Success. I got what I needed to get done today. I realize you might ask yourself what is the reason for posting about something you’re not going to talk about. The only reason is to show you why I haven’t gotten to another item on the agenda. And I promise if/when it’s released i’ll let you know.
Keith
Well I didn’t get to posting this till now, and it’s almost 1PM pacific time. But i’ll do it anyways. This should be the format i’m following for todo posts. Essentially i’ll start with what all I want to accomplish that day, projects-wise. Then sometime at the end of the day (probably closer to midnight) i’ll post what I managed to do that day. Probably seperate posts for each project. That is I’ll post a general todo post in the general catagory, and then at the end of the day post in each of the respective catagories for what I actually accomplished.
Okay i’m the menu for the rest of the day today:
Phone game. I can’t actually say much. And today i’ll get even less done so i’ll leave it at that.
My apartment. I’ve got to finish cleaning so my brother and his family can come over for christmas.
Hypno-Joe. I don’t really know what all I need to use to build this game. This is why i’m going into the prototyping stage first. So i’m going to be using the Scrolling Game Development Kit to do this. So the first two things i’ll need to do is to learn this system, and start drawing a simple walk animation for the character. I don’t think i’ll be doing the animation today, but I will start learning this system by going through it’s tutorial.
Enchanted Lands Resort. Well I think based on the progression I outlined in Enchanted Lands Resort - Design progression. I need to make some progress on the story. So i’ve got a basic premise as mentioned in Enchanted Lands Magical Resort. But now I need to flesh it out more. I already have characters thought up too. So i’ll try to start developing each of their character stories (as you will be playing multiple characters throughout the course of the game). So I guess all this junk really boils down to, the main characters journey. I’m building the game in such a way as each of the plot points is setup like a movie screenplay. Where each point is a cut scene, and where the puzzles are used to get from point-to-point. I like to refer to it as the “string of pearls” story configuration. Where each “pearl” is a non-linear interactive part and the “string” that connects it is the plot points. So by the end of today I should have the plot points figured out for our main story and main character.
Learning C++. Okay by the end of today I should have made up a short story to put into my “madlibs” style program. Then I should possibly try to re-read the chapter i’m on in my book.
So there you have a plan, possibly impossible to finish today, but hopefully i’ll get to most of these items.
Keith
Okay I know you’re probably tired of hearing about this little breakout clone. But I found something out. I have a video-capture card with video out (the ati all-in-wonder 9600 xt) and sometimes I’m playing video off of my computer to my tv. When it comes time to record a tv show or whatever I turn the tvout off, presumably because vid capture will be smoother with it off. (Actually this does seem to be the case.) When tv out is on, the display is changed to 60hz refresh (I believe), probably because of the 60 fields per second aka 30 frames per second framerate of NTSC television signals. In any case. I had been playing the breakout game with tv-out on. Which means technically get game was “slower”, I don’t mean it still wasn’t fast, but somehow with the lower refresh the timing is such that it is a slight bit easier to play. When I shut tv-out off, the refresh goes back to whatever it is for 1024×768 resolution i normally use (I think something like 75 it might be higher but I don’t know for sure). I totally cannot play it this way. I barely make 200 when it’s like this. It’s like a new challenge. It was as if 384 wasn’t a real score. So i’m thinking of maybe finding a way to reset highscore (I think it should be in a file, if not i’ll have to redownload it to start clean). I did manage on this speed to get up to 257 though.
Also it makes me wonder about a friends system. He has an nvidia tnt2 based card (really old by nowadays standards). He said the game ran so slowly as to be unplayable and he mentioned having problem with alpha channel stuff. Now I think it may be refresh related. I remember hearing about older cards that would sync to the vertical retrace, and that you could turn it off for certain games and they would go faster. So maybe i’ll ask him if he can do this and see if he can’t play this game. Anyhoo that’s all i’m going to say about this, unless I get a highscore to beat 384.
Keith
In my post entitled Addicted! I mentioned a breakout clone that simply had me addicted. It still does, and I still haven’t beat my highscore of 384. I think I should stop while I still have the chance. Just when I start playing games again, I realize why I shouldn’t play games. Well at least good ones. Sorry I didn’t post yesterday, it was two things, the two contract jobs i’m working on, and this game. I guess starting to blog during Christmas isn’t such a great idea. I’ve been too busy to keep up with this. In any case more later.
Keith
One thing I didn’t mention here is I have a couple of “jobs” one is a phone game which I can’t really say much about, another is part of a web-based game called Droid Arena. It’s a game where you start out with some credits and you buy and build and then program with a special script language, a robot to fight in a virtual arena. I’m doing some programming for a small portion of it. Between these two I don’t get other stuff done sometimes. So when you don’t see any progress, it’s usaully because of this.
Keith
Well I was talking to some guys on irc about adventure game design. The one guy I was talking to came up with a list of things to work on, and I sort of revised it. Here’s my progression:
So essentially Story, Characters, Puzzles, Inventory, Dialog, then visually, background and character design, background art and character animations, sound effects and music, and finally scripting to put it all together.
Essentially i’m working on the story part and characters. I’ve already settled on a few characters which I may mention at a later date. But I wanted to talk about something i’ve wanted to do every since I played Maniac Mansion 2 : Day of the Tentacle (or DOTT as it’s affectionately known), multiple player characters. In rpg’s you sometimes have a whole team of characters who venture out with you. My idea is to do it more like DOTT, each PC has their own story to tell which supports the main story. You’ll get to switch inbetween characters, and possibly use their stories to help you out on your own (ie the main player character).
I’m also planning to have a highlighting system on things you can interactive with - if it doesn’t light up you can’t do anything with it, so it will possibly help with pixel-hunting, and all too common problem of point’n'clicks in the past.
Your thoughts?
Previously: Enchanted Lands Magical Resort
Keith
I’m evaluating engines as potentials for coding Hypno-Joe. I’ve run against an engine called PTK. Most notably because a Mr. Mark Fassett of Laughing Dragon Games keeps harping on how great it is. Well I haven’t actually looked at the engine itself. But I keep getting caught up by a little example program called Nervous Breakdown. First let me tell you as a game there’s nothing special about it, just a plain vanilla breakout clone. You have only one ball. And the ball speeds up and the bricks keep coming down faster and faster. There’s no highscores list, just a single highscore entry so you can beat your last high score. According to some it has terrible collision detection. Although seeing as it is the only real strategy, it may have been intentional. Essentially you try to move it to hit at the sides and corners, because it will take out more bricks that way. But the more I play it, the more I marvel at it’s simplicity, and it’s addictiveness. I’ve wasted hours and hours each day just trying to beat my own highscore. My current best is 384. Maybe try it out for yourself. I did casually take a look at the source, and it seems to be simple enough. I may think about it in the future. Also i’m considering when i learn c++ enough that i’ll use it to make simple 2d games as I continue learning c++ and OOP.
Keith
Nope not once today, so I thought before midnight and before I go to bed I gotta put something in here. Essentially as I said in another post i’m busy on weekends. But i’ll try for at least once a day. Someone was mentioning todo lists. I don’t really use them much. But I think from all i’ve heard and read that I might should start. I have so many different projects going at once that it is hard to keep track of them. One might say I should narrow it down and do them one at a time. But I say pfft to them. I mean I get bored easily, or rather disinterested in one thing to move on to another. That’s why I need so many. Also I can narrow it down to a few and then just concentrate on those few.
Keith
Okay I made my first successful C++ program. It’s called “Funny Story.exe” instead of madlibs which is probably copyrighted. Anyhoo. It’s merely a shell. Firstly I need to write a small story and then put it in the program. Right now it just uses named constants which will be substituted for real input later, and variables that I can plug anything into. This will need to be recompiled each time I change it until I make it interactive. Here’s the program, note I probably won’t always put whole programs in here as they’ll eventually get large an unweildly.
// Funny Story.cpp : A wacky madlibs like program to turn boring
// normal stories into funny wacky ones!
#include "stdafx.h"
const std::string AN_ANIMAL = "bear";
const std::string ACTION = "flog";
const std::string PLURALNOUN = "chipmunks";
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
// To hold words.
std::string animal;
std::string verb;
std::string pluralnoun;
// in lieu of input
animal = AN_ANIMAL;
verb = ACTION;
pluralnoun = PLURALNOUN;
// Output
std::cout < < "One upon a time in a far away kingdom there lived a " << animal << std::endl;
std::cout << "who liked to " << verb << " " << pluralnoun << ". " << std::endl;
return 0;
}
And here is my illustrious (spelling?) output:
D:\Programming Projects\MSDEV\Projects\Funny Story\Debug>”Funny Story.exe”
One upon a time in a far away kingdom there lived a bear
who liked to flog chipmunks.
Welp what do you think?
Keith
Because of the nature of weekends, i’m usually busy. Grocery shopping, catching a movie, going out to eat or spending time with the family. So in most cases blogging on a weekend will probably be slow. But that’s okay because I have lots to type on the weekdays :-)
Keith
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