The start of an asteroid clone. I think the motion is quite satisfying.

Ship Controls
Up Arrow: Booster Rocket. Boost.
Left Arrow: Rotate Ship Left.
Right Arrow: Rotate Ship Right.

I reused a soundtrack idea from a while ago. I think it fits nicely, gives a sense of space. Not really stolen from a book but most things stolen and modified from other sites. I would like to add other things to this but hey, come on.

Turn on sound if you are able to, and be sure to spin as fast as you can.

The game after the jump …

(more…)

Most of this is out of a book called Flash Professional 8 Game Development. It’s not a great book but it has value in its massive amounts of examples. I can’t say I’m enjoying Flash gamedev. It’s very kiddy and simple. Sure, you get results but there’s really bad things (maybe just in this book) like soft-references.

Soft references are building a variable on the fly. It’s a rookie thing to do.

var number = 1;
var box = "box_number_" + number; // this makes box_number_1
number++;
var box = "box_number_" + number; // this makes box_number_2 and so on


This way later they can say box._x (the x position) and box._y (the y position) and box changes to be box #1 and then box #2 (so you can place the boxes to hit with the paddle). It’s really a bad idea. I mean it makes sense to the novice but it’s not “serious”. A better way to make two boxes would be to do it like C/Java and use an array.


for (var i = 0; i < 2; i++) {
var box[i]._x = something; // set x of box
var box[i]._y = something; // set y of box
}


Now if I was good, I'd rewrite their example from the book and make it better like this but I'm lazy or just wrong about Flash so I'm posting what I have so far. I made some minor improvements, very minor. I made the score and lives numbers more arcade-y by padding zeros in front. It's a bit more old school imo.

function arcadeScoreFormat(score):String
{
if (score < 10) {
return "0000" + score;
} else if (score >= 10 && score < 100) {
return "000" + score;
} else if (score >= 100 && score < 1000) {
return "00" + score;
} else if (score >= 1000 && score < 9999) {
return "0" + score;
} else if (score >= 10000 && score < 99999) {
return "99999";
}
}

And then the code from the book uses the above function like this:

lives = 5;
score = 0;
lives_txt.text = arcadeScoreFormat(lives);
score_txt.text = arcadeScoreFormat(score);


UPDATE: Whelp, looks like things break on flash players possibly older than 9. And also the fonts are broken on Windows. I’ll make some changes tonight and embed the fonts so it looks right.

UPDATE: Ok looks like embedding fonts worked.

The game is after the jump …
(more…)

I left work early today (no overtime allowed) and worked on my animated box thing. With lots of free time, motivation comes easy.

So, it’s doing everything I said I wanted to do. Anything more really moves into the next stage/phase. You can see the lame-ocity here:

Roughly 20 hours of pain and coding.

IGDA (International Game Developer’s Association) meeting yesterday was just a recap of GDC’07 but it was a few hours of interesting conversation. It was a decent turnout, maybe 15 people from all walks of life. Three of the guys there recalled what they saw and who they talked to.

I recalled the Wii experience at Edgar’s house. I said, [WiiSports] It’s better than real bowling. Which is true. When we played 4 player bowling on a couch with our socks off on hardwood floors, it was better than real bowling. I stood up at the IGDA meeting and did the motion of Wii bowling:

• Stand up from couch
• Toss a ball forward
• Slide across the hardwood floor in socks
• Auto-scoring by Wii
• Sit down on couch
• Drink beer while watching someone else bowl

And then I did the same demonstration as if I was at a real AMF bowling lane:

• Stand up from bench
• Toss a ball forward
• Slide across the hardwood lanes in bowling shoes
• Auto-scoring by bowling system
• Sit down on bench
• Drink beer while watching someone else bowl

Everyone laughed. Which is good since I kinda hijacked the conversation for 3 minutes even though this was my 2nd meeting.

I was severely outclassed by many at the meeting. People from EA, people from BethedsaSoft, people with major entertainment contacts. For example, Patrick Dugan was at the meeting and he had a lot of fine things to say. He specifically talked to Miyamoto and Reggie. He said they were nice, Reggie was very busy obviously. Patrick has had a lot of contacts and experience for someone who is 21, I was humbled. He talked to Will Wright previously. Amazing. Rockstars of the video game world.

Hell, Patrick was behind getting the Columbine game controversy exposed. Apparently he knew the guys behind it and suggested that it get submitted. Then later he brought it out into public light because it was getting too much debate by the other developers in the contest. I might have his story a bit wrong but regardless, I was like “are you serious Patrick?!” because I had read all about this on gamasutra. Speaking of gamasutra, one of the games he worked (Play With Fire) on was featured on the front page a few months ago. Starstruck, I’m like I saw your game on the front page. He just kinda laughed. I’m such a noob.

He’s far, far, far along the path to indie or commercial gamedev. I’d be very surprised if someone doesn’t throw him $6 figures to make a title.

At the same time, I think I brought some hands-on experience to the meeting. Patrick name-dropped Unity and I chimed in. It’s an all-in-one Mac development tool that lets you develop cross-platform. It’s super slick. You can publish to the web, to Windows (with the Pro license) and the Xbox360 (with the Pro license). It’s a tool that I’m going to buy this year after some more low-level learning is done. If you want to see something I did in 2 hours, here’s my first test with Unity. You’re going to have to download a small web plugin. It’s caused no issues for me in 6 months.

The unity test is a wine glass model I made in 3d Studio Max. There’s no interactivity. It wasn’t easy because I’m not a modeler but the end result is loading a model on a Mac development tool and publishing it to the web. Pretty amazing for a $150 tool.

Anyway, I think the IGDA meetings will be good for me. I seem to be able to hang a little bit (at least on the technical side) and as long as I listen more than talk then I won’t come off as a pretentious asshole when really my intention is to share information.

Until then, I’m working on three things.

One

My animated box thing. You can read more and see an animated gif of what’s working so far with that link.

Two

Creating a colorwheel class (rotates colors like screensavers do many times). The end result would simply be this:

RGB (0.0,0.1,0.9)
RGB (0.0,0.2,0.8)
RGB (0.0,0.3,0.7)
RGB (0.0,0.4,0.6)
RGB (0.0,0.5,0.5)
RGB (0.0,0.6,0.4)
RGB (0.0,0.7,0.3)
RGB (0.0,0.8,0.1)
RGB (0.0,0.9,0.0)
RGB (0.0,1.0,0.0)
RGB (0.1,0.9,0.0)
RGB (0.2,0.8,0.0)
...

It’s deceivingly simple. It would be used by other things and not really display anything by itself.

Here, blue is decreasing while green is increasing. The goal is to ping pong blue->green->red->->green->blue->etc. It’s harder than I thought.

Three

Drawing three curves that go through (0,0) and (10,0) with varying steepness.

Generally trying to remember calculus so I can draw the curves. Yahoo Answers has really helped a lot on the math side of things. So far, the math side of things have been kicking my ass.

The color wheel is related because I want the curves to be different colors for readability.

Send motivation please, kthx.

Unanswerable Question #1

I’m almost done with Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas (I think). It’s been a year+ long playing game. I’d put it down, pick it up, put it down in disgust, pick it up with rage again and all the while my friend beat it 7 months ago no problem. He loves the game, he loves the plot, I love to drive around as fast as I can and see how long I can live through 5 stars (6 stars once).

Anyway, I don’t know how familiar you are with GTA:SA but when you get in a car and drive around, you suddenly see other cars of your own type. Like, if you see a single ultra rare Ferrari knock-off and steal it, suddenly (it seems to me) that you start seeing a van, a Ferrari, a truck, a Ferrari, a motorcycle and a Ferrari. So what right?

I start thinking, “hmm I wonder if this is a technical limitation or if it’s social commentary?” That is, if you’re in a Van model, the Playstation2 hardware would be eased to just load more models of that type. Or perhaps you are just traveling faster in a “load Vans in this section of the city at this time”. You see more cars of that type because you are seeing more cars period. That’d be the technical answer but it could be social commentary. I mean, if you know someone who just bought a Saturn Ion, suddenly you see them everywhere right?

Unanswerable Question #2

James Woods does the voice acting in GTA:SA and he gives a damn good performance. Along with The Simpons camoes I wonder if he intentionally stays out of the mainstream acting biz or if he just refuses to play a wimpy sitcom role. He seems very self-aware in his jobs he picks (or doesn’t pick). For example, in one GTA mission you have to sneak onto a navy ship.

[CJ is near the amphibious assault ship.]
TORENO (via the earpiece): Sneak in the back without being seen. Once you’re on the inside, I cannot help you.
CJ: Well, can you help me now?
TORENO: Oh, well, no. Actually, no.

The joke is, CJ (the player) is in a videogame so if someone says “I’ll tell you later” usually the character just takes it as the truth and moves on. Toreno (James Woods) seems to break the 4th wall and provide no other excuse for why he can’t help the player now instead of waiting until the player is inside the ship.

I wonder if James Woods likes being outside of the norm, breaking the 4th wall and generally being an oddity. By his own design or by market demand?

Unanswerable Question #3

In San Andreas, Los Santos is Los Angelas. San Fierro is San Francisco. Las Venturas is Las Vegas. A car by the name of Buffalo is obviously a Mustang. Were they unable to secure rights for the real names or is using the real names less tongue-in-cheek and more lame?

Some new details on the Wii got me thinking about some possible uses for the Wii as a training device. Will it be accurate enough to train and improve:

• Your tennis swing?
• Your dart throwing motion?
• Your fencing skills?
• Your ninja skills?

I don’t know! Iaido, what is happening in the video above, is a martial art that is meditative and full of dicipline. Lawyers and Doctors study non-grappling Iaido to avoid showing bruises in their regular life. Nothing like holding a 20″ razor to make you concentrate.

So will the Wii give us a dumbed-down plasticky version of this? In house dicipline? Yoga? I seriously doubt my own idea. After all, the DS with its writable screen hasn’t given us a cursive trainer.

Remember Golden Ax? Remember how you would choose your character to start the game out? You have 3 guys to choose from and you spin the merry-go-round to select between them. Or how about Street Fighter? You have this tile of guys to choose from, you make your choice and the game starts. It’s like choosing a car. It’s pre-fab. It’s static.

Then what about The Sims or D&D or the upcoming Spore game? That’s a little bit more organic. You might pick a base dude but you can customize them to a certain extent. In the Sims, you can customize the clothing. In D&D (and all other nerdly clones) you roll some dice and your relative power is determined by luck and such. You might be lucky: “Oh, I’m going to rule!” or you might roll horribly like bad cards in poker: “This is going to be tough”. But the game adapts to your strong or weak start. Eventually the playing field should level out a bit.

So my limited and under-developed idea is this: picking out the tallest blade of grass that has proved himself already. You watch these little guys run around, as they do good things, they become bigger or shinier. You pick one out and bake him into a hero or “your dude”.

This kinda happens already in Rise of Nations. You send out hordes of generic troops. Some of the troops succeed and get experience. They flash a little icon over their head and “ding!” they are a general or something. When I was playing RoN, I was compelled to keep the succeeder alive and make him more uber. So in this way, you let them prove themselves first, throw in some luck and you get rid of the pre-fab start.

Of course, this wouldn’t work for street fighter, which wants action, action, action.