The time between the last post and this one was longer than I expected. I wanted to make a post earlier, but then I started on something neat and decided to hold off posting until I gathered my thoughts about it. The result is a very long post about two topics: old display simulation and an audio engine update, complete with anecdotes of projects I did in the days of yore. Brace yourself. At least there are lots of pictures to look at.
Old Display Simulation
I've experimented with a few graphical overlays that will make the game window of Gonna Catcha look like an old CRT display. As with the audio capabilities of Gonna Catcha, this is something new to me, so it will require some research. I've already found some blog posts that talk about it, but the methods shown used pixel shaders, which GameMaker: Studio doesn't support (well, at least not yet).
To get technical, you could code up your own pixel shader functionality into a GameMaker application using the draw and get pixel functions, but it will be very, very computationally expensive (i.e. it will make the game run very slowly). I've done something similar with GameMaker before...
*flashback*
I've created a raytracer that renders several spheres on the screen in real-time without using GameMaker's 3D functions, just the 2D functions and mighty 3D geometry and trigonometry powers. It could render at low resolutions fine (like less than 50x50), but once it goes beyond that point, it slows to a crawl:
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| This 50x50 scene runs at 8 frames per second... |
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| ...and this full-resolution frame takes about 18 seconds to render. Yeeeah, I think I'll stick with the built-in 3D functions for now. |
