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posts tagged with: gamedev

Dev Log: Hud Options

Dev Log: Hud Options
I'm almost done with all of these menus for Super Sky Sisters! One thing I wanted to add was a bare minimal hud for players that wanted to see as much of the sky as possible. I've also made some changes to the main hud that make it a little bit smaller and less intrusive, but we'll see if that's enough. I figure adding the minimal hud is a good option for people that don't like the normal one.

This is the normal hud right now:

Image


And you have the option to change it in the options menu:

Image


When you have the minimal hud mode activated you get a hud that looks like this:

Image


I'll probably still make some changes to this but for now I'm happy with it. I also added a simple pause screen finally to the main game play because I noticed that I had to actually close the game and reopen it if I wanted to back out of the gameplay scene, whoops.

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I'm giving myself one more month maximum to work on this and then all I have to do is figure out what to do with it... (I have no idea right now.)
sky sisters gamedev dev log
Posted March 28th 2015 12:00 PM (General)
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Dev Log: Editing Controls

Dev Log: Editing Controls
Everyone wants to be able to customize their keyboard controls in games, and I think I figured out a pretty straight forward way to do just that in my menu system for Super Sky Sisters.

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You can configure each player's keyboard controls to make the set up that best works for you. On keyboards with a numpad it's definitely a good option to have one player set up on the numpad, but on laptop keyboards this isn't the case.

Right now you can't edit the game controller controls because I think I want to make those locked in at least for right now.

The to do list grows shorter! But I still need audio for this game, whoops!
sky sisters gamedev dev log
Posted March 26th 2015 6:10 PM (General)
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Dev Log: Super Sky Sisters Remake

Dev Log: Super Sky Sisters Remake
I'm back on Super Sky Sisters for the time being to try and make a finished game out of it as soon as possible. I'm supposed to be showing it at Indie Amigos on Thursday so hopefully I can get a new build ready! I'm also trying to get it ready for Game Developers Conference.

I'm working on some new assets:

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And getting some of the new HUD working:

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And of course spending a lot of time making sure the wings look exactly right:

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Going to try to jam on it as much as possible today and tomorrow to see if I can have the new version playable for Thursday!
sky sisters dev log gamedev
Posted February 3rd 2015 10:34 AM (General)
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Dev Log: Event Queues Everywhere

Dev Log: Event Queues Everywhere
I've been working on a little prototype involving turn based combat. I'm not quite 100% ready to dive back into Stratoforce yet, and I had this idea gnawing at me and I just have to get it out of my system. What exactly is the idea? Well I can't say what it is yet, but if it works out then I'll talk more about it!

Since it is based around turn based combat I had to figure out how exactly that works. I'm so used to programming things that happen all in real time that suddenly going into a turn based game makes absolutely no sense to my brain. At first I had these huge state machines that were incredibly clunky, then I transformed it all into events that can be placed into a magical event queue.

Here's a simple class that can be dropped into Otter that is an event queue manager. It was whipped up very quickly so there might be some slight issues to debug. Check it out:
/// <summary>

/// A Component to manage and process queue of events

/// </summary>

class EventQueue : Component {



    public List<EventQueueEvent> Events = new List<EventQueueEvent>();

    public EventQueueEvent CurrentEvent { get; private set; }



    bool isFreshEvent = true;



    public EventQueue() {



    }



    public bool HasEvents {

        get {

            return Events.Count > 0;

        }

    }



    public void Add(params EventQueueEvent[] evt) {

        Events.AddRange(evt);

    }



    public void Push(params EventQueueEvent[] evt) {

        Events.InsertRange(0, evt);

    }





    public override void Update() {

        base.Update();



        if (CurrentEvent == null) {

            NextEvent();

        }



        while (CurrentEvent != null) {

            if (isFreshEvent) {

                isFreshEvent = false;

                CurrentEvent.EventQueue = this;

                CurrentEvent.Start();

                CurrentEvent.Enter();

            }



            CurrentEvent.Update();

            CurrentEvent.Timer++;



            if (CurrentEvent.IsFinished) {

                isFreshEvent = true;

                CurrentEvent.Exit();

                CurrentEvent.EventQueue = null;

                Events.Remove(CurrentEvent);

                NextEvent();

            }

            else {

                break;

            }

        }

        

    }



    void NextEvent() {

        if (Events.Count > 0) {

            CurrentEvent = Events[0];

        }

        else {

            CurrentEvent = null;

        }

    }

}



class EventQueueEvent {



    public EventQueue EventQueue;

    public int Timer = 0;

    public bool IsFinished { get; private set; }



    public void Start() {

        IsFinished = false;

        Timer = 0;

    }



    public virtual void Enter() {



    }



    public virtual void Update() {



    }



    public virtual void Exit() {



    }



    public void Finish() {

        IsFinished = true;

    }

}

This is sort of similar to just a very simple behavior tree (see Kodo for more advanced stuff!) Basically what happens is there's a list of events that all need to be run. The current event is run during the Update, and if it's finished then it's removed and now the next one starts up. You can both Add and Push events into the Queue. Push will insert an event at index zero so it will be the next thing to run. To make events just make classes that extend EventQueueEvent!

So I have events like "Damage" "ActorDefeated" "ChooseTarget" "TakeActions" and more. It becomes very easy to manage when things are broken up into separate classes like this! This is actually also giving me ideas on how to run cutscenes in more real time action type games as well. Maybe it will be of some use to you!
programming csharp otter gamedev
Posted January 23rd 2015 1:21 AM (General)
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Dev Log: Productivity Experiements

Dev Log: Productivity Experiements
When the new year came about I was determined to break my cycle of endless procrastination loops. I find that my productivity is tied to my mood, and my mood is tied to my productivity, so when things are going great in either one of those then it's awesome, but if one of those drops then it's kind of a self reinforcing downward spiral into the abyss. It's not impossible to break out of it, but it is really really difficult.

When I got back from my holiday season travels the very first thing I did on my main workstation computer was completely block reddit. I'm using a website blocking extension for Chrome that will just straight up block the site entirely. Reddit is a big problem for my procrastination. When facing a super hard problem I could either sit down spend a lot of time trying to solve it... or maybe open a browser and type "r" and suddenly an hour has gone by.

I've blocked reddit before, but not as hard. Usually my previous reddit blocks have just been totally mental. I would catch myself starting to type in reddit and then divert to something else, but this time I wanted to try a more all out approach. Also I can still browse it on my phone which I still do sometimes before bed, but having it blocked on my computer I should be doing work on feels different.

In similar fashion I've also limited my Twitter and Facebook time on my computer to one hour every 24 hours. Other sites are included in this time limit but it's mostly the big T and F. I actually don't think Twitter and Facebook are that much of a problem for me, but it is nice to have a hard limit on it per day, and even just having that limit does make me mindful of how much time I'm actually spending on those sites. For limiting time on sites I'm using the Chrome extension StayFocusd. I think I've only ever hit the hour limit once, but there are some times where working on various projects does involve Facebook and Twitter usage.

Blocking and restricting sites on my computer felt weird at first. I thought "well if I do this won't I just immediately find ways around my own restrictions?" As time goes on though the restrictions feel more like a part of my routine. Since I only have an hour of Twitter and Facebook I spend very little time on those sites now, and the time I do spend on there is very focused and brief. I haven't really felt a need to go to reddit lately, and I feel like I might just be better off without it. If I really really want to browse it I can use my phone which is a separate entity from my work computer.

The last thing for now is toggl which I've mentioned before. It's a simple time tracking application which can also be downloaded as a desktop program. I have a couple of different work categories such as game dev, drawing, blog, misc tasks, and I put exercise on there to track that as well. So far it's been working out pretty well and I am interested to see the results of it after a month or so. It is useful to see how much time was actually spent on certain things during the day.

I'm not holding myself to any sort of requirements through the day. Right now I just work on stuff as much as I feel like I can. Between drawing, game dev, and other stuff I'm logging about 4.5 to 5 hours of productivity a day which seems pretty decent.

As a continue to experiment with productivity I'll be sure to talk more about the results. Right now things are going pretty well with a weird prototype. It's getting me back into the groove of coding which I'm hoping will transfer back to my current projects like Super Sky Sisters and Stratoforce.
gamedev tools
Posted January 21st 2015 2:34 PM (General)
2 Comments

2014: A Pretty Weird Year Part V

2014: A Pretty Weird Year Part V
2014 is now totally done. As I mentioned in my posts before this it felt like a pretty weird year overall. Usually at the end of the year I feel like I have some sort of body of work to show for it, but this year felt like I didn't really accomplish much. I mean when I look back at it all I really released as a finished thing was Dan Adelman's site, and Starforger, which was a little game jam game from back in August.

Warning: This post is pretty dang long and has some rambly sections. Proceed at your own risk! (There aren't any pictures.)
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gamedev good times yay!
Posted January 3rd 2015 3:00 PM (General)
4 Comments
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