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).