Blog for Brian Jones at GarageGames.com

Historical Quotes

Brian Jones — 2006-11-15T22:34:14+00:00

I'm not really trying to stir up trouble, but it's interesting to stumble across things the GG guys have said in the past, and then look at how things are now.

Pat Wilson in a heated discussion about how using C# for serious game development isn't likely. (Feb 2005)

Jeff Tunnell explaining how 2d games are a thing of the past. (Mar 2001)

I just stumbled across Pat's thread a moment ago searching for something unrelated, and remembered stumbling across Jeff's many months ago, thinking that each were funny in light of how things are now.

The moral? It's fun to watch how things change with time. Even stubborn points of views from grouchy old men :)

(p.s. I love you guys).

Fractal World Generation

Brian Jones — 2006-08-26T01:10:00+00:00

As time goes on I keep simplifying my 'big idea', which I am sure is a common theme that runs among us Garage Gamer's. I've finally decided to start on a relatively known and small scale, and begin building a psuedo-roguelike using TGB. The plan is to continually extend the world until I have what I've envisioned from a logical standpoint, then consider future options (extension into 3d land, etc.).

To get started, I've been tackling the task of random world generation. I've prototyped my generator using Python, (and if I can get TGB extended correctly with Josh Ritters PyTSE I will just port it right in and let the game player sit back while they generate a world). The results so far look like this: mojobojo.com/junk/world.html.

My next task is to then pick an edge of a generated region, and map that over into a new region iteration seamlessly. I'm also trying to tweak the output values so I get ideal basic terrain features within an acceptable range. After that, I will then post process latitude block sections of the world and map logical terrains to them (i.e. the further north/south you get, the more tundra/snow you see, vs. closer to the equator where it would be more tropical/desert, and so forth).

Once I am statisfied with my world generation results, then I'll actually figure out how to map that into a TGB tile based world. One of my concerns is how a 'level' gets loaded, I don't think a full world could completely load into memory. If that's the case, either I will load levels that directly associate with my generated regions, or come up with some way to load/unload bits of the level as they come into scope. Something to think about at least, I'm not actually to this point.

Other future items of note would be inclusion of flora graphics on top of the basic terrain tiles, dropping in world level features using psuedo-random methods (major cities, points of interest, etc.), and spawning monsters based on good/evil thresholds for each region.

Python, Finals, Future

Brian Jones — 2006-07-25T06:53:25+00:00

Python

Many thanks to Josh Ritter for posting his PyTSE resource! After spending a week on what amounts to trivial OSX platform tweaking (easy to say looking back), I was able to get the build to actually run. A good chunk of the time was figuring out how to setup Xcode to correctly build TGE as a library, and the rest of the time was figuring out how all the platform level code interaction goes.

For those not familiar with what Josh did, he actually created his resource so you can run TGE/TSE as a python module, thus allowing one to opperate the engine completely from python. Sexy, huh?

Finals

It's finals week here in Japan, and as you can see I am studying real hard with the Torque Engine. After Friday classes are over, we have a graduation ceremony of sorts August 4th, and I return back to Alaska on August 17th. Then I engage in my final semester of college (whew, 9 years of undergrad... I sure took my time), and will hopefully graduate with that double major in Art, Japanese Studies, and a minor in Computer Science.

Future

Life is all fun and games! Now that I actually have a working build of PyTSE, I can finally implement my game using an awesome game engine, and my favorite language of choice all at the same time! I've had this design document I've been sitting on lately that sums up my dream, which I will hopefully begin revealing as I start fleshing out the components of it. It will be small steps of work from here on out, but I will definately work towards the goal of a completed product. It only took me 5 years to finally get here, haha.

In my next blog post, I will try to have a working title ready, and some basic concepts I want to throw around.

Mind Facet (web software)

Brian Jones — 2006-06-25T08:00:24+00:00

www.mindfacet.com

I've been using a piece of Apple software for awhile called Voodoo Pad which is a nice client side wiki/notepad/thought-organizer, but really wanted something with more of a web side solution. Mind Facet is the end result of not much work, but it does what I want it to so I am happy.

It's released under the GNU General Public License, so the code is available for download, modification, distribution, etc. If anyone likes the project and wants to enhance it, feel free to help out.

At the very least, enjoy using the software if it's something that may interest you. It's not a blog (too linear), and not community based (setup something like mediawiki for that), just a personal notepad thought-linker.

Life without a Plan

Brian Jones — 2006-06-13T06:56:26+00:00

The title really sums up my life, except in reverse. I always have too many plans, and that is a huge problem when trying to focus on something. This post is an attempt to start rectifying the issue, and get started down a path I've only dreamed of.

My stay here in Sapporo, Japan is nearing an end. It will be almost 11 months once I depart back to Fairbanks, Alaska around August 15th, and I will dearly miss this country. The people are so polite, they count your bills (twice) when handing it back to you at a store, and there's endless supplies of unsweetened tea. I'm not done with this country yet, but it will have to wait for a bit.

On top of that I have been in an 8 month relationship with a sweetheart of a girl from Korea. We will both be graduating after our final semester of school when we go to our respective homes this Fall, and clearly intend to carry on a grueling long distance relationship.

The point, however, is the fact that I've read yet another inspiring blog post by Jeff Tunnel at his Make It Big In Games site, right at the perfect time of another week long "what the hell am I doing with my life?!" phase. I'm going home from this dreamland way too soon, I'm going to graduate this Fall, and then what?

I have plans to finish up some business management software this year, and myself and the business who paid me to write it have plans to market it once we work the bugs out. I can't bank for income though, it's still an uncompleted dream. I might be able to keep working for the company I have been in Fairbanks on a full time basis, but the fact of the matter is I am tired of the long and cold Alaska winters.

One plan is to move to Portland, Oregon. I have a couple contacts there, it's a lovely community (I lived up in Washington for 13 years, so am familiar with the area), and there seems to be a nice tech industry there. Another plan is to look at the large number of tech companies in Japan hiring foreigners, and while I would love to continue to experience this country I am not sure I would want to do engage in their current management system.

No matter what I do though, I've decided that I need to buckle down and stop chasing this dream that I have been waving in front of myself for so many years. We all know that making a game isn't easy, but I feel like getting started with a high level of seriousness isn't easy either. In order to change my attitude, and try to buckle myself down to a path I really want to focus, I tore apart my personal blog, updated my profile here at Garage Games, and made this blog post.

Only time will tell if I'm serious, or just content with chasing dreams.

Level Based For Profit Open Source

Brian Jones — 2006-01-10T12:25:31+00:00

As weird as it may sound, it's kind of the answer I came up with to a an idea I had about open source and game development. Later I finally came up with the level based open source for profit solution. I haven't quite fleshed this out as far as I would like, being busy in Japan with school and all, and the idea is pretty half assed as it is.

Some of the bigger questions I ask myself are along the lines of: If the project is for profit, does the body have to incorporate? Since open source style projects tend to be international, how would this entity have to deal with payouts if the project ever made it that far?

Anyways, back to pondering. Will have to follow this up later, since they like to close the campus library early. It's sad that the dorms here have no net access. Bleh.

Sunday Nov 6 4:30

Brian Jones — 2005-11-06T04:30:13+00:00

Sapporo, Japan - Life - All That Jazz

Time moves forward, plans change, I still have no clue what I want to do when I grow up. Sapporo is awesome, and slowly but surely my Japanese is improving. On the side I am working on writing a nano-novel, still trying to complete the GeekSys workorder/inventory system, and working in my studies and fun where I can.

I'm one of those people that continues to try and juggle his 10 different interests, and has a hard time completing projects until enough momentum has been built up to carry things through. I've begun to realize that I lack passion, focus, and determination right now, which is rather frustrating. I keep staring at the t3d and t2d code bases wasting away on my harddrive, and telling myself "THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO FINALLY TRY AND DO IT, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?"

Friday Oct 14 3:26

Brian Jones — 2005-10-14T03:26:41+00:00

Japan, hooray!

So I've been in Japan at the University of Sapporo, Hokkaido for about 3 weeks now. Life is good, and I am having a great time. For those interested in the mundane things I do here, and my occasional thoughts on gaming, I've been making an effort to update mojobojo with what's on my mind. I swear I will try to get more pictures up!

I wish I could say I was seriously pounding out a game in my spare time, but unfortunately that spare time is dedicated to completing a consulting job I have been working on that helped fund my international exchange to Japan. The rest of my spare time may very well go towards building an A.I. Go player (Independent Study Project) with the help of some very strong Senseis at the college of Engineering.

My other passion is to continue to explore concepts behind dynamic persistant worlds. I've posted a few ideas about it on mojobojo (unfortunately some posts got buried in the db with a software change), but fully intend to write a 'white paper' on how I view the topic. I really think that the industy is in a horrible 'cookie cutter rut' right now, and the lack of innovative genres is making this end of the entertainment industry a little boring compared to several years ago. Not that my opinion is unique anyway, however, I fully intend to come up with unique ways to improve it (or so I hope).

My ultimate goal is to leverage this software I have been writing into a marketable product, (the company I am working for is interested in forming a seperate entity with me at the head, it's all been in the works for awhile now), and my pipe dream is to use the imaginary proceeds to fund more software development, and hopefully a small time game company! I guess we will see how it goes!

Friday Jul 15 0:26

Brian Jones — 2005-07-15T00:26:41+00:00

It seems my long .plan I typed the other day never made it out of the moderation queue. Not that it's all that interesting, but it's reflected on my website at http://www.mojobojo.com

I decided to start taking an abstract approach to character and object creation for my up and coming side title that doesn't really exist yet. The following are my character models:

And a palm tree:

I came to a few conclusions doing this:

a) Abstract art is pretty cool. As an Art Major I appreciate it. On the other hand, it's sad that as an Art Major this is about as good as it gets for me too.
b) I can always replace this art with better art later.
c) I still have to make a few hundred more objects to meet what I envisioned.
d) Even if this is a 'small' project, it's still pretty dang big.

My goal (for the moment) is to start modelling an RPG. I want to keep it basic at first, and move on into more complex ideas as I get more comfortable with what I am even doing. I intend to use the Torque2d engine, which I aquired just recently.

Unfortunately I am putting the TGE on the shelf for awhile. In two months I will be in Japan on exchange for a year, and in that time I have to finish coding some additional modules for a side-project work order system I had written earlier this year. However, I may find that not working while in Japan gives me plenty of free time to refocus my efforts.

Lastly, in regards to work my coworker and I implemented a PHP application model that combines our existing PHP framework we wrote over the last year, and merges it with something along the lines of the Ruby on Rails MCV model. The different between Ruby on Rails ActiveRecord implentation, and our backend implementation is the fact that they use a Per Hierarchy model, and we use a Per Class Model. However, we wrote an interface to our Controllers that can accomodate both. We were aware of Cake (a PHP Ruby on Rails clone), and it's code is probably 100x's fancier, but unfortunately we can just throw a new paradigm into place after all the work we've done.

And that is that.

Monday Mar 7 18:04

Brian Jones — 2005-03-07T18:04:39+00:00

I visit GG fairly often, and have owned a copy of the TGE since it's release. Unfortunately, I haven't actually made a game. Right now I do web application development for a local power/datacenter company, and let me tell you, it is getting very boring. My time is divided between a data center management app, and a doctor office management app for one of our DC customers.

In my spare time I am also writing an application along the same lines as what I am doing for work (no conflict of interest, I checked), for the local computer store ran by my dad and little bro. This is also, very boring - especially due to the fact that I do it all week.

Over the last few years I've kicked around a couple game concepts, and actually have them fleshed out pretty well in my head. It's my intention to actually get one of them down on paper before summer.

On top of all of the above, I am working very hard at my Japanese Studies degree. I have been working at it on top of my Art degree (which I have finished all of the requirements for) for two years now, and will be exchanging to Hokkaido University in Sapporo this fall for a year (finally!). During that time, I will not be working and fully intend to make use of the time to get a game I have hopefully started over summer more of a reality.

From there we will see where life takes me. I have the option to come back as a full time developer where I work now (which is an awesome fallback plan), or I can see what other options fall before me while in Japan.

My primary interests for going over there is the game of Go, and traditional Japanese culture in general. I would also like to take a look at the electronic art scene if possible, and have already designated an independant study project along those lines while in school.