[Mercury]

Hello, all!

First, to be clear, AeStHete has not been released. For awhile I had thought that I might just release what incomplete code I had, to let the community pick through it.

However, after much deliberation, I have decided that I do want to finish the project, making a Sonic game development tool that is as complete as possible. Because of the extra work this will take, release for AeStHete is still a little ways off. But the good news is that I have made incredible strides in the core collision engine, making a viable Game Maker Sonic engine a possibility.

More good news is that the engine has been streamlined to the point that the concepts behind it are fairly easy to understand and describe. This means a series of tutorials revealing the secrets at the core of the AeStHete engine will be forthcoming, to tide over until the project's full release.

In addition, a number of web-based hacking and editing tools will be released on the AeStHete site in the near future, intended to work in conjunction with the engine - but can also be useful in the interim. The first of these is the Palettiser.

Over the coming week or so I will be concentrating on finally finishing the styling and interface for the engine, so that I can start releasing videos and screenshots of AeStHete in action.

With that, I'm back to work.

~ Love, Mercury <3

EDIT: Screenshot of interface! Still some tweaking to do...



EDIT:
About Donations

People have been asking about whether or not I accept donations in support of AeStHete. I haven't decided on how I want to handle this just yet, but in the meantime, if you want to help out, you can visit my eBay listings. If you see something you like and buy it, think of it like making a pledge for AeStHete and getting a small reward for your trouble.

Make sure to check back often, because there will be a large amount of gaming magazines, players guides, games, books, and much more.

This post has been edited by Mercury: 19 March 2013 - 07:47 PM

[Andrew75]

Stupid question, any plans for 3d support in the future?

Also happy new year,, new year new topic, :P

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 31 December 2012 - 11:41 PM

[Techokami]

Andrew75, on 31 December 2012 - 11:38 PM, said:

Stupid question, any plans for 3d support in the future?

Mercury, on 31 December 2012 - 11:12 PM, said:

Game Maker

So I'd guess "not really". I mean, there is SOME 3D support in Game Maker 8, but Mercury's engine is pretty much focused on 2D game development.

This post has been edited by Techokami: 01 January 2013 - 12:02 AM

[Mercury]

Andrew75, on 31 December 2012 - 11:38 PM, said:

Stupid question, any plans for 3d support in the future?

3D graphics or 3D physics?

Either way, I don't plan on it myself. But it's going to be open source.

[KingofHarts]

I'd love to see this when it is finished. I may very well cease work on TRYING to build my own engine and use this for STE instead...

[Andrew75]

Techokami, on 31 December 2012 - 11:59 PM, said:

Andrew75, on 31 December 2012 - 11:38 PM, said:

Stupid question, any plans for 3d support in the future?

Mercury, on 31 December 2012 - 11:12 PM, said:

Game Maker

So I'd guess "not really". I mean, there is SOME 3D support in Game Maker 8, but Mercury's engine is pretty much focused on 2D game development.

2D tile based collisions and 3D rendering with depth change system for a nice 2.5D experience.

Not trying to hijack the topic or anything. Just showing what is possible when it comes to 3D and Game maker.
Game maker supports 3D threw the power of writing external Dll to handle rendering.
And let me tell you its very powerful indeed, supporting most anything rendering wise that is offered in UDK or Unity.
The catch is that you need to build all the shaders framework yourself. ( although a good starting place is the Ultimate 3D Plug in for game maker)
and all the tools need to be built from the ground up.

We even had fisheye running on game maker 6 and than 7 with very good FPS back in 2006 - 2009 on geforece 6 7 and 8 series graphic cards.
here are a few realtime Tech Demo screens running in Game maker from fisheye to normal maps that I tossed together.

An early fisheye using another shader technique other than vertex shaders,
this one is a little more GPU incentive than the vertex shader but produces a more real world effect.


The Vertex Fisheye shader. ( a little more true to the original sonic xtreme)


Realtime reflections and refractions




GHZ 2.5D started in 2006 as a Sonic physics assessment tool for AXSX ( can be played in 2D orthopedic view or 3D 2.5D view)
Gameplay for this was never finished at that time, and had been ported over to UDK.



Grass shader (Proof of concept)



I have so many graphical tech assets developed for GM+U3d plugin that it would blow ones mind!
Also sorry to go a bit overboard in showing some of these, as this is not my place.
Anyhow my point is that it can be done.

P.s. and one more for the road! ( this one has Baked textures with nothing special,
Except its has a high poly count, high res textures, and cranked up AA)
Game maker runs as many of these badboys as your graphics card can handle in a single environment.

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 01 January 2013 - 02:40 AM

[Kharen]

Wow, that looks really cool. Why is it that so many people look down on Game Maker? It looks like you can pull off some really awesome things if you put the time into it.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to this a lot. I have GM8 myself, and have been putting together a tileset to use for a Sonic game. Having a pre-built engine to work with would cut down the amount of work I have by a lot!

[Andrew75]

Yeah, sigh,,,its To bad most people don't realize how powerful game maker can really be.
Although, doing 3D work in game maker, there are some issues we could not overcome due to game maker being slower in executing lots of code at once.
(it did not really hurt at first , but when objects and functions piled up, it started to show. ( functions necessary for 3D gameplay btw)
Not because of the models or 3D rendering, but because of game maker itself. (I never got the chance to upgrade to GM8, perhaps its loads faster.)

The slow dev time ( which is expected when building a game and toolsets from scratch) when it came to adding new eye toys or , any type of system for example rigged animations, it took weeks.
(using game maker, we always had to come up with strange work arounds to situations that could normally be coded otherwise)


@Mercury
Also I want to say Mercury! this game engine looks amazingly useful! toolsets are there, has an editor, Its pure GM candy !
You keep my expectations very high.
I know that Mercury, you must have put a lot of hair pulling development time into this beast.
And it It really shows. Cant wait to see whats next. Keep up the good work !

P.S. network support planned or already a feature ?
That is something I would really like to see!

This post has been edited by Andrew75: 01 January 2013 - 09:50 AM

[Techokami]

Andrew75, on 01 January 2013 - 01:59 AM, said:

Techokami, on 31 December 2012 - 11:59 PM, said:

Andrew75, on 31 December 2012 - 11:38 PM, said:

Stupid question, any plans for 3d support in the future?

Mercury, on 31 December 2012 - 11:12 PM, said:

Game Maker

So I'd guess "not really". I mean, there is SOME 3D support in Game Maker 8, but Mercury's engine is pretty much focused on 2D game development.

2D tile based collisions and 3D rendering with depth change system for a nice 2.5D experience.

To elaborate: Mercury is putting a lot of effort into code specifically designed for rendering 2D graphics. Combined with the fact that AeStHete is going to use external tools for building level data, and use some custom rendering code, means you will have to rip apart A LOT of the engine to change it to 3D rendering. Might be better to stick with SonicGDK, or use Egg Engine, if your goal is 3D rendering of a 2D game.

[Andrew75]

Techokami, on 01 January 2013 - 10:21 AM, said:

Andrew75, on 01 January 2013 - 01:59 AM, said:

Techokami, on 31 December 2012 - 11:59 PM, said:

Andrew75, on 31 December 2012 - 11:38 PM, said:

Stupid question, any plans for 3d support in the future?

Mercury, on 31 December 2012 - 11:12 PM, said:

Game Maker

So I'd guess "not really". I mean, there is SOME 3D support in Game Maker 8, but Mercury's engine is pretty much focused on 2D game development.

2D tile based collisions and 3D rendering with depth change system for a nice 2.5D experience.

To elaborate: Mercury is putting a lot of effort into code specifically designed for rendering 2D graphics. Combined with the fact that AeStHete is going to use external tools for building level data, and use some custom rendering code, means you will have to rip apart A LOT of the engine to change it to 3D rendering. Might be better to stick with SonicGDK, or use Egg Engine, if your goal is 3D rendering of a 2D game.

Oh no, its to late in the game for me to change game engines now.
I'm just trying to be supportive and offer up new idea's to inspire, especially since I like what I see here. Perhaps I've gone to far in the matter. ( ahh well)
The fan gaming scene seems to be kind of dry at the moment. Not to many people doing it as before, Hopefully Mercury's release will bump that issue up a notch.

[MalcomX]

This is very interesting. I like what I see here, and that Scrap Brain video looks spot on! Just goes to show how powerful Game Maker is with the right amount of work. I can't wait to see more!

[Relick]

That scrap brain demo certainly look accurate, I'm impressed with how perfect the physics are. However, coming from the background that my only experience with Game Maker has been sluggish performance and weak graphical capabilities (although apparently it can handle 3D well), I have a few questions to ask about this engine:

Is there a palette limitation because of the simple colour swapping that palettes allow (and the reduced file sizes)? Or because of a limitation with Game Maker (where palettes make it run faster/better)?

How does it perform at a higher resolution than standard Mega Drive size? Or is it fixed to that size like other engines?

That'll be all for now, but other than that good work!

[Mercury]

Relick, on 02 January 2013 - 07:24 AM, said:

Is there a palette limitation because of the simple colour swapping that palettes allow (and the reduced file sizes)? Or because of a limitation with Game Maker (where palettes make it run faster/better)?

The former. It's only there to achieve all the effects (waterfalls, Hyper Sonic, underwater, glowing lights) that would be a major headache otherwise.

Quote

How does it perform at a higher resolution than standard Mega Drive size? Or is it fixed to that size like other engines?

I have never experimented with HD resolutions, so I do not know. However the engine can be easily modded to have any resolution; nothing is hardcoded to Genesis resolution.

[Relick]

Mercury, on 02 January 2013 - 06:40 PM, said:

Relick, on 02 January 2013 - 07:24 AM, said:

Is there a palette limitation because of the simple colour swapping that palettes allow (and the reduced file sizes)? Or because of a limitation with Game Maker (where palettes make it run faster/better)?

The former. It's only there to achieve all the effects (waterfalls, Hyper Sonic, underwater, glowing lights) that would be a major headache otherwise.

Quote

How does it perform at a higher resolution than standard Mega Drive size? Or is it fixed to that size like other engines?

I have never experimented with HD resolutions, so I do not know. However the engine can be easily modded to have any resolution; nothing is hardcoded to Genesis resolution.

That's good to hear. I'm glad it wasn't a problem with Game Maker, and once it's released I might look into seeing how it performs are higher resolutions.

Just played the demo, and those framerates look really good. Every time I looked it was a perfect 60, never changing. Really well done Mercury.

This post has been edited by Relick: 02 January 2013 - 06:52 PM

[jasonchrist]

Merry New Year, Mercury!

I've been working blind on the classic hybrid project in the hopes your engine will see the light of day. So... Bravo!