Change of Strategy

After trying out the indexed rendering the mesh still doesn't show up. I also tried changing the camera direction, distance and different model, but still no showing. I think I am completely lost here.

I will try a totally different approach later. Here is new approach: use the code from DirectX example directly within in the project, with only small modification. I think it's possible. All I have to do is to create the hierarchy and the container etc, save those pointer in MeshEntity, and just call the functions from the example to draw and update the mesh. The only thing I might have to watch out for is the loading file directory etc.

Nothing Shows up

Unfortunately I am still struggling with the skinned mesh. I wish I have more energy and time to spend on it. But it's not without progress. I tried to use the model from DirectX example, and it give me skin info, which shows that there is something wrong with the model exported from Milkshape 3D. I think I have to check out the Milkshape 3D website to see if they have new plug-ins etc for exporting .X model with skin info etc. But even after the experiment nothing shows up on screen, although the debugger indicates all the rendering step has been gone through...perhaps it's the light setting or the material that cause the problem. Further investigation is needed.

Another problem I noticed before but didn't mention is that for some reason I need to set material, even for Sprite...otherwise nothing shows up. I don't fully understand it yet but I will just leave this here in case I encounter similar problem in the future.

UPDATE: After some investigation, I decide to try rendering the model without using HLSL. Although the example from DirectX provides the HLSL usage example, I can't seem to get it to work, and I don't have enough knowledge about it to debug it I think. So I will skip that for now and try to get the model to show up and animated properly. Later I should research on HLSL and try to put the shader in.

Fallout 3 Afterthoughts

This blog is about the ending of Fallout 3...I won't go into describing it etc but whoever doesn't want to know anything about it should stop reading. (but who the heck is reading this blog except me anyway, ha...)

I would say the ending, especially the fights before the ending, are very well done and climatic. The tension are built and you get to use all the high tech weapons and armor the game can offer. Seeing the events unfold with large explosion and bodies flying all over the place or burnt to chock is quite satisfying. (It's kind of weird in a way because I imagine in real life people will feel afraid and gross out but for some reason in the game it looks good).

Video game violence aside, it's also satisfying to charge into enemy strong hold with the main character's buddy and the Brotherhood of Steel to accomplish the objective. The ending is faster pace than the rest of the game which is refreshing. I wish they could have more of these type of combat mission in the game. Another thing they could have done better is to have more involvement from the player in the climatic battle. Because in the final battle most of the time I just spend following and watching. They could have given me more stuff to shoot at. But still overall it's a very good experience.

Although I would say the story's final ending doesn't give me strong enough "satisfying" feeling like some of other games. For example Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy 7's ending seems to have more "punch" to me. The feeling is hard to describe...perhaps the best words are it could have been more "powerful" or "emotional." Still the ending sequence are quite nice and the game does have an interesting theme.

Overall the game is nicely done.

Investigation Continued

Recently I didn't spend enough time on the game development to have any major progress. (played too much Fallout 3 I gather O_O). But still some progress has been made.

I have setup the skinned mesh class but so far it still doesn't working properly. Right now my investigation showed me that I am missing skin info (Null point as one of the parameter). I am not totally sure what the skin info is even. I think I should first investigate that. Then if I can't get it to work might want to try another drawing method for now and see what happens.
I did find a small bug about material...although I have no idea why it's a problem anyway, because I don't think I even setup lighting...

Everything becomes unnecessarily complicated when one is not familiar or doesn't have full understanding of the tool, in this case DirectX. Hopefully I will be able to get more familiar with it.