Category: Game Development

Thousander Club Update: August 18th

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 8/18/2008
3 Comments on Thousander Club Update: August 18th

For this week’s Thousander Club update:

Game Hours: 409.25(previous two years) + 114.5 (current year) = 523.75 / 1000
Game Ideas: 710 (previous two years) + 36 (current year) = 746 / 1000

I managed a few hours of development this past week, which is quite a few less than I expected to do, but progress is progress. I reorganized my subversion repositories with the goal of separating common libraries into their own project that can be included by my own projects. Before this change, each project was in its own repository, and they had the same build scripts for the same custom libraries, which was a lot of duplication. Subversion has something called svn:externals which allows my checked out project to essentially include a different project under it. It should be pretty handy for common tools, scripts, and code across projects.

I finally got around to changing the drawing of the goal in Minimalist from a blue filled rectangle to an actual sprite image.

I want it to animate with the text spinning around it, but the important thing is that it does a better job of standing out from the red rectangles.

Also, I would like to change the name of the game. Minimalist got its name from the theme of Ludum Dare #11, but I think the game should be named something more appropriate. I’m thinking Walls, since the game now features obstacles that close in on you.

[tags]game, game design, productivity, personal development, video game development, indie[/tags]

Cliffski Was Civil with Pirates?

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 8/15/2008
1 Comment on Cliffski Was Civil with Pirates?

If you’ve ever discussed copyright infringement, indie game business models, or even chess with Cliffski, you would know that he vehemently HATES so-called piracy. In fact, if you even argue that it isn’t the same as stealing and that piracy is a silly name for it, get ready to be flamed.

Or maybe you don’t have to worry about it as much. In a move that surprised many, he wrote a blog post asking “Why do people pirate my games?” in which he invited people to explain their true motivations. In fact, it would have been expected if he would have turned around and tried to prosecute anyone who admitted it to him, but instead, true to his word, he kept an open mind, and came away with some lessons.

He details what he learned in Talking to Pirates, and he’s changing some aspects of his business.

A big one: No DRM.

I only used DRM for one game (Democracy 2) and it’s trivial. It’s a one-time only internet code lookup for the full version. I’ve read enough otherwise honest people complain about DRM to see that its probably hurting more than it help’s. I had planned on using the same system for Kudos 2, but I’ve changed my mind on that. I have also removed it from Democracy 2 today. I now use no DRM at all.

Again, I’m surprised that of all the indies out there, Cliffski was the one to not only ask why people prefer to not pay for his games but also listen to the responses, but I’m pleased. I know that I’ve made these arguments, that people don’t like DRM because they don’t like being treated as a criminal, but I’ve been dismissed before as not knowing what I talk about. Now Cliffski comes and does this, and getting rid of DRM is justified as good for business? Huh. Who’d have thunk it?

I suppose even if he didn’t get this beneficial feedback, his sales would still pick up significantly from getting the publicity from Slashdot and Digg. Whether or not he expected to get this much traffic from this article, or such good feedback, I don’t know, but hopefully we’ll find out soon.

Game Development Personal Development

Thousander Club Update: August 11th

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 8/11/2008

For this week’s Thousander Club update:

Game Hours: 409.25(previous two years) + 110.25 (current year) = 519.50 / 1000
Game Ideas: 710 (previous two years) + 36 (current year) = 746 / 1000

Wow, I did a lot of game development this past weekend! Ludum Dare #12 wasn’t a big success for me, but I’ll have more to say in a post-mortem of Tower Defender. Along with my LD#11 entry, Minimalist, I intend to properly finish these games and release them. Minimalist should hopefully be out by the end of August at the latest.

[tags]game, game design, productivity, personal development, video game development, indie[/tags]

Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: GBGames Time Lapse!

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 8/11/2008
3 Comments on LD#12: GBGames Time Lapse!

My first time lapse was over 10 minutes long, and so I had to cut out a lot of the repetitive images to shorten it. I also found a way to combine music with it.

Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: Final Submission

Tower Defender source. This is a source only version, and it is 8MB!

Get your smaller Linux-binary here: Tower Defender for Linux

A Win32 binary should be forthcoming.

Unfortunately I only got game play in at the last few minutes, and there are problems. For one, there is no way to win or lose. The enemies don’t know that they’ve already stormed the walls and will keep going until they hit the sky, but they do this cool floating thing…which is a bug. Mousing over the archers will make them fire arrows, and they take a bit of time to reload before letting you fire again. The arrows do hit the enemies and make them disappear.

I’ll have a post-mortem up soon.

Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: Lunch with Gizmo

Post author By Gianfranco Berardi
Post date 8/10/2008

Gizmo tends to like to hang out with me whenever I’m doing anything related to programming. I nicknamed her Hacker Kitty. She’s helping me eat my vegan pizza and apple juice.

Diego, on the other hand, just wants to know when I’ll be done.

Well, I’m not done yet, but I have a few more unit tests, and quite a few more lines of code without tests. Progress is being made.

Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#12: More Design

I was sketching out some of the interactions and just trying to make myself aware of what it is I am tackling with only 8 hours left.

Based on these notes, I think my schedule should be as follows:

Code to draw tower based on height (determined by difficulty, a nice to have later on).
Draw an enemy sprite.
Code to move enemies up the tower.
Code to determine that game is over if they reach top of tower.
Code to mouse over an archer.
Draw an arrow.
Code to move arrow.
Code to handle collision of arrow and enemy.

And after all of that, I should have a good base to work with. I’ll see how much time is left and make further plans when those are done. The cool thing is that I can start writing unit tests again for the classes I’ll be writing.