June 08, 2011
Following on from my last post, I want to gripe about something. With a lot of third party libraries, one of the goals of people who use the library is to bind it to another language than the one it is developed in. Lots and lots of people want to do this. Consequently, it annoys me (almost as much…
June 06, 2011
I use Lua. Like, a lot. I use it to generate procedural textures for my poor attempts at 3D modeling and isometric art creation. I use Lua to compile renders into compact little isometric sprite packages and animations. I use Lua to write games, to write demos, just to tinker around with crap. If I…
May 28, 2011
May 19, 2011
My problem (well, one of them, anyway) is that I like to experiment. This is great and all, but it means that I end up with a lot of half-completed experiments and one-off demos sitting around, that don't do me a whole lot of good. A lot of things never reach "official" status. For example, I've do…
April 29, 2011
Every few months/years, when I need to take a break from other projects, I pull out the ol' Accidental Noise Library and tinker with it, trying to make something cool/shiny. I'm in the midst of a project Goblinson Crusoe-related (a bit of story writing) and to let the old brainpan drain for a bit, …
April 09, 2011
The print edition of April 2011 Game Developer Magazine is out, and my article, Creator of Worlds, comprises 7 pages of it. In light of that fact, I've gotten several emails lately from people who read it and would like to experiment. So I'm releasing another binary build of the Accidental Engine, …
April 06, 2011
I've been re-visiting the crafting system in GC lately. My initial attempt at a crafting system worked like so: Each item drop has a Name. Crafting recipes consist of a string of Names, alphabetized and concatenated together and used as a key to index a recipe table. So if, for example, a recipe re…
April 05, 2011
So I've gone back to work, but I'm no longer a plumber/concrete guy/drywall guy in Arizona. The wife and I have moved back to Wyoming, and I've gone back to work for one of my old bosses, doing woodworking. Cabinetry, furniture, and CNC wood machining. It's awesome to be back in the shop. I love wo…
March 12, 2011
Last week, Brandon Sheffield of Game Developer Magazine contacted me (via Dave Astle, who alerted me to the fact that I ought to check my inbox once in awhile) asking permission to re-publish one of my journal posts in the magazine. Today I received the email with the .PDF of the layout and a reque…
March 04, 2011
I am still around, and still working on Goblinson Crusoe. Unfortunately, now that the move is done I'm back to work and it's been 10 hr days lately, so progress has definitely taken a turn for the worse. Still, though, I keep plugging away.
February 25, 2011
Now that I'm doing actual real work on the early-game experience, I've been doing a little bit of thinking about the early game. Early game is where you learn how to play, hence the existence of Tutorial Valleys and Noob Islands. But I'm wondering if I shouldn't give the player a choice about how h…
February 23, 2011
Had to take a short little trip that turned out quite longer than expected. Flew to Phoenix on Saturday, and spent the last couple days with my wife, my sister, her husband and their daughter, driving a car and a moving truck across Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming. Kind of a bad time to d…
February 17, 2011
Never uploaded a Youtube video, so here goes:
[media][/media]
A couple minutes of current gameplay footage. Still very, very much a work in progress of course, with many incomplete animations and missing icons, as well as a still-small list of usable skills. But all the basic elements are there.
[media][/media]
A couple minutes of current gameplay footage. Still very, very much a work in progress of course, with many incomplete animations and missing icons, as well as a still-small list of usable skills. But all the basic elements are there.
February 17, 2011
February 16, 2011
Today was a bit of a slower day. Had to run a bunch of errands, change a flat on my sister's car, yada, yada. Didn't get nearly as much done as I'd hoped, but I did spend a few minutes on doing some pyrotechnics:
Read more in /* Why you crying? */
Read more in /* Why you crying? */
February 15, 2011
Today's work was mostly bug-fixing (relatively few, all things considered) and cleanup, plus an hour or so of planning. I've scraped together a rough outline for what I am calling Tutorial Island, where you'll learn all you'll need to know to get started exploring the islands. Based on that brainst…
February 13, 2011
Spent some time this evening working out a few more test spells/effects. I'm not making anything official right now, I'm just trying to get a handle on the various effect types, parameters and calling conventions, etc... in order to work out an orderly system that will make it easier to add additio…
February 12, 2011
February 11, 2011
As per yckx's request, I'm writing a little bit about how Goblinson Crusoe is made.
[subheading]The Core Library (C++)[/subheading]
GC is actually a Lua runtime environment running a default Lua script specified in the build process as startup.lua. If no default script is specified, then the executab…
[subheading]The Core Library (C++)[/subheading]
GC is actually a Lua runtime environment running a default Lua script specified in the build process as startup.lua. If no default script is specified, then the executab…
February 11, 2011
Was up until about 3:30 AM this morning tracking down a bug. I left the game running yesterday for awhile with the player on autopilot to see how stable the system is long term, and after about 20 min it crashed. So I checked the debug logs and it looked like the GC choked. For most of the time it …
February 11, 2011
Another big foundational day. I did a lot of work on splitting out combat-actor functionality into components. A combatant who can participate in battle now has two main components that take care of the functionality: CombatantComponent handles casting spells, taking steps, using items, etc... and …
February 10, 2011
Little bit of a slower day today. Got the inventory system up and running, you can pick up/drop/move around items. Works for storage chests and boxes as well, though I still need to make an actual chest graphic. There are a couple issues I need to work out still, including creating an intermediary …
February 09, 2011
Started work on the inventory today: bags, boxes, etc... I'll be glad when this part is done, if feels too much like book-keeping. I also did a "magic numbers" push, and while there are still plenty of 'em left, damned if I didn't squash a whole boatload of the little buggers.
Item stacks. I've deci…
Item stacks. I've deci…
February 07, 2011
February 06, 2011
February 06, 2011
Another day, another whole bunch of progress. Mostly back-end stuff today, though: better picking, fixing the implementation of selection groups so that I can, say, run a query "Select all objects within radius of mouse click", etc... I'm not doing complex relational queries, here; I just built a c…
February 04, 2011
Per Aardvajk's request, I'm uploading another build of my procedural island thingy. Unfortunately, this thing is like a bowl of Jell-o and I broke a few things this morning. This upload has the combat components taken out, since as of this moment they are non-functional. I've also reverted the enem…
Advertisement
Popular Blogs
Advertisement