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Exceptional Journals (in no order): [Eliwood] [Steve Healy] [Ravuya] [Mark the Artist] [Scet] [Ysaneya] [Mayan Obsidian]
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| Monday, September 22, 2008 |
  Onward and upward. | 
Posted - 9/22/2008 10:37:51 PM | I feel like I'm getting back into "the swing of things" with game development. For the last few months it's felt like game development happened on a really "once and a while" basis, rather than me fitting it into my daily schedule. It's feeling a little more routine now, so I don't even have to think about it anymore when I come home after work and plop down to do some coding.
Map Editor
 I started on the map editor yesterday, which functions fiendishly similar to the infamous BUILD editor.
It's just the basics so far, but as long as I can create decent-looking test maps, I'm satisfied. Sector creation, deletion, and manipulation are the three major things, as well as a texture-palette mode that lets you choose what texture to apply to a selected sector. Saving and loading are also already implemented. The only major feature left to write is the entity-related functionality, so that the user can place and move/rotate entities on the map. This will happen some time in the arbitrary future.
 The main game loads the maps and displays them properly, although I've noticed that my collision detection versus polygons is a little skimpy and might need some fine-tuning. For example, since I'm using just a single point (the centre of the player's sprite) for collisions, he can slide through tiny fissures between map polygons. Doh. 
The other 'irk' is that polygons need to be drawn in clockwise order in order for the collision normals to point in the right direction. It's not too hard to figure out a little algorithm to check the winding and fix it automatically, but it's non-trivial and probably is only annoying to people who aren't used to making all sectors clockwise. 
So, next on the list is a small host of fix-ups -- mostly with wall collisions. I'd like to jump right onto items and equipment next, and start getting some glitz going nice and early.
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| Friday, September 19, 2008 |
| Sensors. | |
Posted - 9/19/2008 10:59:04 PM |  It's got to be a good sign when we're finally seeing two consecutive progress posts for the same project.
Assail is off to a good start, and I feel really good about the direction that it's moving in. As you might have discerned from the given screenshot, the Actors now have a line-of-sight cone projecting from their precious eyeballs. The algorithm being used right now is fairly crude and reeks of brute-force, but it's plenty fast for a simple map and this testing environment. Things'll be tuned up when I implemented some spatial partitioning for the map.
The whole thing is really just a 'visual cheat' -- there's no detection as to whether an Actor is within said cone. Not hard to implement though: just cast an additional invisible ray to that Actor and test for map collisions.
Sensor..ium?
Assail is going to (hopefully) be based on the notion of sensors. The ones I'm most interested in implementing are (in order of relevance): sight, sound, touch, heat, and smell. Each will be represented visually to some degree, and each will have their own unique gameplay element to add to the mix.
Sensors are supposed to be black-box objects which take input from the game world via whatever sense they use, and output whatever they detect to their owner. It's then up to that owner to use whatever AI routines they have to act on that. Sensors also have thresholds tied to their detection, and can vary in terms of how sensitive they are to their particular sense.
With that in mind, it should be clear that a sensor in the game can be a myriad of interesting things: a security guard's eyeballs, a hound's nose, the player's ears, a mounted camera, a motion detector, a cyborg's infrared detectors, and whatever else might make a neat gameplay element.
I'm not very certain how I'd like to visually represent each of these senses, nor whether I want to show details like being able to see enemies' line-of-sight, or other sensory information in the game world that could be made visible to the player. On one hand, the player doesn't want to feel in the dark and have a hard time discerning what sensors are around and what types/sensitivities they are. That's how it is in real-life, and it's pretty darn tough to know whether you've been detected or not. On the other hand, giving away important information like how visible you are, or what certain enemies can see makes the game a lot easier, and in many ways more fun.
Copious amounts of experimentation will probably ensue, but I'm looking forward to seeing what works and what doesn't. From my experience, letting an average gamer sit down and try playing a demo for just a few minutes reveals incredibly quickly what gimmicks work well and which do not.
Next time I'll talk a bit more about how these sensors work in a little more detail, as well as whatever additional progress I've made.
(NOTE: Yes, I've caught onto this "put a screenshot on one side merged in with text" thing too, like several other nameless journals. )
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| Wednesday, September 17, 2008 |
| Assail. | 
Posted - 9/17/2008 11:45:47 PM | Shoop-da-whoop
So, I'm pulling another shoop-da-whoop and moving to a new project yet again. Some view project-hopping as a problem with motivation or committing to a project -- which may very well be a small part of it -- but I interpret it as a search.
The search for the right game project for me is not a trivial one. It's easy to settle on a project, but sticking with it to the end is the ultimate commitment to a project. Sometimes you will get to a point in development and realize that this isn't the sort of project that you want to stay involved with. Sometimes you realize that this project, that seemed so perfect at first, is full of flaws and just plain doesn't suit you.
My last project (which saw only one entry here of face-time) was really neat and fun to work on, but the difficulty curve was simply over my head. My inexperience with 3D modelling and texture creation was taking its toll on me, and I quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to pump out enough content AND coding in order to finish this game anytime this decade.
"Assail"
The move back to the realm of 2D is a most comforting one. I'm very cozy working in a 2D environment, even if I'm really 'faking' it with a 3D API such as OpenGL.
I won't start talking about this new project right off the bat, just in case it falls off the radar right away like the last. If I had to throw a few keywords at you, they might be "overhead" and "stealth" and "cyberpunk (again!)".
Unfortunately, this screenshot does no justice to all of the magic going on the background, as typical of most early development shots. You're looking at a map of polygonal sectors and a physics-driven actor scientist fellow. Phew.
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| Tuesday, September 9, 2008 |
| Tutelage | 
Posted - 9/9/2008 10:13:55 PM | It's a Living
It might not sound too fancy, but it's worth mentioning that I'm spending my Fall co-op term tutoring a second-year Computer Science course at my university. The course was without a doubt my favourite back when I had it as a student, so it's been a thrill to help teach thus far.
The course focuses on first teaching the basics of machine code and assembly language on the MIPS processor, then works up to having the students build a simple assembler and compiler by the end. There's a heap of fun material, and it's a topic that I'm fascinated in, making it a pleasure to teach others about.
The Fall term is still young, so it's been really hectic around the campus. Hours are particularly long for the first few weeks, so it's been hard trying to put time into game development at the moment.
I'm also sitting on the waiting list for Japanese 101, which I've been eager to take for a few years now. Although not officially in the course yet, I'll be attending the first lecture/tutorial tomorrow anyways. A lot of people find the course very challenging, and so spaces often become available soon after the first class or two. Exciting!
I won't prattle on any longer about "real-life", but simply say: I've been working on a couple more textures and models for Aphicore, but nothing complete enough to show just yet. More news as this story develops.
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| Sunday, September 7, 2008 |
| Comeback. | 
Posted - 9/7/2008 2:18:37 PM | Back from where?
For those of you who I fell off the radar of, or didn't know me, I used to be a journal-goer here on GD.NET about a year ago. Nobody fancy; completed a few games, bailed on more than a few others, but always with a thirst for game development.
I was maintaining an external journal off yonder -- which had a habit of moving around -- but eventually I came to miss one important thing that GD.NET could always provide: interesting like-minded developers and individuals who had a similar passion for writing games. So, for a measly $5/month, I supposed it was better to head on back from my excursion.
Making what?
So, one year and several (fallen) game projects later, here I am again. What am I working on now?
My latest interest has become Aphicore, a 3D first-person shooter in a futuristic cyberpunk world. My inspiration for it largely came from a similar 2D project called Gloom that I worked on nearly a year back. For any of you who have played Deus Ex, you might have a good idea of the kind of atmosphere I'd like to create.
Development isn't too too far along yet, but the basics and foundation work is all in.
  
The Challenge
Having been used to being soley a programmer, this project is offering me a lot of new challenges. I've always relied heavily on my good friend Dean for artistic aid and content creation, but I've taken it upon myself to learn both how to create 3D models and how to create textures for this game project.
It most certainly has been a challenge, but I'm quickly becoming more proficient at my tools of choice (Blender, KolourPaint, and GIMP), and gaining a much larger appreciation for the hard-working artists of the world.
That's all for now. I feel that I have a really good hold on this project -- it feels like just the correct difficulty level -- and I'll be looking forward to documenting its progress here as I push on forward.
Onward and upward!
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"Good night, Monster Land."
"Good night, brave warrior."
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