Solo Games

Saturday, October 28, 2006

New Toggles Version

For those of you getting the following error: "ERROR: Version incompatibility. Please go to http://www.silvey-games.blogspot.com to get the most recent version." I've got what you need! I recently improved some algorithms and fixed some minor bugs and re-released it as a newer version. Soon, I will have the links on the right panel of the website, but time has been very demanding. For now, you can pick from the following:

If you are a Windows user and you just need to update to the current version, click here: Toggles Patch
If you are a Windows user and you need the entire game, then click here: Toggles
If you are a Linux user and you need just the update, then get the source and recompile: tog-src
If you are a Linux user and you need the entire game, then click here: toggles-1.2.15

On another note, here are some comments I've received on the 3 game released last weekend from various websites:

"1945 = Awesome." - Den on Stratics staff forums.
"the maze game u made was pretty cool" - Chickeno32000 on Game Maker forums.
"Wow... Toggles is really cool now." - Kikaru on allegro.cc forums.
"The menus work great! " - miran on allegro.cc forums.
"nice work again! i think your going to steal the game fair this year!" - magus on uagdc forums.
"Mymaze was the one I liked the most. I haven't played it all the way through, but it seemed like the most fun." - LittleViking001 on metanet forums.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Solo Games Releases Three New Titles

Note: There are several problems with the website. I tried to add some features that don't work quite right on all browsers. I'll try to fix them as soon as possible!

Anyway, yes, Solo Games releases three new titles! How exciting is that? What do I mean by "release" though, considering there's no budget (or company...). Well, I posted the games to several sites that I regularly visit and I'd assume about 500 people from all these sites at least viewed the release. Hopefully 50 of them actually played the games.

The following games were released: Toggles, 1945 and Mymaze.

I'll put more information on them later with links as well. If you have any comments or suggestions about the games (if you're from one of the sites I posted the games to) or any comments about the website, send them to spsilve AT uark DOT edu.

Thanks!

Monday, September 11, 2006

Updates and Discussion

Hi all! It's been a while since I've posted...

Even though the post count has been arid lately, doesn't mean I haven't been working. In fact, everything has been hectic as of late.

Toggles is currently undergoing some make-up and plastic surgery work, but is expected to come out in peak performance. I've fixed bugs, redone some menus and upped the graphics. It should be ready for it's final production within this month.

Medieval Tycoon has been patiently waiting for Toggles to give some room for its own development. Although, I have managed to squeeze in some design time and plotted some points that will hopefully aid in the design stages. I'm still hoping to present a basic demo by the end of this month...which is about three weeks from now. Yeesh!

So what's got Solo Games all constipated lately? Well, full time jobs aren't meant to be fun...or are they? Anyway, work takes a lot of my time, plus class started back up. Yeah, it's only one measley Japanese class this term, but foreign fluency is apparently not my sixth sense. Usually when I do have free time to breath, I like to take a little time for myself and actually play a game for a change. Current games on my playlist: N, SimCity4 (I've nearly got a city with 50,000 people!) and Final Fantasy XI. That last one can eat time like a sumo wrestler eats sushi (I had to keep within the Japanese culture for that simile).

So let's talk about something else, shall we?

The Indie Market's Future
You might be concerned about where the indie game market is going, but most likely you aren't unless you are an indie developer yourself. Well, being one myself, I'm quite concerned! Us indie developers are the nobodies being shutdown by the man...litterally. EA and other corporate giants continue to shut doors for indie development. Of course, you get your fancy-pants game with all the glitter and fun, but us creative types have to work at sweat shops to manage any dwindling spark of hope. We almost have no hope but to bow our heads and go to the giants and beg for mercy to allow us to create something...anything!

What, you didn't know? You thought game development was all candy and sweets? Nope, the market has become heavily dominated by Big Pockets, typically people who don't know the first thing about developing software. The game industry use to run itself, allowing people to wear shorts and even smile from time to time. Of course, this led to the great depression of bad games in '84 and the uncontrollable chaos that led to the supreme court and the ESRB. But hey, those were good times, right?

Well, the market has sling-shot to the other side, it's too corporate for most creative minds. Some have managed to dig deep enough to survive the violent transfer, and have basically become gods of development. Yes, I'm talking about Will Wright and that Mario guy (Miyazaki?). Anyway, they basically get whatever they want now, but is that good for us? Well, they continue to provide wonderful help and new innovations to the market, but they make it hard for us to have a good idea.

So is there any hope for us indie people? Well, yes and no. I have the feeling the ball is about to be back in our court, but not for long. I forsee it sling-shotting back to us and going off too far, eventually going right back to the corporate giants. With Microsoft's new kit for game development, it's obvious they are trying to tap a thirsty tongue (alliteration rocks!). However, is it for us or for them. Well, we all say Microsoft is always in it for themselves, that's what corporate giants are!

Of course, having some software available to us does give us more freedom than we've seen in a while. It could very well be a win-win situation. However, I see a flooding of indies to use the new kits and they'll just end up locking each other out. Because what is the most important part of a game to be successful? The players. If you don't have people buying/playing your game, than your game might as well not exist. With thousands of people making games, who's going to have the time to play them? Sure, one or two uber-awesome projects are going to filter out, but what about the other works that deserve just as much time?

I feel are break is going to be short-lived. Sorry guys, but the indie-life is dead. :(

Updates and Discussion

Hi all! It's been a while since I've posted...

Even though the post count has been arid lately, doesn't mean I haven't been working. In fact, everything has been hectic as of late.

Toggles is currently undergoing some make-up and plastic surgery work, but is expected to come out in peak performance. I've fixed bugs, redone some menus and upped the graphics. It should be ready for it's final production within this month.

Medieval Tycoon has been patiently waiting for Toggles to give some room for its own development. Although, I have managed to squeeze in some design time and plotted some points that will hopefully aid in the design stages. I'm still hoping to present a basic demo by the end of this month...which is about three weeks from now. Yeesh!

So what's got Solo Games all constipated lately? Well, full time jobs aren't meant to be fun...or are they? Anyway, work takes a lot of my time, plus class started back up. Yeah, it's only one measley Japanese class this term, but foreign fluency is apparently not my sixth sense. Usually when I do have free time to breath, I like to take a little time for myself and actually play a game for a change. Current games on my playlist: N, SimCity4 (I've nearly got a city with 50,000 people!) and Final Fantasy XI. That last one can eat time like a sumo wrestler eats sushi (I had to keep within the Japanese culture for that simile).

So let's talk about something else, shall we?

The Indie Market's Future
You might be concerned about where the indie game market is going, but most likely you aren't unless you are an indie developer yourself. Well, being one myself, I'm quite concerned! Us indie developers are the nobodies being shutdown by the man...litterally. EA and other corporate giants continue to shut doors for indie development. Of course, you get your fancy-pants game with all the glitter and fun, but us creative types have to work at sweat shops to manage any dwindling spark of hope. We almost have no hope but to bow our heads and go to the giants and beg for mercy to allow us to create something...anything!

What, you didn't know? You thought game development was all candy and sweets? Nope, the market has become heavily dominated by Big Pockets, typically people who don't know the first thing about developing software. The game industry use to run itself, allowing people to wear shorts and even smile from time to time. Of course, this led to the great depression of bad games in '84 and the uncontrollable chaos that led to the supreme court and the ESRB. But hey, those were good times, right?

Well, the market has sling-shot to the other side, it's too corporate for most creative minds. Some have managed to dig deep enough to survive the violent transfer, and have basically become gods of development. Yes, I'm talking about Will Wright and that Mario guy (Miyazaki?). Anyway, they basically get whatever they want now, but is that good for us? Well, they continue to provide wonderful help and new innovations to the market, but they make it hard for us to have a good idea.

So is there any hope for us indie people? Well, yes and no. I have the feeling the ball is about to be back in our court, but not for long. I forsee it sling-shotting back to us and going off too far, eventually going right back to the corporate giants. With Microsoft's new kit for game development, it's obvious they are trying to tap a thirsty tongue (alliteration rocks!). However, is it for us or for them. Well, we all say Microsoft is always in it for themselves, that's what corporate giants are!

Of course, having some software available to us does give us more freedom than we've seen in a while. It could very well be a win-win situation. However, I see a flooding of indies to use the new kits and they'll just end up locking each other out. Because what is the most important part of a game to be successful? The players. If you don't have people buying/playing your game, than your game might as well not exist. With thousands of people making games, who's going to have the time to play them? Sure, one or two uber-awesome projects are going to filter out, but what about the other works that deserve just as much time?

I feel are break is going to be short-lived. Sorry guys, but the indie-life is dead. :(

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Speedhack Post Mortem

Remember, click a the Speedhack link above to see all Speedhack blog-postings. :)

Everyone has their uphill battle, their passionate journey to victory through seemingly endless challenges, their chance to stardom/fame. Speedhack, the glorious 72 hour competition that reigns control over unsuspecting game programmers is in fact, a great war! This was my first year competing in the grueling match, although my experience in the quick programming competitions continues to rise.

Indeed there are good news and bad news. Good news, I've definitely improved since my last competitions, although you may not be able to tell from the product. Bad news, I still didn't finish everything I planned. Honestly, and oddly, I didn't take it as serious as I usually do. I'm not sure why, I just couldn't get into it. Sure, I had fun and learned a lot, but I wish I could muster a little more motivation. Do I regret doing it? Heck no! I'll do every competition that allows me in.

Perhaps it was the specifics of this years rules, which several have said was harder than before. Take a look for yourself:

The Rules:

Genre requirements
Insanity!
It's a crazy world out there, and your game is no exception. Something about your game needs to be insane; it could be the main character, but there's a lot of other possibilities. Perhaps you are fighting against one of those classic, insane doctors who are trying to destroy the world. Or maybe there is an entire host of insane baddies who are after you. Or quite possibly the entire game is insane!

Regardless of the path you take, the insanity needs to have an effect on the game. Just stating that there is an insane character in the back story isn't enough. The insanity needs to be seen within the game itself.
Technical requirements
There are two technical requirements:
- Time
The game must have some concept of time. As this is a technical rule, it should affect game mechanics to some degree.
- Multiple Players
You better bring a friend, because single player games are out! You can stick with turn based if you prefer, but allowing multiple people to play simultaneously is better.
Your game doesn't have to support multiple players at all times. Perhaps you might make two modes of play for single and multi-player. Or maybe the second player joins only during certain situations. The more flexible you can make it, the better—because not all of us have friends. ;)
Artistic requirements
There are two artistic requirements:
- Show no Humans
Most games have some humanoid form on the screen at all times, whether it is one you are controlling, battling against, or viewing on a cut-scene. The challenge is to create a game without humans. You can still have the existence of humans implied via communication with a human or some other non-visual method.

If you want to go all out, try not to use the humanoid form in the entire game! That is, none of your characters walk upright on two legs or have two arms and a head. This would include, but not limited to, anthropomorphic robots, animals, and aliens.
- Bananas!
Bananas must be present in the game. They can be collected, be used as a weapon or powerup, or just be hanging around.
Bonus rules
There is one optional bonus rule:
- Act of Act of Recursiveness
Clever use of recursiveness will give you permission to opt out of one rule. You could implement recursion in your code. You could create recursive graphics. Or you could even implement a rule with recursion. (If one rule says you have to save a princess, you could make a game where a princess has to save a princess.)

Whatever you do, it must not be common. For instance, creating a recursive function to crawl through a file directory won't count because that is a standard procedure. You'll probably have a better chance of getting your recursion accepted if it is visual or gameplay related, as opposed to being recursive code. Above all things, it should be clever!
If you choose to opt out of a rule, be sure to get your idea approved by the SpeedHack organizer. Posting your thoughts on your blog might help influence the decision, assuming other people generally think it's a clever idea.

Zany's Wonderland

So I created Zany's Wonderland. Catchy title, eh? The idea was turn-based multi-player game...oddly, I think I'm the only one who did that. My goal was to make a Mario Party game, but without the Mario...and the Party. What I mean is, everything is the same setup, except there are no mini-games and the characters aren't Mario-ish.

I focused the most on the optional rule, the Act of Act of Recursiveness. If this rule confuses, then that's okay, it confuses most people. My goal was to have recursiveness in-game and in-code. So I built a structure of board games recursively in the code. When you are walking about in the game, you can enter the other board games through the tile, meaning there's a board game inside of a board game. How confusing is that?

Four people take turns rolling a badly presented dice, going around collecting bananas and hopping through different board-game levels. Of course, a hop costs bananas, so you have to choose how far you want to go, considering the whole goal of the game is to collect bananas. :)

Incomplete

What I didn't complete was a beginning and an end to the game, among many parts in the middle. I got the boards and the board-depth structure and traversing them, along with rolling the dice and collecting bananas, but that's about it. I wanted to have bad guys that took your bananas and items players could use as traps for other players. I also wanted the Red, Green and Blue worlds to have some difference, other than just in their color.

Why didn't I complete these game elements? Well, I didn't spend Friday correctly. I took the day off from work, but didn't even manage to get anything but a design and some skeleton code. Some would say that that's enough for the first day, but I'm not the fastest coder, I should have gotten more done that day. Saturday went about as expected, other than a few road blocks in creating the boards. Sunday was a mad rush to try and fix bugs and get some sort of linearity to the game. The last six hours of the comp, which I had planned to put in some much needed touches, I passed out and woke up 42 minutes before time was up...

What I submitted.

With 42 minutes to spare, I cursed several choice words. I couldn't believe it, I pooped out at the last stretch. I wasn't even sure I was going to package the thing in time. I spent the first twenty minutes doing some tests, and then quickly tried to upload the entry. That, was true speedhack greatness.

I went to upload my entry and the countdown timer said 1 minute. I still had to browse and attach the zip and send the file. Somehow, I managed to get my work in. I suppose I had maybe 5 seconds left. That was hardcore.

Unfortunately, due to the rushing, I left several big bugs in the game, like it always moves 10 spots no matter what your dice rolls. Plus, having it compile was a whole other story that I don't want to go into. I stand no chance of winning anything, but that's okay. There's always next year!

ConcedeHack

Through the always-busy forums, a topic of ConcedeHack has spawned. The objective, finish your speedhack game by Thursday (tomorrow). This bit of spare time might be just what I need to regain some pride. However, so far, I'm the only one competing. I don't mind, at least I'll win. :)

I'll keep you posted.

Monday, August 07, 2006

[Toggles] Beta Release

That's right, the game is now available to play! In fact, it's been available since August 3rd! This weekend was the Allegro Speedhack Competition, so I wasn't able to update my blog until now.

There's still a lengthy list of things not done in Toggles, but it's at least playable, not to mention you can earn a high score that tops the online charts. :)

The source code used to make the game is included, except for the online files for obvious reasons.

Here's a Windows Binary for you Windows users: Toggles
Linux users, you'll have to wait a bit longer...

Here's a link to the official public release on the Allegro site: Toggles Release Posting

Thursday, August 03, 2006

[Toggles] Delays

If you're completely blind, then you probably haven't noticed that I'm several days behind. I've run into a few walls that I can't seem to scale. Nonetheless, Toggles should be done soon. Have patience. :)

Monday, July 31, 2006

[Toggles] Final Day of Production

Giggity, giggity!

So I'm now at the final stretch for Toggles. Sadly, this final stretch happens to be all uphill. I'm a little bit further behind that I had hoped I would be, but it's going to be release tomorrow no matter what!

What's left to do? Well...

Level Progression (1%) - Soooo close to being done. There's still a few glitches that needed to be sorted/fixed.
Scoring (1%) - I do have scores in the system now, but they need to be checked, bug-fixed and polished.
Penalty Picker (1%) - I've got the GUI, but now I need the actual implementation when picking a penalty/reward.
Save Screenshot function (1%) - Haven't worked on this at all! But it should be reasonably simple and to-the-point.
Title Screen (1%) Ugh, art, the slowest thing of game development for me. Oh well, it's gotta be done!
Credits Screen (1/2%) - I have a few people to thank, it would be wrong for me not to do so...
Options Screen (1/2%)
Config File (1/2%)
Online High Scoring Table (2%)
High Scoring Table (2%)

That's at least what hasn't been checked off the original check list. I forgot about the deployment stage and support stage which includes the following items:

Refining Code (1%) - The framerate is a little low on some computers. Maybe too slow. You can still play, but since I'm presenting this game to the geeks, I gotta get it as good as possible!
Readme File (1%) - It wouldn't be very nice to supply this game without one.
Testing (1%) - Typically, 1% of testing would not suffice. Unfortunately, I just don't have the time.

I tried the current version (1.8) on my work computer and there were a few problems. I got to get this all sorted out by tomorrow. Let's see, I'm lacking thirteen and half percent, so I'm at 86.5% done. Scarrry.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

[Toggles] Check List Update

Okay, here's a list of things I've gotten done since my last checklist post.

Level Progression (3%) - It starts at level 1 and moves through levels infinitely, but it's choppy and needs work. Also, there's no penalty picker yet, so level progression is missing a huge part of human interaction.
Remainning Bonuses (2%)- I've added the lightning bolt, 1/2 percent and ultima bonuses. The lightning bolt was by far the most challenging, as it has several graphical components and I'm not fully satisfied with the result.

Yep, that's it. Take those percents up there and subtract them from the totals on the other checklist (or add them to the total done) and you find that I still have level progression to work on, but bonuses are done. Also note, that I'm 5% closer, meaning I'm at 80% done. Here's some things that I've decided to cut from the original design of the game:

The blue turtle shell bonus. I wanted to have this for the nostalgic Mario-kart factor, but obviously time has cut it short. Perhaps I'll include it in a later version, but the release version will not have it.
Water filling the tank. This is part of the level progression that I though would be a cool idea, however it doesn't affect the gameplay whatsoever. Hence, I've moved it to as low priority as possible. If I have time, I might try to stick it in.

As you can tell, there's still a lot to be done and I've got approximately 5 days to finish this, counting today. As long as I have level progression and scoring working, I've got a workable game, so those should be top priority. Guess there's lots more to do these next 5 days. :)

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

[Toggles] Check List

Herein lies the last remainning objectives/functions/procedures along with their percentage/portion of Toggles:

Slot Shifting (1%) - There are six slots for bonuses in the game. When you use one, the other's need to shift into place (in other words, the front slot always determines which bonus is going to be used.
Input commands (1%)- The CTRL key and the left and right mouse buttons are used to use bonuses and shift the available bonuses.
Level Progression (5%) - Currently, only 1 level is set up at whatever difficulty I'm testing. It needs to be setup to start at level 1 and progress infinitely.
Scoring (3%)- How can you have a game without scores?
Remainning Bonuses (2%)- I've got the Clock and Bomb bonus working, with the Lightning Bolt sprite in place. I need to get the bolt's function to work, along with the blue turtle shell, half-percent-needed bonus and ultima working.
Penalty Picker (4%)- After you beat a level, a wheel of six available options appears. Three are: Increase Row/Column count, Increase Percent Needed and Decrease Time Allowed. The other three options are gift packages that, when picked, give a random result (either penalty or reward, where the penalty is far greater than the other penalties).
Save Screenshot function (1%)
Title Screen (1%)
Sound Effects! (1/2%)
Music tied into the code (1/2%)
Credits screen (1/2%)
Options Screen (1/2%)- For changing your personal preferences. (like how loud the music is, etc.)
Config File (1/2%)- For saving options
Online High Scoring Table (2%)
High Scoring Table (2%)

Phew, I think that's all. That totals up to 24% and a half. Meaning I'm at 75% and a half done. Finally, an accurate posting of where I'm at. If August 1st sneaks up on me too fast, I can always postpone some of the above for version 2.0. :)

Monday, July 24, 2006

[MT] Setting Up

Although my primary project right now is Toggles, preparations for Medieval Tycoon are in order. I probably won't dig too deep until Speedhack is done on August 7th. That's most of August, all of September, October and November to complete Medieval Tycoon. I like those odds. :)

Anyway, MT is currently a big blob of noodle ideas, stringy and messy. Hmmm, now I'm hungry. Obviously my current task is to get things more organized and better thought out.

With where I currently stand, I feel that my biggest challenge is not going to be the code, or music or graphics, but rather the initial stage of designing and researching. I have to setup everything right from the beginning or I'm really going to be redo-ing a lot of my work. Plus, I still need to figure out that blasted emblem problem...

That being said, let's do some design work.

Flexible Design
With a time-sensitive project like this, it's important to be able to add or remove without too many headaches, considering it's almost impossible to gauge how big one can go without going overboard. Having four months doesn't help much either. I might get to November and be way behind. Since I like object oriented code, that's obviously the way to go, but it's going to have to more professional than I usually do. I typically start off with great designs and quickly fall into code-pasting madness. This project has to stay tight!

A class diagram is probably necessary. Of course, not the class diagrams you do in college, I mean something that is actually useful. But it's not quite time to be thinking of this yet, considering I don't have my idea properly documented yet. Once most of the game concept is mapped out, a class diagram and other coding practices should follow to produce efficient results.

Research and Requirements Gathering
Since the game takes place in Europe, a place I'm moreorless unfamiliar with, I've got to do some research. Not just about locations, but what people like to do, how popular sports are, where good fishing areas are, etc., etc. Plus, it'd be nice to be somewhat accurate on medieval times. Plot-wise is still more up to my creative influence (for example, the Knights Oppression as mentioned in the first post).

I need to go over the rules listed at GameDev a little more closely and make sure I get everything set up right. Lots to think about.

Next post I'll get into what exactly the game is. :)

[Toggles] Progress Update

Did not get near as much time as I was hoping this weekend to work on Toggles. Between hanging out with people (I do have a social life...kind of) and having extra office work (think Office Space), I hardly managed to squeeze any time in. Right now, I'd say I'm sitting at 76% done. I've got little over a week to finish the next 24%.

So what did I get done? Bonuses. Well, more like Bonus. However, I've got the skeleton set up for the rest of the bonuses and that should suffice. The bonus I did get done is a clock item that when you obtain one, you can press space to reset the current time to 0. Very handy. :) Here are the other bonuses to come (and soon):

* Blue Turtle Shell - when used, it toggles every toggle currently above water until it has no where else to go.
* Lightning Bolt - toggles everything in the row and column that the mouse is on.
* Bomb - toggles everything in a close proximity to the mouse.
* 1/2 % - Resets the maximum percent needed to complete the current level to half.
* Ultima - Clears the current level (rarest bonus).

I need to try and have all the code done by Wednesday or Thursday so I can focus on uping the graphics and porting to Linux. Should be an eventful week.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

New Blog Features

If you haven't noticed, I made some changes to the blog. I've added a section at the top that lists different categories. I seem to have several different projects going on and sometimes I talk about random things (like right now), so breaking them down to category, you can read about what you really care about! Just click the category and boom, you'll see only posts on that topic. I wanted to create a separate link for it so you could just link straight to that section, but I wasn't so successful. Actually, I just hacked away at the template code and was happy with what I got. Keep in mind that I only know that it works in Firefox. Other browsers might not have so much luck.

I just posted several posts because I had lots of separate things to talk about. Please note that I wrote about the following in posts to follow this one:

Toggles - What's new with the game and it's release date
Medieval Tycoon - announcement of my gamedev 4E entry
Speedhack - allegro competition

Check whatever you're interested out and leave me a comment. It get's lonely writing these blogs when I don't think anyone is reading them...

Let me know if there are any problems with site! Later!

Speedhack Date Announced

Finally, the official date for Speedhack has been announced! Argh, I'm biting my fingernails already. I've competed in TINS, but this is my first true Speedhack. I think I've learned enough on what not to do that I'll actually turn in a good entry this year. I'm so excited. Oh yeah, the date is August 4th.

Wish me luck all, I'll keep you updated.

Announcing Medieval Tycoon!

So I'm 95% sure I'm going to enter this mega-competition that gamedev.net is currently hosting. It runs from June 3, 2006 to November 30, 2006. That's a long time! The longest competition (which wasn't even a competition) was Christmas Hack which was only 7 days! Phew, this is going to be interesting.

But what a great opportunity it is. Gamedev is a pretty prestigious community and even has job listings for the industry. Winning this might be a ticket out of database-hell (as I so-call my current job). Can I win it? Haha...no! Too many people who actually know what they're doing. My Comp Sci. degree is great and all, but I'm still too far behind to win this. However, it's still worth trying and experiencing.

What the compo basically boils down to is making a game based on 4 elements. They are the following:

Emotion
Economics
Emblem
Europe

Holy crap! What can you make with that? Well, many things of course, but still, sheesh. The question is, which route do I want to go? Action-adventure, RPG, FPS, Puzzle? Or...something else? My idea is to make something that sticks out, almost like a soar thumb. Originality is good and all, but that's not a definite way to win. Mine has to be different and addicting. I want to create that feel that once you put my game down, five minutes later your craving to pick it back up. In other words, the Sims-factor. Why that game was ever popular is still in debate, but it's true, many loved to play with their sim characters (even me). If I can tap that source, do I have a chance in this? Maybe. So without further ado,

I announce the new game for gamedev's 4E competition, Medieval Tycoon.

Risk-que? Yes. Too big of a project? Most definitely! Am I crazy? Double Check! Do I care? Not in the very least! Okay, that's not true, in fact, it's about the only thing I do care about. Anyway, let me give you the low-down on what exactly Medieval Tycoon is about.

Remember when you were playing FFIV (and if you didn't play that, any old RPG game)? Remember when you walked into the pixelated shop and search the list for some new equipment, putting it on afterwards and feeling like top-of-the-world good when you saw your digital stats raise to new height? Maybe you weren't as excited as I was. Since those days of my youth, I've always role played in my mind what life in that world was like, perhaps working at one of those shops. I always wanted to build one and sell my own personal choice of stock to skilled adventurers. No longer do I have to wait, because MT is on its way!

That's right, in Medieval Tycoon, you build the shops, you supply the stock, you sell the stock, you are the business tycoon of the dark age shops. You will start from nothing, build a shop the way you want and choose what you want to sell and how you want to sell it. You could sell potions, or weapons, or fish, or all of the above (of course that might confuse customers...hint, hint, wink, wink). If you make some profit, you might hire a staff to help run the store so you don't have to be there 24/7. If you are really well off, you could open another store in a neighboring town. In MT, your army of people you control don't have jobs like Dragoon or Black Mage, but rather realistic job titles like Stocker, Clerk all the way up to CFO and HR Manager.

Of course, supplying the shops is a big part of the game. You don't just have a limited supply of products at your disposal. You can chop down trees and make a lumber shop, or find a mine and mine for minerals, you could fish and make a seafood shop, or hunt and kills animals for food. Or you could just move in a few beds and make an Inn. You could also buy at factory rates in bulk from factories and have a full-on item or weapon shop. If you're skilled, you could make the products yourself, by taking hammer to metal! So many options, it's all up to what you want to sell.

Obviously, I'm focusing on the Economics side of the four elements. How do the others fit in? Europe's easy, that's the setting (in medieval times, of course). Emotion is depression (I'll explain that in a sec). Emblem is still giving me troubles, but I have a few ideas that I'll post at a later time.

About the depression emotion, the current time of the world involves a mass oppression coming from the powerful hand of the knight class. The European knights have burdened the masses with their rules and sent the lands into poverty. Everyone is poor but the knights and a few merchants. These knights can do whatever they want, even kill you if they see fit. Everyone is depressed and looking for a way to make their measley lifes any better. You've got to supply them with items at prices they can afford. Of course, make a single knight angry, and he could shut down your entire operation.

You'll have to keep an eye on your local market. You can't sell high-grade weapons for millions of euros a pop if you only have penniless farmers. If knights are regularly coming through, you might be able to sell such high-priced stuff. You constantly have to manage everything to truly become a Medieval Tycoon.

And that's the plan! What do you think? Is it a keeper? Trash it and come up with a new idea? Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more posts, I'll be updating pretty regularly for a change. :)

[Toggles] Release Date August First!

Big announcement: Toggles is going to be release on August 1st! It sure sounds fun saying that!

Of course, this may be an over zealous announcement. Last post I said Toggles was at 60%. That might've been more than it really was. Now, I'd say I'm at 73% done. I've got my awesome music, the timer methods are working great, but there's still several game elements missing. I need a scoring system, bonus items, level progression and other media tidbits, like a main Title screen.

Nonetheless, I really think you guys are gonna like this one. I'm shooting for a 4-star rating on the allegro community. I want it to be sharp as possible. I might have to cut some ideas if I want to make the August 1st release date, but it will be done by then. I can't spend any longer on it than that.

It's kind of neat, I joined allegro in August '05. What a way to commemorate my 1-year anniversary, eh? I might show a screenshot over the next week, so stay tuned!

Monday, July 17, 2006

Announcing Toggles!

And another one forms from dust! Another title-project in my listing of incomplete games. However, you'll be happy to know that this one is already at 60% done (the next closest title would be Dragon Rider at 22%). 60% done is pretty good, considering only a week's worth of work on it.

So will I finish this one? Well, that's the whole concept of Toggles, to finish the darn thing. It's coming along nicely. Good design, good graphics, moderate gameplay and soon-to-be awesome music. I'm hoping to finish this by the end of this upcoming weekend.

And what is Toggles? Perhaps you can guess from the name. It's simple really, you have an X by X set of tiles (formally called toggles) that are floating on water. When you move the mouse over a toggle, it will go under water if it is currently floating above and vice versa. So it toggles, duh. The gameplay comes from having to get Y% done in Z amount of time, where Y and Z change from level to level. Oh, and you'll like how they change...

Yes, I did rip this idea. Don't worry, I'm giving full credit to the game that I stole it from in the game itself (if that made any sense). Of course, the water idea was mine, as well as many other creative influences.

About the internals of the game, I've come up with a decently working design. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done and presents it well. I'm trying out new timer methods, but I just found out that there's a problem. On my computer it runs fine, but if the fps rate is set too high, other computers will just lock up trying to play the game. Sigh, I never seem to get the timer methods working correctly. Oh well, I'll make it work for this game.

So be looking for Toggles on the digital shelves in the next week or tow!

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Back in the Trenches

Well, what a productive yet, not-so-productive weekend. I've installed all my old apps on my new computer, dorked around with them and have everything up to date. What apps am I referring to? Well, there's the ACID music Studio and my Wacom Graphics Tablet, along with its software package including Photoshop Elements 3.0 and Corel Painter 2.0. Also, I installed MS Office Pro, which means I should be getting back to my pointless opinion reviews soon. To test out my tablet programs, I drew the following:

Yeah, keep in mind they're doodles, not hardcore paintings. Like I said, I was just messing around, (obviously, that doesn't look like a snake... :) ).

Anyway, I also got .NET back on my computer and finally updated to the newest version of allegro (version 4.2). I figured I'd make some progress on Sunday, but my other fears were recognized. After a month hietus and I'm obviously very rusty. Nothing seemed to come out of my brain, like it was all dried up. I ended just staring and hoping it would come back and I get some quality work done. Alas, no luck. Perhaps it has to do with all the coding at work and other stressful constraints of life? Let's hope I can make up for my programmer's block (hehe) and get caught up over this week.

Oh, here's another doodle...

Friday, June 30, 2006

New Computer!

Yay, I got a brand new, shiny computer! I've had it since the 16th of this month (June). And you know what's really sad? I haven't been able to work on game development for a month! My schedule at my job is weird and puts me home pretty late. By that time, I'm tired and just want to relax. With the temptation of a computer that can actually run the games I've been holding on to for months, it's been hard to get motivated to do programming.

Once again, I promise to kick back in gear. I'm now the web admin of the game club (how did that happen?!?!), so I will probably talk a little more about it here and what all went down at the fair soon. Anyway, gotta get back to work...sigh.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Reclusive Month

It's been almost a month since my last post. If you read the last one, you could probably understand why. I've been incredibly busy since then and well, things haven't really slowed down. Since April 19th, I...

* Added clouds, rain, snow among many other things to Cosmos
* Made a whole new game called Dragon Rider (to be announced soon)
* Submitted my games to the game fair
* Went through a week of training for new software at work
* Suffered semeseter finals
* Walked at graduation
* Graduated
* Started Full-time job
* Started working out
* Continued to work on games

Maybe it's not that much, but when you expand each item to how much time it takes, it averages out to more than a single day (meaning I don't sleep). Anyway, going to help some friends move and I will continue to post updates on Cosmos and Dragon Rider. There's some big projects planned over this summer, so we'll see if I can keep the pace up. No time to relax now. :)

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

[Cosmos] Phase 4 and 5 (and more)

Phase 4 - Temperatures

There has been a lack of posts recently due to several reasons. I'm trying to get back on track now...

So my Absolute Zero world now has temperature. That's right from the tropical islands around the equator to the valleys of temperate cools and up to the tree line of the mountains as well as the frozen-like polar areas. There all there! Of course, this means little other than just a value at this point. We still just have the plain ole red rock and water along with mountains and valleys.

The temperatures of the planet are based off a few variables. After doing some research, I came to the following equation:

Tplanet = TG + Tsun √[rsun √(1 - α - β / 2) / 2d ]

Where Tplanet is the average temperature of the planet in question, TG is the added greenhouse effect, Tsun is the temperature of the closest star's surface temperature, rsun is the radius of that star, d is the oribital distance of the planet, and α is the absorption rate of the planet and β is the absorption rate of the atmosphere. Phew...

For now, I'm just using the Earth-like setup, so my planet basically has Earth-like temperatures. Also note that temperatures drop at a rough 3.6F every 1000 ft, which accounts for the cold temperatures of the mountains.

Phase 5 - Ice and Evaporation

With the temperatures of phase 4 and the ability to add water, we can now begin the basic principles of the water cycle. I'm still working on these stages, but they seem to be somewhat stable. I've got ice, water and water vapor, and I just need to tweak how they all work together. There's a problem with loss on the system that has to be taken care of.

Here's a picture of what the game looks like now. Please note that there are several Mt. Everest like mountains which account for the large amounts of ice, even with the Earth like temperatures.

Also, for ease of use, my ice doesn't float, but rather sinks to the bottom.

And More - Crunch Time

Take a look at the calendar. Count the days until the 5th of May. You'll notice there are only 15 (if you don't count today). Fifteen days...Fifteen days until the Game Fair! If you look above, you can see Cosmos is quickly coming together and looking nice, but there is no gameplay! Once again, I'm at this stage of pressure and lack of time without a proper game. Plus, I don't want this to be my only game. Not to mention I have to make a game for Psychology (don't ask)! It's time to carefully plan what can and can't be done...

Where should Cosmos be in 15 days?
In order to have it playable, Cosmos has to have lifeforms in the game. That is key. Of course, I also need vegetation, or it won't make much sense either. I think, if I can get lifeforms, grass, and weather with a fitting GUI, Cosmos will be ready for the fair.

What else?
I'm going to make another short game called Dragon Rider. It will hopefully be fun. I won't have much time to fit this game in, but I think it is doable. Yeesh, it's TINS all over again...

Old stuff?
Why not use old stuff? I'm gonna shine The Scourge and Fragments of Time and add them to my game fair queue. I shouldn't have to spend more than an hour on each...

And this all means?
The timeline! Here we are, how I'm going to get this all done in time...

Date	Objective
Wednesday	- Ice and Evaporation- Pressures
Thursday	- Density- Winds
Friday	- Winds
Saturday	- Winds- Clouds- Shine Scourge and Fragments- Dragon Rider
Sunday	- Dragon Rider- Clouds
Monday	- Weather and Grass - Catch Up
Tuesday	- Lifeforms
Wednesday	- Lifeforms
Thursday	- Lifeforms
Friday	- Lifeforms
Saturday	- Lifeforms- GUI- Catch-UP
Sunday	- Clean Up and Testing
Monday	- Clean Up and Testing
Tuesday	- Clean Up and Testing
Wednesday	- Clean Up and Testing
Thursday	- Packaging

Sunday, April 09, 2006

[Cosmos] Phase 3 - Revolving Sun & Moon

Phase 3 - Revolving Sun & Moon

New Features:
* Sun and Moon contiually circle planet
* When Moon is far from night, there is hardly any light
* Moon goes through following phases
- New: 0%
- Waxing Crescent: 20%
- First Quarter: 50%
- Waxing Gibbous: 80%
- Full: 100%
- Waning Gibbous: 80%
- Last Quarter: 50%
- Waning Crescent: 20%

Future Phases:
Phase 4) Temperatures
Phase 5) Ice and Evaporation
Phase 6) Wind

Saturday, April 08, 2006

[Cosmos] Phase 2 - Night and Day

Phase 2 - Night and Day

Several phases are planned to be implemented this weekend, so there will probably be several posts. This phase may seem like a small improvement from the previous phase, but that doesn't mean it wasn't difficult. The math was somewhat difficult to get the feel I wanted. Nonetheless, I'm satisfied with the results.

I talk a little about the math, but I'm just not in the mood. :) BTW, this phase marks the beginning of the very first version of Cosmos: Version 0.1.

Future Phases:
Phase 3) Revolving Sun and Moon
Phase 4) Temperatures
Phase 5) Ice and Evaporation

Thursday, April 06, 2006

[Cosmos] Phase 1 - Hardness & Erosion

Phase 1 - Hardness & Erosion

As I mentioned below, there are several phases that I'm planning to implement into Cosmos. Last night, after much design, I plugged in rock hardness and erosion. With the Game Fair coming fast, expect many posts on progress, possibly even daily.

Hardness
Some rocks/minerals are harder than others, that is a naturalistic fact. This is not too terribly hard to add to Cosmos, it's just a variable. I've made a design choice to randomly assign the hardness for each mountain as well as having every rock below a certain height be set to the hardest value (reasons why in a moment). The hardness of a given mountain will uniform throughout the mountain.

Erosion
A process that deforms the terrain. Since I have a system of water flow and now, rock hardness, I can determine the rate of erosion at any given spot. Rushing water over a thin depth erodes the fastest. If there is too much water already at the location, then new water does not erode the ground level. Thus, your large seas aren't flattening the ground like pancakes. Since the hardness at a certain height is always too hard to erode, erosion can only flatten to a certain point, allowing for the deep trenches to exist. The formula for calculating the erosion looks somewhat like this:

hardness:
1 - hardest
100 - softest

erosion:
if(water <>erode_value = [(1.0 / 5.0) * new amount of water entering location]

if erode_value > 100 then erode_value = 100

if [random number between 0 & 100] > [100 - (erode_value * (hardness / 100))] then reduce the ground level

Did that hurt your brain? Try plugging in some numbers. For example, let's say we have 1000ft of water entering onto dry land that has a hardness of 1.

erode_value = 200
since erode_value is greater than 100, erode_value = 100
Now to figure out the right side of the equation. [100 - (100 * (1 / 100))]
= [100 - (100 * .01)]
= [100 - 1]
= 99

Thus, the ground won't be lowered unless the random number pulled is 100, which is quite unlikely. So even with 1000 feet, the hardness prevents the mountain from being eroded. Neat huh? Did you even read this far? :)

Trust me, it's baby stuff compared to the rest of the system. :)

Future phases:
Phase 2) Sunlight and Moonlight
Phase 3) Revolving sun and moon
Phase 4) Temperatures
etc.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Cosmos: Watery Planet

I guess Gooey GUI is dead, eh? :)

Well, I'm proud to announce an update on Cosmos, my new baby. In fact, this is the first game that I've actually stuck with longer than a week for a long time. Cosmos has been in production for nearly a month now.

The terrain generation, as mentioned in a post below, was pretty quick and painless. Adding water, not so much. I have tried several algorithms and am not completely satisfied with the current, so I might slightly modify it some more. In any case, water is now simulating in the world of Cosmos planet (kind of Mars-ishy).

I've documented where I want this game to be by the upcoming Game Fair. There are around 20 phases that have to be added in order for this thing to really shine. Twenty! That's nearly 1 phase a day that has to be coded! It's going to be challenging, but I look forward to it. I will get into the phases in a later post.

Unfortunately, there is not a download at this time. This product is still in its infancy, and I want to mold it a bit more before any kind of physical demonstration. However, I'm willing to walk through what adding water looks like.....

Once again, this is a newborn planet, with only red rock (think Mars).

1) The new planet

2) Water added at shallow location

3) More water added at shallow location (so much water it is overflowing)

4) Water added in various spots around the planet

5) Enough water added to cover the planet

I hope you enjoyed this little slide-show!

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

UAGDC Game Fair '06

It's about time for the University of Arkansas Game Development Club's Second Annual Game Fair! The Game Fair is a chance to show off any independent game made by any local hobbyist. Of course, when I say game, I mean computer or console game. There's not even really a restriction on participants being University students!

I wanted to write this post to interject something new, besides the consistent flow of "Announcing whatnot" posts of recent. However, I'm sure I'll be back to norm very soon, if you get my drift...

The Game Fair is actually my baby. It was about two years ago to this date that I was talking to a classmate in the computer lab about starting a club when little ole Greg popped up and jumped aboard. The two of us founded UAGDC. The ultimate idea of having a Game Fair was my idea. I wanted it to simulate actual expo's and conventions for independent developers.

Last year was a huge success, having a steady flow of 10 to 20 people there at all times. This year, since I've stepped back from administration duties, I will be presenting a few new games I've been working on. However, there's lots to do until dead day, the day of the fair!

Stay tuned for further updates on the Game Fair and what all I'll be demoing! It should be a lot of fun!

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Announcing Cosmos!

As my brother so bluntly put it, "pick a game and stick with it!" Obviously, he hasn't picked up on my 20 odd years of starting hundreds of projects and never finishing them. It's just what I do. :)

Nonetheless, he's got a point that I've been meaning to exercise for a long time. I do have a few finished projects, but nothing of what caliber I imagine I could produce. I just haven't found a game that I feel stands a chance or will be worth anything by the end. So I keep moving to new ideas until one hopefully sticks. I said I would stick with the CH game, Santa's Secret, but it was so incomplete and badly designed, I just moved on. I said I would stick with the TINS game, Fragments of Time, but it's just not what I consider to be fun.

I believe I mentioned SimRPG a while back. This is actually the game I want to work on the most. I'm afraid of starting it before I'm ready though, I believe my skills are just not ready for how good I want to make that game. Thus, I keep postponing its production.

The game on the drawing board now I believe is a grand stepping stone towards SimRPG, not to mention an exciting project. This idea has hummed in my mind several times before. Now that I've finally started working on it, I feel compelled to work on it (not to mention think non-stop about it). It has totally consumed my every thought, and I'm having a hard time pushing it back when I'm at work (sometimes, I don't manage at all). So, without further ado, I present:

Cosmos

The idea is simulation more than anything, and most likely won't have much user interaction. That's okay, the true user interaction fun will be enveloped by SimRPG. There is no plot to this game and the purpose is simply to have as many lifeforms as possible. It's very simple, you start with a black screen with a bright star in the middle. Naturally, you hover over the only thing on the screen and a few options pop up: Name the Star, Mark the Star, Explode the Star. The other two sound boring, so once again, naturally, you blow it up. Now you have lots of little stars. Each star provides the same options when you scroll over it.

Eventually, after blowing up enough stars, a star will be far enough from other stars that its surface will cool over. Tada! You've got a planet! Zooming in on the planet, you find it to be much like Mars, a solid red surface, with mountains and ravines. A whole planet to explore!

However, not much is happening on the planet. You start to get bored and decide to add water to the mix. You add several hundred feet of water on the plains and hope for the best. The water spreads out and flattens across the plains. If the conditions are right, the water won't freeze nor will it instantly evaporate.

Once you have stable water, then you have an environment for lifeforms! Water also introduces flora (like grass and trees) and clouds which can produce storms. Before you know it, you'll have a thriving Earth-like planet!

But don't forget your other stars! Planets are being born all over the known Universe. Go to them and help them thrive as well. Make sure you don't accidently blow up their star source, or the planet might freeze or burn up depending on how the star explodes.

As you can see from the pictures above, I've already made some headway on the game. Don't be fooled by the lucious water-like terrains. I did make them, but I cheated, as the blue isn't really water, but more like blue rocks that makes it look like water. The actual challenge of producing realistic, flowing water is considerably more difficult.

In fact, that's where I'm at now. I've got a method to make the water flow, but there's a problem. IT'S WAY TOO SLOW! The problem is my graph is 640 X 480, dimension-wise. That means there are about 307,000 spots (or nodes as I call them). Each node has its own height and position. The problem is when you have about 5,000 spots, barely even a percent of the total, there are just too many nodes with water to handle without slowing the framerate down.

The current solution is to make polygons out of the pixels. Group them so I don't have so many to work with. I've got my polygon graph node, along with the algorithm to produce them, I just need to make the method work on the polygons rather than just the nodes. I'm hoping to get to this very soon. Here's an example of what I mean:

Images cannot be uploaded at this time...

On the left, you have the new born planet of red rock only. On the right, you have how the left graph was broken into polygons (each polygon is dyed a random color to differentiate it from the next). The dark blue section is water that I added that is still working on just the node level.

More news to come! Hopefully soon...

Read more!

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Announcing Fragments of Time!

Bah, over a month without posting! How unlike me. Gooey GUI is still on the back draft, mainly due to TINS06, but hopefully I will be getting back to it soon.

"TINS06?" you say? Well, I've mentioned it before on my other blogs, but not here. TINS06 is a 72 hour game programming competition, a crazy manifestation of coke-guzzling, code-pumping, sleep-deprived madness! This is the first time I've competed in such an event (although ChristmasHack comes close). The whole debacle began at 6:00AM on Friday, March 03, 2006. The following rules were generated automatically at that time:

Genre Rule: Game must have a time theme.
Artistic Rule: Game must feature a train and/or a railroad.
Technical Rule #1: Game must have a help function.
Technical Rule #2: Game must have ASCII art.

For a complete definition of all the rules, see here. So, how did I fair? Read on!

Pre-Competition Status
I was getting excited about the competition, but had to put it on the backburner for I was buried in the books, preparing myself for Friday's exam. It was a little after 4:00AM, 2 hours before the competition. I really wanted to stay awake and see what rules would pop up, but managed to force myself to sleep.

I woke up at 9:00AM (that's about 4 and half hours of sleep) and got ready for the exam. I studied some more and took the test. Fortunately, I felt pretty confident that I did well. Afterwards, I talked to class mates about the exam and then headed for work. It was 3:00pm.

Work was awful. I couldn't think straight and I just wanted to get started on the game. I didn't have enough patience to wait, so I went ahead and looked at the rules and everyone's progress thus far. Some people already had screenshots. At 7:04PM, I clocked out of work.

Typically, on Friday nights, I go to my parents' house for pizza. I chose to go straight home and prepare for the competition, hoping to catch up to everyone else. Apparently, my brain wasn't functioning right, because I sat in front of the TV for nearly 2 hours, slowly munching on some food. At 10:00PM, I finally started seriously brainstorming for what I was going to make.

During the Competition
I want to blame my lack of progress on my exam earlier that day. From 10:00PM to 2:00AM, I considered more than 20+ ideas that I would possibly attempt to implement. I had some good ideas, but I just didn't think they'd pan out. I finally decided I needed to sleep on it and hopefully I would do a little better the next day. I went to sleep at 3:00AM and woke up at 10:00AM (7 hours of sleep).

I eventually told myself to start coding, even though I hadn't completely decided on my end-goal. Nonetheless, I started to make some progress. After working for about 3 hours, I decided what little idea I did have wasn't going to work, and I scrapped the idea (but not the code). The truth is, I didn't have my final idea until about 6:00PM (that's 36 hours after the competition started!). Here's where I wanted to go with my game, Fragments of Time:

A signal from outer space was picked up by NASA several years ago. However, the signal could not be decoded until recently. When they finally managed to make sense of it, they located a construction on an uncharted planet far, far away. It was a dome. The NASA scientists managed to hack into the dome-like structure's mainframe, which was surprisingly in English. At the core of the main frame was some unreadable symbol (an ASCII character). They found a procedure within the mainframe that would supposedly decode the character and attempted to run it. Unfortunately, when they did this, the dome produced some kind of energy and unidentified creatures approached the dome and started attacking it. The scientists quickly shut down the program.

After some research, they found a weapon outside of the base that could be used to defend it from the monsters. The weird device was placed on tracks. They soon learned how to control it and use it. That's where you come in. While the scientists attempt to decode the unknown symbol, they want you, a specialized drone operator, to control the weapon device.

And I'll save the remaining story to be revealed during game play. Unfortunately, the current version only has the dome, the monsters (only 1 at this time), and the track-based weapon. However, I do intend to update* this later on.

Keeping the weapon on the tracks
Undoubtedly, the most difficult part was keeping the mobile turret on the railroad tracks. This part alone took me between 8 and 10 hours to get it to function correctly. Why was it so difficult? In the nature of the competition, I was writing particularly ugly code to try and advance the game as far as possible. From time to time, I would spend some time designing where the project would go. My first algorithm to keep the cart moving realistically on the tracks had some major flaws. Eventually, the code unraveled and simply didn't do its job. I decided to scrap my first attempt (the algorithm, that is) and start anew.

Thinking I had the right idea in mind, I wrote down how I wanted it to work and how it would work. The procedure went relatively smoothly with the exception of a few speed bumps. The new algorithm (the one that currently resides in the game) took roughly 2 hours to get functioning correctly.

Fire!!!
Now that the cart was finally doing its job, the next portion to focus on was making that mobile turret actually a weapon. This provided a new challenge that I had not attempted in an allegro project: angles. If you have angles, you have trigonometry. The idea was to have the turret be able to turn 360 degrees, allowing you to fire in any direction. Unfortunately, it was late Saturday (or early Sunday morning), and I was holding off joystick handling until later, ultimately deciding the weapon could only face 8 directions: EAST, WEST, NORTH, SOUTH, SOUTHEAST, SOUTHWEST, NORTHEAST, NORTHWEST. I managed to accomplish this decently fast.

Catnap
The track-algorithm was actually split across Saturday and Sunday. I did the firing part as soon as the first buggy algorithm was implemented. Mid-Sunday, I rewrote the entire procedure, as mentioned above in Keeping the weapon on the tracks. Sunday, at about 7:00AMish, I decided to reenergize myself with a short catnap. This was dangerous, considering over the past three months I have not been able to wakeup as I originally plan. I was afraid my current demeanor would end up knocking me out for the rest of Sunday. However, for once, I had the motivation to jump out of bed, and that's what I did at 11:00AM (4 hours of sleep).

The Balrogs destroyed all your domes!
After getting firing and track movement secured and a good test map working, I invented the Balrog (or stole it from LOTR). These are the "unidentified creatures" that I mentioned in the story part of During the Competition. I had movement and I had a weapon, now I needed a goal. The Balrogs were the chosen entities to give the game some flavor. I wanted to create a gigantic monster that towered over the puny weapon. The monster had to be scary and alien-like. I was happy because this gave me a chance to stop coding and do some graphical work with my graphics tablet, a nice tool I bought last year almost specifically for these kind of competitions. Here's the byproduct of my work, the Balrog and all its glorious frames (picture not drawn to scale)!

Domes
Now that Balrogs populated the planet, it was time to make an object of their desire as well as the central part of the game, the dome. Code-wise, the dome came along nicely and had a nice energy bar above it. Now, the Balrogs had to heat-seak this object, which meant one thing: angles. Now, I had to reverse engineer the mathematics to calculate the angle at which the Balrog would be moving in order to have them hunt down the domes. Nasty little bit of mathematics, but it came together relatively quick. The invention of the dome led me to the game's famous homestarrunner-like line, "The Balrogs destroyed all your domes!"

It was getting late on Sunday (early Monday) and the project was slowly coming together.

Last Hours of TINS
I can't remember what all happened between 2:00AM and 6:00AM on Monday morning, but I know one thing, it wasn't sleep. I designed a quick GUI to place over the current game field to spicen' things up. This took a good 30 minutes to an hour to get it into the game. I was pretty satisfied with this little addition, as it made the game feel like a game.

At 4:00 AM I came to a sudden realization. There was 2 hours remaining in this competition and I had only managed to satisfy one of the 4 needed rules! Even though I had the main framework of the game in place, there simply was no way the story I made could be implemented in 2 hours. Quickly, I changed the direction of the gameplay and made haste to satisfy each rule I was missing.

First, was the intro screen, where I would do my ASCII art. I had seen other competitors ASCII work and knew I couldn't compare with that. Instead, I went for a Matrix look of streaming green characters. I did this in about 5 to 10 minutes. Surprisingly, the intro screen is close to my favorite part of the entire game! There's a lesson in that**...

Second, to take care of the genre theme, Time. I simply decided the goal was to keep the domes up as long as possible. So, I made it that every second you have a dome up, you'd get one point for each dome standing. Unfortunately, all my maps at that time only contained one dome, so the score was basically the same as the time. I added it to the GUI and checked the time. It was about 4:50AM.

Lastly, the help screen. Due to time, I couldn't do anything fancy, so I just made a quick text layout of the controls and object of game that can be viewed during game play. I added the help key command to the GUI so players would easily know how to get some much needed help (how else are you going to know what to do in this game?). This didn't take long either, but the time was now 5:15AM.

After working on all that music, I couldn't leave that out. At this time, there was no extra media in the game and I really wanted to use at least one of my songs. Figuring out how to do this with OGG files*** was something I had never done before. I quickly read some tutorials, messed around with the code and slapped down some of my premade pieces. This actually turned out to be a bad idea, as I will explain in a moment. The time was 5:43AM, T minus 17 minutes till deadline.

Naturally, I had plenty more ideas that I wanted to do. I was very concerned with the fact that I only had one map and quickly made a new one (level 1 map). I also realized that my Balrogs were green and my tiles were green (supposed to be grass). However, this was suppose to be some distant planet, so I changed the grass to red rock. This was a significant change in the appearance of the game maps, one that I'm proud of. However, after these changes, the time was 5:58AM!

I compiled and packaged my program as fast as possible, writing a short readme.txt that simply directed the user to the TINS logs. Then, I submitted it. The time was 6:15AM. I was late. I was fearing it would be Christmas Hack all over and the project wouldn't even make it. I jumped on the logs and noticed that at 6:17AM, they officially shut down submissions, saying "Time's Up!"

I had made it in.

Post-Mortem
The sun was on its way up and if you've been keeping track, I've had roughly 15 hours of sleep since Thursday morning (4 Thursday night, 7 Friday night, 4 Saturday night, 0 Sunday night). However, with all the drama of the last 4 hours, I was hardly tired. Plus, I had to pay rent at 8:00AM (had to go to the bank to get some money).

So I made a new package for people to download. The submission I sent only contained the graphics and the code, and since there was no makefile, it'd be extremely difficult to produce the actual game. The package I made included the game as well as the music. I made a post on the logs to inform users how to get to my actual game.

Basically, for the next hour and a half, I checked things and tried to find problems that might arise. Afterwards, I took care of rent. It wasn't until about 10:00AMish that I finally went to sleep for some quality downtime. There wasn't anything else I could do for my TINS project. I slept until 7:00PM (and that would be 9 hours...).

I began writing this post the next day. I would have finished it, but last week turned out to be a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. I missed my Monday night class due to sleep and it turned out that she announced an exam for Wednesday (0f which I didn't find out about until Wednesday afternoon). My Stat homework was killing me and I had plenty of meetings at work.

What did I learn?
On the day after the competition, I got a message from the administrator of TINS saying my project was too big. One rule was the game has to be 400KB or less. The music alone was about 2000KB. Fortunately, he gave me a chance to make a quick fix that would run the game without the music. After doing this, the game shrunk to 400KB exactly.

There was a problem with the music anyway. I had put it in so hastily that I made a huge mistake. After playing the game for a few minutes, the music would continually overlap and eventually, you would have to shut it down. However, this was really easy to fix.

The main problem of this competition was my writer's block. I've never had it so bad. Of course, it was kind of like the opposite of writer's block, I had too many ideas. Here were some ideas that I came up with on Friday:

A horizontal platformer like The Goonies
A spin-off of Final Fantasy, Cyan takes on the Phantom Train
An Act Raiser like game
A Sim City like game
A scrolling game
A Batman game
Etc.

They came at a mile-a-minute and were about as useless as scented paper. Had I started Fragments on Friday night, I probably could have got at least some of the story done. I wasn't too enthused about the idea I decided on either.

Wrap-Up
All and all, it was a good, fun competition. Fragments might be my best project as of date, but I'm sure better will come! I still need a generic framework that I can work off of and improve my skills for the next competition (which will most likely be the actual SpeedHack!).

You can check out the game here: Fragments of Time
There are some known bugs in it. If you need my help, then just let me know! I will also update my downloads table to include the project. Later, bloggers!

BTW, by the end of the competition, I had quite a display of cokes stacked around my monitor. I drank a 11 out of the 12 pack that weekend alone. :)

* I sure do intend to update a lot of things! With the Second Annual UAGDC Game Fair coming around soon, I best be gettin' a move on all my projects!
**Simple is better!
***Allegro supports many musical versions with the right libraries linked. I couldn't find any package for MP3's, so I went with OGG files, which is relatively easy to implement.

Read more!

Friday, January 27, 2006

Announcing Draconis!

I've delayed my current article Gooey GUI to talk about an exciting new project called Draconis. Gooey GUI, my recent work on developing another GUI package for allegro library, will be posted hopefully in the next week or two.

Draconis is this year's UAGDC (UofA Game Development Club) Club project, a MMORPG in the style of classic RPG's like early Final Fantasy's and Dragon Warrior/Quest's. Sadly, I've already missed out on half of the fun, as I was completely inactive last semester. I did try to put in my 1 cent (not even enough to be considered 2) on the forums. Sometimes I think I have some form of wisdom to offer, I have no idea why. :)

But we all know the second semester is UAGDC's shinning point. With both an end-year Game Fair showcasing a magnitude of alpha-indie-games and a complex Club project, there's just no time to waste...at all! Fortunately, I have some time to offer this semester. What I'll be participating in is currently questionable.

Now you may have noticed my recent projects have been in allegro coupled with C++. Tis true, I've put quite a bit of loyalty and faith in the allegro package, but I've always wanted to expand my knowledge. SDL was high priority no my list, with OpenGL following close behind. Draconis uses SDL, so there's never been a better time to learn, eh? Logic should be the same between the two packages (allegro vs sdl), so I'll just have to get use to the minor details and whatnot.

But I ain't throwin' away allegro just yet! I've got a competition coming up in a month and as I mentioned, I'm working pretty hard on getting a GUI package together, although, that's nothing I can really present at a, oh I don't know, a Game Fair. ;)

Noticed how I haven't really said anything about Draconis yet, other than a basic summary? Weeell that's because Draconis is still in its baby stages, but after the first meeting of the spring semester, I'd say it's about to have a huge boost in functionality. Personally, I like what it can do already. It's just a matter of continuing forward with design and implementation.

I will add to my projects and download sections on the right panel shortly to support this new project. In the mean time, here's where the current version of the game should be located:

Draconis.zip
Note: The above file currently contains code as well. To play the game, run the server.exe and then the client.exe (or as many client.exe as you want...well, max of 50). If you need to figure out how to get your IP, let me know.

For further update information, check out these following links from the other developers and club sites. I too will list updates and other features-o'-interest as I see fit on this site. Toodles.

Kenny's Draconis Page
Club Project - Draconis

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Announcing Santa's Secret [CH05]

Santa's Secret is the name of my ChristmasHack '05 title. I had eight days to finish this small title and all I managed to build was a simple game engine without the game. I tried to finish some last moment touches to give it somewhat of a game-like feel, but ended up missing the deadline for submission. I will talk more about that later.

The object of ChristmasHack is to make a game specifically for another member of the allegro community. At the beginning of the event, you specify three descriptions that your randomly selected secret partner is required to make (only one of the three must be met). At the end, we submit the games and play the games made for us. Some games are made public to the community for everyone to play.

These were the descriptions I received (exactly as they were listed):

SantaPanic: Random tetris-shapes must be placed in a 7x7 field. When its full, the round is over. Score is 100% if all slots in the field got filled.
SantaHaste: Santa has gotten competition this year by other santabies, you must ride your santa sleigh fast and drop gifts down chimeneys. Red houses
SantaMadness: Santa crashed in forest over Canada, his hundred elfs went looking for him, but they got lost around the forst. Find all the elfs in the

I decided to go with SantaMadness as the main description to implement. After all is said and done, I probably should have stuck with SantaPanic...

Summary
Instead of SantaMadness, I decided to call my game, Santa's Secret. It's Christmas Eve Night and Santa has already left from the North Pole to begin delivering toys around the world, but on his way to America, he is ambushed somewhere above the Taiga Forest in Canada. Rudolf, the red-nosed reindeer, dashes back to the homestead where the tired elves are taking their first break in a long time. After hearing the news, all 100 elves race to the forest to help find Santa. All but one, that is. Christopher Gummies is ordered to stay back and watch the misses just in case. Shortly after, all the elves end lost in the forest themselves! It's up to Christopher to find the others and gather enough information to find Santa!

Game Style
Santa's Secret is a mix between the old puzzle game LoLo and action-adventure game Zelda. There are a set of monsters (called Dark Elves) that follow a very basic set of rules, but when put in certain combinations, can make for some tricky puzzles. Every elf you find gives you a bit of information that will help you find Santa. Sometimes, the elf will join your team and his or her special talent might be used to solve a later puzzle. There are several items that help you along the way.

Story
You know how the game starts, but what exactly is going on in the Taiga Forest? Why would Santa be ambushed? Apparently, a demon, deep within the forest, has been waiting for this moment for a long time. He is under the delusion that Santa has something that belongs to him. This something is what grants Santa's immortality, but that is more of a side effect when held by a human. To a demon, it can bind the souls of all living beings. It was 2000 years ago that the treasure was taken from the depths of darkness. Back then, it was simply called "the keys". Shortly after leaving that sinister place, "the keys" were given to a man named Kris as a present for his kindheartedness. Ever since then, Kris, who eventually changed his name to Santa, and his newfound immortality, annually honored this present by giving presents to people around the world. This day would soon be known as Christmas.

Now with Santa in reach of the Demon's grasp, a new dark age is on the horizon. Little does Christopher, the main protagonist, know how important it is for him to save Santa.

You may be asking yourself how Mrs. Claus has lived for so long. That is a good question, but can only be revealed by playing Santa's Secret.

Dark Elves
The following is a list of Dark Elves and what they do (and whether or not they were implemented into the game):

Blind Moby (Not Complete)- Moby doesn'tÂt chase nor hunt you. HeÂs merely stickinÂ to the walls. This baddie continually follows whatever objects are near and wonÂt harm you or your friends unless you run into him.
Annoying Leeper (Not Complete) - Leeper thinks heÂs cool. HeÂs going no where in particular and freezes whenever you are near. Careful, or heÂll block your path and you wonÂt have anywhere to go.
Random Phil - Phil is lost in the forest. HeÂs got nothing to do but walk around idly. DonÂt get close or heÂll have something to do with you.
Hunter Nugget - Nugget is desperately trying to find you. Make sure you hide from him!
Sniper Snake - Snake stands impressively still. If you get in his line of direction then Santa is not the only thing you have to worry aboutÂ
Ogre Elf (Not Complete)- HeÂs the biggest, little person you ever did see. Ogre walks slowly and clubs anything within his path.
Persistent Betty (Not Complete)- She keeps throwing fireballs in one direction. No one knows exactly how sheÂs keeping it up or where the fireballs are coming fromÂ
Ramming Dan - Once he sees you, he puts his head down and dashes forward until he hits something, whether it be you or the wall.
SpittinÂ Zoro (Not Complete)- This odd character prefers the chilly water, only coming up to spit large amounts of water at you.
Swinging George (Not Complete)- George thinks heÂs a monkey for some reason. He swings from tree to tree and likes to throw things. If he catches you, who knows where he will throw youÂ

Puzzles
Unfortunatelavailablezzles are availble for the current version of Santa's Secret, even though this is suppose to be the bulk of the game. Eventually, however, the game will include challenging puzzles using the dark elves above, trying to figure out how to not get caught by one of the several AI's.

Friends
Other friendly elves, the ones who got lost in the forest, will aide you in your journey to find Santa. Some will even provide new items or techniques to out smart the dark forces. The current version does not offer any friendly allies.

Andgistt's about the jist of the game. For the rest of this article, I'll talk about the event and what went wrong.

---

ChristmasHack '05

Out of the 21 participants, only 16 submitted their games, 12 of which went public. Santa's Secret fell into the five that didn't even get to submit. The question is, what went wrong? There are several factors that led to the game's inevitable demise and several lessons that must be learned. Howpertainingeasons pertainning satisfiednt were satisified. I participated because 1) I wanted to make a game, 2) practice for future competitions. As long as I've delved on game design and its processes, I've never competed nor truly presented my work. This shy outlook is equivalent to death in the game industry. In order to perfect my skills and prepare myself for the future, it is necessary to attend these events and learn from the other gurus. I doubt I will be winning any competition soon, but practice makes perfect.

Santa's Secret: Post Mortem
A proper study on the design flaws and drawbacks are needed to evaluate Santa's Secret's failure. Here, I will investigate what I think led to its unraveling and what noobish errs I made.

- Computer Bog Down
Although not truly under my control and many would say this has nothing to do with SS's incompletion, but the truth is, it's a huge factor. Games take resources and typically (unless you have perfect memory) references. My computer has recently aged at exponential rates and finding a simple getpixel method can take several minutes*. I often left my computer during the compiling process of the program code, which could take several minutes. This is very serious, as I Smoke Test, meaning I build often. These drawbacks really affect you in the long run and are critical in time crunch situations. You can't win a tournament with sub-par equipment.

* Not that I'd need to look up a getpixel method, I was just using that as an example. There are, however, many things that I do need to look up.

- Lack of Knowledge
Even though I know good programming techniques and methods, my journey into graphic libraries and API's is short-lived. This means I have to spend a lot of time checking references and any time spent is crucial. Also, I tend to write unnecessary portions of code that already exist elsewhere, which is an obvious waste of time. These events are meant to expand my knowledge and skills progressively faster.

- Design Flaw
I have a pretty good idea how to design and what makes for a good design model, but my problem comes from employing the model. I told myself to stay small, but I went way too big in proportion to the amount of time for this project. There was way too much content and I ended up not able to add any of it. I should have just made a simple engine with a simple premise that could go a long way. Alas, this might have been my biggest flaw.

- Coding Flaw
I already mentioned that I was lacking in the graphics coding department. I spent way too much time trying to make this perfectly flexible system and then rushing through to get done. My code is both organized in some places and ugly-as-can-be in others. The worse part is I could've just done a bunch of copying and pasting and gotten to the same place a lot sooner.

- Foolish Method
I was going for the 40-20-40 model (40% of time designing, 20% coding, 40% testing). I spent way too much time designing and ended up missing a lot of valuable time that I could've used on coding. I should have picked a better model. The 40-20-40 method works great for long team projects, but a short one-man project it just doesn't work. Also, I should have recognized my handicap of being behind in the knowledge of allegro usage and made it more of a 20-60-20 model. That would've been a lot better.

- Time Pressure
Of course there was time pressure, but every one had time pressure in this event. I work full time, so my biggest chance to work was on the weekend (in which I didn't use for designingt rather, desiging...). It was also Christmas time, so I had to some shopping. Not to mention it was my wife and I's fifth year anniversary (of being together, not being married...but what's the difference?), so there was some time there. Plus we had a Christmas party with friends. It all comes to about 8-16 hours that I truly had to work on the project. However, I knew this and I should have utilized that time better.

So that about sums it up. I've added Santa's Secret to the download and project sections on the right side bar if you wan to check it out. This is still the CH version, but I plan on putting some actual game elements to it soon and make it at least playable. For now, all it has is the engine and several AI units that perform the functions listed in the Dark Elves section above. Watch out for the green-hat elves, there the Sniper Snakes...