Blog for Rodney Rindels - Torqued at GarageGames.com

Tri Poker Plus

Rodney Rindels - Torqued — 2006-11-27T05:00:25+00:00

Well I finally got off my ass and started coding again. Lets call this the unofficial official announcement of the current project I am hacking out. "Tri Poker Plus". This is being done with a stock version of the TGB engine. I decided to do most of the work in TorqueScript on this one to see how far I can push the base engine.

This is a three card poker simulation, following the standard rules of Three Card Poker. The game will allow a user to register online and will upload their current cash standings. I have the basics already working.

1. Backend Website code completed (mod_perl + apache on Linux)
2. Table Layout done.
3. Shuffler and Card Tracker.
4. So Far Mac and Linux seem to work fine in parallel.

I have an agressive schedule set for this project, but I think I can complete it by the end of January.

EyeCandy:

I'll post more as I can. But this one I'm planning on marketing if my implementation and polishing are solid enough, so I might keep a bit under the ole hat.

TGB Memory Game Demo

Rodney Rindels - Torqued — 2006-07-18T05:55:25+00:00

I created a neat little Memory Game when I was working on how to do Canvas Positioning stuff. I haven't written a comprehensive tutorial for it yet, but I figured I would go ahead and post it to TDN, and update pieces of it as I have time, I'm sure just having the demo code will help more than my babbling in some degree. There is a zip of the entire simulation on the TDN page.

Make sure you fix the relative fields on the mainscreenGui, or run in 800 x 600.

Link to Demo Page:
tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/TGB/MemoryGameTutorial

What it looks like:

*Hope GG didn't mind me stealing their logo for the cards....(Since its only for TDN, I hope they dont)

*I know I should have used TileMaps, but that wasn't the goal of the design I was attempting.

*Thanks for the Fish Phil :-)

Enjoy!.

Capicu - Street Rules Dominoes

Rodney Rindels - Torqued — 2006-06-12T22:18:28+00:00

*ok enough playing with TGB. Time to get busy.

Definition: Capicu - When the winning bone can play on either open end of the layout. Doesn't apply when the winning bone is a double.

Capicu will be the first production release game from Carapace Games using the Torque Game Builder.

28 Bones (Domino's) in 10 different sets, chinese dragon set shown below*
Online rule updates, fixes, and releases, issue tracking.
Online chat, high scores, find a player

4 player networkable
Advanced CPU AI with difficulty selections

Beta slated for July 1, 2006 - Production (*Hopefully by August 1)

EyeCandy: Random Shuffler

EyeCandy: Pickable and Movable Bones

This is the 4th game I have written using TGB, and I feel I can mold the clay required to make a stable, clean, and sellable production. ..Wish me luck :-)

[update]
Most of the base code is done including the dynamic rules engine.
Here is an updated image of a 6x6 gameboard.

TGB - Game in a Day

Rodney Rindels - Torqued — 2006-06-08T17:13:34+00:00

Pong Rally - Sit down with a friend at a keyboard, and Rally it out. This is a great way to blow off a little steam with a colleague, or settle your dispute the old fashioned way.. Head to Head!

I sat down yesterday to learn more about the physics, collisions, and triggers in TGB. 5 Hours Later, this is what I ended up with ..

2 player pong game with a few physics hints to shift gameplay a tad, + the concept of Rallying points the longer the ball stays in play.

a few touchups this morning on the resitution, and I''m pretty happy with it. The background is designed to make the player focus harder on where the ball is, and where its going.

If you would like a copy of it. You can download here carapace.servehttp.com/images/PongRally.zip

This is a compiled version, not a source Example. However if people request it, I'll post a tutorial on how to build it on TDN.

EyeCandy:

My next installment of this will be network playable. While I learn TGB networking.

Enjoy!

T2d A (star) pathfinding almost a reality.

Rodney Rindels - Torqued — 2006-06-03T21:56:13+00:00

Update: Its ugly.. but its on TDN! tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/TGB/Source/Pathfinding - enjoy!

I realized early on that I would have to build better pathfinding if I were to have a truly professional gameplay, my quasi top down * isometric perspective + some 2D scenes. The game i'm working on needed 8 way movement capability while pathfinding in a more natural way instead of the moveTo() angle based function that can't "walk" around items, and didn't look at natural or be able to keep state on direction player is heading in, etc. So .. I started working on a c++ rendition of the typical A* type pathfinding, once I felt that was working quasi-ok, I ported to torqueScript natively to try and see how bad performance would be impacted so I could possibly use as a TDN resource or for the Binary Users that will soon be members of our community. Lets just say, ouch, without Binary Heaps or true arrays (* remember I want Binary users to be able to possibly use this, so no C++ modifications could be used). I implemented a rough but fairly accurate version in native TS.

It basically implements a

moveToAstar(%obj,%path)

this will move an object along an Astar Path %path is created using

%path = findPath(%obj,%toVector);

what is %path? %path is just a ScriptObject, each node along the path is a ScriptObject, etc.
The performance is "ok".. It could probably be optimized somewhat.

**Fixed: I noticed about a 1 second delay in the pathfinding when moving 300 - 400 world units away.
This delay seems to be in actual object creation. moving a 8x8 sprite object from "0 0" to "300 300" is alot of nodes.. 2K plus in some instances, so .. thats probably the issue.

**Fixed: Its still not ready for primetime, because I have to finish implementing some collission costs at objects found at the intersects. But here are a few screenshots showing the directional finding in action.

**Fixed: You'll notice a bobble at the end of each path, thats because I have a bug in the knowing when the hell to stop portion of the pathfinding. I hope to have this completed soon ,and be able to share it with the T2D community..

Update: Fixed the bobble issue. and have it working pretty sweet now...
Update: Fixed most of the performance bottlenecks. It now works fine in 1000's of world coordinates paths
Update: Object Avoidance works and seems to be pretty stable...

EyeCandy

Initial Tests

After Fixing Bobbling

After Adding Object Avoidance Costing

T2D Pause Screen

Rodney Rindels - Torqued — 2006-05-31T00:43:03+00:00

TDN Tutorial on how I built it.
tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/Torque_2D/StandardTutorials/Basics/PauseScreen