Python script to pack a set of textures in to one larger texture to optimise rendering in game engines or for making sprite sheets for websites.
Many years ago I bought a Current Cost meter. Infact it was so long ago now that they have called my version The Classic. I wanted to see how much electrical energy all my servers, home computers and gadgets were using.
In order to build the assets for my games I have a series of python scripts that know how to take files TexturePacker, Tiled, and Blender and build them for use within the engine. My main platform is OS X and it has good terminal support and more importantly I am comfortable working with the terminal. The artist I work with is not so comfortable and he works on Windows where cmd.exe is painfully outdated and basically useless.
To counter this I wrote a small Python Tkinter script do display a window, text area, some checkboxes and a build button to make it a bit easier for him to work. Crucially it makes it easier to notice build errors and send me bug reports.
I've settled on using Blender 2.6 both as a level editor and modeller for my next game (code name BBM). BBM is a 2D game but modelling the characters and rendering the sprites will save a lot of time. Blender isn't the best level editor but it's pretty close and suits my needs...
Previously the Execution Unit website used Wordpress. I was quite happy with Wordpress and I still think it's a great blogging platform. My problem with it is that I wanted more than a blogging platform, I wanted a platform I could easily extend. I"m thinking of offering a free version of MiniTune with a time limited trial so I needed a platform that could deal with generating temporary keys and...
Stripification is the process of turning lists of triangles in an arbitrary order into as many lists of triangles that contain adjacent edges. There is a great explanation of a triangle strip of wikipedia.
Part of my Art pipeline for Tentacles is to import a directory of 3DS files. Each of these files is a map piece and the map pieces are instanced to create a map. That way I can store the geometry for a shack once but instance it across the level many times with a unique transform (scale, translation and rotation)...
Sometimes you need to write code that loads python at runtime. Plugin architectures are a good example of this. Plugins allow extensibility but more importantly (for me at least) they enforce a strict API. Anyway, I've written this code a few times so I thought I'd modularize it.