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Exceptional Journals (in no order): [Eliwood] [Steve Healy] [Ravuya] [Mark the Artist] [Scet] [Ysaneya] [Mayan Obsidian]
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  The real scoop. | 
Posted - 7/27/2007 9:52:28 AM | The truth comes out: when I spoke so confidently about pushing forward with Skirmish regardless of my lack of internet, I was fairly confident that I would manage to locate an alternate ISP within a week or so. After some research, it turns out that Rogers is the only ISP in my town. Crud. This means that I really am stuck without the internet for the next 25 days. What is one to do?
...
Read more at the new Dev-Journal location.
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| A man without internet is an island. | |
Posted - 7/24/2007 9:33:28 AM | Hello again! It's been far too long since my last entry, although I can't make up for it at the moment. I feel a tad guilty for writing this entry while at work, but my home internet has been out for a little while. Why, you ask? Because some bumpkin jumped onto our wireless router -- for which I am to blame for neglecting to secure with WEP -- and starting spamming out crud to Rogers' DNS servers. As a result, they called me up and told me that our internet service has been suspended -- for a month! A month which we are still paying them for, I might add. Anyways, the result is the same: no internet access at home. This should make developing an online game reasonably challenging. :)
However, I seem to be able to pick up one of the neighbours' router on my laptop wirelessly, so I'm going to sneak on here and there (in a ninja-èsque manner) to post entries here and check up on my email. I expect it to be a tough month. Hopefully Bell will get their DSL up here soon so we can migrate away from the Rogers folks.
Regardless of being devoid of the internet, I still plan on pushing forward full-speed with Skirmish. There is still plenty of non-networking work to be done, which will be able to occupy me for the month. Currently I'm working on the rigid body dynamics for the Object model I mentioned in my last entry, which I'll hopefully be able to talk about more in another entry (tonight?).
Thanks for bearing with me, and I hope you catch most of you on MSN in a month or sooner. :)
Same entry in the new Dev-Journal.
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| The Object Model (and Happy Code) | |
Posted - 7/17/2007 10:01:31 PM | Okay, this is neat. Maybe not from the perspective of your average gamer, but I think that fellow developers respect a good chunk of decent code design. I know I do.
Prior to recently (read: all work preceeding (and including) Membrane Massacre), writing good code just wasn’t something that I bothered with. To me, finishing the game quickly was more important. Or rather, it used to be. As a result — I’m sure you all know — this resulted in tons of ugly hacks here and there, redundant code, and a handful of virtually untraceable bugs. I’m sure I’ve done a pretty good job of hiding this shameful facts in my games thus far, but this item keeps on coming back to haunt me whenever I attempt to take on a large project such as Skirmish: bad code drags me down. For small to medium games I can generally get away with it; even Membrane Massacre, a 5-month-long excursion, managed to reach completion with fairly hackish code. I don’t think I would be able to add much more to it at this point, but I’m starting to dislike the idea of “just barely surviving game completion”. What is one to do?
...
Read the rest at my new DevLog location
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| Groundwork continued. | |
Posted - 7/15/2007 9:38:44 PM | For those of you unaware, I’m currently on my four-month co-op term from the university, working at the Ministry of Education here in Ontario. The commute down to (and back from) Toronto pulls a lot out of me each day, so developing Skirmish on the side has been a difficult talk. Still, during the week I manage to fit in two hours overall during my to-and-fro train rides, and sometimes a little in the evening too. The weekend is where progress tends to shine the most, however, and this weekend hasn’t been an exception....
...
Read the rest at the new journal location.
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| Onwards and outwards! | |
Posted - 7/13/2007 8:26:42 PM | And so unfolds a new chapter. I'm eager to get my websites (for Skirmish and my personal site) underway. I think everything I need to say I've already said at the aforementioned link.
Please take a moment to drop a comment on my new journal -- hopefully it will get you in the right habit to continue doing so. 
Ungh, next step: trying to see if I can somehow export this journal to my new one. I really don't want to have to bail out on 2 years worth of content. 
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| Skirmish moving ahead. And goodbytes. Er, byes. | |
Posted - 7/12/2007 10:32:05 PM | Web hosting secured!
With my solidified decision of taking on DreamHost to provide me with hosting for my in-development project, Skirmish Online, I find -- er -- my wallet a little lighter. 
My purchase is confirmed, and I'm just waiting on approval before I get cracking with my new-found webspace. In particular, I'm excited to put some of the HTML/CSS/PHP/mySQL stuff I've been reading about into practice and see how things begin to work out. I'd imagine that the website development will become nearly as taxing as the game itself, for a time. Sheesh! Any free webmasters out there?
Unfortunately, I really can't afford to pay for both GD.NET+ and web hosting at the same time. This means that I will be canceling my GD.NET+ subscription, and will no longer be hanging out prime-time at GD.NET. I intend to start up my new development journal on my web space within the week, but I plan on cross-posting my entries until my current subscription expires. I hope that those of you interested in either Skirmish or my various other exploits will find your way into my new home on the 'net as things progress.
(EDIT: Ugh, I'm in many ways quite happy to move hosts. I've been waiting for ages trying to get the Web-File-Manager page here to upload my screenshot below, but to zero avail. I actually had to resort to ImageShack -- ungh. I'm looking forward to real hosting .)
Skirmish Update
Skirmish is going great -- both in programming and design. I feel really confident about the game, the direction, and what kind of gameplay I'm after. My last iteration(s) were mostly developed without a solid final image or plan in mind, and so they suffered from ugly code and design holes.
Equipped now with a reasonably solid storyline and a passion to succeed, the problems of the days of yore should be deftly averted. I've also got a generous handful of interesting gameplay plans that will add a degree of extra "umph" to the classic "kill it if it moves" gameplay. The ideal is to incorporate the skill and development of the individual with teamwork, tactics/strategy, and an interesting environment, which I'm working furiously towards.
Development places me at the point of having basic player physics implemented, with still some tweaking to go. This includes collision detection of tiles (full and sloped), but not other entities (props, bullets, etc). Loading/handling user-configuration files and font loading/rendering are in the works now, which will lead into some GUI work. Here is a shot depicting some fully animated/physics-icized player entities:
(Antialiasing is on the list as well -- hush, you! )
The one thing that I've found very interesting is the battle of Speed versus Good Design. The iteration of Skirmish that came even longer ago (circa '03) took me about two weeks to have players online shooting eachother, whereas the last two weeks only places me at basic player movement and collisions. Why is this? I've been putting extra effort into the design of my code, and pushing to keep code reasonably modular and hack-free. This was the opposite of my previous attempts, which were hack-laden and full of poor design. This route certainly takes longer to create visual progression with, but the result should be a project that gets seen through to the end.
I ask you folks to continue to bear with me during the 'slow period'. Sprite management systems and basic player physics aren't exciting points in development (unless you're me ), but with each line of code written the game is drawing closer and closer to looking and feeling like a real product. All I need is time. All we ever need is time!
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| Rinse and Repeat -- er Code. | |
Posted - 7/9/2007 9:59:57 PM | Ungh! Hulk smash!
Cripes, it feels like all I do is write flippin' 2D game foundation code. I've got sprite engines and tile engines falling out my ears. I have nothing against code reuse, but I have no pre-existing gamedev work in Java to pull resources from. Still, since I'm using a graphics base of OpenGL I've been able to mimic my old C++/SDL/OpenGL work without too much of a headache.
On the upside, the foundation nonsense is nearly completed, and the actual game-related coding will get underway. I'll throw in a few screenshots showing relatively unexciting test cases for a few parts of the engine.
(The first test after getting LWJGL initialized and the Texture class written; drawing a tiling of random sprites pulled from Skirmish.)
(The tile engine completed (using Admiral Overalls graphics), as well as the sprite engine functioning, with bat-wielding aliens bouncing around.)
(The collision detection system; showing here Circle->Pixel collisions of a red circle versus a gray chesterfield.)
Placeholder graphics never impressed anyone, but I intend to integrate the old Skirmish graphics in to at least give it a more attractive shine. I'm really interested in upping the spiffiness further, but I'll wait until the game starts to really get going before I try and lure an artist on board. Maybe I can sucker Mark into making me a character template like the one he made for Sapo.
The original plan was to opt for an ambitious polygonal-based sector approach to the 2D environment in a DooM-like fashion, but mapping repeating 2D walls properly onto the outside edges of arbitrary polygons proved difficult. I realized after a few days of work that the approach wouldn't be worth the intense pain (this time). I instead chose to go for the simpler tile-based map format, although including sloped diagonal "half-tiles" to combat the 90-degree syndrome.
With grunt work all but completed, basic player physics/controls are implemented, with player animations/states up next. I'm not sure if I'll tackle the networking directly after, or if I'll opt to implement more client-side systems beforehand.
Overall, it's been slow going. We're really busy at work during the ~5 weeks of July -- yay for summer curriculum writers? -- so my programming time is mostly within the confines of my two 1-hour train rides. I've just been too drained upon getting home to really push any code out.
Despite this, I'm incredibly excited to finally be working Skirmish Online after all of this time. Regardless of the woes of working fulltime and another term of university this September, I'm eager to make it somehow fit in.
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| Untitled1.class | 
Posted - 7/2/2007 7:55:54 PM | New Project and Motivation
I am swimming in motivation. Drenched in it. I've been whirlwinding out code all day long, and don't believe I'll be stopping any time soon -- barring work tomorrow morning.
This all began on Friday afternoon on the train-ride back home from work. I decided what project I really truly desired to write. The project that I knew I had no shortage of motivation or passion for. I resolved that I would begin this project as soon as I got home that night. That I would have a long weekend jam-packed with liquid-cool progress.
Friday night rolled by without comment. I found myself bitten by the "what language + library should I use?" bug. Now, some of you might not be familiar with this formidable adversary, as I notice a number of folks around here seem to only stick to one language/library. However, this little insectoid is a deadly one. I spent Friday evening, all of Saturday, and all of Sunday poisoned by this foul creature. When infected, the oblivious programmer meanders around saying things like, "maybe I should use C++ with Allegro" and, "I think C# with OpenGL would be best" and, "Delphi with Direct3D has its merits you know" and, "COBOL with screen 13h sounds fiendishly tempting". One would not want to be in the same room as the individual, for it is highly contagious. And annoying.
Anyways, the sickness cleared up this morning when I chose a set of tools, sat down, and just started coding. So far it's been working swimmingly, so I'm quite certain -- given the magnitude of this project -- it was just a subconscious attempt of my mind to goad me into inaction.
Now? Things couldn't be better. I'm trucking along merrily, and the code is sluicing out of my fingertips. I am extremely excited at how things are going, and at where they will be going. It'll be more difficult during the week when I'm working full-time again, but time management is a skill I'm getting more adept at. It's going to be a crazy couple of months before September.
GameDev Club
I was just talking with Kasra earlier, and it looks like the University Game Development club is going to be on to a killer start this Fall. With a brand new term -- meaning a horde of potential members! -- the club is only going to expand. We're working on ironing our the executive schedule, and working better with scheduling rooms, AV equipment, and our time.
I also intend on rewriting the Beginners' section, moving from C# & SDL.NET to something else. Since Java is pretty much the educational-sector staple in the University, I may give that a go. I won't hesitate to admit that Slick 2D is one of the key tempting reasons for considering such a transition.
More on this as Leaf-Changing Season draws nigh.
Hosting?
I need to get some real web hosting. GD.NET has been nice to me for a whopping two years, but I'm feeling more and more constrained. I've already run out of space for project screenshots, and the interface for file management and blog management just seem clunky. The FTP has been untouchable for gods know how long, too. I just need more space, and more freedom.
There are other reasons, still. I want to get a personal website going to show my projects, past games, and slew of demos/experiments, as well as a place to host my upcoming project which will require more than a paltry 50 megabytes to keep satisfied. I'm not too adept in the web design/programming world, but I think I can stick together some HTML/CSS well enough to work things out.
All of that said, does anyone have recommendations for web hosting? I've been looking hungrily at Dream Host for a while now, but I want to make sure I form an informed decision.
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"Good night, Monster Land."
"Good night, brave warrior."
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