Blog for Arland (Barry) Woodham at GarageGames.com

Free Email Chess New Version

Arland (Barry) Woodham — 2008-03-17T14:10:29+00:00

For those that remember a little while ago I released my free email chess game. Mainly it was a way for my father and I to play chess. If you want more information please look at my previous post. Well we have finished 2 games using the system so far and my father has won both of them but I am giving it my all for the newest match. What I wanted to make this post about is though some feedback the game has been updated once again. As in my last .plan a button was added to copy the weblink without having to do it manually. The other major addition is a sideboard to keep track of lost pieces. Anyways here we go.

www.cartoon-combat.com/chess.php

As a note these changes should not affect any games currently in progress. Next update should include the point of view switching to make it so the current player is always at the bottom as if they were sitting at a table complete with a button to allow toggling. After that hopefully all the gameplay will work well enough to concentrate some on the graphics.

Free Game E-mail Chess

Arland (Barry) Woodham — 2008-02-11T13:59:27+00:00

Yes it's been quite a while since I have posted anything here. In the time I have been gone I have managed to rebuild my entire website in flash. www.cartoon-combat.com Once I finished it I asked myself what I wanted to do next and I thought of an idea I had with my father. A long time ago people used to play chess by mail and the games could take years to complete. The idea of mail chess encouraged correspondance between one another with a chess move being the main reason. The idea was to recreate that original thought and modernize it. I knew that I could create a chess game in flash but the question became how to make the email part as simple as possible. Originally I had thought of making a system that people could log into that would store all of their information. However a login system adds an extra step to the process. Eventually I went with an html query string that is sent via php to the flash file. The game itself creates the link so that all the player has to do is copy it into an email. Let me stop and post a picture to break up all of my rambling.

So the idea goes like this. The first player goes to www.cartoon-combat.com/chess.php and they then make a move. They copy the link into an email to the person that they want to play with. Said player clicks the link and the board loads up displaying the current game. That player then makes a move and emails it back.

Mainly I created this for playing chess with my father which is why right now it is basic with no real frills. The game does detect check however checkmate is far beyond the coding I wish to attempt right now. I figured others might enjoy the game as well so I am putting a link up now that I think most of the bugs have been caught. Anyways comments or ideas are welcomed.

1 year later Im Hired

Arland (Barry) Woodham — 2006-05-16T15:36:27+00:00

It may have been a while since my last .plan but I assure you I am still here. Finally I have a few things to update on.

Employment
Right before I graduated from SCAD last year I was told about a company in Jacksonville that did military contract work. They do work on both 3d animations and interactive training programs that are used to train our troops. Well since I am from Jacksonville this proved to be a great job for me as I could do 3d work in my own home town. I took all my time during my portfolio class and dedicated it to making a website to showcase my work rather than a demo reel as the company did not seem to accept them. Long story short I have been scraping along for the past year and 4 applications later they have told me that they want me to come aboard. The company I am talking about is called LSI The moral of the story is persistance. I felt many times that I should have just done a demo reel and headed to California only to make enough money to get by. I stuck with it however and now I am going to work with a great company in my own home town. Oh and durning my interview I was told that they ave used Torque in the past to do some work :)

3d
As in two .plans ago. I am still participating in 3dtotal's speed modeling challenges when I have the time to do so. I feel it is a great way to keep modeling skills in top shape. Every 3d artist should go to the forums and check it out. I have also pretty much completely moved to blender from truespace. While truespace has some nice features it just can't do everything that blender can. I will stress what others have said in the past keep trying at blender untill you understand the interface. Because once you understand it is a great way to work. Basically if you work your way up the steep learning curve there is a nice level view at the top.

Here is one of my recent submissions.

Bounty
As Matt put in his recent .plan There are T2D bounties out there. I wish I had more time to try an get some more but alas I probably will not. I know there are many good artists out there and I would like to see as many of those bounties done as possible. And if you aren't an artist well there are bounties for you too. And yes it is true they will send you a check I just got mine the other day :) So what are you waiting for?

Since my art didn't make it in Matt's post I though I would post a shot of the Breakout art set.

The full set includes 12 bricks, 9 powerups, five sizes of paddles with and without lasers, 3 ball types, laser shot and hit sprites, and 3 particle effects.

Unemployment and blender and firefox. Oh my!

Arland (Barry) Woodham — 2006-03-12T06:54:23+00:00

Unemploment
Well it has been a while yet again since I have posted anything. First off I am no longer working at the deadend job I had before. This is a good thing in that I don't wake up every morning wanting to go back to sleep rather then face the day. I have a few job prospects and some money saved up so I am not too worried ..... yet. The good news about all this is right now I have more time to work on projects of my own, including a hex based puzzle game, but more on that later.

Blender
At the school I was working at I installed Linux on all the machines because they were old and would run Linux more stable than windows. Plus no easy access to file sharing programs to junk up the systems. For a little while I actually got to teach a class and in doing so taught 3d to those who actually wanted to learn something. We used wings 3d for the ease of modeling and then blender for the rendering and texturing. I myself had attempted to understand blender many times but gave on and went to other programs. This time I did not have the choice in order to teach someone else I had to learn it for myself. Now even though I am no wiz at it I am comfortable using it and I can see what power it really has. Among the many tests I made i will share two.

The first a static particle test (aka hair) with simple vertex coloring for textures. That is why the eyes are so weird. Length and density of hair determined by vertex painting.

The second was an attempt to crash one of the old computers at the school. Insane number of polys with raytraced reflections and refractions. It took 2 1/2 hours by the way.

Just in case you are wondering about the monkeys. Suzanne is the blender equivalent of the 3dsmax teapot.

Firefox
Another big software change I made a few days ago was a switch from IE to Firefox. This is something I have been meaning to do for quite some time but, it always seemed to get pushed to the back burner. While working on the linux computers Firefox began to grow on me so I took the plunge and put it on my home system. To my surprise the thing I had been dreading, transfering bookmarks, settings, etc., was all done automatically. As soon as it finished i caught myself asking now why hadn't I done this sooner. After a little performace boost I had found about earlier I didn't need to even turn back. I must say the best feature IMHO is the tabbed browsing function. I can load 20-30 forum threads and have them all ready to look at one right after another. I think its safe to say that I won't be headed back to IE for anthing except those that won't work otherwise ie. windows update.

The performance boost if you are wondering is so. Type about:config in you browser bar. find the network.dns.disableIPv6 setting and double click it. This disables a rarely used internet protocol that the only use I have seen is to slow down web browsing

Oh my!
Well all of this culminates into what got me excited enough to post. I have picked T2D back up just don't ask me to call it TGB. I have had an idea for a hex based puzzle game bouncing around in my head for quite sometime now. When I saw Neo Binedell's post about isometic tile mapping in t2d it spured the idea back into my head. I went though all of the work of updating to sp2, setting up c++ express, and recompiling T2D only to find out that I didn't have the first clue what I was getting into. Discouraged I went back to bed and figured I would just have to scrap the idea for the time being. Something came over me and I decided to try and use the level editor again with a snap to grid for my needs. I had problems with this before with say a 64x64 image using a snap up 1 would move 0.2 0.8 1.2 etc. Now going back and trying a non power of 2 image 60x60 I was able to get the image to snap on 1 2 3 etc. This is good enough for desgining my levels so I set forth to tweak my 3d setup until the rendered tile matched up more or less. The next fun part will be the selection process for in game. But I will worry about that later.

Quicky level prototype in T2D. More monkeys.

How tile setup looks in blender.

How setup really looks to get right tile shape. Notice camera length and tile distortion.

The End?
If you have followed this long good for you I know alot people don't read but skim these. Heck I'm one of those people sometimes. The moral of this story is change is good. Looking back unemploment = more time = t2d interest = blender renderings = firefox to post it all. Thats it for my long 2 am post maybe now I can actually get to sleep. Thank you and good night.

Wow I won something.

Arland (Barry) Woodham — 2006-02-14T14:46:54+00:00

Been a while since I posted anything so I thought I should post some good news. 3dtotal hosts a speed modeling challenge each week. Where in you have a hour to model a subject and then you can take as long as you like to texture. The idea is to promote a work enviroment of modeling a subject within a time limit. Several weeks later the judges will have two winners. Well the job I'm in is kinda dead end and was really getting to me the other day so I go on 3dtotal and what do I see I won one of the challenges. Not only that the model was made the same week I started the job I'm in. Needless to say it was a great pick me up. Don't really have too much more to say right now so on to the links and picture.

Link to my place in the winners gallery.
First post on page.

My speed modeling entry gallery

The winning entry.

That's it for now from me back to work.

Saturday Dec 10 19:02

Arland (Barry) Woodham — 2005-12-10T19:02:50+00:00

Well I haven't posted in a while and figured I should give an update. I have been working hard on getting a jobs lately which has finally paid off. I am now the tech support person for a private school here in Jacksonville, Florida. Also I assist in teaching the computer classes. The school is planing on building a new campus which will have more computer space. When that is done I am supposed to get my own class to teach game design. So I have not fallen off the face of the earth and I still visit garage games daily, I just don't have any real time for posting anything.

Since evey .plan needs an image here is my SparcServer 1000E I got for free a couple of weeks ago that I am still trying to setup for rendering.

To put the size in perspective that is a quarter in the first picture leaning against the raid array.

Wednesday Oct 5 3:21

Arland (Barry) Woodham — 2005-10-05T03:21:39+00:00

HoverCraft Fun

Well I haven't done a plan for a while so I thought it was about time to do so. I have been thinking about messing with the hover vehicle datablock since I created Cartoon-Combat. I finally jumped in replaced the buggy in the RSK with a hover version. That was all nice and well but I was not happy with watching a dune buggy sans wheels float around. Today with the freetime I had I did a quick UFO modeling to see how it would feel with a disc model instead. I am real happy at how easy all of this has been and when I get the free time I will make a better model with good geometry and actual uv/texturing. Anyways I thought I would share since I have been a little absent from the scene. So enjoy the images.

Maybe I should change the name from Rotten Wheels.

Look ma no wheels.

Hovercrafts get mad jumps :)

Anyone curious in my non game related work I have been joining in with the 3dtotal speed modeling chalenges. In which they give you a topic and you have a hour to model what you can. Some topics are easier than others but I commited myself to compete so as to improve my skills. I have an archive I'm creating here

Friday May 27 1:06

Arland (Barry) Woodham — 2005-05-27T01:06:00+00:00

Done with college onto the real world.

Ok so my other post got a huge ton of critcism, all in one reply I might add, that I was not looking for so basically I am reposting that yay I am graduating and will leave it at that. Aparently everything on the web must be done a certian way or no one cares so I will just keep my digital portfolio to myself and whoever I apply to for a job. To be frank there where quite a few points made that really hurt about some of my artwork that I have worked VERY hard on for the past four years (particually the half-assed lighting one). The page was not to "sell myself" but rather a digital version of my flatbook with layout pages for each model, level, concept, etc. Sorry to be such a downer but that post while it was meant to be helpful I'm sure, just ended up being hurtful. I will just keep my work to myself untill I can create OMG WOW how did you do that? type artwork because aparently student work just isn't good enough.

Forwarning I will delete this blog post too if it turns into a huge discussion. Just let it stay at me being happy for my graduation which I actually was earlier today.

Saturday Apr 16 7:17

Arland (Barry) Woodham — 2005-04-16T07:17:17+00:00

Its 3:00 A.M. and I should be sleeping.

Well I finally took a jump into T2D the way I should have from the very begining by making an actual game. I did follow the tutorial but then I was in that "what now?" phase that is so evil. While I had ideas the tutorial wasn't really enough of a primer for me to get into these games as I would like. So whats a person to do? Think smaller. Still create a game, but a much more simplified one such as a board game. And what would you know I had one from a concept development class I took several quarters ago. So that is what I have been contemplating for the last several days on how I would go about it. Then about six hours ago I started. I am amazed at how far I have made it with this game so far in such a short time particularlly when I started using a tile map system and decided not go that route which added about an hour to the total.

So here I am about to pass out so excuse the lack of proffreading but I now have a partial version of the board game three musketeers working.

Working
1. Creates board.
2. Checks for legal moves
a. no taking space occupied
b. no killing own pieces
c. only single space movement on vert/hoz
3. Pieces deleted are replaced with board squares for illusion of a board being revealed without overlaping sprites
4. gameover() function that determines if there are any legal moves left and returns an echo as to who won is none exist.
5. Particle mount for spilt second to let player know what they have chosen
I think thats it.

To do (not now)
1. Simple Ai for both sides
2. Enforce turns
3. Gui screens(main/gameover)
4. Artwork other than placeholders curently in place.
Again I think thats it.

So now I will leave with a few pictures.

Thursday Jan 6 16:33

Arland (Barry) Woodham — 2005-01-06T16:33:24+00:00

My Senior Project Car Based Deathmatch With Cell Shading. Alpha done onto beta.

Car-Toon Combat Round Two

Well anyone that may have been following along with my .plans would know about my car based deathmatch game that almost failed last semester, but some how pulled through. I don't have a lot to write about it at the moment. What I do want to say is that for my Project II class I now have a group of eight people plus myself all willing to work on the project. From what we have discussed and the talents we have I am certain that we can take this project to a very polished level. I will give updates throughout the semester on our progress but for now you will just have to be satisfied with the cell-shading tutorial I finally got around to writing.
www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=24663

That's all for now stay tuned for more updates.