DEV Community: bileyg

The think must be checked out!

bileyg — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 11:54:22 +0000

Gitui is a blazing fast terminal git interface

Waylon Walker ・ Jan 17 '21

AI images for usage in hobby 3D racing game

bileyg — Sat, 24 May 2025 11:51:37 +0000

Hi!
This post is about how I use AI for my hobby project: 80's style 3D arcade racing game (with stripped road but in full 3d).
So, Aftificial Intellected Artists are much better than some freelance human buttheads now, but the usage of AI (as I think) is limited now. As for me AI draws something like images from dreams, but not the images from reality. And It's quite hard to get something well defined...
Some month ago I've decided to revive my "Turbo Era" with brighter colour palette, better trackside objects and new menues. But how to get good atmospheric background if I'm not and artist? I thought that some atmospheric blurred stuff with skies, forest and hills is completely it to be done with AI.

That's it. I made bunch of backgrounds and then put game stuff like cars and text on them in Figma. Result is quite good. I'm satisfied.

The harders task is to select proper backroung in case you have double dozen of them)

Pseudo 3d racing

bileyg — Sun, 05 May 2024 23:24:10 +0000

I have the base for pseudo 3d arcade game. Couple of days ago I made port of Buntine's "Swervin Mervin" game from Python2 to Python3. Now I can develop it in normal and contemporary way.

Smoke for pseudo 3d arcade

bileyg — Sun, 05 May 2024 22:56:20 +0000

Today I spent some time creating smoke for car sprites of my pseudo 3d racing arcade. Smoke is not obligatory stuff, but today I saw that my son (testing the game) like the appearing of the smoke very much. So I decided to pay more attention to it and made my best to draw it as good as I can. First of all I studied Pinterest to see how people draw drift smoke. I got couple of ideas, made couple of attempts and that's it! I have the smoke. Now I need to make second picture to animate it)

Is Blender Game Engine 2.79 still actual for indie?

bileyg — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 19:16:23 +0000

The best thing that can happen with your hobby is when you have ability to not turn it to business. Joke? May be, but only then you can do the things you want.
I started gamedev as hobby in far 2007. These times I knew nothing about gamedev any any kind of software development, but I had strong skills of 3D design for construction & some memories about ZX-Spectrum Basic programming. I remember that I found good article in magazine about Blender 2.40: opensourse 3D designing suite with integrated game engine. Of cause I'd tested it and fell in love at a moment.
Next year I and my spouse Asya released our first 3D racing game "Distrakt"
Distrakt — dozen cars & 3 locations with photographic textures

The next project Skidrules was Blender 2.49 based. It used GLSL and had much interesting look than Distrakt.
Skidrules with GLSL shading

In 2011 I and my friend Daniel from Stockholm, Sweden released
game "Skidrules.Burning". It was Unity 2.5 project with good graphix (for indie game) an advanced physic.
Skidrules. Burning — Unity 2.5 project

Although collaboration with Daniel was amazing, I understood that Gamedev became hard work for me with Unity & C#, meanwhile Blender with Python gave fun, joy & pleasure. I took a pause for several years with it concerning on my profession.
I back to my hobby in 2017 with project Societé Turbo. It was collaboration with my friend, polish artist Marcin Adamczyk. And yes it was the Blender based game again! From this moment I decided that I love the process itself. So Blender & Python is exactly that I need.

Turbo Era. Car selection screen

My latest finished project is Turbo Era — retro racing arcade. As dizzy as classic Outrun & Crazy Cars but in 3d. Of cause it's Blender 2.79b based.

Working on Turbo Era I figured out that today in 2024 graphix & effects aren't main aims of indie developer or hobbyist. It's useless to aim on big project with tonns of cars, huge locations and movie-like picture. And naturally you shoudn't recreate latest NFS. I suppose that succesfull indie project has:

Style
Interesting idea
Humour And it definitely filled with love. Also the good indie game is kinda punk, you know! If not, what that's all for?!

Blender Game Engine has limits. Creating game you should always think about performance. So tonns of objects on screen are your enemies. Minimalism is your friend. The same is true for the indiegamedev process at all. BGE limits help you to keep right development limits.

In my blog, I'll tell you about my experience of creation my new BGE-project "Paddock". This will be not a game, but base for a games including all the mechanics I made in my previous projects. For example:

Advanced car physics
Pseudo AI driven cars
Cars modding mechanism
Start/Finish objects
Levels scenario mechanism
Replay system ...etc.