Development Blog

Obstacles.

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:30:00 +0000

My efforts seem to be coming to fruition. A little work yesterday and today has resulted in a working game.

If I were making BookWorm, right now the game would load up with a placeholder graphic for the menu screen, proceed by pressing Enter. You would see your character moving across to the first enemy and you would be able to spell a word by clicking on your letters to hit the enemy. One successful hit would see the used letters instantly replaced and the character moving to the next opponent. Repeat until all opponents have been defeated and then keep spelling words for seemingly no reason while the character is being drawn off-screen, seemingly for no reason, as there is only one level which never ends, for one very valid reason: I am lazy.

That is essentially what Math Mole is like to play now, except your character is a mole and you’re doing mathematics, not spelling. And ideally in the next 2 weeks or so, it will develop into something more in-line with BookWorm Adventures, but still with a mole solving sums. All the art is pathetic, because I made it. Hopefully I can prise some shinier art from an artier person with the promise of credit. Or chocolate. I hope they are happy with credit.

I also need to add an actual menu on the menu screen that is already present and I must either add additional levels or at least provide some kind of sign that you should stop answering questions once the mole is off-screen.

Something else I really should look into is the user-experience and in-game feedback. Everything is just way too “clinical”. There is no sound or animation when you click numbers or operators, the game gives you nothing when you answer a question correctly or incorrectly. Simply, if you are right, the sum disappears, new numbers are generated to replace the ones you just used and the mole moves to the next problem, while if you are wrong, the sum disappears and you try again. I think I should address this.

Also needing of attention is the depth of the game. BookWorm adventures rewards you for spelling interesting/long words with bonuses, power-ups, etc. I guess I should take a look at that kind of thing and think about interesting ways to incorporate them - to keep the player interested.

All these are minor obstacles, just as if I were the mole and had to defeat an obstacle which had the answer 1 and the only buttons I had were “1” and “=”. There is much more to be done, but right now I am pleased with what I have and where the game is heading.

If you don’t know where you’re heading, feel free to hop on over to my other blog, reserved for rants, raves, news and reviews at http://soapbox.matsimmons.co.uk and read about Dare to be Digital, probably the biggest and best game dev competition in the UK and Just Cause 2, probably the biggest and best game in the world.

Stuttering Progress

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:31:21 +0000

It seems appropriate that I write about my progress on my latest project, my dissertation, as I have just been into university to update my tutor and peers on what I have been up to.

Maybe you care too. You probably won’t by the end of this, due to the lack of exciting news. You see, I’ve been coding the backend. The project, at the moment, won’t seem very exciting - because screen & input management, basic animation and programmer art aren’t.

The project is fairly comparable to PopCap’s BookWorm Adventures. If you are unfamiliar with what is actually a pretty fun educational game, I’ll explain the premise. You control a (book) worm on an adventure. It’s a linear path along which you will encounter foes. Spell words with the random letters available to you to hurt each foe. You can do more damage with longer words, by using power-ups and with odd letters like J and Z, for example.

I am developing Math Mole. Essentially the same gameplay, with numbers. Each “foe”, a blockage in the mole’s tunnel problem will be a mathematical problem that you can solve with the random numbers available to you.

If I were to be ambitious, I would talk to you about variable difficulty, levelling up, non-linear levels, rendering in 3D, and so much more. However, I prefer to be more grounded for a project that needs to be accompanied by 25,000 words and is due in 2 months. I’m not setting my sights low, I would just prefer to finish a simpler game to a high standard than neglect the written report and my various other commitments by adding complex features that wouldn’t necessarily add much depth to the game.

The problem at the moment, is that while I know I am making some progress, it might not look like it. My mole looks as though he is having a fit, the tunnel he is removing obstacles from is more jagged than a very jagged thing, and he obstacles are devoid of all colour and texture.

Though the key things to focus on here are that I do have a mole, a tunnel and obstacles and all are being correctly drawn and updated. I have even scripted the mole’s movement between obstacles.

Next task: User Interface. The user needs to know what numbers and mathematical operators are available to them and those numbers need to be updated whenever any are used to solve a problem. These numbers and operators also need to act as the input device, so the user does not have to rely on the keyboard.

My tutor and peers seemed moderately happy with my progress and where I am heading with the project. Now, I just need to keep at it and try to catch up some time lost due to entering a game in the Image Cup contest.

Dilemmas, Decisions and (lack of) Development

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:22:00 +0000

A short post today (actually, it’s not, but I thought it would be, so I’ll leave this in - just to confuse you).

I wanted to tweet this, as I didn’t think it warranted an actual fully-furnished blog post, but could not find any way at all to fit it in the tiny tweet box. I really fail at micro-blogging.

Essentially, I have a bit of a dilemma, about, in fact, this blog.

You may have noticed the title. It’s big and white and it has the word “Development” in it. The issue is not that I don’t like or dislike big white things any more or less than small black things. (No, really).

(Note to self. Go back and watch the Red Vs. Blue episode where Church and Tucker discuss the merits and demerits of going through the teleport and coming out the other side covered in mysterious ‘black stuff’.)

The issue is that I’m not writing much about development. I’m not doing an awful lot of development, but I’m roughly sticking to the schedule I’ve set for myself. I could do a lot more, but that’s a conversation I’ll save for another blog post - one that you may or may not see depending on what I actually decide to do in regards to the question I’ve been skirting around for this whole rant.

I prefer to write interesting things and 2 pages on my bare-bones XNA screen management system wouldn’t be interesting if Jeremy Clarkson (I’m somewhat of a fan) likened it to an otter kicking a walrus in the testes.

If you’re reading this (yes, you definitely are) you’re probably aware of this based on how, even though my first post or two had good intentions, I’ve already reviewed more games than I have implemented features in my project that would be worth even micro-blogging about.

I could go on, but the gist of my problem is that I don’t know what you want. What you expect.

Should I stick to the title and clear this non-development crap out? Should I continue to rant and rave to my heart’s content, elsewhere? Or should I leave the rants and the raves to live in peace-less disharmony with the boring tedium that is the real reason this site even exists?

I’ll let you be the judge, as I really don’t know.

Sometimes I wonder if I care. Then I remember Red Vs. Blue and that makes me want to live. Quite a bit.

The Right Cause

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:42:28 +0000

Sports Relief is upon us. I work in the retail sector, so I do apologise (profusely and with a smile, to avoid complaint) if I am worn a little thin each year by the excessive fund-raising and loudspeaker announcements in-store.

Sure, it is a worth cause and yes, I suspect I will watch some of the related TV coverage. I might even remember how to laugh. But sometimes, your team leader wearing a traffic cone hat and claiming to be a road just isn’t as funny as it should be. Sometimes I just want to ask “How much do I need to donate to end this bizarre dream (we don’t do nightmares in the tertiary sector) so I can get back to normality?”.

I’m just much more conformable donating whatever I can afford, when I can afford it, to those who I feel, really need it. I don’t need such a fuss to remind me that I am lucky, in so many ways, and that others aren’t. I don’t need encouraging to donate and I certainly don’t need anyone telling me I have to make a fool of myself for their enjoyment. I’ll make a fool of myself when I feel like it, thanks.

Thankfully, some relief (sorry) has been found, in the form of a demo. Demonstrations vary, in form and theme. You can have some old bloke in a beard demonstration a scientific experiment, or you can have a playable game demo downloaded right to your PC. Steam is nice like that. Didn’t have to life my sweaty bum-cheeks even an inch from my soggy desk-chair.

Just Cause 2 is a fantastic demo. Avalanche Studios’ latest release (due March 26th) will surely be a main contended for my game of the year, based on what I have seen in the freely-available demo alone. What they have done, and this is really clever, is actually made a really great demo, of a really great game. They actually give you thirty minutes and huge area to explore. You can even unlock more time by attaining various achievements. Everything you can do in the full game, you can experience in the demo. Lots of guns, lots of vehicles (including a tank, various helicopters and a plane) and lots of explosions.

Just Cause 2 is the Right Cause Too, because this is what Grand Theft Auto 4, should have been. What Crackdown and Prototype should have been. This is what every game ever, should have been. Tomohiro Nishikado had it all wrong, Space Invaders should have been just like Just Cause 2. We just didn’t know it until now.

I could write 101 things that are awesome in Just Cause 2. Maybe I will. But for now I’ll just highlight the highlights.

Driving. As someone who is actually learning to drive for real right now, I’m pretty sure I have a rough idea of how an average car handles. This was one of my main gripes with GTA 4, it seemed like the chap who did the car physics had relied solely on steam powered flying carpets to get about all his life. In Just Cause 2, the driving is Just right. I will often play the demo through, just looking for what feels to me like a rally car, so I can really enjoy off-loading.

Shooting. You can aim manually, sure, that works great. Get head shots for bonuses. Or if you’re lazy, let the aim asset help. That’s right, “aim assist”, as opposed to Modern Warfare 2’s “auto aim” (on the console versions, at least). The sound of the sniper rifle is particularly pleasing.

Freedom. Yes, you can go anywhere, you can do anything. No invisible walls, no limitations. So many things to do and an infinite number of ways to do them. Any combination of weapons, vehicles and strategies could complete each task.

And I haven’t even mentioned the grappling gun yet.

Sponsor me to keep playing this demo. That might really make a dent in whatever issues Sport Relief are tackling this year.

Or maybe not.

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:37:30 +0000

So, I actually spent most of the day getting this blog online and fixing numerous bugs. Hope it works good for you.

I also played too much Borderlands and I suspect I’ll play more before I need to sleep. I’d like to blame Gearbox for making Borderlands too addictive, too challenging, too… good. But I’d also like to thank them.

I’m sure I’ll post more about Borderlands in the future as it’s the game I am playing and enjoying the most right now, with the possible exception of Modern Warfare 2 which I love to hate, but I’ll explain what I enjoyed about it today.

Loot. Oh how I love loot. I read a report someone tweeted very recently about how they’ve figured out that finding cool/rare loot in a game like World of Warcraft or Borderlands causes the release of dopamine - which is real nice. So surely everyone loves loot?

If you don’t love loot, you either just aren’t human or you’re making the games that randomly generate loot, as Borderlands does so well. And hey, if you work on Borderlands, thank you so much for the loot-splosion that is the demise of Crawmerax.

Crawmerax is a final boss in the latest DLC: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx who is simply there to be a challenging, yet rewarding battle. I finally downed him today with Chris O’Donovan and it felt good. It felt good that we finally stopped dying but more than that, it felt good that there was so much loot we had to sort it into piles before we could even hope to sift through it.

That was enjoyable. Swimming in randomly generated gear. And I can’t even swim.

I suppose something else I will talk about at a later date on this blog is my dream game, but the more I think about it and nail the concept down, the more I realise it is just BorderWorlds.

Borderlands with more people would be just epic. Just so fantastically frantic that I think I would probably spend about 6 years trying to get on the dev team and if that didn’t work, sign up for the dole and just play with my mates 24/7. I can sleep whilst Jakob’s Cove loads.

Probably best not to expect two posts a day from me, as I expect we’ll both just end up being disappointed. Hoping to actually crack on with GameState Management tomorrow. Really.

And here we go.

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:13:00 +0000

Welcome to my development and industry/game review (read: rant) blog. I hope to use this space to collect my thoughts and record my progress on my university dissertation.

If you didn’t read the About Me page (don’t worry, you didn’t miss much), I am studying Games Development and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Wales, Newport.

I have attended both Global Game Jams and X48 2010 in Birmingham. I love those kind of events as you can really crack on with something in a short space of time. It’s hard to lose focus and/or relax even if you try. And more than that, you can create something amazing. Sure, expectations are low due to the short timeframe and lack of sleep but still, you have the opportunity to come away with something truly great.

Sadly, my lecturer, Mike Reddy, won’t let me leave my dissertation to the last minute so I can make it under the same sleepless conditions, so I am starting today.

Actually, I am hoping to kill two birds with one stone today, as I hope to enter another game in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup with my X48 team mates and need to work on that two. Both projects require some kind of screen management system. Hopefully I can piece some code together to accomplish this today and tomorrow.

Check back soon for more details on the concept for both projects and my thoughts on any games I play or news I hear. I’ll try to keep it interesting, promise.