Matrices and vectors

Having learned about matrices and vector or rather revised about the we began to implement their properties and behaviour in c++. Our tasks for the next few weeks was to essentially write both marix and vector classes for our application. These were to include all the fundemental features exhibited by both matrices and vectors. For instance vectors should include methods for dot product, and methods for cross product(vector multiplication) and much more. As for matrices, well they should include methods for transformation matrices, methods for rotation matrices and many other methods.

Most of this would be used in the following week in which we were required to comeup with a camera class which would be used to view our scene when the final renderer was built. Not only that but these special vector and matrix classes would also be used to tranform our objects in our scene during the rendering phase.

Intro To 3D Graphics: Our goal

WEEK1

In week 1 we had an overview of what we want to have as an outcome at the end of the module. Things discussed were coordinate systems. This is basically how our virtual world can be represented in our computer. We discussed how we can use the cartesian coordinate system. cartesian space can have 2 planes, the x and y planes for 2 dimensions or in the third dimension we introduce another plane the z axis. With the z axis however you have to decide on whether you wish to use the left hand system(this is when the positive z axis is into the plane) or the right handed system(this is when the positive z axis is out of the plane).

So you have to make sure you select a system to use and remain consistent with that system. We also discussed about data sampling for 3d geometry and about how these points to be plotted are stored in the geometry.

GDT:Five On Treasure Island Brief

GAME DEVELOPMENT TECHNIQUES

BRIEF:
For the GDT module we have to do a total conversion of unreal 2004. The game we are making has to be based on one of the famous five books by Enid Blyton. I am basing my game on Five on Treasure Island. Now this is the first book in the series. This book tells the story of how the five meet for the first time. It is also about their forst adventure together.

In this book the four children and Timmy the dog get to visit a shipwreck, castle on Kirrin Island aswell as the castle dungeons in search of treasure in the form of Gold.

I chose this because it does have great potential as a game. The children visit diverse environments as I stated previously which is great because his automatically gives me great templets interms of level design. For instance I could have a level in which they are on the beach and then they could go on the shipwreck and later on go onto the island. This makes it easier for me to have diversity in my levels making sure that the player doesnot get bored with seeing the same kind of environments over and over again. A brief overview of my design document and how I intend to implement my designs will be available on my next post.

INTEL X86 MICROPROCESSOR FOR THE XBOX

The intel x86 microprocessor is a register machine that uses a CISC( Complex Instruction Set computer) instruction set. Which basically means the intel x86 chip in the xbox stores and executes complex instructions which perform multiple tasks such as arithmetic operations sequentially(www.siyobik.info, 2009).

Example machine code:

mov eax, 1
mov ebx, 10
xor ecx, ecx
our_loop:
add ecx, eax
inc eax
comp eax, ebx
jile our_loop

Most of theselines represent an instruction that gets executed by the processor.

The code in C++:

int calculate_sum(int limit)
{
int sum = 0;

for(int i = 1; i <= limit; i++)
{
sum += i;
return sum;
}
}

The instruction pointer (this is what contains the address of the current instruction being executed) is stored in a 32bit register(www.siyobik.info, 2009).

More info on the x86 chip at: LINK

One homebrew disassembler for the x86 chip is known as OllyDbg developed by Oleh Yushun. Its a 32bit assembler level analysing debugger for mcrosoft windows which emphasises on binary code analysis. More info and free download available at: LINK