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digitalmars.D.announce - Demo for The Art of Reflection released (a 3D game and engine fully

reply Lewis <musicaljelly gmail.com> writes:
Hello! Not sure if it's of interest, but I've been developing a 
3D game and engine in D for a few years, and finally have a demo 
up on Steam for anyone interested in poking around (Windows only 
unfortunately).

- All code (engine and game) written in D. Shaders in HLSL. 
External libraries used for some subsystems (eg. PhysX, FMOD)
- Custom 3D DX11 renderer using PBR + IBL
- Supports mirror rendering, with hundreds of simultaneous 
mirrors and recursive mirrors (passing seamlessly through mirrors 
is a core game mechanic)
- Asset burning/cooking system for textures, geometry, materials, 
and shaders. All asset types support hotswapping.
- Flexible code hotswapping, by putting 99% of the game and 
engine in a DLL
- Scrappy in-game level editor that supports editing during 
gameplay

Since I'm building the game as a commercial project I haven't 
released source code, but plan to open source it after the game 
releases. Happy though of course to answer any questions, share 
code snippets, techniques, general experiences, etc.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2290770/The_Art_of_Reflection/
May 24 2024
next sibling parent reply Jonathan Gerlach <jonathan thegerlach.net> writes:
On Friday, 24 May 2024 at 17:45:31 UTC, Lewis wrote:
 Hello! Not sure if it's of interest, but I've been developing a 
 3D game and engine in D for a few years, and finally have a 
 demo up on Steam for anyone interested in poking around 
 (Windows only unfortunately).

 - All code (engine and game) written in D. Shaders in HLSL. 
 External libraries used for some subsystems (eg. PhysX, FMOD)
 - Custom 3D DX11 renderer using PBR + IBL
 - Supports mirror rendering, with hundreds of simultaneous 
 mirrors and recursive mirrors (passing seamlessly through 
 mirrors is a core game mechanic)
 - Asset burning/cooking system for textures, geometry, 
 materials, and shaders. All asset types support hotswapping.
 - Flexible code hotswapping, by putting 99% of the game and 
 engine in a DLL
 - Scrappy in-game level editor that supports editing during 
 gameplay

 Since I'm building the game as a commercial project I haven't 
 released source code, but plan to open source it after the game 
 releases. Happy though of course to answer any questions, share 
 code snippets, techniques, general experiences, etc.

 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2290770/The_Art_of_Reflection/
I'm impressed. Are you using DirectX "11 on 12" or standard DirectX11? Did you need to avoid the GC at all? I imagine the GC could ruin your framerate if you're not careful. Thanks for sharing and congrats on finishing (close enough) your game.
May 24 2024
parent Lewis <musicaljelly gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 24 May 2024 at 19:22:32 UTC, Jonathan Gerlach wrote:
 I'm impressed. Are you using DirectX "11 on 12" or standard 
 DirectX11? Did you need to avoid the GC at all? I imagine the 
 GC could ruin your framerate if you're not careful. Thanks for 
 sharing and congrats on finishing (close enough) your game.
Plain old DX11. I've used DX12 in industry, and it basically amounts to opting in to writing 70% of the graphics driver along with your renderer :) I don't need to push AAA levels of performance or asset load for this game, so DX11 is fine. Regarding the GC, copy-pasting my reply from Discord: I don't have the GC fully disabled, but I make a point to avoid GC allocations in runtime code. I allow myself to use it for initialization, tooling, editor code, etc. For runtime code it really just acts as a fallback. If I messed something up, a memory leak just becomes a periodic hitch instead of an eventual crash. I've also hacked some changes into druntime to help with this: - I added a "scrapheap" GC implementation, which is a simple linear allocator that resets at the end of each frame. I have a mixin that makes a scope use the scrapheap instead of the regular GC, which is useful for allowing me to still use phobos or other libraries, as long as I'm okay with all allocated memory being discarded at the end of the frame. Each worker thread also gets one, which resets when a unit of work completes. - I added a quick and dirty mode I can enable that logs the callstack of every GC allocation, to help me track down stray allocations that occur during runtime. nogc is too restrictive, and doesn't understand that my scrapheap usage bypasses the GC. Runtime allocations that need to stick around almost entirely use a structure I've internally called a GenerationalStorage. Pretty common idea in games, a fixed size object pool that hands out IDs, and IDs can be used to retrieve a pointer to the object. Each ID contains the object's index, along with a generation number that increments every allocation, letting you reliably catch and assert on any use-after-frees of IDs.
May 24 2024
prev sibling next sibling parent Bastiaan Veelo <Bastiaan Veelo.net> writes:
On Friday, 24 May 2024 at 17:45:31 UTC, Lewis wrote:
 Hello! Not sure if it's of interest, but I've been developing a 
 3D game and engine in D for a few years, and finally have a 
 demo up on Steam for anyone interested in poking around 
 (Windows only unfortunately).
Seems worthy of a DConf presentation! -- Bastiaan.
May 26 2024
prev sibling next sibling parent Dukc <ajieskola gmail.com> writes:
Lewis kirjoitti 24.5.2024 klo 20.45:
 Hello! Not sure if it's of interest, but I've been developing a 3D game 
 and engine in D for a few years, and finally have a demo up on Steam for 
 anyone interested in poking around (Windows only unfortunately).
 
 - All code (engine and game) written in D. Shaders in HLSL. External 
 libraries used for some subsystems (eg. PhysX, FMOD)
 - Custom 3D DX11 renderer using PBR + IBL
 - Supports mirror rendering, with hundreds of simultaneous mirrors and 
 recursive mirrors (passing seamlessly through mirrors is a core game 
 mechanic)
 - Asset burning/cooking system for textures, geometry, materials, and 
 shaders. All asset types support hotswapping.
 - Flexible code hotswapping, by putting 99% of the game and engine in a DLL
 - Scrappy in-game level editor that supports editing during gameplay
 
 Since I'm building the game as a commercial project I haven't released 
 source code, but plan to open source it after the game releases. Happy 
 though of course to answer any questions, share code snippets, 
 techniques, general experiences, etc.
 
 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2290770/The_Art_of_Reflection/
While I'm personally probably not going to use this (I'm currently very happy with Godot and it's D binding for what I'm doing), I'll opinion that it's impressive that if/when when you release this one, we'll have three purely D 3D game engines (this, Dagon and Hipreme Engine), and maybe on top of these some less well known ones. I'll be happy to read updates about them once in a while even if I'm probably not having a need for them.
May 26 2024
prev sibling next sibling parent Lurker <no bo.dy> writes:
On Friday, 24 May 2024 at 17:45:31 UTC, Lewis wrote:
 Hello! Not sure if it's of interest, but I've been developing a 
 3D game and engine in D for a few years, and finally have a 
 demo up on Steam for anyone interested in poking around 
 (Windows only unfortunately).

 - All code (engine and game) written in D. Shaders in HLSL. 
 External libraries used for some subsystems (eg. PhysX, FMOD)
 - Custom 3D DX11 renderer using PBR + IBL
 - Supports mirror rendering, with hundreds of simultaneous 
 mirrors and recursive mirrors (passing seamlessly through 
 mirrors is a core game mechanic)
 - Asset burning/cooking system for textures, geometry, 
 materials, and shaders. All asset types support hotswapping.
 - Flexible code hotswapping, by putting 99% of the game and 
 engine in a DLL
 - Scrappy in-game level editor that supports editing during 
 gameplay

 Since I'm building the game as a commercial project I haven't 
 released source code, but plan to open source it after the game 
 releases. Happy though of course to answer any questions, share 
 code snippets, techniques, general experiences, etc.

 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2290770/The_Art_of_Reflection/
Nice, experience is quite smooth. But it does feel a bit like a tech demo. I want to know why I am trying to get out of this wizard home. Maybe he is also walking around here and I need to hide my movement from him as well later in the game :)
Jun 16 2024
prev sibling parent reply cookiewitch <artha samerion.com> writes:
On Friday, 24 May 2024 at 17:45:31 UTC, Lewis wrote:
 Hello! Not sure if it's of interest, but I've been developing a 
 3D game and engine in D for a few years, and finally have a 
 demo up on Steam for anyone interested in poking around 
 (Windows only unfortunately).

 [...]

 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2290770/The_Art_of_Reflection/
I've just played through the demo, it's impressive! It's a pleasantly confusing experience and my brain hurts now. Also, it works perfectly fine on Linux via Proton.
Jun 18 2024
parent Mike Shah <mshah.475 gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 18 June 2024 at 08:49:57 UTC, cookiewitch wrote:
 On Friday, 24 May 2024 at 17:45:31 UTC, Lewis wrote:
 Hello! Not sure if it's of interest, but I've been developing 
 a 3D game and engine in D for a few years, and finally have a 
 demo up on Steam for anyone interested in poking around 
 (Windows only unfortunately).

 [...]

 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2290770/The_Art_of_Reflection/
I've just played through the demo, it's impressive! It's a pleasantly confusing experience and my brain hurts now. Also, it works perfectly fine on Linux via Proton.
Added to my wishlist, as I always like to share with others projects built in D :)
Jun 18 2024