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Demo Night V Coverage, GDC stuff

February 27th, 2007 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So Sunday night I let myself sucker myself back into playing Guitar Hero II, and it was so awesome that it was horrible. I now have 5 stars on every song at the Hard level except Miserlov and Psychobilly Freak Out (both of which still have 3 stars). I finally got frustrated while playing again last nite trying to get all 5 stars on Expert for the first set of songs. I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight wasn’t cooperating. The bad news is that my guitar controller still remains in one piece and functional – I think I’m going to have to hide it. It’s laying on the floor taunting me right now.

No, it’s okay. I don’t have problems.

…

Anyyyways… I finally posted up my coverage of the IGDA NY Chapter’s Demo Night V from last week. Coolest part is that the guys from Heavy Melody Music recorded the whole thing and posted it on GooTube (as I like to call it these days) so I was able to embed the videos into the article as part of the event coverage. So definitely check it out.

I also got an email from Brian Robbins just a little while ago I’ll share with you all:

Quote:


Dustin Clingman and I were talking late last week about where the “new Fairmont” is going to be at GDC this year. It seems like the last time we were in SF, everyone was all spread out into tiny little lobbies that didn’t have nearly enough room for us. We cannot allow that to happen again!

Officially, CMP is saying that Jillian’s is the new Fairmont lobby. That seems like a good idea except that anyone who has truly experienced GDC should know that anyplace that closes at 1 can’t possibly work!

Thus, we propose the Marriott at 55 4th St to fill the void. They’ve got a really big lobby area that should work great for all your GDC networking needs. It’s very close by, and it seems that some evenings even have a few “official” events at the Marriott. The only slight catch is that right now the bar closes at 11. However, we’ve talked to the manager and he’s seemed pretty open and willing to have the bar open later. If you have a few minutes to give them a call to help encourage them, I’m sure it will ensure they are well prepared for us 🙂 I’m on a plane right now and can’t look up the phone number but their website is:
http://marriott.com/hotels/travel/sfodt-san-francisco-marriott/

Absolute worst case we can start off the evening here, and move somewhere else later in the evening, but I doubt that will be necessary.

Please help spread the word, and I look forward to seeing you again next week!


So yea, pass it along if you’re going to GDC. I guess the reasoning is that if hundreds of developers descend upon this place and get drunk, the management won’t dare try and toss us at a measly 11pm.

Works for me.

Of course if that’s not the case we could all just stagger over to Jillian’s for another 2 hours… after that we might be on our own. Either (any?) way, it’ll be interesting to see what evolves into the “hot spot” to replace the Fairmont this year.

No new updates on Blitz Blox, though I did break ground on the chain-reaction code and stole some cool particle effects that came with TGB to use for the moment. We’ll see if anything develops as I lock myself away for the next week and work on it.

Anyone wanna hold on to my guitar controller for me? both of em?

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More Scheduling Goodness, Special Blocks Done

February 24th, 2007 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Schedule Manager 2.0

I’ve improved upon the schedule manager, here’s the changes:

  • addObject now addFunction – Changed this to better clarify what this function is doing, and also because of the next item
  • Command execution – now you can call addCommand in order to schedule a one-line command to be carried out at the given time (example below)
  • Constructor/destructor – making use of onAdd and onRemove to handle some internal stuff (thanks bank!)

The coolest part is, of course, the ability to schedule commands now as well as functions. So for example if your player trips a trap that throws a flag and in 15 seconds you want that flag reset, instead of having to create a function to call to reset a single flag you can just do

Schedule.addCommand(false, 15000, "Trap.doorshut = true;");

Wheeee. Here’s the updated code

Special Blocks Complete

All the special blocks are now working in the game. The ones I implemented today are

  • Vampire Block – lands on the stack and converts the three adjacent blocks to that player’s color
  • Swap Block – this block’s use can be two-fold. First, you can use it to steal the special block your opponent is holding. Second, whether you steal a block or not your swap block appears in his special block holder, and stays there for 30 seconds. Since the player stuck with the swap block can’t get another special block, it has a tactical use to prevent players from getting special blocks
  • Destruction Block – Lands on the stack and destroys every enemy block from the top to the bottom in a 3-column area (1 to each side of the center)
  • Mystery Block – Randomly morphs into any of the other special blocks when dropped
  • Randomizer Block – lands on the stack and changes the orientation of every block’s discharge arrows

Next on the list

My next goal is implementing chain reactions, which let you reach down into the stack of blocks to affect enemies buried beneath. I already have some cool particle effects planned out for this, should be awesome. I’ll also be adding particle effect explosions and other polish over the coming week, as well as breaking the game down into Timed and High Score game types with both Blitz and Direct game modes.

Phew, got a lot of work ahead of me…

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Scheduling Goodness

February 23rd, 2007 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I finally got my damn schedule manager done – after two days *grump*. Mainly because I didn’t have much time to work on it, but also because of stupid bugs that were a bitch to uncover. I finally admitted to myself that I needed a schedule manager as the number of schedule() calls continued to pile up from various places in the game. When I go to pause the game, the main pause function was getting cluttered with having to cancel and store the remaining time of every scheduled event in the game. Ugh. So here’s what I have to manage it all

Weighs in at 160 lines (with spaces and comments), so I’m pretty happy with it. Here’s an example of it in use

Schedule.addObject(false, %this, 1000, "takeSpecialAction", %type SPC %position);

this would be the same as saying

%this.schedule(1000, "takeSpecialAction", %type, %position);

In addition, you can also set the first argument to ‘true’ and the schedule manager will automatically loop that schedule call for you until you remove it.

Oh and just so I can reference it later (and for anyone else interested), this is a bad way to define a ScriptObject

new ScriptObject(Schedule) { appointments = new ScriptGroup(); };

I had that at the top of the file and it compiled fine but for some reason TGB then refused to recognize Schedule as a valid object. It took me a while to think that having it defined that way was causing problems. I have no clue why but TGB doesn’t seem to like it *shrug*

So yea, I converted all my schedule() calls to use the manager and now all I have to do in the main game pause function is say

Schedule.pause($isGamePaused);

And all the scheduled events are paused until the game is resumed. Whoo hoo!

Anyways besides that I added two more special block actions, the Drag Block, which slows down the rate at which your opponent’s blocks fall, and the Speed Block, which increases the rate at which your own blocks fall. Now I just have to fix this collision layering bug so that faster blocks can pass slower blocks while dropping towards the same spot without bumping each other until they reach the bottom – at which the block lowest ends up beneath the higher-up block.

I’d add more special blocks but I have to get up early to coach. Blargh. I’ll finish em up tomorrow.

Feel free to use my source code to help build your own schedule manager, I only ask for credit someplace.

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BB Update, Demo Night V, GGE

February 20th, 2007 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Blitz Blox Update

I coded the first special block action tonight, and it went very smoothly. The first block I implemented was the Clip Block. When a player deploys a Clip Block, it lands on the stack and then every single block residing in the clip of that player’s opponent is destroyed. Since player clips take 12 seconds to fully reload, that’s quite an impact! Here’s the code for the Clip Block.

As you can see, I take advantage of iterative function calling (sort of like recursion, but without the stack unwind) via the schedule function in order to destroy each block in the clip one a time, instead of all at once, in a single second and allow the game to continue to progress in the meantime. It works perfectly. I was going to make a video, but I’m going to wait until all the special blocks and the chain reactions are in before I do.

Demo Night V

It was good to attend a Demo Night for the first time in 5 years. I showed off Galaxy Conquest (then built with my SDL-based Katana Engine) at the original Demo Night back in 2002. Scheduling conflicts have hampered me ever since. But tonight I was able to get up to the city to see what my fellow developers are working on in the NYC area. The highlight of the evening for me was Large Animal Game’s Snapshot Adventures: Secret of Bird Island, since it was developed using TGB and also using TGB’s 3D modeling capabilities to great effect. I was also impressed by the editors they had made for the game as well. I’ll be posting full coverage of the event on GDNet sometime next week, so stay tuned for that!

GGE

Just a quick blurb that I continue to be impressed by the GGE site. It’s cool to find new features almost every time I login to fudge with my account (which is daily, for the most part), and they’re certainly listening to feedback I’ve been offering. If you’re not signed up yet, get up off your ass and join already. It’s a great resource for getting your name and your games out there for public consumption, helping other devs by commenting on their games and finding players for your games – to name a few! Just do it.

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Good start to the week

February 19th, 2007 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Blitz Blox Update

Well I knocked one of my ToDo items off the list tonight, and that was creating an order of precedence for how blocks interact. It used to be that when a block would land on the stack, it would only affect the block its arrow was pointing towards, and not be affected by any blocks around it whose arrow was pointing towards it. Now, if a block is dropping on the stack for the first time, it’s allowed to first affect the block it’s pointing towards and then the surrounding blocks get to take a shot at it (if their discharge arrows are aimed properly). If a block is already on the stack and is dropping lower because a block below it was destroyed, it will be affected by the surrounding blocks first, and then (if its still alive) get to attack the block it’s pointing towards. I also had to rework some code to make sure that, in scenarios where a block was being affected by blocks on both sides, only one point was given to the player towards earning a special block, and not two.

Next up is implementing the special blocks. Once that’s done I think I can do another gameplay video. w00t

Demo Night V

I’ll be in the city (New York City) tomorrow night attending Demo Night V for the first time in 4 years. I was at the original Demo Night (and in fact demoed Galaxy Conquest) but in the years since they’ve had it on Thursday nights, which wreaks havoc with my work schedule. This year it’s a Tuesday night, and that’s easier for me to work around. So I’ll take lotsa pictures, and probably write up a coverage article on it to post on GDNet. It’s grown to be a pretty big event for the area.

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I am a Rockstar

February 17th, 2007 · Gaming

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

I jammed through Institutionalized, Miserlov, Hangar 18 and Freebird – the remaining 4 songs on Expert that had stumped me Monday night – in just over 3 hours. hot damn. And then I went back and started working through Hard again to bring up my stars. Now I have 5 stars on every song (bonus tracks not included) in easy and medium and up to the 6th set on hard. And before you ask if I’ve been a GH zombie all week long, I bought the game last Friday, played maybe 4-5 hours a day over the weekend, about 5 hours Monday, and then the 3-4 hours tonight. So while beating GH II in a week may sound like I don’t have a life, I really do.

….

Ok I really don’t. But that’s not the point here. The point is that I’m in the elitist ranks, and I’m happy about it. Where are my fellow Expert conquerers out there? Speak up! Make me feel small and insignificant!!

Or just bask in my glory. Whichever

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Blitz Blox gets some smarts

February 16th, 2007 · Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Yesterday and today I spent some time coding some basic AI into Blitz Blox. The AI really doesn’t do anything right now except

  1. Pick a random column
  2. move cursor to that column
  3. drop a block

Rinse, wash, repeat. While that may not seem like much, it’s actually just the foundation on which I’m going to build the more advanced AI. See the AI has two functions, Planning and Execution, which occur simultaneously as scheduled function calls (remember I’m dealing with TorqueScript here). When the Planning function is called, and the AI is in a planning state, the AI determines its move. The more complex its thinking (the harder the difficulty is set) the more times this function is called before a decision is reached. When the Execution function is called, it moves the AI’s cursor one column and checks if that’s the column the AI wants to be in. If so, and the AI has made a decision on what to do, it drops a block onto the play field.

Simple enough, the hard part is going to be making it appear smart. To do that I still have a few changes to make to the gameplay. In my last entry about Blitz Blox, I was wrestling with the problem of how blocks should interact once they are on the playfield (which I refer as the “stack”). I’ve decided to take Emmanuel’s suggestion, as it really is the only way to keep things under control in various situations:

Can’t you just decide that everyone is attacking at the same time (once the landing block finishes its own attack?). In your second example, the blue blocks attacks all at once – that doesn’t matter much which one is destroying the red block first (if there is a reward after this attack, both blocks get the reward).

Otherwise,a s I see it, you will always end up with weird cases.

I’m also going to apply a discharge precedence – when a block is first dropped onto the playing field, it discharges before being affected by any surrounding blocks. When a block on the stack drops to a lower row, it is first affected by surrounding blocks before being allowed to discharge.

After that’s done I’m going to get all the special blocks implemented, and then I can begin cracking hard on getting the AI up to snuff. We’ll see what I can get done next week. Hopefully by Wed I’ll be well into getting the special blocks working, and by the end of the week starting to bulk up the AI some more.

In other news, my car is stuck in the damn ice that we didn’t shovel the first day it snowed (Wed). And while it was like a 1/4 in of ice, 2-3 in of snow and like 1/2 in of ice layered back then – now that it’s thawed and frozen again and again these past two days it’s pretty much just a solid sheet of ice now.

Freakin great.

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Hi ho, Hi ho, it’s back to work I go…

February 13th, 2007 · GameDev.net

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Marathon IGF Interview Posting

Yes, you only see a single IGF interview newly featured on the main page, but the truth is I’ve actually gone and posted them all up on the resources section. Every day from now until the end of the month (and when a review or other featured article is being posted) I’ll be featuring a new article on the main page. But now you’re in the know, so head on over and indulge yourself. There are still more to come!

GDC Preview

Besides the usual shenanigans and conference/expo coverage, here’s a look at what I’ll be covering this year at GDC and why. Sessions that are underlined are ones that I’ll be definitely posting about the same day, not the next

Monday

This’ll be an easy day, and I’ll be spending most of my time walking around the conference center in the morning and getting my bearings, taking lots of general conference photos as well, mainly of the convention center and any people I run into.

IGDA Chapter Workshop

If any of you are fellow chapter coordinators out there, or if anyone’s interested in starting their own chapter, I’ll be taking away some notes and ideas from this workshop that gathers coordinators from around the world to discuss how they manage their chapters.

Tuesday

Today I’m going to be taking in a tutorial.

Dealmaking for Developers 2007: Challenges for Growing an Independent Studio

The intended audience blurb for this full-day tutorial says it all: “This program is for anyone who has an interest or a dream of starting a development studio and wants to understand the business climate and contracting related issues that go with the opportunity.” Well, if you’re after the same goal as me, you’ll get some good info when I report on this puppy.

IGDA Members Party

w00t – the party coverage begins here. The IGDA throws this for E3 but, now that that’s defunct it’s about time they started one up for GDC. Expect lots of pics of drunken developers doing crazy stuff. Cause… you know… we’re crazy.

Wednesday

Now the fun really begins, as the conference kicks into high gear with sessions, the Expo (now in two halls – augh!) and the GDCAs.

Burning Mad: Game Publishers Rant

This is the reverse of the Game Developers Rant from 2006 and 2005. now instead of developers bitching about lame game awards, lack of innovation, sexism in marketing it’s the publisher’s turn to take the floor and speak out. based on the last two years of rants and raves I know this is going to be interesting, enlightening and hilarious. Hopefully they have a big enough room this year…

If You’re Scared That Others Will Find Out You Don’t Know How To Be a Manager

This looks interesting, as it is a session on how best to manage people. I’m not sure whether the takeaway will actually be all that good, but I figure it’s worth a shot, and there was nothing better for me in this time slot anyways.

Xbox LIVE Arcade Game Development: How to Develop and Pitch a Successful Xbox LIVE Arcade Game Submission

LIVE Arcade is blowing up quick as one of the next big indie launchpads. I’m definitely interested in this platform myself personally as well. The session topic pretty much says it all. If you’re into 360 casual development, or even thinking about it, you’d better not miss this report

Booth Crawl

I missed this last year, hopefully I won’t miss it this year. Always fun to walk around, get free drink and munchies, and mingle.

Game Developers Choice Awards/IGF Awards

The Big Night. Hopefully we aren’t stuck in a freaking ballroom this year with simulcasts to other convention areas. That was just embarrassing. A venue! We need a venue!. Anyways, like always I’ll be there doing my usual coverage and trying to get it posted before passing out that same night. I usually succeed – for the most part

Thursday

Another session-packed day

Controlling an Entire Theatre of War: The Development of Supreme Commander

I’ve played Supreme Commander and it is indeed an awesome game. Just based on the sheer scope of the gameplay, I can only imagine what valuable nuggets I’ll be able to extract from this session. I shiver in anticipation.

XNA Game Studio Express

This is a sponsored session where MS walks you through XNA Express. I’ve been wanting to delve into it but haven’t had any spare time to do so – well here’s as good an excuse as any! Plus then you all get to benefit from it as well when I report on it…

After the Party: Introversion Software One Year on from IGF 2006

I’ve always wanted to do follow-up articles on some of the IGF finalists I’ve interviewed a year or two ago – see where they are now, what the IGF really did for them, etc. So this is as good an alternative as any, as well as providing insight to the growth of an indie studio

Developer/Publisher Wars

In this case I’ll let the session description speak for itself:

“This panel of industry veterans provides guidance into anticipating, avoiding, preparing for, resolving and litigating the many types of clashes between developers and publishers, including the following: The never-signed long form; milestone approvals; ownership of tools, technology, game play patents and content IP; sequels; mediation, arbitration and courts; suggestions for resolving seemingly intractable disputes; bankruptcy; accounting statements; audits; collecting royalties.”

That’s a lot of stuff there, and all very good things to know.

Early Stage Funding for Independent Development Studios and Gaming Start-ups

Again, this is simply a focus of mine, the takeaway of which I’ll be sharing with all of you.

Suite Night

And the partying continues. Hopefully the W will be a bit more roomy than the Fairmont last year. I couldn’t move – and I’m skinny!!

Friday

May be the last day, but that doesn’t mean any less sessions

The Videogame Piracy Problem: Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest

This should be interesting. We all now piracy is a problem, but can it ever be stopped? Blu-ray and HD-DVD encryption has just recently been blown wide open, so until we have quantum computers is there really any hope?

How To Help Your Players Stop Saving All The Time

This is only a 20-minute lecture, but it ties in with an article I wrote a few years ago (part 1 | part 2), so I’m interested.

Game Sketching

I’ve never heard of this technique, so I’m interested to find out more. Plus it’s another 20-min lecture so why not?

Your Own Game Studio in Six Months: Bootstrapping Core Through Casual

Not only is this once again within my personal field of interest, but the speaker (Charlie Cleveland) is a developer friend of mine and I’m definitely interested to hear how he’s been doing with Unknown Worlds Entertainment

Best Practices to Help You Take Control of Your Game Development

This could end up being a bit over my head, but it’s always good to expand your horizons, and in this talk an IBM Fellow will cover the following:

“Across a number of dimensions the game community is experiencing issues that other software-intensive domains have passed through, so there is value in drawing from the best practices in defense, embedded, and enterprise systems. For instance, the best way to manage complexity is to not write any software at all (thus forming the economic basis for the reuse of code and subsystems); or to move to higher levels of abstraction (thus leading to design patterns, architectural patterns, modeling, and domain-specific languages). These and other best practices from industry will be examined and shown how they may apply to the problems of game development.”

Woah. Sounds heady. Sweet.

The Programmers Challenge

When I saw this in the listings I was like “woaahhh!! no way! AWESOME!!”. This event hasn’t been around since 2002!! And it was hilarious the last time they had it. I definitely can’t wait to attend this. I was going to try once again to make the video game concert but once I saw this was back it was a no-brainer choice. I hope its worth it!

No Joy for GG from GG

Heh, funny headline. So I heard back from GarageGames about Galaxy Conquest. They said it was a fun and well-polished game but not in line with what they are looking to market. It was too casual. Which is good, in a way because I’ve always wanted this to be a casual game. So I’m not totally disappointed. I’m going to see what they have to say about Blitz Blox and if that’s not what they like either I’m pretty sure Drop Zone is more to their style of game. That’s definitely not casual.

And finally, some random stuff

So I beat Guitar Hero last weekend, and on Friday I bought Guitar Hero II and by last nite I had made it to the last 4 songs on Expert mode with Easy, Medium and Hard all beat. Rock on! I’ll nail them this week I swear it!!

It’s all white outside, and it’s freezing rain, not snow. Ugh I feel SICK! Driving home earlier tonight I was playing around a bit, kicking my rear out driving through my neighborhood, testing out the road. It was slick but I would always grip once I let off the throttle. Of course as soon as I turn down my street I do a 180 spin and slide a ways down the road backwards before coming to a stop. Luckily no damage. I didn’t think of that fact that my street, being recently paved, is smooth as a baby’s bottom, while the rest of my development has very very rough pavement. So the ice on my street was a smooth sheet compared to the other roads, which were still gritty and tractionable. I mean for a few seconds I didn’t think I’d be able to move off my street it was so slippery. Well, lesson learned. Bah.

Stupid ice.

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The Bane Of My Existence Has Finally Arrived

January 28th, 2007 · Personal

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

First major snowfall of the season. I was hoping against hope that it wouldn’t happen at all this year, but it finally did. I suppose I can at least be thankful that it took so long. But still.

Yea I hate snow. Well, I didn’t always. Back when I was a kid it was awesome. I did my snowdance like everyone else (okay, maybe not everyone), turned my jammies and my undies inside out and prayed like a mofo for snow. I still liked snow when I got my first car, an ’82 Maxima. I was so happy driving it didn’t matter whether it was snowing or not. Even when I got my ’97 Cavvy coupe shortly thereafter the snow was still cool, cause I could kick out my rear end without losing control – yey front-wheel drive. Then I got my ’03 Tiburon GT V6 5-speed manual.

With no traction control.

Yea my mood towards snow changed real fast. Now I have a rear-wheel drive, 287hp 6-speed ’03 350Z.

With no traction control.

And summer tires.

Snow can go screw itself.

But anyways. I was driving home from the movies with my buddy Sash in my mom’s van. We saw Pan’s Labyrinth – it was a really cool movie. So I’m driving, it’s like 1am and the snow’s comin down but the road’s not too bad. 25 minutes later we’re on Route 18 and Sash is like – “the road’s a sidewalk”. And I’m like, yea it is. Then it turned into a tire track – and then it was gone. Heck I drove down an offramp following tire tracks thinking I was still on the highway!! So yea it was pretty much a 30mph drive the rest of the way home. Took us an hour and 15 minutes for what should have been no longer than a 45min drive. It was a fun adventure tho – we saw one car had slid off the road and we saw tracks swerve off and back on a few times. The van got stuck in this one deep rut of tire tracks that I couldn’t get out of and had to kinda ride off the road a bit in them. That was interesting. Then it took me two tries to get the van up my damn driveway when I finally made it home.

So yea. Snow sucks. I want spring now

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Second IGF Article, New Game Concept

January 25th, 2007 · GameDev.net, Software

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

Okay, so EvStream now has their interview up for consumption, so head on over and check it out. Again, if you guys want me asking things of these developers, whether it’s about the game in question or development in general, let me know and I’ll throw those questions out there. I also have interviews scheduled to go online the 29th and 31st. One is out for review, and another I’m doing tomorrow, with still more in the works! Wow I might actually be done before GDC – that would be a first! 😛

I’ve also finally gotten around to completing that design draft I’ve been talking about. Took longer than I thought and I fleshed out the concept a lot more. This is a concept I’m pretty damn excited about, but I won’t start working on it until after finishing Blitz Blox and Galaxy Conquest. I’d appreciate any feedback from anyone willing to give it a read.

Drop Zone.pdf

Today someone posted on the Blade Edge Software forums, which hasn’t happened in a few years. I’ve been noticing people joining up over the past few weeks, but no one’s posted anything. It would be nice to try and get some people interested in BB and GC to help push me to get the damn things finished and stop playing Guitar Hero instead

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