GDC from afar (w TGB scripts!)

As all my worshipping fans know, I'm now contracting for GG - doing TGB stuff that no one else will do. Actually, it's more like I get to do the fun stuff while the real devs slave away over font rendering ;)

So, when Justin let me know that they needed to turn a bunch of assets into a game in 8 hours for some GDC thing, I was glad to accept...

It was a few minutes later that I remembered that I would be doing it during midterms, but that only makes life more exciting!

Here's the Session Description:

Quote:

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Casual Game Technology Face Off - Chris Melissinos (Sun); Justin Everett-Church (Adobe); Brad Edelman (PlayFirst); James Smith (Reflexive Entertainment); Josh Williams (GarageGames); Jeff Weinstein (PopCap).
Over the last few years, platforms like Flash, Java and Director have matured and new platforms like the Torque Game Builder have emerged. At the same time, C++ programmers have many new frameworks to choose from including PlayFirst's PlayGround SDK and the PopCap Framework. This panel of technologists tells you why their platform or
framework rules the roost, and bring a demo to prove it. Each panelist has used the same art assets and game design to build their own version a casual brick busting game developed in their platform of choice.

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So, with a .zip of a few million .pngs, a design doc, and the passion that only procrastinating college students can posses, I dove into creating Ricochet Extremely Cloned in 8 hours.

However, I was barely prepared...for how incredibly easy it would be to do in TGB.

You can read the download the design journal and scripts here or keep reading my rant about it. Or do both - ain't hyperlinks a blast?

Note
The assets from Ricochet are released under the Creative Commons license (full version here and in the downloadable archives)

I'd never timed myself doing a project like this, so I had very little idea how long it would take to throw a game together. However, it was soon apparent that with a clear design document, a strong understanding of TGB (especially its quirks), and an empty dorm room that I could do it in less than 8 hours.

The design journal in the download goes over the little details of what went right and my decision process, but here are the key points that made TGB a blast to use:

>LevelBuilder - this was the first game that I actually used the Level Builder as, well, a tool for building levels. Using the (completely magical) defaultConfig to apply a datablock to the animations in the Create Tab, I could build levels using only drag-and-drop, which just kinda sorta makes it too easy. Along with the align/distribute tools, those bricks had no chance. And, to top it off, I got sequential level loading to work without any major problems.

>Default collision options - At first, I was very wary of whether the physics would work or not - but it turned out to not be a problem at all. Perhaps it was because I'd had to play with them before, but I figured out all the physics parameters (send/receive stuff, response types) on paper before hand - and it all worked beautifully out of the box. The design doc even specified that they only wanted a simplified ball/paddle interaction (and even gave a formula for it), but in TGB it was as easy as setting the ball's direction to the opposite of the collision normal. Makes me wonder why I'm taking so much math...

>Particles! - Once I had the game finishy, I asked Justin and Joe to take a look - and they decided it needed more polish. I had about an hour and half left at this point, so Justin suggested I set up a whole bunch of placeholder particle effects and then Alex could make some effects... I already knew that particles are awesome in general and that Alex is too - but I somehow forgot the combinatorial property of awesome. Download the scripts and
get the fireBall powerup. Next, close your mouth and add some sweet particles to everything in your TGB game ;)

>Performance - When we found out what kind of computer the demo would run on at GDC, at least someone (me) was worried. I mean, integrated graphics, man... So, GG got a craptastic laptop and gave it a run on that. The game wasn't running over 200 fps like it was on my laptop, but it was still holding at a substantial fraction of that - even with a ton of particles, animations, and physics all over the place. Effect/animation recycling systems are fun to write and make things nice and smooth - check out the code for the simple ones (but don't make the same mistake as me and encourage massive allocation of effects when there are none to recycle - namely, making explosive bricks accessible from the beginning of a level ;)

So, head over here,
download the goods, and give it a whirl! There are lots of nice snippets in there that will answer some common forum posts and the scripting isn't terrible either ;)

Also, you can check out all the Casual Games Summit Presentations here and all the other Ricochet EC demos in this .zip here. (The other versions' design journals are great - made me really feel bad for the other guys, especially the Java dude)

A wee bit of coverage can be found here and here if you're interested.

Have a Torquetastically good time with it! A HUGE thanks to Joe for always answering my constant emails and helping with the journal, to Justin for fixing the audio stuff in the beta of TGB (that's awesome) that I was using, and to Alex for making the demo go from a by-the-book clone to a demonstration of TGB's spectacular particle system.