The prodigal son returns

Greetings, I've finally decided to come back and start writing something again. I've been employed as a teacher of game development (ages 15-18) and as such don't have that much free time on my hands. Because teachers get spring break and other breaks we have to work 45 hours a week instead of 40, this means less energy and less writing. As such this blog has fallen between the cracks and become abandoned, sorry about that. But now I return and hopefully I'll get more stuff up here.

Recently a student asked me how to do pathfinding in 2D platform games, and that's how I came up with this illustrative gem.

Enjoy!
Until next time.

C++ Jeweles

Hi, today I have been programming a bit on a Bejeweled clone. Doing this was once a work test that I failed at the time. There were strict time restrictions and I rushed which became my downfall. Regardless I'm now trying to do it slowly and surely so I can do it again if I encounter a similar problem.

Step one was to create a playing field that worked with dynamically moving tiles. At first I thought hey, tiles, 2D array. Since this is on PC and I have a pretty limited scope I can focus on making it work and worry about optimizing later (if I feel it's needed). I started to go to work with vectors and lists. In the end I want with vectors. In the video below I implemented a function for resetting the field at the press of a button, doing so kills all the tiles and spawns new ones.


In the second video below I've gotten so far that I've been able to remove any tiles that are three in a row. The final piece, switching places between two adjacent jewels, will have to wait til tomorrow.




Until next time.

Sidetracked

Hi everyone, I'm here to explain the lack of updates. Monday 15th of April I was in Stockholm, I went there for interviews with two game development companies. And while I wont mention their names I want to say that these guys are big hitters, one in casual gaming and one in hardcore. After I got back I got the assignment from one of the companies to clone the famous game Bejeweled, and have been sitting with that for a few days. At first I wasn't taking it very seriously thinking that it's a pretty simple game and I have now found out it's a bit more complicated than I originally thought.

After that I've been finishing of a group assignment for a course I thought I was already done with (alone). And after that I've been busy with daily life for a while.

I've also joined a group project I've dubbed the 22cans comunity game. At the moment we've only gotten so far as to decide that the game will in some capacity involve evolution. I came up with, based on revenge of the titans, a RTS/TD where each wave evolves based on the most successful individuals of the preceding wave. But this is far from decided upon. So far we've gathered a 3D artist, a 2D artist, me and 2 more programmers aswell as some enthusiasts.

Don't know exactly what the future will bring but I will tell you about it as it unfolds.

Until next time.

Outlining the project

The Plan
First of all I will try planning a few milestones in advance, where each milestone is a collection of features that needs implementing. I have yet to decide if after each milestone I release a version of the game for public consumption and will do so when I have something worth letting people play around with. The milestones as they are now can be seen below, but are subject to change as I progress.

1st Milestone
  -  Engine with basic infrastructure
  -  A functional graphics pipeline for 3D and 2D (GUI) rendering
  -  A functional input system for mouse and keyboard (Will be platform dependent unless I go with a library)

2nd Milestone
  -  Overworld map
  -  Player-npc system

3rd Milestone
  -  World generation and rendering

Design
The game will be an RPG with MMO influences and prospects, by this I mean that the gameplay will remind you somewhat of an MMO (though no existing MMO) and I haven't quite shaken the idea that I can do some form of network play. I'm intending to try out many of the ideas that I've had over the years and some of them will not make their way into the final game, but work will be put into them and they will be showcased.here at the very least.

I want to be secretive about the design and instead of letting you know what I'm planning to do I'm going to tell you about things that I'm either working on or done with.

Just letting you know
Progress will be slow, and if I could I'd gladly do one update a day but reality will probably be more closely be around one update once a week to once every other week (depending on ho much time I get to myself.

Coming next...
Prep. for milestone 1: OpenGL, platforms and engine design

The start of a journey

Today marks the start of this blog, here I will post the progress I make on the hopefully many games projects I embark upon. Some times I might fail, sometimes I might succeed and some other times I'll.... guess it's just those two. The goal is to have something once a week and maybe even once a day if I can muster it.

Maybe I should tell you all about myself, I'm a game programmer. And even though I'm not an expert at everything I hope that at least some of you out there might find my journey interesting.

Coming next...
Project outline and maybe some game mechanics.