A similar vein of topic...
Today I be merging codebases to produce the hopefully stable base for Pirates. At this rate I will either lose my sanity or have an excellent start come the fifteenth.
Dracos
Tweleve hours and a finished merging later, I think my sanity fled sometime after midnight.
Dracos
:?
Tried out the DigiPen Webcasts over at the Microsoft site. Kind of silly, but I liked a few of the questions asked after the formal presentations.
:)
Lately, I've been trying my hand at DirectX 9... Managed. It's not as fast as I'd like, but it definitely works... which is always a good thing.
:!:
Right now, I'm converting the game from the webcast (StarTrooper) into DirectDraw (don't ask me why). Along with it, I'm trying to add a few things, like an AI that runs the enemies on the screen (just for fun). It might be intesting...
This spring I'll be taking on a class on the subject, so after that, I'll start on something a bit more... original.
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Digipen webcasts?
Anyhow, finally got my damn new dev machine Thing is huge. I could kill a man by dropping it on him.
Got the codebase for pirates pretty steady now. Need to clean up the new machine and transfer it over, get SVN setup and also merge in the joystick code, but that's not a huge deal. =D
Additionally been messing with Torquedev. If you ever find yourself working with Torque, it's a pretty awesome program. Sort of like a Visual C++, save designed to work over torque and to tie in and allow breakpoint debugging (THANK YE!)
Dracos
Dracos-
QuoteDigipen webcasts?
That would be these:
http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/msdnvideodev.mspx
Word of Warning:
Take it with a grain of salt. They're nowhere near as good as they sound... (though the new ones might not be too bad...)
Last few days have been devoted to training the team in the various tools of trade. Mantis, SVN, a C++ IDE, the usual. They didn't groan too much, thankfully, even though they're taking time getting used to SVN.
I'm with the common perspective now. It's significantly more flexible and easy to run compared to CVS. The various crazed disasters have generally been on the order of ten-twenty minute recoveries, and I suspect they'll get much faster as I get more experienced with the admin tools and more specifically, my team stops making mistakes in that area and fully adapts to using it.
The prevention of non-atomic commits alone is a big saver with projects like this, as well as its ability to recursively catch any and all modified files and pull them up in a reasonable list. Very keen.
Dracos
Well, after a good week of fighting the .NET WinForms, I finally managed to get a loop with a fairly good frame rate. Apparently when Flipping a backbuffer using Managed DirectX 9.0 's DirectDraw component, you can't Asyncronously flip with VSync (vertical-blank sync) turned on. If you try, it slows down the program to the VSync refresh rate (60 fps, if you're lucky; 30 fps if you're unlucky). Either way, I now have a 500 fps loop (it does nothing...). Joy.
Now to actually plug a game into it...
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EDIT: Ak! Found a bug in the WinForms. If you contort the border of a window during runtime (change the border style from FixedSingle to None) and then Maximize and Restore the window, it starts to give inaccurate values for window length and width...! (Ever increasing or ever decreasing, depending on Windows build...) Grr...
In one window I'm doing UI design ("This button, no that..mmm, bigger, no smaller...two screens, no one!") which has seen about a number off designs get scrapped tonight. In another I'm helping debug windows input handling whiich while clear enough isn't something I've had to directly touch in years.
Dracos
Well, I officially finished my first day of my first official "game programming" class. So far, I like it, though it is a bit different than I would have expected...
There are three projects: Cat and Mouse, Terrain, and Custom Game. The first involves writing AI for many cats and a single mouse that makes the cats smart enough to chase down the mouse and the mouse smart enough not to get caught. The second is to build terrain using a height/color grid and to build a viewer that lets you look around at it (of course, this will involve some Level of Detail algorithms of some kind...). The last one is the most interesting, which allows me to make a game of my own choosing, so long as it either has a definite win/lose situation (Street Fighter) or a tallied score (Pacman) (I'll probubly go with some kind of space shooter, as that's my favorite type of game...).
Anyway, it sounds like fun.
More as they develop...
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Well, aside from a hard drive blowing up(fixed now), I've been working on interface and sound stuff, but not as much as I'd like.
It's pretty clear that managing a ten person squad eats a lot more time. Looking on, I could easily see doing almost no development work when managing a 40-50 person squad, which itself would be something odd. It's really hitting me about the whole lead coder spiel I read before, giving said individual almost no important tasks so they can, at any time, drop it to cover any of the other tasks (which they should be able to do and help the lower coders with). I'm still doing that a ton since I'm technically at the top of the coding heirarchy, but lucky I've got good folks.
Dracos
Well, it turns out my little analysis of DirectX was wrong. The problem wasn't VSync, but rather the default settings for the DirectDraw Device. Apparently, when creating the Device, you have to set it to either HardwareOnly or EmulationOnly. There is a default that the system chooses, which is usually Hardware (which makes sense for Direct3D, but not DirectDraw). Apparently Emulation is ALOT faster... (the empty loop is now 960 FPS, not 450...). Of course, this assumes I won't be doing anything more complex than simple surface blitting and backbuffer flips...
Now that that's done with, it's time to go back to C++ and OpenGL (glut32.dll)... (at least for the duration of this class -> up until this coming summer...)
-22
Man, it's been a long couple of weeks. Quickly (though not as quickly as I like) approaching alpha level on the single player. We've got pretty much every basic mechanic represented in its untweaked gory fashion. Just adding in player selection today and keybindings. My level dev teams got the phases speech... I need a rocket so I can actually do the whole "I'm going to be coming through your ceiling the second you're 'done' with it" bit.
Ah, the dangers of promises :D
Dracos
Quote from: "twentytwo"Well, it turns out my little analysis of DirectX was wrong. The problem wasn't VSync, but rather the default settings for the DirectDraw Device. Apparently, when creating the Device, you have to set it to either HardwareOnly or EmulationOnly. There is a default that the system chooses, which is usually Hardware (which makes sense for Direct3D, but not DirectDraw). Apparently Emulation is ALOT faster... (the empty loop is now 960 FPS, not 450...). Of course, this assumes I won't be doing anything more complex than simple surface blitting and backbuffer flips...
Now that that's done with, it's time to go back to C++ and OpenGL (glut32.dll)... (at least for the duration of this class -> up until this coming summer...)
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That sounds wrong. Like a card issue. Emulation or not, it does have to go through the video card to write to the screen, which itself maintains (obviously) only hardware buffers. Blitting, if done with zero per pixel stuff, should be faster by a fair margin in hardware as it just stores the whole thing there. Software/Emulation is better when doing lots of fine processing work that the card isn't optimized to do and just sending the final buffer to the card. it should, on simple blits, be slower since after all, it has to do a send to card each frame.
Dracos
Presented yesterday before the media. I must've been on drugs or something when I used Ruiz as one of the graders, because the woman is crazy to work with. Simply no direction whatsoever. "Yeah, just go out and speak...knock on the door when it comes close to time".
And it interrupted a neat discussion on the proper usage of odds in video games.
Dracos
Quote from: "Dracos"
Quote from: "twentytwo"Apparently Emulation is ALOT faster...
That sounds wrong. ...Blitting, if done with zero per pixel stuff, should be faster by a fair margin in hardware as it just stores the whole thing there. Software/Emulation is better when doing lots of fine processing work that the card isn't optimized to do and just sending the final buffer to the card. it should, on simple blits, be slower since after all, it has to do a send to card each frame.
Yeah, I know it sounds wrong (hardware acceleration should ALWAYS be faster than software emulation - almost by definition). Just remember, this is Managed DirectX, so there's a good chance that there's something else going on I don't know about; my guess can only be made based on the results it gives me. Also, keep in mind that I don't have a complete game yet, so all I'm writing to the screen is the FPS and a whole lot of black. Since I'm not doing anything too taxing, the results I'll get will be inaccurate [at best]. Once I have a working demo that actually does something, I'll update my guess...
Work in progress...
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Are you doing something like:
Draw black over x,y coordinates?
Or something like:
Take image (that is all black) and blit to screen?
The first would be significantly faster in software. The second in hardware.
That could be it, just thinkin' on it.
Anyhow, Capstone advisor requested an interim presentation in front of one of the local game development company CEOs.
This, naturallly, causes me to panic. Especially as my BCRANs are next week.
I suspect a fun weekend of content development and tuning is in my future.
Dracos
Quote from: "Dracos"Are you doing something like:
Draw black over x,y coordinates?
Or something like:
Take image (that is all black) and blit to screen?
The first would be significantly faster in software. The second in hardware.
That could be it, just thinkin' on it.
In Managed DirectX, you use a simple call to the function:
backbuffer.ColorFill(Color.Black)
Which, under the hood, is more likely the prior than the latter...
In which case, yes, you would be right on that.
I'll try the other with Hardware settings and see how it works out...
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A color fill? Yeah, that's precisely that.
Take an actual image of black, try blitting it, and then try setting it to hardware, it should be significantly faster, if less flexible. I suspect the idea set for emulated surfaces is to be able to quickly create odd ones and then blit them into a mostly hardware system.
Dracos
Things to watch out for:
Forking extra servers. Smashed an odd bug this weekend where rendering would just go insane, alongside other silly glitches. The problem? I was forking a new server each mission to handle the mission rather than handing a new mission to the existing server. The engine just couldn't take more than two things writing to the same rendering window at once.
Dracos
Working on documentation. Almost finished with the massive tech doc for pirates. @_@
Dracos
Well, I finally managed to get Managed Direct3D to work. Not bad. It ought to be fun to work with for a while...
As for that ColorFill, I tried out the Hardware settings with a bitmap blit and that DID work faster (not too surprised). For simplicity, I used a small color bitmap then performed a StretchBlt, which isn't as fast but allows for me to switch between different screen modes easier...
As for my Game Programming class, I completed my Cat Mouse project, though the results aren't in as to how "smart" mine are. I have my fingers crossed...
But then again, doesn't mean I'm lying...?
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Neat to hear. Hope you did well there, twentytwo.
Was supposed to launch off a test version of pirates this weekend. It did not happen. -_-
Interface is more clean though and I suppose I might as well finish end game scoring and such.
Writing more documentation.
And fixing a few crash bugs.
But basically everything is documentation from me these days. Fucking leadership.
Dracos
Hasn't done crap design in days.
Never ever do an 'engineering' supervised game.
I think I've surpassed the entire game development class combined in documentation written.
Dracos
Presentation 2 of 3 of my failed game project pirates. I think I might toss the postmortem up here just to share a bit of how it went right and wrong. I admit though, it's very not fun presenting what you see as a failed project.
Dracos
Quote from: "Dracos"Presentation 2 of 3 of my failed game project pirates.
Hey, that's too bad. I was hoping the best for that one...
***
Argh... classes are killing me.
I want to spend all my time working on my game project but I can't seem to get a break. It looks like my project's not gonna get finished in time... (why did I have to go with bone animation...? - 3D...)
Oh, well.
Over the summer I think I'll go ahead and try making a pattern-matching action-platformer or a seiken densetsu game (both 2D...). That ought to be fun...
1 week and counting...
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Yeah, getting time and energy for its a killer. I'll be tossing up my notes/postmortem/funstuff soonish for pirates. Brutal presentation 3 done with. I admit there's few things more awkward than having to put folks who simply aren't remotely trained to talk to folks up on stage to talk.
Dracos
Tossed up Bullshit in Storytelling.
Going to get some energy later and get up pirates and such.
Today, i write. =D
Dracos
Well, I'm going at it again, this time in OpenGL using the Tao Framework (a .NET wrapper).
Only, I have this weird problem where the machine I want to run this on clocks at 20% CPU usage in windows mode and 0% in fullscreen (the program loop doesn't even DO anything but sleep). It's really got me beat - even NeHe's lessons all do the same and those are in C++. Oh, well... two days is about all I can give to that problem...
Right now, I'm focusing on my artwork and planning my next great attempt at Game Design.
... why does it seem I do MORE work in the summer...
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Wow. I'm surprised how good the Redbook is. I went ahead and ordered it and the Orange book (Shaders). Might as well see what the future holds...
-22
Hey, twentytwo. You should share some of your experiments up here =)
Dracos
I think I'll do that when I get a chance.
Right now, I'm trying to figure out what kind of tools I have at my disposal. Usually, I'm pretty good at making the most of what I have. It used to be just Paint, but recently I found a couple interesting things like Paint.NET and Blender. I didn't realize there were so many interesting open source programs readily available for use. If I can somehow tie them together, I'll try to make something from them, and maybe even try building a game or two...
I'm actually quite excited...
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Hey, speaking of tools, I just ran into the Torque Game Builder. Tell me, what do you think of it?
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Torque game builder? You mean the engine from garage games right?
It's not for beginners. At least the 3d one. It does handle a lot of the optimizations you'll want in a serious game right off the bat, but I generally found that you spend a lot of time fighting with it as the documentation is pretty wretched. That said, Puzzle Kingdom and Pirates were both done in it for what it can do.
I'll probably have more when I finish learning panda and can really compare it against another serious engine, rather than homebrewn.
Dracos
Quote from: "Dracos"Torque game builder? You mean the engine from garage games right?
They have two: Torque Game Engine and Torque Game Builder (previously Torque 2D).
The Builder was released earlier this month and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on it, considering your experience with the Engine.
I just got back from vacation, so once I get some time, I'll check out their demo...
I would rather not have to remake the wheel...
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2d is a lot easier and it sounded like they had their heads on a lot straighter with the design of that, but I've not touched it myself actually. I was entirely into 3d design during my time there so didn't purchase it or spend tiime with it's demo.
Dracos
Yeah, that's kind of what I figured. I'm still going to stick with OpenGL for now. When I get something interesting, I'll post some stuff up here.
-22
Better for learning. I feel in a way while using the engine was good development training, it also skipped handling many things.
Dracos
I'm learning sockets! And realising that expecting to update the network every frame is dumb. So I am pondering.
I'm programming in a pansy language, though, so I don't know if it really counts as "development". (Python)
I'm working in Python at the moment. I remember Jason loving it.
Dracos
Argh... work's been tough lately. I haven't had any time for much else...
Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to make a good software synth and music mixer for my next game attempt. Since I'm working with Tao, I'll probubly go OpenAL; it seems simple enough, and I'm looking forward to working with it.
Sadly, things won't get much easier. Next week I start back in school. Last semester was Game Programming. This semester will be Artificial Intelligence and Computer Graphics (OpenGL and GLSL); both are very difficult classes from what I've heard (though I'm not too scared - I aced that Game Programming class without too much trouble and these next two were intended to be prerequisites for it...).
My number one plan is to stop working on my Chrono series parody and get back to finishing that Oekaki thread...
Argh... I need more time!
Sixteen Tons...
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GLSL is something I should learn.
You find OpenAL easy? It gave me a headache when I first glanced at it after the ease of fmod. But then I was using pregenerated rather than synths with fmod.
Good luck with your classes. =)
Dracos
More now since I'm using a fair bit of shaders in my current project.
Anyhow, my current class is having us churn out a game for random platforms every two weeks. Project 1 was solo'ed and was a paperboy 3d thing with collision issues.
Project 2 was more detailed with two weeks for it and I'll fling it up when it's done. It's a sort of bike building vr game. Not very exciting, but decent enough for the time frame.
Dracos
Quote
Anyhow, my current class is having us churn out a game for random platforms every two weeks.
Sounds pretty cool. What platforms are you working with?
***
Well, finished a couple simple projects for my CG class. For AI, I did a maze with A*, Greedy, and Simulated Annealing.
Current Topics:
..CG - Matrix Multiplication/Transformations, Axometric/Perspective Views
..AI - Consraint Satisfaction Problems, Alpha Beta Pruning, Expert Systems
Busy Busy...
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man, for working on a game every two weeks, I've been quiet here.
Since last post I've produced a horrible asymmetric mars rover game, which folks tell me is better than the museum varients but is up for most ambitiously idiotic game idea of the term.
Then I kind of stopped producing 'games' as the course isn't about that and started producing shows. Whipped up a nice juggling show using some image capture technology. Was at one point a pretty damn fun game, but I shattered that quite much to make it a better audience show. Shittily, the computers were broken when we were demo'ing it and it pretty much wrecked the show.
Fourth round was making an interactive story game to deliver a story in under two minutes and thirty seconds. We didn't quite steal the show, but were definitely among the top dogs and it was so amusing watching the technical staff do a dance when we finished that the computer hadn't exploded from the strain we put on it. The strain of a cartoon bunny bouncing innocently around with a little girl. Apparently, panda really doesn't handle 2d animation well, and having about a gigabyte of it when it finished uncompressing lead to some interesting cross your fingers moments. Especially on machines that only had a gig of ram.
Fifth has been making predator world. We have the odd position of being way the farthest along the game development track with the least assets in. Made folks laugh by using the bunny for all the aliens in it, but next week will be hopefully replacing all the assets.
---
Twentytwo:
I've been working on the Panda engine over the Jam-o-drum (a weird themeparky type thing), the playmotion (a finicky image detection device), and some vr headsets and motion trackers.
I become less of a hard technical coder and continually more of the 'oh, it's already done' style. Sort of fell off of shaders for the most part. A few are really becoming quite expert in them and while it's useful, I keep finding it as more postprocessing art stuff rather than a core tool to bring forth a design.
Dracos
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.
Quote from: "baka-ken"
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...
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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
Quote from: "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.
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).
Quote from: "Dracos"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.
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P.S.
As for that D in AI: like usual, I aced all the tests but failed to finish the projects on time... :(
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
QuoteI 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...
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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
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
Quote from: "Dracos"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.
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...
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Automated game maker?
Dracos
Quote from: "Dracos"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...
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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.
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.
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
Quote from: "Jason_Miao"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
Quote from: "twentytwo"Quote from: "Jason_Miao"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.
Heh. Breakout/pong, then a "demo MUD" to demonstrate a proposed architecture for interoperable MUDs.
Quote
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.
Damn. Now I need to too, or I won't be cool.
Edit: And actually, I was messing around with the Touhou games when I started with the idea of the initial Galactic Destroyer attacking the kingdom in Ben Oliver's story Nuke 'Em Till They Glow. Naturally, you'd play as the Galactic Destroyer out to blow up the 'Good Guys' because you're genuinely unaware that the lesser races might dislike being destroyed.
Features would be the ability to take multiple hits (HP), replenish bombs by grazing or running into enemies (which kills them), and you could 'capture spells' to give you more types of bombs, blah blah blah. Different than the arcade shmups, but nothing revolutionary. Slow moving bullet hell and laser beams, of course.
Then I realized that it should be possible to plan a language to generate a game engine, based on the writer's description of each in-game powerup, bullets, players, enemies, and player's bombs, and an enemy's bombs (special attacks, if any). Sprites shouldn't be too difficult. Rolling backgrounds, in theory, shouldn't be too difficult (moving picture at the furthest layer).
Then I realized how silly I was being since I've never even written a simple shmup and don't even know where the real bottlenecks and unobvious problems will crop up. :)
Quote
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)
I need remember to quote this at some point. Hopefully when I have a project with an unpronounceable acronym.
Quote from: "twentytwo"Quote from: "Jason_Miao"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
Actually, most start with a puzzle game. Some form of puzzle game clone is infinitely simpler to make than a platformer (which involves several reasonably complex starting concepts) or really any scrolling game. Having to maintain a single screen realestate is a much simpler thing than even a basic shmup.
Dracos
Quote from: "Dracos"Actually, most start with a puzzle game. Some form of puzzle game clone is infinitely simpler to make than a platformer (which involves several reasonably complex starting concepts) or really any scrolling game. Having to maintain a single screen realestate is a much simpler thing than even a basic shmup.
I can agree with that, but I really don't see the fun in it (I'll assume you're doing this because you WANT to). I mean, if you're going to pick something, you might as well choose one that is "infinitely" scalable. To make a good puzzle game, it has to be somewhat decent the first time through; those games are all about perfecting timing and challenge, which weighs heavy on the ol' thinker. As for platformers or shmups, you just have to manage basic movement, backgrounds, obstacles, and make sure the collision works; anything else can be added on incremently should the need arise (power-ups, bosses, minibosses, selectable characters, more levels, story, etc etc). Also, it's much easier to reuse a shmup or platformer engine than a puzzle engine, unless you want to make 13 different versions of the same game (adding bombs to Tetris does not make it a new game >_<).
shmup was Microsoft's genre of choice when they first did their C# Digipen webcasts, as well as in XNA (Spacewar Starter Kit), and I honestly don't see it as a bad thing - it makes you focus on all the necessary elements a game needs and teaches you just how difficult game development can be without makig it so difficult that you can't get it done.
Quote from: "Jason_Miao"
Quote from: "twentytwo"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)
I need remember to quote this at some point. Hopefully when I have a project with an unpronounceable acronym.
Thanks for the complement.
I always wanted to have a game start up with an intro that read along those lines (complete with ominous music and slow scrolling letters... written vertically in japanese with subtitles and a deep voice-over...)
"Quoting someone famous makes an intro seem deeper than it really is... ~Me"
Complete with Inflated Ego!
-22
From my story Pokie Hunter-
Poison <grimace>: You have a chip on your shoulder...
Cobra: Oo, potato!
Poison <pulls out gun>: Here, let me get it for you...
Done with my semester project at this point. I'd share it but it is still under NDA for another many months.
Moving on the week after next to start work at Crystal. Probably won't be able to talk about any of that either, unfortunately, but who knows. At the very least, I'll be working with cool folks.
Dracos
Yup, as expected, I'm not supposed to share anything. Working as a build engineer at the moment and I can say that it is a much different experience organize hundreds of thousands of files versus thousands of files for hundreds of people versus tens of it. Good way to see how the workflow is optimized to remove these concerns in general from people.
So how are folks non nda'ed stuff going? Kind of miss getting able to batter details about =)
Dracos
Too bad. I would have liked to hear about your experience there. It's always good to hear from people in the industry...
***
Well, as far as development on that game idea of mine is going, I've been set back in the worst possible ways
First of all, I only have Windows 2000, so XNA was out of the question until I got myself a laptop (I should get that in a few weeks).
Second, the company I work at was attacked by a hacker, who stole some private documents. The company's response to this threat: let's block our employees from accessing sites from specified dangerous categories, and this will stop people from noticing us and doing us harm! So, they went and banned all sites holding the categories of Nudity, Weapons, Hate Crimes, Violence, and Games. o_O. Yeah, I really don't get that one, either. Thus, I have lost all access to GameDev, Gamasutra, IGDA, Rpgamer, and... Soulriders. To make matters worse, I program in OpenGL at work, so... this makes my job pretty "interesting" (so glad I bought that Redbook!).
Third, I went and promised some people I'd start a game development club on my college campus. Please refer to point two. >_<
Well, other than that, my summer hasn't been too bad. I've been reading through the XNA book by Nitsche from exDream: it's a pretty good book that demonstrates how to use shaders and provides a pretty good intro to 3D programming using various tools. I don't always agree with his approach, but I guess that's to be expected from any book.
I have also been working out how to design a good story bible for my RPG ideas using Excel and Word. That project's going pretty well, though I really wish I had XP and Vista (my laptop plan: dual-boot!).
Well, I wish you luck at Crystal Dynamics. If you ever get your name in the credits, make sure to tell us about it!
Mazal Tov!
-22
Will do. Sounds like a nasty blockade there. But at least you got the red book to back you up.
Dracos
What I can say of the moment that may be of interest:
Building something to build code for three platforms is actually a pretty complex task. I've worked on something like this for the last week or so and there's actually a godawful amount of stuff that goes into just the code side organization. I've never seen project files this large before and it really makes the tens of megabytes that most of the code for my own game projects were pretty dwarfed.
It's also pretty easy to lose time with a large company. ...and I'll finish this when I'm not gaming ^^;
Day 20 or so of build system...
Buildbuild..build build? buildbuildbuildbuildbuildbuildbuildbuildbuild...
OR something :)
Dracos
dazed.
Lots of stats these days. ALmost done with my internship. Not sure what'll happen after yet.
So, yeah, since the last post, some several months ago, I've gotten hired. :)
It is really same old, same old at this point, for more virtue of me not really being supposed to talk about it. =)
Launching a major tool used by multiple studios though? That takes a lot more time than one would guess.