Ireland - Post #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Hope you like them :)

Let's make a game video series

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

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

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

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.