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Dev Log: SFML C#

Dev Log: SFML C#
At this point I am becoming an expert at making test applications full of randomly colored squares.

Image


This was made with SFML.NET and right now is just a quick framework put together loosely based off of Flashpunk. I don't have anything concrete yet, just a basic system of Scenes and Entities, but I'm having fun putting this together so far.

One thing I'm worried about is access to cool libraries. In AS3 I make use of TweenLite and AS3Crypto a lot. I'm really surprised there isn't a big "go to" tweening library for C#. I found some C# tweening classes with some help from Twitter, but they're mostly just "here's the code, good luck" type things. I was really hoping for something more like TweenLite with a bunch of demos and test applications to try out. (I know there's tweening options for Unity in C#, but since they are built with Unity integration they don't really help much without going into the core code and tearing it apart which I don't really have the know how to do.)

I think for now I'll move forward with this while also working a little bit on my AS3 project still. If I can actually manage to make a playable thing with SFML C# in the next two weeks or so then I'll call it a success.

I am both loving and hating this period of experimenting with new stuff, haha!
dev log sfml csharp gamedev programming
Posted May 16th 2013 11:29 AM (General)
2 Comments

AS3 State Machine

AS3 State Machine
State Machines are the greatest thing I've ever discovered when it comes to programming games. More and more I'm beginning to realize that a lot of the structure of the tools I've used is in fact a state machine!

Finite State Machines


To find out exactly what a state machine is, check out this wikipedia article which describes them as "...an abstract machine that can be in one of a finite number of states. The machine is in only one state at a time; the state it is in at any given time is called the current state. It can change from one state to another when initiated by a triggering event or condition; this is called a transition. A particular FSM is defined by a list of its states, and the triggering condition for each transition."

An example of this in action in my games are the guards in Super Ninja Slash. They have a couple of different states. Idle, Alarmed, Shooting, and Dead. That covers all their bases for their behavior.

Without using a state machine, writing code for all of that behavior can quickly become a giant mess of if statements and booleans. With a state machine, I can completely separate all the code for the guard's Idle state, the Alarmed state, Shooting, and Dead.
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programming gamedev
Posted May 14th 2013 11:03 AM (Tutorials)
3 Comments

More Development Options!

More Development Options!
Since my last post about trying out a bunch of different engines and coding languages, a bunch more options were pointed out to me by various people through the comments and through facebook and twitter, so here's a quick rundown of these things I've never even heard of or considered until last week!
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gamedev programming
Posted May 8th 2013 11:41 AM (Tools)
6 Comments

Jump Input Buffering

Jump Input Buffering
Yesterday I updated Super Ninja Slash with a few tweaks, including the addition of jump input buffering. I talked about this a little bit on Twitter, but due to the 140 character limit I think I might've caused some confusion as to what I meant by jump input buffering.

First what I mean by input buffering is allowing the player (or any source of input) to input commands into the game and allow those commands to be effective for a short window of time after they are inputted. In the case of jump input buffering, the goal is to allow the player to input the jump button and still have a successful jump even if they mistimed their input by a tiny amount.

I made some doodles to try and illustrate what exactly is going on. Imagine that this is some typical platforming game.
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gamedev programming
Posted April 4th 2013 1:04 PM (General)
14 Comments

Screenshot Saturday: Web Stuff

Image

This week I took a short break from video game coding to crank out some web tools for a table top RPG that I play with some local friends. The screenshot above is part of a combat manager application that I wrote in php. It's main purpose is to manage all of the NPCs in a fight so that the game master doesn't have to keep flipping through a binder full of different pages of enemies to keep track of what's going on during the battle. It should make our games go along a lot quicker, although some people really like to have physical dice make all the decisions. When you have a battle involving 15+ characters though, dice rolling can get tedious pretty rapidly.

Now back to game development!
programming php webdev
Posted February 23rd 2013 3:25 PM (General)
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