Taking a Break

It's holiday season, so I've decided to take the rest of the month off from posting. I will have the usual end-of-year reflection post, so either that or the Singularity v0.3 update post will be next.

Happy Holidays!

Update - Sorry Guys!

Hello everyone, I have some unfortunate news today:

For various political reasons, my shoulders have decided to let burn the fires of revolution, which would be entertaining if it wasn't so darn painful. It hurts in general, which makes it difficult to focus, and it also hurts extra-hard to type! As a result, I've decided to postpone everything by a full month to allow my body time to recover.

This means that dfgame is now slated to release at the end of September, the tutorial is likely to end in December, etc. I was planning on a little "looking back" post for this blog's 5th anniversary on the 20th, and I might still do that. It's a big date, and most of the work is reading, not writing. My right arm is ok, so I might also bust out my tablet and chance a few sketches. We'll see.

Ultimately, I'm extremely disappointed in myself. I took the first week off this month in an attempt to deal with the issue, but it's been over 2 weeks and I'm still out of commission. I apologize for the delays and such, and you'll probably hear from me again in 3-4 weeks or so.

Mosquitoes ate my update video

Man, don't you hate it when small, buzzing insects devour files off of your hard drive? It's the worst. It's also something that definitely happens all the time, and our modern society is powerless to stop them. Remember when your favorite thing was cancelled or delayed for no apparent reason? Mosquitoes. Yup. Definitely 100% not telling any sort of fib or white lie right now, and frankly I'm a little wounded that you'd suggest that I might ever not tell the truth in a vain attempt to cover up my own shortcomings.

So, because a swarm of mosquitoes ate the update video for this week that I definitely made and didn't put off for too long, I'm making a little life post instead. You can expect me to have it finally finished remade in time for next Sunday's post.

Let's talk about my weekend

I had a really busy weekend, which is why I was unable to complete my video powerless to stop the horde of ravenous arthropods from devouring my video files.

On Saturday, I went on a hike in the Laurentides with a group from the office. For those who don't know, the Laurentides is a region of Quebec that's packed full of beautiful lakes and mountains. Just imagine every photo of the Canadian wilderness that you've ever seen.

This pretty lake is the perfect environment for breeding the harbingers of your hard drive's doom

The hike was 5 1/2 km, and circled a small lake. It was a good length, long enough to be enjoyable without overstaying its welcome. The weather was warm and sunny, but not so hot as to be uncomfortable. In many ways the conditions for this hike were ideal. They also happened to be ideal for the terrifying force of mosquitoes that hounded us and our video files, especially the latter. For every person, I'd say there were 10-20 mosquitoes buzzing around them. They didn't manage to ruin the experience though, and I'd definitely do it all over again. Oh, and uh....some of them, err, hid inside my backpack? Yeah, sure, we'll go with that. Then they emerged to feast upon my defenseless PC or something. It was awful.

Artist's rendition of the event

Unlike most activities that I engage in, I brought my camera with me and took a few photos. Several shots came out quite nicely, so I might do this more often:

(Click any image to view at full size)

On Sunday, my family came in for a visit. They brought my bike over, so once I buy a new helmet I should be able to travel much farther in the city! After that, we went out for pizza and ice cream, then took a little stroll around Parc La Fontaine. I'm not fond of spending lots of time with family, but I really enjoyed this little outing quite a bit! They seemed pretty happy too, so it was a good day all in all. Oh, and they were...yeah, they were totally devastated at the carnage caused by those darn mosquitoes. Yup!

So that was my eventful weekend! As you can see, I was quite busy and didn't find time to make this month's update video set up adequate anti-mosquito defenses. Anyhow, this week is mostly still May so I'm still keeping to the schedule to some degree. Expect the monthly dfgame update next Sunday at the regular time.

EDIT: According to Blogger, this is post #256, so if we were counting with one byte I'd have to stop here. Thankfully, that's no longer the case!

Small Hiatus

If you've been waiting for more roguelike tutorial posts, you may be disappointed. Because of the amount of work I've had on my plate recently, I've been unable to keep up with my schedule. For the moment, I've decided to put the series on hiatus until I have more time freed up. Im guessing that it'll be a couple of months before I really have the free time to devote to this project, but after that I'll try to post more frequently.

I have some standalone tutorials and informative posts planned as well, to add some more work to my portfolio, but there's no ETA on those. In the mean time, this blog will still have plenty of content thanks to class.

General Update: Not Dead, Just Forgetful

I've been quite busy working on projects this past month, but you wouldn't know it from looking at this blog.

About 2 weeks after my last post, I made a 1000+ word update post for Halberd and promptly forgot to publish it. After that, I started remaking Akradion and totally forgot to even write any posts! I'll be posting the Halberd update(with a disclamer indicating its age), but I felt the need to put together a general update post now. This is a pretty good time to do it, since it has been about a month since the big post, and a few deadlines have passed.

The Goal, and the Results

The goal for the rest of this summer was to work on 3 things: Akradion, Halberd, and a One Game a Month entry. I wanted the OGaM entry and Akradion to be finished by now, and Halberd to have caught up with it's previous incarnation, possibly with a demo.

That was a pretty tall order, and I certainly didn't complete all of that, but I don't think I did too poorly either. I've made a decent bit of progress on Halberd, and most of the time lost comes down to figuring out and implementing things that the last version had simply left out. It's a little like finding an old todo list and realizing that half the entries still need to be finished.

As for Akradion, I actually did finish it before the start of the semester, but I don't want to release it just yet. I haven't had a chance to test out the Windows version on any actual machines running Windows, so I can't guarantee that it'll even run! It seems fine from testing it under Linux, but I still want to ensure that it works in its natural environment.

Coming Up

Obviously, I need to make a few posts. First, I'll be posting the old Halberd update shortly. Afterwards, I'll see if I can put together another update post for the project. Once I've finished testing Akradion, the game will be going up here as well. With any luck, I'll get a chance to run the testing next week, so you can probably expect it around next Friday. I also need to make one more post, specifically about school, but I think I'll leave that one to explain itself.

Update: "I spent 7 months rewriting my game engine and all I got was this stupid tshirt"

(tshirt not included)

Despite the title, and all the time and effort spent on this engine, I'm actually in a rather cheery mood. The engine is coming along nicely, and I feel like the peace of mind associated with having something that doesn't randomly break for no reason is worth a few months of backtracking. My job has been slowing my progress down quite a bit, but that ends soon and my next job will be a little less time consuming. Still, I haven't had an update post in a while, so I thought I'd explain the current status of the now-rewritten DFEngine.

At this point, I think I can safely call the rewrite 'done', and focus on making games and adding features. The new engine can pretty much do anything the old one did, and then some. To show off that fact, I'm putting together a super-simple game right now. It mostly serves as a 'proof of tech', just showing some basic gameplay and interaction with the engine. With that said, here are some details on the new features(and the game, of course).

New Stuff

With the rewrite about finished, I've started on adding new things again. I think now is a pretty good time to quickly go over the new features:

1. Level and object files! This is one of the biggest things I've been missing since AMAZE. As awful as level creation was back then, it still beat what I had for later projects. Making levels is still a hassle since I haven't built a level editor yet, but it's still easier because everything is in one place. Naturally, it'll also make designing a level editor easier when I get to it.
2. Particle Effects! Particle effects are a nice flashy feature to have in an engine, so I've been meaning to get them into DFEngine for a while. the only game on this site that uses particles currently is Space Douchebag, but with any luck I'll be able to put them into all future projects going forward.
3. Objects can now have multiple components of the same kind, allowing some interesting things. As an example, You could easily make a character with text over their head(text and models are both considered graphical components), just by adding text to the object and offsetting it.

The Game

If you look closely, you can see a cloud of particles towards the bottom

Let's talk about the game now. It's an extremely basic affair, with a little character bouncing on clouds. The goal of the game is simply to get as high as you can without falling,
and I plan on adding a goal height to reach. Other than a win/loss screen, the game is mostly done. I also need to get DFEngine running on Windows, and do a bit more testing. After that, I'll toss the game up on this site. Due to just how small and simple this game is, I don't have much to say about it. Expect a game of similar scale to one of my game jam games, maybe a tad smaller.

I think I'll be making one more game before starting on any major projects with DFEngine, since I still have some issues that could be worked out. I haven't decided on the next game yet, but hopefully I'll have this one out within a week.

Akradion Update 4

Changelog:

Akradion

• Added a title screen
• Fixed a ton of physics glitches
• The bat can now be used to alter the ball's direction a bit. This makes it possible to aim the ball at bricks(somewhat)
• Added indestructible walls
• Added exploding bricks. When hit, they destroy other bricks in a 2-block radius
• Added a nice animation for when levels end

DFEngine

• Made a bunch of minor tweaks to the codebase to make it easier to work with
• You can now directly add forces to physics objects in scripts
• Added GLSL support
• Global data can now be tweened by giving the entity id -1
• Global data can now be forced to immediately update by giving the entity id -1
• Started working on getting a cross-compiler set up

Oh man, this post is really late! Sorry about that. I've been quite tired recently, and finishing this post up is proving to be much harder than expected. Hopefully things will work better next time. The game is still coming along well, and I got it running on Windows, so no issues there.

DFEngine Update 2

Changelog:

• Added Text Rendering, using FreeType
• Reworked some of the structure, primarily with components
• Added some initial Lua scripting features
• Made some minor changes that should speed things up down the line

Text Rendering:

So, the font stuff's done. Now that I'm using the FreeType library to load fonts, the visual quality of the text has improved dramatically. Instead of the previous sprite fonts(which I may add support for at some point, but not now) which had to be drawn and generally looked pretty bad, I can now use any font that you'd otherwise see used in most applications. These fonts have several massive advantages: First, they're scalable. Once one's been made, I can set it to be used at any size. Second, they are properly aligned. Most sprite font systems don't account well for the sizes and shapes of letters, and the resulting text looks blocky and strange. It's also difficult to deal with letters of different heights, especially those that need to be placed lower than others. FreeType gives you all the information needed to align your letters nicely. Lastly, it's much simpler to read these fonts in and keep track of them. Even if I decide to make my own font files, they'll be made using information gotten from FreeType. I can edit the base font normally, and I won't need to keep track of anything else.

To be honest, the actual process of getting FreeType into a program is pretty boring. The library handles most of the really interesting things behind the scenes. That said, I should leave a word of warning: Most of the tutorials I found for using FreeType with OpenGL were outdated and/or useless. If you want to use the library, you're better off looking through the documentation to get an understanding of how it works, then using that as reference. There's a nice tutorial there to help walk you through the basics of setting up and using FreeType in your application, which is what I used.

Lua:

If you've seen how AMAZE operates under the hood, you'll very quickly find that the scripting is very rudimentary. I'd originally considered using lua, but I eventually decided not to until later. Of course, I never expected things to go as they did, and the scripting stayed as it was. Finally, I can fix that. In order to do so, I had to rearrange quite a bit of code, mostly dealing with components. Components belonging to one entity are now held together in an entity class, and systems hold less power. Now, most of the 'meat' of an entities behavior will be defined in lua scripts that the entity can call. Systems will handle more complex things, such as collisions, timers, and other processes that require knowledge of the game's 'big picture.' Anyway, one of the biggest upsides to using lua will be that the syntax of scripts can be much more complex, and more information can be obtained in these scripts. It'll also make the engine code simpler and cleaner. Overall, it means that I can do fancier things than before, and with it'll be easier too! Of course, lua integration is still ongoing, so for the moment I can't do much more than spawn a couple of basic test objects when the game starts. I did, however, make a nice little FPS counter using lua. I'll probably end up using lua scripts to handle some more basic things like setting up the UI, but I haven't decided for certain yet.

AMAZE - 16 - Bogged Down

I don't know what it is, but something keeps getting in the way of my productivity. Every time I say "Let's get a bunch of work done!" nothing happens, and I hardly get a thing finished. I have made a small bit of progress, but things are going way too slow and I only have 3 weeks to get this thing in a decent, presentable state.

Last weekend, during my little progress jam, I got very little done. However, I did accomplish 2 things:

1. For whatever reason, I felt like adding an overview of each level before it begins. I made the camera start zoomed out, then zoom in on the player when you choose to start the level. It's still a bit buggy, but I rather like the change.
2. I added a system that lets objects trigger level-wide events, that other objects can respond to. The next area is supposed to have lots of little contraptions, switches, and puzzles, so something like this is very important to have.

Overall, these were actually pretty quick, and I spent the rest of the time just slacking off. Then, I did a bit more this week. The biggest change I made was adding a means to access certain bits of game data from scripts. The main reason for this was so that I could add a little completion meter in the main hub. Whenever you complete a level, the meter fills up  a bit more, and once it's completely full the path to the final area will open. In addition to this change, I(finally) started working on Zone 2. Right now, if I work hard and maybe get a bit lucky, I think I might be able to complete the first three zones in time for the Green Mountain Games Fest. If so, the game will be pretty much half done and things will moving along rather well. I don't know if I'll manage to finish the whole thing before the end of the semester, but I can probably get most of it done by then and wrap the project up in late spring/early summer.

I think in 1 week I'll be able to tell how well things will turn out, depending on whether or not I can get work done by then.

Update: Assorted Bad News

I've never really been great about keeping to posting schedules. The most recent one has been active for quite a while, and has probably met with the most success out of all of them, but recently I've been finding myself regularly posting late, or missing posts altogether. The biggest source of posting frustration, I think, is Games I Play. I like the concept, and it feels good when I'm done, but these posts take a lot of time and effort on my part to make. Oftentimes I'll play a game, then never make a post because I'm busy or just don't feel like it.
It is for this reason that I am demoting Games I Play to Optional status, like my ever-elusive art posts. To be honest, it makes me a bit sad. I never seem to make optional posts nowadays, and this almost feels like a death sentence for the series. However, It's just been too much, and this is better than leaving it up and not doing it anyway.

That isn't all of the bad news I have in store, though. I've decided to temporarily stop producing AMAZE demos for Windows. During more inclusive tests of AMAZE for demo 2, I've found that the computers that won't run AMAZE seem to be much more common than I originally thought. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the majority of Windows machines don't run it correctly. Of course, I care very much about fixing this issue. However, I will be presenting the game in just about a month, and I need to get as much done as I can. Following that, I will be taking a break from hardcore AMAZE development in order to relax and work on a few smaller personal projects a bit.
During that time, I'll also spend some time taking the engine apart and trying to figure out what's breaking it on Windows. If I can fix this, then I'll resume the Windows builds then and get back to work. If not..... I'm not sure where I'll go from there. I may have to put off Windows builds until the next game, and I'd hate to do something like that. Only time will tell on this one.

Let's end with some good news, now. I plan to release the next(Linux) demo of AMAZE either tomorrow or Friday! This will mostly depend on workload, since my Thursdays can be a bit hectic.

AMAZE - 15 - Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

First off, let me apologize for the seriously late post. I wanted to finish the second demo before posting, and that took longer than I'd hoped. It's done, though. I've still got to compile and test this release for Windows, but then I can release it.

Now, it's a bit early but here's what you can expect out of this new demo:

1. Zone 1 now joins the tutorial, bringing the level count up to 15.
2. 2 new game additions! The drill can break through large rocks, and some new spikes pop in and out of the floor.
3. A number of bug fixes, and a whole slew of new bugs to go with them!
4. Automatic saving and loading, letting you exit whenever you want.
5. Respawn points make running out of lives slightly less of a chore. If you run out of lives outside of the tutorial, you just get taken back to the hub. You'll lose your progress in the zone, however.
6. Sound support, with sound effects for dropping blocks and spike traps.
7. An improved font for the score.

That looks like a pretty good list. I may go back and change levels from time to time, as I add new stuff. For now, though, they're fine as they are. Remember when this comes out, though: this demo represents the game in an extremely early and unfinished state. There will be plenty of bugs and annoyances, and the game will still be rather short.

I'm quite busy with schoolwork, but I'll hopefully get the demo out in a few days time.

Sorry about this!

There will be no post today, and there may be no Friday post either. I've become sick again, and frankly, I feel like s&#%. I've been in no mood for playing games, and I've been making very little progress on AMAZE. I will post the next development post when Zone 1 is complete, and link the new demo then. It might have to be next week if I don't start feeling better soon. If I do, I only have to make 8 more levels, and a few assets.
We'll see how it goes.....

AMAZE - 14 - Speedy

Sorry about the late post. Yesterday I had a meeting for my Game Production team, followed by a very long Dungeons and Dragons session, ultimately keeping me up until ~1:00 AM. Thankfully, I bring good news.
I've been coding up a storm this week, and I've not only met all of my week 2 targets but I nabbed some of the week 3 ones as well!

The biggest update is the save system. It's quite simple: The game quietly autosaves every time you beat a level, so you can just quit whenever you want without worrying about losing progress. Note that I've seen to it that you can't cheat by just reloading when you die a couple times. Anyway, once a couple simple bugs are worked out I'll be done with it. After that, I'd say the revamp of the engine's scripting would be next biggest. While most users won't notice a difference, this makes developing levels a bit less of a headache. While I was at it, I made a new font for the score too.

What's left for this week is mostly level building. I also need to make a new tileset for the first real zone of the game, which will probably be released in the next demo within a week or two. I'm also not perfectly happy with how certain things work right now, but changing them would be a massive timesink.



Lastly, here's an important announcement:
So far, AMAZE has only been shown off to my friends and colleagues, not counting this blog. However, as the marathon approaches completion, I have signed up to show off AMAZE to the wider public on February 22nd as part of an event run by one of my college's game development groups. I'm quite excited, but also worried. I don't think I'll be done by then, so I need to get as many zones completed as possible in the coming weeks. Assuming I make good time, I can probably get 4-6 zones done in time for this. After that, I hope to finish up by the end of the semester. However, I may spend another month or two after finishing up. Either way, I already know what game I'll be making next, though I won't tell anyone until the time is right..... Let's just say there will be explosions.

Games I Play #12: Maldita Castilla

Once again, Locomalito has ported one of his games over to Linux. This calls for the usual post, although i'm a bit late this time around. Personally, I consider Maldita Castilla to be one of his best games, so I'm happy to see it find its' way on to Linux after all of the time I spent playing it on Windows.

-Overview-

Like Locomalito's other games, Maldita Castilla is a game designed with old-school aesthetics and values in mind. In this case, much inspiration seems to have come from platformers like Ghosts 'n Goblins. You play as Don Ramiro, a knight on a quest to stop the evil plaguing the land of Tolomera.

-The Good-

This game is really well polished. The music not only uses proper soundchip emulation in order to sound as authentic as possible, but it sounds great as well. The gameplay feels like it came straight out of an arcade, with the stiff-but-predictable control that you'd expect from a number of games of that era. The graphics are vibrant and seem to adhere to palette restrictions, for a complete old school look. The game itself is a blast to play, and mastering a level feels great. At this point, I can blitz through the first two levels like some kind of medieval ninja! The game loosens some of its' restrictions when it comes to death. You get 4 continues after running out of lives, and you can sell your soul for infinite continues if you wish. You won't get a very good ending then, but at least you can keep going even if you get stuck. The game also has a ton of cool hidden things that you can easily miss the first time around, adding to the replay value. The end even provides you with a handy checklist of what you did/didn't miss.

-The Bad-

In keeping with the tradition, Maldita Castilla is blisteringly difficult. I enjoy the challenge, but there are a few areas that feel incredibly unfair until you've passed them a few times. Losing any powerups you had when you die can make this problem even worse. While you can still certainly prevail with the basic starting weapon, it still can make an already frustrating bit even worse. Additionally, there is no options screen that I know of, just a handful of keys hidden in a readme. The game would also benefit from some kind of extra mode, be it local multiplayer, or a boss rush, or something of that sort. It's not much of a complaint, but it'd be nice to see.

-Final Thoughts-

In the end, the both the best and worst thing about Maldita Castilla is that it provides a very authentic feeling arcade experience. It's a wonderful throwback to old times, but its' difficulty is brutal and merciless. It's wonderful fun though, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys platformers, especially those harkening back to a simpler, tougher time. The only people that I'd specifically discourage from playing this would be easily frustrated gamers. If you rage easily, then this game is probably not for you. As for everyone else: give it a shot! After all, it's free.

You can download the game for free here.

Space Douchebag - 6 - Nice and Late

I can't believe how late I am, after such a nice few months of relative promptness too! Anyways, I'm temporarily going to shift my programming posts to Wednesdays because that's when my class meets, and it's also when my development targets are due.

So, what have I gotten done lately? Quite a bit!

For starters, the old stuff is all finished. Along with the original two enemies, I've added segmented mechanical 'Serpent' that will leap out of the sands of the first stage, and I also started on a floating gun turret.

Peter has made decent progress on the game's music, completing 2 tracks and starting a 3rd.

I've finished the first of 2(3 if I have time) weapons that can be chosen at the start: The spread blaster. As the name implies, this weapon fires in a cone rather than straight, with higher level versions also adding bullets to protect your sides.

I've implemented the two required powerups, both of which are fairly standard. One pumps up your speed, and another increases your weapon's level. If I have time, I'll be adding missile and shield powerups too.

Finally, I've added the hero's 3 fabled Douchebag Powers, of which you can choose one. They can be toggled at will, and drain energy which is replenished by killing enemies. To be more specific, they are:

1. Super Ego: Health Regen
2. Aggression: Temporary weapon level increase. This can power a weapon up beyond the game's normal limits.
3. 'Can't Touch This!': The player cloaks, and no longer collides with enemies/bullets/other hazards.

As you can see, I haven't just been sitting around. I'll leave you with a screenshot of Stage 1, and the Serpent enemy. Note that this screenshot is a bit old, and there's a nice little UI in the newest version.

Games I Play #8: Beat Hazard

Well, I seem to have completely forgotten about this post somewhere along the way. Sorry about that!

Beat Hazard is a trippy arena shooter with mechanics based on your music library. As a song that you've selected progresses, the game's speed and your ship's power scale to the intensity of the music. Waves of enemies and bosses fly in from all angles, and bright, colored flashes dot the arena. It's certainly something to behold. As a quick note: In case you hadn't guessed, do not play this if you're prone to seizures! Still here? Great.

-The Good-

The song here is actually the Doomsday Darren Goes
Fishing boss theme. Short, but gave good visuals.

There's a lot to praise in this game. To start, the visuals are totally crazy. Some people may find the bright flashes of light and color annoying, but I love them. 

The perks that you can buy (mostly)reduce the difficulty significantly, so I feel like there's plenty of challenge for players if they want it. On top of this, the ability to turn just about any music file into a level is neat and will leave most players with more than enough content to work through. 

-The Bad-

Due to all of the action onscreen, sometimes the enemies will sneak up on you. Unfortunately, since colliding with an enemy kills you, sometimes you'll suddenly die with no warning. If you play cautiously, it shouldn't be too much of an issue but it can still be a real pain.
Boss fights are usually ok, but sometimes if they last too long enemies will start spawning before you're done. One final gripe is that navigating the song menu to find songs feels a bit annoying. Thankfully, it gives you the option to use your OS's default file dialog to find them.

-Final Thoughts-

Overall, this is a pretty good game. The crazy graphics and fast-paced gameplay make for great experience. Unfortunately, the small annoyances really detract from an otherwise great game for me. Still, if you like twin stick shooters you should definitely give this a try.

You can buy the game here.

Game(Engine) Jam, Day 1 Recap

I spent the first hour or two today working on trying to implement my game idea into my partially-completed engine(The AMAZE one). That pretty much failed. The engine isn't ready for a game jam, and it definitely shows. I briefly considered just tossing something together from the ground up, as usual, but then I stopped myself. Wasn't the entire point of this engine avoiding just that??? So, here we are. I'm going to scrap that game idea, and switch focus for this jam. Instead of a game jam, I'm going to make this a game engine jam.

While working on AMAZE, I've had an ever-growing list of things to add to my engine that I've either deemed low priority, or have just been slacking off on. I've decided to see how many features and fixes I can give this engine in the span of ten days. If I'm lucky, it'll end up in a state where I can just about finish AMAZE with it and move on.
Now that I've explained that, here's what I got done today:
-I started off nice and easy. I'd been meaning to make my asset packager use tsx(tiled tileset files) to get tileset information, like tile size. That works now, and I even took a while to make the tileset packaging code more readable. If I ever need to go back to it later, it should be easier to work with.
-Later, I decided to fix a really annoying bug. If you read this post, you probably noticed the vertical lines in the tiles. I said they were nothing, but on closer inspection they actually were the result of a bug. Staring at those lines was making my eyes hurt, so I found the issue and fixed it. Turns out, when I was loading the color data I was skipping the first two bytes. This also explains why the color order seemed to be jumbled. Tomorrow, I want to finish collision detection(finally), and possibly work on view scrolling. Here's a screenshot showing the correctly working tiles:

Remember that most of this is just placeholder art

While I'm at it, here's something that I never got to post about: The player can no longer walk through walls. I got that working a while ago, but the retrospective(and the jam) got in the way of part 10.

A wild schedule appeared!

Remember last time I made a schedule? Here, have a refresher, with commentary:

"I've recently been posting to this blog almost every day, and I think now would be a good time to make a proper schedule for posting. Right now, my objective is to post daily when possible, although I might not have time to do that this weekend. I'm moving into my dorm at Champlain today, and I have to attend the various orientation activities on Saturday and Sunday. That said, you can find my plan for posting after the jump:"

No, Really

Oh god, if only he knew... Typical freshman. Not that I'm much better now. For the record, Orientation sucked. I cannot understand how such a sweet college could fuck this up so badly by just throwing assemblies everywhere. What is this, grade school? Anyway, at the time I had 1 (comparatively simple) game project, no classes or obligations, and nothing to do. Now, I have so many game projects I don't even count 'em anymore. AMAZE has received so many rewrites that the old code folder contains an older code folder. That's a sure sign that you've been busy. Also, I'm still not sure whether I should use jump breaks. I'm leaning towards no, but I feels like I have to for some odd reason. Ok, from now on I'll follow this rule: No jump breaks. Sound good? Good.

"1. Sketchbooks - I'll be putting a new sketchbook post up every Wednesday, preferably during the morning. They're just going to be quick sketches based on a theme. I put the first one up yesterday, but I drew it the Wednesday before. I'd love to see comments on these posts, especially constructive ones. They exist so that I can practice drawing regularly."

I think I made.....1 sketchbook post before saying fuck this and stopping forever. I might draw some more once in a while, but nothing like this. As for comments, I got a comment. A single one. Once. If you're out there, fabled readers, do comment! Yes, even if you're a web spider. I have high standards for automated processes, you know.

"2. Programming - Despite working on a couple little games, I haven't posted about any of my programming/game making projects yet. I'll post about any progress on those every Saturday."

Wait, a couple? What? As in, more than 1? Weird, I need to reread my old posts now... 

...No, no talk of that fabled 2nd project. In fact, I posted about the 1st after this went up, as I'd mentioned. Yeah, I have no idea what old me was talking about. That 'pics or it didn't happen' thing seems pretty cool though. I still need to give it a go sometime.

"3. D&D Recaps - I'm part of a small Dungeons and Dragons group that meets every other week. I'd like to post short recaps of what happened on Sundays, but I'll have to talk to my DM first."

Alas, that fabled conversation never occurred. Either I'd forget, or I wouldn't get a chance to ask. At this point, I don't always make it to games anyway. If someone else were to write some recaps, though, I'd put them up. I may ask about something like that.

"4. 3D Stuff - Last year I did quite a few basic 3d renders/animation with Blender. I haven't done any of that all summer, but I'd love to start anew. Every Monday, I'll try to put up some sort of progress on a Blender project. In the future, numbers 2 and 4 may coincide. Now wouldn't that be nice?"

That would be nice, and it'll happen eventually. I was using Blender all the time before college, but I've replaced that completely with programming. Still, I do want to try making some 3d games sometime.

"5. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and some Sundays, I'll put up whatever I feel like posting. This could be one of the things I've listed above, or it could be something totally different. We'll see."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

No. 

Was I some sort of masochist back then, or was I really that naive? "So I'll post all of this stuff on these 4 days, and-Oh yeah let's just post on all of the others too. No problem." I can't post twice a week on vacations, much less every single day! 

"I'll put up a page with my schedule later. I've been considering Let's Play-ing some indie games at some point. If so, I'll probably put those videos up here along with some post editing commentary."

Wait..... Did I really consider becoming a LPer for even one second? I've got a terrible voice, not too much to say, and a laptop that can't even record my own games properly(Which is why no other gameplay videos are up yet. They don't seem to record well. I'll pester a friend to borrow their computer sometime, or something.)  As for the schedule page, I eventually deleted it in disgust.

So. As you can undoubtedly see, that went rather well. Let's do it again, shall we?

I'll even use the same format! After the not-jump, of course:

1. Programming - Fridays. I have Friday off for this semester, and Friday is D&D night so I plan to keep them light. This'll give me all day to procrastinate, and 1 hour to desperately throw something together. 
2. Games I Play - Mondays. This way, I'll have the entire weekend to check out the game in question, as well as write my impressions. This does mean that I'm missing it again this week, which sucks. I will post another AMAZE update tomorrow though, and it will have pictures, even if they have to be unrelated ones(they won't.)
3. Sprites - Apparently, I haven't been posting sprites often enough. I believe I said it was going to be once a month, but that doesn't seem to have worked out. I'm not going to make an effort to do more spriting, but on the off chance that I make/edit some sprites they'll appear on Sundays.
4. Everything Else - I wouldn't mind posting about my daily life here. In fact, there are a few other things that I'd like to post about. They will be sporadic, If I even choose to post about them. I will be sure to only ever post them on Whenevertheheckiwantday.

So, here's to hopefully not failing! This was super fun, so I might start tearing apart old posts here and there. I won't post the schedule for at least a month, so that I know for sure that I'm following it.

AMAZE - 5 - General Update Thing, a.k.a. I must have a thing for rewriting significant portions of codebases or something

The title says it all.

Dammit.





Alright, it's not that bad so maybe I should actually elaborate. I finished collisions and sprite importing. That's good. I even threw together a simple gui for making asset files! Then I got to adding rooms, and made an important realization: My entity system really sucks. I spent a while thinking about how to add entities to room files, and noticed that the system that I'd built was really just a more elaborate and confusing version of what I'd started with. Obviously, it was back to the drawing board. I've been spending the last week and a half remaking this system, and I'm proud to say that it's basically done! The main reason why I've been delaying this post is that I wanted to resolve all of this beforehand. Anyways, I'm not really going to have much to show off until I finish the room system, which is next on my list. I suppose I could explain how the new entity system actually works, but I'm exhausted today, and I think I'll put that off for some end-of-project roundup. Finally, Ludum Dare is coming up again in a couple of weeks, and I plan on entering. If you don't remember what that is, it's the same jam that spawned A Wheelie Good Time last winter. It's generally quite fun, and I'd like to get my engine in a working state in time for it. That means that once I'm done with rooms, I'm going straight for sound, then I'll try for Windows support. With all that finished, the engine will pretty much be done. As for AMAZE, it'll serve nicely as an easy, not-too-intensive cooldown when school starts up. Hopefully, then I'll relax a bit. I'll work out what my next project will be once that's done.

AMAZE - 3 - Sprites!

First off, I apologize for my super late post. I was aiming to have it up as soon as sprites were implemented, and it took way longer than anticipated. Then, I spent a while carefully procrastinating. Anyway, I can now take png files, convert them into spa files, and load them up into the engine. The files are notably small, as I'm also compressing them with zlib. The current implementation of sprites isn't great, as it was more just a test to see if it was possible to get this setup working. I'm going to spend a few days making general improvements, then I'll move on the interesting bit: Collision Detection.

Also, as I previously mentioned, I'll be posting some thoughts on a game from my steam library tomorrow. I'm planning on trying to do this each Friday. We'll see if that lasts.