A Game(?) A Week(?): Dungeon Generator

You know, I'm running out of quirky ways to say "this took me more than a week, huh". Turns out that going to school full time and working on weekends doesn't leave as much time as I thought I had for game development. Anyway, this project, which is neither a game nor took a week to build, is a dungeon generator! For a rogue-like. I was actually hoping to build a full rogue-like this week but this is all I had time for. I'm quite proud of it.

Rogue-Like Dungeon Generator - total development time 2 weeks

What it is: A program that procedurally generates dungeons in the style of Rogue. There is a player character who can walk around the dungeon, but all the important features of rogue-likes - combat, items, treasure, stairs, field-of-view - are not currently implemented.

A Game A Week(ish): Zombie Slayer

On Venus, a week is 1701 Earth days, or 4.65 Earth years. So on Venus, this game would have been made in 0.0111699001 weeks!

Yeah, okay. 19 days is a little longer than a week. Midterms intruded, then fall break. In total, I probably spent about 10 days working on this game. I won't be able to do a detailed breakdown, but I will give best estimates on how that time got spent.

Without further ado, the next game! It's called Zombie Slayer.

Zombie Slayer - total development time ~8 days

What it is: A game about shooting zombies in a procedural town. There is no win condition, just try to shoot as many as you can before they overwhelm you.

A Game A Week

My attention span needs work. I have a tendency to get excited about a BIG IDEA, start prototyping and blogging, and then losing steam a few weeks later when I get excited about THE NEXT BIG IDEA.

To solve this problem I've decided to never spend more than a week making a game!

Okay, that's not really the solution to my short attention span. And it's not really the plan for the rest of my life. But at this stage in my game development career, the two most important things for me to do are 1) get experience making games, and 2) build a portfolio of finished* projects to show prospective employers, teammates, and my legion of devoted fans.

A Game A Week: Dungeon Runner

The first ever game-of-the-week™ is a game about running. And jumping. You do that too. It's called Dungeon Runner.

Dungeon Runner - Total Development Time 12 days


What it is: A game about jumping over gaps. Run all the way to the end of the dungeon to win.

Coding Beauty: Part 2

Last time, I talked about the level and art design of Ori and the Blind Forest. I spoke of the two broad steps to creating its sumptuous platformer levels: first, design the basic platform layout; then texture it and add details to bring it to life. I've begun implementing the algorithm that will achieve step one of that process.

Here's what the results look like so far:

Coding Beauty: Part 1

Look how beautiful Ori and the Blind Forest is:

I mean, that's gorgeous. The dilapidated tree trunks in the background, the ominous foreground, the interplay of light and shadow -- not to mention, if you actually play the game it's all animated. The grass sways, leaves blow through the air, mist snakes through the trees. It's really freaking beautiful.

Pixel Pushing

Hey all! It's been a while, hasn't it. Last post was shortly before finals week, I believe, after which May term classes and a new job ate up most of my time. That doesn't mean I haven't been working on game development, though!

In my last post (long, long ago), I talked about procedural generation. Procedural generation (proc gen for those of us In The Know) means using algorithms to create levels, enemies, worlds, characters - anything, really - instead of making those assets by hand. It allows for a single developer to develop A LOT of content quickly, as all he (I) have to do is write an algorithm. Now, I don't want to minimize that - those algorithms can take months (if not years) to develop. But once the code is working, it can literally generate an infinite amount of unique content. That's pretty sweet.

How To Make A Cube In 81 Easy Steps

Hi all! It's been a couple of weeks since my last post. I've been very focused these couple of weeks on trying to generate buildings from an algorithm. It's been slow going. The basic algorithm goes something like this:

1) Generate a shape.

2) Do stuff to the shape.

3) Texture the shape.

Screw Tarzan

This week: finished implementing the grappling hook, kind of. Completed a tutorial on the basics of procedural generation (the link will probably just prompt you to buy the tutorial, unfortunately, although I'd definitely recommend it to anyone interested in developing games in Unity).

The swinging mechanic, briefly: I corrected my naive implementation (detailed in this post) with the help of the Sparknotes SAT Physics prep guide. In particular, I found this helpful diagram:

A First-Person Cyberpunk Rogue-Like Hacking Action Platformer

I'll keep trying to think of more superfluous adjectives I can add to that game description. How about, "A First-Person Shooting Platformer Hacking Action Game With Rogue-Like Elements"?

Huh. I'll work on it.

So, the new game! As you may have guessed, it will have a first-person perspective, involve hacking and jumping/jetpacking/grappling-hooking around, and (hopefully) feature procedural elements and permadeath.

I Should Have Been A Physics Major

You ever play the Spider Man games? I never played the spider-man games. I watched the Spider Man movies though! Spidey has some pretty sweet web swinging moves, huh:

Apparently, the Spider Man games have some pretty sweet swinging moves too. As it turns out, the guy who designed those swinging moves wrote a tutorial about how to put moves like in your own games. Which was perfect, since for my FPS the player gets a grapple gun thingy so he or she can do some pretty sweet swinging moves themselves.

Back To Business

Wow, it's been a long time since the last post! From now on, back to weekly entries.

The strategy game crashed and burned. I was trying to merge two tutorials I was following and they didn't play nice together. Then I tried to fix it, and broke the code some more, and from there things pretty much spiraled down hill. At this point, I'll have to start from the ground up to rebuild it.

I bit off more than I could chew, so instead of diving right back into the strategy game, I'm working on some simpler projects. I've created the first level of a mario-style platformer, and I'm working on implementing the movement mechanics of a fast-paced first person shooter (think Unreal Tournament).

Finding the Path

Pathfinding! It's what makes units go around obstacles instead of through them, and it's something that is now in the game.

I used something called the A* algorithm to implement pathfinding. It's a bit complicated, but basically it calculates the shortest walkable route between two points. The algorithm itself is generic, of course, so I had to figure out how to implement it specifically in Unity. Unity does include a built-in navigation utility, but word on The Internet is that it doesn't always work very well. Plus building it myself gave me a much better understanding of how it works and how I can customize it to my needs.

Laying the Groundwork

Progress continues erratically. I'm taking a learn-as-I-go approach, which means that I often have to go back and change some previous work to reflect new knowledge.

I've been spending most of my time following a tutorial about 'traditional' real-time strategy games à la Age of Empires. I've implemented camera controls and a lot of background code laying the groundwork for players, units, buildings, traps, and other world objects, as well as a basic UI. Right now, the game knows when you select something and can tell you what is selected:

What's This (Dev?) Blog About?

I've never had a blog before! And I'm not really sure exactly what this one will be about. I know for a fact that it will contain words. Maybe some pictures. If I'm feeling really ambitious, a video or two.

There will be (semi-)frequent updates about a game I'm developing with my brother. And probably some thoughts on games and gaming in general. And books. And music.

But I'm gonna go ahead and call it a dev blog. That sounds important and makes me feel like a real game developer!