Plan for Colt McAnlis
by Colt McAnlis · 11/09/2004 (7:06 am) · 1 comments
Well, holy freggin hell. Past 24 hours have been pretty damn intense. I haven't slept much, so pardon me if not alot of this makes sence, or is full.
I participated in the GAME IN A DAY event this weekend. Damn, lots of code.
The game: Protonz
Protonz is a basic tile mover, but with a twist: Your tiles do damnage to a growing entity, and you have to kill it, before it kills you. 15 built in levels of fun!
Let's talk about genralities.
The theme was 'cash cow' although I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do all week.
I grabbed my friend Beach ( Jeff Palmer ) to do graphics arts for me. And we were on our way.
First Milestone:
The first milestone was a gui, just basic tile moving, and some fonts. This went pretty fast, 2 hours to complete. Nothing to insnae.
Second Milestone:
Basic game rules and steup, design for levels. etc etc. The audio system was the big kicker here. I decided to use DirectShow for the background .WAV playing, which has turned out to be more of a shitbomb that i would enjoy. Somehow, graph handles are being shared across sounds. I am going to rip the code out, and move to openAL, but not within the GID constraints
Third Milestone:
This is where problems came in. Beach went long at work, and didn't get off until close to midnight. This is where i learned a very important lesson: never do a GUI before your artist gets online. Beach wanted to do alot of changes that i was willing to do, but couldn't do in the 24 hours of the GID. The changes he proposed were great, but i had already been pretty sleep deprived at that point, so i tabled the changes for the cause of the GID.
What didn't get finished:
Beach passed out about 1 am, which I don't blame him, he's been working his ass off. But as a result, none of the graphics were done or polished, so the entire game looks like crap. As a programmer, you really understand how art makes a game 'pop' and 'shine' . Infact, due to the fact the graphics wern't done, alot of things didn't come through. (IE the health bar is still just a number with a + on it)
All the levels past 0-5 are identicial, and I havent played past the end of hte game, so i think things will just crash...
You can grab not only the binaries, but also some screenshots of the development process here:
http://www.badheat.com/sinewave/other/GID
final thoughts:
As Foster Said, GID is a great freggin way to test your engine. As well as your code. There was some intense programming going on, especially when you start hitting block walls, and realize that your debugging is taking time out of features later on down the line. As another thought, MAKE SURE YOUR ARTISTS ARE ON BOARD FROM THE BEGINNING. All in all, i think that this was pretty damn successful, and the feedback on the game has been pretty positive., someone said "addicting'. I plan on participating in more GID's as they appear, damn good skills test!
I plan to come back to Protonz and finish it up. If interest still stays high for it, I might even polish it to the point for potential submission to GG. Who knows though..
Please, e-mail me any comments or problems you have with the game.
duhroach at gmail.com
~Main
==
My Workbench
I participated in the GAME IN A DAY event this weekend. Damn, lots of code.
The game: Protonz
Protonz is a basic tile mover, but with a twist: Your tiles do damnage to a growing entity, and you have to kill it, before it kills you. 15 built in levels of fun!
Let's talk about genralities.
The theme was 'cash cow' although I already had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do all week.
I grabbed my friend Beach ( Jeff Palmer ) to do graphics arts for me. And we were on our way.
First Milestone:
The first milestone was a gui, just basic tile moving, and some fonts. This went pretty fast, 2 hours to complete. Nothing to insnae.
Second Milestone:
Basic game rules and steup, design for levels. etc etc. The audio system was the big kicker here. I decided to use DirectShow for the background .WAV playing, which has turned out to be more of a shitbomb that i would enjoy. Somehow, graph handles are being shared across sounds. I am going to rip the code out, and move to openAL, but not within the GID constraints
Third Milestone:
This is where problems came in. Beach went long at work, and didn't get off until close to midnight. This is where i learned a very important lesson: never do a GUI before your artist gets online. Beach wanted to do alot of changes that i was willing to do, but couldn't do in the 24 hours of the GID. The changes he proposed were great, but i had already been pretty sleep deprived at that point, so i tabled the changes for the cause of the GID.
What didn't get finished:
Beach passed out about 1 am, which I don't blame him, he's been working his ass off. But as a result, none of the graphics were done or polished, so the entire game looks like crap. As a programmer, you really understand how art makes a game 'pop' and 'shine' . Infact, due to the fact the graphics wern't done, alot of things didn't come through. (IE the health bar is still just a number with a + on it)
All the levels past 0-5 are identicial, and I havent played past the end of hte game, so i think things will just crash...
You can grab not only the binaries, but also some screenshots of the development process here:
http://www.badheat.com/sinewave/other/GID
final thoughts:
As Foster Said, GID is a great freggin way to test your engine. As well as your code. There was some intense programming going on, especially when you start hitting block walls, and realize that your debugging is taking time out of features later on down the line. As another thought, MAKE SURE YOUR ARTISTS ARE ON BOARD FROM THE BEGINNING. All in all, i think that this was pretty damn successful, and the feedback on the game has been pretty positive., someone said "addicting'. I plan on participating in more GID's as they appear, damn good skills test!
I plan to come back to Protonz and finish it up. If interest still stays high for it, I might even polish it to the point for potential submission to GG. Who knows though..
Please, e-mail me any comments or problems you have with the game.
duhroach at gmail.com
~Main
==
My Workbench
Torque 3D Owner Tom Bampton
See you next GID, or maybe before if you drop by :)
Tom/Fosters