Red's Game Dev Blog

Video log #1

2012-02-08T20:52:00.001+01:00

Not a really interesting post title but I'll let it be because it’s the first video log I created.

I had a sports “accident” on Saturday so I wasn’t really able to go anywhere which would have been a perfect opportunity for game development but I just suckered in and played Resident Evil 4 on my Wii again. Oh well.

But the “School Madness” project is going nicely. I added platforming and all with double jump. There is still lots of work but I’m getting there.

While recording the video I noticed that the player didn’t jump as high as normal. The game did run at 10-20 fps but I’m using delta time for everything so that should not happen. It works fine at higher fps but there are some weird anomalies at low fps. Don’t know what it could be I will have a look at it but I don’t really worry about it.

At the start of the video I do some explaining for those who are not following my blog but the rest is just showing the game.

I would appreciate some comments about the video

Week update – School Madness

2012-01-30T21:06:00.001+01:00

Well not real madness, but the name of the project is “School Madness".

The project

I haven’t really talked about the school project I’m working on. To complete my school we have to take certain tests at the end of the year. But we also have to create a “product” that has to do with our education. Since I’m learning for a computer technician (translated) and we are doing different programming things in school I decided to create a game. It’s something I’m best at and it suits me. I probably have one of the most ambitious projects in our class. The standard also isn’t very high and so creating a simple game out of pure C++ using many different libraries (SDL, OpenGL, Freetype, FTGL, irrKlang) is way (waaaaaaaay) above it. So I’m not concerned by the fact that the game is really simple platformer. But I’m still trying to do my best.

The projects is really organized with much emphasis on OOP (Object Oriented Programming) and using the languages more complex features everywhere. I’m also writing short comments everywhere on my mentors request and so that if I will need to discuss the code I will immediately know what is where.

(A screen of the current project running)

Edit the level editor

Currently most of the work is going into the level editor. I’m making it user friendly and easy to use. I’m planning on making it the bigger thing in the game promoting creating your own levels. And I think it will be more fun than the simple platforming game. It’s clearly the best level editor I made so far with easy to create levels, test them, and saving/loading works from in-game.

Here you can see the editor menu opened up. By clicking Save/Load Level a “menu” pops up where you input the name of the level. It works really well and it’s the first time I done text input in a game.The red boxes around the objects are collision boxes. It adds a fancy/technical look to the editor.

I still have to add a camera to the editor and some more objects like the player spawn and exit. I will make the rooms a fixed size so that level creators can’t go crazy with it. After that is done I will focus on the actual platforming part of the game. I still think I have to add some kind of power to the player so that is adds some challenge to the game. I think that a double jump will do which the player will then use to do some of the more tricky moves. That way the game won’t be too boring because I’m not planning on adding enemies or moving (deadly) objects.

And that is all about the project for this post.

I have been sick in the last few days and wasn’t really able to do much. I have been learning some 3D modeling with Blender and it’s really interesting. Maybe in the future you will see some low poly models on this blog. But don’t expect any 3D games

I also thought about starting to make video logs. Nothing complicated just a 1-5 minute video where I show you what I’m currently working on. For example on this post: I would show the code a little and how it’s structured, then I would run the game and show some of the features of the level editor and maybe run the player animation. Really simple. I think it would make a really nice addition and it wouldn’t take me much time to make them since I would make them totally spontaneously with no real goal. Fellow YouTube subscribers might appreciate new videos. Please give me some opinions about this idea in the comments.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about here is a video log from Chevy Ray Johnston (An awesome indie game programmer/designer). If you can’t see the video click on the empty space and it should pop out.

Hollow's Deep - Ledge Grab & Tile Stitching from Chevy Ray Johnston on Vimeo.

Thanks for reading.

My workspace

2012-01-24T19:56:00.001+01:00

Everyone has a workspace, and it’s time that I show mine.

A room to work in

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll just stick with that.

Not really high quality (I took the picture with my phone) but it should do. As you can see I use a “dual” monitor screen setup. I’m using my laptop (HP ProBook 4530s) all the time and have an external 21’ LG monitor hooked up to it. I use the big monitor for developing/programming and the small one for things like browsing, music and messaging. The laptop is not really a beast but it’s really good for any kind of development and it still runs most of the games. It’s really practical that I’m all the time one the laptop so that I can simply unplug it and go to school with it and continue there. My other computer (the gaming beast) is currently using my younger brother. I sometimes miss the power but as I said my laptop is good enough for me. I use a classic English layout HP keyboard and the Logitech G700 mouse. I usually listen music on my over 6 years old speakers.

My software setup is Windows 7 64x OS. I’m not using Linux, because it has really bad support for the ATI graphics card and Windows gives more battery power. I miss many Linux tools (I use a Virtual Machine when I really need them) but I really got confortable with Windows. Mainly because of his wide support for different developing environments and better software support. I can use Visual Studio for my IDE again and FlashDevelop for AS3 development. Windows also has Graphics Gale, the best pixel art graphics program. Other software I mostly use: Qt Creator (For C++ GUI development), Eclipse (Java Android development), Aptana Studio 3 (HTML, JS, CSS, PHP development), Inkscape (Vector art), GIMP (Raster graphics / free Photoshop clone), Windows Live Writer (Blog posting), Winamp (Music listening), Pidgin, Skype, Steam (You can find me as "#include<luka>" add me for a round of TF2), etc. There are more but I think this is enough.

As you can see I have a big whiteboard in the middle of the room. It has some “secret” things written on it but you won’t be able to read of it because of the high quality image. I just got the board yesterday so I still don’t have colored pens and it’s not as full and colorful as it will be.

In the bottom you can see my high tech TV with my Wii hooked up to it. My brother can’t understand how I can enjoy playing games on that TV size but I love it that way.

And that is mainly it. Nothing special really just my room where I made all the things you can find on my blog. Other interesting things on the picture: a Pokemon cup, fancy lamp, full trash bin and a copy of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

And that fellow readers was my room.

‘Me and my shadow’ v0.2

2012-01-22T13:09:00.001+01:00

Whoa! A new post the same week as the last one. Well yea, I said that I will post more regularly. This post is about an old game of mine.

A better game

If you have been following my blog, you may have noticed that last February I posted about giving the source code of ‘Me and my shadow’ to a small team of developers. As it turns out the team is really passionate about the project and has brought the game to a completely new state. They revamped almost everything and added many great things. The game also has many new levels and a much better level editor. A completely new game but with the heart of the old one. I’m really happy and a little flattered that they took my game and made so much more out of it.

So what are you waiting for. If you liked the original or if you like platforming/puzzle games then you should really try it out. You can get the game from Sourceforge or from their site. There are also very open to anyone who would like to contribute to the project. Just check out the forums and ask where they need help. You can make new graphics, levels, sounds, music and if you are a programmer you can help them make the game even better.

I wish the guys good luck with the project and I hope that next year, I will be able to make a new post about an even better ‘Me and my shadow’

Year 2012 is here

2012-01-18T17:07:00.001+01:00

And another year has passed. The year I turned 18 and the year many things happened. You could also call it a year of my empty blog, because there wasn’t really anything on it. Well let’s change this.

A year in review

First let’s look back at year 2011. One could say that I didn’t do much in terms of game development, and that is probably true. I started the year with an “A game a month” project, but only completed 1 game. Then for the rest of the year… nothing. So it wasn’t really a good year for my game development.

On the other side, I accomplished many other things. I started working on my personal framework and can happily say, that I brought it to a state where I can use it for all my game development. It covers things like events, rendering, fonts, sound and game logic, and that is what I need. I will probably work more on the framework in the future, but for now I’ll leave it until I make a nice game out of it.

I also started making C++ game programming video tutorials. And they kind of “exploded” on the YouTube. I’m not saying that I got millions of views and thousand subscribers, but with 450 subscribers and over 100.000 views that were brought in just by these videos, I can say that I’m really happy with the result. And I hope I helped others find a way to create the game they want to make.

I also got 3rd place in the “national programming tournament” last year and that is something I’m proud of. I’m still using the mouse I got as an award.

I was in Ireland this year, working for a networking company, where I worked as a Python programmer. I learned much about Python and databases there and also got much experience from working abroad and for a real company. It’s something I won’t forget.

There ware also a ton of other small projects, which brought me much more knowledge in my expertise. Because of school, I had to take on many databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL. I also had to dig into Qt for C++, which is an amazing framework for GUI programs and almost everything not game based. It has so many different things you can use it’s simply amazing. And it’s cross-platform. I really recommend it to everyone who will try something else than games in C++. I also did some work in C#, learning the language and actually creating some things. I also got more into Android programming (with Java) and I plan to continue with it this year. Altogether I did a lot of different things and also finished many projects, which were never mentioned here because they were for other people or for school.

If I can sum up last year: I learned and created a lot of different things last year, which brought me a lot of experience and knowledge. But for my personal game development, well… you could say that was the worst year for it. But that’s OK.

New Year

This year there are big plans. I kind of got “mature” with computer programming and this, so I’m a lot more organized and hard working. I’m working more and more and not just slacking of playing games. I’m really trying to complete the projects I set myself.

Currently there are 3 bigger projects in works.

I am working really hard on making a new “C++ Game Programming” course/tutorial, but this time it’s for a paid site. The owners of the site saw my videos and asked me if I want to make something like that for their site. And I agreed. There are many videos already done and many more to be made. It’s going well, but making quality videos takes more time that usually. I really hope that people will like it so that I will make some money out of it. I would really want to make some money out of my works and I hope that this will be some kind of a start point for me. I won’t tell many details about it, but when it’s done, I’ll make a post about it and make sure there will be coupons for those of you interested.

Because of that project the YouTube videos are on halt. I just can’t make both of them at the same time so they will have to wait. I don’t know if and when I will return to making more YouTube tutorials, but I can say that it won’t be soon. Sorry folks, but there are other priorities.

This year I also have my “finals” in school and I have to create a final project for that. I decided that I’m going to make a game. A simple Mario rip-off game, but I don’t mind, because it’s not a big project and won’t go public. It’s just something for school that I have to finish till March.

The last project. Well it’s a game. A quite big project for me and will probably be my first polished complete game (kinda) since JAHP. It’s also bigger that JAHP and more complex. I won’t tell anything about it, but I will post a screenshot when it’s so far. Currently I’m not working on it that much, because I’m making videos and I really have to create the game for school. But once that clears up, I’ll put all my effort back in the game.

So that’s all I had to say for now. Big things happened and are going to happen and I will make sure I’ll write much more on this blog so that you can read and see what’s currently happening. Have a nice day.

Ireland - Post #1

2011-11-16T22:28:00.001+01:00

A warm hello from Ireland. I am one day late with the post, but I was kinda busy yesterday with other stuff.
So for those who don't know what I am talking about. I went to Ireland for 3 weeks to work for an IT company. I'm in Cork, which is a really nice city in the south part of Ireland. The company I work for is a 15 minutes bus drive out of Cork, but it's nothing compared to the usuall 1 hour trip to school :D I really like the company, it kinda suits me, currently I am working on some Python development. But this was only the first day, we will see how it goes in the comming 2.5 weeks.
Here are some pictures which I took with my super HD 2 mega pixel phone camera. Kinda low quality and blury, but you get the idea.

Here is a picture taken from the plane. I think we were still over Croatia when this was taken. We then arrived in Paris where we had to go on another plane, but we missed it. Poor organisation. So we had to wait for a few hours at the airport. Kinda reminded me on the movie "Terminal"

A laptop is very usefull when you are stuck at the airport :)

A picture of me at the airport. We had nothing better to do so we took some pictures.

So then we finally got to board our plane to Dublin. We arrived late to Dublin and because we missed our first plane, we had no transportation to Cork. So we spend the first night in a hostel with a nice bar at the entrance :)

So we went out a little to check out Dublin at night. This was the first Guinness order. I might insult some Irish people now, but I can't stand the taste of Guinness, so that was also the last glass of Guinness for me.

So on Tuesday we took the bus to Cork. It was a long 4 hour drive, but we survived it. After all the greetings and stuff we arrived in our appartments. This is the living/kitchen room. A normal students apartment.

And this is my room. There are 3 of us in each apartment and everyone has his own room. It's small, but cozy.
And that is all for the first post. I will try to post a new something new as soon as I got some nice pictures to add.

Going to Ireland

2011-11-13T21:38:00.000+01:00

As I said, I'm going to Ireland tomorrow. So no new videos till I come back. I'm going to take pictures off the trip and everything so be tuned and check the blog for updates. I think that will make this blog a little more interesting.

Expect a post on Tuesday :)

Season 2 is here

2011-10-21T15:07:00.001+02:00

Hello there.
It seams it takes some time till I post about a new video here on the blog, because the first episode of the new season was released 2 weeks ago. Because of that you may get the feeling I am abandoning this blog, but that is far from the truth. This blog was my first big thing in getting my games "out there" and is still my primary "journal" where I can check what and when I did something, with additional info about it like nowhere else. But it is true that I may not be blogging much. It's much easier to post a short Tweet about a new video or something like that.
I did ask what you would like to see on this blog, but I didn't get much (any) response. I do know that this site hasn't much traffic but still many people come from other sites to this blog and expect something more interesting and in depth, which sadly this blog doesn't really provide. But if anyone still has some ideas I will be glad to hear them. Anyway, I will try to put more effort into the blog in the future.
So anyway, here is the episode. I will try to make a new episode soon, and then another one before I go to Ireland. Yes, I go to Ireland in November. Not long, just a month, to work for a company. It's a school organized trip and I hope it will be interesting and fun :)

The series continiues

2011-09-23T15:48:00.000+02:00

Hello there.
It has passed quite some time since the last post. And yet again, this is going to be a short one. I decided to finish season 1 on the series and start a new one. So here is the short in between video:

As you can see in the video, I am asking for question, so that I can answer them in a new video. But on this blog I also have a different question. Because it's getting kinda lame here and because I only post like every 2 months, I would like to ask you how I could make it more interesting. Maybe you can recommend some themes about what I should write or what would you like to see. I will be glad for any recommendations :)

Episoded 9 and 10

2011-06-08T09:57:00.002+02:00

After quite some time I uploaded episode 10. Episode 9 was on YouTube for quite some time, but I rather wait and then post them in pairs on my blog. Episode 9 shows how to load images into the game and then blend them on the screen. In #10 we do some refinements. I don't yet know what the next episode is going to show, so if you have any ideas, post them.

I think that the episodes are going well and that each new one gets better. I had some video/mic problems in these episodes but I think that is now fixed. I also got many subscribers which is a good positive feedback, because I know that people like the series.

On the other hand my projects have stopped. I am not working on any game right now. But I must say that I made nice progress with the framework and it's currently heading towards milestone #2. To get from the current state I have to add handling images and rendering fonts, which will require me to learn FTGL. I think that after I will reach the 2. milestone I will begin working on a new game with the framework. Because it's going to be usable at that state. I have many ideas for the next project including a sequel of "Squared Shooter". Yea it came so far that I will make a sequel, but people really like the game and I know that I can make it better and bigger. I also need to give more polish to all of my games. I think the last game that got "polished" was Space Invaders Versus. But back then my programming skills managed to create quite some bugs :)

That's all for now, goodbye.

Episodes 7 and 8

2011-05-08T09:21:00.000+02:00

Hello there. I would like to present you the newest 2 episodes. In them we create bricks, render them and do collision checking so we actually have something to break. Check them out:

I also said that the framework will hit the 1st milestone till the first, but it still isn't there. I haven't been working much these days. But I hope that it will in the next few days. I think that you cal also expect a small game this month, but it will probably just be a "1 week-er". So nothing special.

Blog repaint

2011-04-26T21:48:00.001+02:00

Hello there. As you can already see, I completely changed the look of my blog. The post area is a little wider and I think everything looks more cleaner now. I really like the new look. You might have also noticed that I added a "Projects" page up there under the heading. I really needed some kind of a all-around collection of my projects. I got the template from bTemplates, a good site to find them.

I would also like to know what you think of the new look, what could I add to the projects page, what could I add to the blog, what do you generally like or don't like about the blog/posts? Every feedback is wanted.

Episode 6 is up

2011-04-23T14:47:00.003+02:00

It took some time but here it is. Episode 6. We cover movement again and collision detection. Watch on YouTube for HD quality.

Hope you like it :)

Also if you aren't following me on Twitter (@includeLuka) then you should also knows that my framework has gone open-source on gitHub. Here is the link:
https://github.com/includeLuka/Framework

The framework is in an very early state of development but till the end of April it will reach the first milestone that I set. More about that later.

Episode 5 and donations

2011-04-08T17:44:00.001+02:00

It's been some time since the last episode. I've been working on the framework and I have also been learning Python (nice language) but I finally decided to make a new episode. I will try to make episodes more often from now on.
So here it is (I forgot to enlarge the font but it's readable in HD):

The next thing I have to say is that I implemented a PayPal donate button on the right. I am trying to make some money from game developing and if someone has something to spare and likes my games then I would be really happy for a donation. You can donate whatever amount you want and I will also keep a list of donators and will probably put them in my games (So if you donate, add a nickname or a link on where people can reach you)

Thats all,
thanks :D

Some info about month 2 and 3

2011-04-02T09:54:00.000+02:00

Good morning on this nice spring day. I hope you had a nice April fools day :)

Now let's get some info out about what I've been doing in February and March. The first thing you have noticed is that I haven't released any game. I said that I won't release one in February but it seams that March was also kinda busy. But I was working on many things that just weren't games. First of all, in February I programmed a minesweeper solver for a national programming competition. I won the 3rd place and I am happy about it because before me were only college pupils. It was a great success which brought me a nice and fancy new mouse.

I was also on some other competitions and I still have some to go. We'll see how it goes.

The next thing I am working on is the Let's make a game video series. Which I think is going pretty well for now. I'm happy how it turned out. It's also nice because I get a lot of positive feedback from my videos. So stay tuned in for the next episode today or tomorrow.

I am also working on something gaming related and that is my own framework that I will use on my next big project. The framework isn't anything that fancy but after I have collected together everything from my projects and made some extra things it'll be very simple to use to get the basic game (C++ SDL/OpenGL) up and running. I just want to make some of the rendering, image working, sound etc. a little simplified. I think that every game programmer makes his own little framework when the time comes.

And that's all I have to say for now. A new game will maybe come in April but nothing big. Maybe the framework will be released. But I am starting out with a big project that is going to take some time.

Let's make a video game 2

2011-03-27T10:04:00.000+02:00

Here are the next 2 episodes. I am slowly getting better at this.

Hope you like them :)

Let's make a game video series

2011-03-15T17:37:00.001+01:00

If you haven't been following me on Twitter or if you don't look at my Youtube channel then you haven't probably seen that I started a new video series. In the series I will show you how to make a game from scratch using C++ with SDL and OpenGL. So check them out. Here are the first 2 videos:

I hope you like them. I will try to improve my speaking from video to video but it's much better than the old series.

Me and My Shadow - SourceForge

2011-02-06T14:34:00.005+01:00

Just a quick little post here. A week ago a programmer named Omer Bahri Gordebak started making a clone of my game. So I contacted him and gave him the source code of my game. After that I agreed that he can open a SourceForge project so that everyone can work on the game. The game is now under the GPLv3 licence and everyone who wants to add stuff to it (ether engine, gfx or sound) should go to the SourceForge site. I hope that some of you will add something to the game.

That's all for now :)

January game: RedLetterBox

2011-02-02T20:58:00.001+01:00

Phew! That was quite a rush now. But I did it, a new game is here. I call it "RedLetterBox in GreenSpace". Yea the name was invented in 2 seconds.

Play it HERE
Only the arrow keys are needed. Music credit goes to RushJet1.

As you can see it is a really simple game where you just move around to the exit. I just had to do something quick because the game is a Gi2D (Game in 2 Days). Total time spent on making the game 6-8 hours. And the game is made in.... ActionScript3. Yes that is right. I decided that I will learn AS3 this month and I did. And with it I learned FlashPunk from Chevy Ray. I must say that AS3 is a really good language and the FlashPunk engine is really nice. But I did had some frustrating moments with level handling because I didn't know the framework enough. But overall it is a great combination for someone who is starting out with game dev or moving from GameMaker.

One downside was that had to run a virtual Windows on my unix (Arch Linux) to be able to run FlashDevelop. It worked flawless on my computer but they really should make a native Unix port because it is a great IDE. I really needed some IDE because I was completely new to AS3 and FlashPunk and emacs just doesn't has any good as3 plugin.

For the next month or two I am planning something bigger so maybe February won't see a new game. I also have a lot of school projects to finish in February so development could go down a little on my priority list. But I hope that something good will come out eventually.

Thanks for playing the game and reading my blog. Bye for today.

A year in review: 2010

2011-01-02T16:42:00.003+01:00

First of all, I wish everyone a happy and successful new year. A new year has came and I decided to post a short review of it, mainly about my game development in 2010.

When I look at my posts and the release dates it is clear that I only released 3 games this year. JAHP the only bigger game, E.T. GO HOME NOT - a 4 hour experiment and Mr. Blocky - my first LD entry. All together I am disappointed. I also made a AI showoff game for someone and got paid, but that doesn't really count.

The main struggle was that I was in some kind of creativity stop. In 2008 and 2009 I was learning how to make games and I also made some clones, so it wasn't hard to make something. But now that I make games that are completely my own it is hard to come up with something interesting. Currently I have 2 projects stat are at a complete stop because I just don't feel that they will make something interesting to play. I will probably never finish those 2 games. The other big struggle for me is that... I can't make graphics. I such at drawing and I clearly can't make any kind of animation. The best of my art can be seen in "Me and my shadow". So I clearly have to change the art style I am going to work with in the future. More vector style and more really simple art, because I can't really manage much more than that.

I also decided to start making more games overall. I will try to go with the "One game every month" thing. Petri Purho had a similar method of developing games and now I will try to do the same thing. The deadline for every game will be the 30th/31st of each month, and there will be a timer on top of my blog and on my phone to remind myself.

I hope that I will make more interesting games in the future, that will make me forget about the year 2010 that was a total letdown for me.

Wish me luck. I also recommend following me on Twitter because I post there what I am currently doing in game dev, this blog is only for mayor things.

School is back, totally!

2010-10-02T12:47:00.001+02:00

I thought that I should write something on my blog again, because there is really some lack of information here.

As all of you may know school has started one month ago. Yep the old time sucking "friend" has come back. But this year there is a big difference. This year we actually do interesting computer related stuff like programming, databases (which I never really liked, but hey), in-depth networking in Linux (interesting stuff here) and we are going to have some web building with php. We also get "a lot" of homework at these classes. "A lot" in the meaning from last years nothing. I really like the programming exercises because I can train some older lessons that I nowadays don't really use a lot. But all of this may be an overkill for my schoolmates because we haven't done any programming last year... well just a little bit but it's not worth mentioning. Well, this year is going to be interesting.

Now to some game development. First I have to say that I am disappointed because I didn't made anything in the holidays no matter how much I was saying that I will. Only JAHP was completed but that was an old project. I really hope that I will get something started but I won't promise anything. I think I am in some kind of total creativity stop and laziness attack for quite some time now.

Some other info: I quit Facebook. That thing drains too much time and I really can't stand all the posting everyone does how he is going to go on a toilet.... So the only thing left is Twitter, which I recommend to check more because I post more current info on what I am doing. Post on the blog are only for bigger things.

And I also made a new new site. Something totally not made by me. But flavors.me just had a nice feel so I made something in 5 minutes. Here it is: site

Well that is all for now. I need to post some pictures here to make the blog more interesting.

Regards

I now have a "site"

2010-09-21T18:49:00.002+02:00

Hello there. A small update here, I made a website. A portofolio website to be precise. You know, a really simple site with some description about me and al the games I have done till now... and yea link to this blog.

I made the site using Google Sites builder. The site is also hosted there. I could have tried some html but I don't really mind. All of the "art" on the site is done by me.

Here is the link: https://sites.google.com/site/lukamakesgames/

I won't use a domain for the site, because I will only have it in some links so that people don't get directly redirected here to my blog where I write about how lazy I am :D

I hope I will release something soon, and for thoose 11 games I promies till end of September... well, you could say that I won't make it, TOTALY. But I hope that I make atleast someting.

Some info and...

2010-08-19T15:01:00.002+02:00

LAN party this weekend. I just got the info yesterday, and if you don't know LD is also this weekend. To be more precise it starts and ends the same time as the LAN party. So IDK how this LD game will be BUT I will make something for the competition. It will be done between breaks but I am confident that I can get something done, somehow. I will also record the whole weekend, so you will be able to watch a timelapse of me playing games 80% of the time.

Oh yea, I am back from vacations :D

I was planing a Snake remake with more fun gameplay for this week but I don't know if I will make it till tomorrow. That means that I will move it to the next week and this weeks game will be whatever comes out of LD.

I hope you don't mind that.

I am also buying an Android phone (LG Optimus/Swift). I took a look on how to develop stuff for that platform using the NDK. I hope I will be able to make something for the phone.

That's all for this week. I will post something after the weekend.

Bye

JAHP - released

2010-08-06T19:16:00.004+02:00

And the game released this Friday is: JAHP!

Yes the game I was working on way back. I have chosen to complete it, and here it is.

JAHP is a "short" hard platformer game. I made it because I like games like (Super) Meat Boy, Jumper series and F(l)ail.

I recommend reading the README before playing. Use A,W,D to move and space as "enter". The game gets really really hard and I don't think someone will take his time to complete it. There are 32 levels to play through and 3 medals per level. The medals don't do anything, it's just to compare your time with mine. I played through all the levels many times, all are beatable.

Made in C++ using OpenGL, SDL and Fmod. The game could be much more better but I am not a level designer so this is all I was able to make :D

I hope you like my new game, leave feedback.

DOWNLOAD

///////Some info for next week:

I am going on vecations tomorrow for a week, so no game next Friday. But I will probably came up with something at the beach.

Have a nice day.

Game 1/11 Lost Pogo Rider

2010-07-30T17:32:00.002+02:00

Hello there. Much time has passed since the last post. Oh well. I must say, that I will probably stop with these video logs, because they aren't really that good on interesting. But I know that we all like timelapses, so I will make timelapses. I also said that I will make games in the holidays and so I decided to make 11 games. That is for every week a game. I will have to squeeze some games in like this one because I roughly have to make 2 games a week from now. But I will make it.... probably till end of September :D

So a game a week is officialy started. A week counts from Saturday till Friday. That is also why I made this GID today. I won't upload it now, because it is really... uninteresting but it was something to practice programming in Emacs and Linux.

Here is the timelapse video. HD on Youtube recommended.

Don't worry, this in the only game that I won't upload... I hope :D

Bye

Red's Game Development Episode 3

2010-06-19T19:02:00.003+02:00

Woot. I made it in 1 day. I can't believe it. But yea it is kinda ok. I hope that you will like it even if I lack all the professionality.

YouTube has better quality.

Thanks for watching.

Bye.

What happened to this place, and myself!

2010-06-18T21:22:00.002+02:00

A good day to you all. Specially for those that have been following (maybe) this blog even if it seamed dead. But I am not dead, and nether is my with to make games. And as the school was nearing its end, the wish in me, that I should start making games again, rose and rose. And here I am.

I hope I will be able to bring this blog back to a normal game-making shape. I just checked some older posts, and there were too many "Sry, I had no time", "Apologize..." post where I was just whining about my laziness.

Now some current info. I have switched to Linux a month ago (maybe two). To be more precise, to Ubuntu. I am very happy with this OS. It works at a speed of light and is super nice to use. It is simple amazing. At the start I was afraid how I would move to it but after some time everything works. All the game making stuff too.

I also didn't totally forget game development it these 2 months. I made a game. But it was a paid project for someone and because I sold the game to him (including source), I can't post it here. But the game brought be really close to AI, pathfinding and other. Yea a PAID project, I am really happy. And yea it was on Freelancer.

The last 2 days, I have been trying to get YouTube to "accept" my video. So after a long time with "trial and error" I successfully uploaded a video that was processed and worked. Big thanks for ffmpeg to record my screen and Kdenlive to then make the video "compatible" with YouTube. I think that the quality suffered just a little little bit, but I just can't get a better quality to work. If some Linux user has an idea what codec to use and how to make it work (some tut or something) then I will be very happy. That means that a new video episode will come out. I still didn't record it but as I said it will be about the tools I use to make games. I hope you will like it (deadline is this weekend... I hope as always).

This is all I have to say. I hope that you will forgive me for this long pause but maybe you can understand what school can do to your motivation and creativity. I hope for good games in this holidays and I also have to finish JAHP and the 3D game that I worked on (I don't even know if I mentioned it on the blog. And I will change it to 2D because I just like it more).

Goodbye and have a good day.

Red's Game Development Episode 2

2010-04-11T17:23:00.002+02:00

Here it is. After such a long time period I made a new video. Watch and comment please.

I recommend going to YouTube and watch the HD version. I hope you like it.

I also started working on a new project. It is a simple 3D strategy. Nothing special just something to test 3D.

Bye

Apologise :D

2010-03-27T13:29:00.002+01:00

Hello there. I think I owe an apologize to myself and to all of you. One week ago I said I will start working again and that a new video episode is coming. But all I have been doing the whole week (more that that) is... nothing. I was just doing nothing, I'm such a lazy bastard. My Windows also crashed and I did a format (all my files are saved). Well there is one nice thing, I haven't played a game on my PC for more than a week, maybe 2. If I opened a game then it was for 5 minutes but nothing more. All my gaming has moved to the Wii. But I still waste most of the time doing nothing. So this time I won't promise anything but deep in me I feel my development heart is working again. :D I hope that by tomorrow the next episode is going to be up, or maybe on Monday, because YouTubes uploading is slow for me.

A video...

Today I discovered an amazing application for my PC. It is called Trillian. It is just amazing. I linked all my stuff together, MSN, Facebook, Gmail, Skype and even my old Twitter (which I will be using again from now on because it is so nice with Trillian). I have all my updates in a nice looking window on my right and it just saves time. All the updates on these sites are shown in nice notices so you never have to check those sites with you browser to see if there is something new. And did I say that Trillian is free. Go get it. Maybe I will say a little about it in the next video.

That is all for now. I have to update the projects on the right, the last 3 games aren't added.Bye

Back from reality... with a Wii

2010-03-14T20:44:00.002+01:00

Hello there after a very long time. A long time has past since I posted the video and longer since I posted something on my projects. Well here is a little update.

The cause for my lazyness is, that I bought a Wii on Tuesday and have been playing it since. It is awesome. I have been mostly playing Zelda: Twilight Princess and I have to say it is the best Zelda I player, and I played all of them. Except of the CD series. You know how it is when you buy a console, you play and play.

I am trying not to play too much and work on something but I just wasn't able :D But today I kinda got the wish back to work on something. So I looked a little into Wii programming. I found out that you can use SDL or you can use the native DevKit. But I thought a little about it and games without OpenGL with only SDL would be a step back for me. So if I will chose to start a little with Wii programming then I will use the native DevKit. But I prefer Windows programming because that way everyone can play my games. If I start doing something for wii with total different API then it would only be playable on Wii and some port on PC would not be possible. I will see, maybe some little test apps on Wii but I will stay on my OS.

That's for that. This weekend is a mini LD again with a focus on Retro. Very low resolution and 8 colors. Almost the same as the last. If I will participate then it will be a short GID, because I already made a game on that theme. Maybe I will make it on my own and not in the time of the miniLD, because I love ultra retro games with resolution of 100*100.

Now some info on my Video episodes. Again the Wii took all my time but episode 2 is very near. I will try to show all games till Squared Shooter but I don't want to go over the 10 minute limit on Youtube. If I would make footage for 18 minutes that would go but not 12 minutes like last time. Because then I have to split it in a strange way. People kinda liked the last episode (woah 35 views) so I will keep on making them.

Phew that was a long post. So have a nice day on the other side of the Earth and a good night here. I hope I will work again soon till then... I am of saving Hyrule.

Red's Game Development Episode 1

2010-03-05T17:36:00.002+01:00

Here it is. I didn't upload it yesterday because I didn't have any time. And today I uploaded it first, but then got a "video to long" massage. So I had to recreate the video and upload it. Here is a short info from the videos:

////////////////////////////

Episode 1:
My first video. Please excuse my lack of professionality and some not understandable sentences because of my nerves. I will prepare much more for the next episode, because I am a fluent English speaker but starts are always hard. I had to re voice the first part with the camera if you don't mind.

My introduction is in this episode and some info on how I started game development. Then I show my first 2 projects. Not much but I hope you like it. Thanks for watching. Critics wanted.

Links:
Blog: http://www.redgamedevblog.blogspot.com/
Lazy Foo's: http://lazyfoo.net/index.php
Anomalistic Technologies: http://anomtech.uuuq.com/Index.php

Software used:
Camtasia Studio
Fraps wasn't used in this episode to the gameplay recording are a little slow.

///////////////////

I really recommend to follow the links to YouTube and watch them in HD (720p). I am happy with the quality of the video. It was hard to make talk in a video for a first time even if I am a fluent English speaker. Big thanks if you watch it.

part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K7_nNFRKk0
part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VznAwTErBLo

Good bye.

Blog update

2010-03-03T20:59:00.002+01:00

Hello there. I know it has been some time since my last post. But here is the big announcement. Tomorrow I start doing a video blog. The videos will be posted here. I will do like a development videos. I hope the videos will be interesting in some way :D I will try to make the videos look professional. I will try at least. I think that the first few episodes will be more a presentation of my previous projects but I have to start somewhere. The videos will be in HD quality so yea.

I am currently not working on any project but I think I will start this working this week. I have been slacking a little these days, school and all.

I also found a nice project called Monolith. They have a nice development videos and I would like to create something in that style. Even if I don't work on 1 big project. Here is the link.

Good night for today.

LD over, school back

2010-02-23T18:30:00.003+01:00

Hello there. I made a game for the mini LD and also school is back. We write a test tomorrow and another one on Thursday (maybe even two). So I don't really have the will to make games now. But I made 3 games this holidays. To be precise in 5 days. Two GIDs, a day for break and a mini LD game in 2 days. Here are the links to E.T. GO HOME NOT and Mr. Blocky (mini LD game). I won't post the volleyball game because it isn't good.

E.T. GO HOME... NOT

A fun game to try and play :D

Mr. Blocky

A mixture of Tetris and platformer. Read the info in game. Also 0 is always mapped to ESCAPE and 1 is used to level up difficulty.

That is all for today.

First 2 GIDs

2010-02-18T22:19:00.002+01:00

Hello. The holidays are getting shorter and shorter and I still want more. Oh well. Well today I finnished another GID. I finished both games under 4 hours of work. With todays game I am really proud finishing it this fast.
Here is the picture of Volley Bolley

A multiplayer volleyball game. It is kinda fun to play with someone if you keyboard supports all that button mashing. I had fun playing it but it is realy realy simple. My first GID, made in 4 hours.
Here is the second game E.T. GO HOME... NOT

This game is for everyone who hates E.T. for Atari. But is is fun to play. E.T.s try to climb to the stars to get home and you have to stop them with bombs. Much pixelated blood included. It is also fun to destory the E.T.s at the bottom and then those on top fly and splat on the bottom. Made in 4 hours and sound effects are included.

I will post the download link when I will stop with making GIDs.

Bye for today.

Today it started

2010-02-16T21:38:00.002+01:00

Hello. No posts some time. Yea I know... I will start posting regular from tomorrow on. I have been playing Minecraft a lot these days. I am running my own server and there are a lot of people playing it. But today I stopped and started programming. And yea I got that feeling back. Fingers just fly and you can see progress in minutes. But I started a little late today. I hope that the "Code rush" will come back tomorrow. I plan on finishing todays GID and make another one tomorrow. I hope I will make it :D There is also a mini Ludumdare this weekend. Hmm... we will see. But keep in mind, a game made in a day can't be IDK what. But fun at least.

Hmm.. well I run the Minecraft server some days now. Here is a screenie of the world. It is made from scratch in these days.

So tomorrow it goes. And sorry for no posts these days.

Back from LAN

2010-02-10T20:40:00.003+01:00

Hello there. It is Wednesday. I came from LAN on Sunday night, then there was a national cultural day on Monday. I didn't work on the project from LAN. Today I played Minecraft all day.. again and I kinda don't feel like it. On Friday the 1 week holidays start and I wanted to finish the game till then. But that won't happen. Maybe I will put that big project on the side and work on small daylish games. I really want to try that. Thou I hope that JAHP will be finished also. I won't turn out a big game that I planned (because I probably won't include powers) but everything else is as I wanted it. Only the levels need to be done. But yeah. Tomorrow we write a test and then school free. I will go and play Minecraft now probably :D

That was some update because I didn't post a thing for some time. I look forward for those GIDs (game in a day) and I hope I will make it. Community ideas welcome :D

Bye

Pre LAN post

2010-02-05T15:57:00.004+01:00

Hello there. It is Friday (yes :D) and I will be starting to pack my computer for the LAN now. So here is a short post.

I completed the saving system, saving, medals and stuff just now. At this rate of development I will hit beta in less than 7 days and the game will be near release. But I won't release an alpha today. There are only 5 levels created (I worked on the core and not on the levels) and it isn't worth it to give an alpha with 5 levels. That means that the first time you will play the game is when I release the full version. Oh well. But if you really really really want to try the alpha, then mail me. I am going to create levels on the LAN in the free time so I hope there will be a lot of levels done. I have not internet there but at home I will check e-mail during the weekend on other computer.

A hard thing I did is text rendering with OpenGL. Why don't they have that in it? I tried like 5 different things written to render text but they didn't work. So after some hours of work I wrote my own. It renders a number. The font is really an image but it works. I am happy that I finally did this font thing.

(yay silver medal)

JAHP will go through some testing on the LAN. See you on Sunday.. probably.

Bye and a happy weekend.

JAHP alpha

2010-02-03T21:06:00.002+01:00

Hello. A lot of work has been done in the weekend. Sadly I didn't have more that a hour time on Monday and Tuesday because there were other things. But I worked today a little and finished the level selection screen that was left for the alpha. So... alpha is done. But I won't post it yet. I know some of you want to play it but as I reached alpha, I decided to add some more things and release the alpha. That are mainly more levels because now you don't have much to play, and medals for levels (how fast you complete them). Also some saving. I will do that tomorrow. So the alpha will be released tomorrow or maybe on Friday before I go on a LAN party. Yea we got a LAN party this weekend.

Enough talk, here are the pictures:

The menu. I kinda like it. Made in paint.

Playing a level. As you can see the graphics got changes, the player and stuff. Particles are added. This is the final gfx, maybe some other background but I like this one.

The level editor. It still needs a some user friendliness but it works as needed.

Hmm JAHP. :D I just named it that way. It stands for "Just a hard platformer" but maybe you can make something more juicy out of JAHP.

So alpha is near and the fun trailer will also be started after alpha.

I hope you like it and good night.

Project update #3

2010-01-30T21:40:00.002+01:00

Here is the update for today that I promised. First here is the sticky note where I have the stuff till alpha listed:

(for bigger image click on it)

Today I worked almost 4.5 hours on the game. I implemented FMOD but because of a bad tutorial I lost like 40 minutes figuring something out until I went to check out the documentation of FMOD. It is really good written. Players sound effects are in and 1 song. Today I also did the game states. Till now everything was in main(). Today with the power of inheritance and polymorphism I created the game state thingie. I haven't done this in the last project :D. All the fixes till now were done, level exits are in (still need some graphics), level changing works... Don't know what took me that long I think FMOD took more that 2 hours. I also started on some levels. Some beginning ones where you only need to jump and move with some practice for that.

I hope I won't start making too hard levels too soon. :D

Tomorrow will be more graphical things. I have to make a menu, some level selection screen, some gfx for blocks, get some kind of a background and I will add particle effect (woot).

I found out that when you die and the level is reloaded that the process takes up 0.050 Kbyts (or KB.. dunno) more memory. I will look into it but I don't think it is such a big problem because the game later releases that memory. Dunno.

Alpha is near and when it is in a good state more features will be started to being added.

It is late now, so good night people.

Delay #1

2010-01-29T20:25:00.002+01:00

Hello there. I haven't posted for some days now. I was sick and still am. I have some infection of throat (I don't know how you say that in English). I am sick since Tuesday. I also had some other problems and my head also didn't want to kinda work on the project. I wanted to get over the alpha stage this week but sickness got into my plans. I will start working on the project tomorrow. Some of the things that I think need to be done to reach the alpha stage: some pile of polishes that I have written down, lame-o menu and level selection, some 10+ levels, basic sounds effects maybe some music added. After that is done the game will hit the beta development phase.

Now for some more gaming news. In these days I took myself the time and played some indie games that I tried but didn't put enough time into them.

RunMan: Race Around the World

I completed it. I have to say it is really fun and fast. A lot of love has been put into it. I wish todays Sonic games would be as good as this. I recommend this one.

Dungeons of Fayte

A game that came out of the Assemblee compo at TIGsource. It is great because and a 4 players coop is hell fun. I completed it with my brother. If you have someone around to play with, try this.

Picture on the link. (The links are in the titles)

Spectre

A game from this years IGF student category. It is not much of a gameplay but the storytelling is amazing and gives me that Fahrenheit feeling.

An Untitled Story

One word, epic. The game is humongous and I lost many hours in it and probably didn't even get over the half of the game. Really a gem that I played in the past and played it again this days. Give it a go. I also suggest a gamepad with a long cable and some comfortable chair. Really one of the best games.

There are a lot Indie games I played but you probably know them and I won't list them here.

I hope I will give you more updates on the project tomorrow.

Night

Some update #2

2010-01-24T21:50:00.002+01:00

Yea I think it is #2 of the name "Some update". I am currently listening to the 1UP broadcast or whatever. It is 2 hours long and I like it. I don't have a link but google for it. The maker of Braid is in it.

I survived yesterdays skiing. It was really nice. My friend took a picture of me trying to do some stuff and when I will get it I will post it. I couldn't get it today. :D

I did some work today on the project. Mainly some small but seeable tweaks to the graphics. I kinda like the look now I only need to get some backgrounds. I won't post a picture of it now. Tomorrow when I add a player spawning block in the level editor and a end of the level the game will be in an.... hmm... 0.5 version.. is that alpha or beta.. dunno. And some level editors will be good :D. I will make the main levels but the levels that other people will create will be put in the bonus stuff even in the main levels. Ok some user friendliness in the level editor has to be done :D. I will also make a "trailer" for the game to test my video editing skills again. I also need to make some tutorial levels with text to get the player into it.

That is all for now. Tomorrow is school ( hellish monday ) and here is a picture of me writing a blog post with the sticky notes included.

We go skiing

2010-01-22T22:08:00.002+01:00

Hello there. Another week passed. It is friday night and I will go sleep soon because we go skiing tomorrow. The whole day. So I won't post any updates and logicaly won't work on the project. Maybe if some interesting pictures come out tomorrow I will post it :D I am not really good at skiing so I hope I won't kill myself. Oh well.

I made progress on the game. The level editor is really nice to work with and core gameplay is smooth and as I want it to be. I made a little challenging level for me and like played it over 15 minutes. It is hard but addicting... you just want to make that jump right :D. I really like when I get this feeling. More types of blocks were added and still more will be. You cannot see them on the picture thou because they are the same color.

I hope you like it. Kinda. IDK about the gfx. More updates on sunday.

Bye.

Moving blocks scratched

2010-01-20T21:12:00.002+01:00

Hello. Bad news today. I scratched moving blocks in the game. Yea that is right. I had to make a decision. To waste like 5-10 more hours on them or delete them. I deleted all the code for them. So that means I threw away all todays work including like 5 hours of work from other days. That much because most of the fixing and all was related to the moving blocks. I also don't think that they are that important.

As this big problem is out of the way I can start working on much more content. Different types of blocks, more gameplay mechanics and stuff. I will really make this game the best till now. Secrets included :P

I work a lot on the game but I am kinda angry I had to delete much of hard work. But that is life. And moving platforms are a pain in the ass. Well they worked most of the time but you couldn't use them close to other blocks because of some conflicts.

I hope that great updates are coming tomorrow.

Evil Visual Studio and stupid me

2010-01-19T21:04:00.002+01:00

A really quick post because I am totally nerved now. Today I was just simply working on the project suddenly a error got up. And I couldn't get my game to running again. It was an error I didn't see before (in the debugging output) but the game ran but it was a blank screen. So I was 100% sure that it really is a loading libraries error. After 1 hour of nerves breaking and puzzling searching the net for solution I found out that there is an programming error. The game gut stuck in a never ending loop on the level loading that I totaly didn't expect. I am just so angry......

Oh well. I did do some things at least.

Stupid VS for showing me an not important error just in the same time I (really don't know how) made a programming error, and all made me think it is a VS problem. Well the coding error was, that it reads a level file till the end. But somehow it gets stuck if the level file is empty. WTF..

Good night. More updates tomorrow.

Monday bloody monday :D

2010-01-18T21:31:00.002+01:00

Little quick post today. First I didn't do anything on the project. Maybe I will play a little and make some pixelated graphics. I think I will go with that style. I hope I won't make it worse. Today I came home at 4.30 PM, it was 5.30 PM when I got myself together :P. I had volleyball at 7 PM till 8 PM so I just wasn't in the mood today. But tomorrow is a long programming day. I made a big list of stuff I will add and how the level editor will work. I also made sketches on the paper. I would post it here now but I don't have a scanner in my arms reach now. I will post that tomorrow.

So todays point of interest.

Microsofts Kodu game lab. I downloaded it and player a little with it and it seams you can make simple but kinda good games with this new "programming" language. It is a visual type but still. It is for those that are starting with game dev. It is very simple to use and main usage is for younger people but maybe some talent can make space invaders out of it.

Presentation video:

I recommend it to any game dev to play a little with it. It is fun but I find it a little limitating. But I will play with it tomorrow a bit more.

LINK

Bye for today.

Project update #1

2010-01-17T21:31:00.003+01:00

So here is the big project update. I sadly didn't post it yesterday but I took myself a lot of time to change the template (it isn't as easy as it sounds) and I counted that as an daily post :D I hope you like the it. It has only the simplest things needed not as the previous which had too many not needed stuff. I like this one 100x more.

( I like it so much I will post a picture of it :D)

Now about the project.

As I didn't post a picture of the game yet this is the first thing to do.

First thing to say is the graphics. The blocks are different colors so it was simpler for me to recognize them. The player need his arms also. Also a nice background must be made. I still don't know if I will stay with something like this or remake all the graphics. So I need some kind of feedback. I am not really got at gfx but if people won't like it I have a problem.

Not what is done on the gameplay. I took a lot of time to make the platforming as smooth as possible. Todays I was working with tweaks and bug fixes with it for about 2 hours. Because I constantly discover thing that could be better. But mainly bugs like going through a block at an angle. But that is all fixed now. The game controls mainly as I want to. Maybe I will make the movement a little slower because it is really hard to do dome movements at this speed. But the main thing is that the game is hard because the player can't make it and not because it is made badly.

Then we have the block. Normal blue blocks. The red ones are spiked one and the green ones are moving (you cannot see that on the image). But they work perfectly. As you can see there are glows out of the blocks. That is where you ran (touched them). I will probably use this, so you will gain slow motion power when moving where you still haven't. The level editor also works, as does the saving and loading of different levels. I also made an algorithm that checks if the block has a neighbour, so it doesn't put spikes or bounding line there. There are still a few easy types of block to be made: destroying, switching and some more. I will make it so that when you connect a moving block with other, all of them get the moving attribute. That way you can make different moving structures.

A lot is done till now and a lot more has to be done. But the progress is kinda good. I mainly want a feedback what you thing about all this.

Hmm these post take a long time to write. This was now like 40 minutes :D.

Good bye for now. Also check the new images on my flickr (link on the left) that I didn't post here.

Images #1

2010-01-15T19:16:00.006+01:00

Click on them to see them big time in the all sizes tab :D

I won't break my promise [Update]

2010-01-14T21:54:00.004+01:00

Here is the update of my yesterdays post. For the recap I posted it because I will keep up the at least 1 post a day.

So today I did some progress. It isn't really late now but I am going out with friends. Because of that I didn't finish 2 things on my checklist for today (hey it is friday night). But instead of that I fixed some really weird bugs I discovered.

Today I made a Flickr account. That means high quality images. Yessss. All the pictures go on the blog will be there. I also opened a category called programming, where I already posted 3 pictures about working on the project. I think I will do that daily because it is so simple. I hope you will like the pictures but warning they are about programming soooo. But I think that many of you will be interested. I will be posting the images with the flickr blog posting thingie.

I will now post the images from flickr. A more detailed project update coming tomorrow.

Bye

Happy new year?

2010-01-13T20:47:00.003+01:00

Hello there. First of all happy new year to everyone. I know I am late. I also know that I didn't post anything on the blog since the 23th. That is kinda sad, considering back in the days I made posts more frequently. I will try to change that now (kinda new year promise), I also have to start working more on game developing. I need to put a notifier on my desktop so I will post every day.

About the new project. Well I started on it all the platforming works. I will scratch the shooting part of the game because it kinda does not go together with this style of plaformer. I also hope it won't be to Meat boy-ish. But many developers said: if you remake something, then add something in it so it will be totally different. But I think that the game isn't like Meat boy it only has similar platforming gameplay.

Little what works.

-platforming ( yay wall slide and jump )

- sloooow motion, I like it

- and some eye candy

I start further work on it tomorrow. The last 3 days (and I really mean it) I have been working on something for school but now I done everything and have like 2 weeks of chilling. Enough time to finish this. I start working on advanced platforms tomorrow: spiked, moving, eee oscilating and a level editor. I won't post a screen because the graphics look strange, I have to change them a little but don't expect more from me than lost of cubes and simple stuff.

Here is a little vector art I did for the game (main character)... not named yet :D

(that is not slime at the bottom.. it is a badly drawn light)

I will post some screens of the game tomorrow.

Bye

Some update

2009-12-23T10:02:00.003+01:00

Hello there. It is almost christmas. I wrote the last test yesterday and now the holidays came. I still should go to school these 2 days but I am sick again. Oh well... I play really little games these days from the release. I don't know why but I kinda stick to development, even if only in my head. So I made a good idea for the next project.

This project is going to be a longer one probably. A big project, probably my biggest. I think it is time that I make something really polished and all. I just hope I will get through with the graphics which are my weak point. Well I think some super cool animated detailed cubes will also work. I will try to make my best. I will also learn FMOD. Some better sound output is needed. Yea I will even add sound and all. It will really be a big game and I think it will be very fun to play. I really hope I will finish it. What it will be. For now I can say a 2D platform action shooter. I will try to make the platforming quick like something in Meat Boy but with slow motion shooting. Maybe it sound a little weird :D

I have played to much Meat boy these days :D I found a great show I think every indie should watch. Bytejacker.

I want thissssss :D

Bye for now.

Fall Climber

2009-12-12T12:52:00.005+01:00

Here is my newest "game". I just called it Fall Climber. I said the theme is fall so yea. I is a really really simple game that can be used as a screensaver. So I just call it a screensaver game. But it is also a game.

Picture:

(... why is the image quality bad? ... )

The main objective is to gather points with the line. The leafs will explode into points and you gather them. The points are showed in the bottom. I suggest to read the README ( or BERIME if you are Slovene).

Link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?myrlntnmmmm

The game was made in 10 hours but I will more say 8 because there was a lot of problem solving in VS ( which I solved and it is a stupid thing ).

You need OpenGL support or else you won't see a darn thing ( only quads ).

Hope you like it even if it is that simple.

I will now start working more on games and also post more. I hope. But I really got the programming "force" back.

Sickness attack

2009-11-14T19:08:00.003+01:00

Hello there. I have been sick from Wednesday till Friday. So I haven't worked on the game. I was throwing up and wasn't able to do more that lying on the bed. OK not of Friday, I was in a better shape then. But I had to make an excuse for not making the game. I planed to release it this weekend but I lost some days back then. I haven't worked today ether. I really have to find a way to get myself to work. I WILL TRY to work on the game tomorrow. Maybe even finish it. I know that I can complete it in around 5-6 hours. But you know how I am. I was more productive in the past.

I also have to say that MW2 is a great game. :D

If someone has an idea why textures aren't blited when I am debugging an game (they are when I run them in their directory), then help me out.

I just remembered and older game from Petri Purho. Try it out if you didn't.

http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/tagd

Fast little post

2009-11-10T21:20:00.003+01:00

Hello there. This will be a quick update. I will post longer tomorrow. Sadly I didn't made the 2 games in the vacations but what did you expect after that lazyness attack. But I started working again. It is going really nice till now. All the main swinging action works.

Screen:

Really simple graphics for now. The only problem till now is, the leafs are textured when I run the game in its directory. But when I am using the debugger in VS then they are drawn as rectangles. Don't know why. I want to see the textured when debugging. Total work time on project: eeeee ~3 hours. I hope it will be done quickly.

Also a video I made - for CoD fans. HD on YouTube.

Good night.

Holidays are here...

2009-10-21T19:47:00.002+02:00

Hello there. So much about my regular posting :D. But lets leave that beside. School is going very well and I have been able to get many grades. There is only 1 more test tomorrow. English... I hope it will go good. After that HOLIDAYS!!! Well Is till have to go to school on friday but we have computer practice all day and that is easy. Holidays are from 23th - 31th of october. 1 week and 2 weekends. I also don't have to learn for anything because I did many stuff already. Plenty of time to make games. The weather is also perfect for it ( cloudy and cold, fast wind, no sun ).

For the current project. Well.... there has been stuff in school. So no time. I also don't really like the overall gameplay of the project that I planed. But I will rethink about the idea tomorrow and start working on it. It will be a rapid game. Like 3-4 days :D Yea I will try. And a another game in the holidays. So 2 games in the next 2 weeks.

No more excuses on not working on it. Tomorrow I start.

I would also like to thank for the support. Some people have contacted me in the last week about game programming and that really is a morale boost for me.

Bye. Off to learn english :D

A little delay

2009-10-13T20:53:00.003+02:00

Like always. What did you expect. But it isn't such a big thing. It is only that this week is a little full with school stuff and grading. A looot of things. So it kinda sucks the will out of you to work on something and do stuff for school. So I rather play games. But I will start working on it before the weekend. Probably friday. Man I really have to get back to programming, I play too much games... instead of making them. The funny thing is: it is more fun to make games, but it is hard to get yourself starting creating one.

Oh yea forgot how I said I will " post more ".... hmm will try to start that.

Good night.

Got a theme and an idea

2009-10-07T21:34:00.003+02:00

Hello there. The "tomorrow" has came. Even if 1 week later ( or more? ). I got some themes here and also on IRC. But I haven't really got an idea out of it. I didn't even try really. Mannnn I am lame and lazy. the school has also got some effects on this. But it goes well till now. I also changed my thinking about plain C ( ANSI C ). It is very similar to C++ but with some other stuff. I don't like the goto stuff. Doesn't seam right to me. Ok lets forget this.

Today I finished earlier with school and I had 1 hour time to sit at the train station and wait for the train. So I tried ( wow ) to get and idea. And it came really quickly, you just have to try. It has to do with current year period... fall. Yes, fall. It will be an "mouse-clicking action platformer". Not so much of a platformer but still. Many circular math included, I hope i won't have to do as much researching as last time. I will try to start this weekend and maybe even make it in 7 days.

(The game has to do with leaves) :D

Bye people. I will try to start posting more stuff.

Gimme themes

2009-09-30T20:31:00.003+02:00

Hello there. I have really pushed game developing away. I said that I will do a game till the end of month but I didn't. Not I need your help. I am going to do a theme game. Something like from LudumDare. But it won't be done in 48 hours :D. I just don't want to think about a game idea so I want to get some and make a game on it. You know the drill :D

School is going fine till now. But it gets repetitive waking up every day at 5 AM and soooo onnnn.

Give me some themes NOW

I will post tomorrow when I get some idea :D

I am back... again

2009-09-17T20:08:00.003+02:00

Hello there. Long time no post. So I am making this one so that people won't ask me on facebook if I died :D

So some news.....
Hmm where to start. School is always the same. We got new squedual. It is a little better but I think that I will change again. Don't know if it will be good or bad.

I think I had this new flu. I was really sick for some days and felt really bad. But I think I survived it.

Today was the first day in this school that we wrote some code into our books. It was some plain C just so that we see how this looks. We will be learning c++. But as far I saw this simple C I don't like it. It has some weird stuff in it.

No new project has started... I still don't know what to make. I really have to get an idea.

That is all for now. Here you have some nice G'nR videos :D

Bye for now :D

School school school

2009-09-08T19:53:00.003+02:00

Hello there. It is the 8 of september and school has started already some days ago. We really have a "ugly" squedual. I come home at 4.30 PM almost every day. But we are going to get a new one next week so I will come home at 3 PM more days. It is really hard to wake up at 5 AM and be at school till 3 PM and then drive 1.5 hours too home. The grading will also start. That means learning. I have more career specific classes this year but history, native language and maybe some other thing will be a problem. I will have to learn more for those.

For the game developing part I am finding a good idea what to make. I won't participate in this months experimentalgameplay theme. It is "Failure". I don't have anything interesting for that. Maybe I will get an idea in school. Well probably not :D But I am planning to make a game this month. I try to keep the a game in a month thing ( in a 7 day time limit ). But I would rather like a game a week.

random pic.

Bye.

Squared Shooter

2009-08-31T19:28:00.003+02:00

I am goint to make this as a first post of the game because this is going on the tabs on the left.

So I finaly finished the current project. I made it for the experimentalgameplay where the theme was "bare minimum". So I decided to use only rectangles for graphics. Total work time on the project is 20 hours. Somewhere 12 hours are normal stuff and 8 hours are searching the web for many mathematical formulas. Yea this project was hard. I had to do many advanced math for collision detection and all. But I made it.

Here is the screenie:

Download link.

As I said here is the timelapse video made with chronolapse.

Go to youtube to see HQ. I think then you can even read the code.

All together it was a good project. But the only problem is ( as I just checked experimentalgameplay ) and the made a post of all the games. Mine isn't included. That is because I could'n post a comment in the topic. Darn it. Oh well.

Game done

2009-08-29T17:49:00.003+02:00

Hello there. Long time no post from me. Well I have been working on the game and finished it :D In the 7 day deadline :D Wel the days werent consecutive but still. This project got me many problems ( headacke ) because of lot of math stuff ( i was searchin for functions on net and books for 2 days ) but now it is done.

I will make a longer post later, or tomorrow. Now here is a link. I also used the desktop capturing softwere that Petri used ( Chronological ) and made a video of the whole development time. Webcam included ( now you will actually see my face LOL ). I will post that later with the postmoterm.

http://www.mediafire.com/?5w2yeemwjrj

As you can see the gfx is bare minimum. I alredy posted it on experimentalgameplay but I don't see my comment. I tryed again but it said I alredy posted that. Maybe it needs some time to update.

Try it and give feedback :D

Welcome back

2009-08-19T22:12:00.005+02:00

Hello there. Well is has pased 1 week since the last post. Now it is time to write something. It was verry nice on vecations. I was just laying on the beach all day and relaxing. I completly turned of my brain for 4 days. I sadly don't have any intersting pictures ( i will check again tomorrow ), because we only have like 15 pictures totaly ( on a new digital camera that holds 600 pictures :P ). Well yea.

So the bad news is I didn't do anything on the project. Yea I know I said I will but I just didn't get to it. My brother was constantly bothering me every hour that he wants to play and it is realy hard to work on something 45 minutes then wait 1 hour and then continiue. You lose the will to do it. :S. But that is all about to change, because I ordered a new computer :D. And my brother will get my computer in his room. That means that I will have all the time on my own computer to work on it. A dream came true :D Noooo mooorrrreee bothering. You would have to be me to understand how hard is it to share a computer with a brother and you have to switch every hour. I will but the computer on friday. I will probably get it ready to work on it till the night. Also everything will be set for my brother so on Saturday everyone will have its own. If you want to know the specs: Intel® Core™2 Quad Q8400 2,66Ghz ( OMG ), 4 gb ram, 640 Gb HDD, and GeForce GTS 250 1GB. I won't go to specific into the motherboard and all but as you can see it is a nice machine. It looks like this ( on the site ):

Some quick update on the project. I will start working on the project on saturday. If I will get some hours together to work on it tomorrow then I will. I will try to complete it in 3 - 4 days. I hoped to make a another game till the end of august and maybe I will make it. I hope the games will be good for the experimental gameplay project.

Bye all and good night.

Another delay ( numereo 3 ) big delay :S

2009-08-10T17:25:00.004+02:00

Yea a big delay again.

But first the report. We had a LAN party till friday. Friday was a weird day and I didn't work on the game at all. On sunday we had family visitors from other country the whole day... sooo. There was other work today. A lot has to be done before we go to vecations ( on the see ). Yea that's right. On thursday morning we go on vecations to Croatia. And we come home late Sunday night. For the next 2 days. Well I just don't know if I should work on it. When I come home on sunday I will continiue work on monday. I am realy lazy :D. I wish I had some realy good phone so I could make pictures on the sea and write blog posts :D It would make it more interesting.

Bye for now.

Project delayed 2nd time.

2009-08-05T17:44:00.001+02:00

A realy quick one. Friends told me tha today is a LAN party. Till friday. So Project is delayed until saturday. Bye all.

Quick update

2009-08-04T21:18:00.004+02:00

Hello there. First some update on the project skedual. I started on the project on Sunday night. I was on a picnic so there wasn't much time. I mainly did the bacis framework and some player stuff that day. I had tuts and help opened the whole time, because is takes some time to get used to openGL state tipe of work. There is also many stuf you have to know. But I will get used to it.

I didn't do anything yesterday because I was on pool with friends from 7 AM to 9 PM. :D

Today was also a rather busy day. I slept a lot. I worked few hours on it throught the day. The big problem is that I have to share the computer with my brother. We switch every 1 hour and it is realy hard to work on something. I rather like it that I take some hours for the project and not to work on it for 45 minutes then go and do something else and then get back to work. It just doesn't work. I also wasn't home most of the day. The player movement is done and the rotation. I had some problems with angles because it's the first time I am working with angles and direction. But I managet to get a smooth movent. It is a acceleration time of movement so it takes some time to speed up and slow down. A picture of it:

Simple graphics huh. It will be only quads but I think it will have a nice look at the end. Experimental projects augusts there is "Bare minimum". Maybe the bare minimum of graphics in this game will be enough so I will maybe post it there. :D who knows.

I will try to get the game done till sunday ( in the 7 day deadline ). I WILL.

Everything normal

2009-07-31T18:30:00.002+02:00

Hello there. Well everything went good today. I called the shop and they said that I can go get the card back :D They said that they didn't find the number sooooo.... ok. But I think it was worth it. Instead of getting back my Geforce 8500gt I got a geforce 9500. A card that is twice as powerful. Lucky me :D.

I tryed the card and everything works fine now. OpenGL runs fine.

That means that I can start on the project. Well today I go on a BD party so I won't have time today. It is a little late. I wil lstart tomorrow but we have a picnic tomorrow and another one on sunday. Well. The game will be made in 7 days maximum that means I will work on it durring the week. Oh yeah. I go to the poll with friends on monday ( the whole day ) so I won't work that day.

Good bye.

Very big problem - project delayed

2009-07-30T18:35:00.003+02:00

Hello there. I am not in a good mood realy. But here is the problem. As I alredy posted, I moved to Windows 7. Everything works fine until I started the new project. The problem is: that for the current graphical card (radeon x550, my geforce 8500gt is on guarantie for like 3 - 4 weeks alredy), the drivers for windows 7, don't support OpenGL! They decided that they wont make drivers for Win 7 for so old cards. That means I have to wait for my card to be repaired. And it is realy taking long. It hasn't been a problem till now ( i don't play much games ) but now that I need it to be able to make games in openGL.... welll that is a whole new story. I will call the shop tomorrow and drangle a bit because they told me it will take 1 week ( funny huh ). But I don't want to install back Windows XP. But if it won't work with the new card, well then I will.

That is all for now. Maybe I will make a small SDL game in a day or two if I don't get the card to this weekend.

Funny picture.

Bye.

Blog update

2009-07-30T10:59:00.005+02:00

Hello everyone. As you can see I changed the template of the site. I think it look much nicer now. There are some un neded things like those "undefined" with the posts and I think that the followers tab doesn't work on Opera. It works with Mozilla. But I hope you like it.

Nothing else realy. Maybe a pic of my desktop:

Well it is a little low qualiti :D

Post ya :D

Computer upgrade

2009-07-29T22:48:00.002+02:00

Hello there. Today I did a software upgrade. I decided to install a Windows 7. After many years that I used Windows Xp, I decided that I should move to the newer version. So today I installed Windows 7. I'm testing it the whole day and it is working perfectly. I'm a surprised how well it works. Even on my really old computer.

But sadly I didn't work a thing of the new project. It's took me the whole day to install the programs back. I already installed Visual Studio, but I still need to setup SDL. I hope I'll be able to start on the project tomorrow. But don't think I didn't do anything. I wrote all the concept of the game on a paper. That means that all of the game play idea is already done. The graphics aren't really anything special but I hope the game play will be nice. I will probably post a scan of the concept tomorrow. I also studied some math functions so I'll be able to do some new things.

That's all for today, no pictures or anything.

And if you want to know I used the voice recognition software to write this post, no typing at all. That is really cool.

But. Good night.

Hello there

2009-07-25T20:00:00.003+02:00

Well hello there :D Long time no post. Yea almost 2 week have passed since the last post and somewhere 20 days since the last game. I realy need to start posting again at least. But a new project is also on the way.

Diffrent things have been happening these days but nothing realy interesting. I started on a new project before few days but I canceled it. Yep that's right. I didn't realy like the concept and the game was to much on graphics.

I will try to start on something tomorrow. I still need to get some idea. I have no clue what it will be. I will probably make a simple shot-em up with cubes:D Yea cubes :D Something like this:

The game si called CrytorYan and it is an impressive game made in only 6 hours. I also like the gameplay it is simple but it has something interesting in it :D Link.

I also though about a game where you jump into water. Well you do rotations and trick in the air. Something where you have to press the corosponding ( typo probably ) button. I will leave that idea for later. Also ExperimentalGameplay.com is going to annouce a new theme in the next weeks.

Cya. Good night :D

OpenGL feedback

2009-07-15T11:54:00.004+02:00

Hello there. So openGL is done. I learned most of the things I need to know. And what is my grade.... A+ :D Well lets get little into details.

I learned all the needed stuff in GL that in need. After that I did a little performance test:

Remember that when I use SDL and blit a 640x480 background it uses 50 - 60% of my CPU.

So I did the following in OpenGL. First a 3D cube is in the middle of the screen (screen is 800x600) that is textured with an image and rotates on many dirrections. Then the background is textured with a big image. Then there are many textured boxes (100x100) drawn on the screen, all textured). And the whole screen in rotating.

In the first test I created 50 boxes every frame and textured them with a 640x480 image. That means that a 100x100 place was filled with a 640x480 image. The CPU usage was from 2 - 10%.

(Open the image in new tab/window to see if fully).

Then I thought about it and figgured out that texturing a 100x100 rect with a 640x480 image isn't realy performance efficient and you don't get a better image. So I resized the image to 100x100 and then textured teh rects with it. But now I created 200 rects every frame. And what came out: 0% CPU ussage :D:D Yep thats great. :D

Conclusion: OpenGL is great. Now I need to get an idea for my next game :D

Bye

OpenGL time

2009-07-09T20:44:00.004+02:00

Hello there. I stopped posting again. Darn it :P Well I will try to fill in the holes. But lets forget that, new plan is here.

Yep I decided to move from SDL bliting to OpenGL. One of the main things about this is performance. Because in my current games 90% of the games CPU usage is blendigg with SDL. IIf I create a game and use a background to blit and then everything else, then the game uses somewhere 60 - 70% of my CPU ( at 60 FPS ). Yea it is true that I have a AMD 64 3000+ 1.8Ghz CPU but still. That is a lot. So that is one thing.

Next. With OpenGL I have the option of 3D. I don't play to start making 3d games ( to much work, math and stuff ) and at the end nothing interesting would come out. So 2D FTW. But I will be able to use 3D features with 2D images and so on. The next thing is rotation, morphing and these stuff with images ( textures in future ). I realy need to learn rotating images and so. So it will be more interesting.

Soo this is cleared. I will probably get through the basic tuts in a day or 2 with some example programs.

Next thing Experimental gameplay Project is back. After some years ( i think ). That gives me an additional "morale" boost to make games in 7 days. The theme June was nonexperimental shooters. Now I am waiting for the july theme and start working on a game :D Go and pay the a visit. Here.

Hmm long post. But I will include a fast "how i did the circle detection " in my last game.

Picture first: ( fast paint )

So let me try to explain this. The game created red particles as an effect when you drew the line. In reality bigger collision boxes were created when you moved a certain amount of pixels. When you made a circle arround something and the last collision box collided with one of the first ones the game though that you made a circle. So it created a collision box by the folowing pattern:

The x from the collision box that was on the far left became the X of the big collision box.

The y ..................................... far top .... bla bla bla

You know what I mean.

It realy isn't anything special and the system can easily be abused ( by drawing a diagonal line and then back ), but it worked nice.

Bye for now :D

Crazy Coin Skydiver

2009-07-06T19:30:00.005+02:00

Hello there. Here it is. Crazy coin skydiver. I made up the name in 5 second when I was making the menu :D. So what it is. It is a arcade style short little fun??.. game.

All I can say is, that it nice to play when you have nothing else to do. Easy to play ( I also hope to understand ) but hard to master :D Well not really. Try to get a high score. :P

Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?mte5w2m0okz

Picture of gameplay:

Controls:

Arrow keys to move.

Hold "A" to draw.

Draw a circle around the coin to collect it ( it needs to be some kind of circle ). The game will automaticly detect if you made it :D

Draw a line ( horizontal / vertical ) and then release "A" to attack. The line will explode the enemy.

Don't touch the enemyes ( blue guys ) :D

That is all I have to say.

Link again: http://www.mediafire.com/?mte5w2m0okz

Bye

Long time no post

2009-07-05T21:04:00.003+02:00

Hello everyone. I havent posted anything for 1 week. But I have to tell you I didn't work that hard so I couldn't post anything. But I have worked on it fairly enough, so that all the gameplay is done. But I wasn't home today the whole day ( family visit ) so I couldn't finnish the game. I will do that tomorrow. I also have to add sound, but that isn't hard.

The game is preaty simple, some fast arcade style gameplay with lots of particles effects. I will make a simple menu with instrucions screen. And I also have to programm the loosing part. :P Damn I realy could have completed the game till friday, but I was realy lazy :P. I should try to complete the game as fast as I can and then take the week of. Just like jayenkai ( sorry if I spelled it wrong ). Yep that means I will still be doing a week a game. I will not pull myself together and do this things right.

So my game comes tomorrow. Don't expect anything great, but I think is a nice little time waster, just like watching paint dry :D

lol at the picture :D

Project start

2009-06-30T20:39:00.004+02:00

Hello everyone. I didn't post anything for a long time. That is because the thing I had last week. I was on a lan party from wednesday to sunday night. 5 days without internet. It was realy nice. So yesterday I started with the project. As I said. And this time I will do it in 1 week. A lot of progress has been done the last 2 days.

First some screenies:

Here I am drawing a circle with the "flare" I kinda like the effect.

Here you can see the "flare circle" collision box. When you draw a circle arround something to pick it up. A collision box is created withing the circle. I just made it visible so it is easier to work with it while programming. Also the amout of particles is so big because I was just drawing a lot of zigzag lines on the whole screen.

Here you can see the line attack. I made a horizontal line and IDK what started to fly up and down. You see that the line isn't realy straigh, that's because everything moves up. Like it is falling from the sky and you are faster that it.

As you can see many things have been done. Manly the important things. The gfx are kind edgy but I kinda like it when everything moves. I will maybe change the player sprite and the coin sprite is .... mario like... oh well :P

Here is what is done:

- Player movement

- Flare drawing

- Circle and line detection including everything included to this feature

- Particle effects

- Coint and picking up coins

- ....... more stuff I dont remember

I need to start on the combo system tomorrow. There is a lot of work on it so I hope it will be good.

Bye for now.

Official start of vacations

2009-06-22T11:21:00.004+02:00

Hello. It is monday and it's 11 AM. Outside it is raining and it is just a perfect day to do something on the computer. I played games for the last 2 weeks and I think I have enough. I completed Diablo 2 on 2 difficulities, played many PSX games, reinstalled Starcraft and many COD... and many thing between. Now it is going to be time to start working on developing. But the first week is alredy full. Ok today I got some time, tomorrow someone needs help but I will probably find some time. Then on wednesday I have to go to school to get my "certificate" and if the weather will be nice we go camping. Then on friday when I come home, there is a LAN party. The party is from wednesday to sunday, but I am camping for 2 days.

As you can see I have little time this week. But I want to complete the game in 1 week. So I can't start on it today because I can't work on it the whole week. Yep that means that I will start next week. I have nothing else in plan after this week so I will have plenty of time.

Blueberry garden came out last week. I sadly can't play it. I tryed the demo but the game just had an extreme lag on my 1 core computer. Maybe someday when I have a new computer I will play it.

Also Cactus released a new game. And he made it in 3 hours. It is amazing. I played it and loved it. It is just amazing what he makes. Everything is so nice. I also love the gfx. So simple but so great, I wish I could make something like that. Link.

That is all for today. Bye

Hello holidays!

2009-06-16T20:14:00.003+02:00

Good day everyone. I havent posted for some time. I have beed playing Diablo 2 a lot. I probably added many hours on my Xfire account. Well but that how it is. And Diablo is just a great game so you realy can't stop play it.

I realy can't wait for Diablo 3:

Now something about the project.

First: start date... it isn't going to be tomorrow. Well I think it won't. The holidays are here so I will have enoug time. I will just take the first some days for other things.

Now for some basic info about the game. I still don't have a name for it, so the project name in VS is Skydiver. I will think about the name later. It will be a arcade style game. The gfx are realy retro ( big pixels and simple ). You fall from the sky and try to get the highscore. You get point by collecting things and "destroying" other skydivers. I will probably add many particle effects :D. The interestinh thing is, that for all the actions, you use a "movement patter dettection". Weird name. Basicly when you want, you draw a line with your flare. Then you make a circle arround something to collect it or make a line, that explodes.

Quick picture drawn in paint in 1 minute:

(don't laugh)

This is all I have to say. I will post something tomorrow. Bye.

Project delayed

2009-06-12T19:44:00.003+02:00

Hello everyone. After all these days of no post I have to dissapoint you. I will move the project. This is because I only worked somewhere 3 hours on the project he whole week. Nothing is realy done, only the fraimwork and some little things. I just didn't work on it. The main cause for this is Diablo 2. :P I started with some freinds playing it from start again and well.... I play it too much. Nothing is realy done.

Now the good news.

I only have 2 more days of school. That is monday and tuesday. I took wednesday, thursday and friday free because I had left school free days. Then I go get my (how is it called??) end year certificate... or whatever... I don't know how it is called. But the thing is that I wll start with the project in these free days. The holidays are almost here and I will have plenty of time to work on games.

This is how it has happened and how it will be. Project start moved to: ~17. 6. 2009

Sorry people. Bye for now.

Damn it!

2009-06-07T21:33:00.004+02:00

I am realy pissed up right now so forgive me about the misstakes I will write in this post or if I will use bad words :P.

So here is the status.

Today I started on the project. I alredy made the countdown on my site and as you can see, I have only 6 more days. And very little is done, because today I only had 1 hour time to do something. We were on a visit somewhere and the rest was my brother on. It is realy hard to work if you have a brother and have to share your computer. I also had an argue with my mom. All i said was a "No" but I apparently said it so that she gave me a 1 day computer ban. Damn it!!!!!!!!! And the question that she gave me was about clothes !!!!!! I am realy pissed. That means that tomorrow I probably won't do anything because she will lock up my room. But I will leave the timer as it is, and try to complete the game in the 5 days that will be left. Maybe I will make it.

Nothing else to say. I will go to sleep now and try to cool down.

Bye

Me lazy bastard

2009-06-05T19:37:00.003+02:00

Yes I am a lazy bastard. I haven't doe anything the whole week. I just keept playing games. But the wish to start on the project is getting bigger. I would like to start today but it is late so I will do something (play games) and then watch a movie. Nothing interesting else to say. Well I wanted to buy a Wii this week on an auction site but someone else took it before me :S. Oh well... I hope that tomorrow I will have some pictures of the game.

Bye for now.

I am back :D

2009-06-01T08:13:00.005+02:00

Hello. Yesterday I came from the LAN party but I didn't post anything. I am now posting this from school. I have to say again: these computers are garbage. But hey, you can write in them and make reports in word (if you are lucky and it is instaled). We realy should go to the classroom where there are new computers.

So. The LAN party was a big succes. Now I have to start working on th new project. I just remembered yesterday that I have to do a presentation till tommorow about something that is related with are. I though about presenting google SketchUp, because you can do some nice arty things with it. I will just search the net too se what I can find. If I will make the presentation realy fast ( maybe even here in school ) then I will start working on it.

Did you see the trailer for Cactus new game :P

Bye

Going to LAN party

2009-05-29T15:22:00.003+02:00

Finaly back from school. I finished everything today. Now I will go eat, unplug my computer and I am off. 3 days of gaming. :P See ya people, I hope you will do some interesting stuff in this weekend.

Some random LAN picture. Not ours... we are less organized :P:P ( found on google )

Good bye.

Book done.... I knew it

2009-05-27T17:21:00.003+02:00

Well yesterrday I finished reading the book, wrote 1 page about it. And I got a big headache from it. Boring books are not good for you brain. And today... well I didn't haved to present it. I knew that this will happen. Oh well...

Progress on project...

none. Well I didn't started on it yet. All I have is the gameplay idea on a paper that I did today in school. Well, everithing is done, but on paper. But that is enough so that I won't need to get ideas later. As I said the game is not complicated but it will be fun. The whole game is on 1 A4 size paper :P I need to start working on it, but th eproblem is, that from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon we have a LAN party. That means gaming and I won't work on anything. I realy want to finnish it in 1 week, but the weekend is realy important because I do a lot of stuff then. So don't know. So I realy want 1 weekend to work on the game. That is the next one. That says it, that I won't start it this week, but the next one. Maybe I will do something but not much.

Hope you are not dissapointed, but I will just take a gaming break from it. Well it is 1 week away from the last project.

Here is a hint for the next game :P

You see the theme here, but it is diffrent and realy retro arcade. :P

Bye

Book...

2009-05-25T21:30:00.003+02:00

Hello there. Yesterday I was searching for some info about box2d and some stuff. I played games a lot. Today I had some time in the morning to think of a good game idea. And I found a good one. In school while I was sitting I though of an great idea that will turn the game from a normal thing to something more interesting. The game is now very complex and I will maybe be able to finnish it under 1 week. Don't know. The rest of the day I spend reading a book because I have to read the book till tomorrow and then write something about it and the characters in it and then I have to present it in school on wednesday. Bad choice of timming. But hey gota do it. I will probably start working on the game on wednesday or maybe tomorrow when I finish the writing.

Some random picture here:

Hope you didn't fall asleep. Bye and good night.

Hello.... people! Posmoterm :D

2009-05-24T14:53:00.007+02:00

Well a some kind of post. I didn't post anything the last 2 days ( I think ), soo I will write something now ( please can someone tell me how it is writen: so / soo ??) :P

I released Me and my shadow before 2 day. It has got many diffrent opinions. I still need to post it on GameDev.net but I kinda know how people will react. It is interesing. Mainly it is my fault because I made the control scheme of the Shadow far too less explained. People didn't know how to play right and some didn't make it throug the 2nd level. I also posted a guide video for some first levels on YouTube. It helped some people soo I will post it here.

Now for some postmoterm info.

Tha game development took somewhere 1 month. A little less. You can see that by the date I posted the first post about starting the project. I am happy with the time because I month isn't that much.

Total time spend on the project: 33 hours. That is not much. It is a lot less then Space Invaders Versus. Probably because I used advanced C++ thing and did faster and better coding. I am happy. Maybe 33 hours in month sound little, but I didn't worked on the project a lot and I also didn't get bored.

This is how Timelog looks like now. :P

I won't count the lines of code it isn't soo important. But I think it is less the previos project.

Learned a lot

I learned polymorish, inheriance and friendship... and some other concept. I was also able to eficienlty (lool, you know what I want to say :P ) code all than. It brought me lot of experiance. I noticed that I also code much faster now.

I also lerned a lot when I was adding fonts. I did that before but now it didn't want to work. I posted a post about it and I war realy angry at that moment. I learned the following: never ever try to load an SDL surface from an file in a object constructor!!! It doesn't work, depending on how it was consturcted. But 100% not in a vector. That is what I have to say to that.

And well that it what I have to say to this project. All in one, it was and interesting project to work on and even more interesting to see how people will react to it.

Future plans

I am currently trying to ge a good game idea. I will probably use the "Game name generator" to generate a name for the game and then make a game from it. Whatever it will be, I will try to make it more arcade stlyle and simple. I will also try to finnish it in 1 week. Yeah "A game a week". I will give it a try. But it will be simple. I will probably also implement Box2D. I realy want to learn it so I can use physics and all. That will be fun. I also have to learn OpenGL. Because could see in Me and my shadow that the fading effect was very lagy. I need to find some good image loading and bliting tut for OpenGL ( NeHe's probably ).

Bye for now.

Me and my shadow finished

2009-05-21T17:41:00.006+02:00

Here it is. I compleated it yesterday night but I didn't post it. I thought I will maybe add some more levels but today I decided to just release it. Forst of all I need to say, that the game is more of a prototype. I posted that earlier that I decided to go more this way. So don't expect much from it. But I am realy pleased with the game. Everything worked flawless and I realy got many experiance from working with advanced C++ concepts. I am also very happy about the time that it took. Event that I wasn't realy working much I completed it in IDK 25 days. Could be better but still a big progress from the other two. It means I am getting better. I don't know the hours and lines of code used but I will post that in a postmoterm.

Here is the download link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?x2fjcqnztdz

Some pictures:

Many thanks if you download it and please give feedback.

Bye

I can see the finish line

2009-05-19T21:17:00.004+02:00

Hello there. Sory I didn't post anything yesterday. So the update for the game. Well all I can say is that the game is done. Everything works. I only need to fix some minnor things that I discovered when play testing levels. Yea the levels. Currently there are 10 levels that I made in like 3/4 of an hour. At start I made some simple levels but then I just left my imagination free and did what came to mind. So some levels can be realy simple and in some you will realy have to reset the level many times even if you mastered the control of the shadow ( like me since I am playing it for longer time ). I hope the people will get the hang of the controlling the shadow. The instruction screen says it simple but it takes some time to understand it. I hope there won't be any problems. So levels to go.

The current level select screen. As you can see you need to get to a level to be able to select it from here. This gives the game some progress thing.

And here is medium difficult level. Well not even that. But it needs some precise jumping.

I send the game to few friends over MSN and they like it. That is good. But the game crashed on ones PC, don't know why.

Bye for now.

I will go nuts......

2009-05-17T13:47:00.005+02:00

I am realy pissed of. I have been working with the level selection screen and did some simple font rendering for the level numbers. I didn't wanted to work. The made is simpler and simpler and didn't work. I removed all the stuff with the font and it didn't worked. Then I simple did that it need to load a simple image and it didn't work. I was like totaly WTF OMG. At the end nothing worked from the level selection screen. So I just erased all the code that has to do with level selection state. I am realy pissed now and will just go play games. I will start the level selection screen from scratch tomorrow, maybe later today but I doubt it. For the other stuff. Well anything is complete except the levels. I did the title, menu, nice fading effect for the levels, music, sfx, fixed that bug I found. Everything works. Only the level selection screen and the levels need to be done.

Pictures of the menu and the instructions screen. Tha game has some nice feeling when you start it because the music is nice. I realy like it.

Now fo rthe deadline. I hope to finnish the selection screen by tomorrow and start working on the levels. I hope that I will make at least 20 levels. But because the starting will be easy and simple I will make over 35 levels. The later ones will be realy hard. Like this game "you probably won't make it" Realy nice game. Got to level 18 :D.

So bye for now. I go play now.

Some updates and feedback wanted

2009-05-15T22:03:00.004+02:00

Today I did some things on the game. The level loading thing is done so now you can simpli add the map name in a file and the game loads them in order. The level switching also works when you come to the exit. I also added spikes. So now you can die. I also added a reset button so that you reset the level. I also added some effect to the player.

Thinks that have to be done:

- Title and menu ( title done, menu still to go )

- Level selection screen

- Some fixes with the games input handling function ( it goes nuts if you move and the level changes..... hmmm )

- Sounds and music

- Some die animation and some level changing transition...

- Levels, a lot of them

But mainly I think it works. I realy need to fix the input function. I still don't know how but I will find a way. The sound also need to be added. I still think about adding level naming so the level title is displayed on the start.

Now I also need some feedback. I want to know what do you thing about the graphics. I kinda like this black and white gfx but I want to know what you think. Also some ideas if you think I should realy add to the game then say it.

Bye for now.

Random post #1

2009-05-14T20:36:00.003+02:00

Well I did nothing on the game today. Yesterday was full because I went to someone to fix his computer and I also wrote the long post about what I use to make games. I have to put that post on some special tab on the side. And today I just didn't get the will to do anything. It was a strange day. But I did something in the past days. The game has now 2 .exe. One is the level editor and the other is the game. I made a realy simple algorith ( whatever ) that saves the level height and width because I made the level editor very big but I don't want that the level in the game is larger than needed. So that is made. Everything works nice till now. Tomorrow I need to put a level list file where you will whrite the names of the level files and the game will load them in that order. That way it will be simple to add levels. And in the game you will be able to chose a level. Well that is all I can say. Here is a picture of the game in action.

Post you tomorrow. Bye

What I use to make games

2009-05-13T16:08:00.013+02:00

Hello there. I couldn't post anything yesterday because a storm came and I shut down my computer for safety. But today Swarmer stoped the strom and it is only raining. A great weather to write a long post. So following some suggestions from my blog readers I decided to put up more interesting stuff. I will also try to make posts on a daily basis and to write more about the current development.

So now to this post. The title says everything. I will now describe what I use to make games. I will also try to put as many pictures or else it will be booring.

I hope you can see the picture. It is a nice program to make graph that Cactus made. You will find it on his site.

IDE

Well this isn't hard to guess. I use the best one there is. Visual Studio. I only have Visual C++, because I don't need it for anything else that this. The IDE is realy great and it helps a lot. When you have a lot of functions and all you don't have to remember them all. It is realy great.

(This is not my picture, but it is the IDE)

I also use Dev C++. I used it the whole time for Slot Robber but because projects got bigger I switched. But I still use it to make the .exe for the relesed game. That is because the VS has some stupid s**t that you have to put in with the game and the user who gets the game also has to install some redistrubutibles ( or whatever ). So I just put all the source code into Dev C++ and compile it soo it works on almost all computers ( with Windows ).

Graphics

Well I use MS Paint. Yep, that old thing that is on every windows and everyone thinks it stinks. But for me it is a great program to make gfx realy fast. It is also very simple to pixel in it. Simple but great.

I also use Paint.NET because it has some advanced functions like color effects and all so I pep up the gfx.

I also use the .PNG format for gfx because the size of the format is realy small so the games are not big.

( Making the sprite for the game )

Sound

For sound I use a programm called SFXR. You can find it here. The program is realy great for quickly make sfx. Because you simple generate a sound that you wish and then change it to fit in the game. Then you export it and done.

I search the music for my games on diffrent sites. Till now I used ...... <>. Well i forgot the name. You will find a link in my games and on my site if you look the posts where I described every game.

( SFXR in action. Simple and great.. :D )

Timelog

I have to track time for my development. So I know how long something took. For that I use an extremly simple but great app from Kloonigames ( from Petri ). It is a simple console app but does the job. You can find it here. ( On Kloonigames ). It has some flaws because the function to put eveyrthing together doesn't work but I found my own way to do that.

( Timelog from Petri Purho )

Music # 2

Well not realy. But when I work I like to listen to music. So I turn on Windows Media Player ( the latest version ) and play myself some music. Nothing else to say here. Oh yeah, I listen to every kind of music as long as it is nice ( rock, clasic, rap, hip-hop stuff, new stuff, electro, trance.... blab blabl )

Now to the language and all

I am going to write something about the language I use and all and how I started with it. I hope I won't be too long, but maybe someone will be interested.

Since I got my first computer I was realy interested on how everything worked. So I got realy into computer "stuff" and became for my friend "the one that knows everything with computers". Well something like this. I realy know a lot to work with computers. You could also describe me as a "hacker". If you now thing the bad thing then you are wrong. Quote from wikipedia: .... ok I didn't serach for it but I read once that a hacker is a person that realy knows a lot about computers. But if you thought about the bad hackers ( the one you don't like ), well I was also a little of that.

( I realy like this picture )

But then I got realy interested in programming. I readed about what language to start with. Everyone on the forums said that C++ is not good to start with because it is hard. Well screw that. I got a book called "Beginning C++ game programming" and that is how it all started. At the start everything was like spanish to me but with practise and all I can now read it as plain english.

Before somwhere 1 year ago. I found a nice site called Lazy Foo. There were realy great tuts about starting with SDL. I never did anything more that console programming but I realy wanted to start doing gfx programming. So I puted a lot of time and effort to read the tuts and make a app for every tut myself. That way I realy learned it. And after every few lessons I made a game. And you probably know how it went further. I now probably know most of SDL and C++. I need to say that SDL is realy great. It has anything from I/O to gfx, sfx, events, threads and all. But you also have the full power of c++ to use. The only thing is the useage of CPU for gfx. So I will try to learn OpenGL as soon as posible.

Well that is my story. I hope you found something interesting in here. Also please comment to this post. For the mistakes. Well english is not my mother language....

Keep you updated for "Me and my shadow". Bye

Change of plan

2009-05-11T21:46:00.003+02:00

And it is abig change of plan. I watched some presentations from GDC specialy thoses about indie game developing. I also readed some posts and topicst about it. So I decided that my games will not be something like full games ( much of stuff, complicating it all together ), but they will be more experimental. I got realy inspired by this when I watched Petri's presentation on how he started with making Crayon Physics.

I realy agreed with him that it is better to make smaller, more experimental games that to make 1 game for a long time by just expanding it and adding not so interesting stuff to it.

From now on I will make games but they will be done is shorter time and will be more interesting because I will try new things.

Now to "Me and my shadow". All I can say that it is done a lot. Because the game is also more experimental, I will try to finnish it soon.

Here is a picture of th elevel editor. It looks decent I think.

Give you more updates. Bye

Project update and my birthday

2009-05-10T19:12:00.004+02:00

Yep it is my birthday. I turned 16 today. In our country becoming 16 isn't anything special like somewhere where it is IDK what to be 16. Like "My sweet 16" ????.

And here some update on the game. I havent done much but a lot is alredy done. Here are some screens:

Just some random stuff I did. You can also see here how the shadow is helping you to get on higher places.

Here I just tryed to do some fancy level to try. It look booring with only 1 tile but it is realy easy to add more tiles soo the next days will be adding diffrent tiles with diffrent properties and some active tiles ( switches ).

Most of the gameplay works: platforming, shadow, level editing. Now it is time to add elements. The camera and stuff alredy works but because I made the level editor a big window ( for easyer level making ) you can't see it in action. The game widndow is smaller.

Bye for now.

Me and my shadow update

2009-05-04T20:37:00.004+02:00

I haven't done anything today. But I have done some progress the past 2 days. Here are some pictures.

Here I am just jumping arround and testing the platforming part.

Here I made a nice level. Now really usefull but nice too see.

The programming of the graviti and jumping and all took me about 7 hours. That is because on the first day, everything worked but then the other day I found many bugs so it took me somewhere 4 hours to figure out a new "engine".

The shadow is also mostly done but you can't see it because it follows the player the whole time and it is behind him. I need to make it as I wanted. You will see.

Bye for now.

Me and my shadow

2009-04-30T21:00:00.002+02:00

Me and my shadow

Yep that is the name of my next project. I drawed something on my sketchbook and chosen that I will use it as intro. Well I will need to edit it. But yea, this is the project.

Not to give you soma basic info.

The game is a puzzle platformer. So you go arround solving puzzles. The main thing in the game is, that you work together with you shadow. (There is no 2 players, the game is singleplayer). Your shadow helps you solve diffrent puzzles or you have to help you shadow to solve something. I alredy have some basic moves in my head in what you will be able to do. The game is effected by the next games: Braid ( the shadow world ) and WIMH ( Where is my heart ).

I will post more updates of the game idea when I will be making them.

Today I worked on the level editor which is a essential part fort the game. Because the main thing will be the levels. Today I made following: object deletion, saving, and loading levels, grid. That means the editor is done. So now comes the platformer part. I am a little affraid how the gravity and all will work because I have bad experiances from Game Maker with platformers.

Here is the level editor. ( Level made with bricks. ) lol

Bye

Level editor progress

2009-04-29T19:05:00.003+02:00

So yea. It took me somewhere 2.5 hours to make good game states and basic level editor with the use of polymorism and inheriance. All this stuff was new to me soo I am pleased with the result and the time taken to make it.

Here are some test screens:

The level editor is object based, soo you place object ( in this case blocks ). You can bee pixel perfect with this because it is not grid based. I don't know if I will make it grid based. I will probably just put a background with a grid soo I will have a better orientation.

I need to add the deletion of an object with a right click and some more object to test it.

I will announce my game tomorrow.

Bye.

Summer break over

2009-04-28T11:03:00.003+02:00

Yep I am back. I took a 2 week ( more ) break from programming. I have just been doing anything else I found. I have holidays now but the first 3 days of it was party and all that stuff so I havent worked on anything. I did go through the level editor tutorials I have some knowlage how it needs to be builded.

Yea it wont look like this but still.

So today I will start on my new project. The first thing I am going to do is a Object based level editor. I only saw some stuff on how it should be made so my head will probably hurt me later this day. I hope I will complete it and that it will work fine.

A lot has happened in those 2 weeks. The "A game A week" guy named swarmer is trying to finish his game and he has only few days left. I hope he will make it. A lot of indie games came out and Dyson got an update. :P

Keep you updated. :D

Easter and polymorphism

2009-04-12T21:27:00.003+02:00

First I have to dissapoint you that there are no news about a new project. It is easter now and there is other stuff to do.

But I have been learning. I learned polymorphism and inheriance. Then I learned to make game states based on poly.... Till now I have ben using switch game states. I also lerned scroling. So you move around the level. Finaly I started on tiling and level editor. I somehow understand how tiling workd by reading a file and I will learn how to make a level editor tomorrow. I also made some console apps to try my new skills.

I also need to mention Braid. It is one of the greatest games I played. I also put it on the first place on my list of best indie games. Cave story is now 2nd.

A realy great game with epic story and epic gameplay.

Hear you tomorrow. ( I think ).

Post on blog

2009-04-09T21:21:00.003+02:00

Stupid name I know. I just whrite this now to make some updates because the last post I did was 1 week back.

As I said I learned the stuff in C++ that I said I will. I am makeing some practice programs to get some experiance with this.

In this week I mostly played games. The Godfather 2 to be precise. It is a nice game to play and it doesn't get booring. I recomend it to anyone who likes games like GTA and MAFIA or just be the Don.

I am realy happy that I finnished the last hard test in school ( I think ). It was geography. I don't like it. I will now be able to concetrate more on developing. I will post some updates in the following days when I will finish practicing the new skills.

Lol the picture

Bye

Space Invaders Versus Postmortem (or whatever)

2009-04-04T16:50:00.004+02:00

Yep it is time againg for a postmortem. I did the same thing with Battle Pong and now it is time for this game.

I won't make what did I good and wrong but I will just list stuf and say something about it.

Finished it

Yea probably the most important thing. I finished the project.

Day started: 26.1.2009

Day finnished: 3.4.2009

Hours spend: ~51 hours

Lines of code ~5.000 , ~2.800 statements

I am happy that I finished the project that took me 2,5 months to finish. It could have been done in like 2 weeks but I was just totaly slacking. Most of the game was done in the last week.

There is one bug in the game that can make the game crash but I didn't take my time to find it. The game crashed few times in the development process.

Learned a lot

One of the most important thing about this project is, that I learned a lot from it. If you compare this to te simple Battle Pong, there is a huge difference. I learned a lot about everything and got a lot of experiance. I also learned that I can make a game in small amount of time if I just take my time and work on it.

Made a decision

I hope I spelled that right. I decided that I won't make any remakes. All my project till now were remakes or more remixes that haved additional stuf. Space Invaders was the biggest remake because it is very diffrent from the original and there are 3 modes to play in.

From now on I decided to make creative games. More indie games. So I will make something that noone has done or at least it isn't a remake. I alredy have a great idea for a simple game.

Not using the full power of C++

I noticed today when I was looking how to make a level editor, that there are some vital C++ functions that I don't use and know. And these are: Friendship, inheritance and Polymorphism. These are some vital things that I need to know before I start on my next project. If I learn this I will know how to program more object oriented, that will make my games better.

So what is next

I am now plannig to start learning these vital things. I will realy need them if I want to understand how to make a level editor, that is very important in the next game. Because the game won't be that complex but the levels + interesting gameplay style will make the game nice. So first will be learning, then I will make some example programs to test my knowlage. I hope I will start the next project next week. Till then I will draw the ideas for the game on paper and plan everything out so it will be easier to develop it.

That was what I wanted to say. I hope I didn't complicate much. Also thanks for all the support that you gave me. Specialy Swarmer that gave me support by easily just testing it and giving feedback, that can be a lot for somebody.

I also put the video of the development process on YouTube today. The quality that is on youtube is s**t, but I can't help it.

I will also post a video with all my games till now.

Bye for today.