Blog for Brian Carter at GarageGames.com

Root of all evil

Brian Carter — 2008-03-18T14:59:33+00:00

This is more of a personal introspection, and isn't aimed at any specific person / group in the community; however, maybe it's something all of us as indie developers should give some thought to...

I've only been a member of this wonderful community for a couple of weeks, but in that time it seems that more and more people are jumping on the "selling content" bandwagon. So, this weekend while I was playing around with my basic A* pathing module, see my previous blog, I thought to myself that it could be of interest to other users who need a torque script version. It was at that point that I started to see the potential for recouping some of my costs of buying some art assets that I purchased for my game that I'm working on etc.. In truth I became blinded by the $$ signs in front of my eyes, nice big fat ones .. the root had taken hold.

Having made decent progress on my module, trying to keep it as generic and as user friendly as possible, I posted my intention yesterday that I might make it available to others when its complete for a small cost. However, something unexpected happened. Somebody replied to my blog entry pointing me to a link of somebody else who had already implemented the algorithm for the Pro version. On checking out the resource I noticed instantly that it was given freely in the hope that it would help out other developers.

This for me was one of those "grounding moments". It made me start questioning my motives for wanting to sell my module, and if it was the right thing to do or not. After some contemplation I came to the conclusion that I would rather be here to help the community than profit from it at every possible opportunity - which in honesty was my original intention. As an indie developers we don't all have deep pockets. Most of us are maintaining a day job, supporting family, kids, or even still in school. All of these content packs, starter kits, code modules etc.. are great, but not everybody can afford them - we arn't all commercials.

This actually raises an interesting question, when is it OK to sell content (in any form, be it starter kits, code, models, textures etc..) ? I don't know where I stand on this right now, kinda balancing on the fence. I've purchased the Adventure Kit (among others), so I'm not adverse to paying for content, and it was worth the money I paid for it, because I gained invaluable knowledge and understanding from them. Should a line be drawn somewhere? I think what makes this community so great is the amount of support and help that is given freely for no personal gain - other than to help struggling indie developers bring their dreams and creations to fruition.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying content, modules, artwork etc.. shouldn't be sold; However, for me personally I think I would rather be a member of the community that is here to help struggling developers rather than profit from them. I will just sell my final product - the game - and any modules that I develop along the way that I feel would be useful to other developers will be released freely into the community.

So there it is. I'm not judging anybody, or even expecting anybody else to do the same. We all have our own reasons and needs for doing what we do, and I'm fine with that. All I would ask is that you ask yourself why you are a member of the community, and are you really at peace with that role. Personally, I wasn't happy with the way I was going so I decided to take a different road, and I feel better about myself for it.

Messing with A* Pathing (TGB)

Brian Carter — 2008-03-17T19:46:22+00:00

So I decided to take a quick break from rendering my sprites for my RPG (probably the subject of my next blog which should follow sometime next week), and turned my attention towards the problem of pathing - something that I will need in place for NPC's, monsters, and even possibly my own players movement.

Prior to Sunday I didn't even know what A* pathing was, or how extremely cool it is (when you can figure out what its doing that is). Anyhoo, after reading the beginners guide to A* Pathing a couple of times I decided to give it a shot. The page I used as a source can be found at www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2003.asp - a great resource I think, although the parenting could be better explained :) !! It took me all day but I finally got a basic A* pathing system written in TorqueScript to work including variable terrain costs.

A quick demo video of what I have done so far can be seen *** HERE ***

To give you an idea of the simplicity of use of the module the demo just makes 3 function calls to the A* module:

ASP::asp_Initialize( %debugLevel );

%pathlist = ASP::asp_CreatePath( %startposition, %endposition );
// Now you just iterate through the path list (a list of ordered coordinates) with
// a moveTo command on the player unit - easy and simple (and powerful)
// %pathlist is just a SimSet of Positions strings

ASP::asp_Shutdown();

Now I just need to optimize it (I used a number of SimSets which isnt the fastest solution), etc.. Also, I want to add influences, and make it work with multiple units at once. Also, I think I will try and play around with movement prediction and interception. By that I mean that if an NPC/Monster targets a player and calculates the best path to that player, but the player moves the path will recalculate and compensate for that movement.

I'm also coding this into a generic module that can be moved easily between projects, and adapted easily for different projects. I might even think about selling this as a low cost module if there is enough interest.

Watch this space .. I will post more in the coming weeks as I develop this further.

A small step on the indie path

Brian Carter — 2008-03-07T16:56:20+00:00

I guess if your reading this then your either: a) deperate for things to read, b) at work bored and desperate for things to read, or c) see a) :)

I don't normally blog - and to be honest never really had much of interest to say, at least in my mind - and that's not to say that I've got anything interesting to say now; however, I've decided that this would be a good tool to help me keep track of where I am on this new indie game trail thats I'm traveling down.

So, yeah, usual story, boy meets TGB/TGE, boy falls in love with TGB, his head fills with dreams and visions of things so wonderful and inspiring and decides to follow that dream to see where it goes. On the plus side I've got 15 or so years of C/C++ programming experience, and some hobbyist experience with photoshop, maya, and poser (just wish I had some real artistic talent to go with that experience) :)

So here I am. Like many before me, and the many that will follow I want to make a game - come on don't groan like that ... and you at the back I saw those eyes roll :) However, unlike most I'm aware of my limitations, and I know what I produce is unlikely to be the best thing since sliced doodads. To be honest that doesn't even matter to me. What does matter is finally living a dream, and taking the time to learn how to make a game (even if its one that only I end up playing), and having fun in the process. I've completed my initial boot camp training (meaning the obligatory create your own 3 gems in a row matching game from scratch learning exercise), so I know I can do this - actually I like TorqueScript a lot.

On saying that, and even though I have the TGE/TGEA license I'm going to start small with 2D and the TGB engine. If I can make the game that I want with that then I will move onto translating that into a 3D world, but for now I just want to concentrate on the basics with sprites and not fail before I start.

With all of that preamble out of the way - wow your still reading, you must be bored - heres the initial plan (and btw, this is more for my benefit so I'm kinda talking to myself - yes I know, the insanity of it all).

THE PLAN .. SO FAR (dun dun derrrr)

1. Genre : I've chosen to make a form of RPG type game (hey stop groaning already) but initially I will focus on a single player game - no point getting ahead of myself; however, the design and coding will be undertaken with a view to making it multiplayer at a later date.

2. Tools : I've settled on TGB (a sprite based game), and will user Poser, Maya and Photoshop for the artwork - programs that I already own. My understanding from all that i've read is that Poser allows you to do anything you like with rendered images, just not the meshes - this is great news for sprites especially with sooooooo much content out there (and some really nice stuff too in terms of eye candy) - even better given my low and lacking artistic abilities.

3. I've purchased the RPG adventure kit content pack to give me a foundation - more to examine the scripts and learn from those a little. What I think I will do is refer to it and modernize it a little to fit my own needs and convert it to be more "behavior" orientated that "dataconfig" orientated.

4. Another reason for not using the RPG kit completely is because I'm not overly keen on that perspective. I really like the 2.5D isometric (2:1) perspective - yes I know, TGB doenst support that right now, but having spoken to Neo Binedell he appears to be working on his "nxISOBuilder" version of TGB and is looking to get that out of the door ASAP. This would fit in nicely with my plan .. and I have more than enough behind the scenes work to do, so I can afford to wait in the actual builder right now. For those that havn't seen what Neo is up to, search on his a name and view his blog entries - it looks amazing (and dont even get me started on the excitement level for nxAnimator). If it doesn't materialize then I can still fall back on the top down isometric view initially.

This is really where I'm at right now, and I have some set design parameters to work from. I've been playing around in Poser and I managed to create an animated walking sprite, and slot it into the RGP starter kit (as per GamerGirls excellent tutorial seen at www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=resource&page=view&qid=1196...). With that nailed down that solves my graphics content problem initially.

I've also been playing around with World Creator 2.5++ (www.inet2inet.com/Main/Main.htm) in anticipation of Neo's development of the nxISOBuilder. Hopefully that will all tie together. I actually like the WC, and having completed most of the tutorials I can see the power in it as a world creation tool.

I've also been playing around with getting Jonathon Steven's ODBC code (www.inet2inet.com/Main/Main.htm) to work in TGB, and more importantly to work with an MS Access database file. This I've finally managed to do that (Jonathons code compiled and linked with no errors, but minor script changes were needed for MS Access compatability), and there are still a couple of minor problems that need to be addressed, and I'm still debugging it. On saying that I've managed to access a datafile with a simple select and output specific rows and columns. That is a big step forward and it gave me a chance to examine the engine C++ code and understand how that works a little more. This will be invaluable and central around my RPG design for data (weapons, skills etc..)

Didn't really mean to write this much, not that your still reading at this point anyway ... hey wait a second, your still here!

Anyhoo, my "to-do" list for things to do next (which is probably why they call it a to-do list is as follows:

1. Start working on a storyline (yes I plan on having one)
2. Start creating some generic foundation scripts for objects (most likely focusing on the RPG adventure kit and making it more "behavior" friendly.
3. Keep bugging Neo about his awesome creation
4. Start working on rendering and creating some initial sprite artwork
5. Work on pulling it all together and get a sprite walking around a small village map.

No pretty pictures this go round - sorry, dont you just hate long text blogs!