that one.

Yes you can do that, but that's not the same as "destroy the texture for given ship and free it from memory."
Still need to have lots of similar damage textures (per ship design) always in GPU memory.

What I wanted to ask you is, if it's possible and easy to do, could you maybe post a picture with the ships tree, ie from frigate to bs and so on, to have a nice breakdown of the ships currently in game / still to come.

Yes, I had planned to do that once they are all finished. I want a massive poster in high-res of them for my wall!


Here is the damage working in-game. Have to admit, I don't think it looks that great or very noticeable.

Most of the time you will be zoomed out further than this.



Going to leave this for now.
The extra time it would take to make decent damage textures for each ship wouldn't really be worth it at the moment.

[Dan]

Oh that is a cool pic!

Indeed, I did not notice the damage until I saw you circled the ships in questions. But even then it is barely noticeable. Not much value vs. costs.

Can't wait for that HUGE ship poster!

[Wrymn]

The explosions, as bullet impacts, are done via normal texture, just expanding it self for the explosion effect or via pure code/shaders?

[StuartMorgan]

The explosions, as bullet impacts, are done via normal texture, just expanding it self for the explosion effect or via pure code/shaders?

Normal textures, no shaders. Explosions use a particle system.

[Modest]

I just wanted to jump here and say that I am VERY glad to see that ships types/roles will have more or less standarised amount of firepower I mean - that each destroyer will have 2-3 medium weapons and 2-3 small ones, while each battleship will have 3-4 medium and 1-2 big (or something like that - not numbers are here important but general idea of standarisation). I don't know why, but I just hate it when units of the same class have greatly diffrent firepower. So this is in my opinion perfect way to go, and I am very glad to see that You choosen such way. This will allow me to concentrate on other benefits that each ship will bring into my fleet, not mainly on firepower

Also I think it is good to have some indicator of ships health - it will allow us to measure fleet state in one glance (more or less that is - not perfectly) and take actions according to it. Ships getting darker as more damaged they are is in my personal opinion very good and elegant idea.

QUESTION - how will we repair ships that took some damage? ^^

[StuartMorgan]

QUESTION - how will we repair ships that took some damage? ^^

Hull repair modules fitted in the ships passive, active or weapon hardpoint (to repair other ships) slots.

[ThymineC]

QUESTION - how will we repair ships that took some damage? ^^

Hull repair modules fitted in the ships passive, active or weapon hardpoint (to repair other ships) slots.

Reminds me of EVE Online. Will the same module be able to adopt different behaviours by slotting it in different hardpoints (e.g. Hull Repairer RP-5Y will repair its own vessel when slotted into passive, but another ship when slotted into weapon) or will you need to acquire different variants of a module to use it in different slots?

Edit: Why is my post count about half of what it should be? Do posts in this subforum not count?

[Modest]

Wow! Lot's of options here to choose from Great!

[StuartMorgan]

Reminds me of EVE Online.

Yes it is quite similar to the module system in EVE.

Will the same module be able to adopt different behaviours by slotting it in different hardpoints (e.g. Hull Repairer RP-5Y will repair its own vessel when slotted into passive, but another ship when slotted into weapon) or will you need to acquire different variants of a module to use it in different slots?

They will just be separate modules for each slot type.

Why is my post count about half of what it should be? Do posts in this subforum not count?

Post count wasn't incrementing for announcements forum. Fixed now. Will update the user post counts to how it should be shortly.

[Camo5]

So these ships will not be comprised of multiple components, but rather will each be a unique base?

[StuartMorgan]

So these ships will not be comprised of multiple components, but rather will each be a unique base?

You can choose which modules go inside the ship which affects its capabilities, things like weapons, shields, etc.
But you could make multiple ship designs using the same ship hull, in which case they would look the same.

[theStorkDK]

So these ships will not be comprised of multiple components, but rather will each be a unique base?

You can choose which modules go inside the ship which affects its capabilities, things like weapons, shields, etc.
But you could make multiple ship designs using the same ship hull, in which case they would look the same.

So kinda like what gratuitous space battles did with their ship creation system?

[StuartMorgan]

So kinda like what gratuitous space battles did with their ship creation system?

Yes, I think so. It's also very similar to EVE Online where you pick a ship hull and then choose which modules to fit on it.