Author: Gianfranco Berardi

Categories
Game Development General Personal Development

Thousander Club Update: November 20th

For this week’s Thousander Club update:

Game Hours: 227.25 / 1000
Game Ideas: 500 / 1000

Target: 903

A little less than 100 hours left for the year!

I spent another week researching Autotools, and I managed to get two text-based applications building with it. One was a basic “Hello, World!” application, and another was a text-based board game simulation that I completed months ago. Now, I am trying to get the Kyra Sprite Engine building into a shared library. Previous versions already had a working autotools build system in place, but it has been broken for the last few iterations. Ideally I could get it back to a working state. At the very least, I would like to be able to use Autotools on my project while integrating Kyra into that build procedure.

Of course, November is almost over, and a month ago I said I wanted to be able to complete a Space Invaders clone. Researching and using Autotools is only tangentially related to that goal. Of course, goals can be changed, and I think that sticking with learning a new skill would work better than taking a break to make a game, which in all likelihood would take longer than I think it would.

So my plans change again, only I don’t feel too bad about it. Sure, it means putting off finishing another game, possibly until the beginning of 2007, but it also means that I am not trying to spread my focus across five different disciplines at once. I am still moving forward, and learning a new skill always feels as though you are not being productive at first.

Realistically, with the holidays approaching, I can see my time getting split up between the day job, game development, and family, which means that Space Invaders might really take me a couple of months to make anyway. But hey, once it is made, I should be able to easily build and distribute it.

Oh, and I also spent a number of days coming up with some really simple ideas. I plan to catch up to 1,000 ideas by the end of the Thousander Club for this year. Last week I was at 445 ideas, and now I am up to 500. If I spend a few more weeks coming up with hundreds of ideas, I should be able to make it. It has been a long time since I posted one of them, and I hope to post one for this week.

Categories
Games Geek / Technical Marketing/Business

I Played with a Wii

While out buying some much needed replacement gym shoes (I haven’t rotated them every 100,000 steps like I should have), I decided to stop into a Game Stop and try out the Wii on display. I had heard that they require a credit card, but it turns out that they only needed a state ID.

Ok, seriously, why would you purposefully put up barriers to get your potential customers to try out your products? “Come check out our cool stuff that we want you to purchase! It’s amazing! It’s sweet! You’ll love it! Not so fast there, Mr. Customer! First you need to give us something. We can’t just trust you to try it out, after all.”

When I was given the Wii remote, it was in a steering wheel. Apparently Ubisoft makes plastic steering wheel-shaped holders for the remote? The reason for the wheel was to let it feel more natural while playing Excite Truck. It was the only game on display, which disappointed me. I was looking forward to some Wii-sports or something other than a game in the only genre that I don’t care much about.

I’m not a racing fan. I will play Cruisin’ USA or similar arcade games because for some reason out of all of the games that my female friends could play, racing games appeal the most. And not games like Super Mario Kart. No, they like realistic racers with no missiles to shoot or banana peels to drop or oil slicks to leave behind for the next player. I’m sure it appeals to a lot of people. It just doesn’t appeal to me.

Anyway, I start working with the menu, and I wasn’t sure if the remote wasn’t calibrated or if my hand was shaking (I had been playing basketball not too long before), but eventually I got used to it. It was kind of cool to have the remote rumble when it highlights something that can be picked. I checked out a few of the options, such as the photo album and the calendar. I even left a note, “gbgames was here”. Childish? Maybe. What’s it to ya’?

So I finally start the game. It had a tutorial section, and I made it through a good portion of it with only a little difficulty. Part of it was getting used to the controls. My video-game-playing hands kept hitting the directional controls whenever I wanted to turn. At first, I kept forgetting that you need to turn the controller itself. Eventually I got the hang of it, but I swear it reminded me of my Atari 2600 days. I would dodge, jump, and dive with that controller because it still wasn’t obvious to me that doing so was a waste of energy. With the Wii, it actually becomes not only functional, but necessary.

I did a bunch of tricks and jumps, but I could not get the 720 air spin down. I eventually quit the tutorial and started a race. Apparently while racing three laps I also had to earn a certain number of stars. It was interesting, but just like in most racing games, I found myself struggling to stay on the track. I got a lot of air, though, and a few times I managed to spin 360 degrees and land perfectly to get a speed boost. All the while I was spinning, tilting, and turning the controller.

In my limited period of time playing with the Wii, I thought it was promising. I just wish that the demo had something more interesting for me to try out. This weekend, plenty of people will receive their preorders for the Wii and probably the new Zelda game. I will not be among those people, but that just means that when I do eventually get a Wii, it will have more games and the price will probably have come down a bit. Oh, and maybe I will have more time to play games.

I will eventually get a Wii…once I have something more compelling than Excite Truck to play. When the N64 was in kiosks, I had a blast playing Super Mario 64. I would walk over to the stores over and over to play something on that system. It seems to me that someone messed up somewhere. I know that other people have been able to try out other games, but somehow the one store I go into had such a limited ability to market to me. I WANTED to try out things, but my options were limited. I couldn’t even check out some of the networked features that the menu promised would be there if the network was only configured.

In summary:

The Wii: Promising.
Marketing the Wii: Not so much.

Categories
Game Development Geek / Technical General Politics/Government

Games 4 Girls Competition Registration Is Open

In an effort to attract more females to computer science, a male-dominated field, the Games 4 Girls competition asks college women to create computer games designed to be fun for middle or high school age women.

In previous competitions, Game Maker was required, but this year other tools and platforms can be used. The only requirement is that the games can run on Windows XP (the competition is partly sponsored by Microsoft, after all).

This past year’s winners were Cornell University’s Green, Eggs, and Pan, the University of California-Irvine’s Eterative Tale, and North Central College’s DummerUnfall. Honorable mention went to Fluff, created by the team from University of Buffalo.

For this year’s competition, each member of the winning team will be awarded $1,000. Second and third place team members will receive $500. Also, three teams will win $1,000 for their Women’s Club/Organization. If you are a female college student, and you’re interested in the competition, the registration date is December 22nd, 2006. Deadlines and general information about the competition can be found at the Games 4 Girls site.

Categories
Game Development General Personal Development

Thousander Club Update: November 13th

For this week’s Thousander Club update:

Game Hours: 218.25 / 1000
Game Ideas: 445 / 1000

Target: 882

I have printed out the manual for Autoconf, which is the tool used to create configuration scripts for a wide-variety of Unix-like systems. Together with Automake, it will allow me to make packages that users will simply need to configure && make && make install. So far, it doesn’t seem like it is too complicated, but it is difficult to find beginner documents that don’t assume you already know something. Interestingly, the Autotools book claims to be a tutorial, but it seems to give examples without explaining much, expecting you to use the reference manuals for the individual tools.

I intend to write my own set of tutorials since I think these tools would be much more useful to developers if they only knew how to use them.

Categories
General Linux Game Development

Better Flash Support for Mozilla, GNU/Linux?

I never thought I would be posting anything from Happy News, but then I saw the article entitled Adobe Gives Mozilla Some Computer Code. Basically, Adobe shared some code with the Mozilla Project related to ActionScript, which is what the Flash player uses.

Mozilla created a new project called Tamarin to “implement a high-performance, open source implementation of the ECMAScript 4th edition (ES4) language specification.” The FAQ answers the question of what exactly is being contributed:

The Tamarin release will include the following components:

* Source code from the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2) as currently shipping in Adobe Flash Player 9, including the Just In Time (JIT) runtime compiler and conservative garbage collector.
* A partial implementation of a prototype compiler written in ActionScript, which will be developed by the open source community to implement all of the ECMAScript 4th edition specification. This will be a “self-hosted” compiler that is written in the language it compiles.

I’m surprised more open source news sites haven’t mentioned this news. Maybe I am jumping the gun a bit here, but if the source is being made available, doesn’t it stand to reason that open source implementations of Flash Player will be much better on Gnu/Linux? If so, it means that web-based games will have more reliably available players. To indie game developers, it translates into more potential customers. To us Gnu/Linux users, it means we’ll finally be able to view Flash movies or play Flash games without missing text or wondering if it froze.

That is not to say that Flash Player itself has been open sourced, as Frank Hecker clarifies. Still, if the basic scripting language is going to get better, then Flash might, too.

Categories
Game Development General

IGDA Created a SIG for Tool Development

According to a GameDev.net news report, the IGDA has created its own special interest group on tool development.

Tool Box is the SIG’s blog, and even though there are only a few posts, there is one link to an article at Gamasutra called Swiss Army Chainsaw: A Common Sense Approach to Tool Development that was posted a couple of months ago.

Some other options for the tool building community include the forum and the mailing list.

With content creation being such a big emphasis these days, even the indie game developer could benefit from better tools.

Categories
Games Politics/Government

I Voted

I woke up late today, so I couldn’t vote in the morning. I finally managed to do so.

And I voted third party.

That is, I voted for neither Blagojevich or Topinka.

I also voted against Don Harmon and Deborah L. Graham, even though the latter was running unopposed.

I wasn’t too familiar with the “stakes” of this election, but if it was anything like last election, I’d rather vote 3rd party than support either of the two major candidates.

In any case, I did not support candidates who would support laws such as the unconstitutional video game legislation introduced by Blagojevich. And I feel good about it.

Categories
Game Development Linux Game Development Personal Development

Thousander Club Update: November 6th

For this week’s Thousander Club update:

Game Hours: 216 / 1000
Game Ideas: 445 / 1000

Target: 861

I spent this past week researching autotools in order that I might use them in my projects. Basically, if I can use autotools in my game projects, I will have less of a problem when porting to various Unix-like systems, including different Gnu/Linux distros. In fact, if I do use autotools, I can use CheckInstall to create various distro packages, such as RPM or .deb files. Of course, there is still the problem of porting to Windows, but it seems that my code is quite portable, and there are various installers available for that platform anyway. As for the Mac, I imagine that a third party will be involved, such as Red Marble Games which provides a porting and marketing service.

This week is the 45th of the year; the year is almost over. I hope that I can make a better effort for these last few weeks.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Games

Indie Game Dev Podcast: Interview with Squashy Software, part 2

Speaking of podcasts, Action’s back with a brand new edition of the Indie Game Developer’s Podcast. We return you to the interview with Squashy Software, already in progress. Just like last time, this podcast is almost an hour of Anthony Flack goodness.

Anthony spoke about studying all kinds of games to improve his own, although you can tell he is successful because he answers the question “What’s your favorite game?” with the standard successful game developer answer: “I haven’t played much recently. I’ve been very busy.” B-)

Interesting comments include his views on how he must allow the game to form, almost as a painter or sculptor rather than an engineer. He also offers a few lessons on selling a finished product and prototyping.

Categories
Games Geek / Technical

On Games Podcast

Recently I learned about a new podcast: On Games.

While the hosts, Charcoal and Makka, do discuss video games in general, they have an emphasis on indie games. They are definitely opinionated, but I find that it adds to the fun. They love responding to hate mail, for example, although they haven’t received any yet.

As of this writing, they have two shows up, but it appears that we can look forward to weekly updates.