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posts filed under: tools

WriteMonkey Basics

WriteMonkey Basics
Like I mentioned in my status update for the month I've gotten way more into writing over the past few weeks. I used to write a ton when I was younger (like, high school years younger) and I just totally forgot about it for awhile. Over the past year I got heavily into a Pathfinder campaign and having a character involved in some crazy story made up by a bunch of people sitting around a table totally ignited the writing spark in me again.

I went through a bunch of different tools for writing until I've finally settled on WriteMonkey. I was using Google Docs, OpenOffice Writer, and a bunch of various in-browser solutions, but they all had their own issues. Google Docs lags like hell if you end up with a 60,000 word document. OpenOffice Writer has the same issue that any rich text editor has like when you try to change your formatting and it keeps reverting back to the formatting you had previously. You know what I'm talking about, right? Like when you go to bold some text, and then you unbold it, but then you start typing again and it's bold again, and you can't get it to stop bolding everything. Various in-browser solutions didn't work because I actually wanted something independent of the browser. I prefer having a downloaded application and not have to log into a website every time I want to work.

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tools
Posted June 28th 2017 8:31 PM (Tools)
1 Comment

Visual Studio and Itch.io Refinery

Visual Studio and Itch.io Refinery
Itch.io just released their brand new Refinery tools to the public and I immediately jumped into them head first. After just a little bit of set up I was able to get their new magic up and running for Super Sky Sisters. I have a set up now in Visual Studio in which I can select "Itch" as my build target and push F6 to build and deploy the game to my beta testers on Itch.

So using Visual Studio 2013 (and probably other versions can do this as well) here's how to set up your game to publish on Itch with just the push of a button!
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gamedev itch tools programming
Posted May 17th 2016 3:50 PM (Tools)
2 Comments

Asset Class Generator Update

Asset Class Generator Update
Just a quick post to say I've updated my Visual Studio Asset Class Generator with some bug fixes here and there. Download the new version right here.

There were some issues with duplicate file names, and also files with more than one period in the name would destroy it so I've now set it to ignore those files. I've also cleaned up the code that the generator writes.

The source code for the updated version is also now available here so you can feel free to modify it to your hearts content!
programming csharp tools
Posted January 27th 2015 11:42 AM (Tools)
No Comments

Google Spreadsheet Sync

Google Spreadsheet Sync
Have you ever wanted to take the contents of a Google Spreadsheet and drop it right into your game project? So have I! That's why I made a tool that will take the contents of a Google Spreadsheet and turn it into a C# code file full of data!

Demo


Let's say we have a spreadsheet full of data for our video game written in C#, and it looks something like this.

Image


The resulting output of that spreadsheet will be this.
class Sheets {

    

    public static Dictionary<string, CharactersRow> Characters = new Dictionary<string, CharactersRow>() {

            {"Adventurer", new CharactersRow() {

                Name = "Adventurer",

                Health = 100,

                Magic = 100,

                Attack = 100,

                Defense = 100,

                Speed = 100,

                VictoryPhrase = "Nice try, \"chump!\"",

                FailurePhrase = "Ah... well done..."

            }},

            {"Thief", new CharactersRow() {

                Name = "Thief",

                Health = 75,

                Magic = 100,

                Attack = 100,

                Defense = 50,

                Speed = 200,

                VictoryPhrase = "I take what I want!",

                FailurePhrase = "Not fair!"

            }},

            {"Assassin", new CharactersRow() {

                Name = "Assassin",

                Health = 100,

                Magic = 50,

                Attack = 200,

                Defense = 50,

                Speed = 100,

                VictoryPhrase = "You're lucky to be alive.",

                FailurePhrase = "How could you defeat me?!"

            }}

        };

    

    public class CharactersRow {

        public string Name;

        public int Health;

        public int Magic;

        public int Attack;

        public int Defense;

        public int Speed;

        public string VictoryPhrase;

        public string FailurePhrase;

    }

    

    public static Dictionary<string, WeaponsRow> Weapons = new Dictionary<string, WeaponsRow>() {

            {"Bronze Sword", new WeaponsRow() {

                Name = "Bronze Sword",

                Attack = 45,

                Defense = 0,

                Type = WeaponType.Sword,

                Value = 100,

                CanUpgrade = true

            }},

            {"Silver Bow", new WeaponsRow() {

                Name = "Silver Bow",

                Attack = 20,

                Defense = 0,

                Type = WeaponType.Bow,

                Value = 250,

                CanUpgrade = true

            }},

            {"Fire Wand", new WeaponsRow() {

                Name = "Fire Wand",

                Attack = 35,

                Defense = 15,

                Type = WeaponType.Staff,

                Value = 400,

                CanUpgrade = false

            }},

            {"Lasso", new WeaponsRow() {

                Name = "Lasso",

                Attack = 30,

                Defense = 0,

                Type = WeaponType.Whip,

                Value = 150,

                CanUpgrade = true

            }}

        };

    

    public class WeaponsRow {

        public string Name;

        public int Attack;

        public int Defense;

        public WeaponType Type;

        public int Value;

        public bool CanUpgrade;

    }

}

With a class like that in my project now it becomes very simple to get data from the spreadsheet with the key of the row (the first column.)
var charName = "Adventurer";

var health = Sheets.Characters[charName].Health;

var victoryPhrase = Sheets.Characters[charName].VictoryPhrase;

Console.WriteLine(victoryPhrase);

Download


Download GoogleSpreadsheetSync.zip (0.02MB)

Usage


I use Visual Studio, so I can only really tell you about that.

It's easiest to set this up as an EXTERNAL TOOL in Visual Studio.
* In Visual Studio go to the Tools menu at the top, select "External Tools..."

Image

* Click "Add"
* Name it something like "Google Spreadsheet Sync"
* For Command, press the "..." button to the right and find the exe.
* For arguments you can use "$(TargetName)" "$(ProjectDir)GoogleSheet.key"
* Include the quotes in those arguments!
* For Initial Directory put $(ProjectDir)
* No quotes in that one.
* Below that check the "Use Output Window" option.

Image


Before you run it though you're going to need to create a GoogleSheet.key file. That file should only contain google spreadsheet key.

For this example here's a URL to a published google spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Ia3wr-Pon1180M0_KRR1hywEITLn_P1BoUedbNQeqw/pubhtml

The key is that big long section: 11Ia3wr-Pon1180M0_KRR1hywEITLn_P1BoUedbNQeqw So in this example the contents of your GoogleSheet.key file should only be:

11Ia3wr-Pon1180M0_KRR1hywEITLn_P1BoUedbNQeqw

Save the file as GoogleSheet.key inside your root project folder. (So probably the same folder as your Program.cs)

Image


You should be all set to now run it from Visual Studio! It should appear in your Tools menu. You can even set a keyboard shortcut for it later if you want.

Run the tool from the Tools menu and what should happen is a Sheets.cs file is generated with all the data from your spreadsheets.

Image


Source


Of course it would be way better if you're able to take this tool and craft it into your own needs, so here's the source code!

I've started a public repository where I'll keep any useful tools I create right here.

Trouble?


If you run into any trouble feel free to post a comment and I'll try to help! Or you can reach me at hi@kpulv.com, or the contact form at the bottom of my site.
programming csharp google
Posted January 26th 2015 12:37 AM (Tools)
No Comments

Easy CSV Parsing in .Net

Easy CSV Parsing in .Net
Working on getting a public build of my latest game jam game up, and one thing I'm experimenting with is using CSVs for certain types of data. There's a bunch of enemies in the game that all have different stats, and usually I just store this information in the class for each enemy. Storing this data on a CSV has the benefit of being able to see all the data next to each other.

While I could achieve the same thing by having a dictionary set up in the code itself, storing the data in a csv file makes it a little bit easier to view and edit. Tweaks can be made more easily, and storing a bunch of data in dictionaries in code can get a little crazy looking depending on how much data there is to store.

Image


At first I was using OpenOffice Calc for my CSV editing, but there's a huge down side with that: file locking! OpenOffice thinks it's an awesome idea to put any file its editing into a crazy lock down mode, so I can't even read from the file while OpenOffice has it open. So I had to ditch it, and instead I'm using Ron's Editor. So far this is the best free csv editor I can find, even though it's a quite bit more strict about editing than a big spread sheet.

Now for loading the CSV data I'm using CsvHelper which makes parsing a csv as painless as possible. My enemies.csv looks like this:
EnemyType,Supply,Mass,MaxHealth

BasicTest,1,1,10

BigSkeleton,10,0,-1

TestPart,0,0,5

And the code to parse that looks like this:
var csv = new CsvReader(File.OpenText(Assets.Data.Enemies));

while (csv.Read()) {

    var record = new Record();



    record.EnemyType = Util.GetTypeFromAllAssemblies(csv.GetField<string>("EnemyType"));

    record.Supply = csv.GetField<int>("Supply");

    record.Mass = csv.GetField<float>("Mass");

    record.MaxHealth = csv.GetField<int>("MaxHealth");



    Records.Add(record.EnemyType, record);

}

I'm using a tiny class called Record to store the data. Record looks like this:
public class Record {

    public Type EnemyType;

    public int Supply;

    public float Mass;

    public int MaxHealth;

}

I end up loading the csv data into a dictionary with the enemy Types as the key, and the Records as the values. When an enemy is created it can look into that dictionary by using its own type and get out a Record object that contains all the data it needs to initialize.
var r = Records[this.GetType()];



AddComponents(

    new Team(TeamType.Enemy),

    new Heart(r.MaxHealth),

    new SpriteEffects()

    );

Group = O.GroupGameplay;



if (r.Mass > 0) {

    AddComponent(new PushAway(r.Mass, Tag.Enemy));

}



var h = GetComponent<Heart>();



h.OnDeath += () => {

    Death();

};

h.OnDamage += (d) => {

};

Pretty straight forward! I think I'm going to extend this to expose more fine tunings of things. It might also be fun to leave the files totally exposed for players to mess around with as well.
programming gamedev csharp
Posted November 30th 2014 9:59 PM (Tools)
1 Comment

Google Spreadsheet and nanDeck Workflow

Google Spreadsheet and nanDeck Workflow
One of the things I've been fiddling with for the past month or so is a prototype of a board game inspired by stuff like Dominion and Legendary and a mix of other stuff. It's been a collaboration with some of the local developers in the Phoenix area, and we we're getting to the point where hand writing a bunch of cards was getting really cumbersome, so I looked into tools for generating cards.

Image


I ended up finding nanDeck, which at first looks like a pretty weird program. Okay it is a pretty weird program, but after spending some time with it it really does get the job done. There are some basic tutorials that can get you started, and some neat posts about it here as well.

nanDeck has the ability to read data from a csv file. At first I was using Open Office to manage some spreadsheets and export them to csv files for nanDeck to import, but that wasn't going to last if I wanted to collaborate with others.

I converted all of my spreadsheets into a Google Drive spreadsheet so that I could share it with others, but now the question was how can I take all of that sheet and spit out a csv for each individual spreadsheet that is a part of the document?

The first thing I needed to do was download and install the desktop version of Google Drive. This lets me access my files on Google Drive as just files on my computer, much like Dropbox.

Next I needed a csv export script. I found one here, and then modified it to fit my needs more. The script runs the onOpen method and that adds a custom menu to the document so that anyone that the document is shared with can also use the script. Adding a script to a document is located in Tools, Script Editor.

Image


After loading the script I get a new menu option with my script function.

Image


The script ends up spitting out a bunch of csv files into a folder on my Google Drive. These folders end up syncing to my computer, and now all I have to do is move them from there into a folder where my nanDeck project lives.

Image


Image


That's where a Windows batch file comes in handy. I whipped up a quick batch file that will take all of the csv files from that generated folder and copy them into my project folder. Using some custom system variables it's easy to make this work on my various work computers just by setting those variables on each of them. Just using XCOPY works great.
XCOPY "%NANDECK_CSV_SOURCE%" "%NANDECK_CSV_DEST%" /S /Y /I

After the batch file runs all I have to do is click "Validate Deck" in nanDeck and it will update the data from the newly updated files, and now my new deck is ready to rock. Eventually I can even use nanDeck's command line features to copy the files and render the new deck from the batch file. Neat!

There's one major issue to look out for and that's using the Linked Data editor in nanDeck. If you click the button to edit the linked data, nanDeck seems to place the .csv file in lock down, meaning that XCOPY cant write over it. If this happens you'll have to close nanDeck to unlock the file so XCOPY can do its thing. As long as you don't use the linked data editor you'll be okay.
gamedev tools
Posted November 25th 2014 12:04 PM (Tools)
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