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Heimdall : PreOrder Phase Onepage  1 2 3 4 5 

Anthony Jarvis

Posts 1
31 Mar 2020 14:39


I'm really looking forward to seeing how this takes shape. I've signed up for the Vampire version!

There are a few Amiga developers who I support via Patreon; just because I like their skill and approach. This to me is the same, all the best @Vladimir Repcak


Stefano Briccolani

Posts 586
31 Mar 2020 16:27


I think that at the end of this week or beginning of the next we'll see the phase 2 preorder step, and a new video. I have high expectations too. I believe VladR will deliver a solid 3D shooter for our hungry vampires..


Stefano Briccolani

Posts 586
13 Apr 2020 10:07


Any update on development?


Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
16 Apr 2020 03:49


Sure:
1. Due to overwhelming confirmed interest in 68040-68060 versions, I don't have to spend another minute of my life pondering a question whether it makes sense to burn time on non-vampire build :)

On the other hand, having just 080-only build will also serve as a copy protection, so at least I will have a peace of mind there.

2. Thanks to the experience with the first video, it's obvious most people want to see the final build and then make a decision. But I can understand that - Vampire-exclusive games are as plentiful as if one was perusing the Steam back catalogue, so it's perfectly normal to be paranoid here :)

So, there's zero reason to waste time(literally, money) on three stages of pre-order. For sure, there won't be third one.

And I am still debating whether second one makes sense. As of today, I feel at 70:30 against having second stage of Pre-Orders and just making a final release.


Stefano Briccolani

Posts 586
16 Apr 2020 10:08


I think a second preorder phase could gauge some interest, but the real deal is the finished game. Maybe sharing some pictures or small videos of a finished level on real hardware should wet some appetite..


Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
16 Apr 2020 18:12


Yes, but sharing any new progress now while still in Phase One wouldn't be fair to those who already paid their hard earned money with the information from six weeks ago.

Which, coupled with the description in my previous post, is the reason why I am 70% for closing the Pre-Orders.

And then I could simply upload progress vids every time there's a significant update ready.

What are your thoughts on this?


Stefano Briccolani

Posts 586
18 Apr 2020 09:08


It's up to you to decide what is the best way to showcase and sell your game.
The important thing from my perspective is to show some real footage of a near complete level (when is ready, of course), because I think that your previous video was not very appealing (too many words on preorder phases, for example). I suspect that very few people understood where the game was aiming for (you give just a glimpse of it at the end of the video).
This project have huge potential on Vampire scene.. So, I'm with you..
PS: If you need some beta testers for your engine you should select from the buyers of the preorder..I have both v4, v600 and v1200



Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
18 Apr 2020 22:37


Well, I would lie if I said I didn't hope for more people to get excited about the future potential of this.

There's no team members that can jeopardize the future releases since I created everything by myself. No person on this planet has any claim on my code or art.

There's no dependency on external artists or coders that can at any moment sabotage the whole endeavor - experience I very much have from my past collaborations.

It's much safer to postpone the release by few months and do everything myself than kill it if second potential team member would decide to quit.

I may decide to hire a musician but as of now I will try to create music by myself at first to see if it is viable.




Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
18 Apr 2020 22:57


Vladimir Repcak wrote:

  I may decide to hire a musician but as of now I will try to create music by myself at first to see if it is viable.

Well, take your time to perfect a beat :)

Yes, some real level would be best "commercial" but even at this stage ASM coded Vamp only game gauges interest, as we have none.

Having great music and sfx was always Amigas strong point, so a real or Amiga MOD musician would be recommended. If you cant do it.

All the best!



Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
19 Apr 2020 00:04


I know I can do a 30-45 second track segment consisting of multiple layers.
But, that's still far from multiple tracks, each at least 3-5 minutes long.

Regardless, given that we have unlimited hard drive space and 512 MB RAM, it would be ridiculous to not have a full quality 44.1 kHz mix and just load the track on demand.

A MOD cannot handle the plethora modifiers and plugins that contemporary DAWs have these days.

You can apply hundreds of those in a track.

But they would be completely lost if you used something like MOD.

Most of those require several GHz CPU to process. Good luck with a puny sub-0.1 GHz 68080 :)
And why would I even waste my time on implementation of those? To save couple hundred MBs? That doesn't even qualify as ridiculous.

Besides, I already spent almost a $1,000 on synths, plug-ins and modifiers. I have already created few original SFX using them.

So, I certainly plan to use them. And if not me, then the musician.




Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6197
19 Apr 2020 08:39


Vladimir Repcak wrote:

Good luck with a puny sub-0.1 GHz 68080 :)

Beware: people got tarred and feathers for less insults! ;-)

The Vamp offers 8 hardware audio channel, each able to run at different samplerate, with 8/16 sample and panning support.

You as coder have several options.
- The 8 channels allow you to make very nice MODs.
- You can with CPU /AMMX mixing even create more virtual channels, playing 16 or 32 channels mods is absolutely no problem.
- As you correctly said you can also pre-record your music and just play back a CD quality file.

You have the options and can choose what you like best.


Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
21 Apr 2020 04:49


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

Vladimir Repcak wrote:

  Good luck with a puny sub-0.1 GHz 68080 :)
 

  Beware: people got tarred and feathers for less insults! ;-)

:)
I take it you haven't used recent DAWs much ? My DAW gets updated regularly (every few months, new release each year).

Despite having 8 cores, I can't even get a real-time mix :)
I literally have to click "Offline Render" to create the final audio mix for more complex LFOs/plug-ins.
There is one specific plug-in, that produce awesome sounds, but is absolutely not real-time (like, 1-2 fps)...

So, if 10+ GHz can't do it real-time, how could a puny sub-0.1 GHz remotely have a chance :) ?
Of course, that DAW is probably written in Java or some similar BS...



Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
18 May 2020 19:08


I spent almost 4 weeks on a 640x480 detour, but I consider it a worthwile delay given how different the game looks at 640x480 vs 320x240.

I had to implement frame-rate independent physics and track management, which I then rewrote into floating-point, only to find out that it's really unpredictable and not stable enough (floating point after all, no surprise there), so then had to revert back to integer.

  The 320x240 will still remain an option at 30 fps.
 
  I need to do one final benchmark that will tell me exactly the full range of CPU spikes. I currently reserve 50% of a frame time, but it's hard to say without final data.
 
  I finished my first environment in final quality today and will go create player's ship and some enemies this week. Then I can run that particular benchmark to see if 20 fps lock is safe to achieve in 640x480 (problematic, if CPU spikes are more than 50% of frame time).


Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
18 May 2020 19:17


I will keep the PreOrder paypal link active for exactly 90 days since the day one (March 07, I believe), so around June 06 I will take it down. As explained in earlier posts, no point in running additional preorder stages now.

I should have a quite precise estimate of work remaining on the same day, but I don't think I have more than 8 weeks remaining right now.

So, if this is something you forgot about, there's still 3 weeks remaining to use the lowest ever price point.
I don't have a catalogue of thousand games, so I won't run BlackFriday/XMas/etc. flash sales.
I devoted significant chunk of my life, money and retirement funds towards this effort, so it would be foolish to devalue it like this.



Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
07 Jun 2020 22:51


Switching to supporting 640x480 also means that I can now have a high-poly 3D mesh of player ship as in 320x200 high-poly doesn't look good.
 
  There were quite a few unexpected issues with it along the way, mostly related to 3dsmax.
 
  First thing, obviously, it's way more work to create a 500-poly ship than a 50-poly one. My previous estimates were based on the jaguar-level complexity (e.g. order of magnitude less polys), but after the benchmarks in 640x480 I realized  we can push this particular envelope further than ever before on Amiga.
 
  I literally hit the precision limits of the current 3D pipeline so had to resize the whole environment, resulting in changes to physics, clipping and dimensions of whole world space (and everything else).
 
  3dsmax was quite a hurdle too, as it kept seemingly randomly inserting triangles in the OBJ file instead of quads. Took a few days to figure out why it's doing, and fixing the 3d mesh manually, and then applying all changes in both the loader and OBJ exporter.
 
  If I never went for 640x480, I would never hit this particular issues (and would probably be finishing last environment now), but in the end I'm happy that I pushed the visual envelope further than originally anticipated.
 
 
  Here's the offending Space Ship: 546 triangles
  EXTERNAL LINK 
  There's a slight Cell-Shading. Left End of Edge is darker color than the edge and Right End of edge is lighter color.
It was very cheap to implement and there's very little per-polygon cost, so I think I will keep it.


Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
07 Jun 2020 23:06


It's June 08 in my original time zone, so it's been over 90 days and 3 months since the start of pre-orders and I took the PayPal link down.

I will now be able to post more frequent updates.

I want to spend a day or two on the 1920x1080 build, to see if we can get some playable framerates, then I'll get back to importing the first environment and posting some screenshots/videos of it, later this week.


Mr Niding

Posts 459
08 Jun 2020 06:51


Thanks for the update :)


Stefano Briccolani

Posts 586
08 Jun 2020 10:24


Space-ship is Cool. It reminds me of old Japanese robot anime like Danguard..


Stefano Briccolani

Posts 586
05 Jul 2020 08:58


Any update?


Stefano Briccolani

Posts 586
19 Jul 2020 16:55


Nothing new? I'm sorry, the engine was very promising..

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