Blog for Deozaan at GarageGames.com

Docoto Defense October Update

Deozaan — 2007-10-31T07:18:12+00:00

TGE was proving to be too complex for me to make much progress, so I decided to go back to TGB. My background is mostly in Flash/Actionscript so the 2D stuff makes a lot of sense to me.

Anyway, since I made that decision I've been coding away at the project. It's been some slow progress, me being a full-time student (and strangely it seems my wife's schooling takes up more of my time than my own) and having a part time job. The day I decided to go back to TGB I coded up something to get a turret to follow and shoot at a target. I wrote in my developer blog about the decision to move back to TGB and what I'd done with turret tracking.

Here's a video of the initial targeting in action: Small (~8MB) or Large (~22MB).

I was so excited just to get something done with the game after facing so many setbacks, and just trying out some prototypes to see if certain things would work, that I didn't think it through very well. When I actually sat down and thought about how I wanted these things to interact with each other, I realized the way I'd gone about having the tower pick it's target and follow it around was not done properly.

So I sketched out some relationships on a piece of paper and then tried to figure out how to use UML software, which didn't work very well, so I ended up just using a standard image editor to draw this up:

Using the behavior system in TGB 1.5.x is nice because it lets me add this functionality to any object in the game. With that in mind I've been trying to generalize some of the functionality and make it very expandable and flexible.

Here's the dev blog entry which details the flowchart and shows a new video (~1.5MB) of the rewritten code in action.

Then finally, after testing the code more fully I realized even more changes needed to be made to give it the functionality that I wanted, so I heavily modified it and I think now I've got it working at a very satisfactory level and I can move on to something else.

There isn't a lot about it to show off visually, but I feel the inner workings of the code are very robust and will allow for some fun and interesting strategies in the game.

- Deozaan

Docoto Defense September Update

Deozaan — 2007-10-01T05:16:17+00:00

In September I managed to scrounge up the funds to purchase the RTS Kit for TGE. After doing so I immediately went to the forums to see about updating it to the TGE 1.5.2 so I could begin incorporating it into my project. I was very dismayed to find how unstable it is.

At first I thought the bugs were a result of a poor update to 1.5.2, but then I tested out many of the problems I was having on a fresh install of the RTS-Kit and I found out that the update seems to be done very well. All these bugs and crashes happen with a fresh install.

It's hard to believe that the good folks here at GG are selling a broken and unsupported kit. I was expecting to have to adapt the code and the functionality to my project, but I wasn't expecting to have to debug it just to keep it from crashing on a fresh install. But hey, I should get in line or join the club of all the other people who have been saying the exact same stuff for months.

Sadly I think that right now the RTS Kit is mostly useless to my project as I don't have the time to spend debugging it just to get the features it advertises coming with stable and working properly. I did spend some time on the forums asking around and messing with the code myself trying to fix the problems, but they are beyond what I have the capability and time to resolve. I may be able to grab snippets of code to learn how some things work, but those individual aspects I'm wanting are probably available as free resources somewhere on this site.

Sometime in the future I may be able to spend more resources fixing those problems and get some use out of the RTS Kit, but that probably won't be until the Dream Games contest is over (next April) at the soonest.

That's all for now.

Docoto Defense August Update

Deozaan — 2007-08-29T21:05:01+00:00

Well after playing around with 3D shapes in TGB 1.5 I found there's a bug in how it handles 3D Shape rotation. I made a demo that will let you see the problem, which can be downloaded here. Basically, if X is close to 90 degrees in rotation, both Z and Y rotate along the same axis. Not good.

So with that information I decided to just jump the technology up to TGE 1.5. Unfortunately that put me back to square 2 since I've spent these past months learning more about TGB and ignoring TGE for the most part.

I've just gotten the Game Programmer's Guide to Torque and have been reading through it.

School just started and things have been hectic the past month. I managed to get a full-time school schedule that shouldn't be too difficult to handle this semester, so progress should continue on the game.

That's about it for this month's update.

- Deozaan

EDIT: I fixed the link to the demo.

Docoto Defense July Update

Deozaan — 2007-07-31T03:48:04+00:00

Welcome back to another monthly installment that follows the Docoto Defense progress.

It's been a busy month and unfortunately a lot of the busyness hasn't been in direct development of the game. I've spent more time getting familiar with TorqueScript and even managed to spend a few days familiarizing myself with the behaviors of the newly out of beta TGB 1.5.

More work on the logo has taken place and this is the latest iteration:

Most of the design document has been revealed on the weekly blog this past month.

Right now tests are being done to determine if the 3D shape functionalities of TGB will be suitable for the needs of the game. I'm having trouble figuring out rotation of the shapes as it doesn't seem to rotate the same way a real 3D program does and the numbers get all screwy.

Over the next week or two I plan to have that finally figured out as well as how to implement behaviors. I'd like to really start getting things functional in the game so we have more than just a few concept images to show off.

That's about it for the month of July. Late August brings the start of the fall semester in which I'll be attending full-time so hopefully that won't interfere too much with the development of the game. Thanks to all out there interested!

Docoto Defense June Update

Deozaan — 2007-06-27T17:47:36+00:00

This blog chronicles the development of Docoto Defense, a game entered into the Dream Games "Game in a Year" contest.

In June I started working on compiling an art resource for TGB (for my own prototyping needs) from some freely distributable graphics that were brought to my attention on the GarageGames forums. However, after nearly 1200 lines of code describing the resource and only 1/3 of the creatures done, I decided to postpone the resource and work on things more directly related to Docoto Defense.

Here's an example image of one of the creatures:

I got a little discouraged (again) by the lack of really good documentation for TGB and was having a hard time figuring out how OOP and classes and those things worked in TorqueScript. Someone suggested I try going through the tutorials (the ones that work) again so I started that and am having a clearer understanding. I've also recently been finding a few good TDN articles that explain some things really well. So I'm learning, slowly but surely.

I started working in the Level Builder to try to get a good idea of approximate image size for tilemaps and units and all that. I made a test shot (using graphics from TGB, the Adventure Kit, and a couple skulls from the resource I was working on) to demonstrate it:

The sandy parts on the right and bottom are to help me visualize how much space the GUI will use. I'm not really sure why I put that big rock in there.

I announced Docoto Defense at DonationCoder.com which is the community primarily responsible for my decision behind making the game (Docoto Defense stands for DonationCoder Tower Defense).

Last week I finished the first version of the Design Document for the game. Now that it's all down in one place to read through, I've realized what an ambitious project this is. This is not an ordinary Tower Defense game I'm working on here. I admire that others in the contest have made their design documents publicly available. Mine happens to be on a wiki, so I'm not going to provide public access to it. However, I will be discussing in detail each section of the design document throughout my weekly blogs, so all the information will essentially be available to anyone interested.

A logo is currently being worked on. Here's a concept draft:

The bird is Cody, DonationCoder's mascot.

What I'm working on right now and will write about in this weeks weekly blog is a little toy that just has a creature follow the mouse around the screen. This is to practice coding in TorqueScript and get myself familiar with certain functions and making the graphics update correctly for directional movement, etc.

That's about it for June so far. Here are a few links that might be useful to you:

Docoto Defense Development Blog - Weekly Updates
Entry on MyDreamRPG.com
Announcement on DonationCoder.com
Concept Art Gallery

- Deozaan

Docoto Defense

Deozaan — 2007-05-26T22:54:33+00:00

Hello,

I'm sorry to feel like wasting space here with nothing to show for it, but as a requirement of the contest I'm making my first monthly blog entry.

I've joined the Game in a Year contest over at MyDreamRPG.com and the game (codename) I've entered is called Docoto Defense. It is a Tower Defense style game featuring a more puzzle-like scenario mode as well as competitive and cooperative multiplayer.

It is still very early in the design stage so I don't have a lot of specifics to brag about right now, but I've got some very ambitious plans for it and I'm really excited about it. I have created a development blog for the game which I will quickly summarize:

I'm still working on the design doc and don't have any nifty pictures to show. I'm reading a book called Game Development and Production by Erik Bethke which is very helpful to me because it explains how to make a game from inception to post-release support--not from a programming perspective (it doesn't teach how to program a game) but rather from a business and organizational perspective (the steps that need to be done and what they entail to create a game)--and I feel this is exactly what I need to get me organized to be able to follow through with it without feeling overwhelmed by everything.

In the next month I will have the design document finished (version 1, at least) and I feel I will have a much better understanding of where to go at that point.

I've been following along with some of the other contest entries and I must say I'm very excited to see the creativity that this contest has brought into existence. Thanks to GarageGames for the technology! Thanks to MyDreamRPG for the motivation ($$$) and direction (contest judging points)! And finally I need to thank the fine community at DonationCoder.com for their support and donations which make this possible for me to participate in this contest!

- Deozaan