Phantom107

HTML5 For A Portfolio Website (Not A Game)

 

Hey GMC,

 

To represent myself online I will be making a website that contains my portfolio: the projects I worked on, curriculum vitae, etc. It will contain a lot of (big) images.

 

I could do it in standard HTML but I'd like to have fancy effects/animations, to be able to stand out more from the competition. Considering I can work extremely fast in GMS, I was considering the idea to use GMS to make the portfolio website, and export in HTML5. I do not currently own this module but if things work out I'll get it.

 

Can someone give information/ideas on the possible drawbacks of this idea?

How is image loading handled in HTML5? Does it download the entire "game" before displaying it? (Which means loading time will become a serious issue) 

Or is it possible to download/load images from the server on the fly, so I only have to download/load what's currently displayed onscreen? 

How's compatibility with stoneage browers, such as IE6?

 

Thanks,

 

Phantom107

 

Phantom Skin

 

Hey all! So I finally bought GMS and immediately made a sleek skin for it.

Download the skin here: http://host-a.net/u/...PhantomSkin.zip (0.08 MB)

 

General information

• Thanks to tangibleLime for linking the SkinBuilder program in this topic: http://gmc.yoyogames...howtopic=520978
• Thanks to GS-Games for the skin "Studio Blue Theme". I used it as a reference to build the skin on. It can be found here: http://gmc.yoyogames...78#entry4130052
• After searching around a bit I found a program to be able to edit the GUI icons: http://www.resedit.net/ (They're inside the PhantomSkin.dll file)

   

Skin concept

 

Coming from GM8.0, I wanted a skin that combines the nice icons from GM8.0 and the sleek style my main CAD tool, AutoCAD Architecture 2012.

I think the grayscale theme combines very well with the icons, which make them pop out more. There are green accents on buttons and tabs to still relate to the green YoYoGames color.

1. I made custom icons for the resource tree containers, scrollbars, and various other icons.
2. Some of the icons (such as the "load" icon) have been completely redone, others have had small touch-ups (such as the sprite and paths icons)

Installation 

 

1. Load GameMaker: Studio, navigate to  "Help > Open GameMaker in Explorer", and enter the skins folder
2. Put in the files.
3. Load GameMaker: Studio, navigate to File > Preferences.
4. Make sure the "Use a skin" checkbox is selected, and choose your desired skin.
5. Restart GameMaker: Studio.

Source: http://gmc.yoyogames...howtopic=520978

 

Screenshot

 

Phantom Water Tech

Download link: http://host-a.net/u/..._Water_Tech.zip
Version: GM 8.0

Description

This here example shows how to pull off real 3D distortions in D3D, that means without any GPU shaders. As a result, it's very slow and this example is intended as proof-of-concept only. I won't go into great detail as anyone who can handle this is good enough to understand what all the code does.

In a nutshell, this is how it works:

• Capture the underwater floor onto a surface. (It uses the surface fix, which is required for GM 8.0)
• It scales the surface to 1024x1024 for broad GPU compatibility.
• Renders the scene in the draw event.
• In that render, it constructs a morphed (and constrantly animated) primitive of the water, this is what creates the distortion.
• On the primitive, it uses 3D-to-2D to determine the water's UV coordinates, so that it can use those to draw the captured 2D surface on a 3D plane. (I don't think I've seen this anywhere on GMC before)

Holding spacebar (as seen in screenshot 2) draws 2D circles and 2D lines on the water's vertex points in the HUD to help you understand how it works.

Screenshots

Phantom Light Flare Tech

Download link: http://host-a.net/u/..._Flare_Tech.gmk
Version: GM 8.0

Description

Sometimes, to save computing performance, you will want to have some kind of trick to save on lighting, as lighting is expensive. That's where this comes in. Sprite-based lighting is not actual lighting, but draws flares to imitate it. The editable has 2 light types. One type (first screenshot) are downward looking lights where the light falloff is rigged to be drawn towards the camera. A light flare will become more and more visible when you look into the light. The second type is about an anamorphic light flares, that become visible when the users looks into the light. It can be greatly useful in games for various purposes, such as a row of lights in an arena or on explosions. Anamorphic light flares also look cool on rocket exhausts for example. Enjoy!

Screenshots

• Title: OGRE Tech - Examples using the GM OGRE engine
• Description: Get started with high-end graphics power in GM!
• GM Version: (GM 8.0)
• Registered: Yes
• File Type: .zip
• File Size: 8.15 MB (includes a gmk, gmogre.dll, cg.dll, resource folders)
• File Link: http://www.host-a.ne...- OGRE Tech.zip
• Required DLLs: http://gmc.yoyogames...howtopic=455439
• Latest DirectX 9.0c required: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=35

Summary

OGRE Tech - Examples using the GM OGRE engine





The files inside the .zip will give you a head start starting a project with the GM OGRE engine! The editable will show how to put up a scene, and includes resources for you to play with.

Among other things, the editable shows you to how to...

... start up the OGRE engine using DirectX9.0c for hardware graphics acceleration.
... adjust the OGRE engine using various variables: resolution, FSAA, AF, VSYNC.
... create a custom floor plane, generated from scratch using ManualObject.
... put up a first-person camera that can fly around the map.
... put up a sprite in the HUD (Heads-Up Display)
... put up text in the HUD from an actual font file (no more sprite fonts!)

The editable includes 6 objects. They all use the same model, and they all feature a special material.

Scene 1 - Normal mapping, specularity & texture-based ambient occlusion - http://img267.images...9939/scene1.png
- The little spark flying about the knot shows how to make texture rotation.
- The little spark leaves a trail in mid-air. This feature is called RibbonTrail.
- The knot itself is affected by lighting. It uses multi-texturing in combination with shaders to pull of normal mapping, specular lighting and texture-based ambient occlusion.
- Below the knot is a realtime stencil shadow. This is a CPU-based shadow effect that creates an actual model for the shadow in realtime. The shadow will disappear once you move to far away with the camera. There seem to be some clipping problems with the shadow... which I don't have an immidiate solution for. I think it depends on the scene settings.

Scene 2 - Cubic environment mapping - http://img585.images...840/scene2d.png
This scene shows off cube-mapping in action. Cube-mapping is a method to create reflections using a cubic-texture. It is a subclass of environment mapping.

Scene 3 - Planar environment mapping - http://img834.images...628/scene3b.png
This scene shows off planar mapping in action. Planar mapping is like cube-mapping, except it uses a single flat image for all the reflection. Also being a subclass of environment mapping, this technique is faster than cube-mapping but less accurate.

Scene 4 - Texture Animation - http://img855.images...2575/scene4.png
This scene shows off texture animation and multi-texture. The knot has an animated solid texture as a base. On top of the base is another animated texture, but this one has alpha and is painted on top of the base layer.

Scene 5 - Geometry Outlining - http://img43.imagesh...323/scene5h.png
This scene shows off outlining based on a shader. You've probably seen this effect around, but unlike most, this one is based on normal extrusion instead of the (far inferior) method of just scaling the original. This method is extremely accurate and doesn't create wierd offsets!

Scene 6 - Fresnel Water Shader - http://img689.images...459/scene6n.png
This scene uses a very advanced fresnel shader that bends around a rendered texture viewport to create a water effect. I also put in some fish to make it more appealing.

Closing comment:
If you're feeling confident enough to make a game using the powerful engine, I strongly urge you to base it off the *.gmk file in this example. GM8.0 has some horrible resource indexing problems, that will bother you if you base it off the editables in the GM OGRE topic.

Cheers!