Life, the universe, and everything.
by Jon Frisby · 03/25/2006 (10:28 pm) · 1 comments
First up, my car: Damages are on the order of $5,400 and it ought to be done in a couple weeks. It's still IN OREGON (my car made it to Oregon, I never did), but I'll probably pay to have it shipped back. I am SOOO not risking having to drive in the snow again.
Second up, my game: My game, as many of you have realized, is basically a clone of Lumines. It's progressing quite nicely. Lots of beautiful, and varied skin concepts coming along, including a fruit-based theme and an egyptian theme. Artists and composers are all excited about the project. But the most important thing: At some point, I stopped playing Lumines, and started just playing my own game. That's gotta be a good sign. :) Progress on the technical front is slow but steady -- I've fixed a problem that caused column processing to be "skipped" if the game lagged for whatever reason, and I'm almost done getting the audio code into a usable shape for the composers to work with. I've also got customizable keybindings in (thank you GG!). I need to add a tab to the options pane to allow performance tuning though. That will largely come down to controlling the detail level of particle effects I think. I have outsourced the really hard part to an individual who shall remain nameless until I've gotten the OK from him to name him. Specifically, he's giving me the capability to asynchronously load audio data speculatively (and unload them when I'm done) which will make skin transitions MUCH smoother. I intend to gift this code to the community as a resource, once it's done and paid for. Unfortunately I won't be able to add the three new skins I was hoping to add this weekend because I'm on day three without sleep (long story, don't ask) but hopefully I'll be able to get a build with more-or-less finalized audio code to my composers by the end of the weekend.
Third up, my other game ideas: I was planning on doing an Incredible Machine style game, largely because I miss it so much but it turns out someone beat me to it. I saw a game called "Crazy Machines" at the Apple store today that looks just like what I've been craving! When my budget allows, I WILL be purchasing it. I'm also working up a physics-based game to teach myself T2D's level-builder. Basically, think Asteroids, but instead of blasting them to pieces, you have to bump a bunch of objects off the screen before your fuel is exhausted. I have a working prototype that took me all of 15 lines of code (for keyboard control) and a whole lot of fiddling in the level builder. It doesn't detect win conditions or implement fuel constraints but the basic gameplay mechanics are there. The only problem is that T2D's physics are still a little... um... Strange. For example, I observed my spaceship which uses a collision circle with min/maxAngularVelocity of 0 perfom an intersting zig-zag maneuver where it went from left-to-right in a straight line, bounced downward and to the left , hit the left side of the screen, bounced straight to the right, and so forth, forming a sort of saw-tooth pattern. Very odd. But the basic mechanics are workable, so I might turn that into a real game once my current project is done.
Fourth up, my particle effects content pack: I'm experimenting with some more unique particle effects. I'm currently working on a blood-spray effect. The primary challenge to this is keeping the particle count low. It's easy to make something that looks nice using a few hundred small particles, but that's just not useful. I've got something that looks so-so but only uses a few dozen particles by using two emitters, one with larger, slower particles, and one with smaller, faster particles. The speed gradient helps makes the smaller particles be more eye-catching, and the larger particles act to "fill in the gaps". It's still a bit heavy on the particles, and it still needs some work visually, but it's getting there.
-JF
Second up, my game: My game, as many of you have realized, is basically a clone of Lumines. It's progressing quite nicely. Lots of beautiful, and varied skin concepts coming along, including a fruit-based theme and an egyptian theme. Artists and composers are all excited about the project. But the most important thing: At some point, I stopped playing Lumines, and started just playing my own game. That's gotta be a good sign. :) Progress on the technical front is slow but steady -- I've fixed a problem that caused column processing to be "skipped" if the game lagged for whatever reason, and I'm almost done getting the audio code into a usable shape for the composers to work with. I've also got customizable keybindings in (thank you GG!). I need to add a tab to the options pane to allow performance tuning though. That will largely come down to controlling the detail level of particle effects I think. I have outsourced the really hard part to an individual who shall remain nameless until I've gotten the OK from him to name him. Specifically, he's giving me the capability to asynchronously load audio data speculatively (and unload them when I'm done) which will make skin transitions MUCH smoother. I intend to gift this code to the community as a resource, once it's done and paid for. Unfortunately I won't be able to add the three new skins I was hoping to add this weekend because I'm on day three without sleep (long story, don't ask) but hopefully I'll be able to get a build with more-or-less finalized audio code to my composers by the end of the weekend.
Third up, my other game ideas: I was planning on doing an Incredible Machine style game, largely because I miss it so much but it turns out someone beat me to it. I saw a game called "Crazy Machines" at the Apple store today that looks just like what I've been craving! When my budget allows, I WILL be purchasing it. I'm also working up a physics-based game to teach myself T2D's level-builder. Basically, think Asteroids, but instead of blasting them to pieces, you have to bump a bunch of objects off the screen before your fuel is exhausted. I have a working prototype that took me all of 15 lines of code (for keyboard control) and a whole lot of fiddling in the level builder. It doesn't detect win conditions or implement fuel constraints but the basic gameplay mechanics are there. The only problem is that T2D's physics are still a little... um... Strange. For example, I observed my spaceship which uses a collision circle with min/maxAngularVelocity of 0 perfom an intersting zig-zag maneuver where it went from left-to-right in a straight line, bounced downward and to the left , hit the left side of the screen, bounced straight to the right, and so forth, forming a sort of saw-tooth pattern. Very odd. But the basic mechanics are workable, so I might turn that into a real game once my current project is done.
Fourth up, my particle effects content pack: I'm experimenting with some more unique particle effects. I'm currently working on a blood-spray effect. The primary challenge to this is keeping the particle count low. It's easy to make something that looks nice using a few hundred small particles, but that's just not useful. I've got something that looks so-so but only uses a few dozen particles by using two emitters, one with larger, slower particles, and one with smaller, faster particles. The speed gradient helps makes the smaller particles be more eye-catching, and the larger particles act to "fill in the gaps". It's still a bit heavy on the particles, and it still needs some work visually, but it's getting there.
-JF
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