Digital Dave

Seven years ago I sat on my couch in my living room at my mothers house.  Across the room, in my moms rocking chair, a girl sat.  Her and several of my friends used to hang out at my house, and, secretly, I thought this girl was very cute.  Though, being a single little computer guy who had never once felt a kiss, I never thought that I would actually get my first girlfriend soon after her eyes caught me secretly looking at her.  To this day, I’m still amazed that she is still with me.  Two completely opposite people, being attracted by pure passion, dedication, and the will to succeed in life — with each other.

That is pretty much how it must be, especially if your new found relationship was about to be incredibly burdened a month later.  I had enlisted in the Marine Corps nearly a year before we met.  She knew that I would be going off into the Marines, and that we would need to keep this relationship alive, even though it was going to take 1200+ miles, a lot of telephone minutes, and very few visits to each other.

While time flied for me, I am willing to bet that it crawled for her, which is just a testament for how dedicated she was to this relationship.

It was a pure rarity for us to not communicate through those 4 years that I was in the Marines.  Every night, for hours, we would talk to each other — even if it was just to listen to each other breathe.  In 2003, it got a bit tougher.  I was deployed to Kuwait, in preparation for the liberation of Iraq.  Communication was extremely limited, naturally.  Once the liberation had succeed, I had also been burdened by  an adventure at sea that crippled our communication.

After the active duty portion of my contract had expired for the Marines, I moved to the reserve side and bolted for Kansas State University to move in with her.

A couple years later…

She graduated last May, and moved back down where we are from to start her career, while I continue to work on my B.S. degree.

On Christmas Eve of 2007, 7 years after we first started dating, It was time.

We went to dinner at P.F. Chang’s for our 7 year anniversary, and we even had our favorite waiter.

After the dinner, we took a stroll back behind the restaurant to a ‘Water Walk’ that lines the lake.  Several trees lit up with bright white Christmas lights, with a background of streaming jets of water flying out of an area within the lake.  I handed her a Christmas present that was a rhinestone covered fortune cookie. Within the fortune cookie, held a plate that had been engraved with the words, ‘Will You?‘ Once she recognized what it stated, I dropped to a knee, watching her break down in tears, hyperventilating, to ask, “Will you marry me?”

She said Yes, and thank God she didn’t pass out, falling into that cold lake.

Well… Things always tend to get in the way of planned events, and as I’ve been blogging about, you can evidently see several instances where luck wasn’t on my side in the last two weeks.  In addition to that, I also have a special thing that I decided to work on, which has me more directed toward it then this project at the moment.  I’ll blog about that in a few days, whether success, or fail.

So, anyway, I wanted to release a stable client today, but it looks like I won’t be able to.

Until after Christmas, Happy Holidays blog hoppers!

Blizzard conditions, and I’m sure Calix is loving every minute of it. Luckily, it has passed, but the amount of snow it left on the ground is nasty. Out my window, in that parking lot, tons of people are getting stuck trying to get out. Why travel? I’m not sure. Even the main roads look pretty slick, because traffic is crawling right now as I look out my window. There were quite a few pile ups today. One in Kansas that involved 30 cars, and another in Missouri had a 20 – 40 car pile up, including 3 big rigs. Snow is certainly beautiful, but it’s a silent killer, which I can’t say I enjoy. I also drive a ‘99 Mustang, and that just magnifies the nastiness for being a rear wheel-lightweight vehicle.

So, the entire wallet situation came out alright. The fella didn’t decide drop a haymaker on my credit and debit cards. All of the transactions that he/she did do, were all caught early enough to be declined. So that loss hits the retailers for NOT CHECKING THE SIGNATURE against a PHOTO ID. About the only thing I am really disappointed with was that I had my Christmas money in the wallet. Think I’ll just leave my drivers license, debit card, and nothing else in my wallet from now on.

I woke up today with an e-mail from Megan that said that her car was broken into, and the only thing that was stolen was her CD Player’s Faceplate, of which, is worth about $2.  Uh, why steal that?  No idea…

I also couldn’t find my wallet, and that I must have left it at Megan’s apartment….. Or Car…

Then, I listened to a message on the answering machine from my credit card company inquiring about fraudulent transactions.  Called them back, and listened to them rattle off several charges from my debit card and credit card.  You know, Debit cards are stupid for the fact that you can run them as CREDIT without the need of a pin number.

Lost some cash, drivers license, my social security card (sigh),  my credit card and debit card, and my moms discover credit card (luckily he/she didn’t touch this), and a few misc things.  I canceled all the cards, but the damage has been done, and the potential for further damage still lingers with my SSN being in an idiots hands.

And to top it off, the statement that I’ll never forget from Megan’s mouth, “You know, I always tell you not to leave your wallet in my car.”  As if I did it on purpose. Hello, accident. Just drive the frigging dagger deeper, would ya! ;(

What a crappy day.

Well, I decided to implement some sort of way for a user to know how they are doing.  So, tonight, I tossed together a way for the player to know.  The point values are not set in stone, yet, but they go as followed:

• You Hit Somebody +100 Points
• You’re on Fire BONUS STREAK 3 +500 Points
• You’re on Fire BONUS STREAK 5 +1000 Points
• You’re on.. Have Mercy… BONUS STREAK 10 +5000 Points (God, help those that play with this person)
• You Get Hit -150 Points (I need to make this a high value, to provoke you to care if you get hit or not)

Of course, play testing with my tester will help round out these numbers.  Here is the score screen, and my lashing that I gave a innocent test dummy.  I want to avoid, at all costs, putting anything UI related on the players screen while they are playing.  This score window is completely voluntary.  If you want to see how things are going, and you’re hiding, while other people are reloading, tap ’s’ to bring this window up.  Of course, the streak is put on this window so everybody knows who to team up on.  Good luck nailing that 10!

I spent the evening throwing together the user interface.   Everything is there, and the following will likely will not change from where it stands, except for the credit screen.

So, Let’s get a glimpse of how the user progresses toward the actual snowball fight. Now, these transitions actually fade into each other.  If you have seen my prior game, Breakout Returns, then you’ll know how smooth these transitions really are.  If you haven’t, then you’ll get to see on Christmas eve, I hope.

Main Screen

Credit Screen

Server Selection

The only other thing that I might add on the user interface is the character select screen.  Well, more like a jacket color select screen.  But, I’m not sure if I’m going to go through with that.  Other then that, If I actually get the game completely polished before Christmas Eve, I may go through and finish the particle system so I can get some snow going through the menus and into the game.

Oh, yeah, and this project nailed me 100% in my networking class.

I updated a few things on the game tonight.  One of which, is an indicator that signals to the user how many snowballs they have remaining to throw.  How the game works is that a player can only hold a maximum of TWO snowballs, and after they deplete, they must run back over to a snowball mound to pick up another set.  The user will be able to tell how many they have by looking at their cursor.  Right next to the arrow, will be either 1 ball, or 2 balls.

I also integrated a message queue for the network.  This will make sure that all of the requests are actually processed, and that nothing is skipped. It also helps me manage a few other things effectively.  This probably should had gone in way earlier, but I’ll contribute that failure to my newb status.

Let’s see. What else.   Ah, I also have a feedback mechanism now that will trigger when you are hit.

I started working on the user interface for the main menu, credits, and player selection (jacket color).

I also fiddled around and tried to make a particle system.   Mainly for my main menu (snow).

That about wraps up progress for tonight.  I get to take Calix to the vet in an hour to get him Neutered.  Wish him luck, and pray that he doesn’t hate me after taking him there and leaving him.

Booked my flight out to San Francisco today.  After taxes and fees, the darn thing ended up at $200.  Not bad at all, considering the state of the economy these days.

I’ll be heading to SF the 16th.  Get there in the afternoon, snoop around for the rest of the day and continue my snoop on Sunday.  GDC it up M-F, and fly out of San Jose early morning Saturday.   Can’t wait.

Now to find a place to sleep and shower…

If you are going to a University, or even if you are in high school, that does not offer any sort of game development courses, the Game Institute is having their yearly Christmas tuition discount — 20% off.   I highly recommend the place.   I’ve taken a couple courses through them and I haven’t been disappointed.    Self paced, game development centered, great staff, organized content, and fair prices win me over.  Just thought I’d note that for anybody who was curious about the place.

After being thrown completely off course last week from the ice storm, I plan on jumping back on the Snowball Fight bandwagon tomorrow.   There are a lot of things I want to do to it, and I really want to finish it.  I’ve been thinking that I need to add some sort of chat system to it.  It would be semi-silly to host a snowball fight with people out there, have them log in, throw a snowball, and log out, without the chance of knowing who they are.  So, we’ll see if I can pull this one out.  The game window is pretty small, so I don’t have a lot of room to work with.  I suppose, at a minimum, I can just allow people to log in with a user name that could easily allow people to I.D. each other.  I don’t know, I’m still thinking about this.

So, I survived another semester.   Not nearly as well as I wanted too, but I did.  I’ll save my educational pain for another post.

I absolutely love finding a new independent game release to try out.  Independent games tend to breath some fresh air into a clouded triple A title industry.  More importantly, for me, it lays out a great base of inspiration for my personal development. I remember being a part of the release for Morning’s Wrath and feeling a great sense of accomplishment, even though my main concern for the game was to provide reliable beta testing. I learned an incredible amount of things in those few months. I can only imagine how the guys who put Aquaria together feels now that the game has been released and how it’s been welcomed to the community.

So, what’s special about Aquaria?  Well, if you haven’t heard anything about this game, it was developed by a lone wolf programmer/musician, an incredibly talented paint artist, and a beautiful voiced voice over lady.  They spent roughly two years on the project, and it ended up taking first prize at the Independent Game Festival in 2006.  They didn’t end up going the publishing route, and formed their own LLC as Bit Blot (Creative, eh? Programmer/bit, Artist/blot).

I rather not spoil any of the story, so I’d like to direct you to a link to download the demo of the game.  It’s the first part of the game, and if you do decide to purchase it, your save file will transition to the full version.

Move to the Aquaria Demo Download Page

A few things I would like to note about the game.

The Audio. The programmer is also a musician via the piano, and has created a very, very intriguing sound track to follow this game. I find absolutely nothing wrong with the way he blends his sound into his own creation, which is something I am completely envious of. I incorporated my own audio with Breakout Returns, and I can only hope to become this good.

The Control Scheme. While you can opt for traditional play via the keyboard, or a gamepad, you would be missing a very unique experience to control the game with only your mouse. They came up with a really cool way to activate power ups for your character, via a song menu. You play certain notes to activate special abilities, which is just cool. Here is a glimpse:

The Depth This game released on the 7th of December, and people that have rushed through the game have been tallying up the hour count at around 17. This game is deep. There is a vast world to explore, which is great in my opinion.

So, for those that didn’t know about this project, now you do. Enjoy the demo, feel the well designed vibe, and use it for your own personal motivation.