Project4 - Follow the development of a new game

[foxblock]

Edit: Just "skimmed" through the vid. I was half expecting some commentary. As it stands, it's quite difficult to sit down and watch; and I didn't really grasp what was going on (though I guess part of that might be due to me skipping through the video)

Yes, as I said in my first post, the first video up there is silent (it mostly was there to test the broadcasting setup, I was answering questions in IRC), the coming ones will be with a bit of commentary.


Recoding and cutting it together is not an option for me as for one it's much more work, I don't know what other people deem important so I would not know what to cut out really (or just down-time, not really bringing the length down) and lastly when I am doing cutting work anyway, I could as well make a scripted video with a much higher information density and overall efficiency.


This stream stands as it's not much extra work for me (I am developing anyway, setting up the stream is pretty simple) and to give people some insight into the development process and the opportunity to ask questions. I don't expect anyone to follow it through completely - though I might be doing a scripted episode (with guests...) from time to time.

 

[pmprog]

Recoding and cutting it together is not an option for me as for one it's much more work

Yeah, I understand that. I guess also if you pre-record it, you lose that potential interaction that you get on a stream.


Do you know when you'll be planning the next one?

 

[foxblock]

I have set up a basic site for the project and a collection of the videos, download links, etc.


http://foxblock.pira...ect4/index.html


I also uploaded a temporary todo list, which you can find on the site above. I split it into milestones and plan to get one done in each session. It's very basic and will most likely change a bit in the following days when I add or edit stuff.


The next broadcast is going to be TODAY (06.06.2012) on 11PM UTC+1 (date changed, see below)


I will be going over the existing work first and explain what I created so far, to create a good starting point. From there on I will try to cross of the first points on that todo list and see how far I can get (I usually go to bed around midnight, so will stop recording before when I hit a good point to do so).


Again, questions can be asked on #foxblock-dev on freenode.IRC or in the twitch.tv chat.


All necessary links are in the first post or on the page.

 

[pmprog]

Awww, I'm going to be out tonight Will have to catch up later

 

[foxblock]

Argh, I am terrible at making appointments, forgot I would meet with someone today at 8pm (luckily noticed in time), so the broadcast will be postponed by 2 hours probably (and then go into the night - good thing tomorrow is a holiday around here)


Sorry about that -.-

 

[foxblock]

Going live now...

 

[foxblock]

So the first broadcast came and went and it went pretty well (if I may say so myself).


Not much was added to the game, but I spent about an hour talking about the existing system in a very in-depth manner and hopefully gave some good explanations and tips. If you are looking to start following this project or maybe looking to start a game of your own, I suggest checking out the recording (available here: http://www.twitch.tv/foxblock/videos - it's split into three parts because apparently my connection dropped in-between, only a few seconds were lost though).


Thanks to the 2 to 4 live viewers I had, especially HolySmoke who asked some interesting questions and helped out a bit


All builds for the game is also available for download on the site and as a special treat I decided to make the git repository public, you can find it here: https://github.com/foxblock/Project4

 

[bzar]

Too bad I couldn't stay awake to tune in, will check recording later

 

[foxblock]

I did not have much time to work on this in the past couple of days. I did, however, add circular collision detection and a few other small, yet important changes and fixes.


This was mostly uninteresting grunt coding work, so I did it off camera, though if there is a high enough interest I can go over my collision detection code in detail. It's pretty simple and unoptimized though and I don't take some corner cases into account because I know they won't occur. Though I also already know I will need to change the calculations because my estimation that I won't need collision response information will most likely not hold true.


You can download the build from the site as usual and the code has been committed to git: http://foxblock.pira...ect4/index.html


Haven't set a new date for a broadcast yet as my schedule is pretty tightly packed currently. I don't like doing it on short notice, so you guys cannot plan accordingly, but it might happen in a spontaneous fashion... we will see.

 

[pmprog]

Look forward to the next installment

 

[foxblock]

Next broadcast is scheduled for this Friday (15.06.) at about 9PM UTC+1 (if nothing happens to prevent me...)


Haven't decided on what to cover yet, any wishes? (Recently more collision shapes were added as well as a collision test state, velocity and acceleration for better movement and a few fixes).

 

[pmprog]

Friday is the 15th BTW. It's also pub night depending on who's around and/or seeing the missus. But I'll do my best to tune in when I'm about to see if you're still going

 

[foxblock]

Holy crap, why am I so bad with dates -.- thanks for the info


Also why the fuck am I getting unsubscribed automatically after I make a post in this thread...

 

[foxblock]

I am going live in about 1 hour.


I changed the time information to UTC+2 (because that's the adjusted/actual time zone I am in - due to daylight savings time) from the old UTC+1 to avoid confusion (and with that change you are probably even more confused, blame that on DST and the mess of existing time zones). This does not mean the broadcast will start at a later date!


Btw, I will try to code a spawning system this session as well as bring the game a bit away from only prototype and first alpha version.

 

[pmprog]

Sad to say I only caught about 10 minutes before I went out, just about to watch now

 

[foxblock]

Well this session sadly was not as structured as the first one. Mainly because I wanted to get some framework coding done before the stream, but did not manage to do it. So I could not focus on the more interesting game-dev parts and had to do some rather boring tasks, too. Also my whole day was kinda messed up resulting in me being a bit confused.


Anyway, the end result was a progress nevertheless and some people had fun testing it afterwards and posting high scores in IRC, so I guess it's a small success.


For the next session I will try to get as much boring, grunt coding work done before and only stream the interesting parts. But overall I am still learning how to approach this.


There are some bad news, too, sadly. Twitch.tv automatically deletes any recordings after 4 days, unless I manually mark them as permanent (which you can do for every video). The site lacks a proper help or FAQ page, so I did not know about this and the first recordings are gone.


If anyone has a local copy at any chance, I would be tremendously happy to receive them (mostly because the first session was pretty good imo and is a good start if you want to catch up).

 

[foxblock]

I haven't done anything regarding this project in the past week (due to uni), but I did a few minor changed tonight, so I decided to upload the new build: http://foxblock.pirategames.co.uk/games/project4/index.html


There are two .exe files in the package, one is the normal game, one is the debug version I use to test certain stuff, it behaves like the normal game (currently), but prints quite a few helpful information for me.


This is developing into an actual game, so why not start competing for highscores. Your score is shown on the bottom right corner of the screen, but as it currently vanishes when you die, it is also written to a stdout.txt file next to .exe.


I can't validate any score submitted, so if you cheat nobody will know except for your own conscience(!).


My current high-score is 45.

 

[pmprog]

Oooh, nice, I'm going to try this when I get home tonight


Edit: After my quick play, I think I got about 34... You do really need to "pause" the game after you get killed so we can see I can see me playing this a fair bit. Like CyRacer and Spout, I think this is a great "party" game, you can just pass around to see who's the one-shot-wonder

 

[foxblock]

A Pandora build is now available!


Download here: http://foxblock.pira...ect4/index.html


A new unit got added and the behaviour of the existing ones got a tad refined, as well as the framework.

Edit: After my quick play, I think I got about 34... You do really need to "pause" the game after you get killed so we can see I can see me playing this a fair bit. Like CyRacer and Spout, I think this is a great "party" game, you can just pass around to see who's the one-shot-wonder

Ooops, did not see your edit. Yeah that will definitely happen, but I need to add another state for that. Simple stuff, but wanted to do it right and in combination with saving/displaying the highscore. Maybe I will do a preliminary version for the next build...


Also thanks

 

[foxblock]

A new build is available:


http://foxblock.pira...ect4/index.html


(No Pandora build at the moment as the last CodeSourcery update broke my toolchain - I need to find time to fix that).


This one includes are proper scoring system (my current high-score is 7748), a score screen after death and a modified spawn system.


I also did an impromptu stream this evening going over a few things and my plans, you can catch the recoding on twitch.tv (link on the project page).


Enjoy and please tell me what you think!


PS: I also got my first subscriber, wooo, thanks to whomever that is