Work: 3d audio appears to be working fine now after much messing about, turned out to be a mix of settings for the DSound buffers and a commented out call to set the orientation of the listener from Xbox. Seems ok now though, needs more testing.
Sadly, the game currently slows down very badly when processing the 3D audio in software, needs investigation as to what causes it exactly and then a solution. Also, the naughty streaming audio keeps locking the system up too, I may have to re-implement it if it doesn't behave. :(

Looks like another round of 'chase the missing/invalid file' again. Data in 2 files doesn't match so we go through a protracted effort to try and find out what's wrong, what should be there and then finding out where it should come from. (Make sense?)

Report time. ;)

posted by simeon at 2:43 PM

Updated the b4m site a little bit to try and promote the dsl warehouse stuff. Could be a nice little earner at 5% (split 3 ways). ;)
posted by simeon at 9:13 PM

Updated the b4m site a little bit to try and promote the dsl warehouse stuff. Could be a nice little earner at 5% (split 3 ways). ;)
posted by simeon at 9:09 PM

Finally managed to get the sounds into the game after we took delivery of the Wav files then after much hunting I found a nasty mis-matched data length bug actually inside the incoming wav files. Grrr. Made a tool to patch 'em up and away we go!

Currently trying to figure out why the 3Dness of the sound is pants, suspect some 'listener' stuff. Dunno though.

ttfn.
posted by simeon at 6:10 PM

Finished reading a book called 'Deadline' by Tom DeMarco lasty night. It's a book about project management told in the style of a novel. This style makes it easy to digest and there's some inspired insight in there that makes it worth a read by anyone really. Interesting stuff and I think I've learnt something from it.
posted by simeon at 1:40 PM

Work: Spent quite a while preparing a top-secret design proposal but I'm back on the main project again. Spent the day working on getting lots more tracks & data in today so that we can test multiple game modes. Added in simple command line support to 'trktoxsg' today so that it can be driven by the 'tryit' tool. Also found missing gridlineup files (.gl) and now the races are working! Yee harr! :) Sadly, it's raised the ugly head of the night tracks that have their own special rendering considerations. We should bet getting a CD with all the sorted project assetts on soon so we can get on with the sound. Vrmmm vrmmm.

Home:Looks like were going to get some broadband action out here in the rural community of Maltby, 'bout time too! It's taken 10months of bit of effort to get this sorted but we're almost there. 21st May should be the big day.

THIS is what the web was made for! Astounding. :) It was good (of course) because it took me to a site that has even more of this shit. B3TA.com is always worth a visit though and continues to make me snigger.
posted by simeon at 9:00 PM

Home: Another night wizzes by into the early hours of the following day. I've spent the time setting up Apache, php,mysql at home ready for my home project. ;)
posted by simeon at 1:08 AM

Managed to get *some* of the necessary props sorted out for the stunt sequences, got the lotus car, cones + balloons all in now as they should be. Just a big job to trawl around and try and find the missing files as I continue to find missing / old / inappropriate data. Just frustrating to have to spend so much time trying to find the right data. e.g., hunted around to find the missing 'elise.s' file to find out that it's actually called 'e190s.s'. :(

posted by simeon at 5:47 PM

Dave found the levels weren't displaying 'cos of some commented out code (by me :( ). Doh! In my defence this was commented out due to lack of SIMD instruction set support on the min-spec PCs were supporting. We've decided to implement the existing SIMD assembler code and to rewrite it in C later for older processors (pre Pent3). At least we can get tracks on the screen now. Hurrah!

Sorted out some missing HUD graphics for the different types of cars and MPH/KPH settings. Also added in the associated missing HudFX.

Something was wrong with the stunt sequence as some objects weren't appearing in the scene. The game still ran, there were just missing visual elements. Tracked this down to some missing files for the cameras & world data. Now these are in we're missing some props. On to track those down.
posted by simeon at 3:05 PM

Wow, it's now early Friday morning. This stuff happened on Thursday?! Eep!

Fixed up some multi-threaded nastiness when the streamed audio is started/stopped due to the filter graph not settling down before further changes can be made such as volume changes. Basically, it blocks until the filter is in a known state before allowing the code to continue. Fix also works on the video player and stops that randomly crashing when closing the movies. Nothing mentioned in the documentation about this! :(

More streaming audio has gone into the game today for the commentary although it does appear to be silent on occasion. Must be some weird bug as no errors are reported and there are loads of self-checks.

Found more missing data today, need latest stuff! Finding more old/missing data every day.

Wound up the day by getting the scripts working for the cutscenes, seems to be going well! (touch wood)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Had some more ideas about the online game! Just need more time! Too many things to do, not enough time!
posted by simeon at 12:36 AM

start up the blog?! :D
posted by simeon at 1:30 PM