kamih's stuff

Timing Bug

kamih — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 05:43:33 +0000

A couple days ago I noticed that VoidStorm (36 hits) was running a bit slower than usual on one of my test machines. The frame-rate was still 60Hz, but all the ships were moving a little bit slower. Eventually I saw that my frame time delta was smaller than usual: it should have been about 16.667ms (since I have VSync on), but it was around 11ms instead.

After a bit of investigation with a friend (thanks Alban!), we figured out that QueryPerformanceFrequency (27 hits) (which I use with QueryPerformanceCounter to measure my fame times) was not telling the truth.
We were indeed shocked to see that a QPC/QPF based timer was slow compared to a real-world timer.

I ended up writing this little test program: http://pastebin.com/GeekTiSQ (90 hits)
It compares timing between QPC/QPF and the timeGetTime (31 hits) function, and if they don’t match (within a millisecond), it adjusts the count frequency returned by QPF. It then starts a timer loop and shows the three different timer values (QPC/QPF, adjusted QPC/QPF, and timeGetTime).

In VoidStorm, I now check every 4 seconds (which is when I print the frame-rate and other profiling info) that QPF hasn’t changed (I read that this can happen), and that it matches the timeGetTime timer. If it doesn’t, I adjust it by the ratio like in the test program.

Energy Bar

kamih — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:22:23 +0000

Since allowing the player to go into slow-mode any time and for however long they want would make the game too easy, I added an energy bar. Going into slow-mode uses energy, and the energy replenishes itself when the player is not using it.

(30 hits)

VoidStorm

kamih — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:21:05 +0000

So a couple months ago, I decided that I wanted to see if I could make a Geometry Wars (88 hits) clone by myself.
I decided to write my own engine.
I’m calling it VoidStorm (36 hits).
It uses OpenGL for graphics, OpenAL for audio, and Lua for game-logic scripting.
So far I’ve had a lot of fun working on this and optimizing it. I’ve also learned a lot about game programming.
It’s also given me a great opportunity to try my hand at making some sound effects, which is something I’d been wanting to try for a while now.

Here are some videos and screenshots:

(24 hits)

(27 hits)

(26 hits)

(25 hits)

(29 hits)

Work In Progress

kamih — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 23:08:50 +0000

Some people have complained that I haven’t released anything the last couple of months.
I haven’t been as productive as I wanted, but I have some tracks in progress that I’m not completely sick of yet.
Here are some previews:

To Dust

kamih — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 04:26:08 +0000

Here’s a spacy ambient electronic tune. For this one I used LazySnake (heavily effected for the main ambient keys), Synth1 and Alchemy. Drums are made with MicroTonic.

download (0 hits)

MoonPhase

kamih — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 04:24:23 +0000

From now on I’ll be releasing my ambient electronic tracks under the name MoonPhase.

Lost Temple

kamih — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 02:05:01 +0000

This is a track I’ve been working on for Bal’s entry for the Polycount Beat-em-up level design challenge (277 hits). Music and level design are still work in progress.

RIP, Benoit Mandelbrot

kamih — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 20:22:13 +0000

(158 hits)

Fall

kamih — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 21:46:51 +0000

Here is a calm and airy instrumental track featuring my Ovation acoustic guitar tuned in DADGAD (which I also used to record the main beat).
A little melody introduces the track, which then goes into a first part in G major (lydian melody), before modulating to D minor.
Composed entirely in Ableton Live 8 with 16 tracks. Instruments used were (besides my guitar) mostly Alchemy and Synth1.

download (272 hits)

And here is a cool version with strings recorded by my friend Pravda: http://pravda23.com/update/?p=2715 (188 hits)!

Electronic Drum Loops (part01)

kamih — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 23:34:37 +0000

I’ve recently acquired Sonic Charge’s amazing drum synth plugin: MicroTonic (353 hits).
This thing is really great for making all sorts of crazy electronic beats and rythms.
These guys also have a genetic algorithm running on their servers that generates new beats using user feedback: The Patternarium (243 hits).

Here are 30 free drum loops I recorded from some of the generation 7 patterns.
All loops are recorded as 24bit, 48khz stereo wav files.

Patternarium7_loops_part01.zip (21.7MB) (179 hits)

And here’s a demo of the loops: