GAFs Amateur Devs Chronicles

JasoNsider said:
Yeah, we're still going to do pushing snowballs to create ramps :) Your advice was pretty good, and the only thing I worry about now is that when and if I go to make another more complex game in the future my collision will have to be re-written. But that's part and parcel with a new project :)
Yeah, I don't think there's such a thing as a universal platformer code.

trilobyte said:
Oh heh, a little late; but I finally got a project page up. It has a tech demo I put together a month ago or so...it's horribly out dated. I'll see what I can do about putting up a real demo later (worklife has been kicking me in the crotch lately)

edit: URL removed due to request from trilobyte

IT'S NOT A GAME! (yet) Just a tech demo of my early attempts at getting an "engine" together. "engine" being in quotes because it isn't all that great :P Though it's not bad considering it's my first attempt at 3d programming I think....
Hey, seems to work pretty well, I got all the green blobs. One thing I'll mention (if you haven't addressed this already) is that your animation seems to be tied to whether the jump button is pressed or not, whereas it should be tied to whether the character is jumping. Subtle difference but evident when trying tapping and holding space.

Otherwise cool stuff, I look forward to seeing what you make.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Yeah, I don't think there's such a thing as a universal platformer code.


Hey, seems to work pretty well, I got all the green blobs. One thing I'll mention (if you haven't addressed this already) is that your animation seems to be tied to whether the jump button is pressed or not, whereas it should be tied to whether the character is jumping. Subtle difference but evident when trying tapping and holding space.

Otherwise cool stuff, I look forward to seeing what you make.

Yup good catch. It's still that way, but I'm planning on re-addressing the animation after I get my levels all together. He'll also look a little better too :)
 
So I got a job as a junior designer at Ninja Theory. Cheers for the feedback and support everyone. I will probably still be entering Dream Build Play but this is less of a priority for me now.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
So I got a job as a junior designer at Ninja Theory. Cheers for the feedback and support everyone. I will probably still be entering Dream Build Play but this is less of a priority for me now.
congrats, nice to see you've got your foot in the door... that's half the battle IMO.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
So I got a job as a junior designer at Ninja Theory. Cheers for the feedback and support everyone. I will probably still be entering Dream Build Play but this is less of a priority for me now.
Congrats dude!

Welcome to the industry!
 
The Friendly Monster said:
So I got a job as a junior designer at Ninja Theory. Cheers for the feedback and support everyone. I will probably still be entering Dream Build Play but this is less of a priority for me now.


Congrats!

Have you checked you're still allowed to enter? I know from experience that some devs don't like you distributing any of your own stuff once you're under contract.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
So I got a job as a junior designer at Ninja Theory. Cheers for the feedback and support everyone. I will probably still be entering Dream Build Play but this is less of a priority for me now.

Wow, that's great dude, congrats and good luck! :D
 
The Friendly Monster said:
So I got a job as a junior designer at Ninja Theory. Cheers for the feedback and support everyone. I will probably still be entering Dream Build Play but this is less of a priority for me now.

Congrats Friendly! Don't let'em work you to death :-P.
 
Congrats on your job!

Now back to amateur deving... Trying to perfect my bouncing objects. I have a gravity constant and each object that will be affected by the gravity a time of creation, so I adjust the Y position by the simple formula .5*g*t^2

This works perfectly except for when the object hits the floor and needs to bounce, but also lose some of its energy. I guess I could say there is no loss of energy, but the bouncing would look a lot better if I could get the general loss of energy, stop bouncing thing going right.

Any ideas? Once I get this nailed out I can start to improve on my art and the minor stuff as the game will be basically "done" and I can get a "demo" out here (hopefully by the end of the month) containing 12 of the 100 levels I'm shooting for.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
So I got a job as a junior designer at Ninja Theory. Cheers for the feedback and support everyone. I will probably still be entering Dream Build Play but this is less of a priority for me now.
Congrats! You are certainly talented.

rhfb said:
Congrats on your job!

Now back to amateur deving... Trying to perfect my bouncing objects. I have a gravity constant and each object that will be affected by the gravity a time of creation, so I adjust the Y position by the simple formula .5*g*t^2

This works perfectly except for when the object hits the floor and needs to bounce, but also lose some of its energy. I guess I could say there is no loss of energy, but the bouncing would look a lot better if I could get the general loss of energy, stop bouncing thing going right.

Any ideas? Once I get this nailed out I can start to improve on my art and the minor stuff as the game will be basically "done" and I can get a "demo" out here (hopefully by the end of the month) containing 12 of the 100 levels I'm shooting for.
Maybe make up a weight(?) constant for each object, and take the objects velocity at the time of collision...Subtract the weight from the velocity and then send it back up in the air starting at that velocity?
First thing that came to mind.
 
rhfb said:
Now back to amateur deving... Trying to perfect my bouncing objects. I have a gravity constant and each object that will be affected by the gravity a time of creation, so I adjust the Y position by the simple formula .5*g*t^2

This works perfectly except for when the object hits the floor and needs to bounce, but also lose some of its energy. I guess I could say there is no loss of energy, but the bouncing would look a lot better if I could get the general loss of energy, stop bouncing thing going right.

Any ideas? Once I get this nailed out I can start to improve on my art and the minor stuff as the game will be basically "done" and I can get a "demo" out here (hopefully by the end of the month) containing 12 of the 100 levels I'm shooting for.

Look in to inelastic collisions if you want a realistic solution. You could also look in to adding air resistance or some other dissipating force.

Air resistance would be the easiest to model by just putting a small amount of force in the opposite direction of movement proportional to the velocity.
 
not a perfect solution, and it might cause issues later, but for now this seems to be working :lol

after a collision I just negated the velocity and then multiplied it by some factor. Adjusting the factor makes things LOOK real so far, just need to do some more testing.
 
RoyalSimonBoobs said:
Hmm, I hope you mean you're reflecting the velocity otherwise you will definitely have problems later when you're not bouncing straight up and down.
Negated velocity.Y not both :D not THAT dumb
 
The Friendly Monster said:
So I got a job as a junior designer at Ninja Theory. Cheers for the feedback and support everyone. I will probably still be entering Dream Build Play but this is less of a priority for me now.
Very nice!
Now that the Dream has come true (right?), all that's left is Build and Play. Get to it. MAKE SOME GAMES!

I'm very happy for you.
 
Thanks guys, I am still allowed here though since I'm an technically an amateur dev for two more weeks. I'm looking for places to live now, it's doing my head in.

rhfb said:
not a perfect solution, and it might cause issues later, but for now this seems to be working :lol

after a collision I just negated the velocity and then multiplied it by some factor. Adjusting the factor makes things LOOK real so far, just need to do some more testing.
That's pretty much how real collisions are usually modelled, look up "coefficient of restitution". Of course it is not always the y axis but rather the perpendicular to the collision in general.
 
GL The Friendly Monster.


Completely unrelated to the good news from the Friendly Monster, but if any of you have Java enabled cell phones or can be bothered to download a Java ME emulator (from here: http://java.sun.com/products/sjwtoolkit/download.html), you can check out a game that my two of friends and I made in 48 hours for a Game Jam in Philadelphia. We were all UPenn freshmen then, in January 2008.

Here's the link for our game: http://www.phillygamejam.com/Games/Entries/2008/1/20_Tesla_Wars.html

And to see the rest of the games, click the Games tab at the top. Also, you can see a picture of me on the Welcome page, bottom left picture, I'm all the way on the right with headphones :) I programmed along with the guy in the middle, and the guy on the left did the art.
 
TFM, congrats and good luck! :D That's great to hear. You want to throw me a PM with your email so we can just share side-projects privately between us? Obviously not your Ninja Theory work, but yeah, if you feel like it just let me know :) Hopefully you still stick around here even though you should be doing GAF Professional Dev Chronicles shortly :)
 
ianp622 said:
Completely unrelated to the good news from the Friendly Monster, but if any of you have Java enabled cell phones or can be bothered to download a Java ME emulator (from here: http://java.sun.com/products/sjwtoolkit/download.html), you can check out a game that my two of friends and I made in 48 hours for a Game Jam in Philadelphia. We were all UPenn freshmen then, in January 2008.
How would I know if my phone is Java Enabled? Is there a quick check?
Its a motorola verizon phone, Software version = JFJKN1_01.16.00R ; PRL = 51032 ; ERI = 4
 
JasoNsider said:
TFM, congrats and good luck! :D That's great to hear. You want to throw me a PM with your email so we can just share side-projects privately between us? Obviously not your Ninja Theory work, but yeah, if you feel like it just let me know :) Hopefully you still stick around here even though you should be doing GAF Professional Dev Chronicles shortly :)
Hey, sorry for not replying sooner but I've been away in London for the last week. Looking for somewhere to live in Cambridge at the moment, bit of a nightmare.

I'll totally stick around in this thread, it's fantastic. Not sure about what I'll be doing regarding amateur/xna stuff although I'm definitely keen to carry on in my spare time. I'll need to talk with the bosses about what is cool.
 
Elfforkusu said:
stiria-4.png

So, uh, I finally released a 2-level demo of my Java cell phone game.

It started as a 4 week project for a "programming style" class in spring '07 (and the idea came before Mario Galaxy was announced! So there! :lol), and I've been trying to fine tune it since then. It's a 2D platformer with the tweeeest that gravity hates you.
Update: Now it's a 3 level demo, with an improved framerate, improved physics, and some other new stuff.

Website. The .jar and whatnot can be found there. If you'd like to try it on PC, here's a standalone .exe that should let you do just that.

Comments appreciated!
 
Elfforkusu said:
Update: Now it's a 3 level demo, with an improved framerate, improved physics, and some other new stuff.

Website. The .jar and whatnot can be found there. If you'd like to try it on PC, here's a standalone .exe that should let you do just that.

Comments appreciated!

Hrm, since it's Java and it's also a cell phone game, have you given Android any thought? *plug*
 
Cheeto said:
How would I know if my phone is Java Enabled? Is there a quick check?
Its a motorola verizon phone, Software version = JFJKN1_01.16.00R ; PRL = 51032 ; ERI = 4

If you give me the model of the phone I can look it up for you. I'm not sure if I could tell by the software version. If your phone has any games on it, look to see if you see the Java logo when they're loading.
 
Cheeto said:
How would I know if my phone is Java Enabled? Is there a quick check?
Its a motorola verizon phone, Software version = JFJKN1_01.16.00R ; PRL = 51032 ; ERI = 4
if it is verizon it does not support JAVA. All VZ phones run BREW.
 
Supposedly Verizon will be "opening up" their devices to J2ME support late this year. I don't know if they've started doing it yet though.

But yeah, any past Verizon phone doesn't do Java stuff.

re: Android, I haven't looked at the specs yet. Ideally it would just have J2ME support and I wouldn't have to do anything extra to support it. :D
 
So now my game is basically "done", but it is still horrible. Level information now is stored in code instead of in an XML file, the art is extremely bad, and collisions can still be a bit wonky every now and then :lol

There are also only two levels right now, I was going to add the other 13 I have planned but I wanted to move away from hard-coded levels to the XML file reading them in dynamically before I got to far. So today is the day of refactoring :lol good thing I have CVS setup in case things get really messy and don't compile anymore.
 
Hey, if anyone has some nice projects in the works and would be interested in being published on the Wii, DS or online console services shoot me a PM.
I'll throw up a proper post later on and give out some more information :D
 
Ok I dug this thread up in hopes that someone would be able/willing to help me. I've been trying to make my game look better via shaders but my openGL class was so long ago, the teacher sucked, and I didn't keep the book or notes :< Instead I've decided to do just a rotating texture. Only thing is I'd to only draw the texture in certain places. Imagine like a picture frame that changes with time. The texture would be the entire window size big, but would only be drawn on the frame if that makes any sense...

Anyone know of a decent way of doing this in XNA? If I could do this then my game would look like 100 times better and I wouldn't be forced to "hire" a graphics person to make it look half decent.

Kinda ashamed to say this, but right now I just have solid colored rectangles (and they aren't even solid colored, just a 1x1 white pixel I scale and then use different drawing colors on :lol )
 
rhfb said:
Ok I dug this thread up in hopes that someone would be able/willing to help me. I've been trying to make my game look better via shaders but my openGL class was so long ago, the teacher sucked, and I didn't keep the book or notes :< Instead I've decided to do just a rotating texture. Only thing is I'd to only draw the texture in certain places. Imagine like a picture frame that changes with time. The texture would be the entire window size big, but would only be drawn on the frame if that makes any sense...

Anyone know of a decent way of doing this in XNA? If I could do this then my game would look like 100 times better and I wouldn't be forced to "hire" a graphics person to make it look half decent.

Kinda ashamed to say this, but right now I just have solid colored rectangles (and they aren't even solid colored, just a 1x1 white pixel I scale and then use different drawing colors on :lol )
I don't understand, but feel like I'd be able to help if I did.
 
Any comments on how to improve my site? Or how to capture a better video?
I wanted to increase the FPS, but every time the video hitches the audio desyncs more. Essentially, the higher the quality of the video I attempt to capture, the worse the audio sync becomes, because there's more hitching.

Also, is it professional enough to show to developers? I'm graduating from electrical engineering this year and will be applying to a number of Canadian game developers. I'm unsure of if I should have a joke in the title my website.

corybloor.googlepages.com/home

Also, is the redirect ok or will it cause problems? I don't really want to include a link with my pseudonym directly in the email.


(I kind of wish I had more stuff, but it's hard to find time while I'm in the middle of the last year of my degree! Oh well. At least my final project will get a nice video on that page. Eventually, the XNA game I'm now working on will too.)
 
The Friendly Monster said:
I don't understand, but feel like I'd be able to help if I did.
I found I needed to just use a render target. I've also kinda decided that it didn't really make the game look that much better, and because my project is due in under a month, to just say screw it.

I hope to have a "demo" out by the end of this week being a "complete" game with 15 levels, and the only things left to do would be improve the graphics, refactor most of the code, and maybe add in a sound engine.
 
Slavik81 said:
Any comments on how to improve my site? Or how to capture a better video?
I wanted to increase the FPS, but every time the video hitches the audio desyncs more. Essentially, the higher the quality of the video I attempt to capture, the worse the audio sync becomes, because there's more hitching.
YouTube doesn't go beyond 30fps anyway, if I recall correctly.
I record Desktop video with virtualdub and use GL acceleration ( the program writes to a GL buffer then, it's faster ).
I use XVID and LAME-MP3 while I record and it's lightning-fast on an Athlon 64 XP 3500+.
My container format is the default AVI that ships with VirtualDub, synching is flawless.

You cannot capture DirectDraw things that way unfortunately, I just tested it. So it may not work with XNA displays.

If you play on your 360 ( since it's XNA and stuff ), use DScaler with the above codecs if you've got your 360 plugged into a capture card, it's perfect with that setup.
Also, is it professional enough to show to developers? I'm graduating from electrical engineering this year and will be applying to a number of Canadian game developers. I'm unsure of if I should have a joke in the title my website.
Apart from the fonts, I think it looks really good! I'm not a pro though, so I can't tell you whether or not a developer sees it as some kind of offense if you show him that project. My guess is they'd love it.
Jokes are cool in my book if they're appropriate. But again, I'm some AM dude.
corybloor.googlepages.com/home

Also, is the redirect ok or will it cause problems? I don't really want to include a link with my pseudonym directly in the email.
I think it's perfectly fine. If someone can't be bothered to click a link although you put your heart into it to convince him you're awesome, you might not want to work for that dude.
 
wmat said:
YouTube doesn't go beyond 30fps anyway, if I recall correctly.
I record Desktop video with virtualdub and use GL acceleration ( the program writes to a GL buffer then, it's faster ).
I use XVID and LAME-MP3 while I record and it's lightning-fast on an Athlon 64 XP 3500+.
My container format is the default AVI that ships with VirtualDub, synching is flawless.

You cannot capture DirectDraw things that way unfortunately, I just tested it. So it may not work with XNA displays.

If you play on your 360 ( since it's XNA and stuff ), use DScaler with the above codecs if you've got your 360 plugged into a capture card, it's perfect with that setup.

Apart from the fonts, I think it looks really good! I'm not a pro though, so I can't tell you whether or not a developer sees it as some kind of offense if you show him that project. My guess is they'd love it.
Jokes are cool in my book if they're appropriate. But again, I'm some AM dude.

I think it's perfectly fine. If someone can't be bothered to click a link although you put your heart into it to convince him you're awesome, you might not want to work for that dude.
Thanks!

It's also a good sign that you didn't seem to notice the html redirect from corybloor.googlepages.com to slavik81.googlepages.com.
 
Slavik81 said:
Thanks!

It's also a good sign that you didn't seem to notice the html redirect from corybloor.googlepages.com to slavik81.googlepages.com.
Hey, I actually didn't - I thought I was still on corybloor when I clicked the link.
 
Slavik81 said:
Any comments on how to improve my site?
The site looks good, and definitely don't worry about using your pseudonym as the URL. The video quality is fine too.

I'd say you are safer getting rid of the joke. It's key to be professional, and although you may feel you want to add personality into your application, a "clever joke" is more likely to give a bad impression than a good one in my opinion.

You are probably doing this already, but you definitely need a deeper discussion of what exactly your role was on the project. Also are you planning to have anything else in your portfolio?

What roles are you going to be applying for?
 
If someone wants some designing help for their games, or just what they try out, I'd be glad to help out!. I'm still studying design (first year yet) but maybe I can help out with 3D (mainly) and 2D (not much animation though, sorry!).

Good luck to everybody :)


EDIT - Oh yeah, and to try and demonstrate that I don't suck donkey balls (though I'm not very good either, but hey!..), some 3D and 2D stuff:

cam3061.jpg


smb1.png


(^^^^ my bad for not using the clouds as bushes, :P)

biohazard4.png


spmil.jpg



So yeah, if you are interested in some help or you just don't want to spend time on the graphics and do mostly the coding, pm me :) I will reply ASAP. I don't care much about giving credits, but of course as I'm still an student, I'm not free all the time, but most of it yeah.. :P

If you want logos for your game, I can do that as well (either Photoshop or Illustrator, though I'd go for Illustrator when it comes to logos :P)
 
Hey everyone! :)

TFM, you're back! How are things going for you these days at your brand new job? K, maybe not brand new any more ;) Maybe send a PM if it's not suitable here?

We've been working hard on our title this whole time and it's almost time to finally start showing something for it. It's come a long way in a year's time, but still has a bit left to go before I feel comfortable showing something for it.

Mik2121, I love your sprite art! The 3D stuff is nice too, of course, and you have nice attention to color on all your work there. Keep up the studies, and let us know how you're coming along!

Anybody more updates on your projects guys? :)
 
archangelmorph said:

I would have accepted if it wasn't because of the "animation" part. I can't really animate 2D Sprites. I mean.. I "can" if I learn it, but I have yet to learn anything regarding that. In fact, I have yet to learn anything about 2D sprites (everything I've made until now was just by looking games' styles and seeing what they do, etc..)

If you just wanted an "artist" (not like I'm calling myself such... yet.. :P) that can help out with anything besides animation, I'm over here.. :D

JasoNsider said:
Mik2121, I love your sprite art! The 3D stuff is nice too, of course, and you have nice attention to color on all your work there. Keep up the studies, and let us know how you're coming along!

Thanks! I have done some other pixel art stuff, but mainly 3D :P
Here I have some "concepts" I made a long time ago (before starting school) for an Animal Crossing:

http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w251/KimHaeChul/wiicrossing4.jpg
http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w251/KimHaeChul/wiicrossing3.jpg
http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w251/KimHaeChul/wiicrossing2.jpg
http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w251/KimHaeChul/wiicrossing1.jpg
 
JasoNsider said:
Hey everyone! :)

TFM, you're back! How are things going for you these days at your brand new job? K, maybe not brand new any more ;) Maybe send a PM if it's not suitable here?

We've been working hard on our title this whole time and it's almost time to finally start showing something for it. It's come a long way in a year's time, but still has a bit left to go before I feel comfortable showing something for it.

Mik2121, I love your sprite art! The 3D stuff is nice too, of course, and you have nice attention to color on all your work there. Keep up the studies, and let us know how you're coming along!

Anybody more updates on your projects guys? :)
Hey, I'm really enjoying the job thanks, it's really interesting and I'm learning a lot.

I look forward to seeing your game in action, have you been working on it consistently? How long do you spend every week?

I'm excited about the Microsoft community games stuff, it looks like they've really come through with what they promised. Haven't tried any out yet but will do next week when I have some free time (busy socializing rather than working). I'm definitely going to get back into XNA development and making small games myself, and hopefully I will be putting something up on there eventually.

Mik, that stuff looks really good, hopefully you can find someone to work with. Are you on a specifically games-oriented course?
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Mik, that stuff looks really good, hopefully you can find someone to work with. Are you on a specifically games-oriented course?

Nope. I'm on a design school with different courses but mine is for general design, mostly for illustrations (both hand-drawing and CG), concepts and general CG rather than game-specific.

But seeing how recent games look almost like movies (well, kind of.. you know what I mean), it kinda easy to "switch" from one area to another. In fact I'm learning to use ZBrush right now and the only big difference would be using the meshes straight from ZBrush, or lower the polycount and create a normal map/bump map/etc.. for said mesh to use in-game.

At least I think so, I might be missing something but that's about it and I know most companies do that (create the high poly model and then work from that).
 
Mik2121 said:
Nope. I'm on a design school with different courses but mine is for general design, mostly for illustrations (both hand-drawing and CG), concepts and general CG rather than game-specific.

But seeing how recent games look almost like movies (well, kind of.. you know what I mean), it kinda easy to "switch" from one area to another. In fact I'm learning to use ZBrush right now and the only big difference would be using the meshes straight from ZBrush, or lower the polycount and create a normal map/bump map/etc.. for said mesh to use in-game.

At least I think so, I might be missing something but that's about it and I know most companies do that (create the high poly model and then work from that).
Cool, good luck with it.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Hey, I'm really enjoying the job thanks, it's really interesting and I'm learning a lot.

I look forward to seeing your game in action, have you been working on it consistently? How long do you spend every week?

Cool, glad to hear you're doing well. Sounds like your new position was a good fit! Are your daily responsibilities sort of in line with what you expected in terms of challenge?

I work on it very consistently. Probably put in about 20 hours a week at the least. Basically when I leave my day job at 5 I get right back into development :)

Just so you know, Pizzicati is definitely making the rounds. My friend mentioned the other day that his co-worker was playing it at lunch time at work (it's a game development house here in Ottawa). Good stuff! :)
 
JasoNsider said:
Cool, glad to hear you're doing well. Sounds like your new position was a good fit! Are your daily responsibilities sort of in line with what you expected in terms of challenge?

I work on it very consistently. Probably put in about 20 hours a week at the least. Basically when I leave my day job at 5 I get right back into development :)

Just so you know, Pizzicati is definitely making the rounds. My friend mentioned the other day that his co-worker was playing it at lunch time at work (it's a game development house here in Ottawa). Good stuff! :)
Cheers, the job is definitely not exactly how I expected, but then I was expecting that! I have a huge amount to learn though and it is certainly challenging.

That's really impressive to keep working like that, you are dedicated, it's really difficult to motivate yourself in the evenings after work I find.

Good to hear about pizzicati! To be honest I'm torn about putting it on NXE, I have it coded and working fine, however there are too many small design issues I have with it in its current state on 360, I'd feel more comfortable designing something from the ground up for it.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Cheers, the job is definitely not exactly how I expected, but then I was expecting that! I have a huge amount to learn though and it is certainly challenging.

That's really impressive to keep working like that, you are dedicated, it's really difficult to motivate yourself in the evenings after work I find.

Good to hear about pizzicati! To be honest I'm torn about putting it on NXE, I have it coded and working fine, however there are too many small design issues I have with it in its current state on 360, I'd feel more comfortable designing something from the ground up for it.


Haha :lol It's good to expect the unexpected! Well done, sir :) Hopefully its a nurturing environment though. And I guess if the challenge level is high, a year from now you're going to have a load of great knowledge under your belt. Good stuff!

Yeah, I'm 100% dedicated to see it through :) It's easily the most challenging thing I've done so far, but also the most rewarding! My motto is that I have to always finish what I start :)

Honestly, you could release it almost exactly how you have it right now. It's a very straightforward game in terms of control so the controller shouldn't be too big a deal, right? Still, you've got a huge amount of groundwork there, you could easily work on it from the ground up using the model you already have. We spent a while playing it in its current state, after all :)
 
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