Plan for Martin "Muerte" Schultz
by Martin Schultz · 10/11/2005 (2:32 pm) · 2 comments
Well, I first have to say that I'm really really happy. I finished a couple of days ago the first public beta of the first game as Indy developer for me done in the spare time. Eight months ago I decided to create the simplest possible 3D game that comes to my mind and that was a remake of the 80's Atari ST game "Midi-Maze" (and always Jeff Tunnells statements in mind: start simple, iterate). I wanted to create this game while waiting for TSE to get more complete, as I want to port my old Subsonic prototype over to TSE. I forced myself to complete SuperMaze in this timeframe dependingsless if I need to remove a feature or maybe lack a bit of hypercool graphics. To complete the game had the highest priority. Not just only to have created a game, also to fully run through all possible traps that appear on the way.
A few days ago, only one week behind my schedule, I finished the first open beta version of the game SuperMaze (Screenshots). I also signed up for the snapshot gallery here on GarageGames, but until now it's still in the pipe and waiting to be published. Maybe I'm a bit to impatient. :-) Anyway, SuperMaze is a simple to learn and play humorous non-violent hunt-and-shoot game using Smileys as the main actors in a maze style environment. You don't need more than the cursor keys and the space key to control your Smiley. The aim of the game is simple: Hunt each other alone or in teams and try to reach as first the win score. There are several differenz mazes supplied with the game in various sizes and styles. Additional game modes are planned for the final release.
As I stated that finishing the game had the highest priority, it truly happened while developing the game that I had to cut out a feature I really loved - the automatic AI players - so called Ninjas. It went out because I had unbelievable lock-ups (freezes) while using AIPlayers. I spent a total of 3~4 weeks trying to find out where these lock-ups came from, but I was not successful and decided to drop this feature for the moment to not miss the goal to complete beta 1 milestone. It hurt really not to officially have in one of the coolest features of the game (although it is still in, when you press ALT+B in the game, Ninjas are dropped in for each keypress, but it may crash). This bug is definately the most annoying bug I had in my lifetime so far as developer.
I first thought - man, you messed up something in the script code and therefore started to insert debugging statements more and more. No luck. The game crashed unpredictable at some time somewhere in the code. At first I had my newly created A* pathfinding code under suspicion, but the crashes also appeared NOT using that code and instead using simple moveTo(somewhere); commands. Then I started tracing using trace(1). Still no luck. It was still not possible to detect, where and why the game crashes. Then I thought I messed up something in one of the very very few modifications I made to the engine itself. I replaced my compiled game.exe against the stock torqueDemo.exe from the downloadable Torque Demo - same effect - the game crashes. I still don't have a clue why this happens. I didn't use AIPlayer for the AI Ninjas, I switched back to the old AIClient class as it seemed more comfortable to me as I needed to store lots of variables in the GameConnection of each AIClient which need to be persistent over the games (such as color, name, custom texture, voice sample set, etc). Well, to sum it up - a few weeks have passed since this monster debugging phase and I think I resurrected enough to try again hunting this bug down. Any help is welcome by the way! :-)
So, what's the story behind this all? Regardless of this annoying AI bug, I'm proud and happy that I reached this stage so far. Regardless if this game gets played and liked by the people or not - I've learned a lot over these weeks. As I said at the begining - I'm happy :-)
I'd like to invite you all to play this game. It's available for Linux and Windows. And thanks for reading this text so far :-)
Have a nice day!
Martin
A few days ago, only one week behind my schedule, I finished the first open beta version of the game SuperMaze (Screenshots). I also signed up for the snapshot gallery here on GarageGames, but until now it's still in the pipe and waiting to be published. Maybe I'm a bit to impatient. :-) Anyway, SuperMaze is a simple to learn and play humorous non-violent hunt-and-shoot game using Smileys as the main actors in a maze style environment. You don't need more than the cursor keys and the space key to control your Smiley. The aim of the game is simple: Hunt each other alone or in teams and try to reach as first the win score. There are several differenz mazes supplied with the game in various sizes and styles. Additional game modes are planned for the final release.
As I stated that finishing the game had the highest priority, it truly happened while developing the game that I had to cut out a feature I really loved - the automatic AI players - so called Ninjas. It went out because I had unbelievable lock-ups (freezes) while using AIPlayers. I spent a total of 3~4 weeks trying to find out where these lock-ups came from, but I was not successful and decided to drop this feature for the moment to not miss the goal to complete beta 1 milestone. It hurt really not to officially have in one of the coolest features of the game (although it is still in, when you press ALT+B in the game, Ninjas are dropped in for each keypress, but it may crash). This bug is definately the most annoying bug I had in my lifetime so far as developer.
I first thought - man, you messed up something in the script code and therefore started to insert debugging statements more and more. No luck. The game crashed unpredictable at some time somewhere in the code. At first I had my newly created A* pathfinding code under suspicion, but the crashes also appeared NOT using that code and instead using simple moveTo(somewhere); commands. Then I started tracing using trace(1). Still no luck. It was still not possible to detect, where and why the game crashes. Then I thought I messed up something in one of the very very few modifications I made to the engine itself. I replaced my compiled game.exe against the stock torqueDemo.exe from the downloadable Torque Demo - same effect - the game crashes. I still don't have a clue why this happens. I didn't use AIPlayer for the AI Ninjas, I switched back to the old AIClient class as it seemed more comfortable to me as I needed to store lots of variables in the GameConnection of each AIClient which need to be persistent over the games (such as color, name, custom texture, voice sample set, etc). Well, to sum it up - a few weeks have passed since this monster debugging phase and I think I resurrected enough to try again hunting this bug down. Any help is welcome by the way! :-)
So, what's the story behind this all? Regardless of this annoying AI bug, I'm proud and happy that I reached this stage so far. Regardless if this game gets played and liked by the people or not - I've learned a lot over these weeks. As I said at the begining - I'm happy :-)
I'd like to invite you all to play this game. It's available for Linux and Windows. And thanks for reading this text so far :-)
Have a nice day!
Martin
#2
.. i like the arty games. w00!
10/11/2005 (2:48 pm)
i saw this on gamesareart.com. Seems interesting... i like the arty games. w00!
Torque Owner Martin Schultz