We had our first meeting today, it went really well. I met the girl from the music department for the first time today, she's really into the software side of the game, so that's a huge plus. At the meeting I basically gave them the run-down of my idea for the checkers game that I've mentioned in a previous post. It was more or less an absorption session for them to sort of get on the same page with me. I was/am open to another game idea, but they seemed to like it.
We seem to have agreed on using C++ and SDL, so I'm happy about that. I've got a pretty substantial project already completed using these technologies, so that should save us some time right off the bat.
They asked me to put together a design doc for the game, and I've now done that. I may attach it to the end of this post if I remember... As I was outlining the gameplay features I'd like to have in the game, it was amazing how quickly things branched into other things. It really sparks the creative process. I imagine that increasing when the other members of the team get into it and they'll form their own ideas as well, should be exciting.
The goal is to meet up again sometime soon and essentially play checkers offline and incorporate some of the gameplay tweaks. This will allow us to see what will work, what won't, and what needs to be adjusted. It should also give us some other ideas too. I can't wait for this stage, should be really fun. After that, the design document should be close to finalized and then we can start breaking the project down into tasks and assign people to them.
Sometime concurrently to all of this we'll be getting some server software setup to house some version control, simple website, maybe even spring up a blog just for the project, etc...
All in all the meeting was a total success. We were all able to communicate freely, everyone got along, and things just flowed. Very good signs. I'll keep you updated.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
You are what you play
I figured it would be a good idea to compile the list of games that I have played extensively throughout the course of my life. I'll list them in no particular order of favoritism, but chances are they will be in chronological order simply because it will be easier to remember them that way as I'm making the list. For a game to qualify for this list, I should be able to name it off the top of my head after having been removed from it for over 10 years or more. I was serious about these games! Something to note is that when I was just a wee lad playing these games, I played them because I wanted to beat them, they weren't just entertainment. I'm sure a lot of people in this realm of life are the same way, though.
NES
(Note: This list is small due to the fact that I became semi-professionally involved with Madden, and it was just not ideal to play anything other than Madden)
(Yeah yeah, limited mainly to outdated first person shooters)
NES
- Mario Brothers 3 - Who didn't love this game
- Tecmo Super Bowl - The godfather of football games, step aside Madden
- Smash TV - Very fun, unique smash-em-up game
- Micro Machines - Great racing game, surprisingly challenging in areas
- Dig Dug II - Highly addicting, unique gameplay
- Adventure Island II - Cooler version of a Mario-style game
- Legend of Zelda - One of the best games ever made
- Mario Brothers - Again, everyone loves this game
- Ms. Pacman - Classic
- Al Unser Jr. Turbo Racing - Great simulation racing game
- Mike Tyson's Punch Out - Talk about a fun game
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II Arcade - Challenging gameplay
- Excitebike - Ahead of it's time. Level editor, are you kidding me? Fun!
- R.C Pro-Am - Great racing game, pretty challenging
- Bad News Baseball - Really fun
- Gunsmoke - Addicting, great sleepover game
- Sonic 2 - Just like Mario, everyone loves this great game
- Battletoads - Great gameplay, classic
- Madden 1995 - The start of a long relationship with me and Madden
- Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - One of the best games made for the platform
- Mutant League Football - Great alternative take on football. I still play this game!
- NHL 1995 - Really fun to play
- World Series Baseball - Very impressive on all levels. Home Run Derby mode is more addicting than crack.
- NBA Jam - One of the most fun games I've played
- Joe Montana Football - Absolutely great football game, better than Madden on this platform. I still play this!
- Columns - Basically tetris with some nice aesthetics and a few tweaks. Really fun
- G-Loc Air Battle - Very impressive fighter jet combat game
- Deep Duck Trouble - Addicting adventure game, sort of like Mario. Challenging in areas
- Super Mario - Amazingly in-depth game. Lots of fun
- Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time - I don't think I have to explain this one. Put Mario to shame as far as I'm concerned.
- Cruisin' 64 - Great racing game, very addicting
- Doom 64 - Not as good as the original PC version, but still a load of fun as is to be expected
- Goldeneye 007 - Quite possibly the greatest gameplay ever. How much fun was it playing multiplayer on "Facility" and guarding your side of the map with hidden proximity mines?! I still play this game today.
- Wave Race 64 - Highly fun and addicting game.
- Pilot Wings - The freedom given to the player in this game is what makes it so fun.
- WWF War Zone - Super fun!
- NFL Blitz - Probably one of the most fun games I've played. This was always a nice aside from my friend and I's intense Madden games. We took this pretty seriously though, as well.
- San Francisco Rush Racing 1 and 2 - Challenges Goldeneye 007 for most addicting and fun games. The scope of these games is staggering.
- Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey - Great gameplay, a ton of fun
- Madden (all of them) - Madden is the game closest to my heart, and it really took off for me on the 64.
(Note: This list is small due to the fact that I became semi-professionally involved with Madden, and it was just not ideal to play anything other than Madden)
- Madden - This game deserves it's own post, so I'll spare details but to say that I have traveled all over the country playing this game, and made some money in the process.
- GTA (all of them) - Hands down one of the most addicting and fun games
- Midnight Club Racing - Really fun, looks great too
- Medal of Honor Front Line - Really solid game
- Tiger Woods Golf - Who thought golf could be so fun?
- Madden - See above.
(Yeah yeah, limited mainly to outdated first person shooters)
- Original Doom - This game is still fun today. It needs no introduction.
- Quake 3 Arena - Again, another id Software masterpiece that still has people playing it online. I've spent more time with this game than I'd care to admit, including both playing and editing source code.
- Final Doom - More of the same: greatness.
- Saints & Sinners Bowling - Really fun gameplay tweaks transform bowling into a whole new realm.
- Pogo Bowling - Great casual game
- Sam & Max - First PC game I really got into other than Doom, loads of fun.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Team Project Update
Sorry about the delay on this, by the way. The original meeting never took place, scheduling issues I suppose on part of the other programmer. I sort of anticipated that, but it's a busy time of the year, so no hard feelings. In the mean time I've been thinking about various game design ideas and some of the basic utility classes that any game may need, and how I may implement them.
I had planned on coding the game in C++ because, well, it rocks, I love it, and C++ sits atop the Kingdom of Game Programming throne and shuns non-believers with it's 7ft scepter. The other programmer seemed fine with this, but now he's suggesting we use Java with some 2D graphics lib he's found online. Meh. I checked it out, seems alright I guess, but it is Java and that's usually a deal breaker for me. It does however offer us the ability of fast iteration of ideas and whatnot, so I'm willing to do it. I'm really not too stubborn on this stuff, but if I can use either C++ or Java, I'm almost always choosing C++, but I don't want to even get into that...
He didn't seem to have any details on how "involved" the girl from the Music department wanted to be, so we'll see how that unravels. Along that note (get it, note?) though I have thought more about my idea of a music-driven gameplay element.
The basic abstract concept is to have a simple 2D world which is very stage oriented such that you only see the current area until you complete all tasks or whatever it may be. The visuals would be very vivid. The vision I have for one stage is that of a very drab and dramatic village which is actually more like a small neighborhood. The view is behind the little character and it's viewing 3 or 4 huts. The huts would be very dark colored with really intense colors and the sky would share that sentiment. Just picture a sky before a really terrible storm. The music would coincide with this of course. The gameplay concept I've got in mind is that the music in each stage (coupled with the look of the scene) would lead the player to perform their tasks. Changes in tone, speed, etc... should be evident enough as the player moves or does something that ideally it would be apparent what they need to do. I've tossed around the idea of the character needing to save the inhabitants of these small villages, whether they be creatures or plants, or something. It would incorporate some sort of time incentive which would be pushed by the music, so as you were running out of time the music would get more dramatic sort of like in a movie. An image that comes to mind is as the clouds roll in for a storm more and more of an area is covered in shadow. I think something like that could work well with my idea.
Game design is a process, so I'll just have to keep working it out, but I welcome any comments. Oh, and sorry if I just described someones favorite game that they've played for 30 years, I don't exactly "get out much". Oh, and, don't steal my idea =p
I had planned on coding the game in C++ because, well, it rocks, I love it, and C++ sits atop the Kingdom of Game Programming throne and shuns non-believers with it's 7ft scepter. The other programmer seemed fine with this, but now he's suggesting we use Java with some 2D graphics lib he's found online. Meh. I checked it out, seems alright I guess, but it is Java and that's usually a deal breaker for me. It does however offer us the ability of fast iteration of ideas and whatnot, so I'm willing to do it. I'm really not too stubborn on this stuff, but if I can use either C++ or Java, I'm almost always choosing C++, but I don't want to even get into that...
He didn't seem to have any details on how "involved" the girl from the Music department wanted to be, so we'll see how that unravels. Along that note (get it, note?) though I have thought more about my idea of a music-driven gameplay element.
The basic abstract concept is to have a simple 2D world which is very stage oriented such that you only see the current area until you complete all tasks or whatever it may be. The visuals would be very vivid. The vision I have for one stage is that of a very drab and dramatic village which is actually more like a small neighborhood. The view is behind the little character and it's viewing 3 or 4 huts. The huts would be very dark colored with really intense colors and the sky would share that sentiment. Just picture a sky before a really terrible storm. The music would coincide with this of course. The gameplay concept I've got in mind is that the music in each stage (coupled with the look of the scene) would lead the player to perform their tasks. Changes in tone, speed, etc... should be evident enough as the player moves or does something that ideally it would be apparent what they need to do. I've tossed around the idea of the character needing to save the inhabitants of these small villages, whether they be creatures or plants, or something. It would incorporate some sort of time incentive which would be pushed by the music, so as you were running out of time the music would get more dramatic sort of like in a movie. An image that comes to mind is as the clouds roll in for a storm more and more of an area is covered in shadow. I think something like that could work well with my idea.
Game design is a process, so I'll just have to keep working it out, but I welcome any comments. Oh, and sorry if I just described someones favorite game that they've played for 30 years, I don't exactly "get out much". Oh, and, don't steal my idea =p
Monday, March 3, 2008
How sweet the sound...
I recently contacted a friend of mine here at school to get together and work on some games. He told me he'd definitely be interested, and not only that but he knew of a girl in the music department (student) that would probably love to get involved. Turns out, he was right. I must say, I'm really excited about the notion of sitting down with someone that isn't a programmer but still wants to be involved in the process by contributing their art form to the overall "product". This will definitely be my first experience of that sort.
I think what intrigues me most is the fact that sound is often ignored/overlooked in games, and I'm as guilty of that as anyone. The only game music that comes to mind that wasn't immediately replaced by my mp3 collection is Doom / Quake III Arena. Granted, I don't play a large variety of games, but the music in the ones I have played annoyed the hell out of me. It may seem weird to see a game developer (aspiring nonetheless) that doesn't play a large variety of games. Well, I guess you'd be right, it is. However, I've played games like Zelda and Sonic since I was just a tiny lad. Not to mention the fact that I learned my multiplication tables of 7 from Tecmo Super Bowl for the NES (great music, by the way) and Joe Montana's Football for the Sega Game Gear. More recently though, for the past 5 years I've been a competitive gamer on the Madden tournament circuit. I tend to stick to one group of things that I like in all aspects of life, not just games. I'm sort of backwards in the sense though that my love of programming has inspired me to play as many different games as possible. Most people are the opposite. They love games, they love computers, let's program games! I digress...
The part that really excites me about this is that I love music. I always have my music playing, and I honestly can't function without it. I'm huge into playing guitar as well. I'm really interested to see if/how she will propose a game idea based on something she wants to do with music. I think that would be so cool if she had an idea for something she wanted to do with music that would be instrumental (no pun intended) to the game itself, aside from just serving as a supplement. Of course, she may not have that idea, but now I have it, and anyone reading this does as well, and I'm sure someone else has already made a game like that, so go nuts!
I'll keep you posted and let you know how the first meeting goes on Thursday and hopefully I'll have a constant supply of updates related to the game we make.
I think what intrigues me most is the fact that sound is often ignored/overlooked in games, and I'm as guilty of that as anyone. The only game music that comes to mind that wasn't immediately replaced by my mp3 collection is Doom / Quake III Arena. Granted, I don't play a large variety of games, but the music in the ones I have played annoyed the hell out of me. It may seem weird to see a game developer (aspiring nonetheless) that doesn't play a large variety of games. Well, I guess you'd be right, it is. However, I've played games like Zelda and Sonic since I was just a tiny lad. Not to mention the fact that I learned my multiplication tables of 7 from Tecmo Super Bowl for the NES (great music, by the way) and Joe Montana's Football for the Sega Game Gear. More recently though, for the past 5 years I've been a competitive gamer on the Madden tournament circuit. I tend to stick to one group of things that I like in all aspects of life, not just games. I'm sort of backwards in the sense though that my love of programming has inspired me to play as many different games as possible. Most people are the opposite. They love games, they love computers, let's program games! I digress...
The part that really excites me about this is that I love music. I always have my music playing, and I honestly can't function without it. I'm huge into playing guitar as well. I'm really interested to see if/how she will propose a game idea based on something she wants to do with music. I think that would be so cool if she had an idea for something she wanted to do with music that would be instrumental (no pun intended) to the game itself, aside from just serving as a supplement. Of course, she may not have that idea, but now I have it, and anyone reading this does as well, and I'm sure someone else has already made a game like that, so go nuts!
I'll keep you posted and let you know how the first meeting goes on Thursday and hopefully I'll have a constant supply of updates related to the game we make.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Checkers
I love Checkers. Chess is too complicated for my likes, but Checkers has just the right mix of fun and strategy for me. I'm currently working on my own version of the game. Basically, I'm taking Checkers and adding a few tweaks to the gameplay, and hopefully that will create a new realm for the game that will be as enjoyable as the original. The point of this post, however, is to discuss the underlying structure of the Checkers board.
Coding a Checkers board is similar to coding a deck of cards: there are countless ways you could go about doing it. I tend to like to find my own way of doing something like this without looking at how someone else did it first. I think Checkers is one of the most re-done games out there, or at least tile-based board games in general are, so I could be making life a lot easier for myself but where is the fun in that?
The current idea that I'm toying with on paper is that of a custom linked list that not only has links to the item in front/behind, but also left/right. It took about 20 minutes of staring at a checkerboard to come up with this due to the orientation of the board. Pieces in Checkers can only move in diagonal directions, so thinking of a traditional linked list doesn't work too well...but if you simply turn the board on it's corners, you'll see you have a linear path up each column. That's when it clicked that adding left/right linkages to a traditional linked list setup could be a neat way of representing a checkerboard.
The issue I'm working out now is the initial creation of the board and the subsequent management of the board when a new game is started or a saved game is loaded. Currently I'm thinking that I'd need an array that held 64 tile objects, and then I'd create each tile object in some init function. It would go through and setup the front/back/left/right links, the occupied flag, and the color of each tile on the board. As opposed to having 64 ctor calls in a row, I thought about storing tile data in a data file of some sort and then iterating over a vector to create each tile object. Then, that would also be the mechanism to save/load games. The game would simply write out each tile's data to the file and then upon resuming the game it would load them back in.
The objects would be fairly small, so I don't think this would be too terrible of an approach, but I'm sure I could do it better. I need to do it this way first, though. After all, if you sit around and think about how to make something better, you'll never end up making it AT ALL!
Coding a Checkers board is similar to coding a deck of cards: there are countless ways you could go about doing it. I tend to like to find my own way of doing something like this without looking at how someone else did it first. I think Checkers is one of the most re-done games out there, or at least tile-based board games in general are, so I could be making life a lot easier for myself but where is the fun in that?
The current idea that I'm toying with on paper is that of a custom linked list that not only has links to the item in front/behind, but also left/right. It took about 20 minutes of staring at a checkerboard to come up with this due to the orientation of the board. Pieces in Checkers can only move in diagonal directions, so thinking of a traditional linked list doesn't work too well...but if you simply turn the board on it's corners, you'll see you have a linear path up each column. That's when it clicked that adding left/right linkages to a traditional linked list setup could be a neat way of representing a checkerboard.
The issue I'm working out now is the initial creation of the board and the subsequent management of the board when a new game is started or a saved game is loaded. Currently I'm thinking that I'd need an array that held 64 tile objects, and then I'd create each tile object in some init function. It would go through and setup the front/back/left/right links, the occupied flag, and the color of each tile on the board. As opposed to having 64 ctor calls in a row, I thought about storing tile data in a data file of some sort and then iterating over a vector to create each tile object. Then, that would also be the mechanism to save/load games. The game would simply write out each tile's data to the file and then upon resuming the game it would load them back in.
The objects would be fairly small, so I don't think this would be too terrible of an approach, but I'm sure I could do it better. I need to do it this way first, though. After all, if you sit around and think about how to make something better, you'll never end up making it AT ALL!
Intro
This blog will be dedicated to topics related to game programming. I'll discuss current projects I'm working on or thinking about, certain problems I'm having or solving, things that I have/want to do, things that I've seen others do, etc... I'm starting this so that I'll have something to refer back to in the future, and also so that others can possibly learn something about my experiences. I'll try to keep this sort of updated, no promises. I welcome any comments from anyone as long as they are semi-intelligent... Enjoy.
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