Tiny Linux update.

The 00e version is same 00d from 15th august, except the Linux package now includes latest libstdc++.so.6 so that it can work on older distros which do not have compatible version of this library. Thanks to users for reporting the issue.

Monthly Polynomial Update - version 00c

Changes:

• Arenas have names now.
• Random selection of arenas for demo, instead of first 10.
• Improved the 'Dynamic Reactor' effect. Now, bullets and explosions imprint onto background. You can also customize background's update speed.
• Booster bonus (lets you fly 3x faster). [of questionable goodness though - it seem to make things feel smaller, for me :/]
  
• Bonus icons improved.
• 'Insane' is more difficult now (autoaim lasts less long, enemies shot faster and thus harder to dodge).
• Added death effects - when you're killed, image 'loses synchronization', stretches, and/or whites out, in random combinations.
• Free demo has 11 levels now (numbered 0 to 10), full has 33
• Configuration stored in your home folder by default now (if you want to make portable install, see readme for instructions).
  
• Various bugfixes

If you bought full version, click on "check updates" to get onto update downloads page.

Todo: I'm going to make a new gameplay video sometime soon.

Beware softonic scam.

I generally like to read reviews of my software. Reviews, critique, and user comments often provide important insights on the game, and I always look for the bug reports.

Today I found something unexpected tho. A 'positive' review where reviewer ('Softonic') tries to sell 'fast, virus free' download of polynomial::preview free. Without my permission. Wow. I found it flattering in a way, but not amusing. Others did, too.
Softonic offers 'free download' link, but how! With an non-apparent extra delay script[as to make 'slow download' indeed slow], they show a hotlink to a zip archive hosted by me. No permission was ever given to do any of that. And of course, softonic is a rather successful business (multimillion) from what I can see.
[if you want to see this crap, search for 'polynomial demo' in google. By the way, many other top finds neglect to link my website. This is no good. Those sites are also most likely to be linked. PageRank has severe problem in that PageRank itself influences it's input, creating a feedback loop]

edit: shortened to fit the blog style.

Bugfix update.

The downloads have been updated.

Update contains mostly fixes and workarounds for crashes on old cards. It should display message blaming the card rather than crashing, and in some cases, even draw something nice at lower quality.
Other notable fix improves save image behaviour on some cards, and --nosound option for Arch Linux which got some weird sound issue for one of users.
Thanks to everyone who reported bugs!

So far, most of non-bugfix work is focussed on multi-player which doesn't work yet, and relevant features. I may add some single-player stuff sometime soon too, but I really would want to finish multi-player first - it seems there's more interest in multiplayer than in campaigns and other SP features. Furthermore it would make sense to design campaigns to prepare user for multiplayer.

New feature: real-time editing.

Real-time view while editing, and natural number adjustment (feels like turning a knob).
Due to be released soon - check my site on Friday evening (European time).

You either spin your scroll-wheel over parameter, or you right-drag and spin the mouse in circles around it. Really great for adjustments.

If any VJs are interested - I can develop a customized version that would work with standard MIDI knob or slider board. Contact me to discuss the details and/or pricing.

Some new screenshots.

I'm mostly polishing the game now for the release. Fixing minor glitches, improving gui, etc.
Screenshots of some new "arena" (made by tweaking old one, but looks cooler IMO):

Screenshot from the 'arena' editor:

The table specifies parameters to the attractor. Attractor is given by polynomials like dx=x*x*a+x*y+b+x*z*c+x*d+y*y*e+... same for dy and dz, and cells in table specify coefficients a,b,c...
On top, you can see the factors (xx, xy, xz, x, ...) that are multiplied by cells in table.
Looks intimidating? I myself have no clue what particular set of parameters will look like until I try it! Which, by the way, means that you could tweak it as well as I can even if you don't know how it works. Results depend to tastes, not to technical knowledge.

I rarely enter parameters by hand, though - the "next fractal" button tries a lot of different random parameters until it finds something that seems interesting. Sort of artist AI. Like any today's AI, it is somewhat stupid, but gives good starting point for tweaking parameters by hand.

Another HD video.

There we go.

Some freezes in video were caused by video capture tool writing to disk.

Note: there appear to be some problem with youtube at the moment. If this video keeps loading but does not start, skip to 5 seconds.

I still did not figure how to capture sound from OpenAL correctly.

Encoding used (on file that I uploaded. Youtube itself does re-encode it over again, at lower quality):
glc-play Polynomial64-5125-0.glc -o - -y 1 |mencoder -demuxer y4m - -nosound -ovc x264 -x264encopts crf=22:frameref=3:bframes=3:threads=5 -of avi -o output_x264.avi
Original resolution was 1280x720 , and resulting bitrate was about 1 megabyte per second.

Testing youtube HD.

Uploaded a short video of The Polynomial (game) in action, mostly to test Youtube HD. A lot better than regular youtube, but I still don't like how it compressed.
Video codec is made to work well for regular videos, like people walking and stuff, not for weird math imagery...

In other news, I added plenty of new features and bug fixes, though them are not very visible in the video. You can see zoom (right mouse button zooms for sniping), and also some fancy firework explosion (which didn't show in youtube resolution very well). The game's progressing quite nicely. You can email me if you want to be notified of updates.

Ahh, and also. Many of you asked how it is played. Currently, like a space shooter - you fly around, shoot up red stuff, and collect green stuff. Though I'm working on several alternative gameplay styles (like exploring&collecting). Also, I'm thinking how to tie gameplay with scenery generation so that gameplay would also result in progressively more and more interesting scenery. Maybe, you would be collecting items that you find attractive and shot up items that you don't like, driving the evolution of shapes :-) .

More screenshots.

While manually fiddling with settings for environment generator for my upcoming game, I discovered some interesting-looking type of strange attractor.







It shows bifurcations right in itself. My understanding is that an roughly elliptical orbit drifts along the line, varying properties of the orbit itself, turning the chaos "on" and "off".

Also, public beta version of the game is coming along somewhere soon.

game development.

For past several months I've been working on computer game. As it is nearing release, I'm going to start blogging about it.
Game looks like this:





It is, basically, a 3D space shooter with all the scenery and models generated using mathematical equations (see mathart section on my website).

There is rather old youtube video of that game.

I'll be blogging more about this - stay tuned.