Simulating squishy pixel-art spaceships on the GPU

http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/pixelsim/

by mkeeter • 12 years ago

89 18 12 years ago

mattkeeter.com

DanAndersen• 12 years ago

Very neat! Any ideas if this would run without much trouble in WebGL?

brittonrt• 12 years ago

If it's running in a shader, which it is, it should work just fine via GLSL and WebGL

vortico• 12 years ago

I agree. This would be great in a WebGL implementation.

glxybstr• 12 years ago

neat effect i suppose, but i can't imagine it looking very good in-game. doesnt this go against the whole style of pixel art, being aligned to a grid, low palette colors and keeping the same pixel resolution throughout? i see way too many things that change pixel sizes even through the same sprite. i think this would be better suited to larger svg or even pre-rendered images.

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

I had the same thought. If it's meant to look cartoony it might be better to just deform a simple box/balloon and map that to the sprite. This is worthy work, I just think it's a little too realistic for the whimsical context and ends up failing to satisfy either criterion.

fit2rule2• 12 years ago

I wonder if perhaps you're not overlooking the trees for the forest here - maybe this effect doesn't apply too well to an 8-bit shooter ship, but there are certainly ways this effect can be utilized in other interesting 8-bit/pixel-style forms. Just adding structural deformation to a platformer, for example, opens up all sorts of interesting new dimensions - between the blocks. Sort of like Gish, I would suppose, and games like it ..

100982• 12 years ago

I guess it depends an the game itself, it might not look too good if you just drop the effect into an existing game, but if the game is designed with this in mind it might actually be quite interesting.

kosmic_k• 12 years ago

I could see an indie game using this to great effect.

koliber• 12 years ago

I think it is an interesting visual effect. It clearly breaks the constraints which you mentioned. However, with the popularity of blocky Minecraft-themed lush toys, I can see how breaking such constraints while preserving the general pixel (or in the latter case voxel) aesthetic may be desirable.

Dove• 12 years ago

It looks wrong to me because they're spaceships, which I expect to be fairly rigid.

If it were a game about organic things, it would probably look more 'right' than a static sprite.

gcb02• 12 years ago

this is awesome on so many levels. but a spaceship is the worst example! :) something organic would awe much more... well it does have more organic examples at the end.

fit2rule2• 12 years ago

I've been trying to think how I would apply this deformation to a shooter-style game (I agree its a poor example perhaps) and I think it would be quite relevant as an effect to be applied during acceleration/travelling .. and also, one place it would be interesting as an effect would of course be: Asteroid Fields. I imagine an implementation of Asteroids which utilizes this effect for full mining-ship-plundering-the-billions-of-bits style gameplay. Imagine your little ship has to dig through every Asteroid to get the other little, squishy bits, buried there-in ..

gcb02• 12 years ago

when i saw the spaceship i assumed you were going to use if for a 'entering light speed' kinda of animation

cardiffspaceman• 12 years ago

It's true that the technique would really enhance organic shapes. I see applying it to 8-bit pixel art spaceships as a cutification, and within the right overall design I think it would make sense.

malkia• 12 years ago

This might be useful in minecraft itself - to enhance a bit the animation.

100982• 12 years ago

That spaceship looks... suggestive. Nevertheless, this is a really interesting hack, good work!

Qantourisc• 12 years ago

I'm not sure I'd like it, I would be compensating for the shift in mass. (What is on screen is not what is being simulated, or are the distorted pixels also used in the physics calculations ?) Other then that I can see it working very well in games with "jelly" art style.

Umn55• 12 years ago

This could be used to make an art tool.

Simulating squishy pixel-art spaceships on the GPU

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