F1 2020 Critical Acclaim

F1 2020 released last week, and in that time it has garnered some incredible reviews from critics and users alike, below is a summary of the review scores. These Include being the top rated Xbox game of 2020 by metacritic, and outselling The Last of Us 2 in release week in the UK.

Appearing In A Videogame

Ever since seeing Dr. Doak in Goldeneye on the N64, I've always wanted to feature as a character in a videogame. In F1 2020, I have finally realized that dream. Photos of my head were taken from multiple angles, and then my head was scanned with a 3d scanner. A skilled 3d artist then reduced the poly count, tidied up the geometry, and created materials from the photos. Below are some renders of the 3d model of my head that is used sporadically as a background character in cut-scenes and animations throughout the game.

Water Mesh Displacement

Water with and without Character Swimming

Lean on Slopes

Lean When Running

Slope Sliding

Long Jump

Crouch & Backflip

Hand Switching Animation

Facial Animation & Physics Based Chain

Lean When Running

Foot Prints & Foot IK

F1 2018 Trailer

F1 2017 Accolades Trailer

F1 2017 has done pretty well for itself:

Character Switching

An integral part of the game I am working on is to seamlessly and instantaneous switch characters between the big and small character, today I have been working on switching characters in-place and maintaining animation states following switches

Camera Study

Today I've been looking at implementing some more advanced camera work from other games. In the video below of Mario Galaxy 2, while Mario fights the blue Magikoopa the camera remains focused on the Yoshi egg in the middle of the play-field while maintaining a fixed distance from Mario himself:

Below I have implemented a similar system in Unity, where the camera focuses on the central cylinder while maintaining a distance from my character. I have also added the ability for the camera to track the characters' vertical movement to maintain what I call a "Cylinder camera" which would be useful in a third-person game when climbing tower like structures:

Interactive Water

Today I've been working on some interactive water in unity:

Initial Buddy Move

This evening I have been working on making buddy moves work in my Unity game. Here it is so far:

Framing

Following on from the GDC talk 50 Game Camera Mistakes. I have been working on the camera system for my Unity game. This weekend I worked on automatic framing of the character. A safe frame is defined by a proportion of the screen within which the player can move freely without the camera having to move to track the players' position. Once the player leaves the safe frame, the camera moves to frame the player back in the center of the safe frame. Two different safe-frames are used for an in-air and grounded character so jumping from the ground does not cause the camera to follow the player immediately.

With the camera not always "fixed" onto the player's location, there is more of a sense of independent movement from the player in the game world.

Balancing

I have been working on game feel recently, trying to make my character feel responsive with "tight" controls. I have studied a number of influential games including Super Mario 64, Super Mario 3d World, Rayman 3d and Mario Galaxy. I took screen-measurements and analyzed video captures to discover the "secrets" to making a jump feel good to play and I think I've nailed it.

The factors I have considered are reality based projectile motion and conservation of previous momentum. But also game-physics things such as in-air control, re-targeting orientation in the the air and after-touch. I now have a script which allows me to set up a jump for any required height and distance (so levels can be set around the maximum values), but is also responsive to control and doesn't feel like traveling along a fixed parabola.

Stage Test 2

I have been studying some level design from other games recently in order to improve and learn for my Unity game. Here are a couple of videos of my recreation of the second stage of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker in a white-box form.

Stage Test 1

I have been studying some level design from other games recently in order to improve and learn for my Unity game. Here is a test stage where I re-created the first stage of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker in a white-box form.

Basic Enemy AI

I've added an enemy AI character to my game (currently using the same model as the player). The enemy has a defined patrol area. If a player enters the area, the enemy chases them, and if close enough will attack. The enemy will return to its home position and stay idle if there are no players detected in the patrol zone.

Level Design

I've been working on some basic white-boxing for levels in my Unity game.

Jumping Animation

I've been working on improving the jumping animation for my Unity game. Here's some work in progress:

Wall Kicking In Unity

Here's a video of wall kicking in my Unity game:

A video posted by David Beirne (@davidjbeirne) on Jul 24, 2016 at 3:08pm PDT

I'm currently working on a 3d platforming game in my spare time. So far I have basic character and camera movement. This video highlights the latest addition of wall kicking.

F1 2016 Preview - Next-Gen Gaming

Next-Gen Gaming Blog has posted a preview article for the upcoming Formula One 2016 video-game from Codemasters, read it here.

F1 2016 IGN Interview

Principal Game Designer on F1 2016 Lee Mather sat down with IGN to discuss the features of the upcoming F1 2016:

F1 2015 TV Spot

Here's the TV Advertisement for Formula one 2015 that will be airing during the Great British Grand Prix in Silverstone.

F1 2015 coming to PS4, Xbox One & PC in June

F1 2015 will release on PS4, Xbox One and PC on June 12, Codemasters has announced.

The new game will mark the series' debut on current-gen platforms, with Codemasters promising to deliver "a significant step forward in the game's visuals and physics-based handling model".

Built from the ground-up on an all-new version of the developer's EGO Engine, F1 2015 is said to deliver improvements to over 20 areas of the game, including tweaks to aero dynamics, suspension and transmission, along with a brand new tyre physicals model that offers a "truly breathtaking and realistic representation of how these cars handle on the track".

New Site Logo

I've had a bit of spare time today to update the site logo. Here it is:

F1 2014 Announcement Trailer

Here's a trailer for the upcoming F1 2014 for PC, Xbox 360, & PlayStation 3.

Codemasters

I started working at Codemasters, Birmingham on 19th May 2014. In my new role as an Experienced Programmer I will be working on gameplay programming for a next-gen racing title.

New Invzimals Toys Released

24 Invizimals action figures created by the Spanish company IMC Toys in collaboration with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe are now available.

Bang Bang Racing Let's Play

Watch Youtube user TheGridWalker play through Bang Bang Racing his awesome Let's Play video.

Invizimals : The Lost Kingdom Launches in the UK

Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom developed by Magenta Software has been launched today in the United Kingdom, here is a photo I took of it on a store shelf in GAME.

Invizimals Let's Play

Watch Youtube user and Hardcore Invizimals fan GadgetGirlKylie play through the entire Story Mode of Invizimals : The Lost Kingdom in her excellent Let's Play video series.

Invizimals Spanish TV Ad

Watch a boy transform into TigerShark in the Spanish TV advert for Invizimals : The Lost Kingdom.

Find out more on the official Invizimals site

Invizimals : The Lost Kingdom Launches in Mainland Europe

Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom developed by Magenta Software has been launched for Playstation 3 both as a stand alone game and also packaged with the Playstation 3 Ultra Slim 19GB console.

Invizimals TV Ad

They're back - and for the first time they're on PS Vita and PS3™. Discover two brand new Invizimals games now. Check out our TV Ad!

Find out more on the official Invizimals site

Invzimals Cartoon Trailer

BRB Internacional is bringing the new TV series based on Novarama's and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's "Invizimals" video game franchise to MIPJunior and MIPCOM this year.

The Spanish network TVE has recently signed on a co-producer for the series, alongside SCEE and Screen 21 (BRB Internacional's creative studio).

The Invizimals animated TV series (26 x 30) will incorporate augmented reality techniques to amplify its content from the use of a second screen, a PlayStation Vita, Android or iOS device–through an interactive app.

The storyline follow three teenagers who belong to the Alliance of Invizimal Hunters, a secret worldwide organization fighting to save creatures that inhabit a parallel dimension that is now threatened by an army of robots.

The series will premiere at the end of this year on TVE's Clan channel, along with two specials. Both the specials and the series will be showcased by BRB Internacional at MIPJunior and MIPCOM for international distribution.

The series premiere will also coincide with the launch of two new Invizimals video games under from SCEE "Invizimals: The Alliance�" for PSVita and "Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom" for PlayStation3.

Find out more on the official site.

Invizimals Unveiled Part 2

Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom Unveiled trailer 2 was published today by Sony Computer Entertainment. The second part of the Invizimals unveiled trailers shows some of the powers you'll enjoy playing with in our upcoming title!

Find out more on the official Invizimals site

Invizimals Unveiled Part 1

Explore the world of the Invizimals as the smash hit series comes to PS3 in a thrilling third-person adventure. You are Hiro, a young explorer who discovers a magical portal that teleports you to the Lost Kingdom -- a land under attack from a cruel, rampaging robot army. Transform into 16 of the most popular Invizimals, using their unique powers and abilities to solve puzzles and battle against your enemies.

Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom Announced

Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom developed by Magenta Software Ltd. was publicly unveiled today by Sony Europe via the Playstation Europe Blog

DirectX 11 on Windows 8

I've just started working on some DirectX 11 programming in Windows 8. I haven't used DirectX since DirectX 9 on Xbox360 so I'm learning a lot. Here's a screen shot of my first rotating cube:

Magenta Software Logo Photo

New Bang Bang Racing Renders

I've just uploaded some renders from Bang Bang Racing to the BBR project Page courtesy of Julian Fisher, one of the artists who worked on the game.

BangBang Racing Released

Bang Bang Racing was released globally last week on Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, and Steam.

Twitter

Magenta Software

I have now been working at Magenta Software for 6 Months.

Twitter

I have just updated the site to include a Twitter tweet stream in the side-menu, the page uses AJAX / JQuery to access my twitter account via the Twitter API and updates to show my most recent three posts. You can see it working on the contact page

Imagine Beauty Stylist

I have just updated my article on Imagine Beauty Stylist. The latest version can be viewed at here

Bang Bang Racing THD

Bang Bang Racing THD, A game I wrote the physics system, lighting/effects, some of the graphics engine, some gamplay elements, and an entire console port for has finally been released on Tegra 2 Tablets.

The game can be downloaded from the Android Market at https://market.android.com/details?id=com.playboxgames.bangbangracing

LightBox

I have just added a new lightbox feature to the site, allowing screenshots and videos to be viewed in an inline pop-up gallery within the site. Have a look at the Bang Bang Racing screenshots and video posted here

Magenta Software

I started working at Magenta Software on 24/1/2011

Linked In

I've just joined Linked In, click here to see my profile.

Two Years in the Games Industry

As of today I have been in the games industry (working at Playbox) for two years.

Edge Magazine

This months Edge Magazine (issue March 2010) contains a feature on Liverpool game developers including a single-page profile of Playbox Games. I feature in two of the in-studio photos.

 

Tilt Shift

Recently I've been working on some real-time shader based tilt-shift. Here's a video of some real life tilt-shift photography.

Imagine Salon Stylist Launch

Imagine Salon Stylist has launched here in the UK:

Buy today at Play.com to get exclusive unlock codes!

Bang Bang Racing

Now that Imagine Beauty Salon is in the can (and soon the shops), I have been moved onto Playbox's main project, a racing game for WiiWare.

So far I have done some research and benchmark tests with the Bullet and PhysX physics SDK's on PC and Wii. I've been programming and racing various numbers of cars around various test tracks and jumping them off ramps while tracking memory allocation and processing speeds. Now that we've decided on which physics engine to use I can get to work on getting it into the game.

Imagine Salon Stylist

Here's the E3 2009 trailer for Imagine Salon Stylist on Nintendo DS.

Site Update

I've just updates the style sheet for this site so that it appears perfectly in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari for iPhone. I've also re-arranged the header so that the search box now appears in the main menu bar.

Playbox Games

Just a quick note to say that I officially started work at Playbox, a small game company in liverpool. Playbox is working on a number of projects for Wii and DS, and I've been lucky enough to start in the DS team working on a secret project for a secret publisher

I've never worked on a DS before so the first days have been a case of getting used to it, but I think I've made some progress and I'm now starting to actually contribute to the games development.

MSc Thesis Poster

I've just finished a poster for my MSc Thesis which you can view here

MSc Thesis

Here are some design images from my MSc Thesis program:

Looking for work

Now that I have finished my PGDip in Computer Games Technology at Abertay, and with only a thesis between me and my MSc, I am looking for a new challenge. I have moved back down to Bristol where I'm now looking for full-time jobs through the Aardvark-Swift agency.

Videos Page Added

I've just added a new Videos section to the site using YouTubes handy channel viewing object.

The page can be found at http://www.myGameDemos.com/videos.

Comment Validation

Dare To Be Digital

This Summer, myself and a team of two other programmers and two artists are pinning our hopes on making it into the Dare To Be Digital computer games development competition held here at the University of Abertay Dundee.

The aim of the competition is for a small group of non-professional game developers to get together and create a game of their choice within a 10 week period. Game choices can be very diverse but must adhere to a strict set of rules and guidelines imposed by the competetion. Previous years standards have been very high and this year the competition is bigger than ever with at least 275 teams having already entered (we were team 275). I think we have a good team and a good concept but at the moment its just a matter of waiting to hear the results of our application.

Animated X Files on Playstation 2

Today I finished the programming part of my Playstation2 assignment; loading DirectX (.x) file format 3D models. Here is a video of the result:

Major Update To Site

Tonight I wanted a brake from what I consider 'real' programming, so I've just spent the last 6 or so hours re-writting the projects section of this site so that its now all SQL / PHP driven and dynamic.

There won't realy be a noticable difference to the end user (except that my screenshots arent back in the articles yet) but it should make my life easier only having to maintain a few pages rather than one per-project. The changes also mean the entire site now scales perfectly which is always nice, and still no tables have been used (who needs 'em).

Game In Scotland 2008

Tomorrow afternoon, I will be attending the "Game In Scotland" careers event being held in Dundee.

The Game in Scotland even has also motivated me to upload pages for some of my more recent Projects. While most of them aren't finished yet, I hope some of the people I talk to tomorrow will be interested in reading about what I am up to at the moment. If not, then at least updating the pages will be easy once each project is finished.

.X-Files on PS2

After an unsuccessful attempt at geometry instancing on the VectorUnit hardware of the PS2, I have opted for plan B. plan B being to write an X-File (DirectX model) loader for the PS2. The irony of loading a Microsoft proprietary format model on Sony hardware is not lost on me.

The X format is something I have wrestled with before but never at such a low level. I have always relied on the D3DX helper functions such as D3DXLoadMeshHeirachyFromX(). Working on the PS2 does not allow for such liberties, so I'm writing my parser from scratch in standard C++.

Auxesis

Im currently working with a team on a third-person action / adventure game. We are a team of 6 programmers and one producer, at the moment, called Auxesis. We're using the Ogre Engine with PhysX.

If you would like to find out more about this project, check out the Auxesis Wiki

Overhaul Movie 1

I've just uploaded a video of Overhaul in action after a weeks work. You can see the video below:

As you can see I now have a physics based car (using PhysX) driving around with suspension, breaking, steering and motor torque all working correctly. All input is mapped to an Xbox360 controller using analogue inputs to allow precision handling such as pressure sensitive steering, acceleration, braking and camera movement. I have also written some shaders to allow the headlights and brake lights to be turned on (by the user and when breaking), and a day-night cycle for the skybox.

What you cant see in the video is that I have actually written a car class so I can have as many cars as the computer allows without becoming too slow and I have done the majority of the sound work for the car including a user activated horn, acceleration sound and brake screech.

The game is coming along nicely, especially as it's not due until May. The next step is to start on programming the opponent AI and track system.

Racing Game

I'm just starting work on an arcade-style racing game, currently entitled "overhaul". I've created some artwork (specifically a car) and I'm now working on car dynamics using PhysX and DirectX. Here's a render of my car model:

The game is going to aim for enjoyable gameplay without letting realism get in the way. The cars are fictional superdeformed muscle cars and trucks

XInput & XACT

Having used XNA for a while now, I have noticed that two of my favorite features are the ability to use the Xbox 360 controller and the XACT Audio creation pipeline so I set about writing classes to allow these in my current projects. I am currently refactoring a lot of code, while creating a new COLLADA based version of my engine. I also got around to learning how to use doxygen properly (not that it was difficult or anything) so expect better documentation in the future.

Bird Programmer Art

I have just uploaded some "programmer art" for our bird character. you can see a short video of it below:

COLLADA

I've been looking for a 3D file format for quite a while which encapsulates more advanced features than the trusty old .x format. As I'm now integrating physics into my engine, I need a format that will allow me to export physics parameters directly from a content creation tool. It would also be nice to be able to set up cameras and splines within the modeler. COLLADA offers all of these features along with support from the major content creation tool vendors such as Autodesk (3DS Max & Maya), NVIDIA (FX COMPOSOR 2+) and many others.

I’ve just finished reading COLLADA Sailing the Gulf of 3D Digital Content Creation (ISBN: 1-56881-287-6) which is a great book and explains the format and content creation pipelines in somewhat excruciating detail – which I see as a positive thing.

Another thing I’ve been looking at recently is OpenGL, I’m normally a DirectX person as I find D3DX and in particular HLSL to be a more complete solution than the current state of OpenGL (GLUT & GLSL). I’m also not a big fan of the numerous OPENGL versions and extensions floating about they just add to the complexity. However I’m going to look at using COLLADA with OPENGL and DirectX and maybe even a bit of XNA time allowing. This is going to be a personal project for now, so I will only be able to do it when I’m not too busy with work for my MSc which may be pretty rare in the forthcoming months.

Academic Papers

Now that I'm back at University, I'm writing some game related academic papers for various Assignments. I'm going to use this post to maintain some links to those documents. kind of like a temporary repository, until they are finished and I upload them to a page properly.

Programming Games For PC & Xbox

Artificial Intelligence

The Games Market Place

Shadow Mapping

I finally have shadow mapping working and, just to prove it, here's a video:

Add Comments!

I've just updated this blog page so that you can add comments to my posts. just click the '+ Add Comment' button at the bottom of each post. You can also see anyone elses comments (if anyone ever posts any).

Another update is the permalink functionality to each blog item. Just click on the posting date (now in the top right corner of each post) to see the item on its own.

Cheap Shadows

Today I learned how to render Planer Stencil Shadows. Looking at the example code we were given, I came up with a way to implement similar shadows with barely any cost within my previous PhysX boxes Demo. Here is a short video:

The way I ended up implementing the shadows didn't actually use the stencil buffer at all, in fact it simply took the scene that was already in my subset managers list and rendered it again applying a shader to all subsets. The vertex shader offsets the world space vertices of each subset by a pre-defined shadow matrix - calculated by a projection from a light ray onto the plane defined by (0,1,0,0). The pixel shader simply returns black with a 60% alpha.

This ended up being a very cheap implementation as the geometry had already been gathered in the subset manager and I had already written a method to render the whole scene with a global shader applied to all subsets.

I hope to be able to expand my understanding of shadows and take on shadow mapping in the near future, but that's it for now.

PhysX Character Controller

Work continues on the PhysX side of things. I have now updated all of my PhysX demos to use Cyclones MeshObject class instead of a DirectX standard primitives. Here is a short video (the reflective cylinder is the character):

I have also worked on a nice rag doll demo and a collision callback demo. The collision callback demo plays a bumping sound when two meshes collide with each other. In the rag doll demo, I am rendering some primitives in the location of the PhysX Actors which are bound together by joints i.e. cylinders for arms and legs, a sphere for a head etc.. I want to change this so that I tie the bones of a skinned mesh to each physics actor. This wouldn't be difficult if it wasn't for the lack of available skinned meshes around, or the complexities involved in making them export properly from 3ds Max (problems with normalized skin weights specifically). I will probably resort to using the good old Tiny.x from the DirectX SDK. More Soon.

Update Complete

Recently, Ive been working on updating the DirectX SDK used for Cyclone. I stuck with the DirectX 9.0 release for well over a year, but decided it was time to upgrade.

The biggest problem in updating was the way the latest DirectX SDK (August 2007) has changed the interface classes for mesh data. After a couple of days I worked out how to update my mesh, frame and animation parsers along with a few minor changes to the sprite class.

Masters

Im starting an MSc/PGDip in Computer Games Technology on Monday (10/09/2007) at the University of Abertay. Im moving up to Dundee in just two days!

Im looking forward to getting back to full-time study and improving my skills. I'll post more as it happens.

More PhysX Boxes

I've just written some gameplay into the PhysX Boxes Demo posted earlier. There are now 4 'player' boxes on the ground (there can be as many as I like as its just an array but 4 is nice). Each player box can now emit a magnetic force on the wire framed boxes scattered about the arena. I'm thinking about making a small multiplayer game based on this. Here is how it looks so far:

As you can probably see, the shaded boxes that start off on the ground are the 4 players. In the video I switch between controlling each player and attract up the wire frame rigid body boxes.

New CV

I've been having some trouble getting interviews recently and decided to put my site up for constructive criticism over at GameDev. I have always found the community over there is very helpful.

The overall feedback was positive, but some users did point out some areas which could be improved in my CV. This has resulted in me re-writing my CV. Overall I am very happy with the changes I have made and I feel that my CV now flows better and reflects more accurately my interests and what I can offer future employers.

If you want to see my new CV its available here. It is also now downloadable in both Word Document (.DOC) and PDF format.

PhysX Boxes

I have been working on a group of PhysX Physics Demos recently within my Cyclone Game Engine which will be posted in the projects section soon. Until then, here's a video showing how the Demo looks so far:

In this video, the PhysX API is used to create a simulation containing 80 boxes. Each box is positioned in the sky above a ground plane. When the simulation begins, the boxes fall to the ground and bounce off each other. The video also shows that the user can apply forces to each box which, in this case send them back up into the air.

Hemispheric Lighting

I have been working on a group of Effect Demos recently within my Cyclone Game Engine which will be posted in the projects section soon. Until then, here's a video showing how my Effect Demo works:

In this particular demo, a skull model is loaded and a Hemispheric lighting effect is applied to it. A hemisphere light is made up of two colors, sky and ground, that are interpolated between based on the normal; that is, areas with normals pointing towards the sky are "sky"-colored, and areas pointed towards the "ground" are more "ground"-colored.

The hemisphere light is implemented by linearly interpolating between the sky color and the ground color based on the angle between the normal and sky direction. The angle is calculated by doing a dot product between the normal and sky direction. This results in a -1 to 1 value that, when remapped to 0 to 1, is perfect for linearly interpolating between the two colors. The Vertex shader also morphs the skulls vertices, giving a rippling effect.

New Blog

I have now added a new blog feature to my website. I wrote this web-app from scratch in PHP with a MYSQL database in the background. It allows me to update this page from anywhere!

This blog should be updated regularly with information about what im doing.