GrimBall is a fast paced 3D action game demo by Custom Red Software Studios. It focuses a lot on light puzzle solving, fast paced combat, and overcoming obstacles. It’s a cross between elements from Sonic the Hedgehog, Marble Madness, and old-school shoot-em-ups.
This game was the first game developed on Custom Red’s in-house engine XPA based on DirectX 7 and Open Dynamics Engine for physics simulations . My primary roll in this project was as a programmer working with visual fx, gameplay, physics and artificial intelligence. The game features real-time soft shadows and color bleeding on the static environment using vertex based precomputed radiance transfer (PRT). This was a bleeding edge lighting technolgy at the the time and we had to collaborate with Microsoft to make it work with out technique for occulsion culling (which they hadn’t thought of).
Fun fact is that the game features a day/night cycle where the sun moves across the hemisphere, dramatically changing the ambiance and demonstrating the soft realtime shadows from the PRT, but the game was too fast paced so people didn’t even notice it.
It rendered well on a Geforce 4 using vertex shader 1.1 and no pixel shaders. The game had a pixel shader 2.0 pipe-line as well with added normal mapping and better lighting. The first prototype was finished in the year 2004 and the second prototype in 2005.
Persons involved in this project
