This was a tough one to track… Ended up using GL Monitor to list all the calls and looking at them in detail, trying to figure out what was happening there…
The problem was the redundant texture switch system.
To minimize texture changes, before I set a texture I see if that texture is already set on a texture unit, and don’t set it if it is… Here, it resulted in the issue (for reasons I’m not 100% sure on) because the ambient occlusion texture was not being setup except at the shader level (glUniform1i). As soon as I got rid of the redundancy test, it worked perfectly… As I said, not sure on what happens because of that (the texture was set), or why it only happens under Mac…
Now to play the beginning of the game under Linux to check for bugs and to package this so the artist can play it and test it and get a feel for it so I can start overhauling the UI.
Now listening to “Veto” by “Heaven Shall Burn”
Today I was trying to finalize the Mac version so I could send it to the UI artist, and I found a really weird bug…
So, sometimes the ship landing looks like this:
So, first guess: shader… But this only happens on the Mac build, it works fine on the Linux and Windows build… Still, might be the shader, so I played around it… This is where things got freaky: sometimes I’d add a comment to the shader and it would work, others it would stay the same. Some times I’d change some code (skip a rendering pass or something), and it would work, others it would stay the same…
After a couple of hours, I still wasn’t clear on exactly what was causing the problem, except for the fact that it only happens to that particular object. The only difference between this object and the remaining ones is that this one has an additional texture to be used as emissive (which is what actually is displayed).
After a bit more tests, I arrive to another weird conclusion: the problem is timing dependent. If I fly from the Skydancer to the planet as soon as the save game loads, the ship displays properly and will display properly until I fly up and down again… If I wait some seconds in the Skydancer before flying down, it will display wrong…
I’m not exactly sure on what that means (can’t figure out a relation between time and the shader), but it’s another piece of the puzzle… Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to figure it out!
Now listening to “Hydra” by “Within Temptation”
Link of the Day: Whooooooo, Deadpool!
Now all that remains is to decide on when/how to launch it…
The idea was to do it ASAP, but now I’m thinking if it’s smart, since all my development plans are a bit up in the wind…
Anyway, back to map editing…
Now listening to “Heaven Still Burns” by “Absentia”
Link of the Day: The animation on this demo is amazing:
So this is what I’m staring at for the last 3 hours… 
This sort of web video production services app is so slow, and my computer, while not AMAZING, it’s quite good… It takes forever to adjust stuff to the audio…
Tomorrow I’ll do a final render on this, hopefully, and then I have to think on WHEN to launch the trailer… My initial idea was ASAP, but with all the changes in my life, I’m not even sure if the game will be done by the end of this year or not…
Now listening to “The Inner Circle” by “Evergrey”
Link of the Day: Well, lately I haven’t had much time for the internet (hence the lack of links of the day), but here’s a cool one: this is rock’n’roll!
So, as I said, I received the amazing music for the trailer, so now it’s time to adjust the timings, etc.
Problem with that is that my Premiere is acting a bit wonky… Before I just pressed “play” and I could see a segment to make small adjustments… But now, I press play, it takes FOREVER and then the video just lags…
This will take forever this way!
Now listening to “The Quantum Enigma” by “Epica”
Ok, this took a bit more in the last 5% (especially because I don’t have much time to work, with all that’s going on)…
Anyway, game finalized and sent!
It’s fun for 5 minutes… 
Now to get back into developing Gateway!
Now listening to “Evocation I” by “Eluveitie”
Today I worked about 7 more hours on the game, and I finished everything I wanted, including some bonus features in terms of gameplay (out of scope for the project, but I just had to do it)…
So, presenting: “Ghosts of the Nether” (because I’m terrible at naming stuff)…
I still want to try to figure out where I got the graphics (so I can have a credits screen and maybe release this, if it’s under a free license or something), and compile this on a Mac (might take me a couple of hours, since I’m not as skilled with OSX as I am with Windows)…
Also, received today the music for the trailer! It’s amazing, so can’t wait to have time for that (hopefully I’ll do that this week)…
Now listening to “Greatest Hits” by “Peter Gabriel”
And I have the game complete… of course, as they say, the last 10% take 90% of the time… 
Besides the polishing of effects, etc, also need to work on the menus, and the packaging (making sure this works without installers, and they’ve requested a Mac version if possible as well)…
This is the sum total of about 13 hours of work so far… Expected to have more done in 13 hours, but I’m always too optimistic regarding development times. With my current schedule, I have about another 8 hours or so available to finish this, so let’s hope that’s enough!
When this post goes up, I’ll be on my way to the Vagos Open Air for 4 days of metal and relaxation, yay! So yes, I’m speaking from the past!
Now listening to “Eternal” by “Samael”
3 more hours of work, and I got a lot of stuff working…
Art is all ripped from the internet (should have kept a list where I ripped stuff from for credits… If you’re the author of any of this, sorry!).
Now listening to “Midian” by “Cradle of Filth”
Well, today I didn’t have any time to work on Gateway, since I had to work on a demo for a potential employer…
The challenge is to make a simple clone of a casual game in a couple of days… I can only use SDL for this, and I’ve never used SDL before so today was mostly about looking at tutorials and build a micro-engine (yes, another one) for this.
So, tadam, here’s my test application! Text, particle system, alpha blended textured sprites, mouse and keyboard control, besides a small class structure.
Not brilliant, but it will have to do… Tomorrow I’ll get started on the game itself, this was just 3 hours or so of work
Worst case scenario, just learnt another API (which isn’t terrible, to be honest), best case scenario it gives me one more option for my future… Let’s see…
Now listening to “Instrumental Core”
