PlayBASIC-BLOG- Topics - Website - Ray Tracing & Operation Watergate

[kevin]

PlayBASIC -  BLOG  -  Topics - Website - Ray Tracing  & Operation Watergate (2022-10-26 )


In today's PLayBASIC blog I take a look around the forums and check out two incredible projects that are currently underway.  That's  Steve's #RayTracer and Kman's  #OperationWatergate


Index:
00:00 - Web Round Up
01:20 - Steve's Ray Tracer
09:53 - Kman's Operation Watergate
13:20 - Outtro



Links:

Steve's Ray Tracer Links:
https://www.underwaredesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=4644.0
https://www.underwaredesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=4628.0


Operation Watergate:
https://www.underwaredesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=4678.0



Credits:

Impossible Mission Footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0Nm8WYcvus

ParaDroid 90
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf_SvxDy6qk&ab_channel=syltefar

Video Transcript

Code Select Expand


well hello play basic coders uh welcome
back been a while since I've had a bit
of a conversation with you guys let's do
a bit of a Blog a bit of a catch up
what's going on in recent times we've
been talking website a lot of
conversations on the forums about the
website
uh you'll see a
a newer version of the website it's a
different skin different logos different
features or lots of different things
have changed but it's basically the same
layout at the moment
that's going to change as well
um I wanted to get the back end code
working up up to par
so we've got new features here like
you've got the help files are online
lots of little differences between this
and the old versions you can go to these
Pages you can go there and there's
information about each particular
product now rather that will be
expanding as we go further adding more
to it Etc if you want to find out more
stuff about the website the development
of it Etc look there's a whole series of
these videos on the forums head across
there and you'll find them
they can just sign up for free go and
view them and give you ideas you know
what things do we need in the future
what things can we do better now Etc
as a big Spectrum
right
see a pretty nice Ray tracing
application on the screen there
and that's one of the things that's been
done in recent months
uh I forget when this happened now
sometime earlier this year Steve posted
some progress on various
3D tools he's been working on
um
so back in March he was working on
porting
uh
array tricep written for the Omega
um across the play basic I'm not
familiar with mega basic right now but I
imagine there's a lot of
you know OS calls Etc that you've gotta
uh work out how to emulate or replace
but the principle behind it the actual
Ray tracing element itself that code's
probably largely the same you know it's
probably free you know refreshing for
play basic but you know that's how it
goes
so this is back in March
I've got a very nice shot up here
starting really
there's a comment here about or is it a
the book said the book said allow up to
three days to render if using full 640
by 400 or one day at half resolution
that's something bigger
wow I wonder what sort of prices they're
talking about there
possibly a stock 68 000.
and mix uh seems going well my computer
rendered the 600 600 by 960 and took 26
seconds seconds
it's a pretty big uh Improvement of
speed I would have thought
so lots of conversation here about
um that and me having a look at it you
know on on making video I have that
that was the first dabble and then he
went away and came back with another uh
progression of the of this uh Journey
and this time rebuilding
the whole project from the ground up uh
from for himself really the idea is was
to build not just a
something we can render a basic scene
but something can do has an editor
aspect of it and a rendering aspect as
well
you think of it like if you're familiar
with
Omega applications or I mean in
it's basically making a you know a
simplified blender
or it
the current version looks a lot reminds
me a lot of light wave
so we start here with you know our
initial versions
as we do we all do the same thing
it's me having conversations with him
about uh me some ideas
and we get through
if you want to download them you're
going to have to sign up for the forums
so these are not downloadable you can
see the pictures but not the files
themselves
uh we'll jump across the PBA and
recently he released a an updated
version which has the update to the uh
the interface the rendering I think it's
much the same but the interface had some
problems initially
because of the different screen sizes
people use
you know when you write something with a
particular screen size in mind and you
don't really think about other people
have different sizes the
can be problematic
a lot like a I'm a good example here's
my own website
you know the website is a particular
width and in modern terms that's a bit
of a No-No in web development
it's just a legacy from when it was the
old version was built which was
I think in 2008
maybe nine somewhere in there anyway
and that was just placeholder it was
meant to be replaced you know we
couldn't find someone else to do it
nonetheless we shall check out this
application so across the fly basic I've
reloaded this is the latest uh release
from Steve
F5 to write
let's find out
so now it runs nicely sanded on the
window and the and the window is chosen
his scaled appropriately for my size so
it'll work the same for you too
um
if we check it out we can do
go render each line thanks
this will take a little
um
I think it's about 20 seconds
now we're capturing the system doing all
that downloading the background Etc
and we're running a race racer through
just interpreted play basic
basically just writing the PV virtual
machine
so we're not classically interpreted we
uh
this machine and we run that code and
compile is pretty optimal
um
but even still it's a lot of work for
for this to do and we're doing a large
resolution
but you can go
and add the same
check it out
you can move things around and do stuff
and pick things and go to surface
editors and do stuff with them
you know
these are for changing properties about
the object right
uh We've we've selected there
they go to service how to turn it off
here
uh move and rotate the camera not moving
the camera on that this is the on the
Wi-Fi
so look with we're fixed in XZ and
moving in there
unless your rotation
is it
oh I'll make it full screen that kind of
stuff
uh clear out of this
yep dude
turn shaded mode on
this gives you like a grounded version
of the scene in camera so you can sort
of Zoom around a bit
it's pretty fracking when you think
about
okay now I look I don't know anything
about how to use the application I'm
just showing it to you yeah yeah
you really have to have Steve do that
sort of stuff
um this is a difference as well it's got
a tabbed interface for the help files
which is a lot a lot easier
and uh
I think you probably still need to have
some sort of vertical control down here
you know
I don't mean a scroll bar I mean scroll
bar is cool but you might just have a
button at the top just you know return
to top as you scroll away so if you just
use the scroll wheel here you can scroll
down if it if it's a longer document
maybe there's some sort of indication
here about an Arrow showing you know you
know just simple little visual cues that
that help the the user understand what's
going on
uh well yeah long so shot amazing
and the code's all there for you to pick
through
uh like most bigger programs it is
difficult to pick through what's
happening
that's not Steve's fault that's just as
things get larger
it takes a lot longer for us to to pick
through the source code and decipher
what's happening in every asset aspect
of the application
the amazing
all right let's jump back to some forums
yeah this is not the only thing that's
been happening the other day there was a
postmate in the Forum by uh an older
programmer who's who wrote some really
nice examples back in the day
and there's an example down here called
operation water go check this out
so it's awesome interesting
apparently it's uh like an isometric
uh Mission Impossible
for those people who are familiar with
the
the game on the I guess it was on the 64
but a lot of other platforms at the time
too I would have thought so anyway
starting
very cool
so look I'm guessing where they're
rendered elements or something like that
or
uh I mean piece together that's just how
awesome this it works
not that I've written one actually no I
think I've done any isometric stuff
really
with the with the robots there you kind
of have that sense of power drawing as
well
um
Andrew bribrock wrote that one
a classic 64 game
come on 364 game back in the day
uh where you could take over robots I
forget that the actual gameplay now it's
been such a long time
I could just imagine going up and and
interacting with the robots there and
doing stuff and
cool
last screenshot
it's very nice
it's interesting things about
how that's done
you've got to imagine if you've got a
random isometric you're going to have to
render in a particular order
so we've got the blocks
I think I think about the render order
here
drawing the back row
you know in the next row across
the rise across to make sure things
overlap the correct way
but within those rows it would have to
be sorting as well well actually I don't
really know
uh because awesome isometric games were
made on Old 8-bit platforms so there's
lots of
there's a bunch on the spectrums a bunch
on the 64 Etc
and they didn't do full screen rendering
they were selective about how they were
being drawn so
I suspect might be happening too is that
maybe what your character is so we draw
the whole thing
initially and then
when for movable characters or Sprites
you might call them you might just draw
the parts that are in in front of them
sort of recursively
I don't think it would work or not
there's probably some reason why it
doesn't
um
I don't know you're better off asking
okay man because he clearly knows how
that works yeah it's
it's a big boost into
the community you know Big Boost into
really
for me as well personally to see people
you know experience with like play
biasing you know trying to do different
things and I hope one day we'll see a
demo but it may never get to that point
you know maybe it doesn't
maybe it does I mean who knows
um
but it's a big incentive for me to make
PB better
for people who are doing things like
that you know
to make to make improvements that will
improve people's outcomes directly
um
yeah
that's pretty cool
it's a little the Roundup I've really
got for you at the moment
um yeah I've got a apps websites have
been updated I mean a lot of things have
been fixed on here
still some things that are broken and
one of the new things that have been
added is
a stats package to
just the website in general so you can
sort of work out what's what people are
interested in
what people are looking at you know when
they come to the site beforehand you
you get that data from the raw logs it
was hard to decipher things from it so
the whites being boiled down now is that
to make it easier for me to to look at
things go okay that page is working
pretty well
people like this about that page other
things are not being not being very
effective yeah
and that's the that's the goal with all
of this let's try to try to ball down
the information into the simplest terms
and go
uh are we getting appropriate number of
downloads or not like for example
um
last time I checked the downloads page
it was about a five percent download
ratio so by that I mean that
for every you know 100 people who
view the download page five of them
download The Learning Edition
hmm that's kind of the ratio you
normally get it's a bit less than what
it used to be I must admit
uh
anyway that's all I have for you uh
thanks for hanging around thanks for
listening to my
dribble
I hope you're enjoying the coding I hope
you're challenging yourself out there
all the time
um if you have a a question or whatever
you want you can catch me on social
media you can catch me on the forums
primarily just going register
sign up get on there and let's start
talking
of course there's plenty of source codes
posted down here on the source code
section
I don't know how many pounds there's 42
pages are saying there of source code
free for people who are members
same as tutorials one of those dudes
Etc that's what we that's what we're
here for you know if you post and share
your examples what other people will
help you out though then you can help
them out Etc it's that you know that
Contin sorry it's that consistent back
and forth how people develop their
skills
we're all doing the same thing we're all
just getting better at what we do you
know
me included yeah I'm learning new things
all the time so you should be learning
new things all the time too
all right that's enough thanks a lot and
I'll see you next time bye




[stevmjon]

hey kev. i posted this on youtube but thought i will re-post here with a few more tips.

in my demo i saw the text cutting off along the top taskbar, i will fix that.
with the buttons on the surface editor panel you need to hold down mouse button then drag mouse to adjust setting. that is why i had double arrow symbol on it.
i also noticed that if you click the color icon (C) the mouse turns off when the color panel opens. i will fix all in my new update.
the rotate widget button is actually ghosted on all views except perspective view. only perspective view can be rotated.

it is nice to see it being tested to find the bugs. i will also add hint text in the bottom taskbar for every button you mouseover. that will explain how to use button.

  thanks for testing, stevmjon

[kevin]

Ahh..  that reminds me that while recording I did have an issue when the colour dialog was opened the mouse was off, so I could see what I doing..  I waffled off onto some other topic so cut that whole section. 

There used to a thing where apps had hover hints.. But that's gone these days, but none the less if we hovered over  gagdet the program would pop a dizzy about what this is..     

[stevmjon]

done kev.

i have added mouse-over text to the bottom of the screen (hint box). it tells you what every button does, and how to use it.

i will also add active hints too for when the button gets clicked (activated).