The Blob

Oogst · Post by **Oogst** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 10:12 am

It is not something done in DirectX, it is hardcoded detaching Entities from the scene. It just works too well for you to notice it, which is a good thing for the technique that was used, but believe me, it is there on your computer.

If you take a look from on the NH Hotel like in this screenshot, than you can see it too. Check the dark spots on the ground in the distance without a building there to cast those shadows.

Shadow007 · Post by **Shadow007** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 9:08 am

Just a note to tell that The Blob / Ogre3d just got a boost in the French magazine Joystick (one of the few remaining PC gaming mags), in the "Declaration d'Independance" pages ... I'll try to get a picture of the page / a translation of the text today or tomorrow ...

Oogst · Post by **Oogst** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 12:04 pm

Wow, that is really cool! Show me! Show me!

Shadow007 · Post by **Shadow007** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 6:01 pm

As I'm no translator, and as the article is quite on the familiar side of the language, the following translation leaves MUCH to be desired ... Please excuse any inaccuracies. If anyone has the magazine, please enhance my translation at will, point any inacuracies ...

Let's begin with this strange students's Project : The Blob (+ URL).
Me, when I went to school, I had to do "relous" things, such as integrals, following girls in skirts or frogs dissection. For the second, I never figured out if it was part of the cursus or not... Nowadays, students develop real viodeo games with Ogre3d and all and all. It dazzles me, and I'd quite 'd like to go back to school to learn how to do the same, so much these young dutch's project is "sympathique". Their game is really not really long, but the realisation is worth the seeing, and one will regale oneself , traversing a funny city with a hero getting bigger and bigger by swallowing everything and the kitchen sink ...
It recalls a little bit (much ?) of Katamari Damacy and LocoRoco, two excellent titles for consoles. And if I talk about this little game while it still is only a WIP, it just to recall you that with some brain oil, ten fingers and chips, one can already do great things.

(+ two photos)

Oogst · Post by **Oogst** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 8:36 am

Wow, fantastic, we're in a gaming magazine, woohoo!

Thanks for scanning and translating that!

The sentence "And if I talk about this little game while it still is only a WIP" made we wonder, though, so together with my crappy knowledge of French I checked the original text and I think it says "school project" instead of "WIP". Is that correct? It would be a good thing, because I do not remember sending out a WIP-version of The Blob.

Could you tell me what the number of the issue of Joystick is? A teammate wants to try to get a copy, so he needs to know which number it is.

Shadow007 · Post by **Shadow007** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:04 am

Nope, I guess they expect you to continue to improve your work ... The URL corresponds it seems to your finished version ... They may also have misunderstood your communications about the game ...

The WIP translation comes from the "alors qu'il n'est qu'un projet en cours" words ...

As for the number of the magazine, I don't know it exactly, but it's the september release.

networx · Post by **networx** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:12 am

Doesn't "projet en cours" simply refer to a school project?

Shadow007 · Post by **Shadow007** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:45 am

Taken literally, it could, but the "en cours" expression rather translates to In Progress.

Oogst · Post by **Oogst** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 11:24 am

Well, I am not native French, so I don't know much, but at the start of this text about the Blob he uses the expression "en cours" too and here it definitely means "school". Anyway, so much for discussion about French, you're the Frenchman here, so you're probably just right.

We got ourselves a review on Gametunnel and WOEI! They gave us a Gold Award!

It can be read here:

http://www.gametunnel.com/articles.php?id=512

I totally agree with them that we should have made the goals clearer and made it more of a game, but well, we did not have time for that and for the main version for in the information centre that is of no use, so it slipped our schedule.

(networx, you just told me you were too lazy to get an account for this forum to ask a question and now this language thing suddenly IS important enough to register here? You're WEIRD!

)

networx · Post by **networx** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 4:28 pm

[offtopic]
Yeah, that was kind of the last drop

And yes, I *am* weird

[/offtopic]

Post by **sinbad** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 5:37 pm

It's been nominated Edge's 'Internet Game of the Month' now

Edge is a pretty heavyweight gaming magazine here in the UK.

Shadow007 · Post by **Shadow007** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 12:09 pm

Please follow ...
http://www.gametunnel.com/magazine/2006_q3.pdf page 40

Oogst · Post by **Oogst** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 5:56 pm

W00t! That is so terribly cool! Not just some magazine, but Edge itself.

Thanks for pointing that one out!

The Gametunnel review is one their website as well, I had sent them an e-mail a month ago to request a review and they actually did that.

If anyone spots any other magazine coverage, please let me know, because this definetely rocks.

networx · Post by **networx** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 1:32 pm

Just got my hands on a copy of that Edge (apparently The Netherlands lags about two weeks behind, but it finally appeared in stores today)...

It's really cool to have your first game featured in Edge, not to mention to discover that the scan posted above only shows half of the article

Sweet!

Oogst · Post by **Oogst** » Fri Sep 29, 2006 5:33 pm

Now we are also in the Dutch PC Gameplay-magazine, where we score a 7.8. Really cool! We are also on the DVD that comes with the magazine. For those who like to check it, I scanned the article:

http://student-kmt.hku.nl/~joost1/temp/ ... 202006.jpg

I also scanned the full-version of the Edge-article, because Sinbad's scan only featured half of it:

http://student-kmt.hku.nl/~joost1/temp/ ... 202006.jpg

We are also going to be on the DVD with the PC Gamer UK-magazine and we scored a Gold-award on a Polish website:

http://www.victorygames.com.pl/gry.php3?nr=884

JoshStribling · Post by **JoshStribling** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 6:13 am

Wow... that game is very addictive!!!

I've seen all the talk about it, so I downloaded it and after opening it spent the next hour or two painting the town.

I love the simple game play and controls, as well as the nice effects and graphical touches (like the animated painting of the buildings, and the color dependent signs).

Part of the time was spent going back and painting the signs to see how many different signs there were... I was blobbin it

Congrats on a great project!
-Josh

irrdev · Post by **irrdev** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 6:58 am

This is the best Ogre game I have ever played! Wow! It must have used a lot of inovative coding, even with static geometry, to load that many meshes! Did you make some special "city manager" to load only the meshes in the current view, or is the scene rendered as a whole? Great Work!

SuprChikn · Post by **SuprChikn** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 8:01 am

For some info on how the scene was drawn (building culling, etc) have a look at the previous page, starting from this post.

hmoraldo · Post by **hmoraldo** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 7:37 pm

An only question: is the ground of the entire city a single mesh? or is it divided in independent meshes that are culled just as buildings and npcs are culled too?

And also: didn't you think in releasing the exporter? (i know you don't want to release the game source, but what about the maya or max exporter?)

Best regards,

Oogst · Post by **Oogst** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 2:01 pm

We have good reasons why we cannot release the exporter, I might tell more about that later.

The ground is dividid in meshes according to material. So all the ground in the entire city is approximately divided into one street mesh and one sidewalk mesh. Splitting might have been more optimal, but the bottleneck for the game is in collision detection, not in graphics, so further optimising graphics had no real use.

Also, the city is not that big, no need to do any outside loading for it or anything. Textures are mainly reused throughout the entire city and polygons are not that large to store.

In the meanwhile I have some nice news: we were on the DVD with the English PC Gamer magazine, in the November issue, and we are being reviewed in the November issue of the French PC Jeux-magazine. Somewhere next week I will have some even better news for The Blob...

Oogst · Post by **Oogst** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 9:19 am

I already knew this, but now that is has been officially announced, I can also shout it out here:

The Blob has been nominated for the Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker Awards

The full list of finalists can be found here:

http://www.slamdance.com/games/

Code309 · Post by **Code309** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 1:51 am

Wow that is really exciting! I love the game by the way!

Post by **sinbad** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 4:58 pm

Excellent news

Oogst · Post by **Oogst** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 2:03 pm

Woohoo, we have been nominated for the Independent Game Fesitval Student Competition!

http://www.igf.com/

I like their description: "city color-painting roll-around extravaganza".

OvermindDL1 · Post by **OvermindDL1** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 2:43 pm

I found this thread (usually don't look in this forum) and saw this, looks quite interesting. I downloaded the english installer (by the way, your mirror is down) and installed. However, when I run it then I get this error, any ideas?

Code: Select all

---------------------------
De Blob.exe - Application Error
---------------------------
The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005). Click on OK to terminate the application.

Ogre Forums

The Blob

The Blob in french magazine (Joystick)

The parts about The Blob ...

Perhaps one of the least flattering parts of the article...

Taken literally

One more Blob sighting in ... a new Indie Game Webzine

This is the best Ogre game I have ever played!