Going to LAN party

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

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...

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

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

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

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......

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.