27 June 2010

It's been sometime since my last blog post. I've been busy learning how to use Blender, GIMP, and Unity. Took me awhile to get everything to behave, especially getting animated models exported properly over to Unity from Blender.

I'm very pleased to have finished my first full game in Unity called Krog's Kitchen. It's only a small game with very simple gameplay but it has allowed me to learn a bit of everything and quickly get up to speed using my new tools.

Krog's Kitchen was heavily inspired by a great little game called 'Order Up' from www.unseenkingdom.com. Krog's Kitchen also features music by Kevin Macleod of Incompetech.

What's next? Well, I'm actually thinking of making another, slightly more ambitious, web game to publish on Facebook. I'm intrigued by the idea of 'microtransactions' to generate money from a free-to-play game...

26 April 2010

I'm pleased to say that I've now successfully moved onto to Unity after dropping Blitz altogether. I'm still finding my way around Unity and obviously I still have a lot to learn but I think I'm doing okay so far. To get me started, I worked my through some video tutorials from 3dbuzz.

Following the Unity Space Shooter C# tutorial, I created this: Space Shooter

Then I added a few things and tinkered away to get this: Space Shooter Plus

I know it's not the most impressive game in the world but I'm quite pleased with how much I've learned over the past few weeks. In addition to jumping over to Unity, I've also changed some of my other tools. I've decided to start using and supporting open source tools such as Blender and GIMP but more about that on my next post...

27 March 2010

Wow, two posts in the same month. That's some kind of record for me!

Okay... Bit of good news and a bit of sad news. The good news is that I've just about finished with 'Gardiens', all of the graphics are finished, music by Kevin Macleod of Incompetech is in place, and all of the bugs have been fixed. I've spent the last few days preparing some sound effects, just have to actually get them into the game and it should be good to go.

Now for the sad (ish) news. After about 10 years of using Blitz products, I've decided to move onto other things. Blitz3D is basically obsolete now since it's based on DirectX 7 technology. I fear that without a major update in the near future, Blitz Research will have to withdraw the product from sale as it's no longer fit for it's intended use. Having said that, there are some very nice libraries for sale that might keep it afloat awhile longer, FastLibs and Xors3D spring to mind.

There are a number of 3D modules available for BlitzMax. Unfortunately, none of them are officially supported after Mark Sibley's own Max3D module turned out to be little more than Vaporware. Leadwerks Engine requires a very high end computer to get half decent frame rates and the developers attitude is on par with Blitz Research when it comes to customer relations. There is also MiniB3D, the lovechild of Simon Harisson, which is updated very infrequently. Bug reports often go ignored and MiniB3D's performance leaves a lot to be desired, even when compared with the now obsolete Blitz3D. There is of course Xors3D which I mentioned earlier (and I even wrote a tutorial on getting started with Xors3D and BlitzMax), however, there are some issues that the developers of Xors3D seem to simply ignore which worries me a little. I've tried a few other 3D solutions with BlitzMax but I feel that there's always something lacking.

The final straw for me was getting banned from the community forums for requesting another forum user to stop swearing, knowing that it is against the forum rules and certain members of the forum are quite young. This individual was verging on Tourette's syndrome and his obscene outbursts continued for several weeks (months maybe) before the forum moderators finally took action.

So, I'm not 100% certain of what I'll be moving onto but I am definately moving away from anything Blitz related. I must say, Unity looks very tempting!

04 March 2010

Work on my current game is going very well. With a bit of luck I might actually be able to have it finished by the end of this month. It's taken a little longer than I expected but I think it has been worth the extra time to get things just right. On my to-do list is just a couple of minor bugs, the character graphics, sound effects, and music.

Here's a bit of progress:

To be honest, I much prefer making 3d games, even tho they take longer to make and most of my 3d efforts have lead nowhere. I will try my best to have my current (still untitled) project published on a casual games portal but then I think I'll be going back to 3d. I might even start making models to sell on TurboSquid again to help fund my next project...

21 February 2010

Wow exactly one year to the day that I started this blog. And I actually have something positive to post!

Since my last post just after New Year, I've been working on a casual game. Something quite similar to the Puzzle Fighter games but with a slower pace and a gardening theme. Sounds exciting, I know!

The code is about 90% finished including everything from the splash screen to the game over screen. Just a few tweaks and minor bugs to iron out and it'll be ready for testing. For the graphics, I've gone with 2d images of clay models that I've been busy making. Here's a WIP screenshot for you...

04 January 2010

Humbug! Having a couple of weeks break from my Slay! project has killed it off. Just lost enthusiasm for this one...You know, It's been almost a year now that I've been posting on my blog. Not much to show for it at this point is there? I think I'd better pull my socks up this year and get something finished for once.

I've been thinking of going back to 2d games for awhile, something simple, maybe a casual game (not a match 3 please!) just to get me back into the habit of actually finishing games. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Thinking about it, this isn't anything new to me. A lot of my finished games went through several versions before I was happy enough to call them finished, so there is still some hope for my Slay! project in the future. This is how Bongo used to look!

14 November 2009

I've come back to my Slay! clone that I posted about a few months ago. I've decided to give it another shot, this time using Leadwerks Engine and BlitzMax. I was lucky enough to be able to reuse most of my original code and going over it with fresh eyes helped me to track down a few bugs.

The AI for the game is already fully functional, although it's nowhere near as smart as the bots in Slay! it does provide a nice challenge without becoming frustrating.

My mech project has officially been canned. It's a shame but it is necessary sometimes. I would like to come back to this idea someday, maybe with a different approach to the artwork. Speaking of artwork, here are some characters that I have been working on for my Slay! project.

17 October 2009

Well, the future of my mech game doesn't look too bright at the moment. After finishing my mech and enough scenery pieces to make almost an entire city, I came across a number of animation problems with the Xors3d engine forcing me to look elsewhere.

I've been trying out a number of other 3d engines over the past couple of weeks but I'm left feeling rather frustrated. I have to rewrite chunks of code each time I try a new engine and have to spend time converting between formats and tweaking animations etc. I'll continue to plod on for now and see how the next few weeks go...

24 August 2009

I've recently found the time to write a tutorial on getting started with 3d games development using BlitzMax and the Xors3d engine, it has been published in the September edition of the BlitzMax Coder electronic magazine which can be found here. This is my very first tutorial and on the whole, I think it turned out rather well.

As for my own game development, I've been busy making some anime style mech models for the last couple of months. I've never really tried making any kind of vehicles before so this was something new to me. Things are going quite well at the moment, I have some finished mechs complete with animations, tons of weaponry, and I've even made a start on the games scenery.

I've put my adventure game on hold for a while as I don't really have as much time as I used to, and the amount of artwork that needs to be created is quite astounding. However, I do plan to come back to it at some point in the future when I have more time available.

Here is my mech, all pieces are interchangeable so there are literally thousands of weapon combinations :)

09 June 2009

I have just spent the best part of the last two weeks playing with Box2d and Blitz Max. I have to say that it's the most fun programming that I've had in years! Just for fun, I've started to put together a 2d platform engine using Box2d while I take a short break from my other project.

Working on a 2d game reminded me of a game I was working on last year, a remake of an old Windows game called Slay! As it was approaching Halloween at the time, I gave my remake a spooky theme with witches and pumpkins etc. I found the code for it laying around on my hard drive and took a screenshot of it to post. Shame I couldn't get it finished...

19 May 2009

I've spent some time over the last month or so prototyping some of the minigames for my main project. One minigame in particular is starting to become quite interesting and has almost become a seperate project altogether. I'll continue to pursue this a little further and see what comes of it.

Here's a quick in-game (Blitz 3D) render of the hexagonal tile map system I programmed for one of the minigames. The map is made up of hexagons made on-the-fly. The height is adjustable and each triangle of the map's mesh is automatically textured based on it's height and slope angle. I just threw some old plant models in there for testing...

09 April 2009

Well I've been hard at work since my last/first blog entry making the design document for my next game.

I've compiled a list of all of the ideas I've had over the years but never used for my games and expanded each idea into a piece of storyline, minigame, mission etc. I had to patch a few holes in the game's design with some new ideas and I borrowed a bit from some of my finished games. It's turning into a kind of warped fairy tale that will be played out as a 3D adventure game, something similar the old Dizzy games.

Aside from writing out a complete design document, I've also made a (very) low poly version of the entire game, something to use over the coming weeks and months as I make prototypes for various aspects of the game.

21 February 2009

I'm very pleased to have launched my new website this month. I decided to make all of my games available for download including my very first attempts. As you can see I've had a go at just about everything. Now that I know what I like working on and what my limitations are as an artist and as a programmer, I'm going to start working on something quite special. Watch this space...