What are you doing in game development today?

[baka]

I'm playing with XNA! I've decided I like C#. The syntax and libraries just feel a lot cleaner than C++. You look at a patch of code, and there's a lot more words and a lot less punctuation and capital letters. ^^

I've started writing an "engine" with it. I put that in quotes because I'm not doing any design other than thinking through individual components quickly before writing some code, and it's not going to be very efficient or versatile, but it's a good learning experience. The major components that I'm writing at the moment are a logging service, a 2d gui system and scenegraph (not started that last one yet).

I'm glad I've got a laptop to do this on, because I'm going on four roughly eleven hour flights in the next month, and I can be nice and productive on them until my two batteries run out.

[twentytwo]

I'm playing with XNA! I've decided I like C#. The syntax and libraries just feel a lot cleaner than C++. You look at a patch of code, and there's a lot more words and a lot less punctuation and capital letters. ^^

Yeah, I love .NET, and although C# is fantastic, I prefer VB.NET myself (much easier to read, even though it has been crippled by recent "additions", or lack thereof...).

Anywho, I've been working on getting a harddrive to install XP SP2 so that I can run XNA Express. I've downloaded a ton of video tutorials and sample code, and it seems pretty well-liked. Personally, I'm looking forward to the Pro release next year. I don't care for Express all that much...

Of course, I'm still waiting for the official release of Vista so I can finally get some XNA-love on that. They promised they'd have it ready for the launch...

***

Agh, talk about disappointments. I've been beating my brains in trying to finish that AI course, and I went and got a D.

Now that's just sad...
-22

[Dracos]

Ew.

Last project I heard about in XNA regretted it a bit because the overhead to let anyone test their stuff was ridiculous.  They mentioned hundreds of megs to get stuff running.  But their final output was pretty spectacular.

I'm heading to california where I'll be working with one of them in flash for some disney stuff.

Dracos

[twentytwo]

Ew.

Last project I heard about in XNA regretted it a bit because the overhead to let anyone test their stuff was ridiculous. They mentioned hundreds of megs to get stuff running. But their final output was pretty spectacular.

Yeah, I've heard similar things. The XNA version of Rocket Commander increased from 5MB of Audio up to 50MB when they transitioned to XNA over MDX (Managed DirectX). I heard most of the complaints are against the new XNA Content Pipeline itself, which is more heavily geared towards Xbox development than Windows.

Honestly, I'm looking forward to trying it out, but I still have my eyes set on Tao's upcoming 2.0 release (OpenGL), as well as the final finished product (XNA Game Studio Pro).

I'm heading to california where I'll be working with one of them in flash for some disney stuff.

Hey, good luck with that. Maybe you can tell us how it goes.

-22

P.S.
As for that D in AI: like usual, I aced all the tests but failed to finish the projects on time... :(

[Dracos]

It turns out I'm replicating old games in flash for this semester.  Hmm, I probably can't even talk much about which I'm doing.  Bothersome nda.

Dracos

[twentytwo]

I probably can't even talk much about which I'm doing. Bothersome nda.

Ah, yes. The classic NDA. Too bad, I was looking forward to hearing about it.

***

As for myself, I started another semester. At my school, the old Game Development teacher decided not to teach the class this semester, so a new one took his place; the new guy agreed to let me sit in on the class, since I have already taken it before. It will be focusing on XNA this semester. Not bad. However, I'm still hoping for something more serious...

I've worked through some simple demos and I'll probably use it to throw together a simple 2D game later in the semester.

Of course, that assumes I find the time for it...
-22

[twentytwo]

Well, I've decided to start work on a simple side-view platform game, along the lines of Castlevania. I'm not sure if I can pull it off in the 7 weeks remaining until my club members expect to see it up and running, but I'm giving myself the benefit of the doubt.

The game's name is: Trials of MOLgenDAN - The Mantis.

With some luck, it'll be more than a name...
-22

[Dracos]

Good luck.  On my end, still working on the nda'ed stuff and this summer going to be doing some work over at crystal dynamics.  Which will probably be strongly NDA'ed given they fired someone just a couple weeks ago for that kind of stuff.

Dracos

[twentytwo]

this summer going to be doing some work over at crystal dynamics

Wow. Makers of Legacy of Kain and the new Tomb Raider. They know their stuff. I'm impressed.

[twentytwo]

Okay. I finished the Design Treatment for my little 2D game. I also started up the Design Document, which ought to be pretty lengthy considering my source material. Joy!

Tentatively Renamed the story to:
Molgendan: Trials of Tetragaia - The Mantis.
It's supposed to be "The Great Mantis", but that sounds kind of wordy...

This story takes place in a recurring world I like to use called Molgendan, complete with its own foreign language (i.e. repeated, organized gibberish). I can't decide whether to call it Molgendan or Tetragaia (the "English" meaning of Molgendan)...

Molgendan is important to me since, after all, it WAS created specifically to be the setting for my theoretical "automated game-maker", which I plan to slowly merge piece-by-piece into this "series" when I get a chance.

But then again, Tetragaia just sounds cool...

Oh, well. Time will tell...
-22

[Dracos]

Automated game maker?

Dracos

[twentytwo]

Automated game maker?

Yeah, you know... that THING I rambled on about over at the rpgamer forums...

Theoretically, I can demonstrate that RPGs do not actually exist as a separate genre and that you can break them down into components of ANY other genre (typically Adventure w/ Battle Simulation). If you could build each of these individual pieces separately and make a set of rules allowing them to be selectively combined automatically, then theoretically, a single program could generate almost any kind of game of any genre... (It has to do with the breakdown of standard games into standard Design Patterns...)

Blah blah blah, I can go on forever... (really, I CAN!)

The point is that I created a world specifically for this idea, which is modelled after the balancing of four forces that seek to move the world in four different directions (if you take their viewpoints to an extreme).

The Tetragaia:
Death Gaia - Conflict, Unrest, War, Revolution
Lumina Gaia - Knowledge, Wisdom, Perfection, Clenliness
Love Gaia - Emotion, Peace, Kindess, Charity
Jester Gaia - Humor, Tricks, Fun, Wackiness

The Phantom King:
Brave Gaius - Justice, Balance, Protection, Resolution

Again, the source material is rather extensive, which means I don't have to create a whole new world for this piece of fantasy.

It sounds like a pipedream, but it's not...
-22

P.S.
What makes the Gaius so interesting is his odd sense of humor, his love of tragedies, his weakness for a good romance story, and his tendency to give hints and suggestions whenever a hero is in need. His servents, the Angelballs, are also the mascot of the series (?) and also serve as a menu-cursor.

[Jason_Miao]

Nothing.


But the planning bug is in me lately, and right now, I'm wondering how easy it would be to program a simple shmup engine (the answer is probably "it's not, moron, or everyone would be doing it").  Still, one of those mental exercises to play around with once I get some free time.

[Dracos]

Actually, that'd probably not be too hard.

Lack of folks doing it doesn't necessarily make it a hard task.

Of course, http://www.klikacademy.com/cc/guillermo/r-shmup/ they have been done before.  Some better than others.

The real dependant point is how feature filled it is and how well it does it.

Dracos

[twentytwo]

I'm wondering how easy it would be to program a simple shmup engine (the answer is probably "it's not, moron, or everyone would be doing it")

shmups are pretty straight-forward and when first attempting game development, most people start with either a shmup or a platformer, due to their relative simplicity over other types of games.

Dracos is right, though, that it depends on what kind of features you want to include in your engine, like Bullet Hell patterns or power-ups (Bullet Hell video: http://shmup.blogspot.com/) (Touhou video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bHAFi49j7k).

I'm assuming that you're not trying to make a generic build-your own shmup engine like that R-shmup and rather just a simple engine for your own use. That kind of engine is relatively easy to build and I suggest you start with something simple like a scrolling background and work up from there.

Oh, and yes. Everyone IS doing it.

***

Speaking of game development...

I'm being forced to delay production on my Molgendan game temporarily due to demands from one of my class projects: a Monopoly game. I've decided to put my efforts into designing a good GUI for it, which I will be implementing in XNA (that way, I can prototype some of my Molgendan features ^_^ ; too birds with one stone). Also, it's a good excuse so I can wait for the next release of the XNA Framework in April before trying to do anything overly complex.

Desired Feature (with tentative name):
FATE - Finite Animation-Transition Engine
:: I'm going to try and make a system that transitions well from one animation to another dynamically based on predefined state transitions, or keyframes.

NOTE: Silly names make it sound more important than it is (much in the same way as quoting someone at the beginning of a story makes an intro seem deeper and more grandiose)

This ought to be fun...
-22