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Posted - 6/26/2007 11:19:01 PM | I worked quite a bit on things with little progress it seems today. I was kind of bouncing all over the place however working on different things. The main thing that I did today was embed python and started working on producing a host api for me engine. I'm not really sure if this is the path that I really want to take though for scripting. The more I work on it and get into the more I realize that there is a great deal of overhead involved with working with python inside of the engine environment. It would almost seem easier to write a more simple implementation of a scripting language, one that simply runs through the engine itself. I suppose I'll make a final decision on that over the next couple of weeks as I develop it more.
I also screwed around with the GUI class some, but my initial approach for inheriting from my quad class and my command console class for my textbox didn't turn out how I had initially planned it would. Essentially the problem lies in the drawing functionality as well as the keyboard handling specifically written for the command console(which I was initially trying to inherit for the textbox). I think that because of the way the console class is written, it may just be better to start a new class for the remaining GUI to build off of, this too will have to wait until tomorrow however.
So, today I'm reminded that if you spend time away from a project, it can be a real nightmare to try and come back too and get anything of value accomplished. I worked on the engine at least for eight hours today and maybe made three hours worth of progress. It's better then nothing though, right??
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| Breaking the Silence | 
Posted - 6/26/2007 5:10:44 PM | I haven't added an entry in a while and with some good reason. I've been completely side tracked these last couple of weeks. Also, I'm now among the ranks of the unemployed. It's amazing how quickly job security can falter. At any rate, I was trying to get back into school full time, but I haven't been able to secure the loans, so that ended up being a long shot.
The worst part about it is that I know I want to be a game developer full time, but a person seeking such an avenue who has only a limited number of resources only has a few paths to choose to accomplish said end. How does one reach an ends, without the correct means to do so? That has been the ever prevalent question it seems. Funding.. the dreaded reality of living in a capitalistic society seems to be the main obstacle.
Paths can include :
Going back to school - This is hard to do when reality pressing one has to work a full time job and fulfill all the other roles in ones life. Without securing loans to go to school full time and pay for other expenses, a full time job and being a father leaves little to no time for game development at all. Especially when the work that I am able to secure that pays decently enough for me to live, is usually labor work that has me no where near a computer and has me being exhausted at the end of the day.
Working Full time / part time game development - This is what I've been doing and while the most practical, it also leaves other things to be desired such as more time to concentrate on game development. Also as mentioned previously, I can't seem to land a job that is IT related either, which I would be satisfied with, this avenue is the one that I will also more then likely continue down.
Give up your worldly possessions to live in a dilapidated house and live the true bohemian life style. - This has been the path of many an artist, live for your art , be obsessive and manic in your efforts, someone says hey you have to pay bills to live here, your response is bills are for the mortal (Mom can I live with you?). Scrounge and toil to put footing into your venture, tap into friends networks wirelessly, sleep on benches, shower when there is a source of fresh water, you are a game developer. You also happen to be homeless and have a rather pungent smell about you. Plus the people that depend on you find it hard to depend on a nomad.
I've read where various people on this site have found homes with development companies and that is something that I've thought of as well. I know that I can perform some entry level position with some company some where, but I also fear that my portfolio is lacking at this point and or I don't have any industry experience. On top of that I'm mainly a self taught programmer and as such I probably am not the best engineer. On top of that, Iowa isn't really know for it's massive participation in the game industry so any potential employment with a game dev house is going to be riddled with nationwide competition, but it'd still be worth persuing.
Ok, well I'm not really sure where I was going with that but it was interesting still the same.
I haven't been working on Wrath of the Scarecrow since before the MAGIC competition. Instead I worked on redesigning some stuff for the editor and have been working to implement it. I also was attempting to setup a public wiki from my computer but for some reason MoinMoin doesn't like to run with IIS or at least the write permissions where messed up. It was easy to get python working with it though. At any rate, I ended up giving up on it after a day and a half of messing with it, and may attempt to set it up again at a later date.
In the meantime, I'm concentrating on working on the editor and I'm going to at least find some part time work so that I don't get evicted or lose my internet connection.
I'll be documenting development of the editor over the rest of this week as well, so away I go.
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| I am a lier | |
Posted - 6/10/2007 5:41:20 PM | Ok, well I said I'd be submitting something for the MAGIC competition and it turns out that, nope I won't be. I fell behind this weekend. I was doing pretty well up until Saturday morning at which point I became completely side tracked. I ended up not working on the game more then an hour on Saturday and nothing at all today. Although as mentioned in my previous post, this has been an educational experience and I may go ahead and finish a prototype for the game (Seeing as I spent a while working on animations for it) or I may just use the resources that I did develop.
Maybe I'll develop a casual game as a side project also.
One thing is for sure, the first things on my list for the engine now are to finish my editor, get scene management taken care of, and finish the GUI elements. Once those things are done, it should be a hell of a lot easier to prototype as well as fully develop.
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| Time is almost up | |
Posted - 6/9/2007 10:55:27 AM | Well, there is a little over twenty four hours left in the MAGIC competition now. I can tell you, I've learned a lot this week. Yesterday, I spent all day working on art resources. I even took work off. I kept getting side tracked though with modifying certain things, and I feel like I didn't really get a whole lot completed. I spent a lot of time( and will continue to do so) mapping textures in my now uncompleted editor. I'm tired of doing it manually and as such, as soon as the competition is over, before I get back to work on designing Wrath of the Scarecrow, I'll be adding scene management and saving and loading texture coordinates from the editor to the engine. Had I had this done before the contest, I could have saved a lot of time as mapping textures probably has taken up at least half of the time spent.
Even though I chopped down on my initial design plan, it was still too ambitious for a one week contest, at least for a week when I had my normal life going on too. I'm struggling now even to get the game into a one level demo. It's going to be pretty close if anything actually playable even comes out of it. I will be working on it all day today though and tomorrow until the deadline.
I've spent more time creating animations this past week then anything else because I wanted the game to look good. As such, I have not concentrated on game play elements what so ever. This isn't like me as usually I'm the complete opposite, but I've just been enjoying creating the character and animating him and playing with the engines sprite animation system. If nothing else I've learned a lot this past week about how not to do some things.
This week has been hectic. My apartments as mess, and I neglected some events (like a show some friends were playing) to work on this, I've maybe put 20 hours into it so far. It'll end up being 30 by the time it's all said and done.
I hope everyone else is doing better on their entry.
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| Yep | |
Posted - 6/6/2007 6:06:27 PM | Things are progressing rather well for Enigmatic Ascension. There's some issues with some of the graphics that I ended up doing last night that I would like to change, but this is a one week comp. So, it's better to move forward in my opinion. I'm basically going to be working on design and music tonight. Tomorrow, I'll continue to do more art resources. Friday will be programming and art. Saturday will be programming and art (which hopefully I can get the majority of what needs to be completed done.) Sunday, I'll tie up any lose ends and concentrate on deployment.
Here's a better representation of the graphical style. That is an in game shot, I just don't have a lot of resources yet. I'm almost finished with the design though. More tomorrow.
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| It has Begun | |
Posted - 6/5/2007 10:47:40 PM | 
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| Quick UPdate | |
Posted - 6/4/2007 7:15:12 AM | A little before I head out to work this morning. Trapper Zoid made a comment that the concept for my game was a little ambitious for this contest a couple of posts ago, and well the more I thought about it, the more he is right. The concept was a good one, but with the story being something that would require a bit of development, I instead have decided simply concentrate on the gameplay elements. So it'll just be Enigmatic Ascension, so no Scarecrow. I started working on art resources today ( I ended up going to sleep really early yesterday because I didn't get a lot of sleep all weekend.) and will be continuing to do so when I get home from work. I figure that if I spend most of my time this week working on resources, I should be able to hammer out the levels towards the end of the week and this weekend. I'll post some pics later.
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| SHEESH! | |
Posted - 6/3/2007 3:44:57 AM | Well, it took me about three hours, but I finally got picking working. I actually got the picking itself working about half an hour into it. Then my textures were getting all distorted. It took me the rest of the time to figure out that I have to do my selection pass after my rendering pass in order for things to animate correctly. Well, I would stay up and work on my MAGIC entry, but my sons still around and I need to wake up early and be available for him. So, it'll have to wait until tomorrow afternoon. Art resources are going to be the biggest hold up I believe, but it should be interesting all the same.
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| Come Lighting, Come Thunder... Brainstorming | |
Posted - 6/3/2007 12:30:34 AM | Ok, so I made myself brainstorm some concepts for the magic comp the last few hours instead of getting my picking coding finished(I just need to process my hits correctly, which proved to be a pain in the ass, but I think I have it figured out, I just have to implement it) and I managed to come up with three ideas. Well I came up with more but the three I wrote out were the better of them all.
Here's the two that I'm not going to go with.
1. Card Tower - A physics simulation. Players use cards to build , you guessed it, a tower. Various test would be implemented for structural integrity of the build. (This idea seemed pretty boring and would require too much of a twitch input method, so I decided against it.)
2. Trade Towers - (Notice that these titles are very generic and both include Towers) This was a game focused heavily on economic elements. There was four regions each containing a tower and the whole objective was a competition of resources and over all moral of the populations of the regions. The design did not include any violence and was solely contingent upon world variables and trade relations. The scope of this game could be kept simple and would have been fun to do, but I decided to go with a different idea.
The Winner - Scarecrow : Enigmatic Ascension - This will be a game that will introduce players to the world of Wrath of the Scarecrow. It will follow the path of Kakashi before he was sent to the realm of trial, and will tell the story of how he became the scarecrow. The game will be a side scroller, with no violence once again. This game will contain purely puzzle elements and should be a decent precursor to the prologue of the series.
A week is a short time. I better get started.
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| I'm Behind | |
Posted - 6/2/2007 10:20:01 PM | I have to finish these damned picking routines before I allow myself to start on my entry for the MAGIC Comp. I will submit something. I just hope it's somewhat polished. Oh well, enough speculation.
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| It's not easy being Japanessey ...Eye eye eye | |
Posted - 6/2/2007 12:09:00 AM | So.. I've decided that the longest part of development for this game is going to be the inclusion of the various languages. It is one of my greatest frustrations that with the American school systems that languages aren't a mandatory requirement in school. I mean teaching them early on. Almost every other culture on the planet has at least two languages that they are very fluent in. I only blame the school systems to a certain point though, just like you can only blame your parents to a certain point for decisions you may have made in your life. Once you reach a certain age, it's time to take responsibility for your own actions. So, damnit, I make me feel stupid. 
In the past I've started learning languages but never followed through with it because I allowed myself to get side tracked by being young and stupid and wanting to socialize rather then completing any actual goals. As you get older, you tend to see the reaper with his scythe in the horizon, ominously stretching his skeletal hand in your direction, so it becomes apparent that if you ever want to do something, you better get your ass in gear. Such is the point where I currently reside in time. I decided that I'm also going to attempt to teach my son Japanese and Spanish as well, so I'll at least have a learning partner too. I ordered some books this week on Japanese particles.
A resource for the game that I'm having trouble finding though is a source for romanization of Hirigana and Katakana symbols. I want to include both in the game simply for clarification, so someone who may not be interested in that aspect of the game won't get turned off by it. If anyone can suggest some good resources to that end, I would be appreciative enough to thank you. Spanish on the other hand isn't nearly as hard as it is also derived from Latin, as I'm sure most of you know, and there are thousands of translation resources.
As far as the engine goes, I'll be finishing picking up for the engine over the next couple of days. I have my son the entire weekend so, I won't have a lot of time, but after 9pm, it's all about game development. I really want to get things finished up so that the engine can be ready for the MAGIC contest, which I'll be abandoning sleep for, during the next week.
On another note, I got into my first car accident yesterday. A moderately long story short, if you ever back into a gas pump at a gas station, they make the fire department come and check it for gas leaks. Also, don't forget to check both blind spots when backing up large vehicles, and if you think your going to hit something, but figure you'll be ok, go a head and stop. It was in a work van too, surprisingly enough, I wasn't even scolded, my boss and everyone at work was very understanding. Hopefully that won't change once the insurance claim is entered. It really makes me feel old when I start worrying about job security though, also, makes me realize what a good job I have.
Time for picking.
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