Once again, it's Friday! I am starting to understand, that my posts are being posted on Friday's only.
That's because this week was quite dull and empty. And yes, we finally met the client. And yes, he ripped the project apart.
Even I did a combo meter working last week, there was no point writing about it, because I was waiting for the client. The great thing is, he told us many things he wanted to see in a game. The bad thing, I had to rip most of the project apart. On the other hand, I got a chance to re-write all the files and make them cleaner. I know it's a wrong thing, especially when we talk about programmers. We always want to make something better when it was. But what we actually do, is more errors and bugs. It's paradoxical, I know.
So, this week I started changing the game core. You should remember, I wrote about passing boxes. They are gone now. I wrote about distance and points meter - they are gone. Right now, there are three boxes, or human poses, which work as buttons. Each pose has its own number. Choose the right pose, choose the right answer, move to the next equation. Would you like to know, what is so innovative in this game? Yes, it's Kinect. It won't be used this semester, but the game is being made for it.
It's fun to write code and make everything work, although sometimes it is quite depressing. I don't like ripping the project apart. However, it's industry. It's meant to be like that. One day you are working on FPS, next day you are making RTS out of it and so on... doh!
Have a nice weekend. I hope next week gonna be much better then previous one.
Friday, 26 October 2012
Friday, 19 October 2012
Development Diary Day 7
I wrote quite a long time ago. Each day I thought, that I did nothing, so I didn't know what to write. Nevertheless, I did some work during my spare hours.
I talked about score system last time. I have already implemented it. Good, but could be better. Right now it is called "Meter". However, it is just a score, nothing more. You get score for good answers and you lose it otherwise. To make it more attractive, I added the position meter, which acts something like this: if you have a line, divide it by 2. You get half of your line. Then divide it into 60%, 30%, 10% intervals. Each interval represents different amount of score:
60% - 1 point
30% - 2 points
10% - 4 points
After this achievement, we can think about the ability to spend them or whatever...
I changed the GUI elements from static 2D into 3D elements. I thought doing that would help me to transform and position text easier later on. And I managed to repair the error, where pause didn't work instantly.
While we are waiting for a brief from client, I implemented a start menu. It would be implemented during the polishing stage, but I just made my work easier. I know, that all the work in a latter stages will drop on my shoulders, so I must have more work done now. I mean, all the assets', artwork's and sprites' implementation is being done in the end and by me.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
Good luck! Don't drink too much, if you know what I mean.
The innovation or scam... Ask yourself
I start the post as always... It's Friday!
This week was a busy one, so I didn't have a spare time to write a post here. Although it was a tough time for me, I had some time for reading. And suddenly I got flash to my mind. This time it was about Computer Graphics and Graphics programming.
I hardly believe innovations, because it is something I don't have. Nevertheless, I start to believe them, when they are released to public. It is not some kind of stubbornness. The innovations come as miracles to our life and believing in miracles it's not my type. For example, the flying cars. Would you believe that? The best you could say to the person, telling you this, is some words... It is similar in all situations. However, when they are released to public, you don't have to believe it. It becomes another truth.
The subject I wanted to write about today is called Euclideon, a.k.a Unlimited Detail Algorithm. You wouldn't surprise me telling I am crazy. As I said earlier, it's the best you can say to me. The first question, which pops up into my head, is: "how can you do something unlimited?", because it is not possible. And I totally agree with you. I have been investigating into this "scam" or innovation, whatever you call it, and it seems to be realistic.
I have found a great article about all of this written in Andromeda's blog. This article helps to understand a little bit about this engine. To add more, I add link to a new video, which was released few months ago.
Most people say it is a scam. And they might be true. However, most of us do not believe in innovations. On the other hand, some people want that we wouldn't believe in innovations. For example, the car fueled by water to move, instead of petrol. It is a great innovation, even though the article was written in 2008. There might be even more innovations related to that up until now. The problem is that people selling the oil don't want that. What would happen, if the whole world started using water fueled cars instead of petrol? They would bankrupt in one way, or would lose a lot of money in another way.
The same is with Game Engine companies such as CryTek, Unreal, Unity, Marmalade and many more. They would lose customers, because their technology wouldn't achieve the same result as Euclideon would. And they invested too much money into that.
You can believe it or not. I don't say it is true or it is a scam. I just wanted to inform you about innovations coming into our world, especially - game developers world.
Thanks for reading and have a good day.
See you.
This week was a busy one, so I didn't have a spare time to write a post here. Although it was a tough time for me, I had some time for reading. And suddenly I got flash to my mind. This time it was about Computer Graphics and Graphics programming.
I hardly believe innovations, because it is something I don't have. Nevertheless, I start to believe them, when they are released to public. It is not some kind of stubbornness. The innovations come as miracles to our life and believing in miracles it's not my type. For example, the flying cars. Would you believe that? The best you could say to the person, telling you this, is some words... It is similar in all situations. However, when they are released to public, you don't have to believe it. It becomes another truth.
The subject I wanted to write about today is called Euclideon, a.k.a Unlimited Detail Algorithm. You wouldn't surprise me telling I am crazy. As I said earlier, it's the best you can say to me. The first question, which pops up into my head, is: "how can you do something unlimited?", because it is not possible. And I totally agree with you. I have been investigating into this "scam" or innovation, whatever you call it, and it seems to be realistic.
I have found a great article about all of this written in Andromeda's blog. This article helps to understand a little bit about this engine. To add more, I add link to a new video, which was released few months ago.
Most people say it is a scam. And they might be true. However, most of us do not believe in innovations. On the other hand, some people want that we wouldn't believe in innovations. For example, the car fueled by water to move, instead of petrol. It is a great innovation, even though the article was written in 2008. There might be even more innovations related to that up until now. The problem is that people selling the oil don't want that. What would happen, if the whole world started using water fueled cars instead of petrol? They would bankrupt in one way, or would lose a lot of money in another way.
The same is with Game Engine companies such as CryTek, Unreal, Unity, Marmalade and many more. They would lose customers, because their technology wouldn't achieve the same result as Euclideon would. And they invested too much money into that.
You can believe it or not. I don't say it is true or it is a scam. I just wanted to inform you about innovations coming into our world, especially - game developers world.
Thanks for reading and have a good day.
See you.
Friday, 12 October 2012
Development Diary Day 6
It's Friday, again!
And I did some job since last post. Remember, I told you about the fonts. They are working now! And they aren't blurry anymore. Wonderful achievement.
There were some problems with buttons, where you pushed them and they didn't work. I think I managed to solve that problem. The problem was, that when the OnTrigger event was launched, it got triggered only that frame, like in FixedUpdate, so there were some frames, you were unable to fit in. There were about 75% of times you were able to succeed, but in other 25% the button didn't react. Fixed that now.
We have to re-think the score system to something more addictive. I thought, that applause meter, or self-esteem would help to improve that, but that was just my opinion. Shall see, how it goes on Monday.
I have added a dancer. It is just a stick man, but it works. Sprite system works. it's good to know that. The equations are changing depending on your answer. If you answer it correct, the equation changes and if you're not - it becomes red. That means you are wrong. I have also implemented two buttons into the system. A - means true, D - means false. You have to click each cube passing through the trigger, in order to get all the "score", which is still not implemented.
That's it for two days.
Have a nice weekend.
And I did some job since last post. Remember, I told you about the fonts. They are working now! And they aren't blurry anymore. Wonderful achievement.
There were some problems with buttons, where you pushed them and they didn't work. I think I managed to solve that problem. The problem was, that when the OnTrigger event was launched, it got triggered only that frame, like in FixedUpdate, so there were some frames, you were unable to fit in. There were about 75% of times you were able to succeed, but in other 25% the button didn't react. Fixed that now.
We have to re-think the score system to something more addictive. I thought, that applause meter, or self-esteem would help to improve that, but that was just my opinion. Shall see, how it goes on Monday.
I have added a dancer. It is just a stick man, but it works. Sprite system works. it's good to know that. The equations are changing depending on your answer. If you answer it correct, the equation changes and if you're not - it becomes red. That means you are wrong. I have also implemented two buttons into the system. A - means true, D - means false. You have to click each cube passing through the trigger, in order to get all the "score", which is still not implemented.
That's it for two days.
Have a nice weekend.
Thursday, 11 October 2012
Development Diary Day 5
Yesterday was a great day. I started work from early morning.
I managed to solve the problem, where I needed to calculate the answer of the equation. I knew there is a function, which evaluates a string, although, I haven't used it before. After some time of Google'ing I found what I needed. There were some minor problems after that, but I solved them quite fast. However, I still need to render the correct answer.
At last, we tried our game on a "dinosaur". This is another name for stone-age computer. And you wouldn't believe it, it worked! Well, with some problems. We launched it on a "dinosaur" and it didn't work, in the first place. Because it didn't have a VGA Drivers. What a stupid mistake. After the installation of drivers, it worked flawlessly.
We got into trouble, when I tried to change a resolution of a game. The background was not wide enough, so there was a sky-box background visible. And it was blue. So one of our artists widen background image, so it fills the whole background now. Minor fix.
I added the background music and it sounds brilliant. Even it is just a draft, I really like it!
Some minor changes to the game speed. Me and an audio guy tried to solve the problem with music beats and game speed. It is still under development. Although it is mostly synchronized.
There is still a problem with fonts. They are rendered blurry and I can't stand that. I'll try to investigate.
4 weeks of studying have passed and my knowledge increased drastically. Thank you all for your support.
See you in a next page.
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Some tips for Games Developers
I could talk a lot about this, but who am I, to say, what is good and what is bad. I am not Steve Jobs, or any other well-known figure. So just watch yourself. Have a good time listening to some great tips for all of you, guys.
Good luck with that.
Good luck with that.
Development Diary Day 4
It was a quite busy day. I had many things to test and to make them work, yesterday. The text appears on the boxes now, but it is quite blurry. I think I have an idea, what's wrong with that, however, I don't want to waste more time on that for now. It took too much already.
I added some sounds to the game, which were sent by Brian. They sound creepy, but they show that project keeps moving forward and works. I know, that blops, you know those sounds from stone-age computers, aren't the best solution for these-days games. Hopefully, I will change them soon.
There is a background now. I am not an artist, so you can imagine how awfully it looks. Once again, it just shows that project keeps moving forward. The problem is - resoliution. If you change a resoliution, it cuts the background. I will try to build a project someday and test that.
By the way, we got another guy on our team. I really forgot to mention that. Right now, there is me, Fred, Brian and Mike (sorry, the names might be with some errors, because of the nation differences, let me know, if you spot anything).
Me - programmer, trying to workaround all the thingies to make them work. It's like reviving someone. I could call myself a bishop or wizard, or Merlin, or whatever the name is.
Fred - an artist. Person, who draws whatever you want, but mostly characters. ( I might be wrong, so I shall change the rumours). The pen is a magical tool in his hands. He creates those creatures, so I could survive them and conquer the world, xa,xa,xa,xa... (evil laught).
Mike - another artist. Person, who draws mostly 2D environment, but can draw anything you need or ask. He is another person bringing the armies of monsters to be ready for survival.
Brian - our doctor. He helps us with our ears problems. The person, who disturbs our silence. By saying "our", I mean, game. He revives the music and put us on the drugs that keep us moving forward through the game, without silence, without fear and with a rage in our ears to hear more.
See you soon, guys.
I added some sounds to the game, which were sent by Brian. They sound creepy, but they show that project keeps moving forward and works. I know, that blops, you know those sounds from stone-age computers, aren't the best solution for these-days games. Hopefully, I will change them soon.
There is a background now. I am not an artist, so you can imagine how awfully it looks. Once again, it just shows that project keeps moving forward. The problem is - resoliution. If you change a resoliution, it cuts the background. I will try to build a project someday and test that.
By the way, we got another guy on our team. I really forgot to mention that. Right now, there is me, Fred, Brian and Mike (sorry, the names might be with some errors, because of the nation differences, let me know, if you spot anything).
Me - programmer, trying to workaround all the thingies to make them work. It's like reviving someone. I could call myself a bishop or wizard, or Merlin, or whatever the name is.
Fred - an artist. Person, who draws whatever you want, but mostly characters. ( I might be wrong, so I shall change the rumours). The pen is a magical tool in his hands. He creates those creatures, so I could survive them and conquer the world, xa,xa,xa,xa... (evil laught).
Mike - another artist. Person, who draws mostly 2D environment, but can draw anything you need or ask. He is another person bringing the armies of monsters to be ready for survival.
Brian - our doctor. He helps us with our ears problems. The person, who disturbs our silence. By saying "our", I mean, game. He revives the music and put us on the drugs that keep us moving forward through the game, without silence, without fear and with a rage in our ears to hear more.
See you soon, guys.
Friday, 5 October 2012
Development Diary Day 3
This Thursday was fun and extreme to me. Due to that, I didn't do anything interesting, that I could tell you. Well, it was interesting, but not from yours perspective.
Today is Friday, once again! It is the best day in a week. However, it doesn't last long. I came to UNI about 9:00am this morning. It was extremely hard to move out from the bed, if you know what I mean. Today I did some things that are actually important for our project.
The first one, I made sprites working. Jupy! It's essential thing, when you are doing something 2D. I made a burning fire. It is actually spectacular. I mean, the felling inside me. This is just a textured cube with alpha blending, where sprites are changing during the time. Psshhh....this was supposed to be a secret.
The second, I started learning 3D animations in Unity. This is still under heavy development in my brain.
I have many things to do next week, so hopefully, next week posts will be longer...
Have a nice weekend, people!
See you.
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
Development Diary Day 2
I spent one day attending lectures. I had no time for any other stuff at all. So it was empty, yesterday.
Nevertheless, today was/is much more interesting. I had only one lecture about innovations. Remember, I mentioned I will start uploading the videos and photos soon. Well, I don't really know whether I can do that now. I signed an agreement between me and university about all the IPs made in UNI. Gonna find out someday, how that document works...
Although I don't have what to show you (or I have, but I just can't right now), I did some video of my prototype. I made two versions of it, one's 2D and another's something like 3D. The camera is fixed, so I don't think I could call it 3D... it's somewhere between. Shall have some criticism tomorrow, so changes are inevitable. Hopefully, everything gonna be alright.
Almost forgot a lecture. I visited some great places today. One of them is 3D cinema, saw there some great innovations like virtual world and stuff similar to this. Then moved to Audio Studio, which was awesome. And finally had an expedition to movie production room. All those green walls look pretty. I would like to make a movie there. I can imagine, what you can do there and how stupid you feel, while doing tricks, which are silly. Nevertheless, after having some cosmetics with Adobe's products you become a super-man, spider-man, Thor or any other mystical avatar, even though you were just hanging on the rope. It is a great feeling to get in touch with innovations like these. It's a big thank you for such a great thing.
Gonna have a trip tomorrow in very early morning. Today was a brilliant day! Tomorrow is going to be better.
This post was more general then just a Development Diary. Due to my restrictions to this blog, I can't do branching. Sorry.
See you in a near future.
Nevertheless, today was/is much more interesting. I had only one lecture about innovations. Remember, I mentioned I will start uploading the videos and photos soon. Well, I don't really know whether I can do that now. I signed an agreement between me and university about all the IPs made in UNI. Gonna find out someday, how that document works...
Although I don't have what to show you (or I have, but I just can't right now), I did some video of my prototype. I made two versions of it, one's 2D and another's something like 3D. The camera is fixed, so I don't think I could call it 3D... it's somewhere between. Shall have some criticism tomorrow, so changes are inevitable. Hopefully, everything gonna be alright.
Almost forgot a lecture. I visited some great places today. One of them is 3D cinema, saw there some great innovations like virtual world and stuff similar to this. Then moved to Audio Studio, which was awesome. And finally had an expedition to movie production room. All those green walls look pretty. I would like to make a movie there. I can imagine, what you can do there and how stupid you feel, while doing tricks, which are silly. Nevertheless, after having some cosmetics with Adobe's products you become a super-man, spider-man, Thor or any other mystical avatar, even though you were just hanging on the rope. It is a great feeling to get in touch with innovations like these. It's a big thank you for such a great thing.
Gonna have a trip tomorrow in very early morning. Today was a brilliant day! Tomorrow is going to be better.
This post was more general then just a Development Diary. Due to my restrictions to this blog, I can't do branching. Sorry.
See you in a near future.
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Development Diary Day 1
I should have written this post yesterday. However, I didn't have much time. Another excuse.
I came to UNI at 11:00am. Didn't find any of my colleagues. They are not supposed to be here anyway, cuz we are still prototyping the game. And the prototype is on my shoulders anyway. On the other hand, it isn't a must to be here, cuz those dedicated machines are not worth a quid. You get 6core processor, bulk of RAMS, but HDD of 50MB. The HDD is bigger than that, but students just can't have more than this. How the hell are we supposed to work with that? It's nuisance. So you can use those 6 cores for Facebook and stuff like that. Brilliant! But I love that 24inches monitor. Therefore, I use my laptop for my game development project.
I added some features for my prototype. Right now, it shows an equation and counts it. If you get a right answer, the game says you have won and if you don't - you have lost. It is not so much of work, while you can write that into one sentence. However, some scripting took me a while. Remember, I am still new to Unity.
I started using a Git. Yes, it is a great tool. Well, I have been thinking about Tortoise, but the Git is better, so I thought, I should start using the better tool and get used to it's "Linux'ish" appearance. I can't say it is really so better, but it is faster and faster much more. Those thingies like adding, committing, pushing, pulling are new to me.
I should start uploading some photos, but I am still not ready for that. I know, the photos add some life to a post, but you need to wait for that.
I still didn't find a way to put the text on cubes/squares. However, I don't think I will find that today. I have too many lectures today and have some other job to do either.
See you in a day or two.
I came to UNI at 11:00am. Didn't find any of my colleagues. They are not supposed to be here anyway, cuz we are still prototyping the game. And the prototype is on my shoulders anyway. On the other hand, it isn't a must to be here, cuz those dedicated machines are not worth a quid. You get 6core processor, bulk of RAMS, but HDD of 50MB. The HDD is bigger than that, but students just can't have more than this. How the hell are we supposed to work with that? It's nuisance. So you can use those 6 cores for Facebook and stuff like that. Brilliant! But I love that 24inches monitor. Therefore, I use my laptop for my game development project.
I added some features for my prototype. Right now, it shows an equation and counts it. If you get a right answer, the game says you have won and if you don't - you have lost. It is not so much of work, while you can write that into one sentence. However, some scripting took me a while. Remember, I am still new to Unity.
I started using a Git. Yes, it is a great tool. Well, I have been thinking about Tortoise, but the Git is better, so I thought, I should start using the better tool and get used to it's "Linux'ish" appearance. I can't say it is really so better, but it is faster and faster much more. Those thingies like adding, committing, pushing, pulling are new to me.
I should start uploading some photos, but I am still not ready for that. I know, the photos add some life to a post, but you need to wait for that.
I still didn't find a way to put the text on cubes/squares. However, I don't think I will find that today. I have too many lectures today and have some other job to do either.
See you in a day or two.
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