For the past few months I've been experimenting with the Godot game engine instead of my previous go-to tool that was Gamemaker Studio. YoYo games, the studio behind Gamemaker, has been going in a strange direction since they got bought by Opera and I can't say I'm as comfortable with trusting this company as I was previously. YoYo accounts are being migrated to Opera accounts and the whole thing is giving me flashbacks to when Microsoft bought Mojang and Minecraft just to keep funneling people into their 'ecosystem'.
On top of that Gamemaker now has a subscription payment model which, luckily, I don't have to use as my own permanent license still appears to be valid.  Who knows how long that will last though.

I do find this odd though, Gamemaker as an engine has barely changed in the last decade and looking at their roadmap, the new features they are planning on adding are... unambitious, let's just say.
I don't see how any developer is going to look at Gamemaker now, considering the price of the subscription model and the features that Gamemaker has, and think "yeah this engine seems like it's worth it".
It used to be in the past, a single one-off payment for an engine that was the pinnacle of 2D games development. But that was years ago, now there are so many options out there, many of which are completely free to use or offer more versatility and Gamemaker just seems stuck in its own little corner, never budging, never moving with the times.
Personally for me I started realizing that my journey with Gamemaker had come to an end when I started experimenting with 3D in Gamemaker. Obviously the engine isn't really made with 3D in mind but considering where Gamemaker's long lasting strengths lie, in Gamemaker Language and in its fast workflow, I don't see why Gamemaker shouldn't be a 3D engine. Speaking of the lack of ambition in their current roadmap, I do feel like more 3D support like a 3D viewport and built-in 3D model importer should have been right up there.

All of this is what lead me to Godot, an engine that is very much built for 2D and 3D.
It's has been an interesting few months. Godot turned out to be a lot easier to use than I initially imagined. It clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Unity (unfortunately) but doesn't shy away from adding its own improvements, or its own way of doing things, where it feels like they can be made.
Many of the things I struggled with in Gamemaker like pathfinding and quickly doing some UI design are a walk in the park in Godot, super easy. Other things that are very easy in Gamemaker can be a little tricky to figure out in Godot, like multi-dimensional arrays for example. Godot script is no Gamemaker Language unfortunately but I feel like I'm getting the hang of it.

For the past month my mission has been getting the familiar with the engine and making all the things I never could I Gamemaker. For this project I've basically been trying to re-create one of my favourite games, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, in Godot.

I started out by adding a basic movement system and re-creating a map from the game in Blender, then porting it into Godot. The map I chose was CQB training for no particular reason other than that it was small and fairly symmetrical and therefore not a lot of work to build:

It was fairly basic, some assets from the original game were in there as well but nothing is really textured and there's no gameplay to speak of, just a ghost town for now.

With a map to play around with though, I could start adding some gameplay. I added some basic enemies, pathfinding, interactive elements like hidden doorways for easter eggs and over the next month I kept adding any feature I could think of. Kind of sticking to the original game as a framework but I'm not trying to create a particularly faithful re-creation of RS: Vegas 2, for now it's anything goes.

After one month of progress I had added a bunch more weapons, a weapon attachment system and customization menu. There are some basic load-out options, save-games, rank and leveling, stats tracking and some basic sound effects:

From here on I'm currently building a larger library of properly textured assets that I can use to create a better looking map where I can start trying out some rendering techniques to make it all look better. Right now the whole game is lit by real-time lights in the engine which doesn't look great and isn't perfect for performance either, I'm hoping to learn some light baking for the next map I'm creating and hopefully have it all looking a lot better and running much smoother for the second map.
I also want to try adding some LAN multiplayer just to see how that works in Godot.

The last few days however I've had to pause this project for a bit as my computer started developing some OS related freezing issues, so I had to re-install Windows 10. I took this as an opportunity to try out the Win 10 Ameliorated version, a project set up by a group of people who wanted nothing to do with Microsoft's tracking and data-gathering that comes built in to Win 10. The process of "ameliorating" Windows isn't very straight forward but after three or four tries I succeeded in getting it up and running in a way that I felt comfortable worked.
This new Windows experience is actually quite a lot like older windows versions, reminding me of Windows 7 and XP. It's a bare-bones Windows experience that feels out-of-place in 2022, but in a good way. It's a reminder that software nowadays often has a dual-purpose, to serve you and to gather data on you. Windows that only does the basics of being an operating system feels like a breath of fresh air and there isn't this nagging feeling that Windows is spying on you in the background with everything you do.
It is also MUCH faster, start-up is really fast and right-clicking used to take ages on my old install where Windows Explorer was doing whatever it was doing in the background before showing you the menu, now it's instant. You do need to make sure you install anti-virus and such because of course Windows Defender isn't there either, same with Windows Update.
Overall though I'm very happy with this new install of Win 10 and I'll keep using it for a while I think.

That's it from me. Check out my next blog to see how progress on my Godot Rainbow Six remake project is going.

Been doing quite a few Gamemaker Studio experiments recently, including messing around with 3D for the first time. 3D has been a challenge as the vector math, and lack of built-in functions have been making it much trickier to work with than the usual smooth ride that is 2D in Gamemaker. Still I've come up with some fun projects and I will be using 3D for most future projects for sure.

Besides that I also made a quick bird to ward of other birds from our balcony. This was done in trueSpace, of course, and then made in wood and finished with an acryllic paint.

That's it for this quick update.  Until next time.

Once again I returned this year to update a game project I work on once every year; the anniversary boardgame. Once a year for our anniversary my girlfriend and I play a game that captures our memories from the previous years, our experiences and in some cases our troubles. Every year I also like adding a new gameplay mechanic and this year I decided to take it a step further making it a full on RPG with even a basic questline.

The game features various levels with cutscenes in between where I created renders. The character models are animated and made using a mix of MakeHuman and sculpting in Blender.
I tried not to get too carried away with the character designs but overall it ended up being a little more work than anticipated and me only getting it done just before the actual anniversary.

Here are some highlights of that...

There is also a companion app that goes with the boardgame where each of us can control our avatars on the board by giving them simple commands like hostile/defensive stance, toggle weapons and change the direction in which we're facing on the board, just for fun.

This was a fun project to work on for sure and I can't wait to see what I come up with next year. With the app and the RPG mechanics, there's a lot of potential for expansion so who knows, maybe next year I'll turn it into Elden Ring...

I recently made something for my girlfriends birthday:

I sent it to be 3D printed in silver on Shapeways.com.

It has arrived in the post!

I'm sure she'll be very happy. It's her birthday today!

VITRIOL 3D is 10 years old this year!

Time flies!

V3D started as my personal website and portfolio in 2009 and has become my own personal brand and network since.

Here is to another 10 years!

Then he took us through his early roles and after a brief interval; the complete works of Shakespeare.
From his King Lear to Romeo and Juliet he ended his show with a powerful rendition of Macbeth.

It was, despite a relatively small theatre, a grand show in the theatre heart of London at the end he got a standing ovation by the audience and even by Sting who was sitting one row in front of me with his family. Rather unexpected but certainly caught Ilaria's eye right away. Such is London life I guess.

After the show, on the way out, I got a chance to thank and congratulate Sir Ian and to shake his hand. It was a most memorable evening and I'm very glad we went.

In other news, the game has been going well in the past month. Despite many set-backs due to a decision to reprogram much of the core of the game I now have something far more complex as a basis that will allow me to realise this project the way I had imagined it.

I have very little to show right now but since I like posting screenshots and renders here is a one of a minor hacking component I finished yesterday:

 That's it for this blog. Bye now. :)

Hello again, blog. Yes, Edinburgh is still there but I'm not. Following Ilaria to her new job, I've found myself down there in southern England again, in London town.

It is here that I will be spending the next year or so. We've got a place in the Surrey Quays area that while kind of breaking left and right still is nice and cosy and it's not too noisy despite the air traffic in London looking something like out of The Jetsons.

As for the game... it's coming along. I have mainly been working on getting the ship and station interiors to work but I've got a new ship design to reveal and a fully interactive tactical map for all your scanning, navigation and missile launching needs.

 Check out the brand new website at HyperVentila.com.

That's it for this blog. I wonder what I'll write in the next one...

...well that I forgot anyway. Like this blog! Yes it has been a year since my last post about squirrels. But the resillience and absoluteness of this blog shall remain resolute and keep going for a while longer. Well another four years at least since I apparently bought quite a considerable domain extension a few years ago.

A lot has happened in this year. After Oxford I spent some time in London finally ending up in Edinburgh and the summer I spent mainly in Edinburgh and various places in Italy.

Still rather unsure of what to do and where to go next, with no work and no stable future in sight, I decided to start a game project. This brings us back to the title of this blog post where Mikomwood finally gets a worthy future counterpart; HyperVentila.
Many years in the making ( in my head ) this mad science fantasy spinnoff from Mikomwood has been a bit of a mystery of how to make. While Mikomwood was to me what the Discworld was to Terry Pratchett, HyperVentila would of course seem like another jump to mad comic novelist and radio-play writer Douglass Adams and his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Not this time! I wanted HyperVentila to be something else.
A universe of exploration, making your own madness and interactivity. So a game of course!

What have I got to show so far? some screenshots! and a silly Android port on my phone...

Some things have been a challenge in designing this game so far but I've learnt a lot.

I also recently designed a website for my dear Ilaria: www.ilariagiacon.com Check it out!

That's it for this blog. Until next time.