Well anyway, the program's called Skyscraper, and is a complete first-person 3D skyscraper simulator, and is currently being rewritten and redesigned in C++ (the stable version was written in VB6 with the TrueVision3D graphics engine, while the new one is in C++ and will eventually use the CrystalSpace3D engine). The current stable version simulates a building I designed in 2002; the 138-story Triton Center - the new rewrite will support custom-made buildings. I'm a Christian who lives in the west suburbs of Chicago, and went to Taylor University (Christian college in Indiana) last year. I recently finished writing a prospectus for the project, which details the past, present and future of the program. My current specifications call for the simulation system to be abstracted into linked libraries, a building designer system along with a data file loader that loads custom buildings into the realtime simulation, single-player capabilities maybe similar to games like Sim Tower and Yoot Tower (sequel), and even multiplayer FPS stuff (if you read the prospectus, you'll really get the full picture of what this program could be like in multiplayer mode). I'm also trying to contact the maker of Sim Tower & Yoot Tower to see if this project looks interesting to him.

So my project site's here:
http://www.tliquest.net/skyscraper

Here's some pictures:

Hope you guys like it

Ryan

quote:

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Originally posted by Gump:
By the FPS counter I'm guessing you either have a low end system or you currently are not using any occlusion culling. So this is sort of like a 3D Sims Tower?

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Yeah those pictures were taken on my laptop, which has a lousy video card. The program has a 20 FPS frame limiter because the elevator and movement timings were adjusted to match my laptop speed, but I'm thinking about increasing the limit. The game is supposed to eventually be like a 3D Sim Tower, but right now it's just a full first-person 3D simulation.

Ryan

quote:

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Originally posted by Gump:
I'd suggest at least 30 FPS. 20 FPS just doesn't feel smooth with a mouse.

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Oh I know - it was because my laptop wouldn't get over 20 with the app lol. My new desktop machine gets a lot more though. Actually, you should be able to turn off the frame limiter from within the program, but you can't set it at another value (I'd have to recompile the program to do that). I'll probably tinker with it tomorrow (well today technically lol) and set it at 30 max and readjust the elevator and camera motion timings for that.

Ryan

So right now the program is written in Visual Basic 6, and uses the TrueVision3D graphics engine, and so it is only runnable on Windows.
The rewrite will be in generic C++, with the wxWidgets toolkit, and with the CrystalSpace3D engine - and so it'll be easy to port it to other platforms such as the MacOS, Linux, BSD, Solaris, IRIX, etc (I use all of those btw haha). The wxWidgets toolkit will allow it to use the native operating system's look and feel.

When you run the program, mess around a little with the Control Panel that pops up - you can do a lot of crazy stuff with it

Here's the app's skyline shot:

Ryan

[This message has been edited by eventhorizon (edited May 30, 2005).]

Long time no see. As soon as I saw the topic "Skyscraper Project", I wondered if that was you, and it was.

Anyway, in case you don't remember me offhand, I graduated the year before you got there -- I was introduced to you as "Fatty III".

I'm still around, living in northern Indiana, still working on Christian game programming in my hobby time. I'm currently working on a spiffy MUD engine for use in Christian MUDs (it's got lots of cool things like dynamically compiled scripts and a pretty cool framework), but staying busy with other stuff too.

Anyway, good to see you found CCN also! Welcome!

In Christ,
clint
1EW

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http://www.includingjudas.com/christiangame.html

quote:

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Originally posted by HanClinto:
Hey Ryan!

Long time no see. As soon as I saw the topic "Skyscraper Project", I wondered if that was you, and it was.

Anyway, in case you don't remember me offhand, I graduated the year before you got there -- I was introduced to you as "Fatty III".

I'm still around, living in northern Indiana, still working on Christian game programming in my hobby time. I'm currently working on a spiffy MUD engine for use in Christian MUDs (it's got lots of cool things like dynamically compiled scripts and a pretty cool framework), but staying busy with other stuff too.

Anyway, good to see you found CCN also! Welcome!

In Christ,
clint
1EW

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Awesome - yeah I haven't seen you in a while Clint I was at school a few times recently visiting my sister (had to help her move out and stuff). But my development on Skyscraper has slowed down for about a year, and is now picking back up again. I'm finally porting it to C++, so this should be interesting

Ryan

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Try to explain divine election, and you may lose your mind, try to explain it away and you could lose your soul (my youth pastor quoting somebaody he can't remeber)

quote:

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Originally posted by fingolfin:
did/do you guys like taylor?

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Sorry, off-topic, but do you mean Taylor University College and Seminary? If so, I live just a few minutes from there. Anyone who is/will be in the area is free to contact me, and we can meet for chicken wings and to talk about coding or whatever.

And I also think the skyscraper project is very cool.

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Brian

quote:

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Originally posted by BrianT:
Sorry, off-topic, but do you mean Taylor University College and Seminary? If so, I live just a few minutes from there. Anyone who is/will be in the area is free to contact me, and we can meet for chicken wings and to talk about coding or whatever.

And I also think the skyscraper project is very cool.

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Well it's Taylor University in Upland Indiana - I went there last year (I was at a local community college for 3 years before that), and I'm currently at home (Taylor's become too expensive for me, but my sister goes there).
http://www.taylor.edu

Also I'm glad you like my project In December 2002, my intern/co-op term at Argonne National Laboratory (outside Chicago) expired, and so I was back at home looking for work; since I had tons of time (and was only taking a few classes at the local college) I spent a large portion of my time writing Skyscraper (it was mostly written from late December to around April, and then development slowed down during the summer and also when I left for Taylor)

Ryan

[This message has been edited by eventhorizon (edited May 31, 2005).]

Well Fingolfin, I certainly liked Taylor (largely due to that's where my wife and I met, though we didn't date each other in college, we were good friends and stayed in touch after graduation and got married later). I think they have a very strong physics and computer science department, and I learned a lot there. Looking back, I really respect and appreciate the way the professors there do such a good job of integrating their faith and profession. That's one of the most valuable things I got from there I think -- just knowing that you can be a computer/physics diehard and still be a committed Christian.

I graduated with a degree in Computer Engineering, which is basically a cross between Computer Science and Physics Engineering. Very tough major, but I'm really glad I did that one as opposed to just straight computer science. I got a lot more math and physics, and it was valuable to me to take those classes which I otherwise wouldn't have.

Anyway, that's my experience from Taylor. I hope we didn't take this thread too off-topic.

Anyway, Ryan, I'm about halfway in between Chicago and Ft. Wayne. It's just a train ride for me to get to Chicago from where I live. If you're ever out this way and feel like having a Christian coding session, look me up.

--clint

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http://www.includingjudas.com/christiangame.html

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Skyscraper Prospectus
Ryan Thoryk, 5/29/05

The Skyscraper Project originally began with the simplistic design of a 138-story skyscraper called the Triton Center that I completed on May 4, 2002, using the MyHouse for Windows 6.5 architectural designer application. Later that year I started tinkering with the TrueVision3D graphics engine through Visual Basic 6, and made a small building with a simple but working elevator. This became Skyscraper versions 0.1 and 0.2. I then continued to enhance it, and decided to try to simulate the entire Triton Center. I eventually finished the entire external structure of the building, and still had only 1 elevator. A single shaft bank was made, which housed 10 elevators (5 on each side), and then I eventually duplicated it to increase the number of elevators to 40, divided into 4 shaft banks. All the other parts of the program were made and enhanced, and I started to hit limitations that were not only in my program design, but also in the Visual Basic language itself. So after version 0.96 I forked the code and started redesigning the core of the program, but it became too unstable and needed a great deal of work (this was originally going to be version 0.97); so I took 0.96, fixed it up, and released it as 1.0. I renamed 0.97 to 1.1 alpha, which is the current development project. I rewrote somewhere around 25% of Skyscraper, and then after long periods of other stuff going on in my life, I decided to stop the VB rewrite and start porting the entire program over to C++ (I considered the C# and Java languages before choosing C++). The new C++ version is now at the beginning stages, and I am mainly brushing up on my C++ knowledge before continuing development.

Scalability and expandability factors were considered as early as summer 2003, but were postponed until later (and they’re now part of the design plans of the C++ version). In 2003 many people were complaining about how Skyscraper only simulated a single building, and couldn’t allow people to design others. I explained to them that Skyscraper was still in an early stage, and that the ability to load other buildings as data files is nowhere near easy. Many people also were practically drooling over the thought of having multiplayer deathmatch support in the program, but I explained that I needed to finish more of the main simulation before I start working on multiplayer features. For a while I also had the idea of creating a building designer applet inside the program, which would allow the user to create their own building and save it into a data file, which could then be loaded by the simulation. The original ideas called for a simplistic CAD-like interface that would allow the person to visually create what I had manually coded. I expanded on that idea recently by planning a single player portion of the simulation engine, which would allow the user to create the building during the simulation, and would make it operate very similar to both Sim Tower and Yoot Tower (sequel). All of these ideas will require a massive amount of coding, and so a team of developers would greatly help out.

Skyscraper version 2.0 (of which 1.1 alpha is part of) calls for a highly realistic, real-time, 3D first person simulation of buildings loaded via data files. It also calls for a building designer application that will allow users to create their own buildings and simulate them, single-player elements similar to Sim Tower and Yoot Tower, and multi-player elements such as deathmatch or capture-the-flag scenarios. Everything possible will be simulated, including all the regular parts of buildings (rooms, elevators, stairs, etc), but also crawlspaces, air ducts, elevator shafts, elevator escape hatches, breakable windows, pipe shafts, and lots more. The Visual Basic version of 1.1 alpha currently has an abstraction layer for the 3rd party 3D graphics engine, so that the current one (TrueVision3D) can be replaced by another (CrystalSpace 3D) with very little effort. The entire building simulation system will be contained in a series of DLL files, and is currently called the Scalable Building Simulator, or SBS. The program’s application file (EXE file) will only be the graphical front-end for SBS; everything else will be either handled internally by SBS or by other DLL libraries that would use the SBS API. This way, the program becomes an actual backend simulation engine that can be linked with other applications. It will use the wxWidgets library as the GUI toolkit, thus eventually allowing it to be seamlessly multiplatform (for Windows, MacOS, Linux, BSD, Solaris, IRIX, etc).
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