It’s not as bad as I used to belive. With the help of André stuff is moving along a lot better then it would have otherwise. Just small tips on like how to make sure a “constructor’ish” function only runs when the scene exists and not otherwise. Some hints on input, events and other stuff that might no be clear if you come from the c++ swamp.
Laser Ingvar
July 7, 2009Some friends put together a rapid prototyping contest, mainly for people who used to go to my old school. Due to time limits I had not the chance to do something decent but anyway I finished a Project.
I give you LASER INGVAR.
http://files.getdropbox.com/u/815606/Laser%20Ingvar.rar
Ps. It’s really bad.
A post about reflections on the past and NoMoreSweden
June 25, 2009I am heading back to Sweden at the end of the month, working in england have made me realize that the brittish game industry is a industry indeed.
The comparison I give to people is often, compare MC Donald’s with a family owned fast food place that got it’s own family recipies. Sure the family owned place won’t be as main stream, it won’t collect the kids by the thousands. But anyone with taste buds will realize it’s something different, and if it’s good it’s probably really good. Thats the difference between a Industry and something personal and cool
This time in England has made me realize what I miss about game development.
1. Talking to people I know are in a simular mindsets as me.
2. Working on a game I personally would play or enjoy. Or at least with code that educational and that I can enjoy.
3. Work on a random theme during a few days and see what happens.
4. Being deprived of sleep and senses just by having fun working on something.
What did I find by pure luck?
www.nomoresweden.com a game jam with hopefully a few spots still open at the point when I signed up.
The target group size would be at max 30 people. The latest blog update said there was 25 people signed up, with some luck 5 more haven’t signed up between then and now. Still waiting for the confirmation email, hoping that I will get a spot.
Long time no post.
March 26, 2009Ok. Here is a update on whats been happening in the world of schnacken.
Leveldata can now be changed and reloaded during runtime. Thomas have supplied me with new meshs, materials and textures. I have a created a BooleanCollisionTrigger, that can be set to react on collision from certain materials. I have also decided to add a AI pong Level to the game to try some of the logic of saving and loading data between levels since they are recreated/destroy on entry/exits.
The next plan once the trigger is working is to set up a level where the sound can be turned on or off. I also need to implement doors, that can be opened or closed, used to move between levels in the game.
Physics physics physics.
February 24, 2009I got collision feedback working the way it should. When two objects collide they get notified of each other, the function they end up in will tell them of the other objects, what current shape of that objects physical body that intersected with what shape of their physical body. All shapes does contain material data. So i will know if it’s just a sensor, metal, sword or chicken feather that collided with bone, mud, grass, ground, metal, skull, brain or ham.
This allow me to give the proper feedback and reaction from the objects, limiting me to doing jumps when the feet touch the ground, putting some tiny stars over the head of a character if the head collides with anything at high speed. See if the weapon collides with a shield or body. And the possibility to apply damage or particle effects suitable.
The material system will need to be added. It will contain more information for stuff like particles etc. Giving me the possibility to instantly feedback particle and other data as default and specify on specific events.
This system could be increased to handle bombs, since it’s just one big sensor with the bomb or explosion tag.
Interesting things could come out of this and so far it feels like a sensible stable system.
Hello Friends.
February 18, 2009It’s been a long time. Hard work… at work and that will probably go one for a bit longer. I’ll try to make more regular updates as soon as everything is done. My 12 month review is tomorrow, we’ll see how that goes.
Dominion
February 9, 2009I was role-playing this weekend, and when we where done Dave suggested a game of Dominion.
This is my first experience of dominion and I was quite surprised. Even if the game contains a lots of cards the basic rules are quite simple.
1. You need victory points to win.
2. You got Gold that you buy new cards with.
3. You draw untill you have 5 cards on hand
4. You can only do one action and one buy per turn unless the Cards you play say otherwise (+1 action, +1 buy, +1 Card,+1 gold)
It’s essentially a game of build a good deck of cards. The victory points can be bought, but the cards will take up space in your deck (One turn I hade 1 copper and 4 VP cards in my hand) At the end of your turn, you have to drop your entire hand into the discard and draw 5 new cards. Once your draw pile is out of cards you reshuffle your discard pile and draw 5 more cards again. The same thing apply if you play a “draw more cards” card and don’t have any more cards to draw.
The Player winning the game can choose to replace a existing Action card with another type of action card from the box. This will reshape the game for the next turn. (removing the moat and adding a thief apparently makes gold cards worthless because everybody need to throw their gold away) Instead the wood cuter becomes the most valuable card since it gives +2 gold when played and it can’t be stolen. The only way to block the thief was with the moat that’s been replaced. So as you learn to play the game you are still being faced with new challenges and changing game play.
I want to get my own version.
The game industries Invisible.
February 6, 2009Each day coders work hard to implement design and ideas, support artists desires, and make the game overall possible to play.
But when you watch interviews from companies and hear from people working in the industry these are most often PR, Design or artists. A coder a never or rarely seen.
Sure you can use the stereo typical view that programmers don’t like the attention and thus doesn’t appear, or that code is not intresting to watch at.
News flash, the code is what will make you know if the thing you are looking at is a well polished dead carcass or a good solid product. These are also the people who will encourage people to seek their way into the industry, not because just writing code is fun but also because they like almost everybody else, love games, want good games, and probably have their visions for good games.
Let the programmers out, give us more focus on the code side of things. People should know that game making is not just design and art.
Ben’s Band
February 6, 2009Got a link to Ben at works myspace page for the band he is playing in. Some quite decent stuff.
The Legend of Engine.
February 4, 2009Being a long term Zelda-fan I considered the fact of trying to build a Zelda-style Engine where most of the data can be managed trough xml. Kind of a easy introductionto make a adventure game, NPC interaction, swing a weapon on a button, or throw/shoot something that you equipped etc, possibility to apply area effect to a object and check for said effect on objects. So for instance a bomb would have the tag explosive, a easy xml change to the object layout can make a enemy take a specific amount of damage from a “explosion” or make a object crumble and be destroyed.
This would be something for the future if I should have the time to implement it, many other projects in the way first.
