Writing about the process of developing and programming games in my spare time, and the things I learn from taking part in game jams.
Let’s draw a lit 3D scene without defining any 3D objects. Yeah no it confused me too.
I always thought the point of shaders was to make 3D models look fancy. You can either run code on each vertex, or do crazy things on each pixel. It’s how some of the fancy effects we see on mod…
Today I figured out how to draw a line, and then make it wiggle using some basic maths.
Writing shaders like this seems a bit inside-out. Instead of drawing a line by specifying each point, the code instead runs through every single point on the screen, and if the point is one we want, it get…
Let’s spend this week learning about GLSL and making fancy images from code. The first one, a nice computationally intensive fractal.
This just uses the algorithm from the Wikipedia article, and a few bits and pieces to make a nice colour palette. I might update it later to make clickin…
Today’s lesson in curing headaches by banging your head on the wall until they stop involves joysticks and mice. This is a bit technical, so ensure your seat back and tray table are in the upright and locked position. Please keep all arms inside the ride at all times.
Chapter 1 - Down the Ra…
Learning to program is an endurance game full of random side quests, dead ends and frustration. Rather than learning “how to do X”, which is specific, it’s much more useful learning “how to figure out how to do anything at all”.
Go look on StackOverflow at all the questions that come down to “I do…
What better way to wait out the apocalypse than trying to learn a new system. Read how I dug out my ZX Spectrum Next and set about writing C code on it…
Going Beyond BASICThe Spectrum Next is a progression from the original ZX Spectrums of the 80s. It sort of follows on from the Spectrum …
How to write GameBoy Advance (GBA) homebrew using modern tools and systems in 2020. Compilers, editors, debugging and more!
This isn’t the definitive way of doing things, but it’s a way that seems to work for me. Also you might read this and think it a bit convoluted and full on. I did…
The CPU is a machine, it follows a basic mechanism to the beat of an external clock. In the case of a Redcode simulator, every tick of the clock causes the CPU to go through what is called the Fetch-Decode-Execute (FDE) cycle. All three steps happen in one clock tick. In …
Instead of writing about the game jam afterwards, I’m going to try writing about what I’ve done each day. As well as being more interesting, it might help motivate me to actually finish the jam properly.
The theme of this one is “Leaps and Bounds”, so making a platform game of some description se…
As a challenge I thought I’d try to implement the Minimum Spanning Tree algorithm, and have a play with it. My code is based off the excellent Coding Train video on the same topic which you can watch here. It’s where I got the code from, and then mixed in some code from the Arrays of Objects video…
This week I took part in the One Lone Coder 2019 game jam. The theme of this was “destruction”… My entry was started Friday, a mere 48 hours before the deadline. Yes, a week long jam where I had a whole seven days to come up with an idea was started 48h before the end… Have a good idea The main …
This week I took part in the One Lone Coder 2019 game jam. The theme of this was “destruction”… My entry was started Friday, a mere 48 hours before the deadline. Yes, a week long jam where I had a whole seven days to come up with an idea was started 48h before the end… Have a good idea The main …
Between the 9th and 16th August 2019 I took part in the Godot Wild Jam #12. Let’s go through what it was like, and the things I learned this time. My game, MatchUp is a fairly simple match-the-coloured-blocks game. It’s not a match-3, because the game doesn’t care how you match the tiles, and each…
Between the 9th and 16th August 2019 I took part in the Godot Wild Jam #12. Let’s go through what it was like, and the things I learned this time. My game, MatchUp is a fairly simple match-the-coloured-blocks game. It’s not a match-3, because the game doesn’t care how you match the tiles, and each…
It’s been a long time since I entered a game jam, the last ones being the One Game a Month jams back in 2014. This one was the GMTK Game Jam 2019 Friday Night So the challenge was to make a game around the theme Only One. At first my idea was to have some sort of arena shooter where you’d have o…
It’s been a long time since I entered a game jam, the last ones being the One Game a Month jams back in 2014. This one was the GMTK Game Jam 2019 Friday Night So the challenge was to make a game around the theme Only One. At first my idea was to have some sort of arena shooter where you’d have o…
Introduction Last time I explained in detail how the whole system worked. This time I will focus on the component system, as it is quite complex. Using it isn’t complex, but I’m trying to mimic Unity’s functionality that was written in C#. Functionality that is partially implemented within the edi…
Introduction Last time I explained in detail how the whole system worked. This time I will focus on the component system, as it is quite complex. Using it isn’t complex, but I’m trying to mimic Unity’s functionality that was written in C#. Functionality that is partially implemented within the edi…
Game controllers on computers are somewhat irritating to manage compared to a console. Has the user plugged in an XBox controller? A PS4 controller, or have they obtained some random USB controller they found on eBay? Coping with this in SDL was difficult, with SDL just telling you “button 13 pres…
Game controllers on computers are somewhat irritating to manage compared to a console. Has the user plugged in an XBox controller? A PS4 controller, or have they obtained some random USB controller they found on eBay? Coping with this in SDL was difficult, with SDL just telling you “button 13 pres…
Become better at maths! Are you able to write perfectly functional code, but find the language of mathematics somewhat confusing and hard to make sense of? Are you someone who can look at code like this: int total = 0; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { total += i * 10; } but have a complete failin…
Become better at maths! Are you able to write perfectly functional code, but find the language of mathematics somewhat confusing and hard to make sense of? Are you someone who can look at code like this: int total = 0; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { total += i * 10; } but have a complete failin…
Introduction This is going to be the first part in a continuing series where I try to explain how and why I’m creating my own game engine using C++ and the SDL library. My engine isn’t going to do anything amazing, but will borrow ideas from other engines I’ve used before such as Unity. Booting an…
Introduction This is going to be the first part in a continuing series where I try to explain how and why I’m creating my own game engine using C++ and the SDL library. My engine isn’t going to do anything amazing, but will borrow ideas from other engines I’ve used before such as Unity. Booting an…
This post is sponsored by hand coded HTML and CSS. Hand coding your HTML is a quick and effective method of getting your presence online! The first 20 people to click the link below will get 100% off their own hand coded website! You will require your own hands and knowledge of HTML. Wait, no, tha…
This post is sponsored by hand coded HTML and CSS. Hand coding your HTML is a quick and effective method of getting your presence online! The first 20 people to click the link below will get 100% off their own hand coded website! You will require your own hands and knowledge of HTML. Wait, no, tha…
Back in the mists of history, sometime around the 90s it was quite common for games and demos to display text on the screen. Since we’re talking about old computers with barely any usable RAM, the text was stored as images. A giant single image with every character placed within it. To display wor…
Back in the mists of history, sometime around the 90s it was quite common for games and demos to display text on the screen. Since we’re talking about old computers with barely any usable RAM, the text was stored as images. A giant single image with every character placed within it. To display wor…
I need a routine when developing that makes writing about the code easier afterwards. Nobody likes writing documentation, but these posts need to be interesting to read. I’m going to be making a lot of uninspiring clones of existing games so the process is really the thing I want to write about. I…
