Digital Dave

I decided it was best for me not to progress with helping the person here in my local area with his game development project over the summer.  I would go into detail, but I rather not.  Let’s just say it wasn’t the right opportunity for me.  I don’t have a lot of time, and I need to make the best of it.

He won’t be alone.  There were 2 programmers (including me) and he only really needed 1 (from my perspective) right now.   I told him I’d always be around to help him when that time came.  But, for now, It was better for me to concentrate on a different project.

I have another opportunity that I’m starting with a professor here on campus.  It’s not game development related, but it is finance related, which is still awesome for me.  Details to come about that.

I decided to start another Flash project before the summer kicked off, and before I started to work on my main summer project (to be determined, still).  Here are some early user interface shots that are subject to change, but to keep with the spirit of development progression, I thought I would share them.

This is definitely inspired by the Lemonade Tycoon games.  It was this, or a Harvest Moon inspired game! Mmm, Harvest Moon. Err, Pictures:

I decided to make a texture class that will handle the creation and loading of resources. Right now, I call the texture class to create a background which is created using two display lists so that I can scroll the background. I also call the texture class to build the panel, and a misc object that I just wanted to test out. This is working well so far.  I can now move on to getting objects flying around the screen.

I’m thinking hard about building a level editor right off of the bat. Basically, I want to be able to “Create a new mission”, and within the mission, I want to edit “Level 1″ through “Level 10″. Each level will have it’s own set of creatures, and their corresponding path during the level. Each level will have a certain amount of ‘waves’ and I need to somehow have a data file that regulates the positions. I could do this several ways, but I’m thinking that being able to drop down to this level of customization would be great for me (speed of creation++), and could possibly lead way to user customized add ins. I want to be able to ‘draw’ the paths creatures will take, save it in an XML file, and then load that beast up during game play.

I’ve been spending my off time catching up on some math topics needed for this graphics course that I am taking.   There isn’t a lot of math required for Computer Information Systems students.  I have an Analytical Geometry and Calculus I course finished, and another upper level course that reviews an array of math topics.  That is all that is required for IS majors.  So that means that I get to spend my off time learning what I need to know, when I need to know it, or just for fun.  So these past few weeks I’ve been covering some trig, linear algebra and some vector algebra.  I’ve never really messed with vectors and I found them to be pretty interesting.  It’ll be nice to apply some of this to the graphics course.

I’ve also started to run through several OpenGL tutorials at neon helium, and a few tutorials for Orge3D.

Speaking of this graphics course.  Supposedly this is an advanced course for an undergrad.  That said, it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.  There is a ton of material that we’ll be covering.  From basic display systems (clipping, view normalization, 3d graphics data structures, shading and illumination) to fundamental topics in realistic rendering (ray tracing, radiosity, texture and bump mapping, and splines and cubic curves).

I’m pretty excited for the course, but it’ll definitely be a huge load of work.

In addition to my independent project course, of which, I’ll be making a game for.

I FINALLY got a game ‘genre’ down so I can start building some systems.  My concept changed a few times, especially in light of this graphics course.  I will start coding on this game tomorrow.  I’m already behind, and kicking myself.

I’m getting pretty anxious for my first trip to the GDC, and back to California, in general.   I’ve scanned all of the events that they have listed on the site, so far, and I’ve found several programming and design topics that I will be hitting up.

I’m also looking for some gatherings to attend in the evenings.  I’ve been invited to a gathering that the GameCareerGuide.com is hosting Thursday, and apparently there is a ‘Suite Night’ that a bunch of students attend after it that I will be snooping around at.  If you’ve made your way here through myGDC, feel free to contact me (aim: aim marine || msn/email: dlmcgraw at ksu doht com) if you have anything that I don’t know that is open to the public.

So, I took an extended break away from the blog and away from, almost, everything else.  I decided to spend some time playing games while I have that luxury during school breaks.  During the semester, I rarely play anything.  This was a good time to relax and fiddle around.

One game that I played, and that I highly recommend is called ‘Peggle.’   It is a really simple game.  Pretty darn good design.  It will have you laughing for the first couple of boards.  The presentation had me rolling.  I showed it to Megan, and she was laughing pretty hard, too.  The game actually reminded me of Plinko from the Price is Right, which is still my favorite game on that show.  The objective of Peggle is to fire your ball into a maze of blue, red, pink, and green pegs.  Once all of the red pegs have been hit, then that level is complete.  Also, any peg that you hit is removed after each turn.  There are really interesting power ups for each stage that adds some flare to the game.  My favorite is the dragon ball. >;oD

But, yeah… Go try the trial.

So, my schedule for this semester is finalized.  I have the hardest time coming up with a legit schedule.  I hate taking simplistic classes for an easy A, and I don’t like classes that will not benefit me in any way. I attend classes with an open mind, and I am willing to learn about anything, which I couldn’t say while I was growing up.  I took education for granted growing up in a family where graduating high school was a rarity in itself.  I’ll write more about this later.

• General Psychology
• Intro to Operation Management
• Enterprise Information Systems (Database Class. PHP, MySQL, MS Access, Web Design)
• Interactive Computer Graphics (OpenGL)
• IS Project

Snowball Fight has been thrown to the side.  I had fun, and the project was something decent to introduce me to network coding, but I just don’t have the time (or desire at this time) to direct toward it.  The game is nearly playable 1 vs. 1.  My hopes is to get that working, and call it good.  I have a semester game project starting, and that will get my full attention…….

If I could decide what, exactly, I want to do. ;|

I must have thought about 50 different things through the break TRYING to come up with a semester project that is A) Not out of reach, and B) Something fun.  I keep running around in circles, thinking that I should just ‘clone’ something that is out there.  Or remix it somehow.  I have one unique idea that would be feasible, but it needs a lot more thought put into it.

I’ve thought about doing a 3D Bomberman that would get me introduced to the world of 3D.  In addition, I also thought about doing a 2D clone type game of Harvest Moon (a favorite of mine).  I also thought about taking a board game, and developing a computer game based off of it –  Khet, Ticket to Ride.  The interesting aspect of porting a board game is that I could code a networked portion of the game.  That is purely for fun.  These games would definitely be better implemented online and distributed through something like Facebook.  That is, if you could avoid getting sued (see: scrabulous)…  I also thought about doing a casual game, like Bejeweled.

GDC is a little more than 4 weeks away! Woofa, time is flying. O_O! *bites nails*

I did find somebody to stay with.  So that should help a lot on the finance side of things.

I’ve selected the business card that I will be distributing, and it’s off to the printing presses now.  I’m getting 250 cards, which will be way more than enough, but I don’t need to risk NOT having any since I’ll be there the entire week. Thanks Darius, and all the other individuals whom gave me feedback on my card designs.

How about the Stock Market? Cup of Recession, anyone?

*equips -The Ak’na Plate of Recession- armor* Hope I can heal myself from this one.  Good luck, if you are in the market.  The market is already down 9%, and it’s only been 17 days… ;|

I couldn’t forget to blog about the wedding.  We have our location booked, and our photographer booked.  We have set the date of July 25th, 2009.  Yes… That’s right… 18 months from now.  We have this ball rolling already.  That does mean that I might be moving to California alone while she gets everything ready.  Oh well, at least I’ll be able to give full attention to my new job.

Well, first… Activision Blizzard? I can’t say that the name has a nice ring to it, and I’m pretty confident in saying that this merger surprised everybody. I hold no regression on mergers like this, due to the fact that I don’t like to jump to conclusions. I hope for the best for the merger, and with that, there is a Goliath that will be up right next to Electronic Arts now.

But, really… Activision Blizzard? I completely understand name branding, but… Oh, well. Let’s see what games come out of this.

I saw Stephen King’s The Mist this weekend. Somebody really needs to make a game with all of the crazy ass creatures that Mr. King has thought up… That would be one horrifying game… Oh, and the movie? I’d at least recommend watching it once. It’s not your typical movie with your typical ending, which is good.

So, in my continuing effort to become a game developer (programmer, designer, cola boy) some day, I thought I should start experiencing an area of gaming that I have really lacked playing. Board Games. Brenda inspired me the other day when she compiled a list of favorite board games that her users recommended in a prior post (before I found her blog). I saw that list, and was dumbfounded. There were a LOT of games that I never touched.

It’s never to late to do anything in life. I picked up Carcassonne, and the girlfriend and I are having a blast with it.

I’m making slow progress on the Networking game. I’ve put in the ability to start a server, connect to a server, send data, receive data. I just need to get them all to work together now, nicely. More on this soon.

So, I whipped together a project for my networking class today.  All we were required to do was to create a SMTP client that interacts with the mail server on the campus.  I tossed this together in about 30 minutes after I figured out that I couldn’t access the mail server on campus, while I’m NOT on campus.  Boo!

So I am starting to think heavily about the Game Industry lately. Mainly because the year 2008 is a critical year of my growth as a developer. I’ll graduate college in December (2008), and I’ll start my career in January (2009). But, which direction do I REALLY want to go? Do I want to go straight into Game Development? Do I want to start in the Software Sector?

I spent 4 years in the Marine Corps, and now 4 years at College. I’ll graduate at the age of 26. I, personally, do not want to “waste” time in the software side of the house, when all I really think about is the game industry. Hell, I spent a critical amount of time in college following the game industry. Do I have a LOT to show for it? I have a lot of persistence and dedication to show for it. Beta testing software and games, designing and developing very small games, to even bringing out some creativity to write short stories.  Do I necessarily have the programming capabilities to be in the league of AAA development? That’s where I fall in my own trap. Do I know enough to start in the Game Industry?

I’ll be looking for an internship for next summer. I can’t help but think that I want to concentrate on the game development sector before I turn to the software development sector. With any luck, I’ll have an internship that can tell me if I belong in the game industry as a programmer. I’ll get to be around the atmosphere first hand, and I’ll be around AAA programmers (hopefully).

Only time will tell with this journey, but it sure does creep up on the mind pretty often!

That all leads me to think about the Game Development Conference that is coming up in February. Should I go? I’m not concerned with being able to finance a trip, due to getting a scholarship this year. I can’t help but think how well it would benefit me on the networking side of things. Not only that, but being able to talk to programmers will allow me to get some feedback from somebody who is enduring the trip as a game developer.

Crunch time is coming up. I have just less than two months before I actively pursue an internship with somebody… *bites nails rapidly*

I ended up picking up one of the new NVIDIA 8800GT cards that were just released recently.  The card is bad-ass, and I wish I had more time to tinker around with it.  But I hope to play around with it a little more over thanksgiving break. I played the demo to Crysis, and the effects were really neat.  Motion blur when you turn, or while you’re sky diving. The water effects… The lighting… *drools*

I also got a new project in my networking class… It’ll be pretty easy so I’ll end up being able to take full advantage of the time for my multiplayer game.  All I need to do is to program an e-mail client to send an e-mail.  Should take about an hour or so.

And on a side note, I’ve never been following so many games that ended up having a release date all on the same week…  Next week: Super Mario Galaxy, Crysis, Simcity Societies,  and Need for Speed: Pro Street is coming out.

Well, I ended up getting my final project for my networking class. However, it isn’t really my FINAL, FINAL project… He has yet to give us our programming project 3 to do, due to some out-of-control circumstances. But we did get this one, which gives us time to think about what we want to do, and we can obviously start it now to get a leg up on it.

The project is… Well, just a distributed systems project. I get to choose what I want to do as long as it fits the whole server and client mold. That’s GREAT! I was hoping that it was going to be like that. This will give me an excuse to spend all kinds of hours on a small gaming project, that I could potentially carry on with after this class is over.

But… What in the world am I going to do?

I haven’t had any sort of revelation on what I know I want to do. However, I’ve thought about some things.

• [Not Bad] Create a Tic-Tac-Toe game.
  • People can Create a ‘Table’ where another person could click to join the table.
  • People can View a ‘Table’ where people can see what is going on
  • … And other stuff …
  • Created in C#, using nothing Fancy.
• [Challenging] Create a 2D top-down style game, and allow clients to connect to the “world.” They’ll be able to run around, see other clients.
  • In addition, they could ‘Talk’ to each other.
    • Via Chat Bubbles
    • Via a In-Game Console
  • Game Portion
    • If more than one player is on the plane, a “FIND AND SEEK” game will initiate. This will dump player-specific orbs (via, color) all over the place, and the player with the most orbs collected AFTER all have been collected, Wins! Simple enough.
    • In addition, but probably one of hard concepts to implement is allowing a weapon to be used to fire bullets, or a hammer to smash, at the players orbs (which shatters them, which makes the other player not able to collect).
  • Using C++ and SDL

I’m all about challenging projects. But I only have until December 13th to finish it. I COULD partner with somebody, but I’m hesitant to do that for this project. I enjoy this, and with that, it would be hard to find a dedicated individual that would want to spend as much time as I want too on the project.

If you have any ideas, let me know!